#520 Agustín Fuentes: Race, Gender, Monogamy, and Darwin's Descent of Man (150th anniversary)
Dr. Agustín Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. Dr. Fuentes was awarded the Inaugural Communication & Outreach Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the President’s Award from the American Anthropological Association, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of books like Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature, and Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being.
This interview is part of the series on the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Descent of Man.
In this episode, we talk about biological anthropology, and Darwin’s Descent of Man. We get a bit into the field of Biological Anthropology, and talk about the kinds of questions it deals with. We talk about belief. We then get into some myths about human evolution, including race and sex differences, in the context of Darwin’s Descent of Man. We discuss monogamy and human mating systems. We talk about some issues with taking modern hunter-gatherers as representative of ancestral societies, and with some ideas in evolutionary psychology, like the concept of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Other topics include aggression as an illustrative example of how people theorize about sex differences; human nature; and the overall importance of Darwin’s theories.
Time Links:
Intro
Biological Anthropology, and the relationship between biology and culture
Belief
Myths about human evolution – race, and sex differences
Darwin on human evolution
Monogamy and human mating systems
Modern hunter-gatherers, and evolutionary psychology
Aggression
Human nature
Final thoughts on Darwin’s Descent of Man
Follow Dr. Fuentes’ work!
Follow Dr. Fuentes’ work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3qkFfPM
Works on ResearchGate: https://bit.ly/3g50Ici
Books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3pk9VSj
A Most Interesting Problem: https://amzn.to/3rlLELU
Twitter handle: @Anthrofuentes