Recent ethnographic research and the modern Finnish ‘social class’ system as an evolutionary strategy

Dutton, Edward (2012) Recent ethnographic research and the modern Finnish ‘social class’ system as an evolutionary strategy. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 57 (2). pp. 409-425. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

This report will contribute to the anthropological debate over the usefulness of applying the social class model to Finland by looking at current Finnish socioeconomic differences through the prism of evolution and specifically as breeding strategies. It will defend the application of the social class model to Finland and argue that its utility is further evidenced by looking at social classes as ecologies. The report will argue that Finland’s social classes are, to a certain extent, breeding groups which maximise genetic fitness in their different ecologies with different breeding strategies and, concomitantly, behavioural and cultural differences. Thus, it will argue that, from a scientific perspective, an evolutionary analysis demonstrates ‘class’ to be a predictive, and thus valid, category in the contemporary Finnish case. It will then look at the genetic dimensions to class and how they are congruous with this model and it will examine recent anthropological research on Finnish social class to show how an ecological analysis parsimoniously explains many of the findings, thus rendering them consilient with biology.

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