Risk and reciprocity: Hunter-gatherer socioecology and the problem of collective action

This chapter is concerned with the confluences of risk and uncertainty for the social interactions of human foragers involving resource sharing and land tenure. As part of a broad trend in the social and biological sciences (e.g., Dawkins 1982; Elster 1982; Ortner 1984; Lomnicki 1986; Roemer 1986), a special concern of our analysis is to adhere to the logic of methodological individualism, by showing how the characteristics of groups are best understood as the consequences (intended or not) of the actions and interactions of their individual members. In the present case, this involves some preliminary applications of the theory of games and evolutionarily stable strategies (Maynard Smith 1982; Parker and Hammerstein 1985).