EIGHTEEN PROFESSIONS¹

Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution

“…The argument is as follows: The evolution of the human capacity for cultural learning created both the possibility of gene-culture coevolution (as in the development of lactose tolerance after the domestication of milk-producing animals) and the means for evolution of social practices without genetic change and at a pace much more rapid than is possible through natural selection (Henrich, 2015;Turchin, 2016). Yet this remarkable consequence of biological evolution returns us to a basic argument first made by those who argued for a complete separation between biology and the human sciences: Homo sapiens crossed an evolutionary Rubicon from genetic determination to cultural malleability (Kroeber, 1915).…”

Epigenetics for the social sciences: justice, embodiment, and inheritance in the postgenomic age

“…What it is often too easily forgotten is that the separation of the biological from the social established by hard-heredity played a complex conceptual and political role in the early twentieth century. In favoring an emancipation of the sociocultural from its biological bases, hard-heredity became (somehow paradoxically) a helpful construct for cultural anthropologists eager to get rid of the "vitiated mixture" (Kroeber 1915) between the heredity and civilization, symbolized by the Lamarckian trends in social sciences (Stocking 1968). It is undeniable that Kroeber, one of the fathers of cultural anthropology, saw in hard-heredity his best ally to get rid of racialist discourses that were part and parcel of neo-Lamarckian social science (Stocking 1968;Kronfeldner 2009).…”

Evolutionary program in sociology

“…Поред тога, антропологија се бави и односом између биолошких и социјалних фактора. Тако он историјску антропологију, исто-рију и социологију назива историјом, а физичку антропологију и психологију укључује у биологију (Kroeber 1915). Ментална конституција човека се од стране историчара претпоставља, али историчар је не користи како би разја-снио друштвене феномене, а исто важи и за лично и индивидуално -њима се историја не бави.…”