Understanding Culture, Society and Politics

SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDYING CULTURE, SOCIETY AND POLITICS CULTURE "Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the course of centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved." Culture is the invisible bond which ties people together. It refers to the pattern of human activity. The art, literature, language, and religion of a community represent its culture. Our cultural values and beliefs manifest themselves through our lifestyle. Our moral values represent our culture. The importance of culture lies in its close association with the ways of thinking and living. Differences in cultures have led to diversity in the people from different parts of the world. Culture is related to the development of our attitude. Our cultural values influence how we approach living.  ccording to the behaviorist behaviorist definition of culture, culture, it is the ultimate ultimate system system of social social control where where people people monitor  their own standards and behavior. Our cultural values serve as the founding principles of our life. They shape our thinking, behavior, and personality. Culture Affects Perception !ow we perceive things is largely affected by our udgment skills, preconceived notions, attitude, and emotions. These factors are closely linked with our culture. In perceiving something as good or bad, our biases play a role and so does our way of thinking. In udging something as easy or difficult, our attitude and our motivation levels play a key role. Our culture determines the structure of our thinking, which influences our perceptions. #eople who belong to cultures that promote individualism tend to look at only the main aspects of a situation, while those of a culture that promotes collectivism tend to consider even the minor details. merican culture which is predominantly individualistic, promotes giving freedom of choice to children since a young age. The $apanese culture which promotes collectivism, rather encourages the parents%elders to make choices for their children. This is an e&le of how parenting is perceived in contrasting ways due to the differences in culture. 'imilarly, people of (astern cultures perceive success as being a collective effort, while those of the merican culture perceive it as the fruit of individual effort. SOCIETY 'ociety can be defined as a group of people who share a common economic, social, and industrial infrastructure. It is an organi)ation of people who share a common cultural and social background. Do you know how the word, *society* originated+ The word is a derivation of the rench word societe, which came from the -atin word societas meaning *a friendly association with others*. #urpose of 'ociety and its Importance Support One of the primary purposes of society is the formation of an organi)ed group of individuals who can support each other in various ways. It is in the difficult times that you reali)e the importance of being a part of society. It is the members of your social group who come forward to give you the help needed. The support given by society can be of the physical, emotional, financial, or medical form. Formtion of Socil Groups   society is characteri)ed characteri)ed by social social networks. networks. They form form an integral integral part of it. 'ocial 'ocial networks networks are defined defined as the patterns of relationships between people. elationships give rise to social interactions between people of a

society. Individuals who belong to different ethnic groups can come together, thanks to societies. Their interactions give rise to strong social bonds that result in long/lasting relationships.  society gives rise to a family system and an organi)ation of relationships, which are at the heart of any social group. Formtion of  Culture Culture is an important element of society. Individuals of a particular society share a common culture that shapes their way of living. Their means of subsistence and their lifestyles are derivatives of their culture. Culture defines the pattern of human activity in a society. It is represented by the art, literature, language, and religion of the individuals who form it. Individuals belonging to a society are bonded by common cultural values, traditions, and beliefs that define their culture. 0ou may like to know why culture is important. POLITICS The importance of politics encompasses a discussion discussion of  of intricate proportions. 1ased on the introduction above, one could say that politics is indeed present when there is a collection of people that constitute a community. #olitics is said to be a set of actions or occurrences that raises 2uestions on the community or society as a whole. These 2uestions are raised because there is the distinct possibility that the set of actions or occurrences will inevitably have a considerable effect in the general population at a particular time. There are certain actors that are specifically involved in the practice of politics. 3ormally, one would say that politicians are among the key actors in the practice of politics. This is accurate to some e&tent. These individuals formulate bills, propose policies and advocate their views on how to enhance the performance of the country4s economy. 3evertheless, they do not have the monopoly of employing politics as a means of carrying out things. $udges and other members of the udiciary similarly engage in politics when they make decisions and verdicts that inevitably affect the general public. 3ormally, cases are used as precedence in carrying out decisions that involves the same principles of law. 3evertheless, the main mover and the predominant actor in the employment of politics is the people in general. The public is capable of making changes based on their perspectives on how things should be carried out. 'imple acts that a single individual like casting a vote or supporting a cause indicate a participation in political practice.  ll in all, it could be assumed that that everyone everyone do take take part in the practice practice of politics, politics, one way or the other. other. It is characteri)ed as an act that points out the issues that appears to be significant in a society. 1asically, it points out whether a specific situation is indeed problem, and eventually presents how it could have an effect on society or the community as a whole. The following discussion will be looking into the discussion discussion of  of the three individuals regarding the issue of refugees in the state. 5oreover, the discussion will also look into the fact on whether it is political to some e&tent or ust basically an empty discussion discussion among  among friends.

RATIONALE FOR STUDYING ANT!ROPOLOGY, POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY ANT!ROPOLOGY The range of variations in human ways of life is staggering. The study of anthropology is holistic // the study of humans as biological, cultural, and social beings. nthropologists study alternative ways in which human beings meet their needs and e&amine overall integration and dissonance within a culture. efusing to reduce the primary motives of human behavior to any single factor/whether it be biological, economic, structural, political, technological, or geographic/anthropologists analy)e the interrelationship of all of these factors in trying to understand human behavior.  nthropologists  nthropologists study study the person person both both as an individual individual and and as a member member of society society.. nthropolo nthropologists gists study, study, for e&le, religion and belief systems, the arts, music, gender roles, politics and work. 1ecause of the breadth

of topical interests, anthropology, it is said, is both a social science and a humanity. 6e share the "big 2uestions" with other disciplines7 6ho are we+ 6hy are we here+ 6hat is our purpose+ 1y looking at other cultures and societies, anthropologists are able to reflect on various ways of being human. Thus, anthropology teaches respect for other ways of life, while using a variety of cross/cultural human behavior as a mirror from which we can reflect on the things we do in our own culture. 5ulticulturalism and diversity are the very essence of anthropology. The field is not only innately cross/cultural, but global in its scope. nthropology also has e&traordinary disciplinary breadth. The field of archeology has much in common with history, as it uses artifacts from the past to reconstruct the cultural character of a society. #hysical anthropology is very closely aligned with biology, emphasi)ing physical characteristics of human beings and investigating the evidence for human evolution. -inguistics is a field of anthropology focusing on analysis of language development and language variations. 'ocio/cultural anthropology studies culture and the relationship of culture to other aspects of social life8 it shares much in common with each of the other social sciences, and especially sociology. 5any sociological theories have evolved from anthropological research and vice versa. pplied anthropology uses anthropological knowledge to solve contemporary problems ranging from world hunger to ID' prevention. nthropologists may be involved in a wide range of activities such as research of evolutionary theory, addressing gender ine2uality in society, solving a homicide case in a forensics lab, international trade, advertising, museum and historical preservation. Other than the broad introductory course, the anthropology courses at !anover are socio/cultural in focus. POLOTICAL SCIENCE 6hen you study #olitical 'cience, you4ll learn about how political power is distributed, how different governments operate and interact, how rules are made and enforced. 0ou will e&plore both the "who" of politics 9such as politicians, international organi)ations, and the public: and the "how" 9such as elections, political institutions, and public administration:. #olitics affects virtually every aspect of our lives, including the the availability of education, obs, housing and healthcare. 6hether countries are at war or at peace depends both on what governments do and who supports them. "#t is Politicl Science$ #olitical science is the study a range of political ideas, events, actions, and institutions. It includes both understanding and e&plaining the world of politics that is all around us. 6e all participate in politics, though most of the time we do so unknowingly. #olitics is much more than simply voting in an election or working in government. eading or listening to news, making donations to aid groups, or talking with friends and family about social issues and values are a few of the many e&les of political activity in our every day lives. #olitical 'cience is concerned with the many institutions, organi)ations and norms that determine how people perceive society, and in turn, how they interact within it. In #olitical 'cience, we discuss basic concepts, such as ;power<, ;government< or ;democracy<, in order to get us thinking about the world around us, and our place in it. Once that we understand the many concepts, we study the connections between them in order to better e&plain political outcomes, such as7 why people vote for one political party as opposed to another, why governments and policies differ in different countries, or why armed conflicts happen in some cases while they are avoided in other cases. Citi)en participation and engagement occurs because of the nature of the institutions that structure society7 we work and live within them, and sometimes we rebel against them. If you study #olitical 'cience, you will look at how and why.

"#ere Does Politicl Science Le% You$ 'tudying political science can open up a wide range of ob opportunities in both the public, private, and not/for/ profit private sectors. 'tudents interested in careers in business, education, law, ournalism, communications, government, or politics more generally will obtain vital knowledge and skills. 'tudents can also get practical skills by doing co/ops with government or organi)ations as part of their education e&perience.  You &ill 'in e(pertise n% proficienc) in t#e follo&in'* = e&perience working with others and interacting in a diverse community8 = greater command of reading, writing and critical thinking8 = research and analysis skills that are valuable in a range of employment areas = an ability arrive at decisions based on the analysis and synthesis of information and data = an ability to engage with political events and a greater understanding of the processes involved in different political systems around the world8 These are all useful and important skills necessary for a successful career in any field. Creer Options If you*re considering a career in the government, as a lawyer, as a social advocate, or perhaps with an international organi)ation like the >nited 3ations, then studying #olitical 'cience is an obvious choice. If you4re interested in ournalism and the media, or perhaps public relations, then this might be the place to begin. #erhaps you*re intrigued by 3ewfoundland and -abrador politics and think that you might like to work with a political party and%or in elections. Or possibly you*re interested in learning how to analy)e comple& policies as you prepare for graduate studies. (ven if you are unsure about your career plans, studying #olitical 'cience can be a great path. 5any of our graduates go into business or other practices and professions. (mployers often look for the critical thinking, analysis, and communications skills that political scientists develop // not to mention the valuable knowledge that you will gain about government and international politics. SOCIOLOGY Individuality and independence are highly valued in our society. It is sometimes easy to forget that everything we do, including our private thoughts and fantasies, grows out of or is shaped through our interactions with others, especially others close to us. 6hether we like it or not we are born into groups and spend most of our social lives in those same groups. ll of us assimilate, at least in part, the perspectives of these groups and thereby ac2uire our language, values, attitudes, beliefs and sense of identity. The most basic sociological premise is that humans are social beings, shaped in many ways by the groups to which we belong. 6hether they be families, athletic teams, clubs 9such as sororities and fraternities:, religious groups, socioeconomic classes, comple& bureaucratic organi)ations, or nations, much of human life is guided by group norms. 5uch of human life is also consumed with conflicts between groups, each of which tries to defend its own self interests.  s a discipline, 'ociology involves the description and e&planation of social structures and processes. These range from two/person interactions to relations between large social institutions, such as politics and the economy, to relations between nations. 'ociology also ranges across time and serves as a useful complement to history. Changes in the social arrangements that people create are of special interest to the sociologist for a number of reasons.

irst, 'ociology increases our understanding of ourselves and our society by providing us with concepts that describe and e&plain our social creations and how they influence us. 6e learn who we are and why, and how we are similar to and different from people with different social arrangements. 'econd, e&posure to 'ociology opens our minds, prompts us to review the taken/for/granted, and encourages us to entertain alternatives. Third, it is important to be aware that the organi)ation and institutions of our society evolved through social processes operating in a social environment. 6e need to learn how to collect and analy)e representative information about society and its members rather than to rely on information we encounter hapha)ardly. 6e also need ideas that we can use to classify social behavior systematically and ideas that we can use to e&plain the trends and relationships observed. 'ociology addresses all of these issues and more. 'ociological research also reveals the multifaceted nature of social reality, its multiple causes and multiple effects, and provides us with sets of methods suitable for unraveling the comple&ities of social life. 'ociological study helps us to determine which steps are most likely to lead toward a given goal and provides ways of assessing the e&tent to which a given goal may be reali)ed. In these ways 'ociology helps us move beyond common sense to describe and e&plain more accurately the classes of social behavior and the relations between them. In short, the study of 'ociology gives a view of social reality that fosters an understanding of social arrangements. CULTURE AND SOCIETY AS ANTROPOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS T!E CONCEPTS OF CULTURE AND OF SOCIAL SYSTE+ There seems to have been a good deal of confusion among anthropologists and sociologists about the concepts of culture and society 9 or, social system:.  lack of consensus / between and within disciplines ? has made for semantic confusion as to what data are subsumed under these terms8 but, more important, the lack has impeded theoretical advance as to their interrelation, There are still some anthropologists and sociologists who do not even consider the distinction necessary on the ground that all phenomena of human behavior are sociocultural, with both societal and cultural aspects at the same time. 1u even where they recogni)e the distinction, which can be said now to be a commonplace, they tend to assume determinative primacy for the set of phenomena in which they are more interested. 'ociologists tend to see all cultural systems as a sort of outgrowth or spontaneous development, derivative from social systems. nthropologists are more given to being holistic and therefore often begin with total systems of culture and then proceed to subsume social structure as merely a part of culture. 9"'ocial anthropology" perhaps represents secession within anthropology that inclines to prefer the sociological assumption.: Our obective in the present oint statement is to point out, so far as methodological primacy is concerned, that, either @sic ? should be "each" ? T6A of these assumptions is a preferential a priori and cannot be validated in today*s state of knowledge. 'eparating cultural from societal aspects is not a classifying of concrete and empirically discrete sets of phenomena. They are distinct systems in that they abstract or select two analytically distinct sets of components from the same concrete phenomena. 'tatements made about relationships within a cultural pattern are thus of a different order from those within a system of societal relationships. 3either can be directly reduced to terms of the other8 that is to say, the order of relationships within one is independent from that in the other. Careful attention to this independence greatly increases the power of analytical precision. In sum, we feel that the analytical discrimination should be consistently maintained without preudice to the 2uestion of which is more "important," "correct," or "fundamental," if indeed such 2uestions turn out to be meaningful at all. It is possible to trace historically two successive analytical distinctions that have increased this analytical precision. It might be suggested that the first differentiation was a division of subect/matter broadly along the

lines of the heredity/environment distinction. In (nglish/speaking countries, at least, the most important reference point is the biologically oriented thinking of the generation following the publication of Darwin*s Origin of the 'pecies. !ere the social scientists were concerned with defining a sphere of investigation that could not be treated as simply biological in the then current meaning of that concept. Tylor*s concept of culture and 'pencer4s of the social as super organic was important attempts to formulate such a sphere. Thus the organism was assigned to the biological sciences and culture/society 9as yet more or less undifferentiated: assigned to the sociocultural sciences. In the formative period of both disciplines, then, culture and society were used with relatively little difference of meaning in most works of maor influence. In the anthropological tradition, Tylor and 1oas used culture to designate that aspect of total human social behavior 9including its symbolic and meaningful products: that was independent of the genetic constitutions and biological characteristics of organisms. The ideas of continuity, creation, accumulation, and transmission of culture independent of biological heredity were the key ones. On the sociological @p. BA side, Comte and 'pencer, and 6eber and Durkheim spoke of society as meaning essentially the same thing that Tylor meant by culture. or a considerable period this condensed concept of culture/and/society was maintained, with differentiation between anthropology and sociology being carried out not conceptually but operationally. nthropologists tended to confine their studies to no literate societies and sociologists concerned themselves with literate ones 9especially their own.: It did not seem necessary to go much further. 3ow we believe that knowledge and interests have become sufficiently differentiated so that further distinctions need to be made and stabili)ed in the routine usage of the relevant professional groups. 'uch a need has been foreshadowed in the practice of many anthropologists in speaking of social organi)ation as one maor segment or branch of culture, and of some sociologists in discriminating such categories as values, ideologies, science, and art from social structure. In this way a second analytical distinction has taken 9or is taking: shape. 6e suggest that it is useful to define the concept culture for most usages more narrowly than has been generally the case in the merican anthropological tradition, restricting its reference to transmitted and created content and patterns of values, ideas, and other symbolic/meaningful systems as factors in the shaping of human behavior and the artifacts produced through behavior. On the other hand, we suggest that the term society ? or more generally, social system ? be used to designate the specifically relational system of interaction among individuals and collectivities. To speak of a "member of a culture" should be understood as an ellipsis meaning a "member of the society of culture 0." One indication of the independence of the two is the e&istence of highly organi)ed insect societies with at best a minimal rudimentary component of culture in our present narrower sense. #arenthetically we may note that a similar analytical distinction has begun to emerge with reference to the older concept of the organism, on the other side of the division outlined above, by which the social sciences came to be differentiated from the biological. 6here the term organism was once used to designate both biological and psychological aspects, it has recently come to be increasingly important to discriminate a specifically psychological component from the merely biological. Thus the term personality is being widely used as an appropriate or favored term e&pressive of the distinction. To speak, then, of the analytical independence between culture and social system is, of course, not to say that the two systems are not related, or that various approaches to the analysis of the relationship may not be used. It is often profitable to hold constant either cultural or societal aspects of the same concrete phenomena while addressing attention to the other. #rovided that the analytical distinction between them is maintained, it is therefore idle to 2uarrel over the rightness of either approach. Important work has been prosecuted under both of them. It will undoubtedly be most profitable to develop both lines of thinking and to udge them by how much each increases understanding. 'econdly, however, building on the more precise knowledge thus gained, we may in time e&pect to learn in which area each type of conceptuali)ation is the more applicable and productive.

1y some such procedure, we should improve our position for increasing understanding of the relations between the two, so that we will not have to hold either constant when it is more fruitful not to do so. 6e therefore propose a truce to 2uarreling over whether culture is best understood from the perspective of society or society from that of culture. s in the famous case of heredity "versus" environment, it is no longer a 2uestion of how important each is, but of how each works and how they are interwoven with each other. The traditional perspectives of anthropology and sociology should merge into a temporary condominium leading to a differentiated but ultimately collaborative attack on problems in intermediate areas with which both are concerned. PERSPECTIES IN-APPROAC!ES TO T!E STUDY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY Approc#es to t#e stu%) of culture ie&in' culture in terms of ptterns n% confi'urtions Culturl trits The concept of culture embraces the culture of mankind as a whole. n understanding of human culture is facilitated, however, by analy)ing "the comple& whole" into component parts or categories. In somewhat the same sense that the atom has been regarded as the unit of matter, the cell as the unit of life, so the culture trait is generally regarded as the unit of culture.  trait may be an obect 9knife:, a way of doing something 9weaving:, a belief 9in spirits:, or an attitude 9the so/called horror of incest:. 1ut, within the category of culture, each trait is related to other traits.  distinguishable and relatively self/contained cluster of traits is conventionally called a culture comple&. The association of traits in a comple& may be of a functional and mechanical nature, such as horse, saddle, bridle, 2uirt, and the like, or it may lie in conceptional or emotional associations, such as the acts and attitudes involved in seclusion in a menstrual hut or retrieving a heart that has been stolen by witches. Culturl res The relationship between an actual culture and its habitat is always an intimate one, and therefore one finds a more or less close correlation between kind of habitat and type of culture. This results in the concept of culture area. This conception goes back at least as far as the early EFth century, but it was first brought into prominence by the >.'.anthropologist Clark 6issler in The merican Indian 9EFEG: and 5an and Culture 9EFH:. !e divided the Indian cultures 9as they were in the latter half of the EFth century: into geographic cultural regions7 the Caribou area of northern Canada8 the 3orthwest coast, characteri)ed by the use of salmon and cedar8 the reat #lains, where tribes hunted bison with the horse8 the #ueblo area of the 'outhwest8 and so on. Others later distinguished culture areas in other continents. Culturl t)pes  ppreciation of the relationship between culture and topographic area suggests the concept of culture type, such as hunting and gathering or a special way of hunting//for e&le, the use of the horse in bison hunting in the #lains or the method of hunting of sea mammals among the (skimo8 pastoral cultures centred upon sheep, cattle, reindeer, and so on8 and horticulture 9with digging stick and hoe: and agriculture 9with o&/ drawn plow:. -ess common are trading cultures such as are found in 5elanesia or speciali)ed production of some obect for trade, such as pottery, bron)e a&es, or salt, as was the case in -u)on. 9'ee primitive culture.: Configuration and pattern, especially the latter, are concepts closely related to culture area and culture type. ll of them have one thing in common8 they view culture not in terms of its individual components, or traits, but as meaningful organi)ations of traits7 areas, occupations, configurations 9art, mathematics, physics:, or patterns 9in whichpsychological factors are the bases of organi)ation:. Clark 6issler*s "universal culture pattern" was

recognition of the fact that all particular and actual cultures possess the same general categories7 language, art, social organi)ation, religion, technology, and so on. ie&in' culture in terms of institutionl structure n% functions Socil or'ni.tion   sociocultural system presents itself under two aspects7 structure and function. s culture evolves, sociocultural systems 9like biologic systems: become more differentiated structurally and more speciali)ed functionally, proceeding from the simple to the comple&. 'ystems on the lowest stage of development have only two significant kinds of parts7 the local territorial group and the family. There is a corresponding minimum of speciali)ation, limited, with but few e&ceptions, to division of function, or labour, alongse& lines and to division between children and adults. The e&ceptions are headmen and shamans8 they are special organs, so to speak, in the body politic. The headman is a mechanism of social integration, direction, and control, e&pressing, however, the consensus of the band. The shaman, though a self/appointed priest or magician, is also an instrument of society8 he may be regarded as the first specialist in the history of human society.  ll human societies are divided into classes and segments. Class is defined as one of an indefinite number of groupings each of which differs in composition from the other or others, such as men and women8 married, widowed, and divorced8 children and adults. 'egment is defined as one of an indefinite number of groupings all of which are alike in structure and function7 families, lineages, clans, and so on. On more advanced levels of development there are occupational classes, such as farmers, pastoralists, artisans, metalworkers, and scribes, and territorial segments, such as wards, barrios, counties, and states. 'egmentation is a cultural process essential to the evolution of culture8 it is a means of increasing the si)e of a society or a grouping within a sociocultural system 9such as an army: and therefore of increasing its power to make life secure, without suffering a corresponding loss of effectiveness through diminished solidarity8 segmentation is a means of maintaining solidarity at the same time that it enlarges the social grouping.  tribe could not increase in si)e beyond a certain point without resorting to segmentation7 the formation of lineages, clans, and the like. The word clannish points to one of the functions of segments in general7 the fostering of solidarity. Tribes become segments in confederacies8 and above the tribal level, the evolution of civil society employs barrios, demes, counties, and states in its process of segmentation. In present/day society, the army and the church offer illuminating e&les of increased si)e and sustained solidarity proceeding hand in hand. Economic s)stems Division of labour along occupational lines is rare, although not wholly lacking, in preliterate societies//despite a widespread notion that one member of a tribe speciali)es in making arrows, which he e&changes for moccasins made by another specialist. Occupational groupings were virtually lacking in all cultural systems of aboriginal 3orth merica, for e&le. uilds of metalworkers are found in some frican tribes and specialists in canoe making and tattooing e&isted in #olynesia. 1ut it is not until thetransition from preliterate society, based upon ties of kinship, to civil society, based upon property relations and territorial distinctions 9the state:, that division of labour along occupational lines becomes e&tensive. On this level there are found many kinds of specialists7 metalworkers, scribes, astrologers, soldiers, dancers, musicians, alchemists,prostitutes, eunuchs, and so forth. #roduction of goods is everywhere followed by distribution and e&change. mong the Jurnai of ustralia, for e&le, game was divided and distributed as follows7 the hunter who killed a wallaby, for e&le, kept the head8 his father received the ribs on the right side, his mother the ribs on the left side, plus the backbone, and so on8 the various parts of the animal went to various classes of relatives in accordance with fi&ed, traditional rules.

Distribution along kinship lines constitutes a system of circulation and e&change within the tribe as a whole, for everyone is a relative of everyone else. It takes the form of bestowing gifts to relatives on all sorts of occasions//such as birth, initiation, marriage, death. In some cases there is an e&change of goods on the spot, but more often  givessomething to 1 who gives  a gift at a later date. ll this takes place in the network of rights and obligations among kindred8 one has both an obligation to give and a right to receive on certain occasions and in certain conte&ts. The whole process is one of mutual aid and cooperation. The conse2uence of this form of distribution and e&change is that the recipient receives kinds of things that he already has8 each household has the same kinds of foods, utensils, ornaments, and other things that every other household has. 6hy, then, it might be asked, does this form of e&change take place+ Two reasons may be distinguished. irst, this kind of e&change fortifies ties of kinship and mutual aid//as neighbourhood e&change among households in modern merican culture initiates friendships that in times of need constitute mutual aid. 'econd, this system of circulation of goods is in effect a system of social security7 a household in need, due to illness or accident, receives help from the community 9"3o household can starve as long as others have corn," as the Iro2uois put it:. !ere we have an economic system subordinated to the welfare of the society as a whole. (&change or circulation of goods and services 9a basket is the material form of "a service," that is, human labour: must, of course, take place in sociocultural systems where division of labour finds e&pression in speciali)ation7 the ironworker must obtain food8 the horticulturalist needs an iron hoe. (&change of goods between sociocultural systems is universal and takes place on the lowest levels of cultural development. In some instances it is the only form of nonhostile communication7 in the so/called silent trade the actual e&change takes place in a neutral )one without the presence of the participating parties.  rchaeological evidence shows that intergroup e&change occurred in remote times and over great distances, as already noted above in the discussion of diffusion.  n interesting form of the circulation of goods//usually referred to as redistribution//occurs among more highly developed tribes. The head of the sociopolitical system, that is, the chief or priest/chief, imposes levies upon all households, thus ac2uiring a large amount of goods//food, utensils, art obects, and so on//which he then redistributes to thehouseholds of the tribe. This may take the form and occasion of ceremonies and feasts or distribution may be made in cases of need. This widespread and interesting form of redistribution serves the same ends as those served by distribution as a function of the kinship system, namely, fostering solidarity and social security//an e2uitable distribution that tends to iron out ine2ualities among households. 'ome economic concepts in modern 6estern culture do not correspond closely with conceptions and customs in many preliterate societies. Ownership is a case in point. Complete possession of and e&clusive right to use something in an economic conte&t, such as land, a dwelling, or a boat, is rare, if not wholly lacking, in preliterate societies 9although one might have e&clusive rights to a dream, spell, or charm:. In general, one has merely the right to use or occupy a tract of land or a house8 when its use hasterminated, anyone can take it over. In some societies it might be said that a boat "belonged" to the men who made it or even to the individual who initiated its construction. 1ut anyone else in the community would have the right to use it when the "owners" 9the men who made it: were not using it. It is the right to use, rather than e&clusive and absolute possession, that is significant8 there is no such thing as absentee ownership in primitive society.   band or tribe "holds" the land it occupies8 here again, it is tenure rather than ownership that is significant8 the land "belongs" to 3ature, or 5other (arth8 people merely hold and use it. There is usually an intimate relationship between the people and "their" land. 3avao Indians fell on their knees and kissed the earth when they were returned to their former territory after forcible detention in an alien land. -and is defended against outsiders, e&cept when they are accepted as guests, but the significant thing is not that the outsiders do not own the land but that they pose a threat to those who occupy it.

In some tribes there is a distinct conception that the land held "belongs" to the tribe, the chief of which allots plots or tracts to individuals or households for their use. 1ut when use terminates, the land reverts to the tribal domain. During the latter part of the EFth century there was considerable discussion of "primitive communism." This doctrine came to be interpreted as meaning that private property, the private right to hold or use, was none&istent in primitive society. It was e&tended also to communism in wives and children in some tribes8 this was interpreted to be a vestige of a former stage of "primordial promiscuity." 5any ethnologists, however, launched a vigorous attack upon "the doctrine of primitive communism." 'ome of the conceptions of earlier anthropologists//such as group marriage//were shown to be unwarranted in the light of later research. Today, with these polemics well in the past, the situation with regard to property rights in tribal societies may be summari)ed as follows. Tenure and use, rather than ownership in fee simple, were the significant concepts and practices. #rivate, or personal, possession of goods and use of land were recogni)ed. 1ut possession and right were 2ualified by the rights and obligations of kinship7 one had an obligation both to give and to receive within the body of kindred, according to specific rules. In a de facto sense, things belonged to the body of kindred8 rights of possession and use were regulated by customs of kinship. In some cultures a borrower was not obliged to return an obect borrowed, on the theory that if a person could afford to lend something, he relin2uished his right to its possession. The mode of life in preliterate society, based upon kinship and functioning in accordance with the principles of cooperation and mutual aid, did indeed ustify the adective communal8 it was the noun communism that was resented//if not feared//because of its 5ar&ist connotation. One of the most important, as well as characteristic, features of the economic life of preliterate societies, as contrasted with modern civili)ations, is this7 no individual and no class or group in tribal society was denied access to the resources of nature8 all were free to e&ploit them. This is, of course, in sharp contrast to civil society in which private ownership by some, or a class, is the means of e&cluding others//slaves, serfs, a proletariat//from the e&ploitation and enoyment of the resources of nature. It is this freedom of access, the freedom to e&ploit and to enoy the resources of nature, that has given primitive society its characteristics of freedom and e2uality. nd, being based upon kinship ties, it had fraternity as well. E%uction In the human species individuals are e2uipped with fewer instincts than is the case in many nonhuman species. nd, as already noted, they are born cultureless. Therefore an infant !omo sapiens must learn a very great deal and ac2uire a vast number of conditioned refle&es and habit patterns in order to live effectively, not only in society but in a particular kind of sociocultural system, be it Tibetan, (skimo, or rench. This process, taken as a whole, is called sociali)ation 9occasionally, enculturation://the making of a social being out of one that was at birth wholly individualistic and egoistic. (ducation in its broadest sense may properly be regarded as the process by which the culture of a sociocultural system is impressed or imposed upon the plastic, receptive infant. It is this process that makes continuity of culture possible. (ducation, formal and informal, is the specific means of sociali)ation. 1y informal education is meant the way a child learns to adapt his behaviour to that of others, to be like others, to become a member of a group. 1y formal education is meant the intentional and more or less systematic effort to affect the behaviour of others by transmitting elements of culture to them, be it knowledge or belief, patterns of behaviour, or ideals and values. These attempts may be overt or covert. The teacher may make his purpose apparent, even emphatic, to the learner. 1ut much education is effected in an unobtrusive way, without teacher  or learner being aware that culture is being transmitted. Thus, in myths and tales, certain characters are presented as heroes or villains8 certain traits are e&tolled, others are deplored or denounced. The impressionable child ac2uires ideals and values, an image of the good or the bad.

The growing child is immersed in the fountain of informal education constantly8 the formal education tends to be periodic. 5any sociocultural systems distinguish rather sharply a series of stages in the education and development of full/fledged men and women. irst there is infancy, during which perhaps the most profound and enduring influences of a person*s life are brought to bear. 6eaning ushers in a new stage, that of  childhood, during which boys and girls become distinguished from each other. #ubertyrites transform children into men and women. These rites vary enormously in emphasis and content. 'ometimes they include whipping, isolation, scarification, or circumcision. Kery often the ritual is accompanied by e&plicit instruction in the mythology and lore of the tribe and in ethical codes. 'uch rituals as confirmation and 1ar 5it)vah in modern 6estern culture belong to the category of puberty rites. 9'ee rite of passage, coming/of/age rite.: 6ith marriage come instruction and admonition, appropriate to the occasion, from elder relatives and, in more advanced cultures, from priests. In some sociocultural systems men may become members of associations or sodalities7 men*s clubs, warrior societies, secret societies of magic or medicine. In some cases it is said that in passing through initiation rites a person is "born again." 6omen also may belong to sodalities, and in some instances they may become members of secret, magical societies along with men. Reli'ion n% /elief  5an*s oldest philosophy is animism, the doctrine that everything is alive and possesses mental faculties like those possessed by man7 desire, will, purpose, anger, love, and the like. This philosophy results from man*s proection of his own self, his psyche, into other things and beings, inanimate and living, without being aware of this proection. " belief in spirits is," according to (dward 1urnett Tylor, "the minimum definition of religion." 'ome later students, however, made the same claim for a belief in impersonal, supernatural power, or mana 9manitou, orenda, and so on:. In any case, these two elements of religion are virtually worldwide and undoubtedly represent a very early stage in the development of religion. In some cultures spirits are virtually innumerable, but, in the course of time, the more important spirits become gods. Thus, there has been a tendency toward monotheism in the history of religion. The erman oman Catholic priest and anthropologist ather 6ilhelm 'chmidt argued not only that some primitive peoples believe in a 'upreme 1eing but that monotheism was characteristic of the earliest and simplest cultures. 'chmidt*s thesis, however, has been severely critici)ed by otherethnologists. lso, as Tylor pointed out many years ago, the 'upreme 1eing of some very primitive peoples is an originator god, or a philosophical e&planatory device, accountable only for the e&istence and structure of the world8 after his work was completed, he had no further significance8 he was not worshiped and played no part in the daily lives of the people. In the past there was much discussion//and debate//about the difference between magic and religion. 1oth were deemed e&pressions of a belief in the supernatural. 'ome argued that religion was social 9moral: whereas magic was antisocial 9immoral:. nother distinction was that magic was the use of supernatural power  divorced from a spiritual being. The distinction between religion and magic was so beset with e&ceptions as to render most definitions of these terms logically imperfect. nother difficulty was the tacit assumption that different entities, religion and magic, e&ist per se, and therefore that "correct" definitions of them must e&ist also 9dam called the animal a horse because it was a horse:. 5uch confusion and debate would have been obviated if it had been recogni)ed 9as it generally is now: that there is no such thing as a "correct" definition// all definitions are man/made and arbitrary//and that the problem is not what religion or magic are but what beliefs, events, and e&periences one wishes to designate with the words religion and magic. Custom n% l& 'ociocultural systems, like other kinds of systems, must have means of self/ regulation and control in order to persist and function. In human society these means are numerous and varied. The kinship

organi)ation specifies reciprocal and correlative rights, duties, and obligations of one class of relatives to another. Codes of ethics govern the relationship of the individual to the well/being of society as a whole. Codes of eti2uette regulate class structure by re2uiring individuals to conform to their respective classes. Custom is a general term that embraces all these mechanisms of regulation and control and even more. Custom is the name given to uniformities in sociocultural systems. >niformities are important because they make anticipation and prediction possible8 without them, orderly conduct of social life would not be possible. Custom, therefore, is a means of social regulation and control, of effecting compliance with itself in order to render effective conduct of social life possible.  s in the case of religion and magic, much effort and debate have been spent in attempts to achieve a clean/ cut distinction between custom and law. There is little or no difficulty when one is concerned with the e&tremes of the spectrum of social control. The way that a !opi Indian holds his corn/husk cigarette in his hand is a matter of custom rather than law, as most ethnologists would probably agree. t the other e&treme, a state edict prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages is a law, not a custom. 1ut in other situations the distinction is far from clear, and disagreement with regard to definitions arises. or e&le, in marriage the obligation to wed someone within a specified group or class 9endogamy: or outside a group or class 9e&ogamy: has been called both law and custom. #robably the most useful distinction between custom and law is the following. If an infraction of a social rule or deviation from a norm is punished merely by e&pressions of social disapproval, gossip, ridicule, or ostracism, the rule is called custom. If, however, infractions or violations are punished by an agency, designated by society and empowered to act on its behalf, then the rule is called a law. 1ut even here there is difficulty. The same kind of offense may be punished by custom in one society, by law in another//as in, for e&le, adultery, incest, miscegenation, and black magic. It is the ethnologist, rather than the historian, who is disturbed by instances of ambiguity with regard to custom and law8 in preliterate societies the distinction between the two is not always clear. 1ut in civil societies//that is, states brought into being by the agricultural revolution and their more recent successors//the distinction is usually sharper and more apparent, though instances of sumptuary laws that prohibit the wearing of silk or that limit the length of a garment merge law and custom or reinforce the latter by the former. One need not be unduly disturbed by the difficulty of making sharp distinctions among sociocultural phenomena and of formulating definitions. The phenomena of culture, like those of the e&ternal world in general, are what they are, and if man/made concepts and words do not correspond closely with them, one may regret the lack of fit. 1ut it is better to do this than to distort real phenomena by trying to force them into artificial concepts and definitions. SOCIETY   perspective can be broadly defined as "a way of looking at and seeing 9or interpreting: something". To have a perspective, therefore, means to look at something 9whatever that thing might be: in a particular way. or sociologists, the "thing" we are looking at is the social world and, in particular, the nature of the relationships people form in their everyday lives. Thus, when we talk about "society" or "the social world" as if it were something real and alive, what we are actually referring to is our particular perception of the range and scope of the relationships that e&ist between people in any given society. enerally, we can identify three very broad categories of sociological values 9sometimes called "sociological perspectives" or "ways of seeing the social world":. = unctionalism = Conflict Theory = Interactionism

0ou should keep in mind the fact that this is only a very brief and simplified introduction to the idea of different perspectives. (ach of the above, perspectives "sees" the social world in different ways. 'ociological perspectives are developed to e&plain various social phenomena within society.  theory can be broadly defined as a proposed relationship between two or more variables or concepts. In short, a theory tries to give a representation of social life enhance one*s understanding of social activity by e&plaining a particular behaviour or social phenomenon. In sociology there are a range of theories, the dominant ones will be discuss in this unit. Structurl functionlism initill) 0no&n s Functionlism  attempted to e&plain social institutions as collective means that meet the individual needs of individuals. It emphasi)es on the significance of unity, solidarity and cooperation which provide the source for order and stability in society. Thus, despite being socially and culturally different from each other, people need to share certain common values and fell integrated in society. This follows the thought of Durkheim who used the concepts of organic and mechanical solidarity to e&plain social cohesion and stability. In a society characterised by mechanical solidarity, societies tend to be segmentary and are composed of e2uivalent parts that are held by shared values, common symbols or system of e&changes. On the other hand, modern societies which are characterised by organic solidarity, many parts are different but are held together to work as a whole. To ensure that social solidarity is made possible, functionalist argue that it is necessary that society establish certain social pre re2uisites 9social institutions: such as law, school, family, marriage, religion that will make it function properly. This is because these social institutions provide the norms and values that are necessary to make society remain in e2uilibrium. 5oreover, society is seen as a whole body which has different parts or institutions that are seen as coherent, bounded and interdependent, and these function like organisms and work together to maintain and reproduce social e2uilibrium. If ever, one part is affected, the whole system suffers. or e&le, if the family malfunctions, this can have a negative level on society as a whole and be felt in terms of crime, deviance, delin2uency or insubordination at school. 5erton 9EFBG: e&panded the understanding of social functions that society has some more obvious functions than others. Thus, he distinguished between manifest and latent functions. 5anifest functions are intended and recognised by people in society and latent functions are unintended and unrecognised 95acionis, HLLL:. n e&le to illustrate these functions is through the education system. 6hile the manifest functions of education is to provide skills, knowledge and abilities of citi)enry, it also creates differentiated achievement that leads to different social classes among members of society or keeping many young people out of the labour market. 0et, 5erton argued that such dysfunctions are necessary since these fulfill certain other pre re2uisites like maintaining social stratification system. Limittion* !owever, functionalism as a perspective has been criticised for emphasi)ing too much on value consensus and collective conscience which some theorists see as impediment to social progress and evolvement of new ideas. 1y over emphasi)ing on the fact that social institutions function to hold society together, the paradigm completely ignores that these can also be a source of tension and disorganisation and ine2ualities that cause conflicts. or instance, religion may not always Mglue* society together but be divisive. or instance, in India, 1osnia and 3orthern Ireland, religion is a source of conflict and tension. T#e socil1conflict t#eories see society as providing a setting that generates conflicts and change. In fact, this approach emphasi)es on ine2uality and look at the e&tent to which such factors as race, ethnicity, gender and age are linked to une2ual distribution of money, power, education and social prestige. 95acionis, HLLL:.

Thus, by reecting the fact that society functions to promote solidarity and social consensus, conflict theorists put forward that society is about competition for scarce resources. This competition is reflected in the social institutions themselves and allows some people and organisations to have more resources and maintain their power and influence in society. Taking the education system under the conflict views, it is argued that schooling can be held to reproduce ine2ualities that perpetuate themselves in the class structure from generation to generation. In other words, the desired labour force is prepared at school by transmitting values of the elites and that failure to conform leads to low achievement that create drop out who end up in low skilled obs and low wage. Thus, conflict theories try to show that ine2ualities in power and reward being built into all social structures create conflict of interests rather than adaptation and stability in society. 5ar&*s theory analysis of society from a materialist conception of history and its economic relationship also portrays the deep ine2ualities that e&ist within the capitalist society. The une2ual relationships between the bourgeoisie 9owners of production, ruling class, elite, capitalists: and the proletariat 9workers, subect class: become obvious with e&ploited labour and oppression and the bourgeoisie uses its economic power 9infrastructure: to control the other parts of the system 9 superstructure: like for e&le, education, religion, family, mass media and politics. Limittion* 'ocial conflict theorists fail to see the stabilities of societies although being prone to constant change. Over emphasi)ing on degree of conflict and instability, they also overlook the fact that social institutions can bring people out of disadvantages through social mobility, meritocracy and e2ual opportunities. 5oreover, they tend to ignore that shared values and interdependence can unify members of a society. S)m/olic interctionism is a theoretical approach in the aim of understanding the relationship between humans and society. or interactionists, human are portrayed as actors who interact in meaningful communication with each others. In fact, they are seen as superior to lower animals since they have cognitive abilities that can interrupt instinctive behaviours and conceive alternative responses to gestures and give meanings to them. 1eing also imbibed by phenomenological perspectives, symbolic interactionism e&plains that individuals make sense of their societal life by categorising it. Through language, signs, drawings, individuals distinguished between different types of obects, events or actions. Categorisation also shape types of behaviour and attaches them with reward or punishment. !owever, the process of categorisation may vary from group to group and society to society. In short, it is a subective process. Limittions* 1y denying the e&istence of macro level social structures such as the family, symbolic interactionism risk in overlooking important features like culture, class, gender and race. T!E ROLE OF CULTURE IN !U+AN ADAPTATION Culture Is Essentil for !umn A%pttion It is easy to underestimate the scope, sophistication, and importance of the pool of culturally transmitted information that supports human subsistence, even in what seem to be the ;simplest< foraging societies. The archaeological record makes it clear that modern humans adapted to life above the rctic Circle early in their e&pansion but tells us little about their way of life. !owever, ethnographic studies of the 3etsilik and Copper Inuit, collectively known as the Central Inuit, give us a sense of the comple&ity of the adaptations that allow foragers to thrive in the rctic. These people occupy a habitat that is harsh and unproductive, even by rctic standards. Their groups were small, and their lifeways were simple compared with foragers living on the coasts of laska and reenland. To focus your mind on the crucial adaptive challenges, imagine that you are marooned on a beach on the coast of Jing 6illiam Island 9N.FB3, F.F6:. It is 3ovember and it is very cold.

0our first problem is to stay warm. 5onthly average temperatures in the winter months are between HB PC and B PC. (ven well/acclimati)ed people rapidly succumb to hypothermia below E PC, so you need warm clothes. If there were no wind and you could remain motionless, a cloak would do, but this is a windy place and you need to hunt, so you will need well/tailored clothes 9G:. In the winter, the Central Inuit wore elaborately constructed parkas and pants 9EN:. The best were made from caribou skins harvested in the fall. Caribou skins insulate better than seal or polar bear fur because the individual hairs have an unusual air/filled structure, something like bubble wrap 9EG:. Caribou skins harvested in autumn have fur that is ust the right thickness. !ides were repeatedly stretched, scraped, moistened, and then stretched again to yield pliable skins 9E:. #arkas were assembled from multiple pieces to create a bell shape that captures heat, while also allowing moisture to dissipate when the hood is thrown back. !oods were ruffed with a strip of fur taken from a wolverine*s shoulders because its variable length makes it easier to clear the hoarfrost. 6inter footwear was constructed with many layers7 first the alirsiik, fur/lined caribou stockings, then the ilupir2uk, short lightweight stockings with the fur outside, then a pair of pinirait, heavier stockings with the fur to the outside, then kamiik, boots with the fur outside, and finally tu2tu2uti2, short heavy double/soled boots of caribou skin. Clothing was stitched together with fine thread made from sinew taken from around the vertebrae of caribou. The sinew had to be cleaned, scraped, shredded, and twisted to make thread. 'everal different kinds of stitches were used for  different kinds of seams.  complicated double stitch was used to make footwear waterproof. To make these stitches, Central Inuit women used fine bone needles that made holes that were smaller in diameter than the thread 9EN:. 3ot even the best clothing is enough to protect you from winter storms, so you need shelter. During the winter most Inuit lived in substantial driftwood and sod houses, but the Central Inuit wintered on the sea ice, living in snow houses. These round vaulted structures were Q m high, made of snow blocks cut with a serrated bone knife. The central room was built above a pit, with platforms for sleeping, and a long entrance tunnel below the level of the main room with several low doors to prevent heat loss. The walls were usually lined with skins suspended from toggles on the outside of the snow house. This design allowed the snow walls to stay near free)ing, while the inside of the snow house could reach temperatures of ELHL PC 9EF:. 0ou need a source of heat and light in your snow house, for cooking and for melting sea ice for water. 0ou cannot use wood fires because there are no trees. Instead, rctic peoples carved lamps from soap stone and fueled them with rendered seal fat. These lamps were made from oblong stones between L cm and E m long8 a shallow, sharp/sided depression was carved from the surface of the stone, and the lamp was e2uipped with a long, curtain/like wick made of moss.  well/managed lamp burned without producing any soot 9EN:. 0ou also need food. #lants are easy to gather, but for most of the year this is not an option in the rctic. During the winter, the Central Inuit hunted seals, mainly by ambushing them at their breathing holes. 6hen the sea ice begins to free)e, seals claw a number of breathing holes in the ice within their home ranges. s the ice thickens, they maintain these openings, which form conical chambers under the ice. The Inuit camped in snowy spots near the seals4 breathing holes. The ice must be covered with snow to prevent the seals from hearing the hunters4 footsteps and evading them. Inuit hunted in teams, monitoring as many holes as possible. The primary tool was a harpoon appro&imately E.B m long. 1oth the main shaft and foreshaft were carved from antler. On the tip was a detachable toggle harpoon head connected to a heavy braided sinew line. The other end of the harpoon was made from polar bear bone honed to a sharp point. t each hole, the hunter opened the hard icy covering using the end of the harpoon, smelled the interior to make sure it was still in use, and then used a long, thin, curved piece of caribou antler with a rounded nob on one end to investigate the chamber*s shape and plan his thrust. The hunter carefully covered most of the hole with snow and tethered a bit of down over the remaining opening. Then, the hunter waited motionless in the frigid darkness, sometimes for hours. 6hen the seal*s arrival disturbed the down, the hunter struck downward with all his weight. If he speared the seal, he held fast to the line connected to his harpoon*s point8 the seal soon tired and could be hauled onto the ice 9HL:.

During the high summer, the Central Inuit used the leister, a special three/pronged spear with a sharp central spike and two hinged, backward/facing points, to harvest rctic char in large numbers. -ater in summer and the fall, they shifted to caribou hunting. On land, caribou were mainly stalked or driven into ambush, and kills had to be made from a substantial distance. This re2uired a bow with the power to propel a heavy arrow at high velocity. The simplest way to accomplish this is to make a long bow using a dense elastic wood like yew or osage orange, a design common in 'outh merica, (astern 3orth merica, frica, and (urope. This solution was not available to the Inuit, who had only driftwood 9mainly spruce:, horn, and antler available. Instead, they made short bows and used every bowyer*s trick to increase their power.  bow can be made more powerful by adding wood to the limbs. !owever, making the bow thicker increases the stress within the bow, leading to catastrophic and dangerous failure. This problem is e&acerbated in short bows because the curvature is greater. Instead, the Inuit made bows that were thin front to back, wide near the center, and tapering toward the tips. These bows were also recurved, meaning that the unbraced bow formed a backward ;C< shape. 1racing the bow leads to a compound curve, a geometry that stores more potential energy. inally, the Inuit constructed a uni2ue form of composite bow. 6hen a bow is bent, the back 9the side away from the archer: is stretched, whereas the belly 9the side closer to the archer: is compressed. 6ood, horn, and antler are stronger in compression than tension, so the ability of a bow to sustain strong bending forces can be enhanced by adding a material that is strong in tension to the back of the bow. In central sia and western 3orth merica, sinew was glued to the back of the bow to strengthen short bows for use on horseback. The Inuit lashed a woven web of sinew to the backs of their bows, probably because they had no glues that would work in the moist, cold conditions of the arctic 9HE:. This sampler of Inuit lifeways represents only a tiny fraction of the immense amount of habitat/specific knowledge that is necessary for humans to survive and prosper in the Central rctic. To stay warm and get enough to eat, you have to know how to make and use clothes, snow houses, lamps, harpoons, leisters, and bows. 6e have omitted other crucial tools like kayaks, dog sleds, and sun goggles, and of course, we have had to omit most of the details necessary to make and use the tools we did mention. 5oreover, there is still much more you have to know to stay alive. #redicting storms, understanding the habits of game species, making baskets, building sledges, and managing dogs?all re2uire e&tensive knowledge. Traveling on ice is essential, but also treacherous, and there is much to know about how the current temperature, recent weather, and the color and te&ture of the ice tell you where and when it is safe to travel. @3elson 9HH: devotes four chapters to ice lore in his book on hunting among the Inupia2 of northern laska.A 'o, here is the 2uestion7 do you think that you could ac2uire all of the local knowledge necessary to survive in the arctic on your own+ If superior cognitive ability alone is what allows humans to adapt to diverse habitats, then it should be possible. 5oreover, to a first appro&imation, this is the only way that other animals have to learn about their environments?they must rely mainly on innate information and individual e&perience to figure out how to find food, build shelters, and in some cases to make tools. It is true that some species have simple traditions, probably maintained by learning mechanisms like stimulus enhancement and emulation. !owever, in every case, the traditions involve behaviors that individuals can and do learn on their own, or combine a handful of elements learned by multiple individuals 9H:. There are no convincing e&les in which social learning allows the gradual cumulative cultural evolution of comple&, locally adaptive behaviors that individuals could not learn on their own. Coul% )ou m0e it$ "e %on2t t#in0 so3 Two different kinds of natural e&periments support the intuition that forager adaptations are beyond the inventive capacities of individuals. The first, which might be called ;the lost (uropean e&plorer e&periment,< has been repeated many times during the past several centuries. Typically some e&plorers get stranded in an unfamiliar habitat in which an indigenous population is flourishing. Despite desperate efforts and ample learning time, the e&plorers die or suffer terribly owing to the lack of crucial information about how to adapt to the habitat. If they survive, it is often due to the hospitality of the indigenous population. The ranklin

(&pedition of ERBSERN provides a good e&le 9HR:. 'ir $ohn ranklin, a ellow of the oyal 'ociety and an e&perienced rctic traveler, set out with two ships to e&plore the northern coast of 3orth merica and find the 3orth 6est #assage. It was the best/e2uipped e&pedition in the history of 1ritish polar e&ploration, furnished with an e&tensive library, manned by a select crew, and stocked with a /y supply of food. The e&pedition spent the winter of ERN at Jing 6illiam Island, where it became trapped in the ice. 6hen food ran short, the e&plorers abandoned their ships and attempted to escape on foot. (veryone eventually perished from starvation and scurvy, perhaps e&acerbated by lead poisoning from their tinned food. Jing 6illiam Island is the heart of 3etsilik territory, and the 3etsilik have lived there for almost a millennium. Jing 6illiam Island is rich in animal resources?the main harbor is named >2su2tuu2 which means ;lots of fat.< The 1ritish sailors starved because they did not have the necessary local knowledge and, despite being endowed with the same improvisational intelligence as the Inuit and having H y to use this intelligence, failed to learn the skills necessary to subsist in this habitat. Interestingly, the 3orwegian e&plorer oald mundsen spent two winters on Jing 6illiam Island in EFLEFLR. mundsen sought out the 3etsilik and learned from them how to make skin clothing, hunt seals, and manage dog sleds. !e and his crew survived and completed the first successful traverse of the 3orthwest #assage. -ater he would put these Inuit skills to good use in his race with 'cott to the 'outh #ole. esults from this lost (uropean e&plorer e&periment, and many others, suggest that intelligence alone is not enough. or a similar discussion of the ill/fated 1urke and 6ills e&pedition into the ustralian outback, see ref. HB.   second line of evidence comes from the loss of beneficial technologies in small, isolated populations. or instance, the Tasmanian tool kit gradually lost comple&ity after isolation from mainland ustralia at the end of the !olocene 9HN:. Other #acific island groups have apparently lost useful technologies, such as canoes, pottery, and the bow and arrow 9HG:. The best documented e&le comes from the isolated #olar Inuit of northwest reenland. (&plorers (lisha Jane and Isaac !ayes wintered with the #olar Inuit in EB and ENE, respectively, and reported that the #olar Inuit lacked kayaks, leisters, and bows and arrows and that their snow houses did not have the long heat/saving entryways that were seen among other Inuit populations. They could not hunt caribou, could only hunt seals during part of the year, and were unable to harvest arctic char efficiently, although char were plentiful in local streams 9H:. pparently the population was struck by an epidemic in the EHLs that carried away the older, knowledgeable members of the group, and according to custom, their possessions had to be buried with them 9HF:. The #olar Inuit lived without these tools until about ENH, when they were visited by a group of Inuit who migrated to reenland from 1affin Island 9H, HF:. There is every reason to believe that these tools would have been useful between EHL and ENH. The #olar Inuit population declined during this period, and the tools were immediately adopted once they were reintroduced.  fter their introduction, population si)e increased. It is also telling that the kayaks used by the #olar Inuit around the turn of the century closely resemble the large, beamy kayaks used by 1affin Island Inuit and not the small sleek kayaks of the 6est reenland Inuit. Over the ne&t half century the #olar Inuit kayak design converged back to the 6est reenland design 9L:. If this inference is correct it means that for RL years 9nearly two generations: the #olar Inuit could have benefitted from the lost knowledge. 5oreover, they collectively remembered kayaks, leisters, and bows and arrows, but did not know how to make them and could not recreate that knowledge. Culturl A%pttion Is  Popultion Process 6e think that this body of evidence rules out the idea that superior cognitive ability alone e&plains human adaptability8 the ability to cumulatively learn from others must play a crucial role. lthough advocates of the cognitive niche hypothesis focus on cognition, they do not ignore social learning. They argue that the ability to learn from others reduces the average cost of ac2uiring locally adaptive information. or e&le, 1arrett et al. 9E: write7

Cognitive mechanisms underlying cultural transmission coevolved with improvisational intelligence, distributing the costs of the ac2uisition of nonrivalrous information over a much greater number of individuals, and allowing its cost to be amorti)ed over a much greater number of advantageous events and generations. >nlike other species, cultural transmission in humans results in a ratchet/like accumulation of knowledge. 9p HRR: On the surface this seems to be a logical argument. It may be costly for individuals using improvisational intelligence to discover locally adaptive information, but once it is ac2uired, others can get it by teaching or imitation at relatively low cost. s a result, social learning acts to spread the cost of innovations over all who benefit. Innovations accumulate, leading to an accumulation of knowledge. !owever, this reasoning is mistaken. It is probably true that learning from others either by teaching or imitation is usually cheaper than learning on your own. It is like cheating on a test7 you do as well as the person you copy from but avoid all that tedious studying. !owever, evolutionary models show that if this is the only benefit of social learning, there will be no increase in the ability of the population to adapt 9E ⇓⇓ SR:. This surprising result emerges from the coevolutionary processes that affect the kinds of behaviors that are available to imitate and the psychology that controls learning and imitation. These evolutionary models of social learning rest on two assumptions. irst, the propensities to learn and to imitate are part of an evolved psychology shaped by natural selection. This means that the balance between learning and imitating will be governed by the relative fitness of the two modes of behavior?the average fitness of the population is irrelevant. 6hen few individuals imitate, imitators will ac2uire the locally adaptive behavior with the same probability as individual learners. 1ecause they do not pay the cost of learning, imitators have higher fitness, and the propensity to imitate spreads. s the number of imitators increases, some imitate individuals who imitated other individuals, who imitated other individuals, and so on until the chain is rooted in someone who e&tracted the information from the environment. s the fraction of imitators in the population increases, these chains e&tend further. The second assumption is that the environment varies in time or space. This means that as chains of imitation get longer, there is a greater chance that the learner who roots the chain learned in a different environment than the current environment, either because the environment has changed since then or because someone along the chain migrated from a different environment. The upshot is that on average imitators will be less likely to ac2uire the locally adaptive behavior than learners. The propensity to imitate will continue to increase until this reduction in fitness e&actly balances the benefit of avoiding the costs of learning. t evolutionary e2uilibrium, the population has the same average fitness as a population without any imitation. There will be no increase in the ability to adapt to varying environments, and cumulative cultural adaptation will not occur.  lthough this treatment is very simple, the basic result holds in more realistic models. The primary insight that emerges from these models is that imitation is a form of free riding?imitators scrounge information without producing anything of value. ree riders increase until they destroy the benefits of free riding. ealistic levels of  relatedness among models and imitators do not 2ualitatively change the result 9R:. The advocates of the cognitive niche hypothesis err because they take it as unproblematic that once a beneficial innovation arises, it will spread, and as a result, the capacities for imitation will be favored by selection. !owever, to understand the evolution of social learning psychology you have to know what is available to learn, and this in turn is affected by the nature of the learning psychology. If imitators are simply information scroungers, then they will spread until selection no longer favors imitation. Thinking about the coevolution of the cultural pool of observable behavior and the genes that control the individual and cultural learning suggests that cultural learning can increase average fitness only if it increases the ability of the population to create adaptive information 9H:. The propensity to imitate evolves because it is directly beneficial to the individual, but it may, nonetheless, also benefit the population as a side effect. 6e have thought of three ways in which this could happen. irst, cultural learning can allow individuals to learn selectively?using environmental cues when they provide clear guidance and learning from others when they

do not. 'econd, cultural learning allows the gradual accumulation of small improvements, and if small improvements are cheaper than big ones, cultural learning can reduce the population*s learning costs. inally, by comparing ;teachers< and learning selectively from those that seem most successful, ;pupils< can ac2uire adaptive information without making any inferences based on environmental cues. If individuals ac2uire information from multiple teachers and recombine this information, this process can create comple& cultural adaptations without any intelligence, save that re2uired to distinguish among more/ and less/successful teachers. The ability to learn or imitate selectively is advantageous because opportunities to learn from e&perience or by observation of the world vary. or e&le, a rare chance observation might allow a hunter to associate a particular spoor with a wounded polar bear, or to link the color and te&ture of ice with its stability on windy days  ust after a thaw. 'uch rare cues allow accurate low/cost inferences about the environment. !owever, most individuals will not observe these cues, and thus making the same inference will be much more difficult for them. Organisms that cannot imitate must rely on individual learning, even when it is difficult and error prone. They are stuck with whatever information that nature offers. In contrast, an organism capable of cultural learning can afford to be choosy, learning individually when it is cheap and accurate, and relying on cultural learning when environmental information is costly or inaccurate. 6e have shown 9H, B: that selection can lead to a psychology that causes most individuals to rely on cultural learning most of the time, and also simultaneously increases the average fitness of the population relative to the fitness of a population that does not rely on cultural information. These models assume that our learning psychology has a genetically heritable ;information 2uality threshold< that governs whether an individual relies on inferences from environmental cues or learns from others. Individuals with a low information 2uality threshold rely on even poor cues, whereas individuals with a high threshold usually imitate. s the mean information 2uality threshold in the population increases, the fitness of learners increases because they are more likely to make accurate or low/cost inferences. t the same time, the fre2uency of imitators also increases. s a conse2uence, the population does not keep up with environmental changes as well as a population of individual learners. (ventually, an e2uilibrium emerges in which individuals deploy both individual and cultural learning in an optimal mi&. t this e2uilibrium, the average fitness of the population is higher than in an ancestral population lacking cultural learning. 6hen most individuals in the population observe accurate environmental cues, the e2uilibrium threshold is low, individual learning predominates, and culture plays little role. !owever, when it is usually difficult for people to learn individually, the e2uilibrium threshold is high, and most imitate, even when the environmental cues that they do observe indicate a different behavior than the one they ac2uire by cultural learning. 6e take the evidence on Inuit adaptations as indicating that many of the problems that faced the Inuit are far too difficult for most individuals to solve. s a result, we interpret this logic as predicting that selection should have favored a psychology that causes individuals to rely heavily on cultural learning. The ability to learn culturally can also raise the average fitness of a population by allowing ac2uired improvements to accumulate from one generation to the ne&t. 5any kinds of traits admit successive improvements toward some optimum. 1ows vary in many dimensions that affect performance?such as length, width, cross section, taper, and degree of recurve. It is typically more difficult to make large improvements by trial and error than small ones for the same reasons that isher 9N: identified in his ;geometric model< of genetic adaptation. In a small neighborhood in design space, the performance surface is appro&imately flat, so that even if small changes are made at random, half of them will increase the payoff 9unless the design is already at the optimum:. -arge changes will improve things only if they are in the small cone that includes the distant optimum. Thus, we e&pect it to be much harder to design a useful bow from scratch than to tinker with the dimensions of a reasonably good bow. 3ow, imagine that the environment varies, so that different bows are optimal in different environments, perhaps because the kind of wood available varies. 'ometimes a long bow with a round cross section is best, other times a short flat wide bow is best. Organisms that cannot imitate must start with whatever initial guess is provided by their genotype. Over their lifetimes, they can learn and improve their bow. !owever, when they die these improvements disappear with them, and their offspring must begin

again at the genetically inherited initial guess. In contrast, cultural species can learn how to make bows from others after these have been improved by e&perience. Therefore, cultural learners start their search closer to the best design than pure individual learners and can invest in further improvements. Then, they can transmit those improvements to the grandkids, and so on down through the generations until 2uite sophisticated artifacts evolve. !istorians of technology have demonstrated how this step/by/step improvement gradually diversifies and improves tools and other artifacts 9G, :. (ven ;great insights< often result from lucky accidents or the recombination of elements from different technological traditions rather than the work of a creative genius who buckles down and racks his brain 9F, RL:. The evolution of kayak keels by 6est reenland Inuit provides an instructive e&le of how innovations arise and spread 9RE:. 6hen hunting marine mammals from a kayak, Inuit hunters always paddled their kayak hard toward the prey, then picked up their harpoon and hurled it directly over the bow. This increased the momentum transferred to the harpoon and prevented capsi)ing. 6hen firearms first spread in 6est reenland, the Inuit found that they could not pick up and aim their guns before the kayak veered off course, and thus could only use them from land or ice floes. In EHR, a prominent Inuit hunter named $ens eimer began to e&periment with methods to stabili)e kayaks for firearm use. !e tried trailing a line behind the kayak, but this did not work. !e then fastened a partially submerged wooden plate to the kayak*s stern, in imitation of the rudders of (uropean ships. This did not work very well either?it was noisy, and the fastenings tended to fail. 3onetheless, a number of younger hunters imitated eimer, perhaps owing to his local success and prestige. They were not able to produce a 2uality ayt 9the reenlandic word for both a ship*s rudder and a kayak keel:, and out of ;bashfulness< 9RE, p HG: hid their crude rudders under the waterline. They soon discovered that this unintentional innovation allowed them to use guns from their kayaks, and over the ne&t BL y the ayt underwent a series of further small improvements, eventually creating the modern form. inally, if learners can compare the success of individuals modeling different behaviors, then a propensity to imitate the successful can lead to the spread of traits that are correlated with success, even though imitators have no causal understanding of the connection. This is obvious when the scope of traits being compared is narrow. 0ou see that your uncle*s bow shoots farther than yours and notice that it is thicker, but less tapered, and uses a different plait for attaching the sinew. 0ou copy all three traits, even though in reality it was ust the plaiting that made the difference. s long as there is a reliable statistical correlation between plaiting and power, plaiting form trait will change so as to increase power. Causal understanding is helpful because it permits the e&clusion of irrelevant traits like the bow*s color. !owever, causal understanding need not be very precise as long as the correlation is reliable. Copying irrelevant traits like thickness or color will only add noise to the process. 1y recombining different components of technology from different but still successful individuals, copiers can produce both novel and increasingly adaptive tools and techni2ues over generations, without any improvisational insights. n Inuit might copy the bow design from the best bowyer in his community but adopt the sinew plaiting used by the best hunter in a neighboring community. The result could be a better bow than anyone made in the previous generation without anyone inventing anything new. Consistent with this, laboratory and field evidence suggests that both children and adults are predisposed to copy a wide range of traits from successful or prestigious people 9RH:. dvertisers clearly know this. fter all, what does 5ichael $ordan really know about underwear+ ecent work in developmental psychology shows that young children readily attend to cues of reliability, success, confidence, and attention when choosing who to learn from 9R, RR:. (ven infants selectively attend to knowledgeable adults rather than their own mothers in novel situations 9RB:. This feature of our cultural learning psychology fits a priori evolutionary predictions, emerges spontaneously in e&periments, develops early without instruction, and operates largely outside conscious awareness. These models predict that an adaptive evolved psychology will often cause individuals to ac2uire the behaviors they observe used by in others even though inferences based on environmental cues suggest that alternative behaviors would be better. In a species capable of ac2uiring behavior by teaching or imitation, individuals are

e&posed to two different kinds of cues that they can use to solve local adaptive problems. -ike any other organism, they can make inferences based on cues from the environment. !owever, they also observe the behaviors of a sample of their population. 6hen most individuals can solve the adaptive problem using environmental cues alone, the models predict that an optimal learning psychology will result in social learning playing a significant but relatively modest role. 5any people will rely on their own inferences, but some will copy to avoid learning costs. !owever, often only a minority will be able to solve the adaptive problem on the basis of environmental cues alone, because the appropriate environmental cues are rare or the adaptive problem is too comple&. Then, if the environment is not too variable, an adaptive psychology will evolve in which most people ignore environmental cues and adopt behaviors that are common in the sample of the population they observe. They modify these behaviors rarely, or only at the margin, and as a result local adaptations evolve gradually often over many generations. E4i%ence for Culturl A%pttion The cultural niche hypothesis and the cognitive niche hypothesis make sharply different predictions about how local adaptations are ac2uired and understood. The cognitive niche hypothesis posits that technologies are adaptive because improvisational intelligence allows some individuals to figure out how they work and why they are better than alternatives. These ac2uired understandings of the world are then shared, allowing others to ac2uire the same causal understanding without costly individual investigation. In contrast, we argue that cultural evolution operating over generations has gradually accumulated and recombined adaptive elements, eventually creating adaptive packages beyond the causal understanding of the individuals who use them. In some cases elements of causal understanding may be passed along, but this is not necessary. Often individuals will have no idea why certain elements are included in a design, nor any notion of whether alternative designs would be better. 6e e&pect cultural learners to first ac2uire the local practices and occasionally e&periment or modify them. t times this will mean that cultural learning will overrule their direct e&perience, evolved motivations, or reliably developing intuitions. Se4erl lines of e4i%ence support t#e culturl lernin' #)pot#esis3 The anthropological literature on child development 9RN ⇓ SR: indicates that children and adolescents ac2uire most of their cultural information by learning from older individuals who typically discourage 2uestions from young learners and rarely provide causal e&planations of their behavior. Jids practice adult behaviors, often using toy versions of adult tools, during mi&ed/age play, and little e&perimentation is observed, e&cept that necessary to master the adult repertoire 9RF, BL:. The reliance of young learners on carefully observing and imitating the local repertoires revealed in the anthropological record converges with recent e&periments on imitation 9BE, BH:. In these e&periments, an adult performs a behavior like opening a comple& pu))le bo& to get a reward. The adult*s behavior includes both necessary and unnecessary actions.  subect, either a child or a chimpan)ee, observes the behavior. Children*s performance on such tasks in both western and small/scale societies differs in important ways from that of chimpan)ees. Children accurately copy all steps, including steps that direct visual inspection would suggest are unnecessary. Children seem to implicitly assume that if the model performed an action, it was probably important, even if they do not understand why. Chimpan)ees do not seem to make this assumption8 they mainly skip the unnecessary steps, leading them to develop more efficient repertoires than children 9B: in these e&perimental settings. 5any e&les indicate that people often do not understand how adaptive practices work or why they are effective. or e&le, in the 3ew 6orld, the traditional use of chili peppers in meat recipes likely protected people from food/borne pathogens 9BR:. This use of chili peppers is particularly interesting because they are inherently unpalatable. #eppers contain capsaicin, a chemical defense evolved in the genus Capsicum to prevent mammals 9especially rodents: from eating their fruits. 3onhuman primates and human infants find

peppers aversive because capsaicin stimulates pain receptors in the mouth. (fforts to inculcate a taste for chilies in rats using reinforcement procedures have failed 9BB:. !owever, human food preferences are heavily influenced by the preferences of those around us 9BN:, so we overcome our innate aversion and actually learn to enoy chilies. #sychological research indicates that people do not get accustomed to the chemical burning sensation. Instead, observational learning leads people to reinterpret their pain as pleasure or e&citement 9BG:. 'o, 3ew 6orld peoples learned to appropriately use and enoy chili peppers without understanding their antimicrobial properties, and to do this they had to overcome an instinctive aversion that we share with other mammals. iian food taboos provide another e&le of this process. 5any marine species in the iian diet contain to&ins, which are particularly dangerous for pregnant women and perhaps nursing infants. ood taboos targeting these species during pregnancy and lactation prohibit women from eating these species and reduce the incidence of fish poisoning during this period. lthough women in these communities all share the same food taboos, they offer 2uite different causal e&planations for them, and little information is e&changed among women save for the taboos themselves 9B:. The taboos are learned and are not related to pregnancy sickness aversions. nalyses of the transmission pathways for these taboos indicate the adaptive pattern is sustained by selective learning from prestigious women. Culture n% +l%pttion Cultural adaptation comes with a built/in tradeoff. The cumulative cultural evolution of comple&, hard/to/learn adaptations re2uires individuals to adopt the behavior of those around them even if it conflicts with their own inferences. !owever, this same propensity will cause individuals to ac2uire any common behavior as long as it is not clearly contradicted by their own inferences. This means that if there are cognitive or social processes that make maladaptive ideas common, and these ideas are not patently false or harmful, people will adopt these ideas as well. 5oreover, it is clear that several such processes e&ist. !ere are a couple of e&les. or  a longer discussion, see ref. EL. 6eak Cognitive 1iases Can avor the 'pread of 5aladaptive 1eliefs or #ractices over enerations. -aboratory diffusion chain studies clearly document that biases that have undetectable effects on individual decisions can have very strong effects when iterated over ;generations< in the laboratory 9BF:. The same effect may lead to the spread of false beliefs in natural populations. or e&le, 1oyer 9NL: argues that a number of  cognitive biases e&plain the spread of supernatural beliefs and account for the widespread occurrence of folktales about ghosts and )ombies.  daptive 'ocial -earning 1iases Can -ead to 5aladaptive Outcomes.  model*s attributes provide indirect evidence about whether it is useful to imitate her. If she is successful, then by imitating her you can increase your chances of ac2uiring traits that gave rise to her success. If she is more similar to you than alternative models, her behavior may work better in your situation. If her behavior is more common than alternatives, then it is likely to be adaptive because learning increases the fre2uency of adaptive behaviors. n evolved cultural learning psychology that incorporates such biases increases the chance of ac2uiring beneficial beliefs and behaviors. !owever, these same biases can sometimes lead to the spread of maladaptive beliefs and practices. or e&le, the tendency to imitate the prestigious, or those making credibility/enhancing displays of commitment, can lead to a ;runaway< process analogous to se&ual selection 9EL:, and this may e&plain the cultural evolution of maladaptive cultural systems in which people risk life and limb to summit icy peaks or achieve spiritual perfection in celibate seclusion 9NE:.

Culture Is Prt of !umn 5iolo') n% !s Profoun%l) S#pe% !umn E4olution

6e have recounted two contrasting accounts of the nature and origins of human uni2ueness. On the one hand, there is a widespread view is that people are like other mammals, ust a lot smarter?in essence, we are brainy, hairless chimpan)ees. 6e have a uni2uely fle&ible cognitive system that lets us make causal inferences in a wide range of environments and use that information to create much better tools, and these differences have allowed us spread across the world, dominating the world*s biota like no other creature. 1y contrast, we argue that individuals are not nearly smart enough to solve the myriad adaptive problems they face in any of their many habitats. (ven e&perts lack a detailed causal understanding of the tools and techni2ues that permit them to survive. !igh/fidelity cultural learning allows human populations to solve these problems because it allows selective learning and the accumulation of small improvements over time. Of course, sophisticated, fle&ible cognition is important too. !owever, the degree of cognitive fle&ibility varies widely in nature?chimpan)ees can solve problems that baffle monkeys, and monkeys are geniuses compared with opossums. 3onetheless, no species occupies as wide a range of habitats as !omo sapiens. In contrast, there is a sharp break between human cultural learning capacities and those of even our closest relatives. s a result, it is more apt to think of humans occupying a cultural niche than a cognitive niche. The evolution of the psychological capacities that give rise to cumulative cultural evolution is one of the key events in our evolutionary history. The availability of large amounts of valuable cultural information would have favored the evolution of bigger brains e2uipped to ac2uire, store, organi)e, and retrieve cultural information, a fact that may e&plain the rapid increase in human encephali)ation over the last BLL,LLL y and the evolution of speciali)ed cognitive abilities that emerge early in life, such as theory of mind, selective social referencing 9RB:, overimitation 9BH:, a functional understanding of artifacts 9NH:, and the use of ta&onomic inheritance and category/based induction for living kinds 9N:. The presence of culturally evolved techni2ues and products? such as fire, cooking, weapons, and tools?created new selection pressures acting on our bones, muscles, teeth, and guts 9F:. Culture has opened up a vast range of evolutionary vistas not available to noncultural species. 3onetheless, culture is as much a part of human biology as our peculiar pelvis. This approach contrasts with the common view that culture and biology are in a tug/of/war for control of human behavior. This common view probably taps into a deep vein of 6estern thought, which itself may be the result of evolved cognitive biases 9NR:, but it makes little sense. The ancestral condition in the human lineage is a psychology that does not permit cumulative cultural evolution. Despite earnest efforts, chimpan)ees cannot be sociali)ed to become humans and have little or no cumulative cultural evolution. 1eginning early in human ontogeny, our psychology allows us to learn from others, powerfully and unconsciously motivates us to do so, and shapes the kind of traits that evolve. 'o it does not make sense to ask, does culture overcome biology+ The right 2uestion to ask is, how do genetic and cultural inheritance interact to produce the observed patterns of human psychology and behavior 9NB:+ PROCESSES OF CULTURAL AND SOCIOPOLITICAL EOLUTION CULTURAL EOLUTION Theories of cultural evolution need to be distinguished from theories within evolutionary psychology, even though both may involve an application of evolutionary ideas to the e&planation of cultural phenomena. The evolutionary psychologist 9e.g. Tooby and Cosmides EFFH: tends to assume that the most important inheritance mechanism in all species?our own included?is genetic inheritance. (volutionary psychology regards the human mind as evolving through a conventional process of natural selection acting on genetically inherited variation. or e&le, an evolutionary psychologist might e&plain the widespread taste among humans for fatty foods in terms of the importance in our species* distant past of consuming as much fat as possible on those rare occasions when the circumstances presented themselves. 'uch a hypothesis can also help to e&plain novel cultural trends7 the recent increase in obesity is e&plained as the result of a novel

environmental change?the increased availability of cheap, high/fat foods?acting in concert with a once/ adaptive, now dangerous, gustatory preference. Darwin believed, as do biologists today, that natural selection can e&plain the origin of many comple& adaptive traits. In Darwin*s original presentation of natural selection, he re2uires that parent organisms differ in their abilities to survive and reproduce, and that offspring resemble their parents in terms of the traits that promote or inhibit these abilities 9Darwin EBF:. This e&planatory schema is largely neutral regarding what mechanism accounts for parent/offspring resemblance. or e&le, offspring might learn skills from their parents, and thereby come to resemble them behaviourally. rom the perspective of natural selection e&planations, it does not matter why offspring resemble parents, only that they do resemble them. Darwin*s theory of natural selection e&plains adaptation by appealing to what we now call vertical transmission ?the inheritance of parental traits by offspring. s we have seen, cultural processes such as learning might, in principle, underpin this form of inheritance. 1ut we do not learn only from our parents?we also learn from peers, authority/figures and so forth. This is known asobli2ue transmission. Once we acknowledge the possibility that learning can underpin natural selection, we also acknowledge that a theory of evolution?a theory which seeks to e&plain change, including adaptive change in a population?may also need to be further e&panded to encompass obli2ue transmission. The admittance of obli2ue transmission into evolutionary theory necessitates far more radical revisions to traditional Darwinian models of evolution. This is because obli2ue transmission opens up the possibility that some traits may spread through a population in spite of the fact that they reduce the fitness of the individuals who bear them. SOCIOPOLITICAL EOLUTION 67 E4olutionr) se8uences   key feature of 'pencerian hypotheses is that changes in human socio/political organi)ation follow evolutionary se2uences 9e.g. 1and, Tribe, Chiefdom and 'tate discussed earlier:. 'uch classificatory schemes contain two logically distinct elements7 9i: societies are grouped together based on observed similarities in the way they are organi)ed, 9ii: the categories are arranged on a scale of comple&ity with societies hypothesi)ed to pass through adacent stages of organi)ation in the direction of increasing socio/political comple&ity. Therefore, it is perfectly possible to classify societies according to some criteria without this classification representing an evolutionary se2uence, and societies could evolve without having to pass through the same stages in the same order. or our present purposes we can classify political organi)ation into four categories of increasing comple&ity based on the number of hierarchical decision/making levels in a society. cephalous societies are organi)ed politically only at the level of the local community 9e.g. the village:. 'imple Chiefdoms have one permanent level of leadership uniting several villages, while Comple& Chiefdoms have two levels. 'ocieties with more than two hierarchical decision/making levels above the local community are labelled M'tates4 9see electronic supplementary material:. 6hether this classification does in fact represent an evolutionary se2uence is an empirical 2uestion on which suitable lines of evidence must be brought to bear. #C5s can be used to e&amine the support for evolutionary se2uences, and are commonly used to address 2uestions about evolutionary pathways in biological evolution 9e.g. the evolution of Carnivore social systems. 6e have previously evaluated si& different models of the evolution of political organi)ation 9 figure H:, which are derived from discussions in the literature. Three of these models reflect the 'pencerian hypothesis that change in political organi)ation has been se2uential in the direction of increasing hierarchical comple&ity 9i.e. the transitions cephalous society to 'imple Chiefdom, 'imple Chiefdom to Comple& Chiefdom, Comple& Chiefdom to 'tate have occurred, but the larger, direct increases cephalous society to Comple& Chiefdom,  cephalous society to 'tate and 'imple Chiefdom to 'tate have not:. The (CTI-I3( model reflects the idea that only se2uential increases in comple&ity can occur. This view is often attributed to the classical evolutionists such as 'pencer and 5organ. 6e also specified two models in which increases are se2uential

but decreases are also possible. In the >3I-I3( model, decreases occur only to adacent levels of comple&ity, while in the (-U(D >3I-I3( model, decreases can occur to any lower level. In contrast, in the other three models increasing political comple&ity does not follow a regular se2uence. 6e specified two models based on the idea that different forms or organi)ation have developed along separate evolutionary pathways having evolved from an acephalous form of organi)ation7 -T(3TIK( T$(CTOI(' 9only increases possible: and -T(3TIK( T$(CTOI(' 9(K('I1-(: 9decreases also possible:. inally, in the >-- model any change is possible, representing the idea that political organi)ation has been completely unconstrained.

igure H. 'upport for different models of political evolution based on the kaike Information Criterion 9IC: 9(C, ectilinear8 >3I, >nilinear8 >, ela&ed >nilinear8 >--, ull model8 T9:, lternative Traectories 9eversible:: 9adapted from Currie et al. @ ...  nalyses show the >3I-I3( model to be the best supported, closely followed by the (-U(D >3I-I3( model 9table E:. The >-- model and the reversible version of the -T(3TIK( T$(CTOI(' model are less well supported, while those models that do not allow declines in political comple&ity 9i.e. (CTI-I3( and non/reversible -T(3TIK( T$(CTOI(' model: are even poorer fits to the data. Overall, the analyses provide strong support for the type of se2uences of political evolution that have formed a core feature of the 'pencerian hypotheses of cultural evolution. Importantly, they highlight that change has not always been in the direction of increasing comple&ity. 6hether increases in comple&ity have been more common than decreases is dealt with in the ne&t section.

Table E. #ercentage of 'tochastic Character 5appings in which increases or decreases in comple&ity are more common, and comparisons of inferred number of changes between different forms of organi)ation using paired sample t/tests 9d.f. V FF FF:. In all comparisons, 6/7 Direction of e4olution  nother defining feature of the 'pencerian hypotheses is that there is a direction to cultural evolution, i.e. the comple&ity of socio/political organi)ation increases over time. That the archaeological record indicates an overall increase in comple&ity since the end of the last ice age is not in dispute. 0et, the archaeological and

historical records also indicate periods when societies have decreased in comple&ity, which is supported by the findings described in WHa, and it is unclear if increases have generally been more common than decreases.  dditionally, it is important to understand how such a macro/evolutionary trend can arise if cultural evolution, like biological evolution, is not goal directed.  lthough 'pencerian cultural evolutionary theories have been characteri)ed as assuming that increases in comple&ity have dominated, there has, in fact, been a lack of consensus on this issue. or e&le, Tylor proposed that human history Mis not the history of a course of degeneration, or even of e2ual oscillations to and fro, but of a movement which, in spite of fre2uent stops and relapses, has on the whole been forward4 9Tylor EGL, p. EF cited in @ E, p. HA:, while 'pencer argued that Mthe theory of progression, in its ordinary form, seems to me to be untenableXIt is possible, and, I believe, probable, that retrogression has been as fre2uent as progression4 9'pencer EFL, p. F, cited in @ E, p. HGA:. 5ore recently, Diamond states that increasing comple&ity is Mno more than an average long/term trend, with innumerable shifts in either direction7 ELLL amalgamations for FFF reversals4 @ N, p. HEA. icherson Y 1oyd, while acknowledging that decreases in comple&ity can and have occurred, clearly see increases in comple&ity as more common, arguing that comple& social organi)ation is compulsory in the long run, owing to the competitive advantage that societies hold in competition between groups. Despite the fact that biological evolution is not goal/directed, there are a number of large/scale trends that can be witnessed over evolutionary time.  trend here is defined as a directional shift in a measurement value of some attribute over time 9e.g. the e&treme of a distribution, or a measure of its central tendency:. 'ome trends are present only in certain clades and over certain time scales, while others seem to hold over the entire history of life on earth 9e.g. increases in the ma&imum degree of biological comple&ity, and body si)e?see ref for a summary of the proposed macro/evolutionary trends:. In our own lineage, the trend of increasing brain si)e in homonins is well/established even if there is much discussion as to the reasons for it. One e&planation for such macro/evolutionary trends is that selection has favoured a consistent directional shift in the trait in 2uestion. or e&le, it has been argued that selection acts as a driving force favouring increased body si)e owing to the potential advantages that are gained from being large 9e.g. more efficient metabolism and homeostasis, advantage in competition over resources, greater mobility, and decreased predation:. !owever, it also possible for trends to occur even in the absence of such a driving force if the Mphase space4 in which a trait is evolving is constrained and the trait originally arises near one of the constraints 9a so/called Mpassive4 trend:. or e&le, the trend of increasing biological comple&ity could be the result of the earliest single/celled organisms arising near a Mleft/wall4 of minimum comple&ity, i.e. it was almost impossible for them to have been any less comple&. Initially any changes in comple&ity must be in the direction of increased comple&ity. 'ubse2uently, increases and decreases are possible, yet over time the ma&imum degree of comple&ity will increase. 'imilar mechanisms could e&plain the trend towards increasing political comple&ity 9figure :.

igure .

 lternative trend mechanisms underlying the increase in political comple&ity over time. 9b: In a driven trend, change is biased with increases in comple&ity more likely than decreases 9this represents an e&treme e&le in which only increases have occurred:. ... 1iologists have employed #C5s to investigate trends in biological evolution. !ere we use a #C5 to directly estimate the number of changes between forms of political organi)ation to assess whether increases in comple&ity have actually been more common than decreases. s a first step we inferred the form of political organi)ation in the ancestral ustronesian society under the best/fitting model of evolution from the previous analysis, the >3I-I3( model. The results suggest that the ancestral ustronesian society was politically acephalous 9proportional support for different forms of organi)ation7 cephalous V L.GN, 'imple Chiefdom V L.HH, Comple& Chiefdom V L.LE, 'tate V L.LL: 9 figure E:, which confirms that the ma&imum degree of hierarchical political organi)ation in ustronesian societies has indeed increased over time. 6e then used a #C5 to infer the number of increases and decreases between levels of comple&ity under the >3I-I3( model of trait evolution. igure Eshows the distributions of the estimated numbers of changes from these analyses. 6e can see that increases in comple&ity have occurred more fre2uently than decreases 9 table E: 9although in the comparison between changes  Z sC and sC Z , the mean difference was less than one:.  s the more comple& forms of political organi)ation evolved later, the significant differences in the first three comparisons could be owing to the fact that more time has been spent in the form of lower comple&ity, therefore allowing for more opportunities for increases to occur. The final two comparisons are situations where there were e2ual opportunities for increases or decreases and in these comparisons increases are again significantly greater than decreases. These results suggest that increases in political comple&ity in  ustronesian/speaking societies have generally been more common than decreases. 6c7 Co1e4olution of socil n% politicl trits  nother aspect of social evolution that has been the subect of considerable debate is the idea that different aspects of social organi)ation are correlated with one another, i.e. classificatory schemes such as 1and, Tribe, Chiefdom and 'tate are based on regular hypothesi)ed differences between these categories in such things as subsistence practices, degree of social differentiation, inherited ine2ualities and permanent offices of leadership. n associated idea is that change from one category to another involves the relatively rapid restructuring of these different aspects of social organi)ation, i.e. socio/political evolutionary change is punctuational. !owever, it has been argued that different aspects of social organi)ation do not co/evolve this closely and that societies e&hibit too much variation to fit easily into categories such 1and, Tribe, Chiefdom and 'tate. There has been a lack of 2uantitative comparative analyses attempting to address this 2uestion. 6e e&amined whether political organi)ation co/evolves with hereditary social stratification 9i.e. some individuals or groups of individuals within a society are afforded higher social status and have greater influence owing to who their ancestors were:. In traditional social evolutionary theories, Chiefdoms and 'tates are thought to be socially stratified along these lines, while such hereditary ranking is thought to be absent in societies organi)ed politically only at the level of the local community 9i.e. 1ands and Tribes:. Table H shows the co/occurrence of these two aspects of socio/political organi)ation in our sample, which suggests that cephalous societies generally lack hereditary forms of social stratification, while it is generally present in Chiefdoms and 'tates. !owever, as societies are hierarchically related they may have several features in common, not because they are functionally linked, but because they have all been inherited from a common ancestral society 9e.g. most of  the #olynesian societies in the sample are organi)ed as chiefdoms and have hereditary social stratification 9see electronic supplementary material, figure 'H:, which potentially could be owing to either process:. Therefore, societies cannot be treated as independent data points in a cross/cultural analysis. #hylogenetic comparative analyses can overcome these problems by identifying whether the traits under investigation are co/evolving while controlling for the historical relatedness between societies.

Table H. Contingency table showing the occurrence of different forms of political organi)ation and the presence or absence of hereditary social stratification in our sample. To formally test whether political organi)ation has co/evolved with the wider presence of hereditary social stratification, we use a #C5 to compare two alternative models of trait evolution7 9i: a dependent model where the rate of change of one trait is different depending on the state of the other, and 9ii: an independent model where the rate of trait change does not vary according to the state of the other 9see electronic supplementary material, figure 'E:. or our sample of ustronesian/speaking societies, the dependent model of evolution fits the data much better than the independent model 9 figure R and electronic supplementary material:. These results support the hypothesis that political organi)ation, as represented by the number of hierarchical  urisdictional levels, has indeed co/evolved with the wider presence of hereditary social stratification in  ustronesian societies.

igure R. low diagram showing the estimated rates of change between different combinations of the binary variables of Class 'tratification and $urisdictional !ierarchy under the dependent model of evolution. This dependent model has a much better fit to the data ... igure R shows the estimated rates of change between the different combinations of these variables, and thus shows the most likely pathways of evolution of these traits. It appears that cephalous societies lacking hereditary class distinctions can develop either hereditary class distinctions or a chiefdom form of political organi)ation first. !owever, the rate of change from cephalous society to Chiefdom is greater in the presence of hereditary class distinctions, while the particular form of political organi)ation does affect the rate at which hereditary class distinctions evolve. Interestingly, the rates of change away from the intermediate states 9i.e. 1ands or Tribes e&hibiting hereditary class distinctions and vice versa: are generally higher than those going towards these intermediate states. This suggests that these intermediate forms of organi)ation are unstable, which is consistent with the idea that different features of social organi)ation may alter relatively rapidly once other elements have changed.