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A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples - Paperback
$42.59
by Kevin B. MacDonald (Author)
A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary StrategyThis book develops a comprehensive evolutionary theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. Judaism is conceptualized as a highly effective adaptive system characterized by cultural and genetic segregation from surrounding gentile societies, combined with intensive resource and status competition. Over the course of millennia, this strategy has produced remarkable levels of group cohesion, intellectual specialization, and economic success, while simultaneously eliciting recurrent conflict with host populations.
Drawing on evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, and historical data, the volume examines the mechanisms that have sustained Jewish separatism, including rigorous barriers against gene flow and cultural assimilation, high levels of within-group altruism coupled with controls on free-riding, and the development of distinctive religious and ideological traditions that reinforce ingroup identity and outgroup differentiation. Particular attention is given to the genetic cohesion of Jewish populations, the role of eugenic practices in elevating intelligence and high-investment parenting, and the emergence of Judaism as a coherent group strategy in antiquity.
The analysis applies the same evolutionary principles used to understand other human groups and diaspora peoples, offering a theoretically coherent framework for one of history’s most enduring and consequential examples of group continuity amid dispersion. Far from reducing Judaism to a mere religion or ethnic label, this work illuminates it as a sophisticated collective adaptation that has profoundly shaped both Jewish history and the dynamics of intergroup relations in the societies where Jews have resided.
This volume lays the essential theoretical foundation for subsequent explorations of the interactions between Judaism and gentile societies, including the recurrent phenomenon of anti-Semitism as a predictable response to the conflicts of interest inherent in such a strategy.
Author BiographyKevin MacDonald is Professor of Psychology at California State University–Long Beach. His research focuses on developing evolutionary perspectives in psychology and history. He received a Master’s degree in evolutionary biology and a Ph.D. in biobehavioral sciences from the University of Connecticut, where he studied behavioral development in wolves. He later conducted postdoctoral research on human parent-child interactions at the University of Illinois. In addition to A People That Shall Dwell Alone, he is the author of Social and Personality Development: An Evolutionary Synthesis (Plenum, 1988), Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998), and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998).
Number of Pages: 600
Dimensions: 1.42 x 9.14 x 5.96 IN
Publication Date: June 06, 2002