Jerome Barkow | Dalhousie University (original) (raw)
Jerome H. Barkow received a BA in Psychology from Brooklyn College in 1964 and a doctorate in Human Development from the University of Chicago in 1970. He is currently an emeritus professor of social anthropology at Dalhousie University, Canada (where he has spent most of his career) and a Trustee of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International. Barkow has always identified professionally as an anthropologist but his work is interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary and has ranged from analyzing the impact of Islam on Hausa women in West Africa
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Papers by Jerome Barkow
Oxford University Press eBooks, 1992
Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur... more Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright© 1992 by Oxford University ...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Jun 1, 1991
Darwin, Sex and Status argues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for the... more Darwin, Sex and Status argues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for theories of psychology and culture is wrong, as are psychologies that could never have evolved or social sciences that posit impossible psychologies. Status develops theories of human self-awareness, cognition, and cultural capacity that are compatible with evolutionary theory. Recurring themes include: the importance of sexual selection in human evolution; our species' preoccupation with self-esteem and relative standing; the individual as an active strategist, regularly revising culturally provided information; and awareness as an impressionmanagement device. Culture is a somewhat structured information pool that itself evolves, often in ways that reduce the genetic fitness of its participants.
Current Anthropology, 1978
AI HALLOWELL is important o sociobiology for two reasons. First, he tried to turn anthropology in... more AI HALLOWELL is important o sociobiology for two reasons. First, he tried to turn anthropology in a biosocial direction at a time when our field was still celebrating its victory over the bad biology of social Darwinism by discarding all consideration of the evolution of human behavior. ...
Journal of Bioeconomics
The Editors wish to thank all the referees of published articles in Vol. 1, 1999 & Vol. 2... more The Editors wish to thank all the referees of published articles in Vol. 1, 1999 & Vol. 2, 2000 as well as referees who provided comments to papers they recommended rejection. We are most grateful to our referees who gave so generously of their time to provide constructive and excellent comments for authors who submitted papers to our journal.
Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 1976
The Psychology of Social Status, 2014
ABSTRACT
The Frontiers Collection, 2013
ABSTRACT
An explicit theory of sociocultural universals is essential for a nomothetic sociocultural anthro... more An explicit theory of sociocultural universals is essential for a nomothetic sociocultural anthropology. For lack of such a theory, social scientists in general and ethnographers in particular have little choice but to assume that home-host cultural similarities are universals requiring little analysis but that differences must be accounted for. Social scientists also cope with this theoretical lack by relying on a logically endless loop of social constructionism. Evolutionary psychology provides a way to buttress both the study of cultural differences and the approach of social constructionism. EP
… psychology and the generation of culture, 1992
1 The Psychological Foundations of Culture JOHN TOOBY AND LEDA COSMIDES INTRODUCTION: THE UNITY O... more 1 The Psychological Foundations of Culture JOHN TOOBY AND LEDA COSMIDES INTRODUCTION: THE UNITY OF SCIENCE One of the strengths of scientific inquiry is that it can progress with any mixture of empiri-cism, intuition, and formal theory that suits the convenience ...
Review of General Psychology, 2012
Popular culture is a subcategory of culture. Today, mass and new media appear to be interfering w... more Popular culture is a subcategory of culture. Today, mass and new media appear to be interfering with the evolved mechanisms that permit the acquisition and editing of culture. We know surprisingly little about these cognitive attentional processes that enable the information acquisition and editing packed into the term “cultural transmission.” It was Michael Chance who first concluded that we attend to and learn preferentially from those high in status. For Chance, high status based on fear leads to agonistic attention and a constricted type of learning, while hedonic attention based on respect permits much broader learning possibilities. If Chance's theories are supported, then it would follow that much of the current unpredictability of popular culture and culture change in general reflects the replacement of family and community high-status figures by influential media celebrities, thereby damaging the transmission of local culture. Chance's approach would also explain wh...
Oxford University Press eBooks, 1992
Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur... more Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright© 1992 by Oxford University ...
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Jun 1, 1991
Darwin, Sex and Status argues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for the... more Darwin, Sex and Status argues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for theories of psychology and culture is wrong, as are psychologies that could never have evolved or social sciences that posit impossible psychologies. Status develops theories of human self-awareness, cognition, and cultural capacity that are compatible with evolutionary theory. Recurring themes include: the importance of sexual selection in human evolution; our species' preoccupation with self-esteem and relative standing; the individual as an active strategist, regularly revising culturally provided information; and awareness as an impressionmanagement device. Culture is a somewhat structured information pool that itself evolves, often in ways that reduce the genetic fitness of its participants.
Current Anthropology, 1978
AI HALLOWELL is important o sociobiology for two reasons. First, he tried to turn anthropology in... more AI HALLOWELL is important o sociobiology for two reasons. First, he tried to turn anthropology in a biosocial direction at a time when our field was still celebrating its victory over the bad biology of social Darwinism by discarding all consideration of the evolution of human behavior. ...
Journal of Bioeconomics
The Editors wish to thank all the referees of published articles in Vol. 1, 1999 & Vol. 2... more The Editors wish to thank all the referees of published articles in Vol. 1, 1999 & Vol. 2, 2000 as well as referees who provided comments to papers they recommended rejection. We are most grateful to our referees who gave so generously of their time to provide constructive and excellent comments for authors who submitted papers to our journal.
Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 1976
The Psychology of Social Status, 2014
ABSTRACT
The Frontiers Collection, 2013
ABSTRACT
An explicit theory of sociocultural universals is essential for a nomothetic sociocultural anthro... more An explicit theory of sociocultural universals is essential for a nomothetic sociocultural anthropology. For lack of such a theory, social scientists in general and ethnographers in particular have little choice but to assume that home-host cultural similarities are universals requiring little analysis but that differences must be accounted for. Social scientists also cope with this theoretical lack by relying on a logically endless loop of social constructionism. Evolutionary psychology provides a way to buttress both the study of cultural differences and the approach of social constructionism. EP
… psychology and the generation of culture, 1992
1 The Psychological Foundations of Culture JOHN TOOBY AND LEDA COSMIDES INTRODUCTION: THE UNITY O... more 1 The Psychological Foundations of Culture JOHN TOOBY AND LEDA COSMIDES INTRODUCTION: THE UNITY OF SCIENCE One of the strengths of scientific inquiry is that it can progress with any mixture of empiri-cism, intuition, and formal theory that suits the convenience ...
Review of General Psychology, 2012
Popular culture is a subcategory of culture. Today, mass and new media appear to be interfering w... more Popular culture is a subcategory of culture. Today, mass and new media appear to be interfering with the evolved mechanisms that permit the acquisition and editing of culture. We know surprisingly little about these cognitive attentional processes that enable the information acquisition and editing packed into the term “cultural transmission.” It was Michael Chance who first concluded that we attend to and learn preferentially from those high in status. For Chance, high status based on fear leads to agonistic attention and a constricted type of learning, while hedonic attention based on respect permits much broader learning possibilities. If Chance's theories are supported, then it would follow that much of the current unpredictability of popular culture and culture change in general reflects the replacement of family and community high-status figures by influential media celebrities, thereby damaging the transmission of local culture. Chance's approach would also explain wh...
JBIS, 2022
For interstellar messages that we have sent so far, the underlying assumption in schemes for enco... more For interstellar messages that we have sent so far, the underlying assumption in schemes for encoding/ decoding is that the recipients are fundamentally similar to ourselves. But there have been criticisms of this assumption of equivalence approach because intelligence even on our own planet takes many different forms, and these forms are influenced by the senses of the individual. Jonas and Jonas (1976) describe hypothetical extraterrestrial species with alternate senses inspired by Earth animals. This current work further expands on the capability of these extraterrestrial species to understand messages that we would send. A continuum of similarity to humans is proposed, from species whose senses do not allow them to develop radio technology, to species who do but whose senses do not allow them to understand 2D images, to species with senses only slightly different than our own. Implications for message construction are considered, and recommendations for future message content are given. These recommendations include redundant sections with questions that require different senses (similar to how a person can see a number in a colorblind test only if they are not colorblind). Replies would tell us the sensory modalities we should be addressing with this particular extraterrestrial intelligence. Another recommendation would be to use information about a targeted planet to determine the most probable sense of inhabitants, and tailor messages to that sense.
