As widespread social transformations have been paralleled by gains in health and life expectancy through public health and other improvements, a variety of new obstacles to health have emerged. Lifestyle-related, behaviorally mediated changes in rates of chronic disease are the most prevalent of these new challenges. This book examines the relationship between human biology and human society, and how behavior, hormones, and health intersect. There is both scientific interest and practical urgency behind the ideas and findings presented here, as the need for a socioecological view of function...

Childhood is a uniquely human life-stage, and is both a biological phenomenon and a social construct. Research on children is currently of wide-ranging interest. This groundbreaking book presents reviews of childhood from four major areas of interest--human evolution, sociology/social anthropology, biomedical anthropology and developmental psychology--to form a biosocial, cross-cultural understanding of childhood. The book places a strong emphasis on how childhood varies from culture to culture, offering examples from developed and developing countries, as well as from other animal species....

As widespread social transformations have been paralleled by gains in health and life expectancy through public health and other improvements, a variety of new obstacles to health have emerged. Lifestyle-related, behaviorally mediated changes in rates of chronic disease are the most prevalent of these new challenges. This book examines the relationship between human biology and human society, and how behavior, hormones, and health intersect. There is both scientific interest and practical urgency behind the ideas and findings presented here, as the need for a socioecological view of function...