Culture in Dual Inheritance Theory:

A Cultural Anthropologist’s Perspective

Dr. Robert Paul, Emory University

Monday, October 31, 2016

5:15 pm - 6:15 pm, AA-G008

Dual Inheritance Theory (DIT) is based on the fact that humans transmit and inherit information necessary to construct themselves as viable mature individuals on the basis of both genetic information encoded in DNA, and cultural information encoded in symbols. Dr. Paul challenges the standard DIT view about culture, which understands it, by analogy with genetic inheritance, in population terms. He argues that this is incorrect, that cultural inheritance has many properties that differentiate it from genetic inheritance and that this leads to conflicting imperatives for individuals, and for different social formations essential to human society. The fact that culture is a collective phenomenon, not a property of individuals, enables humans to live together in society without disruptive competition; which Dr. Paul shows is done through the sharing of cultural symbols.  Dr. Paul offers ethnographic examples of what he refers to as the “public arena” where the collective cultural symbols are displayed and transmitted, and where culture exercises its control over the genetic program.

About the speaker

Robert A. Paul is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University; he also currently serves as Director of the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute.

He has written widely on the integration of evolutionary, psychoanalytic, and socio-cultural theory. His most recent book, Mixed Messages: Cultural and Genetic Inheritance in the Evolution of Human Society(University of Chicago Press, 2015) was named one of the twelve “best reads” in science for 2015.

Contact: evos@binghamton.edu