Biological Adaptation in Human Societies: a ‘basic Needs’ Approach

The ground-zero premise (so to speak) of the biological sciences is the assumption that survival and reproduction is the basic, continuing, inescapable problem for all living organisms; life is at bottom a “survival enterprise.” Whatever may be our perceptions, aspirations, or illusions, this tap-root assumption is applicable to the human species as well. Survival is the “paradigmatic problem” for all human societies; it is a prerequisite for any other, more exalted objectives. A key concept in biology is “adaptation” -commonly meaning both the functional requisites for survival and reproduction and the specific means that are employed for doing so by a given organism in a given environment; an organism is, quintessentially, a “bundle of adaptations.” Although the term “adaptation” is also familiar to social scientists, until recently it has been used only selectively, and often very imprecisely. Here a more rigorous and systematic approach to the concept of adaptation is proposed in terms of “basic needs.” The concept of basic human needs has a venerable history -tracing back at least to Plato and Aristotle. Yet the development of a formal theory of basic needs has lagged far behind. The reason, in a nutshell, is that the concept of objective, measurable needs is inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions that have dominated economic and social theory for most of this century, namely, “value-relativism” and “cultural determinism.” Nevertheless, there have been a number of efforts over the past 30 years to develop more universalistic criteria for basic needs, both for use in monitoring social wellbeing (“social indicators”) and for public policy formulation. Here I will advance a strictly biological approach to operationalizing the concept of basic needs, which is referred to as the “Survival Indicators” paradigm. It is argued that much of our economic and social life (and the motivations behind our revealed preferences and subjective utility assessments), not to mention the actions of modern governments, are either directly or indirectly related to the meeting of our basic survival needs. Furthermore, these needs can be specified to a first approximation and supported empirically to varying degrees, with the obvious caveat that there are major individual and contextual variations in their application. Equally important, complex human societies generate an array of “instrumental needs” which, as the term implies, serve as intermediaries between our primary needs and the specific economic, cultural and political contexts within which these needs must be satisfied. An explicit framework of “Survival Indicators,” including a profile of “Personal Fitness” and an aggregate index of “Population Fitness,” is briefly elucidated. Although this framework has been under development for some years, it is stressed that there is still much work to be done and much room for improvement. Finally, it is suggested that a basic needs paradigm could provide an analytical tool (a “bio-logic”) for examining more closely the relationship between our social, economic and political behaviors and institutions and their survival consequences, as well as providing a predictive tool of some value. INTRODUCTION – ‘BIO-LOGIC’ AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES For our remote ancestors of the late Pleistocene, the basic problem that they confronted -along with all other living things -was the “struggle for existence” (in Darwin's pellucid phrase). Nothing fundamental has changed since then. Whatever may be our perceptions, aspirations, or illusions, biological survival and reproduction remains the “paradigmatic problem” of the human species. Furthermore, the survival problem is ongoing, relentless and inescapable; it will never be permanently “solved”. This tap-root assumption about the human condition is not exactly news, although we very often deny it, or downgrade it, or simply lose touch with it. The survival imperative was recognized by Aristotle in various writings (Nussbaum 1988, 1993). It was also the underlying assumption in Darwin's treatise on The Descent of Man. Herbert Spencer and a slew of nineteenth century social theorists also took the survival problem as a given. Today it figures prominently in some of our public policy debates, most notably those concerning poverty and various environmental problems. It is also the ground-zero premise (so to speak) of the biological sciences; life is at bottom a “survival enterprise.” In a very real sense, the ground-zero premise of the social sciences during the course of this century could be considered a “null-hypothesis.” Several generations of our forebears in the social sciences have accepted without question (and many still do) the assertion that “mere” survival and the provision of “basic needs” is no longer a real problem for humankind, at least not in the so-called “developed” countries. This despite the fact that in this century hundreds of millions of people have been left hungry, or in physical deprivation, or dead, as a result of two world wars, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions and the Great Depression, not to mention various lesser tragedies in more recent decades. Indeed, the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 alone killed more than 21 million people world-wide. And, as the millenium draws to a close, the AIDS epidemic remains a major threat. Furthermore, it is estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that some 20 percent of the population in the developing and less developed countries -about 800 million people -are chronically undernourished (BWI 1995; Pimentel and Pimentel 1996; Ehrlich 1998). All-told, about one-third of humankind suffers from the effects of undernutrition and/or malnutrition (WHO 1995; Combs et al., 1996), even though the world's total population is continuing to grow, if somewhat less rapidly than before (Bongaarts 1994; Smail 1997; Ehrlich 1998). More disturbing is the estimate by the well-known ecologists David and Marcia Pimentel that in the past 40 years almost one-third of the world-wide stock of arable land has been eroded (some of it irretrievably) (see also Lal and Stewart 1990; Pimental et al., 1995) and that the per capita availability of fresh water (especially for irrigation) has begun to decline as well (Postel 1992; Gleick 1993; Pimentel et al, 1997). Perhaps most ominous is the fact that increases in world-wide food production, following the boom years of the so-called “Green Revolution,” are no longer keeping pace with population increases. In 1997, the world food “carryover” (or reserve stocks) was the lowest since 1960. World population is now projected to reach 6 billion in 1999 and 9.5 billion in 2050. Although the large quantity of food wastage (mostly during storage and transport) offers hope for some significant short-term improvements in the developing and less-developed countries, there are currently no major opportunities available for dramatically increasing the world food supply over the long term (Pimentel and Pimentel 1996; Ehrlich 1998). Finally, there is the looming problem of global warming, an “externality” that threatens to disrupt the very basis of the human survival enterprise. Nevertheless, in the social sciences “value-relativism,” “cultural-relativism,” and “cultural-determinism” -along with their co-conspirator, the Behaviorist “reinforcement” learning paradigm in psychology -have long prevailed. Some social theorists (most notably the latter-day Marxists) blame human suffering largely on cultural factors, particularly capitalist economic and political institutions, and tend to discount the importance of basic needs per se. Then there are the phenomenologists, who deny that the concept of basic needs can have any external, objective meaning at all apart from the individual's subjective experience. Meanwhile, many other mainstream social scientists have proceeded from the assumption that basic biological needs are only marginally relevant to social theory and that individual motivation can be treated as a “black box” into which various cultural influences are poured. Our social, economic and political behaviors are therefore largely shaped by our “wants”, “tastes”, “revealed preferences,” “subjective utility functions,” and “social norms,” which are said to be “infinitely variable” and culturally determined. (For more detailed discussions and critical analyses of this paradigm, see Corning 1983, 1996a, Doyal and Gough 1991, Edgerton 1992, Hodgson 1993, inter alia.) Moreover, the so-called “is-ought dichotomy” in social theory, dating back to the philosopher David Hume, proscribes us from passing moral judgment on any given social practice or personal choice; we cannot deduce an ethical imperative from any empirical circumstance. Economist John C. Harsanyi's (1982) principle of “Preference Autonomy” (a.k.a. preference utilitarianism) epitomizes this posture: “In deciding what is good and what is bad for a given individual, the ultimate criterion can only be his own wants and his own preferences” (p.55). Similar assertions can also be found in the literature of anthropology, sociology and psychology, not to mention social philosophy. This tacit null hypothesis, and its philosophical underpinnings, is becoming increasingly untenable. Various developments in the life sciences and the social sciences alike over the past two decades -ranging from behavior genetics and the neurosciences to ecological anthropology and welfare economics -have, in effect, challenged the environmentalist/relativist paradigm. (Some of these developments will be discussed briefly below.) Nevertheless, a broad theoretical framework based explicitly on the ground-zero premise of the biological/survival imperatives -what could be called a “bio-logic” -has lagged behind (but see Galtung 1980; Corning 1983; and Doyal and Gough 1991). Here a limited effort will be made to operationalize the survival problem as an explicit analytical paradigm. In essence, this effort involves a synthesis of three very different concepts and research traditions from three separate disciplines. From biology comes the concept of biological “adaptation”, which provides the theoretical foundation. From the social sciences, including welfare economics, comes the concept of “basic needs,” which provides an analytical framework. And from the public policy field comes the methodology and research tools that are associated with the “social indicators” movement. Together, these three elements are synergistic; they provide a new way of viewing and analyzing economic and social phenomena. INTRODUCTION – ‘BIO-LOGIC’ AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the leading evolutionists of the 20th century, was fond of characterizing the evolutionary process as a grand experiment in adaptation. And biologist Julian Huxley, in his landmark volume, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942), defined adaptation as “nothing else than arrangements subserving specialized functions, adjusted to the needs and the mode of life of the species or type....Adaptation cannot but be universal among organisms, and every organism cannot be other than a bundle of adaptations, more or less detailed and efficient, coordinated in greater or lesser degree [italics added]” (p.420). Adaptations are means to an end; they serve a purpose; they are “teleonomic” in nature. (Teleonomy is a term commonly used in biology to connote evolved purposiveness, as distinct from an externally imposed teleology.) In George C. Williams's (1966) phrase, an adaptation is a “design for survival.” Not everything in nature is adaptive, of course. Functional adaptation may be predominant in evolution, but it is not omnipotent; Darwin never took the position that everything in nature is useful, as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin (1979) forcefully reminded us. There are also many fortuitous effects, some of which involve nothing more than the operation of the laws of nature. To use one of Williams's illustrations, when a flying fish leaps out of the water, that may well be the result of an adaptation, but its fall back into the water is not. On the other hand, what may be a fortuitous or random effect initially may well become an adaptation, should it persist and enhance the survival chances of the bearer and its progeny -i.e., if it is positively selected. The assumption of a need for adaptation, then, is nothing more or less than a “biological” deduction from the core premise stated above that biological survival is an existential problem and that organisms must actively seek to survive if they wish to do so. Richard Lewontin (1978) has written that “The modern view of adaptation is that the external world sets certain 'problems' that organisms need to 'solve,' and that evolution by means of natural selection is the mechanism for creating these solutions.” Of course, the evolved internal needs and characteristics of an organism also set problems that must be solved. More important, the very definition of what constitutes a problem often has a relational aspect. For example, most plants do not have the “problem” of locomotion or the need to obtain energy by consuming other plants and animals, although they share with all other species the need for energy. Likewise, fish and people have very different sorts of problems in and out of water. Adaptation may also be a twoway street; an organism must adapt to its environments (living and nonliving), and in the process environments are often modified, perhaps in ways that in turn influence the organism. Ehrlich and Raven (1964) coined the term co-evolution to describe such dynamic interactions, citing as examples the stepwise directional evolution of predator and prey species via successive incremental adaptations to one another. There has been much sloppy theorizing about adaptation over the years. Evolutionists often engage in a priori reasoning to the effect that there must be an adaptive (functional) explanation for every trait and, conversely, that natural selection can be invoked as an explanation for every biological phenomenon. Gould and Lewontin (1979) called such reasoning “just so stories,” after Rudyard Kipling’s fanciful tales. However, John Maynard Smith (1975) points out that a priori reasoning is not necessarily wrong and may well be the most efficient way to proceed. Unless one is ready to set aside the core premise that survival and reproduction is the basic problem and to discount the necessity for adaptation (something a fieldtrained naturalist would view as ivory tower theorizing), then most traits probably evolved in relation to the problems of earning a living, even though they may not currently be optimal or in any way adaptive. For example, the number of known or presumed nonfunctional aspects of human morphology is exceedingly small. Maynard Smith (1978) notes that it may not be necessary (and might even be considered foolish) to devise ways of testing the obvious -why animals have teeth, or why horses have legs. In such cases we can legitimately reason from a necessary function to be performed to appropriate structures for fulfilling that function, given the core premise. But when there is reason to be suspicious of the obvious explanation, when drift or allometry (non-functional correlated changes) might be plausible alternatives, or when the function of a trait or an organ is obscure to us and subject to debate, then experimental tests or evidence should be demanded and ad hoc explanations challenged. (For a discussion of the problems involved, see West-Eberhard 1992.) Frequently supporting evidence can be found to buttress a priori functionalism. For instance, waterbugs are normally dark-colored on top and have light-colored bellies, as camouflage against predation from above or below -according to the adaptationist explanation. The exceptions are those waterbugs that swim on their backs; as an adaptationist would “predict,” their color patterns are reversed. (Maynard Smith, 1975) Another example, in human societies, involves some elegant field work (described in Vayda 1995). It happens that the Enga people of the New Guinea central highlands cultivate their staple sweet potato crops in large mulch mounds, typically more than half a meter high and three meters in diameter. Although the Enga, according to the researchers' informants, believe that sweet potatoes will not grow in unmounded bare ground, they do not themselves know exactly why the practice exists. One obvious explanation is that the mounds serve to enhance soil fertility and produce larger yields. However, the mounding practice is not universal in that region. In fact, the most plausible hypothesis is that the mounds serve to protect the sweet potatoes from radiation frost damage, a significant hazard at high altitudes. Careful studies, primarily by Waddell but also Brookfield, have shown that the spatial distribution of mulch mounds corresponds with the distribution of the frost hazard in that region. Moreover, the size of the mounds and the minimum planting height increases at higher (colder) elevations -a finding that is consistent with the fact that the warmest temperatures are to be found in larger mounds, and at the tops of the mounds. In short, mulch mounding appears to be an unintentionally adaptive cultural practice. Accordingly, Huxley (1942) suggested that there are three basic kinds of adaptations: An organism must be adapted to the inorganic environment, the organic environment, and to its own internal environment (so to speak). At the time Huxley wrote, no one seems to have objected to the fact that he did not include a fourth category for the sociocultural environment -that is, socially constructed behavioral constraints, opportunities, tools, information, and other resources that are a part of the adaptive environment for any organism that lives in a functionally interdependent group. In the 1940s the consensus was that “culture” is a uniquely human “invention” that sets humankind apart absolutely from other species. However, this was an extreme, ideologically-tinged reaction against the nineteenth-century social Darwinists and other advocates of biological determinism, not to mention the apologists for laissez-faire capitalism. Darwin did not accept either extreme separatism or extreme biologism, and he chided his codiscoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, for exempting the evolution of the human brain from natural selection. Nevertheless radical separatism came to dominate the social sciences in the twentieth century, as noted earlier. Today many contemporary theorists accept the views that were first developed in Roe and Simpson's Behavior and Evolution (1958) and Dobzhansky's Mankind Evolving (1962), which stressed the mutual interdependence of human nature and human behavior. It is obvious that there are unique aspects to human cultures. However, most theorists today seem to agree that the sociocultural category of adaptation is not unique to humankind, is not independent of biological evolution, is not unconstrained by biological imperatives, and should properly be added to Huxley's list as a class of biological adaptations. (See especially Wilson 1975; Barash 1977, 1986; Alexander 1979; Bonner 1980; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Corning 1983; Boyd and Richerson 1985; Durham 1991; Smith and Winterhalder 1992). First, many species have the rudiments of culture, at least according to Bonner's reasonable definition (the transfer of information by behavioral means, especially via social learning and teaching). Second, the functional products of culture -organized physical structures and social processes -have survival relevance and may therefore be instrumentalities of natural selection (properly understood). As Bonner writes, culture is “as biological as any other function of an organism, for instance respiration or locomotion” (1980:11). To be sure, many cultural adaptations in human societies do not involve a direct, conscious pursuit of biological/adaptive ends. These may be the farthest thing from our minds as we struggle with rush-hour traffic, income tax forms, final exams, or deadlines at work. In cultural adaptation, where most of our conscious efforts are focussed, biological needs and purposes are often served in oblique and roundabout ways -and may even be ill-served. There is a very imperfect fit between what serves biological adaptation and the processes of sociocultural adaptation; in other words, there are many “degrees of freedom” and the potentiality for a disjunction to occur between our cultural practices and their biological/survival consequences. A great many factors -lack of information, bizarre social customs, destructive economic practices, malevolent political forces -may limit or constrain biological adaptation in humankind. If this were not the case, an adaptationist perspective and the “traditional” social science paradigm would be isomorphic -end of discussion. For instance, the Bena Bena of highland Papua, New Guinea, have a taboo against eating either chicken or eggs, which are plentiful in their environment, even though the population suffers from a protein deficiency (Edgerton 1992). Or consider the Shakers, a small religious sect in the United States during the 19th century whose strict celibacy rule guaranteed their ultimate extinction. Furthermore, human cultures often display a mirror-image of biological adaptedness -traits or behaviors which are strictly-speaking “maladaptive” and may significantly lower biological fitness. This was documented extensively by anthropologist Robert Edgerton in his important study, Sick Societies (1992). As Edgerton puts it (paraphrasing George Orwell's famous line): “All societies are sick, but some are sicker than others” (p.1). Even when a population/society as a whole may be reasonably well-adapted, Edgerton notes, there are likely to be some practices or behaviors that are harmful to health, well-being and reproductive success. This is equally true of the “folk societies” studied by anthropologists and of contemporary Western societies. In his extensive and detailed review of the evidence, Edgerton cites the following maladaptive practices, among others: infanticide, torture, wife-beatings, witchcraft, human sacrifice, lethal competition for women, patterns of feuding and revenge, female genital mutilation, female foot-binding, rape, homicide, suicide, slavery, drugs, alcoholism, smoking, celibacy, and environmental pollution, not to mention many dysfunctional food and health care practices that increase infant mortality, reduce life-expectancy and/or lower personal productivity. Some societies, in fact, seem to be systematically maladapted. Edgerton identifies both historical and contemporary examples, including the Tasmanians, the Siriono, the Montegrano (Italian farmers), the Mayans and the inhabitants of Duddie's Branch in Eastern Kentucky, among others. At various times over the course of human history, entire populations have disappeared: The Hopi, Maasai, Maori, Papago, Yahi, and many others. Accordingly, biological adaptation (and its antipode, maladaptation) are “variables” for humankind just as they are for any other species. Adaptation involves much more than simply “filling our bellies,” as one critic of an adaptationist paradigm charged, and even in affluent Western societies the provision of adequate food and shelter are problematical for a significant number of people (Riches 1997). But more to the point, the problem of meeting basic survival and reproductive needs is an imperative for every one of us, whether we are aware of it, or care about, it or not. In fact, our biological needs routinely impose themselves on the daily rhythms of our lives. And if our basic needs are not met, there will be significant biological/adaptive consequences, not to mention psychological disturbances. What the value-relativists overlook is the fact that survival and reproduction are inescapable daily problems for all of us; we must actively pursue the meeting of our survival and reproductive needs or we will fail to do so. In this light, an economic science that is focussed exclusively on the psychology of human preferences/satisfactions and is studiously indifferent to the bio-logic of adaptation excludes by fiat a bedrock source of psychological motivation and causation in economic life. THE PROBLEM OF MEASURING ADAPTATION The core analytical challenge, then, is how do we measure adaptation? The ultimate biological criterion of adaptation is Darwinian “fitness”. Traditionally, this has been defined as the ability of an individual to produce viable progeny, or of an interbreeding population to reproduce itself. However, in recent years the concept of inclusive fitness (the summed proportion of one's own genes shared by close relatives as well as progeny) has been increasingly favored as a more satisfactory measure. In population biology, which dominated evolutionary theorizing during the middle years of this century, the primary tool used to measure adaptation was (and is) the “selection coefficient,” a quantitative measure of the relative reproductive efficacy of different genotypes in discrete breeding populations (demes). This rigorously analytical approach has been widely used in laboratory and field studies of microevolutionary change. However, the problems involved in applying this approach to the larger evolutionary process, including sociocultural evolution in humankind, are manifold. Only recently have biologists come to appreciate the complex relationship between adaptation at the micro level (individuals) and at higher levels of organization (trait groups, social organizations, demes, species, ecological communities). Yet in dealing with complexly organized species such as humankind, nothing less than a multi-leveled approach will do. The most important unit of adaptation in humankind must often be defined in relation to units of economic and political organization -that is, units of functional interdependency -that go beyond anything in the rest of nature. By the same token, there has been a growing appreciation in recent years of the complex relationship in humankind between economic, social, psychological and biological measures of “well-being.” These and other limitations in the classical formulation have prompted calls for a less restrictive approach to measuring adaptation in Homo sapiens (e.g., Coelho, et al. 1974; Hardesty 1977; Durham 1991; Smith and Winterhalder 1992). Various candidates have been proposed. There have been (1) efforts to develop criteria for defining and measuring the “optimal” population size; (2) attempts to specify in some concrete way the property of adaptability, or flexibility; (3) efforts to measure adaptive functions directly; and (4) applications of bioeconomic analyses, particularly benefit-cost analyses utilizing various “proxy currencies” (such as time or energy). Energy-oriented analyses were especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Two different approaches were utilized. One, following the lead of anthropologists Leslie White, Marshall Sahlins, Elman Service, and others, stressed the amount of energy capture in various cultures. The other, which includes most of the empirical studies done to date, stresses the efficiency of energy capture (or the benefit-cost ratios). The shortcoming with this approach is that energy capture is not the only important adaptive problem. Some of the constraints that have been encountered in energy-resource development, especially environmental constraints, testify to the multi-dimensional nature of the adaptation problem. From a biological perspective, energy throughputs are but a means to the larger end of sustaining and enhancing the overall life process. A relative scarcity of energy may be a limiting factor in societal development, in conformity with the “law of the minimum,” but there are many other limiting factors: protein, for instance; and water; and the basic “raw materials” that have also become requisites for sustaining complex economies. Accordingly, many theorists believe that we need a more inclusive and multifaceted approach to measuring adaptation. The anthropologist Eugene Ruyle (1973) urged us to concentrate on the “struggle for satisfactions.” The psychologist Robert W. White (1974), calling adaptation the master concept of the behavioral and social sciences, applied it to any means-ends, or goal-oriented behavior (though surely he did not mean to include actions that are biologically maladaptive). Others, especially ecological anthropologists, have adopted an explicitly biological orientation. Donald Hardesty (1977), for example, defined adaptation as “any beneficial response to the environment,” and it is clear from the context that he meant biologically beneficial. Anthropologist John Bennett (1976) conceptualized adaptation in terms of how human actors realize objectives, meet needs, and cope with conditions. Bennett wished to stress the cognitive/purposive elements in human behavior; he wished to treat adaptation as a goal-oriented process that is embedded in a cultural milieu. But he also made it clear that biological problems lie at the root of the process. Vayda and McKay (1975) were also concerned with the “existential game” of survival and reproduction; in an article whose objective was to identify “new directions” in ecological anthropology, they argued for an emphasis on “health” and various “hazards” and “stresses.” More recently, the burgeoning new disciplines of evolutionary ecology and evolutionary psychology have focused on attempting to explain human behaviors in terms of Darwinian adaptation. Thus, the anthropologists Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder (1992) stress that adaptation in human cultures involves a “propensity” toward Darwinian fitness, even though it may not reflect a tight fit with the Darwinian criterion of survival and reproductive success. (See also Richerson and Boyd 1992.) Meanwhile, the evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (1990:375) take the position that “present conditions and selection pressures are irrelevant to the present design of organisms and do not explain how and why organisms behave adaptively, when they do.” Evolutionary psychologists seek to explain present behaviors in terms of postulated “ancestral environments.” (The term “environment of evolutionary adaptation,” or “EEA” is also frequently employed in this context.) Needless to say, neither of these movements seek to measure adaptation per se. Rather, they aspire to accopunt for various human behavior patterns in terms of their past/present contribution to adaptation. To our knowledge, there have been at least three noteworthy attempts in anthropology to operationalize a broadly-defined conception of adaptation. One is Raoul Naroll's The Moral Order (1983). Hoping to initiate a systematic science of cross-cultural evaluation (which he called “socionomics”), Naroll produced a data-rich comparative study of adaptation and maladaptation across all human societies. However, Naroll's purpose was not explicitly related to biological adaptation. His main concern was the cultural practices and core social values which support, or undermine, what he called the “moralnet” -the moral and ethical framework which he held to be the foundation of any society. Naroll's agenda was frankly normative. His objective was to develop a set of “indicators” that could monitor the ongoing condition of the moralnet. Though the United Nations, the World Bank and other agencies publish data on the needs and adaptive problems of various countries, Naroll asserted that there was no “scoreboard” for the overall status of the global moralnet. His goal in developing such a scoreboard was to provide a policy/planning tool for “the creation of a stable human world order,” which he called “the deepest historical task of our times” (p.20). His proposed indicators for monitoring the moralnet included suicide, divorce, child abuse, mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, and crime, among others. Naroll also developed a summary index of the quality of life in these terms that allowed him to rank the performance of various nations. While The Moral Order was an impressive effort and a useful source of comparative data on adaptation, from our perspective it ultimately amounts to a partial view of the overall adaptation problem. It is a tool for assessing one important aspect of biological adaptation in human societies. From a strictly biological adaptation viewpoint, the moral and ethical framework of a society is a means (an “instrumental need,” in our terminology) that serves, or ill-serves, the broader adaptive needs of a society and its members. Another noteworthy effort to apply the concept of adaptation in anthropology is the theoretical program of Benjamin Colby and his co-workers, which is concerned with the concept of “adaptive potential” (see Colby et al., 1985, Colby 1987). Colby defines the term adaptive potential broadly (it includes “altruism” and “creativity”, as well as what Colby calls “adaptivity”), and it is seen by Colby as a basis for developing predictors of adaptation (he prefers the term well-being), including physical health, satisfaction and happiness. More recently, the concept of adaptation was discussed in some detail by Edgerton in Sick Societies (1992), although his primary concern, as noted above, was with adaptation's antithesis -maladaptation. Edgerton notes that the terms “adaptive” and “maladaptive” can have various meanings, depending upon which criteria are used and which “level” of cultural organization is involved -individuals, families, groups, or societies. By the same token, the causal dynamics of maladaptation are both multi-levelled and multi-faceted. Some forms of maladaptation are the direct result of genetic influences that predispose an individual to poor physical or mental health, ranging from Parkinson's disease and Down Syndrome to schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis. Other forms of maladaptation involve personal behavioral patterns with significant health or mortality implications, from smoking to high-fat diets. Still other forms involve harmful cultural practices -say, unhealthy or highly stressful working conditions. As Jerome Barkow points out in his influential book, Darwin, Sex and Status (1989), maladaptive cultural traits can also occur when there are environmental changes and the population fails to respond effectively, or when shortsighted ecological practices lead to environmental destruction, or when powerful elites serve their own interests in such a way as to harm others in the community. Edgerton in his study ultimately adopts three “self-evident” criteria for cultural maladaptation at the societal level: (1) the outright failure of a population to survive; (2) a context in which a sufficient number of the population are deeply enough dissatisfied with the status quo to threaten the viability of the society and its institutions; and (3) when a cultural practice severely impairs the physical or mental health of a population, so that its members cannot adequately meet their own needs or maintain their social and cultural system (p.45). (In the “Survival Indicators” paradigm, the emphasis will be on the third of Edgerton's three categories -but we also adopt a multi-level approach.) Closely related in spirit to these anthropological writings but very different in its disciplinary focus is the literature in the field of welfare economics, and especially the work related to the concept of “well-being.” While the term “welfare” has a long and distinguished history in economic theory, it has been used in widely varying ways over the years. One tradition is associated with the orthodox neo-classical formulation, which seeks to derive individual and collective well-being from the sum of individual “utility functions” or subjective “satisfactions” (see especially the discussions in Sen 1982, Elster and Roemer 1991 and Hanley and Spash 1993). Others define welfare in terms of the preferences or goals of some collective entity -an organization, agency, or polity (e.g., Faber and Proops, 1990, who utilize a multilevel approach). Still others have advanced various external criteria, from GNP per capita to average life expectancy (e.g., Streeten 1981). Jon Elster and John Roemer (1991), in introducing the second volume of an important collection of conference papers concerned with interpersonal comparisons of well-being, point out that there are a number of complex issues associated with the concept, namely: (1) how do you define it? (2) how do you validate it? (3) how do you measure it? and (4) how does the analyst's values or goals affect the answers to questions 1-3? (See also Elster and Hylland 1986.) Thus, interpersonal comparisons of well-being might be used variously to achieve distributive justice, or to establish some “intersubjective” standard for measuring well-being, or to explain economic behavior when interpersonal comparisons are among the factors that are influencing the actors themselves (i.e., when keeping up with the Joneses is an important motivator). Significantly, many of the participants in the well-being conference objected to the use of any purely subjective measure of psychological “satisfaction” as a standard, without regard for the objective situation. Two of the contributors to the conference, James Griffin and Thomas M. Scanlon, argued strongly for more “impersonal standards” that are based on widely-shared values. Indeed, Scanlon observed that the very process of evaluating well-being is value-laden, no matter which standard is used. Scanlon's preferred alternative was to construct “a more concrete conception of welfare in terms of particular goods and conditions that are recognized as important to a good life even by people with divergent values” (Scanlon 1991:39). Perhaps the best-known attempt to construct such a framework is philosopher John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1972), which has inspired an enormous critical literature (pro and con). Briefly, Rawls attacks relativistic notions of justice and equity and sets out to develop a “universalistic” foundation. Using a highly-contrived “thought experiment” that is reminiscent of the social contract theorists, Rawls posits a negotiation process which, he claims, could be expected to produce a shared interest in the mutual provision of what he calls “primary goods” that is, basic “rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and wealth” (1972:92-93). Rawls sees his primary goods as necessary prerequisites to being able to formulate any other life goals and to act upon them. Because all participants in this imaginary negotiation are required by Rawls to come to the bargaining table with a shared understanding about the world but behind a “veil of ignorance” about their own pre-existing personal interests, the game is actually rigged: everybody must start out “equal” in terms of perceived needs and presumed benefits. Rawls calls this the “original position,” but it is obviously a very hypothetical construct, which various critics, both on the political left and the right, have attacked. (There is, in fact, something a bit disquieting about the notion that willing consent to a universal concept of justice may be possible, but only if people are kept in ignorance of their real-world stakes.) The movement toward objectification of welfare economics has been given further impetus by the prolific and important theoretical work of Amartya Sen and various colleagues over the past three decades (see especially Sen 1982, 1985, 1992; also Nussbaum and Sen 1993). In a series of writings that date back to the 1970s, Sen has mounted a major assault on the utilitarian, subjectivist model of well-being. To some extent paralleling and expanding the arguments of Rawls, Sen challenged the adequacy of various “psychological” formulations of welfare that rest on desires, tastes, subjective utilities, or what have you. Sen charges neoclassical economics with circularity, vacuity, gross oversimplification and the use of psychological premises that are without foundation. Noting, for example, that “sympathy” and concern for others can also affect a person's welfare, or that individual welfare functions can be interdependent (as highlighted in game theory), or that social commitments may affect behavior, Sen argues that a narrow, materialistic concept of “self-interest” is not a sufficient definition of behavioral motivation, much less well-being. Furthermore, Sen points out, consistency in making choices is a pretty weak definition of rationality. In one famous passage from his Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University in 1976, entitled “Rational Fools,” Sen concludes: “The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool decked in the glory of his one all-purpose preference ordering. To make room for the different concepts related to his behaviour, we need a more elaborate structure” (1982:99). Sen does not try to define what the end-state should look like for any given individual but rather directs our attention to the means that are necessary for setting and pursuing personal goals. However, in contrast with Rawls, who was concerned about the “goods” (say food) that are needed to create various “opportunities”, Sen focusses on the “capabilities to function” -the nutritional benefits of food versus food per se. Sen describes it as “a particular approach to wellbeing and advantage in terms of a person's ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being” (Sen 1993:30). In the current political jargon, Sen's focus is on “empowerment” rather than a person's subjective sense of satisfaction, which, as Sen notes, may or may not be concordant. Sen tells us that the functionings which may be relevant for well-being can vary from “elementary” ones like escaping mortality, morbidity, or hunger, to more “complex” and subtle conditions such as achieving self-respect or enjoying social interactions. However, Sen demurs from proposing “just one list of functionings” (quoted in Nussbaum 1988:152). Sen also addresses the issue of poverty and “basic needs” in his framework. He speaks of a subset of capabilities which he calls “basic capabilities,” and he defines these as “the ability to satisfy certain crucially important functionings up to certain minimally adequate levels” (1993:41). Noting the extensive literature in recent years on the concept of basic needs (see below), Sen argues that the basic capabilities approach is compatible with a basic needs approach and can greatly improve on the use of income measures for defining poverty. Sen's theoretical stance can perhaps be illustrated with the following diagram (inspired by Doyal and Gough, 1991, but significantly modified): ((FIGURE I GOES HERE)) A final point is that Sen clearly recognizes the concept of “basic needs.” Indeed, he and various colleagues have been much concerned about such pressing real-world problems as hunger and global poverty (e.g., see Drèze and Sen 1989; Drèze, Sen and Hussain 1995). And yet, Sen's paradigm does not provide any explicit theoretical basis for his distinction between “capabilities” and “basic capabilities.” Like so many other treatments of the concept of basic needs, its status in Sen's paradigm is at once intuitively obvious and theoretically adrift. In short, what is missing in Sen's work is a way of grounding the concept of capabilities (requisites) that is both independent and directly measurable. Sen has demurred from elaborating his concepts in more specific detail, so they remain elusive as analytical tools for real-world situations. Sen leaves that task to others. How, then, can we apply and test Sen's concepts? As Scanlon (1993) argues, what is required is a “substantive list” of the elements that are needed to sustain life and make it valuable. Scanlon calls for an “objective index” of well-being that can pass two tests: (2) adequacy and (2) practicality. BASIC NEEDS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Actually, concerted efforts to measure the quality of life more objectively date back at least to the emergence of the so-called “social indicators” movement in the 1960s. While the origins of this movement could perhaps be traced to the sociologist William F. Ogburn's Social Trends (1929), contemporary researchers generally identify Raymond Bauer's Social Indicators (1966) as the catalyst for the more recent and sustained efforts in this area. Following the publication of Bauer's path-breaking book, social indicators research enjoyed a period of rapid, well-funded growth. Much of the impetus for the creation of a distinct body of data called social indicators arose out of a reaction against our heavy dependence on economic indicators as measuring rods for societal progress or well-being (especially the GDP and per capita income). The goal of the social indicators “idealists,” as they were sometimes pejoratively called, was to develop a broad definition of the “general welfare” that subsumed economic growth and also accounted for various diseconomies, or economic externalities. Perhaps the most frequently quoted statement of this energizing vision (at least in the U.S.) can be found in Toward a Social Report (1969), a benchmark report sponsored by the (then) U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and written principally by economist Mancur Olson: A social indicator may be defined to be a statistic of direct normative interest which facilitates concise, comprehensive and balanced judgments about the condition of major aspects of a society. It is in all cases a direct measure of welfare and is subject to the interpretation that, if it changes in the “right” direction, while other things remain equal, things have gotten better or people are “better off” (p. 97). Just as economists had been able to articulate a theory of economic activity that established a framework for aggregating data on the production and consumption of goods and services, so the social indicators proponents aspired to develop a coherent system of objective measures of well-being. The goal was not only to augment and improve an ad hoc collection of social statistics that already were being gathered for sometimes obscure or narrow purposes. The hope was that it would also be possible to create a comprehensive statistical portrait, a tapestry by means of which we could view a society at once as an integrated whole and in all of its major facets. Needless to say, the concept of “basic needs” has also played an important role in the social indicators movement. In addition to the present author's early work on measuring basic needs (Corning 1970, 1975, 1978), which was little-noticed at the time, there was a study by the Stanford Research Institute (1975) for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concerning “Quality of Life Minimums” (QOLMs), which analyzed existing political standards in this area; also, the important work sponsored by the Overseas Development Council on a “Physical Quality of Life Index” (PQLI) (Morris 1979); also, the voluminous writings on a basic needs strategy for world development emanating from the World Bank (Streeten 1977, 1979, 1981, 1984; Streeten and Burki 1978; Hicks and Streeten 1979; Streeten et al., 1981); also the manifold efforts of various United Nations agencies since 1975 (see especially the so-called McHale and McHale Report, 1978). Unfortunately, none of these efforts was rigorously grounded theoretically. All rested on intuitive (albeit often compelling) pragmatic criteria. Although there was considerable overlap among the various attempts to formulate a shopping list of basic human needs, there were also significant differences among them, not surprisingly. Hicks and Streeten (1979), for instance, included nutrition, education, health, sanitation, water, and housing. Geist (1978) included among his basic “normative criteria” for human health the social milieu, education, nutrition, exercise, natural surroundings and emotional security. Mazess (1975), a specialist in highaltitude peoples, had a physiologically oriented list of nine “adaptive domains”. (See also Streeten et al., 1981; Streeten 1984; Miles 1985; Stewart 1985.) Attacks on the social indicators proponents came from the many social scientists who claimed that well-being is necessarily a personal and subjective affair (value relativism). Included in their number were the many workers in the survey research field who, for obvious reasons, had a strong preference for “perceptual indicators” of well-being. The Survey Research Center's director, Angus Campbell, for instance, noted “the obvious fact” that “individual needs differ greatly from one person to another and that what will satisfy one will be totally unsatisfactory to the other. Indeed, the same individual may find the same circumstances thoroughly unsatisfactory at one stage of his life but quite acceptable at a later stage” (Campbell et al., 1976:9). Likewise, the sociologist Erik Allardt (1973:267, 272) asserted that: “A level of need satisfaction defined once and for all has hardly any specific meaning....To a large extent, needs are both created by society and culturally defined, meaning that the satisfaction and frustration of needs have to be studied in a systematic context in which societal feedback processes are considered.” Rist (1980:241) was even more dogmatic: “Needs are constructed by the social structure and have no objective content.” In the same vein, the writers of a synthesis volume on the quality of life, published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s, claimed that: “Quality of life means different things to different people. It can be stated that at the present no consensus exists as to what it is or what it means...QOL is viewed by many as not applying to the nation as a whole. In their view, the only way QOL could be applied at the macro-level would be by homogenizing the country and forcing everyone to accept the same value standards.”(1973:1,11). Finally, advocates for Third World countries attacked the very concept of social indicators as an imperialist tool that was meant to deflate the legitimate economic aspirations of the developing countries and/or deflect attention from the then-popular focus on redistributing wealth between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (see Miles 1985; Wisner 1988). Still others accused the social indicators advocates of being politically naive. It was not realistic, they claimed, to think that the powers that be, especially in Third World countries, would allow the development and publication of such politically-sensitive social outcome statistics. Len Doyal and Ian Gough (1991) conclude in their important book on basic needs (see below) that: “The movement for social indicators and human development appears to have run into the sand...The decline and fall of the social indicators/human development movements was due first and foremost to the lack of a unifying conceptual framework” (p. 154). True, but that was only part of the reason. As Nussbaum and Sen (1993:4) point out: “The search for a universally applicable account of the quality of human life has, on its side, the promise of greater power to stand up for the lives of those whom tradition [read economic and political forces] has oppressed or marginalized. But it faces the epistemological difficulty of grounding such an account in an adequate way, saying where the norms come from and how they can be known to be the best.” Doyal and Gough agree: “The earlier theoretical innovations...all suffer from one overriding defect. None of them demonstrates the universality of their theory, nor, the other side of the same coin, tackles the deeper philosophical questions raised by relativism” (ibid). In short, the search for a satisfactory metric, or measuring rod for well-being and the quality of life has been severely hampered by the lack of a compelling theoretical foundation. BASIC NEEDS AND ADAPTATION We propose that the concept of basic needs can be grounded in the biological problem of survival and reproduction. To our knowledge, the first social scientist to espouse in significant detail a basic needs approach to adaptation was the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1944). For Malinowski a society is preeminently an organized system of cooperatively pursued activities. It is purposive in nature, and its purposes relate to the satisfaction of basic needs -i.e., “the system of conditions in the human organism, in the cultural setting, and in the relation of both to the natural environment, which are sufficient and necessary for the survival of the group and organism” (p. 90). In contrast with the hyphenated structural-functionalism (so-called) of Comte, Durkheim, and their descendants, Malinowski's “pure functionalism,” like Herbert Spencer's before him, was concerned with relating the complexities of cultural behavior to “organic processes in the human body and to those concomitant phases of behavior which we call desire or drive, emotion or physiological disturbance, and which, for one reason or another, have to be regulated and coordinated by the apparatus of culture” (p. 74). The structure that Malinowski developed for his essentially biological functionalism is reproduced here in synoptic form: Table I. Malinowski's Framework Basic Needs Cultural Responses 1. Metabolism 1. Commissariat 2. Reproduction 2. Kinship 3. Bodily comforts 3. Shelter 4. Safety 4. Protection 5. Movement 5. Activities 6. Growth 6. Training 7. Health 7. Hygiene Malinowski drafted this listing only for the sake of simplicity; his textual discussion provides more detailed and more sophisticated treatment. For example, his “health” need has a dual significance. In a narrow sense it refers to the absence of physical impairment or sickness, but in a broader sense it is a condition that is affected by all the other categories (see below). Malinowski also went on to show that these primary needs give rise to a set of “derived” societal needs. (Our concept of “instrumental needs,” discussed below, is at once similar and different.) Malinowski used the fork as an example. Can anyone doubt that the function performed by a fork (a “capability” in Sen's terminology) is a significant part of the explanation for the existence and the design of this commonplace cultural artifact? Yet the fork is not a cultural universal. So more information is needed to account for how the fork was invented and diffused and why it is used in some cultures and not in others. In light of contemporary anthropological theory (not to mention the technical literature on social indicators), one finds many shortcomings in Malinowski's formulations (see especially the critique in Harris 1968). One might take exception, for instance, to Malinowski's claim that his basic needs approach was the only valid set of external, or “etic,” criteria for cross-cultural classification and comparisons (1944:176). Nevertheless we believe that his basic approach was sound, indeed essential to a view of human societies that is in touch with the biological fundamentals. Another major progenitor of the basic needs approach is the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow (1954; 1962; 1967). Maslow's famous hierarchy of human needs involved nothing less than a theory of human nature and motivation. According to Maslow, the human being is neither a behavioral sponge (as the Behaviorists implied) nor a tormented neurotic (as some Freudians hold) but a natural innocent endowed with an array of biologically based needs that ascend hierarchically through five categories from “deficiency motivations” (which derive from such physiological needs as food, water, shelter, sleep, sex) to “being motivations,” at the apex of which is “self-actualization,” a kind of beatific state in which one achieves the full use of one's talents and potentialities. Maslow's five categories are: (1) physiological needs, (2) safety needs, (3) “belongingness” and love needs, (4) esteem needs, and (5) self-actualization or “growth” needs (1954:80ff). Despite its popularity among various psychologically oriented social scientists, Maslow's hierarchy per se gained only marginal status among experimental psychologists because it did not have empirical support. Although it has been frequently invoked to justify a particular moral position or to anchor a model of social behavior, such uses are pseudoscientific. Fitzgerald concludes: “Most psychologists regard the purely empirical study and validation of a hierarchy of needs in Maslow's sense as presenting immense and (perhaps) insurmountable problems. It is clear that insofar as a potentially verifiable aspect can be abstracted from this ambiguous amalgam, Maslow's theory of human needs has not been empirically established to any significant extent” (1977:46). Nevertheless, Maslow's more expansive vision of “human nature” had a kernal of truth, as we shall argue below. Another attempt to create a theoretical foundation for the concept of basic needs, and a major contribution to the debate, is Doyal and Gough's book, A Theory of Human Need (1991). As stated in their introduction, their goal was a “coherent, rigorous theory of human need....We shall argue that basic needs can be shown to exist, that individuals have a right to the optimal satisfaction of these needs and that all human liberation should be measured by assessing the degree to which such satisfaction has occurred” (pp.3-4). Doyal and Gough's theory has a frankly normative aspiration -in their words, to undergird “the moral importance of the needs of individuals,” and to support “the maximum development of the individual as a person” (p.5). They also proclaim themselves to be strong advocates for a “political economy of needs-satisfaction” as a constraint on the free play of market forces. Although their theory is convergent (and to a degree compatible) with the Survival Indicators paradigm, it also differs in some significant respects (most especially in its theoretical foundation and normative implications). It is important, therefore, to describe and discuss the Doyal and Gough theory very briefly, although we cannot do full justice here to their detailed explication and analyses. Doyal and Gough begin with a full-dress rebuttal to the neo-classical/relativist attacks on the concept of basic needs. First, they point out that the relativist position is fatally compromised once it is acknowledged that there is such a thing as “perfect knowledge” (an objective external state that transcends the individual's subjective perceptions); or when it is recognized that wants can be manipulated externally and may not reflect a person's “true” wants; or if it is conceded that market forces may distort a person's “real” wants. The relativist claim to moral superiority (allegedly because it is the road to greater personal freedom) also leads to a reductio ad absurdum unless hedged with externally-imposed limits, or constraints. Do our children (or worse, our teenagers) always know what is best for them? Should we indulge the strongly-held preferences of rapists, bank robbers, swindlers and other anti-social actors? In fact, the argument for a moral order as a necessary (objective) constraint and precondition for economic and political freedom goes back to Adam Smith (and to Plato and Aristotle before him). Doyal and Gough also address the problem of defining basic needs. To be sure, the term is used in many different ways, from psychological motivations or “drives” (sensu Maslow) to strictly physiological requisites (food, water, sleep, waste elimination) to any conceivable want or preference whatsoever. Following the lead of philosopher Garrett Thomson (1987) in his thoughtful monograph on the concept of “needs,” Doyal and Gough argue that the bedrock implication of the term should be that some specific “harm” will occur if the posited need is unfulfilled, whether we are aware of it or not. (Galtung, 1980, advanced a similar idea under the term “disintegration”.) Furthermore, some needs are universal. To quote Thomson (1987:27): “Fundamental needs are inescapable; we cannot escape the fact that we must all ail and eventually die without [among other things] food, water, and air.” Accordingly, Doyal and Gough focus on “goals which are instrumentally and universally linked to the avoidance of serious harm” (1991:42). The concept of objective and universal human needs is thus central to their theoretical task. Doyal and Gough argue that: (a) our basic needs are equally needed by all (within a clearly bounded range of variation); (b) we are all equally harmed if these needs are not satisfied; (c) it constitutes an injustice if these needs are not fulfilled; (d) our needs take normative precedence over non-essential “wants”; and (e) most of us do desire the satisfaction of our basic needs. (The latter point is linked by Doyal and Gough to the recent rediscovery of “human nature” by the social sciences. However, they rightly stress that biological influences shape but do not determine our choices and behaviors.) In keeping with their normative agenda, a conspicuous feature of Doyal and Gough's argument is that “harm” in their terms refers to the broad concern for human fulfillment -most importantly “participation” in the life of the community -and not biological adaptation strictly speaking. Thus, Doyal and Gough remain within the Western, humanistic moral tradition, which supports human aspirations as ends in themselves. A “basic need” in their terms refers to the preconditions for the fulfillment of our “being motivations” (in Maslow's terminology), in addition to bottom-line survival. Indeed, Doyal and Gough cite an array of theorists whose writings are supportive of this viewpoint, including Plato and Aristotle, Kant, Gewirth, Rawls, Habermas, Sen, Thompson, Braybrooke, Dworkin, and others. (Maslow could also be added to their list.) So, in the final analysis, their use of the term basic needs overlaps with, and embraces, the broader aspiration for human self-actualization and well-being. It is really a theory of well-being disguised as a theory of basic needs. Accordingly, Doyal and Gough posit two global “basic needs.” One is “physical health,” which encompasses physical survival but means much more to them than “mere” survival. (They cite the so-called “biomedical model” of health as a reference point and claim to be operationalizing the famous WHO definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.”) The second basic need, Doyal and Gough claim, is “autonomy”, by which they mean (a) a person's level of “understanding”, (b) his or her psychological capacity to make choices and act upon them, and (c) objective opportunities to act upon these choices, with an emphasis on participation in social activities (see Figure II below ). While they acknowledge wide personal and cultural differences both in perceptions about autonomy and in the forms of expression that autonomy may take, Doyal and Gough insist that meaningful evaluations can be made both within a given culture and comparatively between cultures in terms of the relative degree of need-satisfaction. The concept of “optimum need-satisfaction” is universally applicable, they claim, whatever may be the differences in specific cases. ((FIGURE II GOES HERE)) In order to satisfy these two broadly-defined basic needs in any given society, Doyal and Gough also posit a set of “intermediate needs,” which they see as encompassing the range of specific “need-satisfiers” (a concept similar to Sen's notion of “capabilities”). “Basic needs, then, are always universal but the specific satisfiers are often relative” (1991:155). These “satisfiers” generally refer to the goods and services provided by the economic, socio-cultural and political systems of a given society. However, embedded in each specific satisfier (say a particular type of food-stuff) is what Doyal and Gough call their “universal satisfier characteristics” (i.e., the nutritional properties of the food). It is those universal satisfiers (what Sen refers to as “capability characteristics”) that Doyal and Gough identify as the basis for their concept of “intermediate needs.” To use a concrete example, the specific “need-satisfier” in the package of snack-bars that I currently hold in my hand corresponds to its list of ingredients, but the “universal satisfier” is the percentage of various daily food values that are documented in the table of “Nutrition Facts” printed on the side of the box. Doyal and Gough note that there are many different lists of basic needs. As Braybrooke (1987) has pointed out, a large “family of lists of needs” has resulted from the various social indicators projects sponsored by international agencies like the International Labor Organization (1976), national governments like Sweden (Erikson 1993), and private organizations like the OECD (1976). There is even a consolidated list produced by Braybrooke himself (1987:33-36). By contrast, Doyal and Gough claim that their theory provides clarification because it dictates which intermediate needs (read universal satisfiers) are important in any culture for the satisfaction of their two overarching basic needs. “The only claim for inclusion...is whether or not any set of satisfier characteristics universally and positively contributes to physical health and autonomy” (p. 158). Their list of eleven intermediate needs includes: 1. Nutritional Food and Clean Water 7. Protective Housing 2. A Non-hazardous Work Environment 8. A Non-hazardous Physical Environment 3. Appropriate Health Care 9. Security in Childhood 4. Significant Primary Relationships 10. Physical Security 5. Economic Security 11. Appropriate Education 6. Safe Birth Control and Child-bearing Doyal and Gough then proceed to support their claims with a detailed, two-chapter review of the efforts that have been made by various workers to develop standards and measurement techniques related both to their two postulated basic needs and to the array of supportive intermediate needs. Their conclusion: “One thing, we hope, is clear. Our theory of human need has a purchase, albeit a tenuous one, on existing evidence of need-satisfaction throughout the world” (p.221). One other “historical” use of the concept of basic needs should also be noted in passing. Even though it has been regularly debunked by cultural relativists, the concept has nonetheless played an important political role in the development of the so-called Welfare State in Western societies over the past century. Beginning in 1883, when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck established the first “social insurance” program in the then new German nation-state, an appeal to basic needs has figured in the development of a broad spectrum of social programs in Western countries. These programs include workmen's compensation, public assistance, social security, health insurance, and the minimum wage, among others. The concept was also an explicit element of the New Deal philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt. As FDR put it in one of his famous fireside chats: “One of the duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves victims of such adverse circumstances as makes them unable to obtain even the necessities of mere existence without the aid of others. That responsibility is recognized by every civilized nation...” Thus, it seems paradoxical, to say the least, that the concept of basic needs has been regularly invoked in connection with social policy and regularly rejected in social theory.