Lesson 3 Flashcards
Culture-
shared learned social behaviours
Compared to chimpanzees, humans have a significantly larger neocortex, particularly in the prefrontal and parietal regions, enabling:
Reasoning, planning, empathy, abstract thought, and personality regulation.
Complex language, visual processing, spatial awareness, and decision-making.
Robin Dunbar (Dunbar number)
Robin Dunbar’s research indicates a relationship between neocortex size and group size.
Predicts an average human group size of about 150 individuals.
This supports stable, cooperative social groups among early foragers and hunter-gatherers.
Human cooperation is broader in scale and complexity than in any other mammal. This includes:
Altruism, group selection mechanisms, and resource sharing.
What is unique about the human brain
More primitive regions of the brainTriune Simplified Brain model (Paul MacLean)• Limbic – (palaeomammalian cortex)• Emotion, behaviour, long-term memory, olfaction
Large Neocortex (structures involved in advanced cognition)
• remembering, reasoning• greater neural connectivity• many species have a neocortex, but humans is significantly
What about a large neocortex??
Occipital Lobe – earliest expansion in human lineage – visual processing
Expansion of Temporal Lobes –auditory processing, meaning to sounds, recognition of language, production of speech, visual memory
Significant Parietal Expansion –visual mapping, hand-eye
coordination, processing language, numerical cognition, visual-spatial navigation, reasoning
Enlargement of prefrontal Cortex –slowest to mature, assess future
consequences of current action,
long term memories, language,
empathy, personality, dopamine
rewards, attention regulation
Theoretical frameworks for nature and culture
Environmental Determinism: Human behavior and societal development are shaped directly by the environment (e.g., Greek and Roman theories, Ratzel).
Cultural Determinism: Culture exists independently and is the primary driver of human behavior (e.g., Leslie White, Kroeber).
Franz Boas and Historical Possibilism: Environment sets constraints, but human agency and historical factors determine cultural outcomes.
Environmental determinism
Environmental Determinism: Human behavior and societal development are shaped directly by the environment (e.g., Greek and Roman theories, Ratzel).
Cultural determinism
Cultural Determinism: Culture exists independently and is the primary driver of human behavior (e.g., Leslie White, Kroeber).
Franz Boas and Historical Possibilism
Franz Boas and Historical Possibilism: Environment sets constraints, but human agency and historical factors determine cultural outcomes.
Friedrich ratzel
Emphasized importance of habitat in development
of cultural diversity
• Cultures react to nature as any animal does within
a habitat
• Migration promotes diffusion of cultural traits• Similar locations lead to similar political models,
yet natural boundaries may influence political
units (ex. Mountains, isolation, cultural variability)
Justus Liebig
‘law of the minimum’
organisms are limited
by the factor in most
limited supply
• Limiting effect of one
things on rest of system
– ie, nutrient depletion
in soil may limit farming
Links to Malthus – principles of population
Frank boas (1858-1942)
• Environmentalist – predisposed to seeing
importance of environment in shaping and
modifying biology
• Historical possibilism – nature circumscribes
the possibilities for humans, but cultural
factors explain what is actually chosen
• Environment NOT the primary molder of
culture
Ex. Inuit – hunting and fishing vs. Chukchi reindeer
herding
• Environments provide people with the material to
shape artifacts of daily life as well as beliefs and
customs, but outcomes are locally variable and not
predetermined by environments Ex. Inuit – hunting and fishing vs. Chukchi reindeer
herding
Kroeber and lowie
Lowie – aimed to disprove
environmental determinism in ‘Culture and Ethnology, 1917)• Under the same conditions,
radically different cultures
have developed – Indigenous America, China
Kroeber - Insisted that the
‘superorgainic’ (culture) be
totally free from any
connection with Biology
Alexander goldenweiser
Student of Boas
• Saw environment as a static force,
culture the dynamic element that
shapes the use of natural resources
• Human change the natural
environment to suit them – led to
‘historical ecology’, context and
agency over nature.
Bronis law Malinowski
Influenced by Durkheim,
Functionalism
• workings of society analogous to
workings of bodies – needs of
individuals lead to secondary societal
needs: nutrition, reproduction, bodily
comforts, safety, relaxation,
movement and growth
• Culture responds to these human
needs above any adaptation
Leslie Alvin white
The Science of Culture (1949) “culturology”
• No-one could grow up outside a cultural tradition, which was the sole shaper of humans and social
behaviour, individuals insignificant
• No instincts, “human nature is merely culture
thrown against a screen of nerves, glands, sense
organs, muscles, etc..”
• Culture “is the symbol which transforms an infant of Homo sapiens into a human being; deaf mutes who grow up
without the use of symbols are not human beings
Cultural transmission and learning mechanisms
Vertical Transmission: Cultural knowledge passed from parent to child.
Horizontal Transmission: Learned from peers.
Oblique Transmission: Learned from non-parental adults.
Definitions:
Enculturation: Passive internalization of cultural behaviors.
Acculturation: Learning through contact with another culture.
Socialization: Direct teaching and instruction in cultural behaviors.
Mechanisms of cultural change
Four major models describe how culture interacts with biology:
Culture as a reflection of genes: Culture is adaptive, shaped by natural selection.
Culture is autonomous: Culture evolves separately from biological processes.
Selectionist models: Cultural evolution functions like biological evolution (memes as replicators).
Kinetic approaches: Focus on population-level interactions without invoking replication or selection.
Selectionist approach’s
Memes (Dawkins): Cultural units of transmission, akin to genes.
Spread through repetition, adoption, and mutation.
Critique: Cultural replication often involves transformation, not perfect copying.
Replicatooors: units that make copies of themselves, effects on vehicle determine success/rate oof replication
Kinetic model details
Explains change through social learning, frequency-dependent biases, and guided variation.
Types of bias:
Content bias: Some traits are inherently more memorable/useful.
Indirect bias: Preference based on another attribute (e.g., prestige).
Frequency bias: Preference for conformist or rare traits.
