Morin, Olivier (Author)
Oxford University Press
Publication date: 2015
Language: English
Physical Details: 320
Of all the things we do and say, most will never be repeated or reproduced. Once in a while, however, an idea or a practice generates a chain of transmission that covers more distance through space and time than any individual person ever could. What makes such transmission chains possible?For two centuries, the dominant view (from psychology to anthropology) was that humans owe their cultural prosperity to their powers of imitation. In this view, modern cultures exist because the people who carry them are gifted at remembering, storing and reproducing information. How Traditions Liveand Die proposes an alternative to this standard view. What makes traditions live is not a general-purpose imitation capacity. Cultural transmission is partial, selective, often unfaithful. Some traditions live on in spite of this, because they tap into widespread and basic cognitive preferences.These attractive traditions spread, not by being better retained or more accurately transferred, but because they are transmitted over and over. This theory is used to shed light on various puzzles of cultural change (from the distribution of bird songs to the staying power of children's rhymes) andto explain the special relation that links the human species to its cultures. Morin combines recent work in cognitive anthropology with new advances in quantitative cultural history, to map and predict the diffusion of traditions. This book is both an introduction and an accessible alternative tocontemporary theories of cultural evolution.
...MoreReview Kim Sterelny (2017) Review of "How Traditions Live and Die". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 42-50).
Similar Citations
Article
Batty, Philip;
(2014)
The Tywerrenge as an Artefact of Rule: The (Post) Colonial Life of a Secret/Sacred Aboriginal Object
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001201590/)
Book
Brown, Gillian R.;
Kevin N. Laland;
(2011)
Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour
(/p/isis/citation/CBB960667952/)
Book
Yuval N. Harari;
(2018)
21 lessons for the 21st century
(/p/isis/citation/CBB751849515/)
Book
Gabriella D'Agostino;
Vincenzo Matera;
(2023)
Histories of Anthropology
(/p/isis/citation/CBB578235961/)
Review
Stewart, Tony K.;
(2012)
Review of "Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500--1800"
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001500542/)
Book
Adams, Vincanne;
Schrempf, Mona;
Craig, Sienna R.;
(2011)
Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001214757/)
Article
Park, Changbom;
Lee, YongBok;
Lee, Yung-Jo;
(2001)
Cheongwon Adeugi Koindol yujeog-e-seo balguldoen byeoljaripan
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000350395/)
Article
Harrison, Henrietta;
(2012)
Rethinking Missionaries and Medicine in China: The Miracles of Assunta Pallotta, 1905--2005
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001202139/)
Chapter
Schiebinger, Londa;
(2009)
Scientific Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000952556/)
Chapter
Kloos, Stephan;
(2011)
Navigating “Modern Science” and “Traditional Culture”: The Dharamsala Men-Tsee-Khang in India
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001214761/)
Book
Masco, Maire M.;
(2012)
The Mandaeans: Gnostic Astrology as an Artifact of Cultural Transmission
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001212007/)
Article
Eyferth, Jan Jacob Karl;
(2010)
Craft Knowledge at the Interface of Written and Oral Cultures
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001034995/)
Article
Knipper, Michael;
(2009)
Anthropology and “Crisis in Medicine”: The Pathologist M. Kuczynski-Godard (1890--1967) and the Indigenous Peoples of Central Asia and Peru
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000931745/)
Book
Ned Blackhawk;
Isaiah Lorado Wilner;
(2018)
Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas
(/p/isis/citation/CBB479858176/)
Book
Rivers, W. H. R.;
(1927)
Medicine, Magic and Religion: The Fitzpatrick Lectures Delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1915 and 1916
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000101801/)
Book
El Shakry, Omnia S.;
(2007)
The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000950225/)
Chapter
Jianmin, Wang;
(2012)
Academic Universality and Indigenization: The Case of Chinese Anthropology
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001202155/)
Chapter
Chun, Allen;
(2012)
From Sinicization to Indigenization in the Social Sciences: Is That All There Is?
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001202163/)
Chapter
Chee-Beng, Tan;
(2012)
Chinese of Different Nationalities, China, and the Anthropology of Chinese Culture
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001202161/)
Article
Thakur, Amrendra Kumar;
(2011)
Tribal Technology of Northeast India: Arunachal Pradesh
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001024497/)
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Han'guk Kwahak-sa Hakhoe-ji (Journal of the Korean History of Science Society)
History and Anthropology
Indian Journal of History of Science
Journal of Asian Studies
Be the first to comment!