Continuities in Cultural Evolution

Continuities in Cultural Evolution PDF Author: Margaret Mead
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351526081
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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Book Description
Margaret Mead once said, "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples--faraway peoples--so that Americans might better understand themselves." Continuities in Cultural Evolution is evidence of this devotion. All of Mead's efforts were intended to help others learn about themselves and work toward a more humane and socially responsible society. Scientist, writer, explorer, and teacher, Mead brought the serious work of anthropology into the public consciousness. This volume began as the Terry Lectures, given at Yale in 1957 and was not published until 1964, after extensive reworking. The time she spent on revision is evidence of the importance Mead attached to the subject: the need to develop a truly evolutionary vision of human culture and society. This was desirable in her eyes both in order to reinforce the historical dimension in our ideas about human culture, and to preserve the relevance of historical and cultural diversity to social, economic, and political action. Given the present state of academic and public discourse alike, this volume speaks to us in a language we badly need to recover.

Continuities in Cultural Evolution

Continuities in Cultural Evolution PDF Author: Margaret Mead
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351526081
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Get Book Here

Book Description
Margaret Mead once said, "I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples--faraway peoples--so that Americans might better understand themselves." Continuities in Cultural Evolution is evidence of this devotion. All of Mead's efforts were intended to help others learn about themselves and work toward a more humane and socially responsible society. Scientist, writer, explorer, and teacher, Mead brought the serious work of anthropology into the public consciousness. This volume began as the Terry Lectures, given at Yale in 1957 and was not published until 1964, after extensive reworking. The time she spent on revision is evidence of the importance Mead attached to the subject: the need to develop a truly evolutionary vision of human culture and society. This was desirable in her eyes both in order to reinforce the historical dimension in our ideas about human culture, and to preserve the relevance of historical and cultural diversity to social, economic, and political action. Given the present state of academic and public discourse alike, this volume speaks to us in a language we badly need to recover.

Continuities in Cultural Evolution

Continuities in Cultural Evolution PDF Author: Margaret Mead
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Culture Evolves

Culture Evolves PDF Author: Andrew Whiten
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199608962
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Culture shapes vast swathes of our lives and has allowed the human species to dominate the planet in an evolutionarily unique way. This book is unique in focusing on the evolutionary continuities in culture, providing an interdisciplinary exploration of culture, written by leading authorities from the biological and cognitive sciences.

Continuities in Cultural Evolution. (Terry Lectures ... 1957.).

Continuities in Cultural Evolution. (Terry Lectures ... 1957.). PDF Author: Margaret Mead
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description


Culture and the Evolutionary Process

Culture and the Evolutionary Process PDF Author: Robert Boyd
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226069338
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
How do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate.

Global History, Visual Culture and Itinerancies

Global History, Visual Culture and Itinerancies PDF Author: Francisco José Díaz Marcilla
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527562417
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
National studies have demonstrated their inability to correctly understand global phenomena, and the way in which they affect societies. This chronologically ambitious book investigates methodological and theoretical issues from Roman times to the present, in terms of globalization. In this context, one of the most relevant parameters of change emerges: the itinerancy of culture and knowledge. Therefore, this volume argues that itinerant agents carry with them cultural baggage, transporting and transmitting it to other spaces. In this way, interconnection begins, producing active changes in global history and visual culture. Contributions to this book focus on comparative studies, the evolution of global phenomena, historical processes in their diachrony, regional studies, changing economies, cultural continuities, and methodological questions on globalization, among others. In addition, the book opens with a contribution from Professor Peter Burke.

The Taming of Evolution

The Taming of Evolution PDF Author: Davydd Greenwood
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501719947
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson’s human sociobiology and Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin’s theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes.

Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples

Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples PDF Author: Margaret Mead
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351319981
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 776

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Book Description
In many respects, this volume is a pioneer effort in anthropological literature. It remains firmly part of the genre of cooperative research, or "interdisciplinary research," though at the time of its original publication that phrase had yet to be coined. Additionally, this work is more theoretical in nature than a faithful anthropological record, as all the essays were written in New York City, on a low budget, and without fieldwork. The significance of these studies lies in the fact that Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples was the first attempt to think about the very complex problems of cultural character and social structure, coupled with a meticulous execution of comparative study.

Through the Lens of Anthropology

Through the Lens of Anthropology PDF Author: Robert J. Muckle
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442608633
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description


Unprecedented Evolution

Unprecedented Evolution PDF Author: Spyridon A. Koutroufinis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781940447476
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The authors of these essays examine core dimensions of the human condition in light of biophilosophy and process metaphysics, which they apply to such core anthropological issues as the survival of both the human species and the biosphere as a whole. With a general focus on the unique capacity for symbolization as marking an important and influential factor in human evolution, the authors address key issues in biophilosophy, such as the specific ways we differ from other species, our capacity to symbolize and create a helpful or dangerous distance from life, and our playfulness and proclivity for mythmaking. Questions addressed include the following: How did symbolic thought shape the evolution of the human species? How did symbolic systems shape human experience of and reasoning about space, time, matter, life, and natural processes? How do our unique forms of power relations distinguish humans from other species? How do our spiritual and metaphysical belief systems influence human rationality and morality? How can we balance our spiritual needs with our rational abilities, and how could this influence our future evolution? How should we respond to the trends towards transhumanism and bio-technocracy? Our intellect is troubled by a consciousness of its own evolution, by the ecological and ethical challenges of a severely degraded environment, and it wields great symbolic and mythic fictions with the power to influence the bio-social evolution of future humans. Despite all our unique qualities, we cannot set ourselves apart from the natural heritage we share with every living being on planet Earth. Somewhere between transhumanism and cosmohumanism, we must find an ethical guide, an organismic and cosmic consciousness, and a speculative framework to manage our knowledge and our spontaneous actions towards the future.