Evolutionary Anthropology Society Mission Statement
- The primary purposes of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society (hereafter, EAS)
are to:
- promote the application of modern evolutionary theory to the analysis
of human behavior and culture (including its paleontological, archaeological,
and linguistic manifestations);
- foster scholarly exchange between evolution-minded researchers in
all subfields of anthropology as well as in other disciplines;
- support the dissemination of evolutionary anthropology in teaching
and research;
- provide a forum for those who are concerned with the communication of
evolutionarily-informed anthropological research among the general public;
- provide a greater opportunity for evolutionarily-oriented anthropology graduate
students to present papers at the American Anthropological Association
(AAA) annual meetings, and
to encourage them to take full advantage of the benefits of belonging
to the AAA.
- Justification
- There are solid reasons, both scholarly and pragmatic, for creating
EAS as a section of the AAA.
First, the explanatory power and theoretical unity provided by contemporary
Darwinian theory is leading to rapid growth of knowledge about the evolutionary
processes that shape human behavior and related social phenomena (including
cultural evolution, long-term ecological change, the origin and evolution
of language, and the like). While much of this work is based on understandings
derived from the analysis of genetic evolution, of equal importance is
the recent development of a sophisticated theory of cultural evolution
that establishes the unique properties of this system of adaptation. Human
phenotypic adaptability, particularly behavioral forms such as individual
and social learning and symbol-based cognition, also provide an important
basis for much of the research that falls properly within the purview
of the EAS.
- Second, those interested in evolutionary anthropology range across
traditional anthropological subdisciplines, as well as encompassing
scholars from other disciplines with a strong desire to both contribute to
and learn from anthropology. EAS is intended to provide a venue for presentation
of research by scholars who would otherwise be unlikely to attend AAA
meetings on a regular basis. Our society is explicitly aimed at linking
various subfields of anthropology, as well as scholars in other relevant
disciplines such as biology, economics, and psychology. EAS encourages a
theoretically unified evolutionary perspective that cuts across
subdisciplinary and disciplinary boundaries.
- We encourage
our members to belong to other relevant sections of the AAA, such as the
Archaeology Division, the Biological Anthropology Section, and the Society
for Anthropological Sciences. We see the relationship between EAS and
these units as complementary rather than competitive, and
many members of EAS are active members of other AAA units.
- EAS aims to be a unifying
force in the AAA, not a divisive one. As anthropologists, we are sensitive to the long history of abuse of evolutionary notions and
ill-founded biological determinism in anthropology. Indeed, we believe
the EAS can be a major contributor to critiques of naive and distorted
evolutionary analyses in anthropology and human affairs, as well as
ill-informed attacks on evolutionary social science and evolutionary
biology.