Innovation in Cultural Systems: Contributions from Evolutionary Anthropology
O’Brien MJ and SJ Shennan (eds) (2010) Innovation in Cultural Systems: Contributions from Evolutionary Anthropology. The MIT Press, Cambridge. 284 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-01333-8
Contributors:
A Ariew, RA Bentley, W Callebaut, J Henrich, A Kandler, KN Laland, DO Larson, A Mesoudi, MJ O’Brien, CT Palmer, A Powell, SM Reader, V Roux, C Savage, MB Schiffer, JH Schwartz, SJ Shennan, J Steele, MG Thomas, TL VanPool
Description:
This book, like another recently reviewed, applies the principles of evolution to the task of understanding cultural variation and change. Its specific focus is on innovation and its role in the evolution of cultural systems. Importantly, innovation in this context is considered as a process and not merely a product, and is distinguished from invention (the creation and establishment of something new) in being an invention that becomes successful (and is therefore presumably beneficial). The papers presented here are the product of a workshop held at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) in Altenberg, Austria, in September 2007, and come from participants in diverse fields, including archaeology, anthropology, biology, psychology, and philosophy. The book consists of an introduction and three main sections. The introduction serves as an historical overview of the role innovation has played in the explanation of cultural phenomena over the past two centuries. The next section of the book is titled “The Biological Substrate,” and addresses innovation from numerous angles, including an epistemological perspective, zoological case studies of animal innovation, and contributions from neuroscience and evolutionary developmental biology. The third section, entitled “Cultural Inheritance,” is the largest section of the book, and demonstrates in some detail different ways in which our understanding of cultural innovation has benefited from modern insights. Topics in this section are quite varied, and include laboratory simulations of cultural innovation, presentation of neutral models for innovation, demographic analyses, and even a section on the evolutionary advantages of metatraditions (i.e. non-innovation). The final section, entitled “Patterns in the Anthropological Record,” focuses on case studies of innovation in the archaeological and ethnographic record.
