W. Penn Handwerker
Email: handwerker@UConn.edu
I was trained as a general anthropologist with an emphasis on the intersection of biological and cultural anthropology. I have published in all four fields of the discipline, and have also undertaken many applied research projects. My current research focuses on the hypothesis that the shared assumptions, norms, and patterns of behavior that constitute cultures originate unexpectedly and are subject to selective processes that optimize a cultural participant’s ability to survive and eat well reliably. Human imagination produces a continuous flow of new ideas and behaviors. But specific novelties originate unexpectedly and invariably contain imperfections. By assigning emotional weights to the consequences of behavior for a person’s ability to survive and eat well reliably, our brains may exert a selective effect by identifying knowledge and reasoning imperfections, giving precedence to one or another mode of framing choices, and thus altering the values that apply to a set of choice alternatives. Because our lives encompass multiple domains of thought and action that bear on our ability to survive and eat well reliably in different ways, each person participates in multiple cultures. Because selection favors choices framed as gains between equals and as losses as inequalities grow, as power differences grow larger the fair behavior that characterizes interaction between equals shifts increasingly rapidly to increasingly exploitative and, eventually, violent behavior.
I developed and have tested this hypothesis in a series of studies on a wide range of topics, including public sector corruption, entrepreneurship, human fertility, the origins and evolution of intelligence, human rights, and the causes and consequences (particularly for sexual behavior) of violence to women and children. In the process, I developed new methods and strategies with which to study cultures. Key publications include articles in the American Anthropologist (1989, 1997, 2002), Current Anthropology (1997), the American Journal of Human Biology (2001), and Ethos (2003), a chapter on sample design in the Encyclopedia of Social Measurement (2005), and the books Women’s Power and Social Revolution (1989) and Quick Ethnography (2001). I summarize the argument in a new book, The Origin of Cultures (2009). Here’s one implication: cultural assumptions provide for collective action to address specific sustainability problems. The most resilient cultures may arise from a shared assumption that each person knows best for him or herself. This assumption rationalizes the cultural norm that each person should exercise personal sovereignty with constraints worked out among equals. Threats to sovereignty thus evoke a ‘loss’ choice frame, discounted risks, and solutions previously unimagined or thought impossible.
This hypothesis grounds an integrated teaching curriculum. 'Other People's Worlds' shows how to identify cultures, differentiate one from another, and examines how cultures accomplish goals. 'Introduction to Anthropology' explores how and why we became creatures who accomplish goals only through cultures, and what this augurs for your future. 'Violence & Human Rights' addresses the implication that violence evolved as means to secure and defend what we now think about as 'human rights.' 'Human Dimensions of Sustainability' asks how we humans, as highly imperfect beings, may most effectively construct resilient (hence, sustainable) cultures. 'Quick Ethnography' provides an overview of research methods suitable for the study of cultures. A prospective course 'Modeling Cultural Dynamics' will apply dynamic modeling to the study of evolving cultures.
Curriculum Vitae Students & Dissertations Current PhD Students Course Syllabi Some Recent Publications In Progress: Articles Books
Evolution, Cognition, & Culture Graduate Program