Immanuel Kant and the Baron Thiry d’Holbach were born in Germany just one year apart at the start of the Enlightenment. If Kant had lived in sparkling Paris rather than in Konigsberg, and d’Holbach had stayed in dark Edsheim, his native town, they might have exchanged philosophies: Kant might have become the great materialist and realist philosopher of the century, and d’Holbach his idealist counterpart. Of course, the previous sentence is a counterfactual, and as such untestable, and therefore neither true nor false. But it is not a ludicrous fantasy, because we know that nurture and opportunity are just as important as nature.

Mind and Society

Researchers from diverse backgrounds are converging on the view that human evolution has been shaped by gene-culture interactions. Theoretical biologists have used population genetic models to demonstrate that cultural processes can have a profound effect on human evolution, and anthropologists are investigating cultural practices that modify current selection. These findings are supported by recent analyses of human genetic variation, which reveal that hundreds of genes have been subject to recent positive selection, often in response to human activities. Here, we collate these data, highlighting the considerable potential for cross-disciplinary exchange to provide novel insights into how culture has shaped the human genome.

How culture shaped the human genome: bringing genetics and the human sciences together

Current research on culture focuses on independence and interdependence and documents numerous East-West psychological differences, with an increasing emphasis placed on cognitivemediatingmechanisms. Lost in this literature is a time-honored idea of culture as a collective process composed of cross-generationally transmitted values and associated behavioral patterns (i.e., practices). A new model of neuro-culture interaction proposed here addresses this conceptual gap by hypothesizing that the brain serves as a crucial site that accumulates effects of cultural experience, insofar as neural connectivity is likely modified through sustained engagement in cultural practices. Thus, culture is “embrained,” and moreover, this process requires no cognitive mediation.Themodel is supported in a reviewof empirical evidence regarding (a) collective-level factors involved in both production and adoption of cultural values and practices and (b) neural changes that result from engagement in cultural practices. Future directions of research on culture, mind, and the brain are discussed. 419 A nn u. R ev . P sy ch ol . 2 01 1. 62 :4 19 -4 49 . D ow nl oa de d fr om w w w .a nn ua lr ev ie w s. or g by U ni ve rs ity o f M ic hi ga n A nn A rb or o n 12 /1 5/ 10 . F or p er so na l u se o nl y. PS62CH16-Kitayama ARI 10 November 2010 7:52 Independence versus interdependence: social orientations that emphasize each individual’s distinctness, uniqueness, and separation from others (e.g., self-promotion, self-expression, and self-sustenance) versus each individual’s embeddedness and connectedness with others (e.g., social harmony and coordination, relational attachment, and social duties), respectively

Culture, mind, and the brain: Current evidence and future

Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework. This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology's stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.

Evolutionary psychology. Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations.

역사학 선언 [The History Manifesto]

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book--the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times--is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

Ben Kiernan, “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur”

Resistance to malaria. Blue eyes. Lactose tolerance. What do all of these traits have in common? Every one of them has emerged in the last 10,000 years. Scientists have long believed that the great leap forward that occurred some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago in Europe marked end of significant biological evolution in humans. In this stunningly original account of our evolutionary history, top scholars Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending reject this conventional wisdom and reveal that the human species has undergone a storm of genetic change much more recently. Human evolution in fact accelerated after civilization arose, they contend, and these ongoing changes have played a pivotal role in human history. They argue that biology explains the expansion of the Indo-Europeans, the European conquest of the Americas, and European Jews' rise to intellectual prominence. In each of these cases, the key was recent genetic change: adult milk tolerance in the early Indo-Europeans that allowed for a new way of life, increased disease resistance among the Europeans settling America, and new versions of neurological genes among European Jews. Ranging across subjects as diverse as human domestication, Neanderthal hybridization, and IQ tests, Cochran and Harpending's analysis demonstrates convincingly that human genetics have changed and can continue to change much more rapidly than scientists have previously believed. A provocative and fascinating new look at human evolution that turns conventional wisdom on its head, The 10,000 Year Explosion reveals the ongoing interplay between culture and biology in the making of the human race.

Gregory Cochran interview, "The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution"

Greg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design”

Hitler's Empire constituted the largest, most brutal and most ambitious reshaping of the continent ever attempted in Europe's history. Liberalism and democracy were swept aside, as Germany aimed to turn itself into the most powerful state on the continent, and to compel everyone else to recognize its mastery. Europe's future was to lie in a new racial order based on the uprooting, resettlement and extermination of millions of people. "Hitler's Empire" charts the landscape of the Nazi imperial imagination - from those economists who dreamed of turning Europe into a huge market for German business, to Hitler's own plans for new trans-continental motorways passing over the ethnically cleansed Russian steppe, and earnest in-house SS discussions of political theory, dictatorship and the rule of law.Above all, this chilling account shows too what happened as these ideas met reality. After their early battlefield triumphs, the sheer bankruptcy of the Nazis' political vision for Europe became all too clear: their allies bailed out, their New Order collapsed in military failure, and they left behind a continent corrupted by collaboration, impoverished by looting and exploitation, and grieving the victims of total war and genocide.

Marshall Poe

Papers

Ben Kiernan, “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur”

Gregory Cochran interview, "The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution"

Greg Castillo, “Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design”

Mark Mazower interview, "Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe"

Stephen Kotkin interview, "Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment"