Study Of Cultural Evolution Research Articles

The Case for Memes

The significant theoretical objections that have been raised against memetics have not received adequate defense, even though there is ongoing empirical research in this field. In this paper I identify the key objections to memetics as a viable explanatory tool in studies of cultural evolution. I attempt to defuse these objections by arguing that they fail to show the absence of replication, high-fidelity copying, or lineages in the cultural domain. I further respond to meme critics by arguing that, despite competing explanations of cultural evolution, memetics has unique explanatory power. This is largely founded upon the increasing likelihood of formulating a workable fitness measure for memes, a memetic index. I conclude that memes must be integrated with psychological bias and population-dynamic approaches to cultural evolution.

Synthesis in the human evolutionary behavioural sciences

Over the last three decades, the application of evolutionary theory to the human sciences has shown remarkable growth. This growth has also been characterised by a ‘splitting’ process, with the emergence of distinct sub-disciplines, most notably: Human Behavioural Ecology (HBE), Evolutionary Psychology (EP) and studies of Cultural Evolution (CE). Multiple applications of evolutionary ideas to the human sciences are undoubtedly a good thing, demonstrating the usefulness of this approach to human affairs. Nevertheless, this fracture has been associated with considerable tension, a lack of integration, and sometimes outright conflict between researchers. In recent years however, there have been clear signs of hope that a synthesis of the human evolutionary behavioural sciences is underway. Here, we briefly review the history of the debate, both its theoretical and practical causes; then provide evidence that the field is currently becoming more integrated, as the traditional boundaries between sub-disciplines become blurred. This article constitutes the first paper under the new editorship of the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, which aims to further this integration by explicitly providing a forum for integrated work.

The Savannah River chiefdoms: political change in the late prehistoric Southeast

This volume explores political changes in chiefdoms, specifically how complex chiefdoms emerge and collapse, and how this process - called cycling - can be examined using archaeological, ethnohistoric, paleoclimatic, paleosubsistence and physical anthropological data. The focus for the research is the prehistoric and initial contact-era Mississippian chiefdoms of the Southeastern United States, specifically the societies occupying the Savannah River basin from circa AD 1000 to 1600. This regional focus and the multidisciplinary nature of the investigation provides a solid introduction to the Southeastern Mississippian archaeological record and the study of cultural evolution in general.

Transitions in Power: Centralization of Wanka Political Organization under Inka Rule

Transitions in Power: Centralization of Wanka Political Organization under Inka Rule

Mirror Images? Three Analyses of Values in England and the United States

In his studies of cultural evolution, Talcott Parsons suggested that, in the modern era, core Western values were essentially unified and stable. This was most particularly the case when considering England and the United States, two societies from the same cultural stock. But the evidence Parsons used to substantiate his claims was selective and the empirical literature comparing values in England and the United States disagrees as to whether value similarities or differences are predominant. Indeed, some of that literature suggests that value comparisons can take place on at least two different levels, allowing the possibility of simultaneous diversity within unity. Consequently, hypotheses concerning the (1) unity, (2) diversity, and (3) stability of value patterns in these two countries are explored using three distinct cross-national data sets-interviews with a cross-section of adults in two matched urban settings, questionnaire surveys administered to students at colleges and universities, and a content analysis of mass-circulated magazines and counterculture literature sampled in time periods from 1937 to 1979. Results provide strong support for all three hypotheses and suggest that the empirical variation of values is much more complex than earlier theory supposed.

The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues Edited by Arthur L. Caplan (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Sociobiology Debate: Readings on Ethical and Scientific Issues. Edited by Arthur L. Caplan. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Pp. 514. $6.95. The Sociobiology Debate is a useful compendium of "oft-cited" papers discussing those aspects of sociobiology germane to the evolution of human nature and human ethical values. The emphasis in this volume of edited and condensed papers is on the historical antecedents of the nature-nurture controversy regarding human behavior and on the current, often heated, public debate over sociobiology. The equally controversial scientific and empirical issues that underlie much of sociobiological theorizing are conspicuously and unfortunately neglected. Although Caplan's concern with philosophical and conceptual issues may attract a wide readership, the answers to many of the difficult questions raised are not logical but biological and lie in ecology, genetics, and evolution. In this review, I will attempt to make explicit some of the genetical and evolutionary assumptions implicit in the reprinted essays, which are for the most part psychological , philosophical, or sociological in tenor. In this way, the advantages and disadvantages ofomitting much ofthe biology ofsociobiology can be made clear. In studying human behavior, the authors of many of the essays contained in this book subscribe to the methodology of what Lewontin has called the "adaptationist program." They begin with the fundamental assumption that human behavior is adaptive, that is, they assume that all or most aspects of human behavior are or have been the focus of natural selection. Therefore, what exists is good from the point of view of individual survival and reproduction. To paraphrase what E. O. Wilson calls in the foreword the three alternative states "allowed" for our species by sociobiology: Some are born fit, some acquire fitness (through apt choice of mates or habitat), and some have fitness thrust upon them, usually by their kin. Once human behavior has been assumed adaptive, it is partitioned into components such as incest inhibitions, bond formation, parent-offspring conflict, sex-biased infanticide, primitive warfare, territoriality, and sexual practice (to cite a few examples from Wilson's foreword). Each component is then treated as an independent evolutionary unit molded by selective pressures and problems posed by the environment. The goal is to establish a functional relationship between the behavior or value and the environment. Thus, incest inhibitions function to obviate the deleterious effects of inbreeding, bond formation functions to diminish the possibilities for mate desertion and cuckoldry, and sexbiased infanticide enhances the reproductive success of newly dominant males. Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author. 658 Book Reviews The adaptationist program, particularly when applied to the study of human behavior and human values, has several drawbacks as a scientific methodology. The first is the opportunity for reifying arbitrary behavioral divisions and components which are not free to vary in response to evolutionary forces. When behavioral terms and concepts, developed in the context of sociological, psychological , and philosophical research, are adopted uncritically by evolutionary theorists and subject to the adaptationist methods described above this opportunity for error is further augmented. A second drawback stems from the tendency to ascribe evolutionary function to human values on the basis of the intent perceived to underlie the values. That is to say, when human values are studied as evolutionary units the relevant environment is human society and an appeal to the common wisdom often substitutes for a biologically rigorous functional analysis. In many cases, the circularity of the arguments is simply reinforced by the evolutionary interpretation and little is added in the way of insight. A more interesting and fruitful approach to the evolution of human behaviors and values is the study of cultural evolution in its relation to biological evolution. The major difference between the two processes lies in the laws of transmission or heredity. The hereditary laws of Mendel, with interesting but minor variations , characterize transmission in biological systems. These laws, when combined with knowledge of the mating system, provide a null hypothesis for gene and genotype frequency distributions against which selective forces are measured . Cultural transmission, however, differs in several respects. Instead of a single pair of biological parents, culturally inherited traits and behaviors can...