#426 Lyle Steadman: Society, Kinship, Tradition, Ancestor Worship, and Religion
RECORDED ON NOVEMBER 24th 2020.
Dr. Lyle Steadman is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. Dr. Steadman focuses on religion and kinship, especially their interrelationship, and the influence of natural selection on human social and cultural behavior. He has done extensive research among the Hewa, a society in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. A short period of fieldwork was also conducted in an Indian village in Baja California, Mexico.
In this episode, we talk about kinship and religion. We first discuss the Hewa, and then get into aspects of human sociality, and go through topics like kin selection, group selection, kinship systems, tradition, ancestor worship, religion, and shamanism.
Time Links:
The Hewa, from New Guinea
Kinship systems
The descendant-leaving strategy model
Religion and kinship
Myths and ancestors
The social role of shamans
Cultural and group selection
Follow Dr. Steadman’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3m29Kc3
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3nT664K
Supernatural and Natural Selection: https://amzn.to/33ftphc