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THE EVOLUTION OF FAIRNESS NORMS

The evidence is strong that modern hunter-gatherer societies approximate the Marxian ideal in which each contributes according to ability and receives according to need. It has been argued that such a form of social organization can be explained by neither reciprocity nor kinship. Attempts to found evolutionary social contract theories on sociobiological principles therefore seem doomed from the outset, since the same authors believe that modern foraging societies preserve in fossil form the type of social contract from which all later social contracts evolved. This paper outlines the importance of the issue to my own social contract theory. It then uses game-theoretic arguments to argue that reciprocity and kinship are actually the twin pillars that maintain the quasi-utilitarian social contracts of modern hunter-gatherer societies. Finally, the idea that modern foragers have social contracts similar to their prehistoric ancestors is questioned.

Key Words: fairness norms

Rationality and Society, Vol. 10, No. 3, 275-301 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/104346398010003001


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