Culture universals and genes (original) (raw)
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The Concept of Culture: Bioculturology and Evolutionary Social Sciences
ABSTRAKT Předmětem studie je analýza současného stavu konceptu kultury v antropologii, a to v kontextu konstatované krize jak antropologie jako holistické vědy o člověku, tak konceptu kultury jako klíčového epistemologického nástroje v antropologii. Zvláštní pozornost je věnována analýze evolučních teorií kultury, které jsou formulovány v tzv. evolučních sociálních vědách. Autor diskutuje biokulturologii jako výzkumnou strategii, která umožní dialog mezi společenskými a přírodními vědami, a to zejména s ohledem na evoluční teorie kultury, které jsou stále předmětem diskuzí a sporů. V závěru studie věnuje autor pozornost původu pojmů příroda a kultura a formuluje tezi, že spor o evoluční teorie kultury má kořeny právě v historických kořenech uvedených pojmů.
Futures, 1998
The goal of cross-cultural psychology to identify and explain similarities and differences in the behavior of individuals in different cultures requires linking human behavior to its context . In order to specify this relation, the focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior. Since crosscultural psychology also deals with the evolutionary and biological bases of behavior, this focus on culture has regularly led to an unbalanced view (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis & Sam, 2011). Too often, biology and culture are seen as opposites: what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural . This article will first introduce the central concepts of natural and sexual selection, adaptation, and the epigenetic (open) genetic processes in evolutionary biology, and indicate their psychological implications. It will then argue that biology and culture are intricately related. Finally, empirical evidence from diverse psychological research areas will be presented to illustrate why the study of the evolutionary basis is as essential as the analysis of the sociocultural context for the understanding of behavior. Due to space restrictions, cultural transmission will be the only research area which is addressed in more detail (more examples of evolutionary approaches in intelligence, personality, and behavior genetics and their implications for cross-cultural research can be found on the website accompanying Berry et al., 2011; see also further readings section).
The Impact of Culture on Human Being Evolution A Review Essay
Annals of Social Sciences & Management studies
The cultural cohesion in different civilizations affects human behavior. European countries had no specific country and gradually they were released of the dominance of church and based on the new definition created government-nation as top to bottom. In Iran, civilization was strong and even after Islam, they didn't change their language into Arabic, before that they had human community in a country with central government. People were building the governments in this regard. Even in the extension of countries or different invasions, they didn't low their Iranian identity. This study doesn't attempt to compare the civilization and religions but it reviews the underdevelopment causes of Iran with such civil and cultural integration. In new western concept of West, why this nation with thousands years of establishment of government couldn't achieved common human freedom including freedom of speech or democracy in the past decades. Iran had great culture and civilization all around the world and people had important role in this culture and they emphasized mostly on the term "Iran" in this country.
Human Nature and Culture: An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective
Journal of Personality, 2001
Personality psychology is the broadest of all psychological subdisciplines in that it seeks a conceptually integrated understanding of both human nature and important individual differences. Cultural differences pose a unique set of problems for any comprehensive theory of personality-how can they be reconciled with universals of human nature on the one hand and within-cultural variation on the other? Evolutionary psychology provides one set of conceptual tools by which this conceptual integration can be made. It requires jettisoning the false but still-pervasive dichotomy of culture versus biology, acknowledging a universal human nature, and recognizing that the human mind contains many complex psychological mechanisms that are selectively activated, depending on cultural contexts. Culture rests on a foundation of evolved psychological mechanisms and cannot be understood without those mechanisms.
1 7-1-2011 Evolution and Culture
2019
The goal of cross-cultural psychology to identify and explain similarities and differences in the behavior of individuals in different cultures requires linking human behavior to its context (Cole, Meshcheryakov & Ponomariov, 2011). In order to specify this relation, the focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior. Since cross-cultural psychology also deals with the evolutionary and biological bases of behavior, this focus on culture has regularly led to an unbalanced view (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis & Sam, 2011). Too often, biology and culture are seen as opposites: what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural (Chasiotis, 2010, 2011a). This article will first introduce the central concepts of natural and sexual selection, adaptation, and the epigenetic (open) genetic processes in evolutionary biology, and indicate their psychological implications. It will then argue that biolog...
The Evolution and Evolvability of Culture
Mind & Language, 2006
In this paper I argue, first, that human lifeways depend on cognitive capital that has typically been built over many generations. This process of gradual accumulation produces an adaptive fit between human agents and their environments; an adaptive fit that is the result of hidden-hand, evolutionary mechanisms. To explain distinctive features of human life, we need to understand how cultures evolve. Second, I distinguish a range of different evolutionary models of culture. Third, I argue that none of meme-based models, dual inheritance models, nor Boyd and Richerson's models fully succeed in explaining this adaptive fit between agent and the world. I then briefly develop an alternative. Finally, I explore (in a preliminary way) constraints on cultural adaptation. The processes of cultural evolution sometimes built a fit between agents and their environment, but they do not always do so. Why is folk medicine, for example, so much less reliable than folk natural history?
Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 20, 65-78. (together with Nicholas Conard), 2011
The aim of the interdisciplinary conference 'The Nature of Culture' was to introduce and discuss in detail both a proposal for a concept of culture and a model of the course of cultural evolution. Primatologists, Paleolithic archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, and cultural anthropologists contributed to the interdisciplinary dialogue. The basis of discussion was the proposal of the concept of culture with biological, historical-social, and individual dimensions and a model for the expansion of cultural capacities. Invited papers assessed selected parts of the proposed concept and model. The result was widely agreed upon: an integrative concept of cultural capacity and cultural performance that accounted for the evolutionary processes involved, as well as a new model of the expansion of cultural capacity. Altogether six steps of expansion have been identified. The first three -capacities for socially transmitted information, capacities for tradition, and basic cultural capacities -can also be observed in some animal species today. Participants agreed to focus on the archaeological record as the key source of evidence documenting cultural evolution instead of ethologically derived features that are difficult to be traced archaeologically. The researchers in attendance defined three more cognitive extensions of cultural capacities during the course of human evolution: • modular cultural capacities, based on the ability to produce tools with tools, • composite cultural capacities, based on the ability to combine different objects into single tool units, and • collective cultural capacities, based on the ability to perceive a group (of agents, objects, persons, things) as an acting entity of interdependent parts. The Nature of Culture Synthese eines interdisziplinären Symposiums in Tübingen, Deutschland, 15.-18. Juni 2011 Zusammenfassung: Das interdisziplinäre Symposium ‚The Nature of Culture' hatte zum Ziel, ein integratives Kulturkonzept und ein Modell der kulturellen Evolution vorzustellen und diese mit Primatologen, Archäologen, Paläoanthropologen und Kulturwissenschaftlern auszuarbeiten. Grundlagen der Diskussion waren der Vorschlag eines Kulturkonzepts mit biologischen, historisch-sozialen und individuellen 66 Dimensionen sowie eines Modells der Expansion kultureller Kapazitäten. Die eingeladenen Beiträge der internationalen Teilnehmer befassten sich mit ausgewählten Teilen der Vorschläge. Als Ergebnis wurde ein integratives Konzept kultureller Kapazitäten und kultureller Performanzen erarbeitet, das die unterschiedlichen Entwicklungsprozesse sowie Umweltabhängigkeiten einbezieht. Ergänzt wird dieses Konzept durch ein neues Modell der Expansion kultureller Kapazitäten. Insgesamt sechs Entwicklungsschritte wurden identifiziert. Die ersten drei -Kapazitäten für sozial übermittelte Informationen, Kapazitäten für Tradition und Kapazitäten für Basiskultur -werden heute auch bei einigen Tierarten beobachtet. Für die Modellbildung zum Verlauf der menschlichen Kulturevolution wurde vorgeschlagen, sich auf archäologische Hinterlassenschaften als Ausgangspunkt zu konzentrieren statt auf von den Verhaltenswissenschaften abgeleitete Merkmale, die sich archäologisch nur schwer fassen lassen. Drei zusätzliche Schritte der Erweiterung kultureller Kapazitäten im Lauf der menschlichen Evolution, die auf kognitiven Expansionen basieren, wurden identifiziert: • Kapazitäten für Modularkultur auf der Grundlage der Fähigkeit Werkzeuge mit Hilfe von Werkzeugen herzustellen, • Kapazitäten für Kompositkultur auf der Grundlage der Fähigkeit, unterschiedliche Objekte zu einer Werkzeugeinheit zu kombinieren, und • Kapazitäten für Kollektivkultur auf der Grundlage der Fähigkeit, eine Gruppe (von Handelnden, Objekten, Personen oder Dingen) als Handlungseinheit mit voneinander abhängigen Teilen wahrzunehmen.