Nonverbal Communication: Where Nature Meets Culture - Hardcover

9780805821796: Nonverbal Communication: Where Nature Meets Culture

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805821791 ISBN 13: 9780805821796

Publisher: Psychology Press, 1997

The search for the biological foundations of human culture inevitably leads to nonverbal communication. Superficial intuition suggests that nonverbal communication is a sine qua non for the evolution of sociality. Without it, the diversity and sophistication of today's social systems would be unimaginable. However, there is the opposite hypothesis that the evolution of nonverbal communication may in part be the result of our being thoroughly social entities: Our sociality itself may have amplified the evolution of a capacity we share with other primates but have developed to a degree unequaled by any other species. Advances in the evolution of nonverbal communication as presented in this volume will certainly contribute to further insights into the intricacies of the biological and the social worlds.

This volume grew out of a conference at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld, Germany. The conference was organized by a research group working on the overarching theme of "Biological Foundations of Human Culture," so that scholars in such wide-ranging areas as biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, primatology, history, and philosophy of science could present and discuss recent approaches toward a biologically and sociologically founded understanding of human culture. This pluralistic perspective made it possible to bring the diverse disciplinary approaches into fruitful dialogue.

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Review:

...an important book and should be selected by undergraduate-level libraries.
—CHOICE

Everyone will find something of interest in this eclectic volume of psychophysiology, economics, ethology and history, all of it documenting the close ties between nature and culture in human affairs...the book's breadth is exciting, its reach invigorating...the book is an intellectual smorgasbord...the book admirably establishes nonverbal behavior as a focal point of the dynamic interplay of biological and social origins of behavior.
—American Scientist

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