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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science pp 1–7Cite as

Resource Defense

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Synonyms

Resource control; Territoriality

Definitions

Resource defense consists of controlling or denying others’ access to resources, including territoriality.

Introduction

Resource defense is a broad category covering all the means by which individuals or groups actively attempt to control or deny access of others to resources, using agonistic or display behavior. This entry focuses on defense of material resources located within spatially circumscribed territories by humans, particularly in non-state societies documented ethnographically and archaeologically.

The Logic of Economic Defensibility

Half a century ago, the biologist Jerram Brown published a short paper entitled “The Evolution of Diversity in Avian Territorial Systems” (Brown 1964). Brown’s immediate goal was to explain why some bird species are strongly territorial, others are not, and some species in fact alternate between territorial and open-access regimes. Further variation exists in the immediate benefits of...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Eric Alden Smith & Benjamin Hanowell

Authors
  1. Eric Alden Smith
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  2. Benjamin Hanowell
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eric Alden Smith .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA

    Russell Jackson

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Smith, E.A., Hanowell, B. (2017). Resource Defense. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2683-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2683-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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