Explaining Culture Scientifically

What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors--prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics--approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chimpanzees, from Taiwan to New Guinea, from cannibalism to marriage patterns, this volume directly addresses the challenges of explaining culture scientifically. The evolutionary paradigm lends itself particularly well to the question of culture; in these essays, different modes of inheritance - genetic, cultural, ecological, and structural - illustrate evolutionary patterns in a variety of settings.Explaining Culture Scientificallyis divided into parts that address how to think about culture, modelling approaches to cultural influences on behaviour, ethnographic case studies addressing the question of culture's influence on behaviour, and challenges to the possibility of a scientific approach to culture. It is necessary reading for scholars and students in anthropology and related disciplines.Melissa J. Brown is assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University. The other contributors include Kenichi Aoki, Christophe Boesch, Robert Borofsky, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, Roy D'Andrade, William H. Durham, Marcus W. Feldman, Herbert Gintis, Joseph Henrich, Yasuo Ihara, James Holland Jones, Peter J. Richerson, Gregory Starrett, and Arthur P. Wolf.