Abstract
A widely accepted view in the cultural evolutionary literature is that culture forms a dynamic system of elements (or ‘traits’) linked together by a variety of relationships. Despite this, large families of models within the cultural evolutionary literature tend to represent only a small number of traits, or traits without interrelationships. As such, these models may be unable to capture complex dynamics resulting from multiple interrelated traits. Here we put forward a systems approach to cultural evolutionary research—one that explicitly represents numerous cultural traits and their relationships to one another. Basing our discussion on simple graph-based models, we examine the implications of the systems approach in four domains: (i) the cultural evolution of decision rules (‘filters’) and their influence on the distribution of cultural traits in a population; (ii) the contingency and stochasticity of system trajectories through a structured state space; (iii) how trait interrelationships can modulate rates of cultural change; and (iv) how trait interrelationships can contribute to understandings of inter-group differences in realised traits. We suggest that the preliminary results presented here should inspire greater attention to the role of multiple interrelated traits on cultural evolution, and should motivate attempts to formalise the rich body of analyses and hypotheses within the humanities and social science literatures.
Highlights
Research in cultural evolution aims at understanding and explaining cultural change at multiple causal levels (e.g., Mesoudi, 2011; Colleran and Mace, 2015; Gjesfjeld et al, 2016)
This is evident both in the multiple definitions of culture, many of which selectively highlight features and processes of culture and cultural change (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952; Weiss, 1973; Keesing, 1974; Mesoudi, 2011), and in the variety of methods used to decompose and analyse the constituent causal processes of culture.1. Despite variation among these attempts at describing and understanding the complexity of human culture, there has long been consensus on its key features: that culture is composed of a number of distinct elements, that these traits bear varying relationships to one another, and that these traits are realised in overlapping yet heterogeneous ways by different populations in the world. In calling this a consensus, we draw attention to the long history of viewing culture as a complex dynamic system, composed of multiple traits and their relationships, which can change over time
More relevant for current considerations, this consensus view is evident in the qualitative descriptions accompanying early cultural evolutionary models (e.g., CavalliSforza and Feldman, 1981; Boyd and Richerson, 1985) and in banner claims about the scope and power of cultural evolutionary theory (e.g., Sperber, 1996; Henrich, 2016)
Summary
Research in cultural evolution aims at understanding and explaining cultural change at multiple causal levels (e.g., Mesoudi, 2011; Colleran and Mace, 2015; Gjesfjeld et al, 2016). The systems approach highlights how individual (micro) and population (macro) levels can influence one another through effects on trait relationships and availability.
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