Process Of Cultural Transmission Research Articles

How does opportunistic behavior influence firm size? An evolutionary approach to organizational behavior

Abstract:This paper relates firm size and opportunism by showing that, given certain behavioural dispositions of humans, the size of a profit-maximizing firm can be determined by cognitive aspects underlying firm-internal cultural transmission processes. We argue that what firms do better than markets – besides economizing on transaction costs – is to establish a cooperative regime among its employees that keeps in check opportunism. A model depicts the outstanding role of the entrepreneur or business leader in firm-internal socialization processes and the evolution of corporate cultures. We show that high opportunism-related costs are a reason for keeping firms’ size small.

“When Mister Right Comes Along”: Gender and Ethnic Identity in Narratives from Spontaneous Indian New Zealander Mother-Daughter Conversations

Narrative has been theorised as significantly implicated in the articulation of social identities and in the reproduction of culture. The present study investigated the kinds of observable practices used to achieve those ends. Spontaneous interactions between mothers and adolescent daughters from the Indian immigrant community of New Zealand were recorded. The conversations were examined for narratives where gender and ethnicity were explicitly mentioned. The analysis drew upon conversation analytic, linguistic, and psychological approaches to narrative. The results show narrative as an interactional site where there can be an explicit display and contestation of cultural norms. Explaining deviations to cultural norms and repair contexts were moments where gender and ethnicity were observable resources for action. The findings are an initial step toward understanding the role of everyday, naturally occurring narratives, within the processes of cultural transmission and change.

The accumulation of stochastic copying errors causes drift in culturally transmitted technologies: Quantifying Clovis evolutionary dynamics

The archaeological record is the empirical record of human cultural evolution. By measuring rates of change in archaeological data through time and space it is possible to estimate both the various evolutionary mechanisms that contribute to the generation of archaeological variation, and the social learning rules involved in the transmission of cultural information. Here we show that the recently proposed accumulated copying error model [Eerkens, J.W., Lipo, C.P., 2005. Cultural transmission, copying errors, and the generation of variation in material culture and the archaeological record. Journal of Anthropology archaeology 24, 316–334.] provides a rich, quantitative framework with which to model the cultural transmission of quantitative data. Using analytical arguments, we find that the accumulated copying error model predicts negative drift in quantitative data due to the proportional nature of compounded copying errors (i.e., neutral mutations), and the multiplicative process of cultural transmission. Further, we find that the theoretically predicted rate of drift in long-lived technologies is remarkably close to the observed reduction of Clovis projectile point size through time and space across North America.

Brains, genes, and language evolution: A new synthesis

AbstractOur target article argued that a genetically specified Universal Grammar (UG), capturing arbitrary properties of languages, is not tenable on evolutionary grounds, and that the close fit between language and language learners arises because language is shaped by the brain, rather than the reverse. Few commentaries defend a genetically specified UG. Some commentators argue that we underestimate the importance of processes of cultural transmission; some propose additional cognitive and brain mechanisms that may constrain language and perhaps differentiate humans from nonhuman primates; and others argue that we overstate or understate the case against co-evolution of language genes. In engaging with these issues, we suggest that a new synthesis concerning the relationship between brains, genes, and language may be emerging.

The role of genetic biases in shaping the correlations between languages and genes

It has recently been proposed [Dediu, D., Ladd, D.R., 2007. Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104(26), 10944–10949] that genetically coded linguistic biases can influence the trajectory of language change. However, the nature of such biases and the conditions under which they can become manifest have remained vague. The present paper explores computationally two plausible types of linguistic acquisition biases in a population of agents implementing realistic genetic, linguistic and demographic processes. One type of bias represents an innate asymmetric initial state ( initial expectation bias) while the other an innate asymmetric facility of acquisition ( rate of learning bias). It was found that only the second type of bias produces detectable effects on language through cultural transmission across generations and that such effects are produced even by weak biases present at low frequencies in the population. This suggests that learning preference asymmetries, very small at the individual level and not very frequent at the population level, can bias the trajectory of language change through the process of cultural transmission.

Las traducciones en la antigüedad

A large part of the Western cultural heritage has been transmitted through translation. The author analyses the translation phenomenon in Antiquity, emphasizing the significance of the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in Ptolemaic Alexandria. This translation is the major literary corpus translated into Greek in Antiquity and, probably, the most important as well, due to the impact it had on the West once Christianity adopted the Greek version as the official Bible. He also describes the context in which the translation was carried out, the different models utilized for the Pentateuch, its reception and influence on other translations. Finally, he points out other processes of cultural transmission through translation in late Antiquity.

A Social Psychology of Cultural Dynamics: Examining How Cultures Are Formed, Maintained, and Transformed

AbstractSocial psychological research on culture has mainly focused on differences in psychological processes between cultural groups. However, in the globalizing world today, a complementary approach to culture, a social psychology of culturaldynamics, is emerging as a critical research program. Adopting a neo‐diffusionist meta‐theory of culture, it regards culture as emerging from the processes of cultural transmission in situated social activities, and examines the dynamics involved in the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. The paper reviews recent research on culture in this perspective and makes suggestions about future directions.

Galton's Problem as Multiple Network Autocorrelation Effects

Empirical evidence that cultural traits are often nonrandomly distributed because of the individual or combined effects of common history, diffusion, borrowing, and/or other types of cultural transmission processes has been accumulating for decades. Because many cultural traits have recently been shown to be influenced by more than one transmission process, it has become a methodological priority in comparative research to develop statistical methods that can simultaneously incorporate multiple transmission processes. This article proposes a multiple network autocorrelation effects model and associated two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation procedures. The network autocorrelation effects model offers an alternative interpretation of how cultural trait transmission processes operate than does the network autocorrelation disturbances model. Conceptual differences between the two classes of models suggest that the network effects specification will be more generally applicable in comparative studies. An empirical example demonstrates the substantive value of the multiple network autocorrelation effects model and the widely available 2SLS estimation procedures.

Creating Culture in the Mythopoetic Men's Movement: An Ethnographic Study of Micro-Level Leadership and Socialization

This paper analyzes the complex interactional processes of cultural interpretation and transmission engaged in within the context of the mythopoetic men's movement. Employing a micro-level but also cultural approach, the study examines the nuances of the process of meaning formation in this contemporary social movement. The ethnographic data shows that the men's movement group leader utilizes his authority and interactional power to develop the cultural identity of the group and to act as a socializing agent to its members. The analysis conceptualizes the leader as a kind of grassroots intellectual, the creative connection between the movement high intellectuals and the local members that constitute the mass of the movement. The leader works to develop a cadre of motivated movement participants who will work toward the goal of what they see as the counter-hegemonic achievement of new forms of masculinity. The detailed empirical examination of key interactional practices within the men's group context suggests new ways of understanding the dynamics through which local leaders work to interpret and transmit meaning on the micro level.

LA COMPLEMENTARIEDAD CULTURAL EN EL SURGIMIENTO DE LOS GRUPOS ZAMBOSDEL CABO GRACIAS A DIOS, EN LA MOSQUITIA, DURANTE LOS SIGLOS XVII Y XVIII

Historical sources that recount the encounters between enslaved Africans and Amerindians suggest that there are occasions when the traditional concepts of acculturation and transculturation are inadequate to explain the processes that develop when peoples from two different cultures come into contact. Similarly, the concepts of cultural recreation and cultural transmission require certain conditions that are not always the same in cases of cultural contact. The goal of this article is to refl ect on the issue of cultural contact and to propose that the concept of cultural complementarity be used as way to explain certain cases, such as that between Africans and Amerindians on Cape “Gracias a Dios” on the Mosquito coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This situation contrasts sharply with the processes of cultural recreation and transmission that occurred in Jamaica during this same period and in the context of the English-Spanish confl ict on the Mosquito coast and in Jamaica. The article seeks to contribute to the international debate on the rise of sambo groups, suggesting other ways to explain the initial development of cultural “contacts.”

Cultural Landscapes and Neolithisation Processes: Outline of a model for the Scheldt basin (Belgium)

Recent research has indicated the continuation of a hunting-fishing-gathering way of life in the lower Scheldt basin (Belgium) for over a millennium after the first arrival of agriculture in the middle Scheldt. Current evidence suggests multiple hiatuses in cultural change from the late 6th-late 5th millennium BC. This article provides the outline of a model that seeks to explain these hiatuses from the perspective of indigenous hunter-fisher-gatherer cultural landscapes. The outline investigates the significance of palaeoecological and social contexts in relation to contact and cultural transmission processes during the transition to agriculture. Recent ethnoarchaeological research from hunter-fisher-gatherers in temperate and boreal environments is referenced as a structural analogy for illuminating the important relationship between territoriality and social mediation within hunter-gatherer groups at the Mesolithic-Neolithic interface.

Review: Debatable Fictions: Scottish Cinema, Television and the Novel

Duncan Petrie's Contemporary Scottish Fictions largely succeeds in examining the novel, film and television drama in Scotland since 1980. He considers these three pervasive forms of art and entertainment as very much inter-related, and linked in significant ways to social and political developments in the context of devolution. Displaying in his approach something of George Davies's 'democratic intellect' at its best, Petrie describes his principal aim as follows: 'This book will explore the Scottish cultural renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s by focussing primarily on the novel, cinema and television drama', adding that '(t)hese are all narrativebased popular forms that provide the means by which the myths and realities, experiences and dreams of Scotland and its inhabitants have been reflected and asserted, imagined and re-imagined through a process of cultural transmission dating back to the bardic tradition of oral story-telling' (p.l).

Cultural traits and cultural integration

Modern efforts to model cultural transmission have struggled to identify a unit of cultural transmission and particular transmission processes. Anthropologists of the early twentieth century discussed cultural traits as units of transmission equivalent to recipes (rules and ingredients) and identified integration as a signature process and effect of transmission.

Comparing 6th Grade Science Classrooms: Inner-City versus Suburb

Do teachers in the inner-city have different expectations of their students than teachers in the suburbs? Ethnographic studies of the classroom such as one by Wilcox in 1982 suggest they do. Wilcox describes education as "primarily a process of cultural transmission". In other words, schools in a particular setting or neighborhood aim to instill in their students the cultural norms and behaviors accepted and expected in that setting. This project is an ethnographic study of two sixth grade science classrooms; one in an urban inner-city Detroit, Michigan neighborhood and one in the neighboring suburb of Dearborn. The study examines the way the two classrooms are run by the teachers and their teaching styles by comparing the types of assignments that are given to students and the implications they have on the students’ learning development. Other factors such as a comparison of school funding per pupil and the effect it has on the availability of resources necessary for learning in each classroom were also examined. We found that the Dearborn school students learned how to work individually and in groups whereas the Detroit school students learned only how to work in groups. We also found that Dearborn students were encouraged to read out loud to the class individually whereas Detroit students were often read to by the teacher.

Cultural transmission, copying errors, and the generation of variation in material culture and the archaeological record

Archaeologists are adept at analyzing variation in artifacts. The discipline has well established and tested methods to track change through time and to evaluate the function of artifacts that depend upon measures of variation in the archaeological record. Although a critical concept, the means by which variation in material culture is generated is not well understood. This paper explores one source of variation, copying errors, and systematically examines how cultural transmission processes act to amplify, reduce, or maintain such variation. Using simple models, we generate expected distributions for the amount of variation that occurs through time under varying circumstances. This variation is caused by small errors that are transmitted from one person to another in the propagation and replication of cultural traits. These baseline values provide useful null models for explaining variation in prehistoric assemblages of artifacts. We use measurements of projectile points from Owens Valley and Woodland ceramics from Illinois to demonstrate the value of this approach.

Are Color Categories Innate or Internalized? Hypotheses and Implications

AbstractThe considerable agreement across languages in the way they categorize the color domain, despite independent historical development, demands an explanation. One option is to postulate a universal innate representation of the color categories, 'hardwired' into each observer's brain. An alternative is that observers internalize their color categories through a process of cultural (linguistic) transmission, constrained by some kind of 'optimality hypothesis' to account for the cross-language agreement. A number of optimality hypotheses are reviewed. It is tempting to believe that the vivid experiential quality of the categories can only be explained if they are determined by innate representations rather than by linguistic imprinting. However, linguistic transmission of color categories – perturbed from their optimal boundaries by special circumstances – fits best with the experience of dichromats. Even for the 'primary hue' categories, where the case for innate representations should be strongest, the evidence is far from convincing.

Song learning by chaffinches: how accurate, and from where?

Geographical variation in song is a common feature of populations of territorial songbirds. However, the factors responsible for the levels and patterns of variation have not been examined in detail. We measured geographical variation of songs in chaffinches, Fringilla coelebs, in samples from five locations in Scotland, U.K. We found substantial variation in the level of song sharing between locations. It was highest in isolated island areas and in a recently populated area. By comparing our data with a spatial simulation model designed to mimic the different areas, we calculated estimates of cultural mutation that ranged between 0.001 and 0.03, with a maximum possible value of 0.05, and found that chaffinches had a significant preference for learning songs not from immediate neighbours, but from males about 500m away. We discuss the implications of these findings for the process and function of cultural transmission of song in the chaffinch. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Evolution for Our Time: A Theory of Legal Memetics

The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance for legal thought of recent developments in evolutionary theory which are associated with the notion of 'memetics'. 'Memetics' aims to account for processes of cultural transmission and change using a version of the 'genetic metaphor'. This is the idea that patterns of cultural evolution are closely analogous to those which occur in the natural world as a result of the interaction between genes, organisms and environments. At a further, more ambitious level, the initial metaphor gives way to a search for mechanisms which unite biological and cultural evolution. Identifying these general evolutionary mechanisms is part of a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary research agenda.

Cultural Transmission and the Diffusion of Innovations: Adoption Dynamics Indicate That Biased Cultural Transmission Is the Predominate Force in Behavioral Change

In challenging the pervasive model of individual actors as cost‐benefit analysts who adapt their behavior by learning from the environment, this article analyzes the temporal dynamics of both environmental (individual) learning and biased cultural transmission processes by comparing these dynamics with the robust “5‐shaped” curves that emerge from the diffusion of innovations literature. The analysis shows three things: (1) that environmental learning alone never produces the 5‐shaped adoption dynamics typically observed in the spread of novel practices, ideas, and technologies; (2) that biased cultural transmission always produces the S‐shaped temporal dynamics; and (3) that a combination of environmental learning and biased cultural transmission can generate 5‐dynamics but only when biased cultural transmission is the predominate force in the spread of new behaviors. These findings suggest that biased cultural transmission processes are much more important to understanding the diffusion of innovations and sociocultural evolution than is often assumed by most theorists. [diffusion of innovations, cultural transmission, learning, cultural evolution]

Demography and Cultural Innovation: a Model and its Implications for the Emergence of Modern Human Culture

In recent years there has been a major growth of interest in exploring the analogies between the genetic transmission of information from one generation to the next and the processes of cultural transmission, in an attempt to obtain a greater understanding of how culture change occurs. This article uses computer simulation to explore the implications of a specific model of the relationship between demography and innovation within an evolutionary framework. The consequences of innovation appear far more successful in larger populations than in smaller ones. In conclusion, it is suggested that the model has major implications for the origins of modern human culture in the last 50,000 years, which may be seen not as the result of genetic mutations leading to improved cognitive capacities of individuals, but as a population consequence of the demographic growth and increased contact range which are evident at this time. It is also proposed that the model may be of general relevance for understanding the process of cultural evolution in modern and pre-modern humans.