Cultivating human nature

Evolutionary psychology claims to offer a unified perspective on human nature and culture, which can serve to further the integration of psychology and the social sciences. I describe four approaches to evolutionary psychology, and note increasing attention to the agency of the individual in constructing the biological and cultural environment. These approaches, however, share a problematic conception of culture as information. I explore the possibility of using Latour's concept of mediation to analyse the relation between human nature and culture without restricting the latter to information, and collect a number of recent studies and essays that illustrate the way individuals mediate nature and culture. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.