Eric Abella Roth is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, and an Affiliate, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington-Seattle. He has conducted demographic anthropological fieldwork in the Canadian Subarctic, the Sudan and northern Kenya. He has published in various journals, including American Anthropology, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Human Biology, Human Ecology, Journal of Anthropological Research, and Social Sciences and Medicine. He is co-editor of the text, African Pastoralist Systems: An Integrated Approach (1994, Lynne Rienner).

• Part I. Anthropological Demography and Human Ecological Behavioural Ecology: 1. Two solitudes; 2. Why bother?; 3. Anthropological demography: culture, not biology; 4. Human evolutionary ecology: biology, not culture; 5. Discussion: cultural and biological reductionism; Part II. Reconciling Anthropological Demography and Human Evolutionary Ecology: 6. Common ground; 7. Demographic strategies; 8. Reproductive interests: social interactions, life effort and demographic strategies: a Rendille example; 9. Sepaade as male mating effort; 10. Rendille primogeniture as a parenting strategy; 11. Summary: demographic strategies as links between culture and biology; Part III. Mating Effort and Demographic Strategies: 12. Mating effort as demographic strategies; 13. Cross-cultural mating strategies: polygyny and bridewealth, monogamy and dowry; 14. Bridewealth and the matter of choice; 15. Demographic and cultural change: values and morals; 16. The end of the sepaade tradition: behavioral tracking and moral change; Part IV. Demographic Strategies as Parenting Effort: 17. Parenting effort and the theory of allocation; 18. The Trivers-Willard model and parenting strategies; 19. Parity-specific parental strategies: the case of primogeniture; 20. Local resource competition model; 21. Infanticide and child abandonment: accentuating the negative; 22. Adoption in modern China: stressing the positive; 23. Summary: culture and biology in parental effort; Part V. Future Research Directions: 24. The central place of sex in anthropology and evolution; 25. Male sexuality, education and high risk behavior; 26. Final ground: demographic transitions; Part VI. References Cited.

'… Roth's undertaking is to be applauded … Roth draws on an exceptionally wide collection of materials to support his arguments … His first-hand account of how he developed this research focus will be particularly useful for those researchers engaged in or considering such cross-disciplinary work.' Population Studies