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.
According to the behaviorist definition of culture, it is the ultimate system of social control where 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

How we perceive things is largely affected by our judgment 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 judging 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.

People 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. American culture
which is predominantly individualistic, promotes giving freedom of choice to children since a young age. The
Japanese culture which promotes collectivism, rather encourages the parents/elders to make choices for their
children. This is an example of how parenting is perceived in contrasting ways due to the differences in culture.
Similarly, people of Eastern cultures perceive success as being a collective effort, while those of the American
culture perceive it as the fruit of individual effort.

SOCIETY

Society can be defined as a group of people who share a common economic, social, and industrial
infrastructure. It is an organization 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 French word societe, which came from
the Latin word societas meaning 'a friendly association with others'.

Purpose of Society and its Importance

Support

One of the primary purposes of society is the formation of an organized group of individuals who can support
each other in various ways. It is in the difficult times that you realize 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.

Formation of Social Groups

A society is characterized by social networks. They form an integral part of it. Social networks are defined as
the patterns of relationships between people. Relationships 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. A society gives rise to a
family system and an organization of relationships, which are at the heart of any social group.

Formation of a 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. You may like to know why culture is important.

POLITICS

The importance of politics encompasses a discussion of intricate proportions. Based on the introduction above,
one could say that politics is indeed present when there is a collection of people that constitute a community.
Politics is said to be a set of actions or occurrences that raises questions on the community or society as a
whole. These questions 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. Normally, one would say that
politicians are among the key actors in the practice of politics. This is accurate to some extent. These
individuals formulate bills, propose policies and advocate their views on how to enhance the performance of
the countrys economy. Nevertheless, they do not have the monopoly of employing politics as a means of
carrying out things. Judges and other members of the judiciary similarly engage in politics when they make
decisions and verdicts that inevitably affect the general public. Normally, cases are used as precedence in
carrying out decisions that involves the same principles of law. Nevertheless, 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. Simple acts that a single individual
like casting a vote or supporting a cause indicate a participation in political practice.

All in all, it could be assumed that everyone do take part in the practice of politics, one way or the other. It is
characterized as an act that points out the issues that appears to be significant in a society. Basically, 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 of the three
individuals regarding the issue of refugees in the state. Moreover, the discussion will also look into the fact on
whether it is political to some extent or just basically an empty discussion among friends.

RATIONALE FOR STUDYING ANTHROPOLOGY, POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY

ANTHROPOLOGY

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. Anthropologists study alternative ways in which human
beings meet their needs and examine overall integration and dissonance within a culture. Refusing to reduce
the primary motives of human behavior to any single factor-whether it be biological, economic, structural,
political, technological, or geographic-anthropologists analyze the interrelationship of all of these factors in
trying to understand human behavior.

Anthropologists study the person both as an individual and as a member of society. Anthropologists study, for
example, religion and belief systems, the arts, music, gender roles, politics and work. Because of the breadth
of topical interests, anthropology, it is said, is both a social science and a humanity. We share the "big
questions" with other disciplines: Who are we? Why are we here? What is our purpose? By 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.

Multiculturalism and diversity are the very essence of anthropology. The field is not only innately cross-cultural,
but global in its scope. Anthropology also has extraordinary 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.
Physical anthropology is very closely aligned with biology, emphasizing physical characteristics of human
beings and investigating the evidence for human evolution. Linguistics is a field of anthropology focusing on
analysis of language development and language variations. Socio-cultural anthropology studies culture and the
relationship of culture to other aspects of social life; it shares much in common with each of the other social
sciences, and especially sociology. Many sociological theories have evolved from anthropological research and
vice versa. Applied anthropology uses anthropological knowledge to solve contemporary problems ranging
from world hunger to AIDS prevention. Anthropologists may be involved in a wide range of activities such as
research of evolutionary theory, addressing gender inequality 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 Hanover are socio-cultural in focus.

POLOTICAL SCIENCE

When you study Political Science, youll learn about how political power is distributed, how different
governments operate and interact, how rules are made and enforced. You will explore both the "who" of politics
(such as politicians, international organizations, and the public) and the "how" (such as elections, political
institutions, and public administration). Politics affects virtually every aspect of our lives, including the the
availability of education, jobs, housing and healthcare. Whether countries are at war or at peace depends both
on what governments do and who supports them.

What is Political Science?

Political science is the study a range of political ideas, events, actions, and institutions. It includes both
understanding and explaining the world of politics that is all around us. We all participate in politics, though
most of the time we do so unknowingly. Politics is much more than simply voting in an election or working in
government. Reading 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 examples of political activity in our every day lives.

Political Science is concerned with the many institutions, organizations and norms that determine how people
perceive society, and in turn, how they interact within it. In Political Science, 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
explain political outcomes, such as: 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.

Citizen participation and engagement occurs because of the nature of the institutions that structure society: we
work and live within them, and sometimes we rebel against them. If you study Political Science, you will look at
how and why.
Where Does Political Science Lead You?

Studying political science can open up a wide range of job opportunities in both the public, private, and not-for-
profit private sectors. Students interested in careers in business, education, law, journalism, communications,
government, or politics more generally will obtain vital knowledge and skills. Students can also get practical
skills by doing co-ops with government or organizations as part of their education experience.

You will gain expertise and proficiency in the following:

experience working with others and interacting in a diverse community;

greater command of reading, writing and critical thinking;

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 world;

These are all useful and important skills necessary for a successful career in any field.

Career Options

If you're considering a career in the government, as a lawyer, as a social advocate, or perhaps with an
international organization like the United Nations, then studying Political Science is an obvious choice. If youre
interested in journalism and the media, or perhaps public relations, then this might be the place to begin.
Perhaps you're intrigued by Newfoundland and Labrador 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 analyze complex policies as
you prepare for graduate studies.

Even if you are unsure about your career plans, studying Political Science can be a great path. Many of our
graduates go into business or other practices and professions. Employers 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. Whether we like it or not we are born into groups and spend most of our
social lives in those same groups. All of us assimilate, at least in part, the perspectives of these groups and
thereby acquire 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. Whether
they be families, athletic teams, clubs (such as sororities and fraternities), religious groups, socioeconomic
classes, complex bureaucratic organizations, or nations, much of human life is guided by group norms. Much
of human life is also consumed with conflicts between groups, each of which tries to defend its own self
interests.

As a discipline, Sociology involves the description and explanation 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. Sociology 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.
First, Sociology increases our understanding of ourselves and our society by providing us with concepts that
describe and explain our social creations and how they influence us. We learn who we are and why, and how
we are similar to and different from people with different social arrangements. Second, exposure to Sociology
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 organization and institutions of our society evolved through social
processes operating in a social environment. We need to learn how to collect and analyze representative
information about society and its members rather than to rely on information we encounter haphazardly. We
also need ideas that we can use to classify social behavior systematically and ideas that we can use to explain
the trends and relationships observed. Sociology addresses all of these issues and more.

Sociological 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 complexities of social life. Sociological
study helps us to determine which steps are most likely to lead toward a given goal and provides ways of
assessing the extent to which a given goal may be realized. In these ways Sociology helps us move beyond
common sense to describe and explain more accurately the classes of social behavior and the relations
between them. In short, the study of Sociology gives a view of social reality that fosters an understanding of
social arrangements.

CULTURE AND SOCIETY AS ANTROPOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

THE CONCEPTS OF CULTURE AND OF SOCIAL SYSTEM

There seems to have been a good deal of confusion among anthropologists and sociologists about the
concepts of culture and society ( or, social system). A lack of consensus - between and within disciplines
has made for semantic confusion as to what data are subsumed under these terms; 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. Bu even where they recognize 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.
Sociologists tend to see all cultural systems as a sort of outgrowth or spontaneous development, derivative
from social systems. Anthropologists 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. ("Social
anthropology" perhaps represents secession within anthropology that inclines to prefer the sociological
assumption.)

Our objective in the present joint statement is to point out, so far as methodological primacy is concerned, that,
either [sic should be "each" TW] of these assumptions is a preferential a priori and cannot be validated in
today's state of knowledge. Separating 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. Statements made about
relationships within a cultural pattern are thus of a different order from those within a system of societal
relationships. Neither can be directly reduced to terms of the other; 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 prejudice to the question of which is more "important," "correct," or "fundamental," if indeed
such questions 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 subject-matter broadly along the
lines of the heredity-environment distinction. In English-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 Species. Here 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
Spencers 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 (as 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 major influence. In the anthropological tradition, Tylor and Boas used culture to
designate that aspect of total human social behavior (including 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. 583] side, Comte and Spencer, and Weber and Durkheim spoke of society as meaning
essentially the same thing that Tylor meant by culture.

For 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. Anthropologists
tended to confine their studies to no literate societies and sociologists concerned themselves with literate ones
(especially their own.) It did not seem necessary to go much further. Now we believe that knowledge and
interests have become sufficiently differentiated so that further distinctions need to be made and stabilized in
the routine usage of the relevant professional groups. Such a need has been foreshadowed in the practice of
many anthropologists in speaking of social organization as one major 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 (or is taking) shape. We suggest that it is useful to define
the concept culture for most usages more narrowly than has been generally the case in the American
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 Y." One indication of the independence of the two is the existence of highly organized
insect societies with at best a minimal rudimentary component of culture in our present narrower sense.

Parenthetically 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. Where 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 expressive 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. Provided that the analytical distinction between them is maintained, it is
therefore idle to quarrel 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 judge them by how much
each increases understanding. Secondly, however, building on the more precise knowledge thus gained, we
may in time expect to learn in which area each type of conceptualization is the more applicable and productive.
By 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.

We therefore propose a truce to quarreling over whether culture is best understood from the perspective of
society or society from that of culture. As in the famous case of heredity "versus" environment, it is no longer a
question 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.

PERSPECTIVES IN/APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY

Approaches to the study of culture

Viewing culture in terms of patterns and configurations

Cultural traits

The concept of culture embraces the culture of mankind as a whole. An understanding of human culture is
facilitated, however, by analyzing "the complex 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. A trait may be an object (knife), a way of doing
something (weaving), a belief (in spirits), or an attitude (the so-called horror of incest). But, within the category
of culture, each trait is related to other traits. A distinguishable and relatively self-contained cluster of traits is
conventionally called a culture complex. The association of traits in a complex may be of a functional and
mechanical nature, such as horse, saddle, bridle, quirt, 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.

Cultural areas

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 19th century, but it was first brought into
prominence by the U.S.anthropologist Clark Wissler in The American Indian (1917) and Man and Culture
(1923). He divided the Indian cultures (as they were in the latter half of the 19th century) into geographic
cultural regions: the Caribou area of northern Canada; the Northwest coast, characterized by the use
of salmon and cedar; the Great Plains, where tribes hunted bison with the horse; the Pueblo area of the
Southwest; and so on. Others later distinguished culture areas in other continents.

Cultural types

Appreciation 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 example, the use of the horse in bison
hunting in the Plains or the method of hunting of sea mammals among the Eskimo; pastoral cultures centred
upon sheep, cattle, reindeer, and so on; and horticulture (with digging stick and hoe) and agriculture (with ox-
drawn plow). Less common are trading cultures such as are found in Melanesia or specialized production of
some object for trade, such as pottery, bronze axes, or salt, as was the case in Luzon. (See primitive culture.)

Configuration and pattern, especially the latter, are concepts closely related to culture area and culture type. All
of them have one thing in common; they view culture not in terms of its individual components, or traits, but as
meaningful organizations of traits: areas, occupations, configurations (art, mathematics, physics), or patterns
(in whichpsychological factors are the bases of organization). Clark Wissler's "universal culture pattern" was
recognition of the fact that all particular and actual cultures possess the same general categories: language,
art, social organization, religion, technology, and so on.

Viewing culture in terms of institutional structure and functions

Social organization

A sociocultural system presents itself under two aspects: structure and function. As culture evolves,
sociocultural systems (like biologic systems) become more differentiated structurally and more specialized
functionally, proceeding from the simple to the complex. Systems on the lowest stage of development have
only two significant kinds of parts: the local territorial group and the family. There is a corresponding minimum
of specialization, limited, with but few exceptions, to division of function, or labour, alongsex lines and to
division between children and adults. The exceptions are headmen and shamans; they are special organs, so
to speak, in the body politic. The headman is a mechanism of social integration, direction, and control,
expressing, however, the consensus of the band. The shaman, though a self-appointed priest or magician, is
also an instrument of society; he may be regarded as the first specialist in the history of human society.

All 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 women;
married, widowed, and divorced; children and adults. Segment is defined as one of an indefinite number of
groupings all of which are alike in structure and function: 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.

Segmentation is a cultural process essential to the evolution of culture; it is a means of increasing the size of a
society or a grouping within a sociocultural system (such as an army) and therefore of increasing its power to
make life secure, without suffering a corresponding loss of effectiveness through diminished solidarity;
segmentation is a means of maintaining solidarity at the same time that it enlarges the social grouping. A tribe
could not increase in size beyond a certain point without resorting to segmentation: the formation of lineages,
clans, and the like. The word clannish points to one of the functions of segments in general: the fostering of
solidarity. Tribes become segments in confederacies; 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 examples of increased size and sustained solidarity proceeding hand in hand.

Economic systems

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 specializes in making arrows, which he exchanges
for moccasins made by another specialist. Occupational groupings were virtually lacking in all cultural systems
of aboriginal North America, for example. Guilds of metalworkers are found in some African tribes and
specialists in canoe making and tattooing existed in Polynesia. But it is not until thetransition from preliterate
society, based upon ties of kinship, to civil society, based upon property relations and territorial distinctions
(the state), that division of labour along occupational lines becomes extensive. On this level there are found
many kinds of specialists: metalworkers, scribes, astrologers, soldiers, dancers, musicians,
alchemists,prostitutes, eunuchs, and so forth.

Production of goods is everywhere followed by distribution and exchange. Among the Kurnai of Australia, for
example, game was divided and distributed as follows: the hunter who killed a wallaby, for example, kept the
head; his father received the ribs on the right side, his mother the ribs on the left side, plus the backbone, and
so on; the various parts of the animal went to various classes of relatives in accordance with fixed, traditional
rules.
Distribution along kinship lines constitutes a system of circulation and exchange 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 exchange of goods on the spot,
but more often A givessomething to B who gives A a gift at a later date. All this takes place in the network of
rights and obligations among kindred; one has both an obligation to give and a right to receive on certain
occasions and in certain contexts. The whole process is one of mutual aid and cooperation.

The consequence of this form of distribution and exchange is that the recipient receives kinds of things that he
already has; each household has the same kinds of foods, utensils, ornaments, and other things that
every other household has. Why, then, it might be asked, does this form of exchange take place? Two reasons
may be distinguished. First, this kind of exchange fortifies ties of kinship and mutual aid--as
neighbourhood exchange among households in modern American culture initiates friendships that in times of
need constitute mutual aid. Second, this system of circulation of goods is in effect a system of social security: a
household in need, due to illness or accident, receives help from the community ("No household can starve as
long as others have corn," as the Iroquois put it). Here we have an economic system subordinated to the
welfare of the society as a whole.

Exchange or circulation of goods and services (a 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 expression
in specialization: the ironworker must obtain food; the horticulturalist needs an iron hoe.

Exchange 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 communication: in the so-called silent
trade the actual exchange takes place in a neutral zone without the presence of the participating parties.
Archaeological evidence shows that intergroup exchange occurred in remote times and over great distances,
as already noted above in the discussion of diffusion.

An 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 acquiring a large amount of goods--food, utensils, art objects, 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 equitable distribution that tends to iron out inequalities among households.

Some economic concepts in modern Western culture do not correspond closely with conceptions and customs
in many preliterate societies. Ownership is a case in point. Complete possession of and exclusive right to use
something in an economic context, such as land, a dwelling, or a boat, is rare, if not wholly lacking, in
preliterate societies (although one might have exclusive rights to a dream, spell, or charm). In general, one has
merely the right to use or occupy a tract of land or a house; 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. But anyone else in the community would have the right to use it when the
"owners" (the men who made it) were not using it. It is the right to use, rather than exclusive and absolute
possession, that is significant; there is no such thing as absentee ownership in primitive society.

A band or tribe "holds" the land it occupies; here again, it is tenure rather than ownership that is significant; the
land "belongs" to Nature, or Mother Earth; people merely hold and use it. There is usually an
intimate relationship between the people and "their" land. Navajo Indians fell on their knees and kissed the
earth when they were returned to their former territory after forcible detention in an alien land. Land is
defended against outsiders, except 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. But when use terminates, the land reverts to the tribal
domain.

During the latter part of the 19th 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 nonexistent in primitive society. It was extended also to communism in wives and children in some tribes;
this was interpreted to be a vestige of a former stage of "primordial promiscuity." Many ethnologists,
however, launched a vigorous attack upon "the doctrine of primitive communism." Some 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
summarized as follows. Tenure and use, rather than ownership in fee simple, were the significant concepts and
practices. Private, or personal, possession of goods and use of land were recognized. But possession and
right were qualified by the rights and obligations of kinship: 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 kindred; rights of possession and use were regulated by customs of kinship. In some cultures a borrower
was not obliged to return an object borrowed, on the theory that if a person could afford to lend something, he
relinquished 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 justify the adjective
communal; it was the noun communism that was resented--if not feared--because of its Marxist connotation.

One of the most important, as well as characteristic, features of the economic life of preliterate societies, as
contrasted with modern civilizations, is this: no individual and no class or group in tribal society was denied
access to the resources of nature; all were free to exploit them. This is, of course, in sharp contrast to civil
society in which private ownership by some, or a class, is the means of excluding others--slaves, serfs, a
proletariat--from the exploitation and enjoyment of the resources of nature. It is this freedom of access, the
freedom to exploit and to enjoy the resources of nature, that has given primitive society its characteristics of
freedom and equality. And, being based upon kinship ties, it had fraternity as well.

Education

In the human species individuals are equipped with fewer instincts than is the case in many nonhuman
species. And, as already noted, they are born cultureless. Therefore an infant Homo sapiens must learn a very
great deal and acquire a vast number of conditioned reflexes and habit patterns in order to live effectively, not
only in society but in a particular kind of sociocultural system, be it Tibetan, Eskimo, or French. This process,
taken as a whole, is called socialization (occasionally, enculturation)--the making of a social being out of one
that was at birth wholly individualistic and egoistic.

Education 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. Education, formal and informal, is the specific means of socialization. By 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. By 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. But 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 villains; certain traits are extolled, others are deplored or denounced. The
impressionable child acquires ideals and values, an image of the good or the bad.
The growing child is immersed in the fountain of informal education constantly; the formal education tends to
be periodic. Many sociocultural systems distinguish rather sharply a series of stages in the education
and development of full-fledged men and women. First there is infancy, during which perhaps the most
profound and enduring influences of a person's life are brought to bear. Weaning ushers in a new stage, that of
childhood, during which boys and girls become distinguished from each other. Pubertyrites transform children
into men and women. These rites vary enormously in emphasis and content. Sometimes they include
whipping, isolation, scarification, or circumcision. Very often the ritual is accompanied by explicit instruction in
the mythology and lore of the tribe and in ethical codes. Such rituals as confirmation and Bar Mitzvah in
modern Western culture belong to the category of puberty rites. (See rite of passage, coming-of-age rite.)

With 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
sodalities: 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." Women also may belong to sodalities, and in some
instances they may become members of secret, magical societies along with men.

Religion and belief

Man's oldest philosophy is animism, the doctrine that everything is alive and possesses mental faculties like
those possessed by man: desire, will, purpose, anger, love, and the like. This philosophy results from
man's projection of his own self, his psyche, into other things and beings, inanimate and living, without being
aware of this projection.

"A belief in spirits is," according to Edward Burnett Tylor, "the minimum definition of religion." Some later
students, however, made the same claim for a belief in impersonal, supernatural power, or mana (manitou,
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 German Roman Catholic priest and anthropologist Father Wilhelm
Schmidt argued not only that some primitive peoples believe in a Supreme Being but that monotheism was
characteristic of the earliest and simplest cultures. Schmidt's thesis, however, has been severely criticized by
otherethnologists. Also, as Tylor pointed out many years ago, the Supreme Being of some very primitive
peoples is an originator god, or a philosophical explanatory device, accountable only for the existence and
structure of the world; after his work was completed, he had no further significance; 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. Both
were deemed expressions of a belief in the supernatural. Some argued that religion was social (moral)
whereas magic was antisocial (immoral). Another 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 exceptions as to
render most definitions of these terms logically imperfect. Another difficulty was the tacit assumption that
different entities, religion and magic, exist per se, and therefore that "correct" definitions of them must exist
also (Adam called the animal a horse because it was a horse). Much confusion and debate would have been
obviated if it had been recognized (as 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 experiences one wishes to designate with the words religion and magic.

Custom and law

Sociocultural 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
organization 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 etiquette regulate class structure by requiring 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. Uniformities are important because they make anticipation
and prediction possible; 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.

As 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 extremes
of the spectrum of social control. The way that a Hopi Indian holds his corn-husk cigarette in his hand is a
matter of custom rather than law, as most ethnologists would probably agree. At the other extreme, a state
edict prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages is a law, not a custom. But in other situations
the distinction is far from clear, and disagreement with regard to definitions arises. For example, in marriage
the obligation to wed someone within a specified group or class (endogamy) or outside a group or class
(exogamy) has been called both law and custom. Probably 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 expressions 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. But 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 example, 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 law; in preliterate societies the distinction between the two is not always clear. But 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 external 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. But it is better to do this than to distort real phenomena by trying to force them into
artificial concepts and definitions.

SOCIETY

A perspective can be broadly defined as "a way of looking at and seeing (or interpreting) something". To have
a perspective, therefore, means to look at something (whatever that thing might be) in a particular way.

For 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 exist between people in any given society.

Generally, we can identify three very broad categories of sociological values (sometimes called "sociological
perspectives" or "ways of seeing the social world").

Functionalism
Conflict Theory
Interactionism
You should keep in mind the fact that this is only a very brief and simplified introduction to the idea of different
perspectives.

Each of the above, perspectives "sees" the social world in different ways.

Sociological perspectives are developed to explain various social phenomena within society. A 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 explaining a particular
behaviour or social phenomenon. In sociology there are a range of theories, the dominant ones will be discuss
in this unit.

Structural functionalism initially known as Functionalism attempted to explain social institutions as

collective means that meet the individual needs of individuals. It emphasizes 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 explain social cohesion and stability. In a society characterised by mechanical solidarity, societies
tend to be segmentary and are composed of equivalent parts that are held by shared values, common symbols
or system of exchanges. 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 requisites (social 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 equilibrium. Moreover, 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 equilibrium. If ever, one part is affected, the whole system
suffers. For example, if the family malfunctions, this can have a negative level on society as a whole and be felt
in terms of crime, deviance, delinquency or insubordination at school.

Merton (1957) expanded the understanding of social functions that society has some more obvious functions
than others. Thus, he distinguished between manifest and latent functions. Manifest functions are intended and
recognised by people in society and latent functions are unintended and unrecognised (Macionis, 2000). An
example to illustrate these functions is through the education system. While the manifest functions of education
is to provide skills, knowledge and abilities of citizenry, 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.
Yet, Merton argued that such dysfunctions are necessary since these fulfill certain other pre requisites like
maintaining social stratification system.

Limitation: However, functionalism as a perspective has been criticised for emphasizing too much on value
consensus and collective conscience which some theorists see as impediment to social progress and
evolvement of new ideas. By over emphasizing 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
inequalities that cause conflicts. For instance, religion may not always glue' society together but be divisive.
For instance, in India, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, religion is a source of conflict and tension.

The social-conflict theories see society as providing a setting that generates conflicts and change. In fact,
this approach emphasizes on inequality and look at the extent to which such factors as race, ethnicity, gender
and age are linked to unequal distribution of money, power, education and social prestige. (Macionis, 2000).
Thus, by rejecting 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 inequalities 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 jobs and
low wage. Thus, conflict theories try to show that inequalities in power and reward being built into all social
structures create conflict of interests rather than adaptation and stability in society.

Marx's theory analysis of society from a materialist conception of history and its economic relationship also
portrays the deep inequalities that exist within the capitalist society. The unequal relationships between the
bourgeoisie (owners of production, ruling class, elite, capitalists) and the proletariat (workers, subject class)
become obvious with exploited labour and oppression and the bourgeoisie uses its economic power
(infrastructure) to control the other parts of the system ( superstructure) like for example, education, religion,
family, mass media and politics.

Limitation: Social conflict theorists fail to see the stabilities of societies although being prone to constant
change. Over emphasizing 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 equal opportunities.
Moreover, they tend to ignore that shared values and interdependence can unify members of a society.

Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach in the aim of understanding the relationship between
humans and society. For 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.

Being also imbibed by phenomenological perspectives, symbolic interactionism explains that individuals make
sense of their societal life by categorising it. Through language, signs, drawings, individuals distinguished
between different types of objects, events or actions. Categorisation also shape types of behaviour and
attaches them with reward or punishment. However, the process of categorisation may vary from group to
group and society to society. In short, it is a subjective process.

Limitations: By denying the existence of macro level social structures such as the family, symbolic
interactionism risk in overlooking important features like culture, class, gender and race.

THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN HUMAN ADAPTATION

Culture Is Essential for Human Adaptation

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 Arctic Circle early in their
expansion but tells us little about their way of life. However, ethnographic studies of the Netsilik and Copper
Inuit, collectively known as the Central Inuit, give us a sense of the complexity of the adaptations that allow
foragers to thrive in the Arctic. These people occupy a habitat that is harsh and unproductive, even by Arctic
standards. Their groups were small, and their lifeways were simple compared with foragers living on the coasts
of Alaska and Greenland. To focus your mind on the crucial adaptive challenges, imagine that you are
marooned on a beach on the coast of King William Island (68.935N, 98.89W). It is November and it is very
cold.
Your first problem is to stay warm. Monthly average temperatures in the winter months are between 25 C
and 35 C. Even well-acclimatized people rapidly succumb to hypothermia below 1 C, 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 (7). In the winter, the Central Inuit wore elaborately
constructed parkas and pants (16). 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 (17). Caribou skins harvested in autumn have fur that is just the right thickness.
Hides were repeatedly stretched, scraped, moistened, and then stretched again to yield pliable skins (18).
Parkas 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. Hoods were ruffed with a strip of fur taken from a
wolverine's shoulders because its variable length makes it easier to clear the hoarfrost. Winter footwear was
constructed with many layers: first the alirsiik, fur-lined caribou stockings, then the ilupirquk, 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 tuqtuqutiq, 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. Several different kinds of stitches were used for
different kinds of seams. A 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 (16).

Not 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 3 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
freezing, while the inside of the snow house could reach temperatures of 1020 C (19).

You need a source of heat and light in your snow house, for cooking and for melting sea ice for water. You
cannot use wood fires because there are no trees. Instead, Arctic peoples carved lamps from soap stone and
fueled them with rendered seal fat. These lamps were made from oblong stones between 30 cm and 1 m long;
a shallow, sharp-sided depression was carved from the surface of the stone, and the lamp was equipped with a
long, curtain-like wick made of moss. A well-managed lamp burned without producing any soot (16).

You also need food. Plants are easy to gather, but for most of the year this is not an option in the Arctic. During
the winter, the Central Inuit hunted seals, mainly by ambushing them at their breathing holes. When the sea ice
begins to freeze, seals claw a number of breathing holes in the ice within their home ranges. As the ice
thickens, they maintain these openings, which form conical chambers under the ice. The Inuit camped in
snowy spots near the seals breathing holes. The ice must be covered with snow to prevent the seals from
hearing the hunters footsteps and evading them. Inuit hunted in teams, monitoring as many holes as possible.
The primary tool was a harpoon approximately 1.5 m long. Both 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. At 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. When 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 point; the seal soon tired and could be
hauled onto the ice (20).
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 Arctic char in large numbers. Later 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 required 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 South America, Eastern North America, Africa, and Europe. This
solution was not available to the Inuit, who had only driftwood (mainly spruce), horn, and antler available.
Instead, they made short bows and used every bowyer's trick to increase their power. A bow can be made
more powerful by adding wood to the limbs. However, making the bow thicker increases the stress within the
bow, leading to catastrophic and dangerous failure. This problem is exacerbated 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. Bracing the bow leads to a compound curve, a geometry that stores more potential energy. Finally,
the Inuit constructed a unique form of composite bow. When a bow is bent, the back (the side away from the
archer) is stretched, whereas the belly (the side closer to the archer) is compressed. Wood, 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 Asia and western
North America, 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 (21).

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 Arctic. 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. We 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. Moreover, there is still
much more you have to know to stay alive. Predicting storms, understanding the habits of game species,
making baskets, building sledges, and managing dogsall require extensive 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 texture of the ice tell you where and when it is safe to travel. [Nelson (22) devotes four
chapters to ice lore in his book on hunting among the Inupiaq of northern Alaska.]

So, here is the question: do you think that you could acquire 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. Moreover, to a first approximation, this is the only way that other animals have to
learn about their environmentsthey must rely mainly on innate information and individual experience 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. However, 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 (23). There are no convincing examples in which social
learning allows the gradual cumulative cultural evolution of complex, locally adaptive behaviors that individuals
could not learn on their own.

Could you make it? We don't think so.

Two different kinds of natural experiments support the intuition that forager adaptations are beyond the
inventive capacities of individuals. The first, which might be called the lost European explorer experiment, has
been repeated many times during the past several centuries. Typically some explorers get stranded in an
unfamiliar habitat in which an indigenous population is flourishing. Despite desperate efforts and ample
learning time, the explorers 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 Franklin
Expedition of 18451846 provides a good example (24). Sir John Franklin, a Fellow of the Royal Society and
an experienced Arctic traveler, set out with two ships to explore the northern coast of North America and find
the North West Passage. It was the best-equipped expedition in the history of British polar exploration,
furnished with an extensive library, manned by a select crew, and stocked with a 3-y supply of food. The
expedition spent the winter of 1846 at King William Island, where it became trapped in the ice. When food ran
short, the explorers abandoned their ships and attempted to escape on foot. Everyone eventually perished
from starvation and scurvy, perhaps exacerbated by lead poisoning from their tinned food.

King William Island is the heart of Netsilik territory, and the Netsilik have lived there for almost a millennium.
King William Island is rich in animal resourcesthe main harbor is named Uqsuqtuuq which means lots of
fat. The British 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 2 y to use this intelligence, failed to
learn the skills necessary to subsist in this habitat. Interestingly, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen
spent two winters on King William Island in 19031904. Amundsen sought out the Netsilik and learned from
them how to make skin clothing, hunt seals, and manage dog sleds. He and his crew survived and completed
the first successful traverse of the Northwest Passage. Later he would put these Inuit skills to good use in his
race with Scott to the South Pole. Results from this lost European explorer experiment, and many others,
suggest that intelligence alone is not enough. For a similar discussion of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition
into the Australian outback, see ref. 25.

A second line of evidence comes from the loss of beneficial technologies in small, isolated populations. For
instance, the Tasmanian tool kit gradually lost complexity after isolation from mainland Australia at the end of
the Holocene (26). Other Pacific island groups have apparently lost useful technologies, such as canoes,
pottery, and the bow and arrow (27). The best documented example comes from the isolated Polar Inuit of
northwest Greenland. Explorers Elisha Kane and Isaac Hayes wintered with the Polar Inuit in 1853 and 1861,
respectively, and reported that the Polar 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 (28). Apparently the population was struck by an
epidemic in the 1820s that carried away the older, knowledgeable members of the group, and according to
custom, their possessions had to be buried with them (29). The Polar Inuit lived without these tools until about
1862, when they were visited by a group of Inuit who migrated to Greenland from Baffin Island (28, 29). There
is every reason to believe that these tools would have been useful between 1820 and 1862. The Polar Inuit
population declined during this period, and the tools were immediately adopted once they were reintroduced.
After their introduction, population size increased. It is also telling that the kayaks used by the Polar Inuit
around the turn of the century closely resemble the large, beamy kayaks used by Baffin Island Inuit and not the
small sleek kayaks of the West Greenland Inuit. Over the next half century the Polar Inuit kayak design
converged back to the West Greenland design (30). If this inference is correct it means that for 40 years
(nearly two generations) the Polar Inuit could have benefitted from the lost knowledge. Moreover, they
collectively remembered kayaks, leisters, and bows and arrows, but did not know how to make them and could
not recreate that knowledge.

Cultural Adaptation Is a Population Process

We think that this body of evidence rules out the idea that superior cognitive ability alone explains human
adaptability; the ability to cumulatively learn from others must play a crucial role. Although 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 acquiring locally adaptive information. For example, Barrett et al.
(13) write:
Cognitive mechanisms underlying cultural transmission coevolved with improvisational intelligence, distributing
the costs of the acquisition of nonrivalrous information over a much greater number of individuals, and allowing
its cost to be amortized over a much greater number of advantageous events and generations. Unlike other
species, cultural transmission in humans results in a ratchet-like accumulation of knowledge. (p 244)

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 acquired, others can get it by teaching or
imitation at relatively low cost. As a result, social learning acts to spread the cost of innovations over all who
benefit. Innovations accumulate, leading to an accumulation of knowledge.

However, 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 test: you do as well as the person you
copy from but avoid all that tedious studying. However, 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 (3134). 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. First, 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 behaviorthe average fitness of the population is irrelevant. When few individuals
imitate, imitators will acquire the locally adaptive behavior with the same probability as individual learners.
Because they do not pay the cost of learning, imitators have higher fitness, and the propensity to imitate
spreads. As 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 extracted the information from
the environment. As the fraction of imitators in the population increases, these chains extend 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 acquire the locally adaptive behavior than learners. The propensity to imitate will continue to increase
until this reduction in fitness exactly balances the benefit of avoiding the costs of learning. At evolutionary
equilibrium, 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.

Although 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 ridingimitators scrounge information without
producing anything of value. Free riders increase until they destroy the benefits of free riding. Realistic levels of
relatedness among models and imitators do not qualitatively change

the result (34). 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. However, 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 (32). 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. We
have thought of three ways in which this could happen. First, cultural learning can allow individuals to learn
selectivelyusing environmental cues when they provide clear guidance and learning from others when they
do not. Second, 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. Finally,
by comparing teachers and learning selectively from those that seem most successful, pupils can acquire
adaptive information without making any inferences based on environmental cues. If individuals acquire
information from multiple teachers and recombine this information, this process can create complex cultural
adaptations without any intelligence, save that required to distinguish among more- and less-successful
teachers.

The ability to learn or imitate selectively is advantageous because opportunities to learn from experience or by
observation of the world vary. For example, a rare chance observation might allow a hunter to associate a
particular spoor with a wounded polar bear, or to link the color and texture of ice with its stability on windy days
just after a thaw. Such rare cues allow accurate low-cost inferences about the environment. However, 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. We have shown (32, 35) 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 quality threshold that governs whether an individual relies on inferences from environmental cues
or learns from others. Individuals with a low information quality threshold rely on even poor cues, whereas
individuals with a high threshold usually imitate. As the mean information quality threshold in the population
increases, the fitness of learners increases because they are more likely to make accurate or low-cost
inferences. At the same time, the frequency of imitators also increases. As a consequence, the population does
not keep up with environmental changes as well as a population of individual learners. Eventually, an
equilibrium emerges in which individuals deploy both individual and cultural learning in an optimal mix. At this
equilibrium, the average fitness of the population is higher than in an ancestral population lacking cultural
learning. When most individuals in the population observe accurate environmental cues, the equilibrium
threshold is low, individual learning predominates, and culture plays little role. However, when it is usually
difficult for people to learn individually, the equilibrium threshold is high, and most imitate, even when the
environmental cues that they do observe indicate a different behavior than the one they acquire by cultural
learning. We 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. As 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 acquired
improvements to accumulate from one generation to the next. Many kinds of traits admit successive
improvements toward some optimum. Bows vary in many dimensions that affect performancesuch 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 Fisher (36) identified in his geometric model of
genetic adaptation. In a small neighborhood in design space, the performance surface is approximately flat, so
that even if small changes are made at random, half of them will increase the payoff (unless the design is
already at the optimum). Large changes will improve things only if they are in the small cone that includes the
distant optimum. Thus, we expect it to be much harder to design a useful bow from scratch than to tinker with
the dimensions of a reasonably good bow. Now, imagine that the environment varies, so that different bows are
optimal in different environments, perhaps because the kind of wood available varies. Sometimes 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. However, 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 experience. 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 quite sophisticated
artifacts evolve. Historians of technology have demonstrated how this step-by-step improvement gradually
diversifies and improves tools and other artifacts (37, 38). Even 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 (39, 40).

The evolution of kayak keels by West Greenland Inuit provides an instructive example of how innovations arise
and spread (41). When 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 capsizing. When firearms first spread in West Greenland,
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 1824, a prominent Inuit hunter named Jens Reimer began to
experiment with methods to stabilize kayaks for firearm use. He tried trailing a line behind the kayak, but this
did not work. He then fastened a partially submerged wooden plate to the kayak's stern, in imitation of the
rudders of European ships. This did not work very well eitherit was noisy, and the fastenings tended to fail.
Nonetheless, a number of younger hunters imitated Reimer, perhaps owing to his local success and prestige.
They were not able to produce a quality ayt (the Greenlandic word for both a ship's rudder and a kayak keel),
and out of bashfulness (41, p 27) 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 next 50 y the ayt
underwent a series of further small improvements, eventually creating the modern form.

Finally, 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. You 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. You copy all three traits, even though in reality it was just the
plaiting that made the difference. As 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 exclusion of irrelevant traits like the bow's color. However, 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. By recombining different components of technology from different but still successful
individuals, copiers can produce both novel and increasingly adaptive tools and techniques over generations,
without any improvisational insights. An 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 (42). Advertisers clearly know this. After all,
what does Michael Jordan really know about underwear? Recent work in developmental psychology shows
that young children readily attend to cues of reliability, success, confidence, and attention when choosing who
to learn from (43, 44). Even infants selectively attend to knowledgeable adults rather than their own mothers in
novel situations (45). This feature of our cultural learning psychology fits a priori evolutionary predictions,
emerges spontaneously in experiments, develops early without instruction, and operates largely outside
conscious awareness.

These models predict that an adaptive evolved psychology will often cause individuals to acquire 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 acquiring behavior by teaching or imitation, individuals are
exposed to two different kinds of cues that they can use to solve local adaptive problems. Like any other
organism, they can make inferences based on cues from the environment. However, they also observe the
behaviors of a sample of their population. When 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. Many people will rely on their own inferences, but some will
copy to avoid learning costs. However, 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 complex. 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.

Evidence for Cultural Adaptation

The cultural niche hypothesis and the cognitive niche hypothesis make sharply different predictions about how
local adaptations are acquired 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 acquired understandings of the world are then shared, allowing others
to acquire 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. We expect cultural learners to first acquire the local practices and
occasionally experiment or modify them. At times this will mean that cultural learning will overrule their direct
experience, evolved motivations, or reliably developing intuitions.

Several lines of evidence support the cultural learning hypothesis.

The anthropological literature on child development (4648) indicates that children and adolescents acquire
most of their cultural information by learning from older individuals who typically discourage questions from
young learners and rarely provide causal explanations of their behavior. Kids practice adult behaviors, often
using toy versions of adult tools, during mixed-age play, and little experimentation is observed, except that
necessary to master the adult repertoire (49, 50).

The reliance of young learners on carefully observing and imitating the local repertoires revealed in the
anthropological record converges with recent experiments on imitation (51, 52). In these experiments, an adult
performs a behavior like opening a complex puzzle box to get a reward. The adult's behavior includes both
necessary and unnecessary actions. A subject, either a child or a chimpanzee, observes the behavior.
Children's performance on such tasks in both western and small-scale societies differs in important ways from
that of chimpanzees. 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. Chimpanzees do not seem to make this assumption;
they mainly skip the unnecessary steps, leading them to develop more efficient repertoires than children (53) in
these experimental settings.

Many examples indicate that people often do not understand how adaptive practices work or why they are
effective. For example, in the New World, the traditional use of chili peppers in meat recipes likely protected
people from food-borne pathogens (54). This use of chili peppers is particularly interesting because they are
inherently unpalatable. Peppers contain capsaicin, a chemical defense evolved in the genus Capsicum to
prevent mammals (especially rodents) from eating their fruits. Nonhuman primates and human infants find
peppers aversive because capsaicin stimulates pain receptors in the mouth. Efforts to inculcate a taste for
chilies in rats using reinforcement procedures have failed (55). However, human food preferences are heavily
influenced by the preferences of those around us (56), so we overcome our innate aversion and actually learn
to enjoy chilies. Psychological 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 excitement (57).
So, New World peoples learned to appropriately use and enjoy chili peppers without understanding their
antimicrobial properties, and to do this they had to overcome an instinctive aversion that we share with other
mammals.

Fijian food taboos provide another example of this process. Many marine species in the Fijian diet contain
toxins, which are particularly dangerous for pregnant women and perhaps nursing infants. Food taboos
targeting these species during pregnancy and lactation prohibit women from eating these species and reduce
the incidence of fish poisoning during this period. Although women in these communities all share the same
food taboos, they offer quite different causal explanations for them, and little information is exchanged among
women save for the taboos themselves (58). The taboos are learned and are not related to pregnancy
sickness aversions. Analyses of the transmission pathways for these taboos indicate the adaptive pattern is
sustained by selective learning from prestigious women.

Culture and Maladaptation

Cultural adaptation comes with a built-in tradeoff. The cumulative cultural evolution of complex, hard-to-learn
adaptations requires individuals to adopt the behavior of those around them even if it conflicts with their own
inferences. However, this same propensity will cause individuals to acquire 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. Moreover, it is clear that several such processes exist. Here are a couple of examples. For
a longer discussion, see ref. 10.

Weak Cognitive Biases Can Favor the Spread of Maladaptive Beliefs or Practices over Generations.
Laboratory 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 (59). The same effect
may lead to the spread of false beliefs in natural populations. For example, Boyer (60) argues that a number of
cognitive biases explain the spread of supernatural beliefs and account for the widespread occurrence of
folktales about ghosts and zombies.

Adaptive Social Learning Biases Can Lead to Maladaptive Outcomes. A 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 acquiring 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 frequency of adaptive behaviors. An evolved cultural
learning psychology that incorporates such biases increases the chance of acquiring beneficial beliefs and
behaviors. However, these same biases can sometimes lead to the spread of maladaptive beliefs and
practices. For example, the tendency to imitate the prestigious, or those making credibility-enhancing displays
of commitment, can lead to a runaway process analogous to sexual selection (10), and this may explain 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 (61).

Culture Is Part of Human Biology and Has Profoundly Shaped Human Evolution
We have recounted two contrasting accounts of the nature and origins of human uniqueness. On the one
hand, there is a widespread view is that people are like other mammals, just a lot smarterin essence, we are
brainy, hairless chimpanzees. We have a uniquely flexible 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. By
contrast, we argue that individuals are not nearly smart enough to solve the myriad adaptive problems they
face in any of their many habitats. Even experts lack a detailed causal understanding of the tools and
techniques that permit them to survive. High-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, flexible cognition is important too. However, the degree of cognitive flexibility varies
widely in naturechimpanzees can solve problems that baffle monkeys, and monkeys are geniuses compared
with opossums. Nonetheless, no species occupies as wide a range of habitats as Homo sapiens. In contrast,
there is a sharp break between human cultural learning capacities and those of even our closest relatives. As 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 equipped to acquire, store, organize, and retrieve cultural information, a
fact that may explain the rapid increase in human encephalization over the last 500,000 y and the evolution of
specialized cognitive abilities that emerge early in life, such as theory of mind, selective social referencing (45),
overimitation (52), a functional understanding of artifacts (62), and the use of taxonomic inheritance and
category-based induction for living kinds (63). The presence of culturally evolved techniques and products
such as fire, cooking, weapons, and toolscreated new selection pressures acting on our bones, muscles,
teeth, and guts (9).

Culture has opened up a vast range of evolutionary vistas not available to noncultural species. Nonetheless,
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 Western thought, which itself may be the result of evolved cognitive biases (64), 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, chimpanzees cannot be socialized to become humans
and have little or no cumulative cultural evolution. Beginning 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. So it does not make sense to ask, does culture overcome biology? The right question to ask is, how do
genetic and cultural inheritance interact to produce the observed patterns of human psychology and behavior
(65)?

PROCESSES OF CULTURAL AND SOCIOPOLITICAL EVOLUTION

CULTURAL EVOLUTION

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 explanation of cultural phenomena. The
evolutionary psychologist (e.g. Tooby and Cosmides 1992) tends to assume that the most important
inheritance mechanism in all speciesour own includedis genetic inheritance. Evolutionary psychology
regards the human mind as evolving through a conventional process of natural selection acting on genetically
inherited variation. For example, an evolutionary psychologist might explain 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. Such a hypothesis can also
help to explain novel cultural trends: the recent increase in obesity is explained as the result of a novel
environmental changethe increased availability of cheap, high-fat foodsacting in concert with a once-
adaptive, now dangerous, gustatory preference.

Darwin believed, as do biologists today, that natural selection can explain the origin of many complex adaptive
traits. In Darwin's original presentation of natural selection, he requires 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 (Darwin 1859). This explanatory schema is largely neutral regarding what mechanism
accounts for parent-offspring resemblance. For example, offspring might learn skills from their parents, and
thereby come to resemble them behaviourally. From the perspective of natural selection explanations, it does
not matter why offspring resemble parents, only that they do resemble them.

Darwin's theory of natural selection explains adaptation by appealing to what we now call vertical transmission
the inheritance of parental traits by offspring. As we have seen, cultural processes such as learning might, in
principle, underpin this form of inheritance. But we do not learn only from our parentswe also learn from
peers, authority-figures and so forth. This is known asoblique transmission. Once we acknowledge the
possibility that learning can underpin natural selection, we also acknowledge that a theory of evolutiona
theory which seeks to explain change, including adaptive change in a populationmay also need to be further
expanded to encompass oblique transmission. The admittance of oblique transmission into evolutionary theory
necessitates far more radical revisions to traditional Darwinian models of evolution. This is because oblique
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 EVOLUTION

(a) Evolutionary sequences

A key feature of Spencerian hypotheses is that changes in human socio-political organization follow
evolutionary sequences (e.g. Band, Tribe, Chiefdom and State discussed earlier). Such classificatory schemes
contain two logically distinct elements: (i) societies are grouped together based on observed similarities in the
way they are organized, (ii) the categories are arranged on a scale of complexity with societies hypothesized to
pass through adjacent stages of organization in the direction of increasing socio-political complexity. Therefore,
it is perfectly possible to classify societies according to some criteria without this classification representing an
evolutionary sequence, and societies could evolve without having to pass through the same stages in the
same order. For our present purposes we can classify political organization into four categories of increasing
complexity based on the number of hierarchical decision-making levels in a society. Acephalous societies are
organized politically only at the level of the local community (e.g. the village). Simple Chiefdoms have one
permanent level of leadership uniting several villages, while Complex Chiefdoms have two levels. Societies
with more than two hierarchical decision-making levels above the local community are labelled States (see
electronic supplementary material). Whether this classification does in fact represent an evolutionary sequence
is an empirical question on which suitable lines of evidence must be brought to bear.

PCMs can be used to examine the support for evolutionary sequences, and are commonly used to address
questions about evolutionary pathways in biological evolution (e.g. the evolution of Carnivore social systems.
We have previously evaluated six different models of the evolution of political organization (figure 2), which are
derived from discussions in the literature. Three of these models reflect the Spencerian hypothesis that change
in political organization has been sequential in the direction of increasing hierarchical complexity (i.e. the
transitions Acephalous society to Simple Chiefdom, Simple Chiefdom to Complex Chiefdom, Complex
Chiefdom to State have occurred, but the larger, direct increases Acephalous society to Complex Chiefdom,
Acephalous society to State and Simple Chiefdom to State have not). The RECTILINEAR model reflects the
idea that only sequential increases in complexity can occur. This view is often attributed to the classical
evolutionists such as Spencer and Morgan. We also specified two models in which increases are sequential
but decreases are also possible. In the UNILINEAR model, decreases occur only to adjacent levels of
complexity, while in the RELAXED UNILINEAR model, decreases can occur to any lower level. In contrast, in
the other three models increasing political complexity does not follow a regular sequence. We specified two
models based on the idea that different forms or organization have developed along separate evolutionary
pathways having evolved from an acephalous form of organization: ALTERNATIVE TRAJECTORIES (only
increases possible) and ALTERNATIVE TRAJECTORIES (REVERSIBLE) (decreases also possible). Finally, in
the FULL model any change is possible, representing the idea that political organization has been completely
unconstrained.

Figure 2.

Support for different models of political evolution based on the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) (REC,
Rectilinear; UNI, Unilinear; RU, Relaxed Unilinear; FULL, Full model; AT(R), Alternative Trajectories
(Reversible)) (adapted from Currie et al. [ ...

Analyses show the UNILINEAR model to be the best supported, closely followed by the RELAXED
UNILINEAR model (table 1). The FULL model and the reversible version of the ALTERNATIVE
TRAJECTORIES model are less well supported, while those models that do not allow declines in political
complexity (i.e. RECTILINEAR and non-reversible ALTERNATIVE TRAJECTORIES model) are even poorer
fits to the data. Overall, the analyses provide strong support for the type of sequences of political evolution that
have formed a core feature of the Spencerian hypotheses of cultural evolution. Importantly, they highlight that
change has not always been in the direction of increasing complexity. Whether increases in complexity have
been more common than decreases is dealt with in the next section.

Table 1.

Percentage of Stochastic Character Mappings in which increases or decreases in complexity are more
common, and comparisons of inferred number of changes between different forms of organization using paired
sample t-tests (d.f. = 99 998). In all comparisons,

(b) Direction of evolution

Another defining feature of the Spencerian hypotheses is that there is a direction to cultural evolution, i.e. the
complexity of socio-political organization increases over time. That the archaeological record indicates an
overall increase in complexity since the end of the last ice age is not in dispute. Yet, the archaeological and
historical records also indicate periods when societies have decreased in complexity, which is supported by the
findings described in 2a, and it is unclear if increases have generally been more common than decreases.
Additionally, it is important to understand how such a macro-evolutionary trend can arise if cultural evolution,
like biological evolution, is not goal directed.

Although Spencerian cultural evolutionary theories have been characterized as assuming that increases in
complexity have dominated, there has, in fact, been a lack of consensus on this issue. For example, Tylor
proposed that human history is not the history of a course of degeneration, or even of equal oscillations to and
fro, but of a movement which, in spite of frequent stops and relapses, has on the whole been forward (Tylor
1870, p. 193 cited in [1, p. 28]), while Spencer argued that the theory of progression, in its ordinary form,
seems to me to be untenableIt is possible, and, I believe, probable, that retrogression has been as frequent
as progression (Spencer 1890, p. 93, cited in [1, p. 27]). More recently, Diamond states that increasing
complexity is no more than an average long-term trend, with innumerable shifts in either direction: 1000
amalgamations for 999 reversals [6, p. 281]. Richerson & Boyd, while acknowledging that decreases in
complexity can and have occurred, clearly see increases in complexity as more common, arguing that complex
social organization 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. A trend here is defined as a directional shift in a measurement value of
some attribute over time (e.g. the extreme of a distribution, or a measure of its central tendency). Some 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 (e.g. increases in the maximum degree of biological complexity, and body sizesee ref
for a summary of the proposed macro-evolutionary trends). In our own lineage, the trend of increasing brain
size in homonins is well-established even if there is much discussion as to the reasons for it.

One explanation for such macro-evolutionary trends is that selection has favoured a consistent directional shift
in the trait in question. For example, it has been argued that selection acts as a driving force favouring
increased body size owing to the potential advantages that are gained from being large (e.g. more efficient
metabolism and homeostasis, advantage in competition over resources, greater mobility, and decreased
predation). However, it also possible for trends to occur even in the absence of such a driving force if the
phase space in which a trait is evolving is constrained and the trait originally arises near one of the constraints
(a so-called passive trend). For example, the trend of increasing biological complexity could be the result of
the earliest single-celled organisms arising near a left-wall of minimum complexity, i.e. it was almost
impossible for them to have been any less complex. Initially any changes in complexity must be in the direction
of increased complexity. Subsequently, increases and decreases are possible, yet over time the maximum
degree of complexity will increase. Similar mechanisms could explain the trend towards increasing political
complexity (figure 3).

Figure 3.
Alternative trend mechanisms underlying the increase in political complexity over time. (b) In a driven trend,
change is biased with increases in complexity more likely than decreases (this represents an extreme example
in which only increases have occurred). ...

Biologists have employed PCMs to investigate trends in biological evolution. Here we use a PCM to directly
estimate the number of changes between forms of political organization to assess whether increases in
complexity have actually been more common than decreases. As a first step we inferred the form of political
organization in the ancestral Austronesian society under the best-fitting model of evolution from the previous
analysis, the UNILINEAR model. The results suggest that the ancestral Austronesian society was politically
acephalous (proportional support for different forms of organization: Acephalous = 0.76, Simple Chiefdom =
0.22, Complex Chiefdom = 0.01, State = 0.00) (figure 1), which confirms that the maximum degree of
hierarchical political organization in Austronesian societies has indeed increased over time. We then used a
PCM to infer the number of increases and decreases between levels of complexity under the UNILINEAR
model of trait evolution. Figure 1shows the distributions of the estimated numbers of changes from these
analyses. We can see that increases in complexity have occurred more frequently than decreases (table 1)
(although in the comparison between changes A sC and sC A, the mean difference was less than one).
As the more complex forms of political organization 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 complexity,
therefore allowing for more opportunities for increases to occur. The final two comparisons are situations where
there were equal opportunities for increases or decreases and in these comparisons increases are again
significantly greater than decreases. These results suggest that increases in political complexity in
Austronesian-speaking societies have generally been more common than decreases.

(c) Co-evolution of social and political traits

Another aspect of social evolution that has been the subject of considerable debate is the idea that different
aspects of social organization are correlated with one another, i.e. classificatory schemes such as Band, Tribe,
Chiefdom and State are based on regular hypothesized differences between these categories in such things as
subsistence practices, degree of social differentiation, inherited inequalities and permanent offices of
leadership. An associated idea is that change from one category to another involves the relatively rapid
restructuring of these different aspects of social organization, i.e. socio-political evolutionary change
is punctuational. However, it has been argued that different aspects of social organization do not co-evolve this
closely and that societies exhibit too much variation to fit easily into categories such Band, Tribe, Chiefdom and
State.

There has been a lack of quantitative comparative analyses attempting to address this question. We examined
whether political organization co-evolves with hereditary social stratification (i.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 States are thought to be socially
stratified along these lines, while such hereditary ranking is thought to be absent in societies organized
politically only at the level of the local community (i.e. Bands and Tribes). Table 2 shows the co-occurrence of
these two aspects of socio-political organization in our sample, which suggests that Acephalous societies
generally lack hereditary forms of social stratification, while it is generally present in Chiefdoms and States.
However, 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 (e.g. most of
the Polynesian societies in the sample are organized as chiefdoms and have hereditary social stratification
(see electronic supplementary material, figure S2), which potentially could be owing to either process).
Therefore, societies cannot be treated as independent data points in a cross-cultural analysis. Phylogenetic
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 2.

Contingency table showing the occurrence of different forms of political organization and the presence or
absence of hereditary social stratification in our sample.

To formally test whether political organization has co-evolved with the wider presence of hereditary social
stratification, we use a PCM to compare two alternative models of trait evolution: (i) a dependent model where
the rate of change of one trait is different depending on the state of the other, and (ii) an independent model
where the rate of trait change does not vary according to the state of the other (see electronic supplementary
material, figure S1). For our sample of Austronesian-speaking societies, the dependent model of evolution fits
the data much better than the independent model (figure 4 and electronic supplementary material). These
results support the hypothesis that political organization, as represented by the number of hierarchical
jurisdictional levels, has indeed co-evolved with the wider presence of hereditary social stratification in
Austronesian societies.

Figure 4.

Flow diagram showing the estimated rates of change between different combinations of the binary variables of
Class Stratification and Jurisdictional Hierarchy under the dependent model of evolution. This dependent
model has a much better fit to the data ...

Figure 4 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 Acephalous societies lacking
hereditary class distinctions can develop either hereditary class distinctions or a chiefdom form of political
organization first. However, the rate of change from Acephalous society to Chiefdom is greater in the presence
of hereditary class distinctions, while the particular form of political organization does affect the rate at which
hereditary class distinctions evolve. Interestingly, the rates of change away from the intermediate states (i.e.
Bands or Tribes exhibiting hereditary class distinctions and vice versa) are generally higher than those going
towards these intermediate states. This suggests that these intermediate forms of organization are unstable,
which is consistent with the idea that different features of social organization may alter relatively rapidly once
other elements have changed.