What is the cultural transission theory?

Question

What is the cultural transission theory?

Answer 1

Cultural transmission is the process of passing on culturally relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes and values from one person or culture to another.

Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins posited the theory of a unit of cultural transmission, called a meme. These are replicators and imitation is the method by which they produce copies of themselves. "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or arches. " Memes have since been describes as being akin to a virus, only transmitting aspects of culture rather than disease.

When encountering a different culture, you transmit part of your own and leave with pieces of theirs. Longer exposure to the "foreign" culture leads to more solidified integration of aspects of that culture in your own behavior. When you return to your "home" culture, you then transmit parts of the "foreign" culture you picked up to other members of the culture you are a member of. This occurs on broad levels, such as leaving a Western culture and visiting, or doing business with, an Asian or African culture. It also occurs on smaller levels, like when you grow up in a white, middle-class neighborhood and then spend a good deal of time working or living in an urban black neighborhood; if you are an urban Latino and move to a rural farming community.

Eventually, the "virus", or meme, spreads and integrates well enough that the different cultures begin to merge on some levels while continuing to maintain their base autonomy. Over great periods of time, the build-up of these memes between two cultures can create a total merge and a "new" culture develops.

This school of thought considers human behavior to be the consequence of the interaction of evolved physiological and psychological variables with the natural environment. Culture would be ultimately biologically determined by the evolutionary history of the species. Evolutionary psychologists regard certain widespread behaviors as the maladaptive result of the clash between Stone Age instincts and our current technological environment. Essentially, cultural transmission theories seek to Darwinize sociology, psychology, and culture and make them conform to the evolutionary theory of biology.

The concept itself seems solid in general, but their are disputes in the scientific community as to the ability of the profession to adequately and scientifically test the specific theory of memes.