Strong Reciprocity and the Emergence of Large-Scale Societies

Bibliographic Data

ID10927210
AuthorsBenoît Dubreuil (Fonds de la recherche scientifique, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume38
Issue2
Pages192-210
Publication date2008-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy of the Social Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-3931 • E-ISSN: 1552-7441
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0048393108315509
OpenAlexW1988482822
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited45

The paper defends the idea that strong reciprocity, although it accounts for the existence of deep cooperation among humans, has difficulty explaining why humans lived for most of their history in band-size groups and why the emergence of larger societies was accompanied by increased social differentiation and political centralization. The paper argues that the costs of incurring an altruistic punishment rise in large groups and that the emergence of large-scale societies depends on the creation of institutions that render control of these costs possible through a social division of sanction

Economics · Geography · Neoclassical economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Punishment (psychology) · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) · Scale (ratio) · Social science · Sociology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub