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The Dynamics of Cultural Evolution

The Central Role of Purposive Behaviors

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Michael Rosenberg

    1. Philadelphia, USA

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  • Considers cultural structured systems as true entities bounded in time and space and not as ephemera
  • Synthesizes approaches to cultural evolution to provide a complete picture
  • Discusses the central role purposive behaviors play in evolutionary interactions

Part of the book series: Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation (STHE, volume 12)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 1-8

  3. The Evolution of Evolutionary Theory in Biology

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 9-28

  4. Borrowing from Biology

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 29-47

  5. That Complex Whole: The Structure of Culture and the Kinds of Cultural and Culturally Structured Entities

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 49-72

  6. That Complex Whole and its Evolutionary Dynamics

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 73-90

  7. The Deaths and Births of Cultural Systems

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 91-107

  8. Chance, Agency, and Loaded Dice

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 109-131

  9. Proximate Causation and Pattern Part I: The Paths to Food Production

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 133-151

  10. Proximate Causation and Pattern Part 2: The Paths to Social Complexity

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 153-178

  11. Agency, Proximate Causation, and the Sloshing Bucket

    • Michael Rosenberg
    Pages 179-189

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 191-203
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the nature of cultural and culturally structured social and behavioral entities, their evolutionary interactions, and the central role purposive behaviors play in those interactions. It, first, makes the case for cultural and cultural structured systems being considered as true entities bounded in time and space, and not ephemera in a constant state of becoming another system. Second, it examines how these entities interact to produce evolutionary culture change. It then argues that the intent of purposive behaviors is reliably knowable in the aggregate, at least when dealing with expressions of behavioral tendencies in the animal kingdom, humans included. Finally, the book references well documented behavioral tendencies for examples of proximate causation in the evolution of settled village societies and, following that, socially complex societies. Through these efforts, the book synthesizes the various approaches to the evolution of culture and provides a completeand comprehensive picture of the process. It provides a corrective to the tendency to view cultural systems as entirely open ended and as capable of changing in any direction; and also to treating cultural evolution as solely a result of selective forces, that is, in terms of only ultimate causation. This book provides an engaging and critical counterview to established theories of cultural evolution and is of interest to scholars and students of different disciplines, from anthropology and archeology, to evolutionary biology and epigenetics.


Authors and Affiliations

  • Philadelphia, USA

    Michael Rosenberg

About the author

Michael Rosenberg is a retired Professor of Anthropology at the University of Delaware, Wilmington, USA. His primary research interests are the mechanics of cultural evolution and understanding the beginnings of food production, settled village life, and social complexity in the context of those mechanics. In the late 1980s-early 1990s, he participated in the Tigris-Euphrates Archaeological Reconnaissance Project in Anatolia, Turkey and in the late 1990s he discovered and directed the salvage excavations at the early Neolithic sites of Hallan Çemi and Demirköy in southeastern Turkey. He has published over 40 journal articles in reputed journals, and several book chapters in edited volumes with international publishers.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Dynamics of Cultural Evolution

  • Book Subtitle: The Central Role of Purposive Behaviors

  • Authors: Michael Rosenberg

  • Series Title: Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04863-0

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-04862-3Published: 10 July 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-04865-4Published: 11 July 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-04863-0Published: 09 July 2022

  • Series ISSN: 1574-0501

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 203

  • Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations, 4 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Anthropology, Archaeology, Evolutionary Biology

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