Abstract
Cultural explanations of socio-economic phenomena are often considered tautological or, at best, residual explanations. This does not have to be the case as long as theoretical and empirical restrictions are imposed on what is culture, how cultural traits are distributed across the population, and how they evolve over time. The present course surveys a vast literature on the evolution of culture which imposes theoretical and empirical restrictions on what is culture, how cultural traits are distributed across the population, and how they evolve over time. The objective is to provide a general account and some elements for the explanation of the observed cultural inequality across the population, for different classes of cultural traits, transmitted by means of different mechanisms, e.g. at different time frequencies.
Introduction
We generally define culture to represent those components of preferences, attitudes, and beliefs which depend upon the capacity for social learning and transmission across generations.
This definition allows us to frame the object of our study formally in terms of the properties of preference orderings of agents (as typically represented by utility functions) as well as of probability distributions over the properties of the environment they face. At the same time, the definition highlights the fundamental transmission mechanisms behind the evolution of culture, social learning and inter-generational transmission.
Consequently, the present course will attempt at providing a categorization of cultural traits and of transmission mechanisms as well as, most importantly, a map between them. First of all, cultural traits are typically not independent objects, they come and are transmitted in bundles. This is e.g., evidently the case for ethnic traits. Furthermore, different classes of traits are trans- mitted by means of different mechanisms, e.g. at different time frequencies. Some general form of risk aversion or time-discounting might be the result of natural selection, while political attitudes, religious preferences, ethnic identity are certainly transmitted via faster social learning mechanisms like, e.g., inter-generational transmission and/or peer effects. Depending on the different time frequencies, cultural traits are or are not significantly modified in their form and composition as they evolve. Some cultural traits are affected as agents interact with the environment, which might change fast relatively to evolutionary time. This is the case, generally, for ethnic and religious traits. In many interesting cases, cultural evolutionary processes are indeed fast enough that the distribution of the population with respect to a set of cultural trait represents the only dynamics of interest, while traits themselves are approximately given. Finally, in many instances the same traits are subject to different mechanisms governing their evolution at different time frequency. While e.g., some general form of time-discounting might be an evolutionary adaptation, its effect on behavior is generally mediated through parental socialization e.g., to self-control.
The survey will be structured as follows. We shall first of all briefly touch upon the evidence for cultural inequality across the population, for different classes of cultural traits. We will then study more in detail the classes of theoretical models of the evolution of cultural traits which can account for the observed cultural diversity, again for different classes of cultural traits transmitted by means of different mechanisms, e.g. at different time frequencies. More specifically, we first concentrate on cultural traits which are considered evolutionary adaptations, the result of evolutionary selection or of gene-culture evolution. We then concentrate on ethnic traits, introducing phylogenetic models theoretically and reviewing their application to the ethnic traits with genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data. Finally, we concentrate on the population dynamics of the distribution of cultural traits, distinguishing and comparing different specific elements of the transmission mechanisms studied in the literature.
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