Homogeneous middleman groups as superorganisms, endogamous ethnic groups, and trust networks: Reply to comments on Janet Landa’s target article, ‘The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as adaptive units’

摘要

This article responds to some of the very valuable comments on my target article (Landa, J Bioeconomics 10(3):259–278, 2008) on homogeneous middleman groups (HMGs) as adaptive units. In addition to viewing HMGs as adaptive units, I discuss the idea of viewing HMGs as superorganisms and as endogamous ethnic groups, as well as re-emphasizing the importance of HMGs as trust networks. My theory of HMGs as adaptive units shares some similarities with biologists’ ‘biological market theory’ of mutualistic interactions between species.