Christophe Boesch
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190218966
- eISBN:
- 9780190274474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190218966.003.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Originally the concept of culture was proposed only for humans, stressing the importance of social influences on its dynamics and development. Although there is no question that all human groups have ...
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Originally the concept of culture was proposed only for humans, stressing the importance of social influences on its dynamics and development. Although there is no question that all human groups have different diverse, complex, and rich cultures, a debate begun in the early 1950s raised the issue of animal culture and what it may mean for the uniqueness of human culture. This chapter argues that data from captive studies are difficult to use in this regard owing to the artificiality of the “social dimension” in captive groups and the absence of a species-specific ecological environment-issues that have obscured progress toward a better understanding of human culture. Two major attributes of human culture-cumulative cultural evolution and symbolic culture-arise in adopting an ethnographic approach to the study of differences between wild chimpanzee populations. Culture is observed among both humans and chimpanzees; therefore further work should be aimed at uncovering the specifics of culture in each of these species.Less
Originally the concept of culture was proposed only for humans, stressing the importance of social influences on its dynamics and development. Although there is no question that all human groups have different diverse, complex, and rich cultures, a debate begun in the early 1950s raised the issue of animal culture and what it may mean for the uniqueness of human culture. This chapter argues that data from captive studies are difficult to use in this regard owing to the artificiality of the “social dimension” in captive groups and the absence of a species-specific ecological environment-issues that have obscured progress toward a better understanding of human culture. Two major attributes of human culture-cumulative cultural evolution and symbolic culture-arise in adopting an ethnographic approach to the study of differences between wild chimpanzee populations. Culture is observed among both humans and chimpanzees; therefore further work should be aimed at uncovering the specifics of culture in each of these species.
