Curtin et al on Zapotec cooperative institutions
Two cooperative institutions in one Oaxacan village run on different norms and different mixes of mechanisms, which supports a cultural evolutionary account of cooperation.
Cameron M. Curtin, Narcedalia Vásquez Martinez, Yunitza Vásquez Vásquez and Joseph Henrich, "Zapotec cooperative institutions: Exploring the psychological and social mechanisms". Forthcoming in Current Anthropology; version dated 24 Sept 2026. PDF
Ethnography, vignettes and surveys on two institutions in San Francisco Yateé, a Zapotec village in Oaxaca: gozona (mutual help in farm labor and celebrations) and usos y costumbres (traditional governance, including rotating unpaid civic roles that provide public goods).
Excerpt
These results support the view that institutions tap into and recombine diverse cooperation-sustaining mechanisms as they culturally evolve, challenging "culture-free" efforts to explain human cooperation. Indeed, even within a single, small community, different cooperative institutions work in different ways.
— Curtin, Vásquez Martinez, Vásquez Vásquez & Henrich, abstract
Key points
- The claim: norms and institutions play a central role in shaping cooperation, alongside evolved psychology. The authors set this against "culture-free" accounts, which deemphasize culture.
- Each institution has its own norms and drives cooperation in its own context. The norms are not associated with generalized prosociality.
- Both use reputation. Direct reciprocity matters more in gozona, punishment more in usos y costumbres.
- Evidence that the institutions build interdependence is clear only for gozona. Evidence on norm internalization is mixed: ethnography says yes, the priming experiment came out null.
- Market integration, wealth and wage labor are eroding gozona.
Connections
- Cooperation here is built and maintained by culturally evolved institutions, not something that happens 'naturally'. This is the contrast with accounts that rely on selection alone, such as Multi-level selection. See Cultural group selection and Gene-culture coevolution for the cultural side.
- The mechanisms named (Shadow of the future for reciprocity, Punishment, reputation) are the ones in Cooperation at scale. Here they are combined by institutions, differently in each.
- Community institutions that provide public goods: compare Ostrom design principles in Governing the commons.
- Sits with Ultrasociety, Kin networks and WEIRD in Cultural evolution.
Read for this note: abstract, opening of the introduction, and conclusions. Not the full paper.
