Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Applied Evolutionary Anthropology pp 15–38Cite as

Rationality and the Green Revolution

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Advances in the Evolutionary Analysis of Human Behaviour ((AEAHB,volume 1))

Abstract

Adaptation via differential success among competing individuals creates winners and losers. But adaptation via cultural group selection creates benefits that are shared among group members. During the twentieth century, evolutionary biologists and economists developed parallel theories of rationality, the gene’s eye view and rational choice theory, which imagine humans as self-interested individuals maximizing consumption of scarce resources. When rational choice theory was applied to agricultural development in the Green Revolution programs of the 1940s to the 1980s, it turned otherwise cooperative farmers into competitors for cash profits, resulting in a process akin to differential mortality, generating wealth for some but exacerbating poverty for many. I suggest that evolutionary biology may offer an alternative view of human rationality, one consistent with ethnographic evidence of farmers’ behavior. One emerging candidate for a “Rationality 2.0” assumes cultural inheritance, cultural group selection, strong reciprocity, and bounded rationality. Farmers make decisions that balance individual benefits with family and community well-being. While the new Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) seeks technical solutions within its seeds, soils, policy, and markets programs, Rationality 2.0 suggests that AGRA should also promote community cohesion, autonomy, human capability, and reduced dependence on imported technology.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    A reviewer commented on the similarity of farmer’s prosocial behavior and the political philosophy of communism. While this comparison has been made before (e.g., Lee 1990), I believe this to be a semantic issue. The word “communism” to most people refers to state-sponsored communism, which, as I address in the conclusion, has historically failed when applied to agriculture. Farmer’s social organization would be a more organic form of socialism.

References

  • AGRA. (2008). AGRA in 2008: Building on the new momentum in African agriculture. Nairobi: Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

    Google Scholar 

  • AGRA. (2009). AGRA in 2009: Engaging globally, working locally. Nairobi: Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

    Google Scholar 

  • AGRA. (2010). AGRA in 2010: Driving real change. Nairobi: Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

    Google Scholar 

  • AGRA. (2011). AGRA in 2011: Investing in sustainable growth. Nairobi: Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allais, M. (1953). Le comportement de l’homme rationnel devant le risque: Critique des postulats et axiomes de l’école américaine. Econometrica, 21(4), 503–546.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Antle, J. M., & Pingali, P. L. (1994). Pesticides, productivity, and farmer health: A philippine case study. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 76, 418–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atran, S., & Henrich, J. (2010). The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biological Theory, 5(1), 18–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211(4489), 1390–1396.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beattie, J. H. M. (1964). Kinship and social anthropology. Man, 64, 101–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Binmore, K. (2005). Economic man—or straw man? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), 817–818.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Binswanger, H. P. (2007). Empowering people for their own development. Agricultural Economics, 37, 13–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blaug, M. (1962). Economic theory in retrospect. Homewood Hills, Il.: R.D. Irwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blaustein, R. J. (2008). The Green Revolution arrives in Africa. BioScience, 58(1), 8–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bohannan, P., & Middleton, J. (1968). Kinship and social organizaton. Garden City: The American Museum of Natural History.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1988). An evolutionary model of social learning: The effects of spatial and temporal variation. In T. R. Zentall & G. Galef. Bennett (Eds.), Social learning: Psychological and biological perspectives (pp. 29–48). Hillsdale: Lawrence Elbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1992). Punishment allows the evolution of cooperation (or anything else) in sizable groups. Ethology and Sociobiology, 13(3), 171–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2010). Transmission coupling mechanisms: Cultural group selection. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 3787–3795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J., & Henrich, J. (2011). Rapid cultural adaptation can facilitate the evolution of large-scale cooperation. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 65, 431–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broome, J. (1991). Utility. Economics and Philosophy, 7, 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brush, S. B. (1992). Reconsidering the Green Revolution: Diversity and stability in cradle areas of crop domestication. Human Ecology, 20(2), 145–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cancian, F. (1989). Economic behavior in peasant communities. In S. Plattner (ed.), Economic Anthropology (pp. 127-170). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chibnik, M. (1994). Risky Rivers: The economics and politics of floodplain farming in Amazonia. Tucson: University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clawson, D. L., & Hoy, D. R. (1979). Nealtican, Mexico: A peasant community that rejected the ’Green Revolution’. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 38(4), 371–387.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cleaver, H. M. (1972). The contradictions of the green revolution. The American Economic Review, 62, 177–186.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Gregori, T. R. (2004). Green revolution myth and agricultural reality? Journal of Economic Issues, 38(2), 503–508.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Munck, V. (2000). Culture, self, and meaning. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Janvry, A., Fafchamps, M., & Sadoulet, E. (1991). Peasant household behavior with missing markets: Some paradoxes explained. Economic Journal, 101(409), 1400–1417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, F. (1988). Peasant economics: Farm households and agrarian development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elster, J. (1982). Marxism, functionalism, and game theory: The case for methodological individualism. Theory and Society, 11, 453–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elster, J. (1986). Introduction. In J. Elster (Ed.), Rational choice (pp. 1–33). New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1937). Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evenson, R. E., & Gollin, D. (2003). Assessing the impact of the Green Revolution, 1960 to 2000. Science, 300(5620), 758–762.

    Google Scholar 

  • FAO. (2009). How to feed the world in 2050: Global agriculture towards 2050. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foley, R. (1985). Optimality theory in anthropology. Man, 20(2), 222–241.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fortes, M. (1953). The structure of unilineal descent groups. American Anthropologist, 55(1), 17–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster, G. M. (1965). Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist, 67(2), 293–315.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frankena, W. K. (1939). The naturalistic fallacy. Mind, 48(192), 464–477.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freebairn, D. K. (1995). Did the green revolution concentrate incomes? A quantitative study of research reports. World Development, 23(2), 265–279.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerkey, D. (2013). Cooperation in context: Public goods games and post-Soviet collectives in Kamchatka, Russia. Current Anthropology, 54(2), 144–176.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & ABC Research. (2000). Simple heuristics that make us smart. Oxford: Oxford University Press Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gintis, H. (2000). Strong reciprocity and human sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 206, 169–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gurven, M., & Winking, J. (2008). Collective action in action: Prosocial behavior in and out of the laboratory. American Anthropologist, 110(2), 179–190.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hagen, E. H., & Hammerstein, P. (2006). Game theory and evolution: A critique of some recent interpretations of economic games. Theoretical Population Biology, 69, 339–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harlan, J. R. (1975). Our vanishing genetic resources. Science, 188, 618–621.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawkes, K., & Bird, R. B. (2002). Showing off, handicap signaling, and the evolution of men’s work. Evolutionary Anthropology, 11(2), 58–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., et al. (2005). Economic man in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), 795–855.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herrmann, B., Thöni, C., & Gächter, S. (2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319, 1362–1367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horner, V., & Whiten, A. (2005). Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees and children. Animal Cognition, 8, 164–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, E. K. (2002). History of economic thought. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchinson, J. M. C., & Gigerenzer, G. (2005). Simple heuristics and rules of thumb: Where psychologists and behavioral ecologists might meet. Behavioural Processes, 69, 97–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, B. G. (2005). Africa and the poverty of international relations. Third World Quarterly, 26(6), 987–1003.

    Google Scholar 

  • Junankar, P. N. (1975). Green revolution and inequality. Economic and Political Weekly, 10(13), A15–A18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (2000). Choices, values, and frames. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klemick, H., & Lichtenberg, E. (2008). Pesticide use and fish harvests in Vietnamese rice agroecosystems. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 90(1), 1–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knutson, B., & Peterson, R. (2005). Neurally reconstructing expected utility. Games and Economic Behavior, 52, 305–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laland, K. N., & Brown, G. R. (2002). Sense and nonsense: Evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lansing, J. S. (1991). Priests and programmers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, R. B. (1990). Primitive communism and the origin of social inequality. In S. Upham (Ed.), The evolution of political systems (pp. 225-246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, R. B. (2003). The Dobe Ju/’hoansi. Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann, L., Feldman, M. W., & Foster, K. (2008). Cultural transmission can inhibit the evolution of altruistic helping. American Naturalist, 172, 12–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luce, D. R., & Raiffa, H. (1957). Games and decisions: Introduction and critical survey. New York: Dover Publications Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyle, H. F., & Smith, E. A. (2012). How conservative are evolutionary anthropologists? A survey of political attitudes. Human Nature, 23, 306–322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malthus, T. R. (1888). An Essay on the Principle of Population. London: Reeves and Turner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marlowe, F. W., Berbesque, J. C., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J. C., et al. (2008). More ’altrusitic’ punishment in larger societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 275, 587–590.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mauss, M.. (1967). [1925]. The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • McElreath, R., Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2003). Shared norms and the evolution of ethnic markers. Current Anthropology, 44(1), 122–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meza-Montenegro, M. M., Gandolfi, A. J., Santana-Alcantar, M. E., Klimecki. Walter T., Aguilar-Apodaca, M. G., del Rio-Salas, R., et al (2012). Metals in residential soils and cumulative risk assessment in Yaqui and Mayo agricultural valleys, northern Mexico. Science of the Total Environment, 433, 472–481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murgai, R., Ali, M., & Byerlee, D. (2001). Productivity growth and sustainability in post-Green Revolution agriculture: The case of the Indian and Pakistan Punjabs. The World Bank Research Observer, 16(2), 199–218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nanda, M. (1995). Transnationalisation of Third World State and undoing of green revolution. Economic and Political Weekly, 30(2), PE20–PE30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Netting, R. McC. (1981). Balancing on an Alp: Ecological change and continuity in a Swiss mountain community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Netting, R. McC. (1993). Smallholders, householders: Farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Padoa-Schioppa, C., & Assad, J. A. (2006). Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value. Nature, 441, 223–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, K. (1977). The livelihood of man. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prahladachar, M. (1983). Income distribution effects of the Green Revolution in India: A review of empirical evidence. World Development, 11(11), 927–944.

    Google Scholar 

  • Price, G. R. (1970). Selection and covariance. Nature, 277, 520–521.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Price, G. R. (1972). Extensions of covariance selection mathematics. Annals of Human Genetics, 35, 485–490.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, N. (2004). Cognition and culture: Implications for theory and method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, B., & Gross, N. C. (1943). The diffusion of hybrid corn in two Iowa communities. Rural Sociology, 8, 15–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sachs, J. D., McArthur, J. W., Schmidt-Traub, G., Kruk, M., Bahadur, C., Faye, M., et al. (2004). Ending Africa’s poverty trap. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2004(1), 117–216.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone age economics. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sahlins, M. (1976). The use and abuse of biology: An anthropological critique of sociobiology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, A. (1983). Poor, relatively speaking. Oxford Economic Papers, 35(2), 153–169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, A. (2000). Development as freedom. New York: Anchor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. C. (1976). The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shipton, P. (1989). Bitter money: Cultural economy and some African meanings of forbidden commodities. Washington, D.C: American Anthropological Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, H. A. (1957). Models of man, social and rational: Mathematical essays on rational behavior in a social setting. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singh, I., & Day, R. H. (1975). A microeconometric chronicle of the Green Revolution. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 23(4), 661–686.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, E. A. (2005). Making it real: Interpreting economic experiments. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), 832–833.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, E. A., & Winterhalder, B. (1992). Natural selection and decision-making: Some fundamental principles. In: E. A. Smith & B. Winterhalder (Eds.), Evolution and human behavior (pp. 25–60). New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber, D., & Claidiere, N. (2008). Defining and explaining culture (comments on Richerson and Boyd, Not by genes alone). Biology and Philosophy, 23, 283–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stephens, D. W. (1981). The logic of risk-sensitive foraging preferences. Animal Behaviour, 29(2), 628–629.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephens, D. W., & Krebs, J. R. (1986). Foraging theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, G. D. (2007). Agricultural deskilling and the spread of genetically modified cotton in Warangal. Current Anthropology, 48(1), 67–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, R. L. (1971). Evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tucker, B., Huff, A., Tsiazonera, Tombo, J., Hajasoa, P., & Nagnisaha, C. (2011). When the wealthy are poor: Poverty explanations and local perspectives in southwestern Madagascar. American Anthropologist, 113(2), 291–305.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tucker, B. (2012). Do risk and time experimental choices represent individual strategies for coping with poverty or conformity to social norms? Evidence from rural southwestern Madagascar. Current Anthropology, 53(2), 149–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tybur, J. M., Miller, G. F., & Gangestad, S. W. (2007). Testing the controversy: An empirical examination of adaptationists’ attitudes towards politics and science. Human Nature, 18, 323–328.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1944). Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wade, N. (1974). Green Revolution I: A just technology, often unjust in use. Science, 186(4169), 1093–1096.

    Google Scholar 

  • West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., & Gardner, A. (2008). Social semantics: How useful has group selection been? Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 21, 374–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • West, S. A., Mouden, C. E., & Gardner, A. (2011). Sixteen common misconceptions about the evolution of cooperation in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32, 231–262.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiessner, P. (2009). Experimental games and games of life among the Ju/’hoan Bushmen. Current Anthropology, 50(1), 133–138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, G. C. (1966). Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, D. S., & Wilson, E. O. (2007). Rethinking the theoretical foundations of sociobiology. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 82(4), 327–348.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, E. R. (1957). Closed corporate peasant communities in Mesoamerica and central Java. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 13(1), 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woolcock, M. (1998). Social capital and economic development: Toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework. Theory and Society, 27, 151–208.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1962). Animal dispersion in relation to social behaviour. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yapa, L. (1993). What are improved seeds? An epistemology of the green revolution. Economic Geography, 69(3), 254–273.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zentall, T. R., & Galef, B. G. (1988). Social learning: Psychological and biological perspectives. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlba.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Many of the ideas expressed here were developed while a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, particularly during discussions with Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Alex Courtiol, Jim Hunt, Phillip Kitcher, and Virpi Lummaa. I appreciate insightful comments on a previous draft supplied by Shakti Lamba, Mhairi Gibson, David Lawson, Susannah Chapman, Jessica Ham, Laura Tilghman, and an anonymous reviewer. Thanks to J. Stephen Lansing and Joseph Lanning for permission to use their photographs.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, 250A Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Bram Tucker

Authors
  1. Bram Tucker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bram Tucker .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bristol Archaeology and Anthropology, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Mhairi A. Gibson

  2. Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

    David W. Lawson

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Tucker, B. (2014). Rationality and the Green Revolution. In: Gibson, M., Lawson, D. (eds) Applied Evolutionary Anthropology. Advances in the Evolutionary Analysis of Human Behaviour, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0280-4_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation