Human Nature and the Biology of Everyday Life

Anthropologists are well poised to contribute to an immanent theory of human physiological experiences that accounts for the broad social and environmental influences that shape individual and community experiences of health and disease. This article forwards a theory of the biology of everyday life as a means to conceptualize the interactions between institutional expectations of behavior, cultural norms, and biological plasticity. Drawing on a wide variety of research on human sleep, this article shows how the expression of sleep needs vary within and between societies and are shaped primarily not by innate biological drives but cultural norms embedded in the institutions that comprise the infrastructure of everyday life. Embracing perspectives from laboratory scientists, social theorists, and ethnographers, the biology of everyday life offers a way to conceptualize human nature not as a set of drives but a supple interaction of physiological plasticity, cultural expectations, and social organization.