It presents a theoretical treatment that many consider to have resolved longstanding questions about the proper place of genetic (or 'blood') connections in human kinship and social relations, and a synthesis that "should inspire more nuanced ventures in applying Darwinian approaches to sociocultural anthropology".

[3] Beyond its central argument, the broader philosophical implications of Holland's work are considered by commentators to be that it both "helps to untangle a long-standing disciplinary muddle"[4] and "clarifies the relationship between biological and sociocultural approaches to human kinship.

Meanwhile, many biologists, biological anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have persisted in viewing human kinship and cooperative behavior as necessarily associated with genetic relationships and 'blood ties'.

"[10] The book reviews the background and key elements of Hamilton's inclusive fitness theory from the 1960s onwards, setting out its significant conceptual and heuristic value.

Specifically, the supergenes notion (sometimes called the Green-beard effect) - that organisms may evolve genes that are able to identify identical copies in others and preferentially direct social behaviours towards them - was theoretically clarified and withdrawn by Hamilton in 1987.

[12] However, in the intervening years, the notion that supergenes (or more often, simply individual organisms) have evolved to identify genetic relatives and preferentially cooperate with them took hold, and became the way many biologists came to understand the theory.

Holland also shows that, following the perceived failures of this early wave, and particularly its methodological agnosticism regarding proximate mechanisms of social behavior, the evolutionary psychology school grew up in its place.

Although this latter school typically avoided engaging with the ethnographic data on human kinship, Holland argues that in the few cases where it did so, it repeated the misinterpretation of inclusive fitness theory that characterized the first wave.

Holland also notes that Kitcher, in his[13] 1985 critique of the sociobiological position, suggested that perhaps the expression of social behaviors in humans might quite simply be based on cues of context and familiarity, rather than genetic relatedness per se.

Similar points have been made by others; "many behavioural ecologists seem to implicitly assume that specialised mechanisms allowing individuals to distinguish their kin from non-kin must have evolved.

[17]Having argued for the above position on the lack of necessity for genetic relatedness per se to mediate social bonding and behavior, Holland suggests that "The further question then is; can we uncover in any greater detail how familiarity and other context-dependent cues operate?".

Holland finds that; Like other mammals, Catarrhini primate demographics are strongly influenced by ecological conditions, particularly density and distribution of food sources...

[20]Holland's concluding chapter gives a summary of his fundamental position; A crucial implication of this argument taken as a whole is that the expression of the kinds of social behaviours treated by inclusive fitness theory does not require genetic relatedness.

[24]Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, and James R. Barker Professorship of Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University, past president of the American Philosophical Association and inaugural winner of the Prometheus Prize, stated of the book: Max Holland has provided a wide-ranging and deeply-probing analysis of the influence of genetic relatedness and social context on human kinship.

Among other contributions, it debunks the common misconception that biological evolution involves individual organisms actively pursuing the goal of increasing the numbers of their genes in successive generations, the measure of their so-called 'individual inclusive fitness'.

Holland demonstrates that an alternative non-deterministic interpretation of evolutionary biology is more compatible with actual human social behavior and with the frameworks that sociocultural anthropology employs.

Not only does it help to resolve debates that have run for many years, but it is also an outstanding example of what can be achieved by immersing oneself in literature from different fields, while retaining an intellectual openness and exercising incisive analysis.