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The Evolution of Cultural Diversity

2016-09-16 Social Science
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Release : 2016-09-16
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 592/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Evolution of Cultural Diversity by : Ruth Mace

Download or read book The Evolution of Cultural Diversity written by Ruth Mace. This book was released on 2016-09-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Explaining Human Diversity

2018-07-04 Social Science
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Release : 2018-07-04
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 969/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Explaining Human Diversity by : Carles Salazar

Download or read book Explaining Human Diversity written by Carles Salazar. This book was released on 2018-07-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Continuities in Cultural Evolution

2017-07-12 Social Science
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Release : 2017-07-12
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 081/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Continuities in Cultural Evolution by : Margaret Mead

Download or read book Continuities in Cultural Evolution written by Margaret Mead. This book was released on 2017-07-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Culture and the Evolutionary Process

1988-06-15 Science
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Release : 1988-06-15
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 338/5 ( reviews)

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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. This book was released on 1988-06-15. 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.

Understanding Cultural Traits

2016-02-26 Social Science
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Release : 2016-02-26
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 497/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Understanding Cultural Traits by : Fabrizio Panebianco

Download or read book Understanding Cultural Traits written by Fabrizio Panebianco. This book was released on 2016-02-26. 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.

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