Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the merits and shortcomings of two theories of cultural evolution: cultural group selection and cultural epidemiology, and I will use the example of religious ritual as an apt illustration of the main theoretical claims of the paper.

Paper long abstract:

Apparently useless behaviours, religious rituals can be approached from two radically different points of view. Following the old Durkheimian insights, they can be seen as fulfilling some social function beneficial to the group that outstrips the individual costs entailed in their performance or, conversely, they can be considered as an instance of a viral meme that parasitizes human minds by making them generate the appropriate behaviours suitable for its reproduction at the expense of its hosts. Modern cultural evolutionist theories provide interesting developments and corrections to those two approaches. Durkheimian functionalism can be aptly rephrased in cultural group selection terms, and cultural epidemiology provides apposite amendments to the memetic theory of cultural reproduction. And yet there are important theoretical difficulties in both theories. Cultural evolution means that cultures change through time in a non-random fashion. But it is unclear how these changes should be understood in the long term: Do they provide selective advantages to the social groups wherein those cultural changes take place? Or do they merely increase the reproduction of the cultures themselves, maybe at the expense of the individuals who uphold them? Two main points I would like to make in this paper, first, that cultural group selection theory cannot solve the ambivalences inherent in the concept of cultural group and, secondly, that cultural epidemiology, though immune to some of the problems raised by the cultural group selection approach, needs a more precise definition of its key conceptual tool, the concept of 'cultural attractor'.