TY - JOUR
AU - Durham, William H.
AB -  In this paper, I review recent attempts to formulate an evolutionary theory of cultural change. Historically, cultural evolution has had a bad name in anthropology, largely because the term has been used to describe unilineal schemes of social development and to promote the "biologicization" of the discipline. When defined and used appropriately, however, the term deserves a better fate. I argue that the conceptual systems we call cultures do evolve in the important, specific sense of "descent with modification," and that an­ thropology cannot afford to deny or ignore this fact. On the contrary, I suggest that there is much to be gained by adding an evolutionary perspective of this kind to cultural theory and analysis. The last decade has witnessed a number of pioneering efforts in this direction; here I review five of the leading theoretical formulations, pointing out their similarities, differences, and specific contributions to the evolving subfield of evolutionary culture theory. The Meaning of "Evolution" The word "evolution" has meant many things to many people (e.g. see reviews in 27,28,42,44, 129, 155,188,205). Swayed by Darwin's simple yet seminal rendering, "descent with modification" (63), I consider evolution to have occurred in any setX whose elements (Xl,Xz, 
TI - Advances in Evolutionary Culture Theory
JF - Annual Review of Anthropology
DO - 10.1146/annurev.an.19.100190.001155
DA - 1990-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/annual-reviews/advances-in-evolutionary-culture-theory-65oCeO6N0z
SP - 187
EP - 210
VL - 19
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -