Patterns of continuity and variation, then, admit of. Language diversity as a resource for understanding cultural evolution. Towards a unified science of cultural evolution citeseerx. It follows from the definition of culture as information capable of affecting individuals behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission. Centre for social learning and cognitive evolution and school of psychology. He convincingly argues for the interplay between experimental, field and simulation studies. Cultural evolution is the idea that cultural change constitutes an evolutionary process. Commentary canoes and cultural evolution stephen shennan institute of archaeology, university college london, london wc1h 0py, united kingdom ver the last 30 years, the idea the way in which cultural entities and cultural traits that characterize agricul o that the processes producing cultural stability and change are analogous in important respects to those of biological evolution has. In recent years, the phenomenon of cumulative cultural evolution cce has become the focus of major research interest in biology, psychology and anthropology. In this target article, i will discuss the significance of what i term grouplevel traits in the context of human cultural evolution.
How darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences, alex mesoudi is published by university of chicago press. The question is not so much whether cultural evolution is important, but how theories of cultural evolution should be fashioned, and how they should be related to more traditional understandings of organic evolution. Cultural evolution anthropology oxford bibliographies. Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics volume 1 charlotte o.
Leading scholars report on current research that demonstrates the central role of cultural evolution in explaining human behavior. Introduction cultural evolution is the idea that human cultural changethat is, changes in socially transmitted beliefs, knowledge, customs, skills, attitudes, languages, and so oncan be described as a darwinian evolutionary process that is similar in key respects but. Cultural evolution provides a thoughtprovoking argument that darwinian evolutionary theory can both unify different branches of inquiry and enhance understanding of human behavior. Other features, such as specialized religious castes, appear to be restricted to speci. Theories of cultural evolution address cultural trends in their own right, rather than as outputs of. Cultural evolution an overview sciencedirect topics. The subject may be viewed as a unilinear phenomenon that describes the evolution of human behaviour as a whole, or it may be viewed as a multilinear phenomenon, in which case it describes the evolution.
Along the way, the book reveals how new insights arise from looking at culture from an evolutionary angle. The question is not so much whether cultural evolution is important, but how theories of cultural evolution should be fashioned, and how they should be related to more traditional understandings of. This approach incorporates cultural change and variation into a. Recombination of existing variants into new ones is frequently regarded as another important process in cumulative cultural evolution mesoudi and. Wider application of these insights, however, has been hampered by traditional. Not only do their criticisms of henrichs 3 and powell et. This contrasts with the progressive, unilinear theories of cultural evolution. Preface the year 2009 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of charles darwin s the origin of species. How darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences by alex mesoudi. Human behaviour and cultural evolution group, college of life and environmental. The cultural evolution of religion 383 and rites that respect superhuman beings, recur across religious groups paden 20. Cultural evolution, cultural transmission, human culture, lamarckian inheritance, memes, natural selection, the origin of species.
We suggest that human culture exhibits key darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. How darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences by alex mesoudi university of chicago press, 2011. The interplay of genetic and cultural factors in ongoing language evolution. Social learning is also an important agent of adaptation, and perhaps of speciation, in animals. The cultural evolution of emergent grouplevel traits. Apr 22, 2015 the last two decades have seen an explosion in research analysing cultural change as a darwinian evolutionary process. Peoples motivations are changing, and reshaping the world kindle edition by inglehart, ronald f download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. Introduction cultural evolution is the idea that human cultural changethat is, changes in socially transmitted beliefs, knowledge, customs, skills, attitudes, languages, and so oncan be described as a darwinian evolutionary process that is similar in key respects but not identical to biologicalgenetic evolution. Available formats pdf please select a format to send. Mesoudi then moves on to describe the body of work on cultural evolution that has developed over the past several decades.
How darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. Brand co, acerbi a, mesoudi a 2019 cultural evolution of emotional expression. Eds cambridge handbook of evolutionary perspectives on human behavior. Drawing a parallel with genetic evolution, this field. Mesoudi 2011 provides a series of concepts that allows such an endeavour.
Prospects for a science of cultural evolution alex mesoudia,1 ahuman biological and cultural evolution group, department of biosciences, university of exeter, penryn, cornwall tr10 9fe, united kingdom. The only fault i can find in the book is the partly surprising internal reductionism. Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of. Charles darwin changed the course of scientific thinking by showing how evolution accounts for the stunning diversity an. Here i provide an overview of the theory of cultural evolution, including its intellectual history, major theoretical tenets and methods, key findings, and prominent criticisms and controversies. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there. Human behaviour and cultural evolution group hubceg. Cultural evolution ebook by alex mesoudi rakuten kobo. Cultural change constitutes an evolutionary process because cultural traits vary, they are inherited via social learning from individual to individual, and some cultural traits are more likely to be passed on than others. While largely recycling prior criticisms, they provide no new models, evidence, or explanations 2. This idea is the basic premise of cultural evolution.
Cultural evolution, the development of one or more cultures from simpler to more complex forms. Understanding agriculture within the frameworks of cumulative. The quantitative description of trends is fundamental, but a further necessary step is to understand what drives these trends. Cultural evolution, then, shares many traits with biological evolution. Such a theory of cultural evolution is an area of active study in evolutionary anthropology and human sociobiology henrich et al. Members of the human behaviour and cultural evolution group hubceg at the university of exeters cornwall campus apply evolutionary theory and methods to study human behaviour, cognition, life histories, cultural evolution and social complexity. How darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences mesoudi, alex on.
In a narrow critique of two early papers in the literature on cumulative cultural evolution, vaesen et al. Cultural evolution provides a rich set of theories and methods for studying cultural change, encompassing the subject matter of several traditional academic disciplines. This taboo has been especially prominent in ethnomusicology, but is. These cognitive adaptations give rise to a robust second system of inheritance cultural evolution that operates by different transmission rules than genetic inheritance, and can thus produce phenomena not observed in other less cultural species. Some researchers argue that cce is unique to humans and underlies our extraordinary evolutionary success as. Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change.
Understanding agriculture within the frameworks of. Peoples motivations are changing, and reshaping the world. This taboo has been especially prominent in ethnomusicology, but is also observable in historical. I am a professor of cultural evolution in the human behaviour and cultural evolution group at the university of exeters cornwall campus, uk i study cultural evolution, the idea that cultural change changes in beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and other socially transmitted traits constitutes a darwinian evolutionary process that is. Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged from a variety of disciplines to highlight the importance of cultural evolution in understanding human behavior. Pdf towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Culture is defined as socially transmitted information. As was the case for the 50th and 100th anniversaries in 1909. One major trend in popular music, as well as other cultural products such as literary fiction, is an increase over time in negatively valenced emotional content, and a decrease in positively valenced emotional content.
Cultural evolution theory boyd and richerson, 1985. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading cultural evolution. The last two decades have seen an explosion in research analysing cultural change as a darwinian evolutionary process. Aug 09, 2017 alex mesoudi, pursuing darwins curious parallel.
Popular music offers a rich source of data that provides insights into longterm cultural evolutionary dynamics. Why cultural evolution is real and what it is carcinisation. Cultural evolution by alex mesoudi overdrive rakuten. Cultural evolution is the theory that cultural change in humans and other species can be described as a darwinian evolutionary process, and consequently that many of the concepts, tools and methods used by biologists to study biological evolution can be equally profitably applied to study cultural change mesoudi 2011a.
Theorizing about these processes requires taking what we know about human. The targets of explanation for evolutionary psychology and geneculture coevolutionary accounts differ from those of theories of cultural evolution. Towards a unified science of cultural evolution ucl discovery. Cultural change constitutes a darwinian evolutionary process that shares key characteristics with the genetic evolution of species. We highlight several ways in which the study of agriculture can benefit from these frameworks. Jun, 2018 in recent years, the phenomenon of cumulative cultural evolution cce has become the focus of major research interest in biology, psychology and anthropology. Alex mesoudi is a lecturer in psychology at queen mary, university of london. If you want to read just one whole book about cultural evolution, mesoudi is engaging and thorough, and only about 40% more technical than the present article. Cultural evolution stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.