That complex whole : culture and the evolution of human behavior by Lee Cronk

Lee Cronk’s book That complex whole is about a variety of different kinds of culture wars, some restricted to an academic milieu and others well-known fixtures of public discourse in the United States and beyond. Most directly, it addresses a perennial debate in cultural anthropology: how should anthropologists define human culture, its boundaries and roles in human existence? Beyond that, it looks at the disciplinary split that runs through the different sub-fields of North American anthropology, one that distinguishes researchers who define themselves as scientists from those who take a more humanistic view of anthropological goals and procedures. Finally, and most indirectly, the book offers a perspective on the arguments over cultural practises and values that periodically – or perhaps constantly – ring across Western societies. The book raises a set of important questions about the relations between evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology and is well written and accessible, so that one would expect it to be a useful text for undergraduates and the general public. Unfortunately, its treatment of anthropological theorizing about culture is weak, and creates a distorted view of the history and state of the art of this work. Such difficulties might perhaps be expected in a text written by someone outside the discipline (see for example Pinker 1997, 2002), but are less understandable when they come from the pen of an anthropologist. Cronk begins the book with an observation, and a claim. The observation is one instance of an ethnographic commonplace: people say one thing, but actually and systematically do another. The Mukogodo pastoralists in whose Kenyan communities Cronk did his fieldwork express a preference for male children over female children, but treat their daughters somewhat better than they do their sons. Examples of such contradictions can be multiplied, and Cronk cites a number of such examples, from other parts of Africa, from Asia and from the United States. Based on his research, he posits that in the Mukogodo case the favoritism shown toward daughters is an example of an evolved human tendency to favour children with the best prospects, especially in marriage, in later life. The hypothesis is an interesting and useful one. It could be – and probably is being – extended by fieldwork in other societies where similarly gender-differentiated prospects exist.