This conversation was led by Jonathan Wells, Professor of Anthropology, University College London There is growing concern with social disparities in health. Despite addressing inequality, evolutionary biologists have paid less attention to why human societies are prone to demonstrating exploitation. In this seminar, I will describe an overarching evolutionary framework for studying all forms of social inequality involving exploitation. The dynamic ‘producer-scrounger’ game, developed to model social foraging, assumes that some members of a social group produce food, and that others scrounge from them. An evolutionary stable strategy emerges when neither producers nor scroungers can increase their Darwinian fitness by changing strategy. This approach puts food systems central to all forms of human inequality, and provides a valuable lens through which to consider different forms of gender inequality, socio-economic inequality and racial/caste discrimination. Individuals that routinely adopt producer or scrounger tactics may develop divergent phenotypes, helping understand how social dynamics drive health disparities. This framework differs from previous evolutionary perspectives, by focusing on the exploitation of foraging effort rather than unequal access to resources. Health inequalities emerge where scroungers acquire different forms of power over producers, driving increasing exploitation. Gender and racial inequality emerge when symbolic categorization is used to systematically assign some individuals to low-rank producer roles, embedding exploitation in society. Efforts to reduce health inequalities must address the whole of society, altering producer–scrounger dynamics rather than simply targeting resources at exploited groups.
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