FRS 001V - Sec. 001 - (1 unit) - CRN 93117 - M 5:10-6:30 pm - 5 Wellman

The Social Animal

Instructor: Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Department of Anthropology, College of Letters & Science

Description: How is human society possible? Unlike any other ape or monkey, we live in large societies, are highly dependent upon one another, and are bound inextricably in a dense web of interrelationships with our families, our communities, our leaders, and our globalized world. How a creature that has evolved through the process of natural selection has achieved this distinction is one of the great puzzles of humanity. Increasingly this ancient question is finding answers in an unlikely source – evolutionary biology. This seminar traces elements of human nature – our competitiveness and our cooperativeness, our cares and our hates – to find out what we can learn about ourselves from the broader perspectives of the animal kingdom. As such it aims to bridge the social and the natural sciences. Substantively students will become familiar with the rudiments of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and its potential application to our own species. The principal goal of the seminar is nevertheless broader: students will be introduced to the idea that the natural and social sciences are not isolated strongholds. We will address issues germane to anthropology, economics, sociology, politics and history, such as warfare, trade, property, hierarchy, morality, and the environment. Special attention will be given to two skills: first, thinking about how grand ideas can be reduced to simpler propositions amenable to hypothesis testing; second, critical reading of a beautifully written popular application of Darwinian ideas to the social sciences.

Format: Class meetings will be divided between informal lecture presentations, discussion and students’ reading of their weekly reading summaries. Assigned reading material, primarily from Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue (1996, Penguin Books) will be available for purchase at the UC Book Store. We will meet for 1.3 hours over 8 weeks. Each session will start with each student reading his/her paragraph summarizing the principal points of the weekly reading assignment. The instructor will then provide an overview of the reading, its significance and broader background material, before opening the topic up to discussion. By the end of the 8th week of the quarter a 1000 word (maximum) piece of written work is required. Outside of class students will be required to spend approximately 2 hours reading and preparing their reading summary. Over the quarter they will spend about 5 hours in preparation of their term paper. Grading: Students will be letter graded on the quality of their contributions to discussions (33%); a single written paragraph, submitted weekly, outlining the principal point of the assigned reading for that week, evaluated on the basis of reading comprehension (33%); a 1000 word maximum-length term paper outlining how they might further investigate one of the hypotheses discussed in class (33%).

About the Instructor: Professor Monique Borgerhoff Mulder (Faculty, Anthropology) has research interests that lie in applying evolutionary theory to the study of human behavior. She has conducted anthropological fieldwork in different parts of East Africa and has recently completed a book on “Conservation & People: An Introduction to Debates in the Natural and Social Sciences”. She teaches courses in Human Ecology (ANT 101), and Indigenous People and Conservation (ANT 103).