27.224, Books: How Traditions Live and Die: Morin

Tue Jan 12 21:19:32 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-224. Tue Jan 12 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.224, Books: How Traditions Live and Die: Morin

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Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 16:19:24
From: Carolyn Napolitano [Carolyn.Napolitano at oup.com]
Subject: How Traditions Live and Die: Morin

Title: How Traditions Live and Die 
Series Title: Foundations of Human Interaction  

Publication Year: 2015 
Publisher: Oxford University Press
	   http://www.oup.com/us

Book URL: http://bit.ly/1J0QxSX 

Author: Olivier Morin

Paperback: ISBN:  9780190210502 Pages: 320 Price: U.S. $ 39.95

Abstract:

Of all the things we do and say, most will never be repeated or reproduced.
Once in a while, however, an idea or a practice generates a chain of
transmission that covers more distance through space and time than any
individual person ever could. What makes such transmission chains possible?
For two centuries, the dominant view (from psychology to anthropology) was
that humans owe their cultural prosperity to their powers of imitation. In
this view, modern cultures exist because the people who carry them are gifted
at remembering, storing and reproducing information. How Traditions Live and
Die proposes an alternative to this standard view. What makes traditions live
is not a general-purpose imitation capacity. Cultural transmission is partial,
selective, often unfaithful. Some traditions live on in spite of this, because
they tap into widespread and basic cognitive preferences. These attractive
traditions spread, not by being better retained or more accurately
transferred, but because they are transmitted over and over. This theory is
used to shed light on various puzzles of cultural change (from the
distribution of bird songs to the staying power of children's rhymes) and to
explain the special relation that links the human species to its cultures.
Morin combines recent work in cognitive anthropology with new advances in
quantitative cultural history, to map and predict the diffusion of traditions.
This book is both an introduction and an accessible alternative to
contemporary theories of cultural evolution.

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics
                     Cognitive Science

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=96313

PUBLISHING PARTNER

    Cambridge University Press
        http://us.cambridge.org

MAJOR SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS

    Akademie Verlag GmbH
        http://www.oldenbourg-verlag.de/akademie-verlag

    Bloomsbury Linguistics (formerly Continuum Linguistics)
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    Brill
        http://www.brill.nl

    Cambridge Scholars Publishing
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    Cascadilla Press
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    Classiques Garnier
        http://www.classiques-garnier.com/

    De Gruyter Mouton
        http://www.degruyter.com/

    Edinburgh University Press
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    Elsevier Ltd
        http://www.elsevier.com/

    Equinox Publishing Ltd
        http://www.equinoxpub.com/

    European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
        http://www.elra.info/

    Georgetown University Press
        http://www.press.georgetown.edu/

    John Benjamins
        http://www.benjamins.com/

    Lincom GmbH
        http://www.lincom-shop.eu/

    MIT Press
        http://mitpress.mit.edu/

    Multilingual Matters
        http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

    Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG
        http://www.narr.de/

    Oxford University Press
        oup.com/us

    Palgrave Macmillan
        http://www.palgrave.com/

    Peter Lang AG
        http://www.peterlang.com/

    Rodopi
        http://www.rodopi.nl/

    Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
        http://www.routledge.com/

    Springer
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OTHER SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS

    Association of Editors of the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics
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    Linguistic Association of Finland
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    Morgan & Claypool Publishers
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