How Traditions Live and Die 1st Edition by Olivier Morin 0190210508 9780190210502

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ISBN 10: 0190210508

ISBN 13: 9780190210502

Author: Olivier Morin

Of all the things we do and say, most will never be repeated or reproduced. Once in a while, however, an idea or a practice generates a chain of transmission that covers more distance through space and time than any individual person ever could. What makes such transmission chains possible? For two centuries, the dominant view (from psychology to anthropology) was that humans owe their cultural prosperity to their powers of imitation. In this view, modern cultures exist because the people who carry them are gifted at remembering, storing and reproducing information. How Traditions Live and Die proposes an alternative to this standard view. What makes traditions live is not a general-purpose imitation capacity. Cultural transmission is partial, selective, often unfaithful. Some traditions live on in spite of this, because they tap into widespread and basic cognitive preferences. These attractive traditions spread, not by being better retained or more accurately transferred, but because they are transmitted over and over. This theory is used to shed light on various puzzles of cultural change (from the distribution of bird songs to the staying power of children’s rhymes) and to explain the special relation that links the human species to its cultures. Morin combines recent work in cognitive anthropology with new advances in quantitative cultural history, to map and predict the diffusion of traditions. This book is both an introduction and an accessible alternative to contemporary theories of cultural evolution.

Table of contents:

1. The Transmission and Diffusion of Traditions
Culture as Distributed
Cultural Homogeneity Is Overrated …
… Yet Homogeneity Remains a Heavily Influential Hypothesis
A Quantitative and Abstract View of Culture
What is Cultural Transmission?
Distinguishing Diffusion and Transmission
Transmission and Invention are not Opposites
Not all Differences between Societies are Traditional
Our Cultural Repertoires Could not Exist without Transmission
Culture: A Set of Traditions Rather than a Set of Differences
Do Traditions Exist?
Some Traditions are as Durable as they Seem
Culture is not an Undecomposable Whole
Why Anthropologists are no Longer Interested in Traditions
Traditions do not Exist Solely as Ideas
Two Questions
Why are there Traditions Rather than Nothing?
Why Does One Species Monopolize Traditions?

2. Communication and Imitation
Imitating and Understanding Others
Looking for “True Imitation”
Imitation is neither a Human Privilege nor the Source of Our Cultures
Human Ostensive Communication
Involuntary Transmission: When Behaviors Leak Information
Non-Ostensive Voluntary Transmission
Voluntary and Overt Transmission: a Human Phenomenon
Culture did not Build Our Communicative Skills from the Ground Up
Ostensive Communication is not Particularly Faithful
Communicating to Imitate, Imitating to Communicate
Communication for Imitation: Demonstrations and “Rational” Imitation
Ostensive Communication Goes Beyond Teaching
It Takes Place at any Time, from Anyone, and for any Reason
It Requires an Active Reconstruction of the Transmitted Material
It Can Bypass Language
It does not Need Adults
“A Light, Insubstantial, Fugitive Web”

3. The Myth of Compulsive Imitation
How far do we Follow Conformity and Deference?
An Ambiguity of Dual Inheritance Theory
“Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart”—Really?
Docility: Does Compulsive Imitation Breed Altruism?
The Case for Flexible Imitation
Imitation: the Key that Unlocks Every Door?
Conformity and Deference: Psychological Mechanisms or Social Facts?
Cultural Diffusion in a Population of Flexible Imitators
Negative Informational Cascades are Short or Rare
Waves of Compulsive Imitation: Often Evoked, Seldom Documented
The Influence of Influentials: Tautology or Misunderstanding?
Closing the Case against the Imitation Hypothesis

4. A Theory of Diffusion Chains
Transmission is Easy, Diffusion is Hard
There is no Inertia for Transmission
Why a few Transmission Episodes do not Make a Diffusion Chain
Transmission Fidelity is not the Problem
For Transmission, Quantity Matters More than Quality
Cultural Transmission is no Chinese Whispers Game
A Tradition Must be Carried by Many Robust Diffusion Chains
Redundancy and Repetition Make Diffusion Chains Less Fragile
Traditions Must Proliferate in Order to Survive
Stability and Success Go Together
Why do Traditions Proliferate?
Accessibility: Certain Populations Make Contacts Easier
Many Ways to Proliferate, Several Types of Diffusion Chains
Cultural Selection—Many are Called, few are Chosen
Traditions Survive Cultural Selection by Being Attractive
Attraction Can be Linked to a Restricted Context, or More General
Traditions are Appealing in Many Ways, not all of Them Cognitive
Transmission is not Memorization, Culture is not Collective Memory
When Does Psychology Drive Culture?
Politeness Norms Last Longer if they Tap into Our Sense of Disgust
Among the Kwaio, Beliefs about Spirits Survived by Being Intuitive
Generally Attractive Traditions do not Always Prevail
How the Vagaries of Diffusion Dilute General Attraction
Local Attraction Can Override General Attraction, Locally
General Attraction Prevails in Long and Narrow Diffusion Chains
For Instance, Widely Diffused Languages Tend to be Easier on the Mind
The Benefit of Moving across Scales When Looking at Culture

5. The Passing of Generations
“That Constant Stream of Recruits to Mankind”
Demographic Generations are not Social Generations
How to Link Humans Scattered across Time
How Generational Overlap Makes Diffusion Easier
Demographic and Social Obstacles to Transmission
Everything your Parents did not Teach you about Culture
Why do Children have Traditions?
The Lost World of Children’s Peer Culture
Children’s Traditions are not Vestigial Adult Practices
They are Mostly Transmitted from Child to Child
They are Children’s Games, and they Look Like it
They are at Least as Durable as Cross-Generational Traditions
They are Homogenic and Share a Common Fate
What Makes Children’s Peer Culture Last?
Traditionalism is not what Took Children’s Culture across Time
Neither Does Memorability Preserve Children’s Rhymes
Children’s Traditions Were Selected to Proliferate
Generational Turnover Need not Impair Cultural Survival

6. An Ever More Cultural Animal
Three Clues for One Puzzle
What is Cultural Accumulation?
“Cumulative Culture” is an Avatar of Evolutionary Gradualism
Faithfully Replicated Small Changes Cannot Explain Everything
Traditions Often Endure without Improving …
… and Cultural Progress May Do without Conservation
The Growing Number of Traditions is What Matters
The Opening Up of the Human Public Domain
Human Populations Became Increasingly Hospitable to Culture …
… But Hospitable Populations Are No Guarantee of Cultural Progress
The Extreme Accumulation Hypothesis
What Kind of Cultural Animal are we?
We Need Not Believe that We Are Wired for Culture …
… or that Communication Is Designed for Cultural Transmission
A Species Taken in a Cultural Avalanche
The Growing Weight of Traditions does not Erase Human Nature
A Cultural Animal by Accident

Appendix
Rabelais’s List of Games in Gargantua
Scope and Limits of the Search
Adults and Children: Two Cultures of Play
Detection Biases and Selection Biases
The Longevity of Children’s Games
Lasting Traditions, Specific to Childhood

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Tags: Olivier Morin, Traditions, Live, Die