An evolutionary critique of cultural analysis in sociology.

AN EVOLUTIONARY CRITIQUE OF CULTURAL ANALYSIS IN SOCIOLOGY Timothy Crippen Mary Washington College

A noteworthy development that has transpired in American sociology in the past quarter century has been the increasingly sophisticated interest in the analysis of human cultural systems. Sadly, however, these analyses reveal that social scientists rarely appreciate the profoundly evolutionary aspects of human culture. The chief purpose of this essay is to address this shortcoming and to offer some tentative suggestions toward its rectification. The essay begins by briefly reviewing recent developments in the analysis of cultural systems, primarily by reference to the influential work of Wuthnow. Second, a common flaw in these approaches is addressed--namely, the absence of any recognition of the value of grounding sociocultural theory in an informed evolutionary framework---and the case is made that this shortcoming is avoidable, even within the context of the intellectual traditions of the social sciences. Third, the evolutionary foundations of human cultural behavior are explored in terms of an analysis of relevant theoretical and empirical developments in the evolutionary neurosciences. Fourth, the value of these insights is illustrated by reference to an evolutionary critique of a recent and thought-provoking contribution to the study of m o d e m political culture--Douglas and Wildavsky's analysis of Risk and Culture. Finally, the article concludes by emphasizing the value of and the necessity for incorporating evolutionary reasoning into the domain of sociocultural theory. KEY WORDS: Cultural evolution; Culture theory; Reductionism; Sectarianism; Sociobiology; Symbolization; Reification. Received January 28, 1991; revised version accepted May 3, 1992.

Address all correspondence to Timothy Crippen, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5358. Copyright 9 1992 by Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York Human Nature, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 379---412. 379

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A noteworthy development that has transpired in American sociology in the past quarter century has been the increasingly sophisticated interest in the analysis of h u m a n cultural systems. Bellah's (1964, 1967, 1970) and Swanson's (1960, 1967) investigations of the nature and evolution of religion; Berger and Luckmann's (1966) influential argument concerning the social construction of reality; Collins's (1975, 1981, 1988) analyses of symbols of deferential behavior and of interaction rituals; Douglas's (1966, 1970) treatments of the social-structural underpinnings of pollution rituals and taboos; Bergesen's (1977) assessment of political witchhunting rituals--these and other sociological inquiries into the nature of human culture delve more deeply than merely analyzing the socialstructural correlates of beliefs and values. These scholars have resuscitated long-standing questions regarding the essence and transformation of systems of symbolic information. The developments are welcome, and they enable us to begin to grasp the essential features of the ideological disputes that define the modern era. Sadly, however, these and other analyses reveal that social scientists rarely appreciate the profoundly evolutionary aspects of h u m a n culture. More is the pity that the circumstance is avoidable, for sociology's master theorists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were keenly attentive to the evolutionary foundations of h u m a n nature, social structure, and culture, at least within the context of the state of evolutionary reasoning in their own day. Contemporary social scientists, by and large, have lost sight of these pioneering visions and, in the process, have developed tools of analysis that are constrained by an excessively "culturological" theoretical bias. The chief purpose of this article is to address this shortcoming and to offer some tentative suggestions toward its rectification.

RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL ANALYSIS: THE STATE OF THE ART Perhaps the most thoroughgoing program in recent years to revitalize the analysis of h u m a n culture in sociology has been engineered by Wuthnow (1985, 1987, 1989; Wuthnow et al. 1984; Wuthnow and Witten 1988). A chief aim of his enterprise is to isolate reductionism as the central flaw accompanying sociological inquiries into cultural phenomena. The principal target in this assault is what Wuthnow (1985) calls the "correspondence theory of knowledge" that posits a direct and strong connection between social structure and culture. In this vein, he is primarily critical of the contributions of "classical" sociologists, such as Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. These scholars, W u t h n o w (1987:31)

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claims, laid the foundations for a "radical sociology of knowledge" that views cultural phenomena as mere "reflections of social experience," the sources of which may be discovered "in various aspects of economic, social, and political life." This effort to reduce explanations of symbolicexpressive aspects of human behavior to their social-structural foundations is considered by Wuthnow to be both naive and counterproductive. To view human culture as epiphenomenal to the dynamics of demographic and social-structural conditions is, in his estimation, to denigrate it. Thus, Wuthnow portrays the otherwise useful contributions of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber as antithetical to the development of a sophisticated analysis of symbol systems inasmuch as they fail to appreciate the emergent and autonomous qualities of cultural phenomena. The apparent problem of reductionism and the attendant sins of the classical tradition's approach to the study of human culture led to theoretical reformulations that Wuthnow (1987:36-50) groups under the rubric of the "neoclassical" approach represented by the contributions of such scholars as Berger, Luckmann, Bellah, and Geertz. The approach avoids reductionism by eliminating the Cartesian dualism between subject and object. "This emphasis relativized the objectivity of the external world by demonstrating that it, no less than the subjective world, was created symbolically" (Wuthnow 1987:37). The essence of the approach resides in its core assumption that cultural phenomena ultimately derive from the "human requirement for wholistic meaning" (Wuthnow 1987:40), although from whence this requirement comes is only vaguely conceptualized. The quest for meaning is thus viewed as the source of human culture, and these symbolic products are viewed as emergent phenomena, explicable only in their own terms. Although clearly sympathetic with the efforts of the neoclassicists, Wuthnow has some reservations about their approach to the study of cultural systems. The principal problem that he identifies is a methodological one. The phenomenological and hermeneutic strategies of analysis that are seemingly consistent with these theoretical perspectives have thus far proved incapable of producing systematized and replicable knowledge. Indeed, the flaw in these approaches is that they seem content to describe rather than to explain cultural phenomena. Interpretative or "thick" description (Geertz 1973) appears to be their primary goal. Of even greater concern to Wuthnow is the degree to which the neoclassical approaches overemphasize the individual, a problem that derives from the tendency to view cultural phenomena as inextricably linked with the human quest for meaning. "What has seldom been successfully attained within the neoclassical framework are analyses that relate cultural systems to large-scale institutions, that deal

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with ideologies and interest groups, or that examine the resources used in the production and institutionalization of cultural systems" (Wuthnow 1987:49). These shortcomings lead W u t h n o w to examine a third, and final, source of influence on the resurgent sociology of culture, an approach that he labels "poststructural." Deriving largely from the contributions of L6vi-Strauss, Barthes, and Chomsky, the scholars representative of this style of cultural analysis include Douglas, Foucault, and Habermas. As Wuthnow correctly notes, their concerns move beyond the quest for meaning. Instead, culture is assessed as a systematic, patterned code of symbolic behavior. Thereby, cultural phenomena are rightly viewed as behavioral expressions as mechanisms employed by active individuals in their engagement with the social world. Culture, in effect, is composed of all "symbolic-expressive aspects" of human behavior (Wuthnow 1987:57). Wuthnow is not content merely to reiterate the insights drawn from modes of inquiry as diverse as phenomenology, hermeneutics, structural anthropology, and critical theory. Instead, he seeks to distill these contributions into a coherent scheme of cultural analysis. This task recently culminated in his analysis of "communities of discourse," perhaps his most sustained critique of and contribution to contemporary cultural analysis (Wuthnow 1989). In this volume, Wuthnow outlines his conceptual scheme and then employs it to examine three significant examples of cultural transformation in the Western world--the emergence and institutionalization of the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European socialism. What follows is an abbreviated review of his conceptual formulations. Wuthnow's analysis begins by making general distinctions among environmental conditions, institutional contexts, and action sequences. Environmental conditions concern "the most general social, cultural, political, and economic contours of the period under consideration" (Wuthnow 1989:6). The concept thus refers to very general demographic and social-structural conditions within which some particular cultural transformation is embedded. Institutional contexts concern the "immediate settings" (Wuthnow 1989:7) within which resources are mustered to produce cultural phenomena. These settings include educational, political, publishing, religious, scientific, and other social organizations. In these settings, individual and collective producers of symbolic information obtain access to key resources, including their target audiences, and encounter obstacles posed by their competitors. Finally, action sequences "refer to the behavior of culture producers and consumers and the decisions of patrons, censors, political leaders, and others who affect the behavior of culture producers and their audiences" (Wuthnow


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1989:7). In short, action sequences concern the historically specific behavior of particular individuals and groups e m b e d d e d in a specific set of environmental and institutional constraints. The concept is meant to draw attention to the role of individual agency in and to the piecemeal character of cultural innovation. Wuthnow is not only concerned with the demographic and socialstructural settings within which cultural transformations occur. Equally important, in his view, is "the w a y in which the two articulate with each other. This is a process of mutual influence, adjustment, accommodation" (Wuthnow 1989:9) and includes the production, selection, and institutionalization of cultural innovations. Production concerns the manner in which specific symbolic expressions are constructed, including h o w resources are employed in the process. Production indudes, inter alia, the formulation of ideas; the preaching of sermons; the publication of books, pamphlets, and newspapers; the establishment of salons and learned societies; and the teaching of university courses. Once cultural phenomena are produced, the process of selection occurs: some cultural forms and content flourish by attracting the attention and support of specific audiences; others wane. As with cultural production, the pressures that direct cultural selection are largely governed by access to crucial, especially political, resources. Finally, once a particular cultural product has survived the pressures of selection, institutionalization may result. "Stable access to resources, communication networks, established organizations, autonomy, and control over processes of evaluation and debate are all important features of institutionalization" (Wuthnow 1989:11). In this aspect of his conceptual scheme, W u t h n o w flirts with the incorporation of evolutionary principles into his analysis of cultural transformations. Unfortunately, this theoretical pathway remains undeveloped beyond some fleeting terminological similarities. Finally, in seeking to account for the manner in which culture "articulates" with demographic and social-structural conditions, W u t h n o w underscores a key tenet in his conceptual scheme, namely, that cultural phenomena are never perfectly coherent with the social environment. "Articulation always implies disarticulation. Some features of an ideology resonate closely with the social context in which they appear; others point toward context-free concepts and generalizations" (Wuthnow 1989:12). In brief, W u t h n o w insists that cultural phenomena possess an autonomous character and, thereby, are not reducible to demographic, social-structural, or other levels of explanation. To guide this aspect of his analysis, he introduces three final concepts that reveal most keenly his debt to the "poststructural" camp of cultural analysis: social horizons, discursive fields, and figural action (or actors). Social horizons refer to those aspects of the environment and institutional contexts that are actually

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experienced by those who produce, select, and institutionalize cultural expressions. Discursive fields refer to the "symbolic space or structure" (Wuthnow 1989:13) that inhere in specific ideologies---to patterns, themes, and binary oppositions that lend coherence to specific symbolic expressions. Lastly, figural action "refers to representative behaviors, modes of thinking, or characters that occupy space within a discursive field and are defined by the structural features of that field" (Wuthnow 1989:14). Figural actions or actors are idealizations that are invoked to corroborate and validate some specific moral plea--"the righteous magistrate, the prototypical bourgeois, the valorized proletarian" (Wuthnow 1989:14) represent a few examples of these idealizations. The foregoing is a highly condensed version of Wuthnow's conceptual scheme. Moreover, space constraints preclude any effort to summarize the assiduous manner with which he employs the scheme to examine the instances of cultural transformation that occupy the bulk of his attention in Communities of Discourse. My purpose in briefly reviewing Wuthnow's scheme is simply to illustrate the state of cultural analysis in contemporary American sociology. In this vein, Wuthnow's approach, although containing many valuable insights, illuminates a general flaw in sociological explanations of cultural phenomena. The flaw stems from one of the principal objectives of his agenda, namely, the effort to oppose all manner of reductionism in analyses of h u m a n culture. The following statement by W u t h n o w and his colleagues conveys his concern: studies of culture have been inhibited by the assumption that culture can only be understood by relating it to social structure. This is reductionism. Instead of treating culture as an interesting phenomenon in its own right, social scientists have reduced it to some other level. Instead of attempting to understand religion, one attributes it to differences in social class. Instead of dealing with the internal characteristics of ideology, one seeks its roots in vested interests. Now, there is value in this approach for certain purposes, just as there is value in reducing human behavior to the functioning of chemical impulses. But social scientists have generally resisted such attempts as far as social structure is concerned on the grounds that much of value is overlooked. They have been less conscientious in dealing with culture. (Wuthnow et al. 1984:5--6) Indeed, by opposing reductionism in any form, W u t h n o w seeks to lay the foundation for "an independent science of culture" (Wuthnow et al. 1984:240), one that treats its subject matter as an autonomous and, therefore, "distinct aspect of social reality" (Wuthnow et al. 1984:259). Building on his appropriately broad definition of cultural behavior, he argues that "a primary task of cultural analysis is to identify recurring features, distinctions, and underlying patterns which give form and


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substance to culture" (Wuthnow et al. 1984:255). Continuing: "The appropriate level of analysis is the patterns among these artifacts of interaction, rather than efforts to reduce culture either to the internal states of individuals or to the material conditions of societies. As a systematic body of inquiry, therefore, cultural analysis becomes distinct from related disciplines such as social psychology or sociology in that it concerns a unique aspect of h u m a n behavior" (Wuthnow et al. 1984:259). Although I suspect that a good m a n y social scientists concur with the sentiment expressed, my intent is to push the argument in exactly the opposite direction. Contrary to Wuthnow's claim, I would argue that social scientists have been too reluctant to pursue, where appropriate, reductionist explanations in their analyses of demographic, socialstructural, and, especially, cultural phenomena. Conventional wisdom in the social sciences treats human cultural behavior as thoroughly elastic, contingent only upon various environmental conditions and/or individual agency. This viewpoint implies a vague and unproductive form of "cultural determinism" in which little or no room is allowed for assessing the demographic and social-structural, much less the evolutionary and biological, sources of h u m a n cultural behavior. The circumstance is unfortunate, and it impedes the development of a truly scientific sociology. Although Wuthnow claims to have sympathy for "the possibility and desirability of seeking empirically verifiable generalizations about the patterning of cultural p h e n o m e n a " (Wuthnow et al. 1984:259), he rejects strategies of cultural analysis that are grounded in nomological styles of reasoning. Thus, we are left with elaborate descriptions, not explanations, of h u m a n cultural phenomena.

HUMAN NATURE AND CULTURAL BEHAVIOR: RESTORING LOST INSIGHTS Wuthnow's argument on behalf of "an independent science of culture" is grounded in an erroneous assumption, shared by many social scientists and humanists, that our species is singularly unique. Of course, our species is unique in the hackneyed sense of the term--all species are unique inasmuch as their anatomical, physiological, and behavioral traits represent the outcome of a specific history of genetic e n d o w m e n t interacting with environmental conditions, a history that results in the selective retention of naturally occurring variations. To say, therefore, that our species, or any other species for that matter, is unique is to say nothing of significance. When social scientists and humanists assert that Homo sapiens is unique, however, they are saying something altogether

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different. They are suggesting that, in contrast to other living organisms, humans represent a species that has cut itself loose from any significant biological constraints on or determinants of behavior. In this vein, it is often suggested that the capacity for symbolic communication is the sine qua non of human existence. The resulting cultural expressions are described as features of h u m a n social behavior that depend on symbolic communication and that, thereby, set our species qualitatively apart from all other living organisms. Lest one err by overstating h u m a n biological uniqueness, however, it must be remembered that we are biological creatures and that even our most "unique" trait--the capacity to construct, employ, and intergenerationally transmit symbols--is genetically conditioned. The m a n y recent advances in the evolutionary behavioral sciences continue to support Huxley's (1965; quoted in Konner 1982:25) warning not to "forget that even the capacity to learn, to learn at all, to learn only at a definite stage of development, to learn one thing rather than another, to learn more or less quickly, must have some genetic basis." Among those who are well-acquainted with the contemporary neuroscience literature, few continue to deny the validity of Huxley's claim. Even Turner (1983:221)--a symbolic anthropologist whose work is generally admired by those who, for whatever reasons, continue to deny the evolutionary bases of and constraints on human cultural behavior--admitted that the central axiom of twentieth-century cultural anthropology, "that all human behavior is the result of social conditioning," is a thoroughly flawed starting point for social-scientific inquiry. His lucid essay, "Body, Brain, and Culture," should be required reading for all those who still cling to the culturological agenda in the sociocultural sciences (see also Changeaux 1985; Edelman 1982; Finkel and Edelman 1985; Konner 1982; Lumsden and Wilson 1981, 1983; Masters 1989).' These considerations and their implications were not foreign to sociology's master theorists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In their own ways, and within the context of the state of evolutionary theorizing in their own time, such scholars as Spencer, Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, Sumner, and Mead recognized the value of, although they at times seriously misconstrued, Darwin's fundamental contribution to the life sciences, including the nascent discipline of sociology (Collins 1975, 1985; Collins and Makowsky 1989; Crippen 1987; Degler 1991; Lopreato 1984, 1990; Sanderson 1990). Among the master theorists, perhaps it was Pareto who most effectively incorporated Darwinian logic and evolutionary reasoning into his theoretical system (Crippen and Lopreato 1989; Lopreato 1975, 1980, 1981a; Lopreato and Rusher 1983). This is especially true of his analysis of the nature and transformation of h u m a n culture, an aspect of h u m a n behavior that


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corresponds to two key elements in his theoretical system, namely, the residues and derivations. Hence, a review of this feature of Pareto's contributions will underscore the degree to which sociology's master theorists utilized evolutionary logic in their efforts to explain h u m a n cultural behavior. The residues and derivations refer, respectively, to the constant and variable aspects of human verbal behavior, aspects that reflect the action of unobservable sentiments. The sentiments are conceived by Pareto as the ultimate motives for the vast share of h u m a n behavior that he construes to be nonlogical in character. These nonlogical behaviors "originate chiefly in definite psychic states, sentiments, subconscious feelings, and the like" (Pareto 1935:section 161), a notion that is roughly equivalent to what today some evolutionary behavioral scientists term "behavioral predispositions" (Lopreato 1984). The Paretean perspective thus urges considerable caution w h e n the justifications that individuals invoke to "explain" their own behavior are analyzed. These verbal accounts, for the most part, are construed as "pseudo-logical" rationalizations or sophistries that mask the operation of deep-seated sentiments. Thus, attitudes, opinions, beliefs, and ideologies core elements of any human culture--are considered to be a type of camouflage, instances of the human inclination to deceive oneself and others. In another sense, however, these verbal accounts provide powerful clues regarding the presence and operation of the unobservable sentiments. Careful inspection of verbal behavior reveals two fundamental aspects: a constant element and a variable element (Pareto 1935:sections 798ff.). Christians, for example, practice the custom of baptism and variously "explain" the ritual as an effort to remove original sin or as a method for achieving contact with the Holy Spirit. One may conclude the analysis of baptism at this point and, thereby, end with a rationalization specific to a given people in a given historical era. Or, one may expand the range of observations to i n d u d e other instances in which water or some other liquid substance is employed in rituals of selfpurification. By doing so, one observes an underlying "uniformity of fact." Pareto refers to these uniformities as "residues"; the sophistries and other verbiage that vary greatly in time and place are labeled "derivations." Both, it should be emphasized, are observable manifestations of underlying sentiments, which according to Pareto are the ultimate causes of human behavior. Pareto identifies six classes of residues, which correspond closely, although not perfectly, with underlying sentiments. Two classes of residues (or sentiments) are especially relevant to analyses of the nature and transformation of human cultural phenomena. Class I residues concern the "inclination to combine certain things with certain other

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things" (Pareto 1935:section 889). This "instinct for combinations" is ultimately responsible for the introduction of a potentially endless stream of cultural innovations, much as mutation and recombination are the sources of genetic variation in sexually reproducing species. The trait represents a powerful behavioral mechanism enabling h u m a n beings to adapt to variations in their biophysical and sociocultural environments. Once innovations are introduced, Class II residues, or the "group persistences," enter the evolutionary dynamic. Just as natural selection operates through the selective retention of naturally occurring genetic variations, the persistence sentiments act to preserve some combinations by institutionalizing them (Lopreato 1984). Pareto construes these sentiments as ultimately responsible for the emotionally forceful commitment to kin and community groupings, to social classes and territorial associations, and to established systems of mortality, including ethics, law, philosophy, and religion. Thus, the combination and persistence sentiments, acting upon and reacting to one another, are to a large degree responsible for channelling and propelling the course of sociocultural evolution (Lopreato 1980:xxxiii). In Pareto's view, these inclinations, predispositions, or sentiments underlie the human capacity to create, maintain, manipulate, and modify symbol systems. In short, they are construed as psychological mechanisms that engender human social consciousness. This behavioral trait is, however, much more complex than suggested by the conventional phrase "symbolic capacity." The ability is more accurately portrayed as an emergent product of two cognitive mechanisms, symbolization and reification (Lumsden and Wilson 1981, 1983; Lopreato 1984:281-293), mechanisms that, interestingly, are entirely consistent with Pareto's conception of combination and persistence sentiments. Symbolization refers to "a behavioral predisposition that impels the individual to facilitate communication through the invention of symbols, that is, through the association of a thing and an idea" (Lopreato 1984:347). This trait, it may be argued, confers an inclusive-fitness advantage to individual human beings who had to contend with the environmental pressures attending much of our species' existence. Those individuals who are inclined to learn more efficiently that symbols can be used to represent objects, events, and even intangible properties are, conceivably, better able to forge cooperative attachments with others---bonds that enhance the reproductive success of these individuals and their close kin. The mechanism of reification, in a related vein, refers to "a behavioral predisposition that impels the individual to transform an idea into a thing" (Lopreato 1984:346). Certain symbols, in short, take on a real existence in the individual's mind.


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Abstract conceptions, such as Community, God, and Society, are construed as real elements of the "natural order of things." Reifications of this sort encourage individual commitment to some sense of collective identity and purpose and, thereby, intensify bonds of nepotism and reciprocity. This inclination, of course, has obvious adaptive significance for h u m a n beings living in isolated forager bands, that is, in environments typically encountered throughout the vast share of our species' existence. In addition, individuals frequently attribute extraordinary powers to these reifications. The forces associated with these symbols are often perceived to be so awesome in relation to the inferior strength of individuals that the latter willingly subordinate their self-interest to the perceived interests of the reified abstraction. It is in this sense that such reifications as Divine Right, Democracy, Liberty, Nation, Socialism, and so forth may be employed by dominant classes as cultural mechanisms that encourage attitudes of resignation and submissiveness among subordinate classes in h u m a n societies that are demographically and territorially expansive (Crippen 1988). In extreme instances, individuals may even sacrifice their lives in defense of these "sacred" reifications. Thus, the capacity for symbolic communication may underlie behaviors that, at times, apparently contravene the maximization principle but that, nonetheless, are properly construed as products of h u m a n behavioral mechanisms installed over the lengthy course of our species' evolution by means of natural selection (Crippen and Machalek 1989). Symbolization and reification, the behavioral mechanisms that stand as the centerpiece of h u m a n cultural capacities, mutually evolved along with significant transformations in the hominid brain, transformations that reflect the powerful selective forces at work on the variable genetic and environmental circumstances over the course of the past one million years of hominid evolution, "perhaps especially during those long years on the savannah when human brain size was increasing rapidly, thus suggesting strong selective pressures favoring behavioral flexibility and innovation" (Barash 1982:203). The twin capabilities to combine things and ideas and, simultaneously, to preserve, through reification, those symbolic associations that confer adaptive advantage enabled species of Homo to survive and to expand in a global environment that was changing rapidly. Thereby, cultural expressions and their evolution, ultimately rooted in our species' complex nervous system, proved to be an especially efficient behavioral trait. The underlying neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and psychological mechanisms coevolved in the hominid line in part because they encouraged h u m a n behaviors that maximize inclusive fitness. Thus, if we are to understand the essence

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and transformation of human culture, it is incumbent upon us to view these phenomena through the prism of modern evolutionary behavioral science.

THE EVOLUTIONARY F O U N D A T I O N S OF H U M A N CULTURAL BEHAVIOR

Homo sapiens undeniably is a cultural species; the inclination to construct and behave in accordance with cultural or symbolic codes is part and parcel of human nature. Of course, readers of a journal titled Human Nature are unlikely to find this claim controversial. Similarly, they likely need not be persuaded of the assertion that the Lockean dogma of tabula rasa is, by now, thoroughly discredited. Would that such were the case among social and behavioral scientists more generally. Especially among certain camps of cultural anthropologists and sociologists, the cultural aspects of human behavior are commonly portrayed as disembodied systems of symbolic information, as phenomena sui generis. This intellectual orientation is rather curious in light of our knowledge of cultural universals (Brown 1991). Indeed, it is far more plausible to assume that these cultural universals---including language acquisition and structure, tool making, kinship, religion, ethnocentrism, rule making (morality), and age- and sex-differentiated roles and statuses---are grounded in universal features of human nature, traits that, themselves, are intimately linked to features of the human central nervous system. As such, both the capacity for and the expression of cultural behavior may be viewed as products of evolution by means of natural selection. In short, what Wuthnow and others prefer to call "symbolic-expressive" behavior may be more effectively construed as phenotypic h u m a n traits representing the outcome of a lengthy history of our species' genetic endowment interacting with environmental variations (Flinn and Alexander 1982). An evolutionary approach to the analysis of h u m a n cultural behavior thus begins, by logical necessity, with the neo-Darwinian principle of natural selection "acting u p o n " genetic variation. A sketch of the basic case can be summarized fairly concisely: Genes code the production of proteins and their assembly into somatic materials, including neural tissue. Hence, neuroanatomical and neurophysiological characteristics are clearly subject to the process of natural selection. In addition, since human behavior, including symbolic behavior, is a product of brain structure and function, it, too, represents a phenotypic trait that is equally subject to the process of natural selection. In short, discussions of and efforts to explain human cultural behavior are incomplete to the


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degree that they ignore the complex influences of genes, hormones, neurotransmitters, and experience on brain ontogeny and phylogeny. As briefly noted above, the human brain and corresponding mental faculties evolved rapidly, particularly in the past one million years, and there is no longer any doubt that this rapid evolution of hominid brain size and structure was driven by the forces underlying the process of natural selection. Among the many environmental and experiential conditions that represent hypothesized proximate variables in the development of the human central nervous system are the use of fire and fire-making capacity; the emergence of big-game hunting; the slowly building demographic pressures that forced hominids to migrate into variable environments; the changing climatic and geographical environments resulting from glacial growth and retreat; the development of strong bonds of mutual assistance among women during childbirth; and the individual advantages accruing to strategies of deception, deceptiondetection, and self-deception (see Badcock 1991; Barash 1982; Johnson and Earle 1987; Konner 1982; Masters 1989; Maxwell 1984; Pfeiffer 1969, 1977, 1982; Wilson 1975, 1978). For hominids, these circumstances likely conferred a premium on the individual capacity to cooperate with others through a reliance on flexible behavioral strategies, a flexibility that was profoundly enhanced by an enlarged neocortex. Whatever ultimate phylogenetic forces are responsible for the hypertrophy of the human neocortex (and, eventually, differential population growth rates and environmental variations must play some proximate role in any evolutionary account), it is clear that the evolution of human cultural behavior both expressed and reinforced the coterminous neuroanatomical and neurophysiological transformations. A great deal of human sociocultural behavior is conditioned by the neuroanatomy and biochemistry of the brain (see Changeaux 1985; Konner 1982). In particular, the hypothalamic-limbic system, or "emotional center" of the "triune brain" (MacLean 1973), directly participates in the expression of social and cultural behavior. The limbic system is a complex circuitry representing the "paleomammalian" addition to the even more phylogenetically ancient "reptilian brain," the latter corresponding to the center of autonomic nervous activity and accounting for the behavioral strategies associated with a variety of fixed-action patterns and innate releasing mechanisms that are well-documented by contemporary ethologists (see Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989; Lorenz 1981). Although the functional capacities of the human neocortex (the "new mammalian brain") are not independent of the workings of the "reptilian" and the "old mammalian" neurology, one cannot deny the fact that its evolution confers a tremendous adaptive advantage or that it serves as the foundation for the construction and maintenance of cultur-

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al symbols, a behavioral trait that remains the chief distinguishing feature of our species. Although MacLean's portrait of the evolution of the hominid brain by structural accretion is not without critics among neuroanatomists (e.g., Deacon 1990), the triune-brain hypothesis remains useful for social scientists interested in the nature of h u m a n cultural behavior. If for no other reason, it sensitizes us to (a) the genetic and, therefore, evolutionary bases of brain anatomy and physiology; (b) the complex circuitry that connects what are commonly portrayed as distinct brain structures; and (c) the role of hormones, neurotransmitters, and experience throughout the course of h u m a n brain ontogeny, especially during infancy and early childhood (see Konner 1982). Our genes, in effect, code for the production of neural tissue that is structured and functions in a way that "programs" our mental faculties for particular purposes (e.g., language, associalion, emotion, memory) that emerge at particular stages of development. In short, human genes encode architectural plans for building a brain that is designed to respond to certain types of environmental stimuli at certain stages of development and that, among several other things, enables individuals to receive, comprehend, employ, construct, and transmit symbolic information. Many, perhaps most, sociocultural scientists are willing to stipulate the evolutionary and genetic bases of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, but they often go on to assert that this foundation merely creates some vague and undefined "potential" for cultural behavior. Thus, or so they argue, the emergence of cultural capacity introduces a new mode of h u m a n adaptation, one that is entirely liberated from the constraints of genetic coding. Consider, for example, a recent statement by Gellner (1988:14): "A culture is a distinct way of doing things which characterizes a given community, and which is not dictated by the genetic makeup of its members. Humanity is unique in that the communities into which it divides display an astonishing variety of modes of conduct, all of them evidently compatible with our shared genetic inheritance; hence none of them are dictated by it." One cannot question the assertion that the quotient for h u m a n adaptability escalated enormously along with the development of cultural capacity. Nonetheless, it does not necessarily follow, and recent advances in a variety of behavioral disciplines seriously dispute the claim, that the h u m a n cultural repertoire is independent of genetic conditioning, constraint, and control. After all, no one claims that the varieties of, for instance, h u m a n language, tool making, kinship designation, religion, art and music, and age and sex differentiation are coded in genetic material. Nevertheless, ample evidence suggests that these behavioral tendencies (or cultural universals) are more than simply "compatible with our shared genetic inheritance."


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Indeed, the predispositions to acquire and employ language; to manufacture and use tools; to name kin; to posit the existence of sacred forces and entities; to craft objects, stories, and songs for purely aesthetic purposes; and to organize individuals into sub-societal units based on age and sex statuses represent natural human tendencies rooted in the evolutionary heritage of our species (Brown 1991). Although not always in agreement with each other, various scholars in diverse fields endorse the viewpoint that genes channel and constrain not only the ontogeny of brain anatomy and physiology but also the expression of cultural phenomena. Lumsden and Wilson (1981, 1983; Lumsden 1989) have elaborated their thinking on epigenetic rules, or learnability channels, in the human brain that "hard wire" specific forms of cultural abilities and associations (e.g., perception constraints, color classification, mother-offspring bonding, "fear of stranger" responses, language acquisition). Tooby and Cosmides (1989; Cosmides and Tooby 1989) have explored the evolution of domain-specific psychological mechanisms that underlie the expression of cultural phenomena, specifically those mechanisms that underlie the inclination to cooperate for mutual benefit. Finally, a number of recent studies and discussions have delved into the manner in which aspects of neuroanatomy, particularly the circuitry connecting the hypothalamic-limbic system to the neocortex, are directly relevant to analyses of human language ability, memory, association, and emotion (Armstrong 1991; Blonder 1991; Konner 1982). These latter efforts are especially intriguing inasmuch as one very critical aspect of the analysis of human cultural behavior concerns the emotional content of specific symbols. Symbolic information represents a powerful emotional stimulus for individuals, sometimes evoking strong sentiments of fear and dread, other times calling out powerful sentiments of affection and love. Symbols, in and of themselves, do not possess these emotional loadings; the emotional responses depend on the enormously complex neural circuitry that enables individuals to perceive and process a mental construct and its associations through the sensory organs, into the neocortex, along pathways through the limbic system, and back to the neocortex. These neural circuits surely exist, although as of today their nature and operation are only poorly understood. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that human cultural phenomena are most properly conceived as an integrated product of genetic encoding, anatomical structure, physiological processes, and psychological mechanisms interacting with historically specific social environments. As Flinn and Alexander (1982) have so cogently argued, bridging the gap between the evolutionary behavioral sciences and the sociocultural sciences in their respective approaches to the study of human cultural phenomena requires an explicit rejection of false and unproductive

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dichotomies, such as "nature versus nurture," "genetic determinism versus cultural determinism," "instinctive versus learned." These types of dichotomies rest ultimately on the erroneous Cartesian assumption of mind-body dualism (Armstrong 1991; Blonder 1991; Steklis and Walter 1991). In place of these counterproductive tools of analysis, an explicit recognition that all phenotypic traits of living organisms, including cultural traits, are the product of genetic information interacting with environmental conditions is required. In short, sociocultural scientists may enhance their analysis of h u m a n cultural behavior by recognizing first that symbolization and reification capabilities and plausible domain-specific learning biases are phenotypic h u m a n traits that have a strong genetic component and second that h u m a n cultures represent important environmental conditions within which individual h u m a n beings are born and develop and that, thereby, channel and constrain the acquisition and potential modification of those very traits. Indeed, Flinn and Alexander (1982:397) urge investigators to explore "the proximate m e c h a n i s m s . . , that result in the acquisition and transmission of cultural traits." The recommendation has considerable merit, and, toward that end, I wish to return attention to recent examples of sociocultural approaches to the problem for the purpose of illustrating the potential value of incorporating evolutionary reasoning into studies of human cultural behavior. For reasons of convenience, I focus m y attention on recent studies of modern political culture.

STUDIES OF MODERN POLITICAL CULTURE: ILLUSTRATING THE VALUE OF AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH The social-scientific study of political culture is no longer so narrowly focused on questions of political socialization and the distribution of political attitudes and beliefs. Instead, the field of inquiry has broadened substantially, and scholars today are posing more incisive questions about the content and structure of symbols that either buttress or challenge exiting political orders. These studies span a wide range of issues. They include analyses of the nature and significance of nationalist ideologies in the modern world (Chirot 1986; Crippen 1988; Gellner 1983; Smith 1979), inquiries into the conditions associated with the identification of and reaction to political heresies (Bergesen 1977), explorations of the role of traditional religious symbols in contemporary political debates and contests (Liebman and Wuthnow 1983), and examinations of the correlation between the structure of social organizations and the


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content of political ideologies (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). The topics treated in these studies are so diverse that it is unfeasible in this context to explore the evolutionary significance of several representative examples. Instead, I shall focus on just one of the studies cited above. Douglas and Wildavsky, in Risk and Culture, examine the intensification of environmental concern during the past twenty years in the United States and other industrial societies. The thrust of the essay is to account for this development by reference to "cultural science"; the subtitle of their book, "An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers," suggests that danger, risk, and threat are purely cultural constructs, ideological elements adopted by members of m o d e m societies in an effort to comprehend their existence. These scholars review and eventually reject explanations based on technological advance, increasing affluence, and increasingly knowledgeable citizenries as causes of the heightened level of environmental concerns. They argue instead that changes in social organization----chiefly, the growth of "sectarian" organizations are the fundamental source of increasing alarm about the quality of air and water, the threats posed by new techologies, the devastation of wilderness areas and associated threats to endangered species, and so forth. Sectarianism represents a complex of moral values characterized by "positive commitments" to "human goodness," "equality," and "purity of heart and mind." Stemming from these commitments, the sectarian mind conceives increasing danger and threat in the modern world as consequences of "worldliness and conspiracy"; "big organization, big money, and market values" are the culprits in the modern drama (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982:10). H o w has this sectarian ideology come to be so prevalent in today's world? Douglas and Wildavsky contend that the reason lies in the proliferation of voluntary organizations that try to forge their members into a unified body without resort to coercion or to overt and structured leadership. Members of these organizations, which the authors portray as residing on the "border" of modern societies, view the powers-thatbe as corrupt and evil, as engaged in a conspiracy to rob humanity of its essential right to live in a world free of danger, inequality, and tyranny. In contrast, sectarian organizations are constructed ostensibly to provide a forum in which the concerns of each member may be debated openly and freely, without the intervention of a designated authority. In this type of setting, the sectarian believes, a "natural consensus" rooted in "'pure motives" will emerge, representing a basic agreement among participants about the principal dangers facing the global community and about the strategies and tactics required to root out the evil threat. This sense of alarm is countered, according to Douglas and Wildavsky, by a sense of complacency among the more numerous individuals in-

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volved in the "center" of modern societies. These individuals are not unconcerned about questions of danger, risk, and threat, but in contrast to sectarian alarm, their manner of response is more cautious and deliberate, a strategy that derives from the types of organizations within which they participate. In this regard, Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) distinguish between two types of "center" organizations and the respective mentalities that they encourage. On the one hand, many individuals in modern societies are actively involved in organizations that are managed by reference to bureaucratic or hierarchical principles. Douglas and Wildavsky submit that these hierarchical arrangements engender a particular moral orientation that incorporates the following elements: (a) long-term commitment to the organization; (b) collective responsibility (or an absence of individual accountability) for decision making; (c) an aversion to "internal politics," which is achieved by turning policy questions into "administrative problems"; and (d) a strong sense of subunit loyalty, which derives from the larger organization's refusal to adopt a single, overriding goal. In so doing, hierarchical organizations limit information, minimize change, and modify themselves only in times of crisis and only insofar as they must in order to placate constituent demands. Among participants, the setting encourages an acceptance of their limited roles and unequal status. On the other hand, Douglas and Wildavsky note that others occupying the "center" of modern societies are more regularly involved in the market and, as a result, adopt the moral framework of the entrepreneur or individualist. In contrast to the hierarchist, the entrepreneur is little concerned with history and tradition; long-term commitments to specific organizations or procedures are generally lacking. Instead, the entrepreneur constantly scouts the horizon, is always on the lookout for short-term fluctuations, and is willing to alter his or her tactics abruptly to take advantage of changing circumstances. Although Douglas and Wildavsky argue that the hierarchist and the individualist mentalities are distinct, they note many underlying similarities, especially in terms of how each orientation perceives and responds to danger. Individuals who adopt one or the other outlook fear threats to "the system as a whole"; encourage high levels of public confidence; appreciate adherence to universalistic rules (although hierarchists prefer instruction guidelines whereas individualists prefer "fairplay" rules); seek to expand their influence through the development of "bigger markets, bigger collectivities"; invest confidence in the capacity to reach rational decisions through quantified calculation; and worry little about the distant future (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982:97). In contrast to the hierarchist and the individualist orientations typical of the "complacent center," Douglas and Wildavsky probe the nature of


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the sectarian perspective that typifies groups on the "'border.'" These small voluntary associations on the edges of societal organization and activity are typically "absorbed in their internal politics," which encourages them to "invoke the idea of the evil outside as a theological image, justifying their separation from established orders" (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982:102). The distinctive feature of sectarian associations is not simply their small size; instead, the chief distinguishing characteristic is their unwillingness to adopt hierarchical principles of organization and management. The organizational structure and the demands on individual members associated with sectarian groups make it difficult for them to achieve sustained effectiveness. Excessive reliance on consensus as a decision-making strategy consumes enormous amounts of energy and time; intense unwillingness to compromise with "evil outsiders" places them in an awkward bargaining position in their encounters with established authority; and the tendency to splinter into competing factions disrupts organizational continuity. Interestingly, this "losing battle against the difficulties of voluntary assodation presses its members into rejecting increase of scale, preferring egalitarian rulings, and attempting dosure against the rest of the world" (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982:121). The very nature of sectarianism nearly guarantees their defeat in the political arena, and yet, these defeats only confirm, in the minds of participants, the righteousness of their cause and of their claims to special insight and moral superiority. In industrial societies, the sectarian mentality frequently expresses itself in debates about environmental quality. Chemical pollution of the air and water; the hazards associated with the development of nuclear technology; the u n k n o w n risks attached to biotechnology and genetic engineering; the disastrous consequences of indiscriminate depletion of wilderness and wildlife--these and other alarming portraits of environmental degradation represent the apocalyptic catechism of the contemporary sectarian mentality. "It warns the center that its cherished social systems will wither because the center does not listen to warnings of cataclysm. The border is worried about God or nature, two arbiters external to the large-scale social systems of the center. Either God will punish or nature will punish; the jeremiad is the same and the sins are the same: worldly ambition, lust after material things, large organization" (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982:123). Douglas and Wildavsky present a thought-provoking analysis of the relationship between the structure of social organizations and the ideologies expressed by participants. The connections, on the one hand, between relative complacency about environmental danger and involvement in bureaucratic or market structural settings and, on the other hand, between intense alarm about environmental catastrophes and

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participation in sectarian associations are ably documented and examined. Nonetheless, the explanation offered by Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) to account for this historical resurgence of sectarianism is not entirely satisfying. On this score, they retreat from general analytical principles and resort to a historicist argument that focuses on developmental conditions in the United States that foster sectarian organization and ideology. In terms of "general historical factors," they emphasize the country's long tradition of opposition to central authority. Their "medium-range factors" include the innovative nature of capitalism, which encourages skepticism and criticism; the expansion of educational opportunities; and the decreasing reliance of citizens on industrial forms of employment. Finally, the authors point to the advent of direct-mail technology and various government subsidies (e.g., tax breaks for nonprofit organizations), both of which substantially reduce the costs of organization, as "short-term factors" that stimulate the contemporary growth of sectarian associations. Although each of these factors may have some relationship to the intensification of sectarian activity that has occurred in industrialized societies during the past two or three decades, the facts presented by Douglas and Wildavsky can be explained at a more general level by reference to both Paretean and evolutionary principles, an analysis focusing on the interaction of deep-seated behavioral predispositions and environmental variations. For example, the argument contained in Risk and Culture can be effectively subsumed under Pareto's (1935, 1984) analysis of the nature of "demagogic plutocracy," which he published in the early decades of the twentieth century. The portrait of a society dominated by hierarchists assiduously avoiding individual accountability and responding to the demands of various constituencies and by entrepreneurs energetically pursuing their narrowly defined and short-term economic interests is entirely consistent with Pareto's description of societies dominated by individuals generously endowed with combination sentiments. These individuals and groups are well-positioned to take advantage of circumstances in a society in which the dominant class prefers to grant concessions to clever opponents rather than to respond forcefully. Entrepreneurs and individuals involved in large, hierarchically structured interest groups (e.g., corporations, professional and trade associations, unions) are the likely beneficiaries, at least in the short run, of these conditions. "Those who do not belong to such collectivities are weak. No longer protected by the sovereign, they must look elsewhere for protection and adjudication. They can either trust a powerful patron, enter into secret or public partnerships with other weak people, or join associations, communes, or trade unions" (Pareto 1984:41). The sectarians described by Douglas and Wildavsky opt for the second solution;


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religiously committed to the ideal of "equality," they are unable or unwilling to submit themselves to the discipline of a "powerful patron" or of a strong association. Instead, they are left to combine "with other weak people" in voluntary associations in which discipline derives neither from coercive control nor from explicit rules governing decision making, but from the consensus of a small body of like-minded people. Individuals attracted to these groups are repulsed by the corruption and duplicity that they perceive in the larger society and express their willingness to sacrifice both creature comforts and power as long as they are not required to compromise their cherished ideals (although, of course, they rarely possess either the material possessions or the political status that they so readily eschew). Pareto's analysis of political strategies---an analysis grounded in logic similar to that underlying contemporary models of "evolutionarily stable strategies" (Crippen and Lopreato 1989; Maynard Smith 1976, 1979; Maynard Smith and Price 1972)---masterfully anticipates the bulk of the Douglas-Wildavsky thesis. In discussing the types of individuals that participate in political organizations, Pareto distinguishes between two types: "A. Individuals who aim resolutely at ideal ends and unswervingly follow certain personal rules of conduct. B. Individuals whose purpose in life is to strive for their own welfare and the welfare of their associates and dependents." In the terms of Douglas and Wildavsky, Pareto is describing, respectively, (a) sectarians and (b) individualists and hierarchists. Interestingly, he notes that individuals " w h o are kindly disposed towards a party will call the A's in that party 'honest men' and sing their praises. Adversaries of the party will call them 'fanatics' and 'sectarians,' and hate them" (Pareto 1935:section 2268; emphasis added). The sectarians are individuals strongly endowed with persistence sentiments; they are keenly committed to derivations that express the strength of their faith and deplore the widespread appeal of philosophical skepticism so prevalent in contemporary demagogic plutocracies. They are on the "border" of modern societies primarily because their sentiments are not in accord with the broader currents of activity and expressed belief (Pareto 1935:section 2552). If sectarianism is on the rise, as Douglas and Wildavsky contend, it is not simply the result of the historical reasons that they cite; it reflects a growing resistance to the intensifying reliance on chicanery and sophistry as instruments promoting the insatiable greed of favored individuals. The historical "factors" on which Douglas and Wildavsky rely to explain the phenomenon are not unimportant, but the Paretean perspective encourages us to look much deeper, to probe the oscillating relations among diverse sentiments, material interests, and class dynamics in h u m a n social systems.

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Although a Paretean analysis of the problem is stimulating, it remains to be demonstrated how the application of conventional evolutionary reasoning may enhance our understanding of the rising tide of sectarianism in the modern world. Here we might ask the following questions: "Why are some individuals, and not others, inclined to join associations that adopt sectarian strategies of decision making? .... What evolved behavioral mechanisms, if any, underlie these individual preferences? .... Why do sectarian strategies proliferate in certain environmental contexts, but not in others?" Given the state of knowledge today, definitive answers to these questions are unlikely to be forthcoming. Nonetheless, plausible suggestions can be made, suggestions that are consistent with the logic of evolutionary reasoning. Indeed, there are at least two distinctive ways in which recourse to evolutionary considerations may usefully broaden Douglas and Wildavsky's otherwise insightful analysis of perceptions of danger and risk. One first might explore the issue in terms of the emotional bearing of individuals. Sectarianism, as portrayed by Douglas and Wildavsky, is more than merely a complex of cognitive constructs (i.e., beliefs about "human goodness," "equality," and "purity of heart and mind"). Perhaps more significant is the fact that sectarianism is a set of symbols and rites rich in emotional content that strikes a harmonious chord among certain individuals. These individuals, we may gather, are inordinantly risk-averse, fearful of established authority, angry at the world around them, distrustful, and unforgiving (i.e., unwilling to compromise in order to achieve only some of their cherished goals). These perceptions of danger and risk, and the judgments concerning h o w to respond to them, are emotionally charged, and behavioral responses to these perceptions are not uncommonly irrational. As Douglas and Wildavsky point out, we are generally more averse to risks that we perceive to be involuntarily imposed on us than we are to risks that we willingly take, even when the latter may be plainly more dangerous. For example, I may object strenuously to a proposal to build a nuclear power plant in the vicinity of my home (even though the probability of a serious accident is incredibly low) whereas, at the same time, I fret hardly at all about the dangers of hopping on a bicycle and peddling about my city's streets (even though the probability of risking serious injury or even death is relatively great). Similarly, we are much more inclined to fear the consequences of danger that we perceive to be concentrated and of enormous magnitude than we are to be fearful of risks that are comparatively routine and individually isolated. I may fidget nervously each time I board an airplane, concerned about the prospects of crashing (even though the odds of this occurrence are inordinantly small), whereas I worry only occasionally about the very real and potentially


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lethal consequences of my smoking habit (indeed, consider the irony involved w h e n I smoke that last cigarette to "calm m y nerves" prior to boarding an airplane!). These behavioral tendencies are hardly rational; nonetheless, they, and many others like them, are all too common (Konner 1990). The examples suggest that perceptions of risk and risk-taking behaviors are much more than simply the product of rational cost-benefit calculations. Considerable emotional and habitual tendencies come into play. More important, there can be little doubt that these behavioral inclinations, to some degree, are powerfully conditioned by the influence of hormones and neurotransmitters. For example, studies of sensation seeking (which may be seen as the obverse of risk a v e r s i o n ) including thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility--reveal that these dispositions have a significant heritable component and that they are correlated with both low activity levels of monoamine oxidase (an enzyme that breaks down several key neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) and high levels of estrogen and testosterone (Konner 1990; Zuckerman et al. 1980). In short, individuals who are keenly averse to danger and risk, extraordinarily fearful of the world around them, and extremely distrustful of established authority may be expressing an emotional complex that is, to some significant degree, grounded in the biochemistry of their brains. Moreover, an abundance of evidence suggests that h u m a n emotional responses, such as anger, anxiety, fear, joy, grief, and love, are deeply rooted in our mammalian and primate heritage and, therefore, that the symbolic colorations we attach to them may be viewed as cultural accretions (Konner 1982). These considerations invite the following hypothesis: Genetic and neurophysiological differences among individuals may account, in part, for individual variations in emotional bearing, thereby predisposing some individuals to be strongly attracted to sectarian organizations. In short, sectarian agencies may hold greater appeal for individuals who are extremely anxious, fearful, and risk-averse. Although these differences in emotional dispositions may play an important role in explaining w h y some individuals and not others are attracted to sectarian groups, individual variations in genetically conditioned or constrained dispositions are not of much help in explaining what Douglas and Wildavsky describe as the increasing number of these organizations in the m o d e m world. To develop an adequate argument on this score requires moving to a second level of evolutionary analysis, one that focuses on the evolution of behavioral strategies in h u m a n populations. When Douglas and Wildavsky focus their attention on long-, medi-

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urn-, and short-range historical conditions that have encouraged the development of sectarian organizations, they are, in evolutionary terms, identifying powerful selective pressures emanating from the sociocultural environment that govern the emergence and diffusion of specific behavioral strategies in a human population. In effect, and as Douglas and Wildavsky explicitly acknowledge, entrepreneurial, hierarchical, and sectarian forms of social organization may be viewed as competing strategies for addressing the problem of creating and maintaining a sense of commitment, common identity, and purpose in voluntary organizations, thereby facilitating, in various degrees, recruitment, decision making, and sustained effectiveness. Without, I hope, taking too many liberties with Douglas and Wildavsky's typology, Table 1 presents a schematic portrait of entrepreneurial, hierarchist, and sectarian strategies by reference to a complex of associated behavioral traits. As can be seen, the strategies are conceptualized in terms of variable dispositions with regard to (a) "'venturesomeness" (the degree to which individuals are willing to take risks), (b) "fretfulness" (the degree to which individuals are wary of their environment), (c) "confidence" (the degree to which individuals are willing to invest trust in others, especially others who are in positions of authority), and (d) "toleration" (the degree to which individuals can accommodate differences of opinion and basic values). For reasons alluded to above, modern industrial societies, especially those in which economic relations are governed by capitalist principles, constitute sociocultural environments that are favorable to the establishment and proliferation of entrepreneurial and hierarchist strategies. In these circumstances, the "entrepreneur" and the "bureaucrat" will flourish in their efforts to accumulate the resources of wealth and authority, thereby infusing in such individuals a powerful stake in the continued survival of the industrial-capitalist system. Sectarian strategists, on the other hand, adopt beliefs and practices that challenge the core cultural and social-structural underpinnings of industrial capitalism, portraying the system as morally corrupt and as a serious threat to the integrity of the global biophysical environment. Unwilling to cornTable 1. Behavioral Strategies and Variable Traits Behavioral T r a i t s Venturesomeness Fretfulness Confidence Toleration

Entrepreneur Risk-Taker Complacent Trusting Forgiving

Behavioral Strategies Hierarchist ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ * ~

Sectarian Risk-Averse Fearful Suspicious Unforgiving


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promise, they call for radical economic and political transformations that they believe are necessary to eradicate perceived threats to environmental quality and to social justice. Sectarianism thus appeals to those who are profoundly angry with the status quo and who likely possess only a limited material and symbolic stake in the current arrangement of economic and political resources. They are the alienated, the disenfranchised, and the dispossessed--individuals who have little to lose, and potentially much to gain, by advocating a revolutionary transformation of the political structure of industrial societies. Moreover, given their positions of relative weakness, the adoption of beliefs and practices that are couched in the language of a global or universal "altruism" is morally convenient inasmuch as they have little, if anything, to sacrifice if their revolutionary appeals were to be heeded. And yet, it is not enough to claim that these appeals are attractive to the materially and the symbolically weak segments of industrial societies in order to account for the intensification of sectarianism in recent years. After all, the presence of the disadvantaged and the dispossessed is a constant feature of class-divided societies. To account for the rising appeal of sectarianism, therefore, it is necessary to identify transformations in the sociocultural environment that alter the cost-benefit profile associated with sectarian strategies. That is, from an evolutionary perspective, it is important to identify changes in the sociocultural environment that have enabled sectarian strategies to invade populations dominated by entrepreneurial and hierarchist strategies. In short, what conditions have emerged that enable strategies that appeal to the riskaverse, the fearful, the suspicious, and the morally intolerant to gain a foothold and proliferate on the "border" of industrial societies? As noted above, the long-, medium-, and short-range factors discussed by Douglas and Wildavsky in this regard are not unimportant; nonetheless, their argument does not go far enough. To be sure, they emphasize, especially with reference to their short-range factors, environmental changes that have reduced the costs of sectarian organizations. Still, they say little, if anything, about the sorts of recent changes that enhance the appeal of these agencies. After all, participation in sectarian groups is costly not only to those individuals most active in their organization; it is enormously costly to all participants. Thus, to explain the intensifying appeal of sectarian organizations, it is necessary to explicate either the diminishing costs of this activity to all prospective participants (not merely to the initiators of the group activity) or the expansion of potential benefits to all prospective participants. In fact, focusing attention on the potentially beneficial aspects of participation in sectarian organizations helps to account for the phenomenon that Douglas and Wildavsky intend to explain. During the past

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forty years in the United States, for example, a number of developments have transpired that conceivably enhance the moral and political appeal of sectarianism. The civil rights movement; the opposition to the Vietnam war; the "sexual revolution" and corresponding changes in the roles of men, women, and youth; the Watergate, Iran-Contra, savingsand-loan, and other government scandals; declining living standards--these and other developments have weakened the public's confidence in existing economic and political arrangements and have heightened the general level of attentiveness to matters of elite corruption and duplicity. Moreover, real threats to environmental quality epitomized by the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; by various accounts of the dangers of toxic wastes dumps (e.g., Love Canal); by the alarm expressed by reputable scientists regarding the destruction of the rain forests around the world, the depletion of ozone in the upper atmosphere, and global warming have escalated the concern about potential public-health hazards and have raised serious doubts about the prospects for real solutions. In these circumstances, the prospective benefits of sectarian agitation rise; the potential payoff associated with calls for revolutionary transformation of the existing economic and political system begin to outweigh, at least for some individuals, the enormous costs in time and energy endured by those who have only a weak stake, if any at all, in defending the status quo. In this fashion, the emergence and proliferation of sectarian organizations as portrayed by Douglas and Wildavsky may be interpreted more broadly as an instance in which individuals lacking significant material and symbolic investment in existing sociopolitical institutions are attracted to peripheral agencies that employ rituals of negation and rejection as mechanisms to expose the corruption and deception of more powerfully entrenched interest groups. Thus, the rise of sectarianism may' be viewed as an invading cultural and social-structural strategy, a strategy that is especially sensitive to detecting the symbolic deceptions promulgated by those who, in defense of entrenched interests, adopt entrepreneurial and hierarchist strategies. In short, the evolving competition among the three strategies may be productively interpreted as an "arms race" involving contending cultural strategies of the sort discussed by Dawkins (1982) and others.

CONCLUSION Although the themes developed in this article have tackled subject matter of enormous complexity and tremendous significance, my goals have been comparatively modest. Within rather severe space constraints


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I have sought to review the current state of cultural analysis in sociology, to isolate a general flaw therein, to offer some suggestions regarding its rectification by reference to an explicitly evolutionary perspective, to demonstrate that this effort is consistent with sociology's own intellectual traditions, and to provide a brief illustration of the manner in which evolutionary considerations may deepen our appreciation of cultural phenomena. Nothing claimed herein is intended to dismiss the extraordinary complexity and emergent properties of h u m a n culture. As emphasized earlier, the twin capabilities of symbolization and reification enable h u m a n beings to respond creatively and productively to environmental variations, especially to challenges emanating from the sociocultural environment. No one can deny this remarkable capacity or its contribution to our species' evolutionary past and present. Instead, the claim made herein is simply that human cultural capacities are not thoroughly unlimited, infinitely flexible, or constrained only by environmental conditions and individual agency. Culture may be an emergent characteristic of human behavior; nonetheless, it is not therefore autonomous. In this vein, little of value is to be gained by urging, along with Wuthnow and others, the development of an "independent science of culture." Such an effort is counterproductive. More important, it fails to appreciate the manner in which scientific knowledge has developed over the past four centuries. Specific sciences, of course, operate within particular domains; they strive to explain distinctive aspects of reality. And yet, the great achievements in scientific understanding generally result from attempts to explain some aspect of reality by reference to theoretical principles invoked to explain more "fundamental" levels of reality. Chemistry builds upon the insights of physics; biology builds upon the insights of chemistry. Similarly, sociology and other sociocultural sciences will develop productively only to the extent that they borrow from and build upon the evolutionary behavioral sciences. This orientation toward sociocultural theory construction has been enunciated eloquently by several scholars (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1985; Chagnon and Irons 1979; Dietz et al. 1990; Lopreato 1984, 1990; van den Berghe 1990). Additionally, it is consistent with Lenski's (1988) recent appeal to sociocultural scientists to develop and utilize nomological principles. Laws of h u m a n social and cultural behavior, to the degree that they are useful, must be grounded in a recognition that h u m a n beings are biological organisms and that our species' traits, including cultural traits, ultimately derive from a lengthy history of evolution by means of natural selection. Theoretical efforts of this sort neither diminish the distinctive contributions nor violate the special domain of sociology and

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kindred disciplines. Moreover, as the discussion of Pareto's contributions reveals, explanations of the remarkable varieties of h u m a n behavior and social structure in terms of the interaction between deep-seated behavioral predispositions and environmental variations are entirely consistent with the intellectual heritage of the sociocultural sciences. From this point of view, the factors or variables isolated by W u t h n o w to describe the nature and transformations of cultural p h e n o m e n a - environmental conditions, institutional contexts, action sequences, production, selection, institutionalization, social horizons, discursive fields, and figural action--are not without significance. The conceptual scheme merely does not go far enough. W u t h n o w focuses attention on several significant proximate conditions that constrain or facilitate the expression and maintenance of symbolic behavior within specific historical circumstances. The effort, as far as it goes, is laudable. And yet, it fails to consider the operation of ultimate causes; the scheme ignores both the evolutionary bases and the implications of h u m a n culture. This failure, as noted, results from the unwarranted fear of reductionism in sociocultural theory construction. When judiciously employed, reductionism is a powerful theoretical tool in scientific inquiry. In studies of h u m a n cultural phenomena, the matter is no different. For example, Douglas and Wildavsky offer a fascinating analysis of sectarianism in the m o d e m world by examining its social-structural underpinnings. I have only suggested that we take this sort of analysis one step further by exploring some plausible biological and evolutionary bases of specific ideological expressions. After all, our species' capacity for cultural expression and the mechanisms upon which that capacity depend are products of the lengthy evolution of the hominid brain. It is entirely reasonable, therefore, to assume that cultural behavior operates under the guidance of a complex neurological circuitry that, to some as yet u n k n o w n degree, channels and constrains our species' symbolic behavior. Lest the fundamental issue be misconstrued, it bears stressing that no one is claiming that h u m a n culture can be thoroughly comprehended merely by reducing its explanation to the level of genetic organization. An evolutionary approach to h u m a n symbol systems does not claim that culture is simply a behavioral mechanism installed over the lengthy course of h u m a n evolution that serves invariantly the reproductive interests of individuals. This claim, of course, would be ludicrous; moreover, it is inconsistent with the logic of evolutionary science. Human culture is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon, and recourse to evolutionary principles for purposes of its explanation does not deny this complexity. In fact, evolutionary reasoning alerts investigators to the likely prospect that crucial aspects of h u m a n symbolic behavior, specifically the enhanced capacities for deception and self-deception, may well engender circumstances that en-


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courage individuals to behave contrary to their material and reproductive self-interest. As Wuthnow himself emphasizes, culture may be viewed thereby as a tool in struggles for dominance in h u m a n societies. Culture, in short, is not viewed by any sophisticated evolutionary theorist as a mechanism that invariably contributes to fitness maximization. Instead, evolutionary approaches to the study of cultural phenomena encourage the examination of the complex interaction b e t w e e n ultimate and proximate causes of h u m a n symbolic behavior. Sociocultural scientists have for too long concentrated their efforts almost exclusively on the latter set of causes, on those immediate environmental, historical, and social-psychological causes of h u m a n behavior. The ultimate level of causation is rarely addressed by sociocultural scientists; very little attention has been focused on the evolutionary bases, or adaptive significance, of fundamental aspects of the h u m a n behavioral repertoire. Fortunately, during the past fifteen to twenty years, sociologists and other behavioral scientists have begun to appreciate the valuable insights that attend the adoption of a soundly evolutionary perspective. These efforts include demographic studies of differential fertility, mortality, infanticide, hypergamy, and polygyny (Chagnon 1979; Dickemann 1979; Eaton et al. 1988; Lopreato and Yu 1988); studies of crime, deviance, and expropriation (Cohen and Machalek 1988; Daly and Wilson 1988, 1990); evolutionary analyses of stratification structures and revolutionary transformations (Betzig 1986; Lopreato and Green 1990); inquiries into the origin and evolution of the state and of warfare (Masters 1989; Shaw and Wong 1989); and even investigations of religion, ritual, and ideology (Alexander 1987; Crippen and Machalek 1989; d'Aquili et al. 1979; Lopreato 1981b). These developments are welcome and point the direction for the manner in which sociology and kindred disciplines may contribute to the emerging synthesis of evolutionary behavioral sciences. Comments by Roger Masters and one anonymous referee on an earlier version of this article are gratefully acknowledged. A portion of the research reported herein was supported by a Faculty Development Grant provided by Mary Washington College. Of course, I assume sole responsibility for any errors of fact or judgment.

Timothy Crippen is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociologyand Anthropologyat Mary Washington College. His principal research interests concern the application of recent developments in evolutionary theory to conventional problems in sociology,especiallyproblems relating to the evolution of dominance orders and religion in human societies.

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NOTE 1. Wuthnow is among those who actively deny the significance of evolutionary and neurobiological aspects of human cultural behavior. For example, in discussing the basic assumptions of "poststructural" approaches to the analysis of cultural phenomena and of their debt to the insights of such scholars as L6viStrauss and Chomsky, he notes that, for his purposes, "the intricacies of structuralist assumptions about binary qualities of the brain can be overlooked" (Wuthnow 1987:50). It bears stressing that increasing numbers of sociocultural scientists recognize that, if these issues are overlooked, their disciplines risk becoming theoretically sterile and substantively irrelevant.

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