Trust is a central feature of relationships within the Mafia, oppressed minorities, kin groups everywhere, among dissidents, nationalist freedom fighters, ethnic tourists, ethnic middlemen, exchange networks of Kalahari Bushmen, and families subjected to Stalinist social control. Each of these types of trust is examined by a leading scholar and compared with the expectations of neo-Darwinian theory, in particular the theories of kin selection and ethnic nepotism. The result is a fascinating, theoretically focused yet empirically eclectic contribution to the overlapping fields of human ethnology, evolutionary psychology, and bio-politics. The common thread uniting these diverse phenomena is a trusting relationship predicated on altruism. Chapters examine the strengths and limits of human trust under various stressers and temptations to defect. By exploring the relationship between kin and ethnic altruism and showing its sensitivity to culture, Risky Transactions recasts the evolutionary approach to ethnicity as a blend of primordial and instrumental factors.

Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the current century, yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.

This book is part of a quest for a general theory of organizations valid in all cultures. Central to Frank Salter's investigation is the question of social power: why people obey their superiors. His approach is to locate the nature of organizational power in the behavioral details of hierarchical interactions in the institutional settings in which they occur.

Trust is a central feature of relationships within the Mafia, oppressed minorities, kin groups everywhere, among dissidents, nationalist freedom fighters, ethnic tourists, ethnic middlemen, exchange networks of Kalahari Bushmen, and families subjected to Stalinist social control. Each of these types of trust is examined by a leading scholar and compared with the expectations of neo-Darwinian theory, in particular the theories of kin selection and ethnic nepotism. The result is a fascinating, theoretically focused yet empirically eclectic contribution to the overlapping fields of human ethnology, evolutionary psychology, and bio-politics. The common thread uniting these diverse phenomena is a trusting relationship predicated on altruism. Chapters examine the strengths and limits of human trust under various stressers and temptations to defect.

By exploring the relationship between kin and ethnic altruism and showing its sensitivity to culture, Risky Transactions recasts the evolutionary approach to ethnicity as a blend of primordial and instrumental factors.

Frank K. Salter is a Researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for Behavioral Physiology and the Center for Human Sciences, University of Munich.

This book is part of a quest for a general theory of organizations valid in all cultures. Central to Frank Salter's investigation is the question of social power: why people obey their superiors. His approach is to locate the nature of organizational power in the behavioral details of hierarchical interactions in the institutional settings in which they occur.

Salter begins by noting the extensive research that points to hierarchy as being a necessary component of organization and proceeds to an analysis rendered in universals of primary emotions and behaviors of dominance and affiliation. The first five chapters are theoretical, the last seven empirical. He reviews the social science literature showing the place of ethological methods and concepts, then aspects of the evolution and physiology of dominance and affiliation. Salter then introduces the emotional underpinnings of dominance and affiliation, and applies these concepts in a summary of the literature on interpersonal signaling. He describes the methods used, drawing parallels with classical ethology, anthropology, and sociology.

The empirical section begins with a short chapter examining the simple commands given in a military parade. Chapter 7 analyses nightclub doormen's use of dominance in dealing with troublesome patrons. Chapter 8 describes the giving and receiving of commands in artistic rehearsals, and finds generally soft, appeased commands. Chapters 9 and 10 analyze courts and meetings respectively, finding both blunt and softened commands. Chapter 11 reports preliminary observations of command in general government bureaucracy, a setting which combines many organizational techniques in a highly articulated infrastructure. The concluding chapter summarizes the data and adopts a comparative method in searching for relationships between structural variables of institutional dominance and behavioral variables of command aggression, subordinate submission and resistance, and task characteristics.

Provocative and well written, Emotions in Command will appeal to students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, and social and organizational-industrial psychology.