This article explores the relationships between habitat and social organization among humans and other species. Diet, technology, group size, home range, mobility, kinship, marital residence, sexual division of labor, mating system, central places, food sharing, and egalitarianism are all considered.

After studying Paiute society, the author postulates that sorcery may serve as a mechanism for social control in societies lacking superordinate authority justice. In this chapter, the cross-cultural results were presented.

Using a sample of 145 African societies, the authors seek to examine the relationship between segmentary lineage organization and conflict. Presented is evidence supporting the claim that segmentary lineage societies are more prone to conflict and to conflicts larger in scale and duration. The authors aim to contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of conflict, and additionally address the applicability of the present study beyond Africa.

This article challenges an earlier finding that hunter-gatherers are predominantly virilocal in residence. The author presents new tests of marital residence including early patterns in marital residence; results suggest that foragers are more multilocal than nonforagers. The author theorizes that bride service, food acquisition methods, small population size, little accumulated wealth, and low frequency of warfare among foragers could all influence the tendency toward multilocal residence.

This study examines costly punishment behavior across cultures. Authors conducted economic games in a variety of societies and found that costly punishment behavior occurs to varied degrees across cultures. Results also suggest that altruistic behavior is associated with costly punishment behavior.

This article explores the interrelated roles of male parental investment (males' infant/child care and resource provisioning) and male-male competition (variation in male status) on the degree of monogamy or polygyny in a society. Marlowe argues that Degree of parental investment affects females' interest in resource-shopping versus gene-shopping. Also discussed is the idea that male-male competition affects males' inclination toward harem-defense or coercive polygyny. Particular attention is paid to variation in parental investment and male stratification across subsistence types.

This study examines predictors of the type of conflict management used at the community level. Results suggest that level of political integration is associated with mode of conflict management.

This book investigates a broad hypothesis linking social solidarity and initiation ceremonies. The author proposes that “the degree of solidarity of a given social system determines the degree to which status transitions within it will be dramatized” (1). A variety of operational hypotheses are supported for both male and female initiation ceremonies.

This study reviews the dietary habits of South and East Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Ethnographic descriptions and raw data are presented. The author concludes with several observed patterns: humans are carnivorous and become vegetarian by force of circumstance; taboos are more commonly used on meat than on plants; eating patterns conform to economic base; people tend to extract a fairly high percentage of available resources from their environment.

Using a self selected sample of 33 ex British colonies and the Ethnic Power Relations database, the author sampled 170 ethnic groups from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to test for association between precolonial state formation, colonial state building tactics, and modern ethnic conflicts. The author theorized that ethnic groups that were centrally governed before the colonial period were less likely to be recruited to colonial security forces, leaving them out of the picture during the formation of the independence movement and the formation of a post-colonial regime. This in turn is theorized to lead to greater contemporary armed conflict against the regime from which they were excluded.