The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity
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The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity
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Author : Ruth Mace
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2016-09-16
The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity written by Ruth Mace and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-09-16 with Social Science categories.
Virtually all aspects of human behavior show enormous variation both within and between cultural groups, including material culture, social organization and language. Thousands of distinct cultural groups exist: about 6,000 languages are spoken today, and it is thought that a far greater number of languages existed in the past but became extinct. Using a Darwinian approach, this book seeks to explain this rich cultural variation. There are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural diversification might be tree-like, that is phylogenetic: material and non-material culture is clearly inherited by descendants, there is descent with modification, and languages appear to be hierarchically related. There are also a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural evolution is not tree-like: cultural inheritance is not Mendelian and can indeed be vertical, horizontal or oblique, evidence of borrowing abounds, cultures are not necessarily biological populations and can be transient and complex. Here, for the first time, this title tackles these questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America. A range of powerful theoretical tools developed in evolutionary biology is used to test detailed hypotheses about historical patterns and adaptive functions in cultural evolution. Evidence is amassed from archaeological, linguist and cultural datasets, from both recent and historical or pre-historical time periods. A unifying theme is that the phylogenetic approach is a useful and powerful framework, both for describing the evolutionary history of these traits, and also for testing adaptive hypotheses about their evolution and co-evolution. Contributors include archaeologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists and linguists, and this book will be of great interest to all those involved in these areas.
Understanding Cultural Traits
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Author : Fabrizio Panebianco
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2016-02-26
Understanding Cultural Traits written by Fabrizio Panebianco and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-02-26 with Social Science categories.
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.
Continuities In Cultural Evolution
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Author : Margaret Mead
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2017-07-12
Continuities In Cultural Evolution written by Margaret Mead and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-07-12 with Social Science categories.
Margaret Mead once said, "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples--faraway peoples--so that Americans might better understand themselves." Continuities in Cultural Evolution is evidence of this devotion. All of Mead's efforts were intended to help others learn about themselves and work toward a more humane and socially responsible society. Scientist, writer, explorer, and teacher, Mead brought the serious work of anthropology into the public consciousness. This volume began as the Terry Lectures, given at Yale in 1957 and was not published until 1964, after extensive reworking. The time she spent on revision is evidence of the importance Mead attached to the subject: the need to develop a truly evolutionary vision of human culture and society. This was desirable in her eyes both in order to reinforce the historical dimension in our ideas about human culture, and to preserve the relevance of historical and cultural diversity to social, economic, and political action. Given the present state of academic and public discourse alike, this volume speaks to us in a language we badly need to recover.
On Cultural Diversity
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Author : Christian Reus-Smit
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2018-08-09
On Cultural Diversity written by Christian Reus-Smit and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2018-08-09 with Political Science categories.
The rise of non-Western Great Powers, the spread of transnational religiously-justified insurgencies, and the resurgence of ethno-nationalism raise fundamental questions about the effects of cultural diversity on international order. Yet current debate - among academics, popular commentators, and policy-makers alike - rests on flawed understandings of culture and inaccurate assumptions about how historically cultural diversity has shaped the evolution of international orders. In this path-breaking book, Christian Reus-Smit details how the major theories of international relations have consistently misunderstood the nature and effects of culture, returning time and again to a conception long abandoned in specialist fields: the idea of cultures as coherent, bounded, and constitutive. Drawing on theoretical insights from anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology, and informed by new histories of diverse historical orders, this book presents a new theoretical account of the relationship between cultural diversity and international order: an account with far-reaching implications for how we understand contemporary transformations.
The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity
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Author : Ruth Mace
language : en
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Release Date : 2016-09-16
The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity written by Ruth Mace and has been published by Taylor & Francis this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-09-16 with Social Science categories.
Virtually all aspects of human behavior show enormous variation both within and between cultural groups, including material culture, social organization and language. Thousands of distinct cultural groups exist: about 6,000 languages are spoken today, and it is thought that a far greater number of languages existed in the past but became extinct. Using a Darwinian approach, this book seeks to explain this rich cultural variation. There are a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural diversification might be tree-like, that is phylogenetic: material and non-material culture is clearly inherited by descendants, there is descent with modification, and languages appear to be hierarchically related. There are also a number of theoretical reasons to believe that cultural evolution is not tree-like: cultural inheritance is not Mendelian and can indeed be vertical, horizontal or oblique, evidence of borrowing abounds, cultures are not necessarily biological populations and can be transient and complex. Here, for the first time, this title tackles these questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America. A range of powerful theoretical tools developed in evolutionary biology is used to test detailed hypotheses about historical patterns and adaptive functions in cultural evolution. Evidence is amassed from archaeological, linguist and cultural datasets, from both recent and historical or pre-historical time periods. A unifying theme is that the phylogenetic approach is a useful and powerful framework, both for describing the evolutionary history of these traits, and also for testing adaptive hypotheses about their evolution and co-evolution. Contributors include archaeologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists and linguists, and this book will be of great interest to all those involved in these areas.
The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity
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Author : Human Behavior and Evolution Society
language : en
Publisher: Left Coast Press
Release Date : 2005-05-31
The Evolution Of Cultural Diversity written by Human Behavior and Evolution Society and has been published by Left Coast Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2005-05-31 with Social Science categories.
This volume tackles questions of cultural evolution empirically and quantitatively, using a range of case studies from Africa, the Pacific, Europe, Asia and America. Powerful theoretical tools developed in evolutionary biology are used to test detailed hypotheses about historical patterns and adaptive functions in cultural evolution.
Cultural Vision
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Author : J. Knutsen
language : en
Publisher: iUniverse
Release Date : 2003-11
Cultural Vision written by J. Knutsen and has been published by iUniverse this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2003-11 with Science categories.
For hundreds of millennia, thousands of tribal cultures have thrived throughout the planet, each possessing a unique Vision, derived from thousands of years of evolution. With their deep ties to the world around them they experienced a communion with life, which offered a spiritual sense of overwhelming interconnectedness with the land, the plants, the animals, and each other. But one culture evolved to dominate all others, and linear history was created. Now a new reality has been built over the former surface of the planet, not only altering the biosphere, but also what is available for us to interact with and relate to. We struggle with the meaningless daily rote duties of our jobs. We live sequestered lives in houses and apartments, cut off from our neighbors, woefully uninformed in a sea of trivial information. Unprecedented resource extraction and energy consumption is heralding the greatest mass extinction of plant and animal life, the likes of which has not been seen in the last 65 million years. Cultural Vision exposes the ancient roots of these challenges as it reveals a new direction for the future of humanity based upon cooperation, true human values, and cultural diversity.
Explaining Human Diversity
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Author : Carles Salazar
language : en
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Release Date : 2018-07-04
Explaining Human Diversity written by Carles Salazar and has been published by Taylor & Francis this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2018-07-04 with Social Science categories.
Why are humans so different from each other and what makes the human species so different from all other living organisms? This introductory book provides a concise and accessible account of human diversity, of its causes and the ways in which anthropologists go about trying to make sense of it. Carles Salazar offers students a thoroughly integrated view by bringing together biological and sociocultural anthropology and including perspectives from evolutionary biology and psychology.
Cultural Evolution
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Author : Alex Mesoudi
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2011-07-30
Cultural Evolution written by Alex Mesoudi and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-07-30 with Political Science categories.
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.
Pattern And Process In Cultural Evolution
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Author : Stephen Shennan
language : en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date : 2009-03-31
Pattern And Process In Cultural Evolution written by Stephen Shennan and has been published by Univ of California Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-03-31 with Social Science categories.
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.