These papers and reprints are available here on the World Wide Web. Comments are welcome.
2008
Is Religion and Evolutionary Adaptation? Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11(2).2007
A Scientific Definition of Religion. Anpere: Anthropological Perspectives on Religion. (www.anpere.net)
Coevolutionary Materialism. Ch. 9 In Studying Societies and Cultures: Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism and Its Legacy. Lawrence A. Kuznar and Stephen K. Sanderson, eds. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.
This chapter makes Harris's theory of infrastructural determinism more realistic and applicable by allowing idealistic determinism regulated by an evolved brain. It corrects Harris's dogmatic rejection of evolutionary biology.
2006
The Evolution of Religion: Three Anthropological Approaches. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 18(1):67-91.
This article examines three anthropological theories explaining how religion has evolved and continues to evolve. They are: commitment theory, which postulates that religion is a system of costly signaling that reduces deception and creates cooperation within groups; cognitive theory, which postulates that religion is the manifestation of mental modules that have evolved for other purposes; and ecological regulation theory, which postulates that religion is a master control system regulating the interaction of human groups with their environments. An assessment of the success of the theories is offered. The idea that the biological evolution of the capacity for religion is based on the group selection rather than individual selection is rejected as unnecessary. The relationship between adaptive systems and culturally transmitted sacred values is examined cross-culturally, and the three theories are integrated into an overall gene-culture view of religion that includes both the biological evolution and the cultural evolution of behavioral systems.
2005
The Sierra Ñähñu (Otomí). Chapter 11, pp. 231 to 254 in Alan R. Sandstrom and E. Hugo García Valencía, eds. Native Peoples of the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (2005). Contains a basic description of Sierra Ñähñu lifeways including agriculture and religion.
The Expansion of Protestantism in Mexico: An Anthropological View. Anthropological Quarterly78(4):827-850.
Abstract: In the last three decades of the twentieth century, many people in Mexico and Central America turned to Protestantism as a new religion. The greatest increase has been in rural and Indians areas. This article shows that Protestantism in these areas is not a reaction against the Catholic Church as much as it is a reaction against traditional Indian cargo systems generating political and economic power. These people are farmers who live in tight-knitted closed communities that dominate their lives. It has been difficult for scholars of religion to understand these cultures because the communities are closed to outsiders and many of the people speak Indian languages. Anthropologists have been more successful than historians at finding the data and discovering why the people are converting.
Sistemas de Sacrificio: Perspectivas Sobre la Base de la Religión en Los Sistemas de Cargos y El Protestantismo Evangélico. Conferencia Magistral en el III Congreso Internacional Sobre Organización Social Tradicional. San Felipe del Progreso, Edo. de México, 20 a 25 de junio, 2005. (in Spanish)
This paper applies costly signaling theory to the problem of religious change in Indian areas of Mexico. Both traditional cargo systems and the new evangelical Protestantism are interpreted as costly signaling mechanisms. The change from one system to another is driven by changes in the local economic environment.
Nature Worship within Cargo Rituals in Mexico. A paper presented at the 2005 Meetings of the Central States Anthropological Society, March 10-12, 2005. Oxford, OH. This is an ethnographic study of two pilgrimages by Hñãhñũ people to their sacred mountain in eastern Mexico. These pilgrimages to adore the Sun and other traditional deities are maintained within the context of the town cargo system.
2004
Using R for Cross-Cultural Research. World Cultures 14(2):144-154.
Memory and Environmental Learning (2004). A working paper discussing improvements in a model of environmental learning involved in the transmission of cultural traits. This article concludes that memory needs to be added to models of environmental learning to make them more realistic. (mathematical)
Otomí (Ñähñu) Shamanism (Mexico). In Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture. Edited by Eva Jane Neumann Fridman and Mariko Namba Walter. Pp 435-439. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO
The Evolution of Religion: Modern Anthropological Theory (2004). An article discussing modern evolutionary theories of religion published in the Oakland Journal. (Fall 2004)
2003
Sierra Otomí Religious Symbolism: Mankind Responding to the Natural World. In Mesas and Cosmologies in Mesoamerica. Edited by Douglas Sharon. Pp 25-31. San Diego, CA: San Diego Museum of Man. (2003)
The Growth of Protestant Religions in Mexico and Central America. A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Norfolk, Virginia. October 23-26, 2003.
Computer Methods in a Study of Racial Profiling by Police. National Social Science Journal. 20(2):56-63.(2003)
2002
Historia y etnografía de los otomís, Siglos XVI-XX. Colloquium at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. Distinguished Visiting Professor Program of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. February 25, 2002
The Extraction of Research Data from Tape Archives Not Collected for that Purpose: Computer Records of Police Communication. NSSA Perspectives, Proceedings of the National Technology and Social Science Conference, Las Vegas, April 10-12, 2002.
2001
Central and North Mexican Shamans. In Mesoamerican Healers. Brad Huber and Alan Sandstrom, eds. Pp. 66-94. Austin: University of Texas Press. (2001)
Demographic Factors Affecting Protestant Conversions in Three Mexican Villages, In Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America. Edited by James W. Dow Alan R. Sandstrom. Pp. 73-86. Westport CT: Praeger (2001).
Protestantism in Mesoamerica: The Old within the New, In Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico and Central America. Edited by James W. Dow and Alan R. Sandstrom. Pp. 1-23. Westport CT: Praeger (2001).
1999
The Early History of Electronic Communication in Applied Anthropology. NAPA Bulletin 19. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, (1999)
The Cultural Anthropology of Middle America is general introduction to the cultural anthropology of Middle America, the region south of the United States and north of the border between Panama and Columbia. (1999)
1997
How Cultural Anthropology Contributes to Culture: The Scientific Method in Late Twentieth Century Cultural Anthropology. A paper presented in the session Science in Anthropology: Late 20th Century Debates at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society, April 3-6, 1997, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1996
"Ritual prestation, intermediate-level social organization, and Sierra Otomí oratory groups" (Ethnology 35(3):195-202) is a description of a system of intermediate social organization between the family and the village. It is based on local oratorios that contain family-owned saints with godparents from other communities. The social functions of oratorios are made apparent in this analysis.
A brief description of Cannibalism in the New World Reprinted from Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, Vol. 1. Barbara A. Tenenbaum, ed. Pp. 535-537. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1996).
1995
The Mexican Political System and the Promise of Reform was written in 1995 and is an expanded version of a paper published in the Oakland University International Letter. It looks at the way that political power was exercised in 1995 in Mexico. It is focuses on the political problems of the average Mexican rather than on the activities of the elite power holders.
1987
On the Evolution of the Capacity for Culture. Current Anthropology 28(4):549-551.
1986
Universal Aspects of Symbolic Healing: A Theoretical Synthesis. American Anthropologist March 1986, Vol. 88, No. 1, pp. 56-69
This article proposes that symbolic healing has a universal structure in which the healer helps the patient particularize a general cultural mythic world and manipulate healing symbols in it. Problems currently existing in the explanation of symbolic healing are examined. The relationship between Western psychotherapy and magical healing is explained, the function of shamanic ecstasy is discussed, and symbolic healing is explained in terms of a theory of living systems.
1976
Systems Models of Cultural Ecology. Social Science Information 15(6):953-976. This paper describes a system for modeling the dynamics of culture. Culture is conceived as a cooperative system that manipulates energy and materials under the control of humans. The flows of energy and materials can be specified with diagrams and mathematical formulae. The models also include flows of information that regulate the flows of energy and materials. With this system the cultural responses to changes in the environment and resource depletion can be predicted.
A Mathematical Model of Lineage Evolution. Social Science Information 14(5):167-179. This is a mathematical investigation of how lineages can evolve and become relatively stable in size despite the fact that random events determine the reproduction and death of individuals. The equations can predict the probability lineages of different sizes from the demographic characteristics of the population. The version here is does not have the same pagination as the original published version.