Evolution Of Vulnerability

Biologists have known for decades that many traits involved in competition for mates or other resources and that influence mate choice are exaggerated, and their expression is influenced by the individuals’ ability to tolerate a variety of environmental and social stressors. Evolution of Vulnerability applies this concept of heightened sensitivity to humans for a host of physical, social, psychological, cognitive, and brain traits. By reframing the issue entirely, renowned evolutionary psychologist David C. Geary demonstrates this principle can be used to identify children, adolescents, or populations at risk for poor long-term outcomes and identify specific traits in each sex and at different points in development that are most easily disrupted by exposure to stressors. Evolution of Vulnerability begins by reviewing the expansive literature on traits predicted to show sex-specific sensitivity to environmental and social stressors, and details the implications for better assessing and understanding the consequences of exposure to these stressors. Next, the book reviews sexual selection—mate competition and choice—and the mechanisms involved in the evolution of condition dependent traits and the stressors that can undermine their development and expression, such as poor early nutrition and health, parasites, social stress, and exposure to man-made toxins. Then it reviews condition dependent traits (physical, behavioral, cognitive, and brain) in birds, fish, insects, and mammals to demonstrate the ubiquity of these traits in nature. The focus then turns to humans and covers sex-specific vulnerabilities in children and adults for physical traits, social behavior, psychological wellbeing, and brain and cognitive traits. The sensitivity of these traits is related to exposure to parasites, poor nutrition, social maltreatment, environmental toxins, chemotherapy, and Alzheimer’s disease, among others. The book concludes with an implications chapter that outlines how to better assess vulnerabilities in children and adults and how to more fully understand how, why, and when in development some types of environmental and social stressors are particularly harmful to humans. Describes evolved sex differences, providing predictions on the traits that will show sex-specific vulnerabilities Presents an extensive review of condition-dependent traits in non-human species, greatly expanding existing reviews published in scientific journals, and more critically, extending these to humans Applies condition-dependent traits to humans to identify children, adolescents, or populations at risk for poor long-term outcomes

Offers the first comprehensive overview of research into hazards and disasters from a historical perspective. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

How do people develop in their important relationships? How do two people come together to form a new, close relationship? How do relationships affect or determine who we are and who we become? These questions should be central to the study of mind and development, but most researchers neglect relationships and focus instead on analyses of individuals, as if people were basically alone, experiencing occasional fleeting moments with other people. Research based on this individualist assumption has dominated the behavioral and clinical sciences, but there are other voices, and they are growing. In this book, many of the scholars who are moving relationships and attachments back to the center of human development outline their central concepts, findings, and perspectives. People are fundamentally social, and relationships are part of the fabric of being human, forming an essential foundation that molds each person's mind and action. A mind does not reside in one person but in relationships and communities, composed of many people's interconnected minds, which mutually support and define each other. From the start and throughout life, each person develops strengths and vulnerabilities in important relationships in communities and cultures. Those relationships are so central to each person's activity and experience that without them, no scientific explanation can even begin to analyze mind and action. There is no mind without other people. There is no psychological vulnerability that does not involve others. The contributors to this book aim to establish a firm foundation for the role of relationships in human activity and health and to promote strong research by bringing together in one place most of the best research and theory on development and relationships. Their goal is to stimulate a more radical inclusion of relationships in mind, an ecological focus on the ways that relationships constitute action, feeling, and thought.

Adolescents obviously do not always act in ways that serve their own best interests, even as defined by them. Sometimes their perception of their own risks, even of survival to adulthood, is larger than the reality; in other cases, they underestimate the risks of particular actions or behaviors. It is possible, indeed likely, that some adolescents engage in risky behaviors because of a perception of invulnerabilityâ€"the current conventional wisdom of adults' views of adolescent behavior. Others, however, take risks because they feel vulnerable to a point approaching hopelessness. In either case, these perceptions can prompt adolescents to make poor decisions that can put them at risk and leave them vulnerable to physical or psychological harm that may have a negative impact on their long-term health and viability. A small planning group was formed to develop a workshop on reconceptualizing adolescent risk and vulnerability. With funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Workshop on Adolescent Risk and Vulnerability: Setting Priorities took place on March 13, 2001, in Washington, DC. The workshop's goal was to put into perspective the total burden of vulnerability that adolescents face, taking advantage of the growing societal concern for adolescents, the need to set priorities for meeting adolescents' needs, and the opportunity to apply decision-making perspectives to this critical area. This report summarizes the workshop.

Measuring Vulnerability to Natural Hazards presents a broad range of current approaches to measuring vulnerability. It provides a comprehensive overview of different concepts at the global, regional, national, and local levels, and explores various schools of thought. More than 40 distinguished academics and practitioners analyse quantitative and qualitative approaches, and examine their strengths and limitations. This book contains concrete experiences and examples from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe to illustrate the theoretical analyses.The authors provide answers to some of the key questions on how to measure vulnerability and they draw attention to issues with insufficient coverage, such as the environmental and institutional dimensions of vulnerability and methods to combine different methodologies.This book is a unique compilation of state-of-the-art vulnerability assessment and is essential reading for academics, students, policy makers, practitioners, and anybody else interested in understanding the fundamentals of measuring vulnerability. It is a critical review that provides important conclusions which can serve as an orientation for future research towards more disaster resilient communities.

This work explores and analyses the ways in which our ancient genes contend with, and influence, modern human life. It offers coverage of the points of contact between evolutionary biology and medical science.

Vulnerability and empowerment are central concepts of contemporary development theory and ethics. Vulnerability associated with human interdependence is a wellspring of values in care ethics, while vulnerability arising from social problems demands remedy, of which empowerment is frequently the just form. Development planners and aid providers focus upon improving the wellbeing of the most vulnerable – especially women – by empowering them economically, socially and politically. Both vulnerability and empowerment are considered in this volume. Drydyk argues that empowerment is necessarily relational, not simply a matter of expanding choices. Koggel reviews Drydyk’s discussion through the lens of feminist relational theory, considering how norms, structures and institutions shape, delimit, and promote empowerment. Presbey examines empowerment in East African women’s lives through the writings and biography of Wangari Maathai. Kosko considers indigenous self-governance and participation in shared governance. Khader reflects upon postcolonial feminist criticism of the concept of adaptive preference. Panitch discusses the economic vulnerability that surrounds the global market in surrogate birth. Pandey provides a review of third world eco-feminist activism and literature. Cudd envisions international humanitarian intervention to support female autonomy against oppressive state and social institutions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Global Ethics.

The evolution of the human brain and cognitive ability is one of the central themes of physical/biological anthropology. This book discusses the emergence of human cognition at a conceptual level, describing it as a process of long adaptive stasis interrupted by short periods of cognitive advance. These advances were not linear and directed, but were acquired indirectly as part of changing human behaviors, in other words through the process of exaptation (acquisition of a function for which it was not originally selected). Based on studies of the modem human brain, certain prerequisites were needed for the development of the early brain and associated cognitive advances. This book documents the energy and nutrient constraints of the modern brain, highlighting the significant role of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) in brain development and maintenance. Crawford provides further emphasis for the role of essential fatty acids, in particular DHA, in brain development, by discussing the evolution of the eye and neural systems. This is an ideal book for Graduate students, post docs, research scientists in Physical/Biological Anthropology, Human Biology, Archaeology, Nutrition, Cognitive Science, Neurosciences. It is also an excellent selection for a grad student discussion seminar.