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In this brief, autobiographical account, I trace the development of my intellectual and theoretical interests, especially as they relate to culture. How can we account for culture's being learned by individuals and yet apparently shared by members of a community? How do cultures as shared within communities change and evolve? How does what we know about languages, themselves a kind of cultural tradition, contribute to understanding culture and cultural evolution? Are processes of cultural and linguistic evolution analogous to those in the evolution of biological species and, if so, in what ways? How, also, do genetically based behavioral proclivities manifest themselves in social arenas that are structured by language and culture?
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