Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology
Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology

Author: Roy Ellen

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-08-01

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0857459945

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The concept of "cultural transmission" is central to much contemporary anthropological theory, since successful human reproduction through social systems is essential for effective survival and for enhancing the adaptiveness of individual humans and local populations. Yet, what is understood by the phrase and how it might best be studied is highly contested. This book brings together contributions that reflect the current diversity of approaches - from the fields of biology, primatology, palaeoanthropology, psychology, social anthropology, ethnobiology, and archaeology - to examine social and cultural transmission from a range of perspectives and at different scales of generalization. The comprehensive introduction explores some of the problems and connections. Overall, the book provides a timely synthesis of current accounts of cultural transmission in relation to cognitive process, practical action, and local socio-ecological context, while linking these with explanations of longer-term evolutionary trajectories.

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture
Cultural Transmission and Material Culture

Author: Miriam T. Stark

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2008-11-13

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780816526758

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How and why people develop, maintain, and change cultural boundaries through time are central issues in the social and behavioral sciences in generaland anthropological archaeology in particular. What factors influence people to imitate or deviate from the behaviors of other group members? How are social group boundaries produced, perpetuated, and altered by the cumulative outcomeof these decisions? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding cultural persistence and change. The chapters included in this stimulating, multifaceted book address these questions. Working in several subdisciplines, contributors report on research in the areas of cultural boundaries, cultural transmission, and the socially organized nature of learning. Boundaries are found not only within and between the societies in these studies but also within and between the communities of scholars who study them. To break down these boundaries, this volume includes scholars who use multiple theoretical perspectives, including practice theory and evolutionary traditions, which are sometimes complementary and occasionally clashing. Geographic coverage ranges from the indigenous Americas to Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, and the time frame extends from the prehistoric or precontact to colonial periods and up to the ethnographic present. Contributors include leading scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Together, they employ archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological,experimental, and simulation data to link micro-scale processes of cultural transmission to macro-scale processes of social group boundary formation, continuity, and change.

Cultural Transmission
Cultural Transmission

Author: Ute Schönpflug

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-11-10

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 1139474480

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Cultural Transmission covers psychological, developmental, social, and methodological research on how cultural information is socially transmitted from one generation to the next within families. Studying processes of cultural transmission may help analyze the continuity or change of cultures, including those that have to cope with migration or the collapse of a political system. An evolutionary perspective is elaborated in the first part of the book; the second takes a cross-cultural perspective by presenting international research on development and intergenerational relations in the family; the third provides intra-cultural analyses of mechanisms and methodological aspects of cultural transmission. Made up of contributions by experts in the field, this source book is intended for anyone with interests in cultural issues – especially researchers and teachers in disciplines such as psychology, social and behavioral sciences, and education – and for applied professionals in culture management and family counseling, as well as professionals dealing with migrants.

Cultural Transmission and Evolution (MPB-16), Volume 16
Cultural Transmission and Evolution (MPB-16), Volume 16

Author: L L Cavalli-sforza

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-03-31

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0691209359

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A number of scholars have found that concepts such as mutation, selection, and random drift, which emerged from the theory of biological evolution, may also explain evolutionary phenomena in other disciplines as well. Drawing on these concepts, Professors Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman classify and systematize the various modes of transmitting "culture" and explore their consequences for cultural evolution. In the process, they develop a mathematical theory of the non-genetic transmission of cultural traits that provides a framework for future investigations in quantitative social and anthropological science. The authors use quantitative models that incorporate the various modes of transmission (for example, parent-child, peer-peer, and teacher-student), and evaluate data from sociology, archaeology, and epidemiology in terms of the models. They show that the various modes of transmission in conjunction with cultural and natural selection produce various rates of cultural evolution and various degrees of diversity within and between groups. The same framework can be used for explaining phenomena as apparently unrelated as linguistics, epidemics, social values and customs, and diffusion of innovations. The authors conclude that cultural transmission is an essential factor in the study of cultural change.

The Origin and Evolution of Cultures
The Origin and Evolution of Cultures

Author: Robert Boyd

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-01-20

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0195347447

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Oxford presents, in one convenient and coherently organized volume, 20 influential but until now relatively inaccessible articles that form the backbone of Boyd and Richerson's path-breaking work on evolution and culture. Their interdisciplinary research is based on two notions. First, that culture is crucial for understanding human behavior; unlike other organisms, socially transmitted beliefs, attitudes, and values heavily influence our behavior. Secondly, culture is part of biology: the capacity to acquire and transmit culture is a derived component of human psychology, and the contents of culture are deeply intertwined with our biology. Culture then is a pool of information, stored in the brains of the population that gets transmitted from one brain to another by social learning processes. Therefore, culture can account for both our outstanding ecological success as well as the maladaptations that characterize much of human behavior. The interest in this collection will span anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy, and political science.

Theory in Economic Anthropology
Theory in Economic Anthropology

Author: Jean Ensminger

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780759102064

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This new volume from the Society for Economic Anthropology examines the unique contributions of anthropologists to general economic theory. The authors challenge our understanding of human economies in the expanding global systems of interaction, with models and analyses from cross-cultural research. The book will be a valuable resource for anthropologists, economists, economic historians, political economists, and economic development specialists.

Explaining Culture Scientifically
Explaining Culture Scientifically

Author: Melissa J. Brown

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780295987897

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What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors - prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics - approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chimpanzees, from Taiwan to New Guinea, from cannibalism to marriage patterns, this volume directly addresses the challenges of explaining culture scientifically. The evolutionary paradigm lends itself particularly well to the question of culture; in these essays, different modes of inheritance - genetic, cultural, ecological, and structural - illustrate evolutionary patterns in a variety of settings. Explaining Culture Scientifically is divided into parts that address how to think about culture, modeling approaches to cultural influences on behavior, ethnographic case studies addressing the question of culture's influence on behavior, and challenges to the possibility of a scientific approach to culture. It is necessary reading for scholars and students in anthropology and related disciplines.

Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution
Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution

Author: Stephen Shennan

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780520255999

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This volume offers an integrative approach to the application of evolutionary theory in studies of cultural transmission and social evolution and reveals the enormous range of ways in which Darwinian ideas can lead to productive empirical research, the touchstone of any worthwhile theoretical perspective. While many recent works on cultural evolution adopt a specific theoretical framework, such as dual inheritance theory or human behavioral ecology, Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution emphasizes empirical analysis and includes authors who employ a range of backgrounds and methods to address aspects of culture from an evolutionary perspective. Editor Stephen Shennan has assembled archaeologists, evolutionary theorists, and ethnographers, whose essays cover a broad range of time periods, localities, cultural groups, and artifacts.

Understanding Cultural Traits
Understanding Cultural Traits

Author: Fabrizio Panebianco

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-26

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 3319243497

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This volume constitutes a first step towards an ever-deferred interdisciplinary dialogue on cultural traits. It offers a way to enter a representative sample of the intellectual diversity that surrounds this topic, and a means to stimulate innovative avenues of research. It stimulates critical thinking and awareness in the disciplines that need to conceptualize and study culture, cultural traits, and cultural diversity. Culture is often defined and studied with an emphasis on cultural features. For UNESCO, “culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group”. But the very possibility of assuming the existence of cultural traits is not granted, and any serious evaluation of the notion of “cultural trait” requires the interrogation of several disciplines from cultural anthropology to linguistics, from psychology to sociology to musicology, and all areas of knowledge on culture. This book presents a strong multidisciplinary perspective that can help clarify the problems about cultural traits.

Culture and the Evolutionary Process
Culture and the Evolutionary Process

Author: Robert Boyd

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1988-06-15

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0226069338

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How do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.