Saturday, September 11, 2010

Pg. 99: Daniel Hruschka's "Friendship"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: Friendship: Development, Ecology, and Evolution of a Relationship by Daniel Hruschka.

About the book, from the publisher:
Friends--they are generous and cooperative with each other in ways that appear to defy standard evolutionary expectations, frequently sacrificing for one another without concern for past behaviors or future consequences. In this fascinating multidisciplinary study, Daniel J. Hruschka synthesizes an array of cross-cultural, experimental, and ethnographic data to understand the broad meaning of friendship, how it develops, how it interfaces with kinship and romantic relationships, and how it differs from place to place. Hruschka argues that friendship is a special form of reciprocal altruism based not on tit-for-tat accounting or forward-looking rationality, but rather on mutual goodwill that is built up along the way in human relationships.
Learn more about Friendship at the publisher's website.

Daniel Hruschka is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University.

The Page 99 Test: Friendship.

--Marshal Zeringue