Wednesday, August 08, 2007

A free lunch?

I have just noticed that a recent article of mine, 'The Limits of Culture? Society, Evolutionary Psychology and the History of Violence' seems to amongst the free content available for download from the journal Cultural and Social History.

Normally, you have to have a subscription to the journal (or be part of an institution that subscribes to it) to get access to its content.

For whatever reason, this issue is now free. (Article is here, click on 'view now' to get the PDF.)

The article's abstract:

Recent debates about the meaning and role of cultural history have focused on the relationship between 'culture' and 'society'. Some have taken this opportunity to position cultural history as a site of resistance to 'biological' explanations of human behaviour. In contrast, this article argues that 'biological' methodologies - particularly the perspectives of evolutionary psychology - can usefully contribute to the historical understanding of culture and social development. To this end, it outlines the fundamentals of Darwinist psychology, suggests options for interdisciplinary cooperation and uses the topic of interpersonal violence to explore the potential for uniting cultural, social and evolutionary psychological methodologies.

The article appeared in the 'debate forum'. I have received two very thought-provoking responses. They, along with my own reply, will appear later this year.

Happy reading.

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