Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology

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Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 0857459945
Total Pages : 391 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (574 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology by : Roy Ellen

Download or read book Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology written by Roy Ellen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of "cultural transmission" is central to much contemporary anthropological theory, since successful human reproduction through social systems is essential for effective survival and for enhancing the adaptiveness of individual humans and local populations. Yet, what is understood by the phrase and how it might best be studied is highly contested. This book brings together contributions that reflect the current diversity of approaches - from the fields of biology, primatology, palaeoanthropology, psychology, social anthropology, ethnobiology, and archaeology - to examine social and cultural transmission from a range of perspectives and at different scales of generalization. The comprehensive introduction explores some of the problems and connections. Overall, the book provides a timely synthesis of current accounts of cultural transmission in relation to cognitive process, practical action, and local socio-ecological context, while linking these with explanations of longer-term evolutionary trajectories.

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture

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Publisher : University of Arizona Press
ISBN 13 : 9780816526758
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Transmission and Material Culture by : Miriam T. Stark

Download or read book Cultural Transmission and Material Culture written by Miriam T. Stark and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why people develop, maintain, and change cultural boundaries through time are central issues in the social and behavioral sciences in generaland anthropological archaeology in particular. What factors influence people to imitate or deviate from the behaviors of other group members? How are social group boundaries produced, perpetuated, and altered by the cumulative outcomeof these decisions? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding cultural persistence and change. The chapters included in this stimulating, multifaceted book address these questions. Working in several subdisciplines, contributors report on research in the areas of cultural boundaries, cultural transmission, and the socially organized nature of learning. Boundaries are found not only within and between the societies in these studies but also within and between the communities of scholars who study them. To break down these boundaries, this volume includes scholars who use multiple theoretical perspectives, including practice theory and evolutionary traditions, which are sometimes complementary and occasionally clashing. Geographic coverage ranges from the indigenous Americas to Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, and the time frame extends from the prehistoric or precontact to colonial periods and up to the ethnographic present. Contributors include leading scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Together, they employ archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological,experimental, and simulation data to link micro-scale processes of cultural transmission to macro-scale processes of social group boundary formation, continuity, and change.

Cultural Transmission

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139474480
Total Pages : 490 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Transmission by : Ute Schönpflug

Download or read book Cultural Transmission written by Ute Schönpflug and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-10 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Transmission covers psychological, developmental, social, and methodological research on how cultural information is socially transmitted from one generation to the next within families. Studying processes of cultural transmission may help analyze the continuity or change of cultures, including those that have to cope with migration or the collapse of a political system. An evolutionary perspective is elaborated in the first part of the book; the second takes a cross-cultural perspective by presenting international research on development and intergenerational relations in the family; the third provides intra-cultural analyses of mechanisms and methodological aspects of cultural transmission. Made up of contributions by experts in the field, this source book is intended for anyone with interests in cultural issues – especially researchers and teachers in disciplines such as psychology, social and behavioral sciences, and education – and for applied professionals in culture management and family counseling, as well as professionals dealing with migrants.

Cultural Transmission and Evolution (MPB-16), Volume 16

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691209359
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Transmission and Evolution (MPB-16), Volume 16 by : L L Cavalli-sforza

Download or read book Cultural Transmission and Evolution (MPB-16), Volume 16 written by L L Cavalli-sforza and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A number of scholars have found that concepts such as mutation, selection, and random drift, which emerged from the theory of biological evolution, may also explain evolutionary phenomena in other disciplines as well. Drawing on these concepts, Professors Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman classify and systematize the various modes of transmitting "culture" and explore their consequences for cultural evolution. In the process, they develop a mathematical theory of the non-genetic transmission of cultural traits that provides a framework for future investigations in quantitative social and anthropological science. The authors use quantitative models that incorporate the various modes of transmission (for example, parent-child, peer-peer, and teacher-student), and evaluate data from sociology, archaeology, and epidemiology in terms of the models. They show that the various modes of transmission in conjunction with cultural and natural selection produce various rates of cultural evolution and various degrees of diversity within and between groups. The same framework can be used for explaining phenomena as apparently unrelated as linguistics, epidemics, social values and customs, and diffusion of innovations. The authors conclude that cultural transmission is an essential factor in the study of cultural change.

The Origin and Evolution of Cultures

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195347447
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origin and Evolution of Cultures by : Robert Boyd

Download or read book The Origin and Evolution of Cultures written by Robert Boyd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-20 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford presents, in one convenient and coherently organized volume, 20 influential but until now relatively inaccessible articles that form the backbone of Boyd and Richerson's path-breaking work on evolution and culture. Their interdisciplinary research is based on two notions. First, that culture is crucial for understanding human behavior; unlike other organisms, socially transmitted beliefs, attitudes, and values heavily influence our behavior. Secondly, culture is part of biology: the capacity to acquire and transmit culture is a derived component of human psychology, and the contents of culture are deeply intertwined with our biology. Culture then is a pool of information, stored in the brains of the population that gets transmitted from one brain to another by social learning processes. Therefore, culture can account for both our outstanding ecological success as well as the maladaptations that characterize much of human behavior. The interest in this collection will span anthropology, psychology, economics, philosophy, and political science.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191025275
Total Pages : 1361 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers by : Vicki Cummings

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers written by Vicki Cummings and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 1361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

Theory in Economic Anthropology

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman Altamira
ISBN 13 : 9780759102064
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Theory in Economic Anthropology by : Jean Ensminger

Download or read book Theory in Economic Anthropology written by Jean Ensminger and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2002 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new volume from the Society for Economic Anthropology examines the unique contributions of anthropologists to general economic theory. The authors challenge our understanding of human economies in the expanding global systems of interaction, with models and analyses from cross-cultural research. The book will be a valuable resource for anthropologists, economists, economic historians, political economists, and economic development specialists.

Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520255999
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (559 download)

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Book Synopsis Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution by : Stephen Shennan

Download or read book Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution written by Stephen Shennan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an integrative approach to the application of evolutionary theory in studies of cultural transmission and social evolution and reveals the enormous range of ways in which Darwinian ideas can lead to productive empirical research, the touchstone of any worthwhile theoretical perspective. While many recent works on cultural evolution adopt a specific theoretical framework, such as dual inheritance theory or human behavioral ecology, Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution emphasizes empirical analysis and includes authors who employ a range of backgrounds and methods to address aspects of culture from an evolutionary perspective. Editor Stephen Shennan has assembled archaeologists, evolutionary theorists, and ethnographers, whose essays cover a broad range of time periods, localities, cultural groups, and artifacts.

Explaining Culture Scientifically

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 9780295987897
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (878 download)

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Book Synopsis Explaining Culture Scientifically by : Melissa J. Brown

Download or read book Explaining Culture Scientifically written by Melissa J. Brown and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors - prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics - approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chimpanzees, from Taiwan to New Guinea, from cannibalism to marriage patterns, this volume directly addresses the challenges of explaining culture scientifically. The evolutionary paradigm lends itself particularly well to the question of culture; in these essays, different modes of inheritance - genetic, cultural, ecological, and structural - illustrate evolutionary patterns in a variety of settings. Explaining Culture Scientifically is divided into parts that address how to think about culture, modeling approaches to cultural influences on behavior, ethnographic case studies addressing the question of culture's influence on behavior, and challenges to the possibility of a scientific approach to culture. It is necessary reading for scholars and students in anthropology and related disciplines.

Understanding Cultural Traits

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Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3319243497
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Cultural Traits by : Fabrizio Panebianco

Download or read book Understanding Cultural Traits written by Fabrizio Panebianco and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume constitutes a first step towards an ever-deferred interdisciplinary dialogue on cultural traits. It offers a way to enter a representative sample of the intellectual diversity that surrounds this topic, and a means to stimulate innovative avenues of research. It stimulates critical thinking and awareness in the disciplines that need to conceptualize and study culture, cultural traits, and cultural diversity. Culture is often defined and studied with an emphasis on cultural features. For UNESCO, “culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group”. But the very possibility of assuming the existence of cultural traits is not granted, and any serious evaluation of the notion of “cultural trait” requires the interrogation of several disciplines from cultural anthropology to linguistics, from psychology to sociology to musicology, and all areas of knowledge on culture. This book presents a strong multidisciplinary perspective that can help clarify the problems about cultural traits.

Culture and the Evolutionary Process

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226069338
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Culture and the Evolutionary Process by : Robert Boyd

Download or read book Culture and the Evolutionary Process written by Robert Boyd and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1988-06-15 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.

Essays on Cultural Transmission

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000323641
Total Pages : 125 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Essays on Cultural Transmission by : Maurice Bloch

Download or read book Essays on Cultural Transmission written by Maurice Bloch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-02 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together recent work by Maurice Bloch which explores the highly controversial territory between the cognitive and social sciences. The essays are of broad, theoretical interest and aim to combine naturalistic approaches to cognition with a recognition and respect for the cultural and historical specificity of ethnography. All the essays illustrate Bloch's characteristic approach to the relation between anthropology and cognitive science, where cognitive science is used to criticize anthropological assumptions concerning such key topics as religion, kinship, belief, ritual, symbolism and art.

Losing Culture

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978815352
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (788 download)

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Book Synopsis Losing Culture by : David Berliner

Download or read book Losing Culture written by David Berliner and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world, you will hear complaints that people are losing their culture and their heritage. This study explores what is triggering this sense of cultural loss, to what ends this rhetoric gets deployed, and how anthropologists deal with their own feelings of nostalgia.

Cultural Evolution

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226520455
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Evolution by : Alex Mesoudi

Download or read book Cultural Evolution written by Alex Mesoudi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-07-30 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin changed the course of scientific thinking by showing how evolution accounts for the stunning diversity and biological complexity of life on earth. Recently, there has also been increased interest in the social sciences in how Darwinian theory can explain human culture. Covering a wide range of topics, including fads, public policy, the spread of religion, and herd behavior in markets, Alex Mesoudi shows that human culture is itself an evolutionary process that exhibits the key Darwinian mechanisms of variation, competition, and inheritance. This cross-disciplinary volume focuses on the ways cultural phenomena can be studied scientifically—from theoretical modeling to lab experiments, archaeological fieldwork to ethnographic studies—and shows how apparently disparate methods can complement one another to the mutual benefit of the various social science disciplines. Along the way, the book reveals how new insights arise from looking at culture from an evolutionary angle. Cultural Evolution provides a thought-provoking argument that Darwinian evolutionary theory can both unify different branches of inquiry and enhance understanding of human behavior.

Anthropological Perspectives on Environmental Communication

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Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030780406
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Anthropological Perspectives on Environmental Communication by : Annelie Sjölander-Lindqvist

Download or read book Anthropological Perspectives on Environmental Communication written by Annelie Sjölander-Lindqvist and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the continuous search for sustainability, the exchange of diverse perspectives, assumptions, and values is indispensable to environmental protection. Through anthropological and ethnographic analyses, this collection addresses how interests, values, and ideologies affect dialogue and sustainability work. Drawing on studies from three continents - Europe, North America, and South America - the paradoxes and the plurality of meanings associated with the creation of sustainable futures are explored. The book focuses on how communication practices collide with organizational frameworks, customary practices, livelihoods, and landscape. In so doing, the authors explore the meanings of environmental communication, pushing beyond environmental advocacy rhetoric to emphasize stronger anthropological engagement within communities to achieve more impactful environmental communication practice. Empirically the book's chapters explore a diverse set of issues, ranging from coastal management in the European north to Native American place naming in Alaska. They further share findings from studies of contaminated land remediation in Sweden, conflicts over water resources in Chile, management of heritage and national parks in Northern Arizona, and cultural transmission in Slovakia. This is an open access book.

Cultural Software

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300084504
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (845 download)

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Book Synopsis Cultural Software by : J. M. Balkin

Download or read book Cultural Software written by J. M. Balkin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book J. M. Balkin offers a strikingly original theory of cultural evolution, a theory that explains shared understandings, disagreement, and diversity within cultures. Drawing on many fields of study--including anthropology, evolutionary theory, cognitive science, linguistics, sociology, political theory, philosophy, social psychology, and law--the author explores how cultures grow and spread, how shared understandings arise, and how people of different cultures can understand and evaluate each other's views. Cultural evolution occurs through the transmission of cultural information and know-how--cultural software--in human minds, Balkin says. Individuals embody cultural software and spread it to others through communication and social learning. Ideology, the author contends, is neither a special nor a pathological form of thought but an ordinary product of the evolution of cultural software. Because cultural understanding is a patchwork of older imperfect tools that are continually adapted to solve new problems, human understanding is partly adequate and partly inadequate to the pursuit of justice. Balkin presents numerous examples that illuminate the sources of ideological effects and their contributions to injustice. He also enters the current debate over multiculturalism, applying his theory to problems of mutual understanding between people who hold different worldviews. He argues that cultural understanding presupposes transcendent ideals and shows how both ideological analysis of others and ideological self-criticism are possible.

Seeing Lithics

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Publisher : Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN 13 : 9781842175279
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (752 download)

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Book Synopsis Seeing Lithics by : Gilbert B. Tostevin

Download or read book Seeing Lithics written by Gilbert B. Tostevin and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is substantial debate over the extent to which the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition and the dispersal of anatomically modern humans from Africa into Eurasia at the end of the Pleistocene were the result of the same process, related processes, or unrelated but coincident processes. The current debate shows a gap in archaeological method and theory for understanding how different cultural transmission processes create patterning in the material culture of foragers at the resolution of Paleolithic palimpsests. This research project attempts to bridge this gap with a middle-range theory connecting cultural transmission and dual inheritance theory with the archaeological study of flintknappers' flake-by-flake choices in the production of lithic assemblages. The project thus combines a new middle-range theory as well as a new approach to characterizing Paleolithic assemblages for systematic comparison of units of analysis appropriate to distinguishing forces of change in cultural evolution.