Book ID: CBB086218691

Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution (2019)

unapi

Interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution that reject meme theory in favor of a complex understanding of dynamic change over time How do cultures change? In recent decades, the concept of the meme, posited as a basic unit of culture analogous to the gene, has been central to debates about cultural transformation. Despite the appeal of meme theory, its simplification of complex interactions and other inadequacies as an explanatory framework raise more questions about cultural evolution than it answers. In Beyond the Meme, William C. Wimsatt and Alan C. Love assemble interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. By focusing on the full range of evolutionary processes across distinct contexts, from rice farming to scientific reasoning, this volume demonstrates how a thick understanding of change in culture emerges from multiple disciplinary vantage points, each of which is required to understand cultural evolution in all its complexity. The editors provide an extensive introductory essay to contextualize the volume, and Wimsatt contributes a separate chapter that systematically organizes the conceptual geography of cultural processes and phenomena.Any adequate account of the transmission, elaboration, and evolution of culture must, this volume argues, recognize the central roles that cognitive and social development play in cultural change and the complex interplay of technological, organizational, and institutional structures needed to enable and coordinate these processes.Contributors: Marshall Abrams, U of Alabama at Birmingham; Claes Andersson, Chalmers U of Technology; Mark A. Bedau, Reed College; James A. Evans, U of Chicago; Jacob G. Foster, U of California, Los Angeles; Michel Janssen, U of Minnesota; Sabina Leonelli, U of Exeter; Massimo Maiocchi, U of Chicago; Joseph D. Martin, U of Cambridge; Salikoko S. Mufwene, U of Chicago; Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard U; Paul E. Smaldino, U of California, Merced; Anton Törnberg, U of Gothenburg; Petter Törnberg, U of Amsterdam; Gilbert B. Tostevin, U of Minnesota.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Mathieu Charbonneau (2020) Review of "Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution". History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (p. 47). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB086218691/

Similar Citations

Article Harman, Oren Solomon; (2007)
Powerful Intuitions: Re-reading Nature versus Nurture with Charles Darwin and Clifford Geertz (/isis/citation/CBB000740748/)

Chapter Gissis, Snait B.; (2011)
Lamarckism and the Constitution of Sociology (/isis/citation/CBB001500088/)

Article William T. Lynch; (2019)
Between Kin Selection and Cultural Relativism: Cultural Evolution and the Origin of Inequality (/isis/citation/CBB211246459/)

Article Alter, Stephen G.; (2007)
Race, Language, and Mental Evolution in Darwin's Descent of Man (/isis/citation/CBB000772495/)

Chapter Segerstrale, Ullica; (2008)
Against the Grain: The Science and Life of William D. Hamilton (/isis/citation/CBB000960103/)

Book Cecilia Heyes; (2018)
Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking (/isis/citation/CBB158347057/)

Article Marciano, Alain; Koppl, Roger; (2009)
Darwin, Darwinism and Social Darwinism: What Do We Learn from Darwin's Theory of Social Evolution? (/isis/citation/CBB001033841/)

Book Patrick Manning; (2020)
A History of Humanity: The Evolution of the Human System (/isis/citation/CBB479341652/)

Article Wilson, David Sloan; (2001)
Religious Groups as Adaptive Units (/isis/citation/CBB000770078/)

Book Robert C. Berwick; Noam Chomsky; (2017)
Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (/isis/citation/CBB837593395/)

Book Jonathan Birch; (2017)
The Philosophy of Social Evolution (/isis/citation/CBB585525367/)

Article Cédric Paternotte; (2020)
Social evolution and the individual-as-maximising-agent analogy (/isis/citation/CBB692281691/)

Article Jean-Baptiste Grodwohl; (2017)
Modeling Social Evolution, 1964–1973: Inclusive Fitness Meets Population Structure (/isis/citation/CBB740085092/)

Article Richerson, Peter J.; Boyd, Robert; (2001)
Built for Speed, Not for Comfort: Darwinian Theory and Human Culture (/isis/citation/CBB000770077/)

Article Angner, Erik; (2002)
The History of Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution (/isis/citation/CBB000770680/)

Authors & Contributors
Berwick, Robert C.
Paternotte, Cédric
Henrich, Joseph
Piqué, Pilar
Manning, Patrick
Grodwohl, Jean-Baptiste
Concepts
Social evolution
Evolution
Cultural anthropology
Altruism
Human evolution
Darwinism
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
21st century
20th century
Places
France
Canada
Belgium
Great Britain
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment