Defining Culture
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“Culture” has had 150 different definitions
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Four major classes of cultural definitions
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Rules for behaviour or conduct
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Ideas or concepts (e.g., myths)
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Material artefacts (e.g., tools)
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Literature, art, music
Distinction between learning imitation and individual

Defining the Problem
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Why study culture?
How is culture transmitted?
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Vertically, obliquely, horizontally
Why is culture transmitted?
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More efficient means of transmitting knowledge across generations
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Memetic parasitization
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Unique, acquired fitness indicators

Assumptions of Cultural Research
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Brown (1991) outlines several misleading propositions encountered in cultural anthropology:
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Nature and culture are distinct phenomena
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Nature is manifested in instincts whereas culture is manifested in learning
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The mind at birth is tabula rasa
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There are few universals, and they are unimportant

Cultural Transmission (1)
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The paradox of conformity
Learners
Imitators
Frequency of Imitation

Cultural Transmission (2)
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If basic “imitators” and “learners” cannot reach a mutual equilibrium, how is this behaviour maintained in the population?
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Extra privileges given to learners by imitators
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Selective imitation
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Payoff-biased imitation
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Conformist transmission

Memes and Neutral Mutations
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Kimura (1979) proposed that if a genetic trait has a neutral effect on selection, it is relatively free to vary randomly (genetic drift)
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Perhaps random variation in neutral memes accounts for cultural variability
What about cases when memes increase biological fitness costs?
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Under certain conditions, memetic evolution can still take place

The Adaptiveness of Culture
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Although there is considerable debate on the matter, it does appear that some cultural phenomena enhance fitness
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Is culture adaptive?
(
Example: the Rendille
& the Honey-guide
Indicator indicator )

Guided Cultural Evolution
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Do genetic predispositions have an effect on cultural evolution?
Example: the evolution of the teddy bear
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Originally, teddy bears were quite “bearlike”
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Over history, however, bear snouts have become less pronounced and foreheads larger, an outcome of adult predispositions for neoteny

Culture in Non-Human Animals
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Do non-human animals have culture?
Exchange between researchers:
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“There is cultural transmission of information in fish and it is clear that the choice of mating behavior and mating partner are of cultural derivation”
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“Can you define ‘culture’? My sociological understanding of the term probably excludes fish.”

“Economic Man” Across Cultures
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A recent cross-cultural study of 15 societies demonstrates cultural variation in game playing
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At the group, rather than individual, level
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Predicted by market integration and higher cooperative payoffs in social life (66% of variation among societies)
These differences are not obtained when comparing university students across cultures

The Universal People
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Brown (1991) has proposed the concept of the Universal people
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A “description of every people or of people in general”
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They share in common
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Sophisticated language
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Basic emotions
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Recognition of individuals

The Wrap-Up
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Defining culture
Misleading assumptions of cross-cultural research
Cultural transmission
Neutral mutations
Adaptiveness of culture
Culture in non-human animals

Things to Come
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The evolution of
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Art
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Music
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Morality