Managing Risk Through Cooperation: Need-Based Transfers and Risk Pooling Among the Societies of the Human Generosity Project

Abstract

Making a living often involves risks. Whether you are a Hadza hunter who often comes home empty-handed, a Maasai herder facing the prospect of losses due to drought, disease, and theft, or a modern-day cowboy in the American Southwest using potentially dangerous heavy machinery on a day-to-day basis, risk is an integral and inevitable part of life. Given risk’s inevitability, managing it is an important component of both individual and community strategies to adapt to local conditions. Social risk management strategies are diverse. They include, for example, Hadza sharing food with camp members who do not have enough to eat, Maasai herders agreeing to help each other when disaster strikes, and American ranchers coming to the aid of their injured neighbors. The Human Generosity Project, a transdisciplinary effort to examine both biological and cultural influences on human cooperation, has documented and analyzed these and many other examples of social risk management.