A selectionist approach to cultural phenomena: Experimental analysis of behavior and cultural materialism

Abstract

The selectionnist principle is used as an explanatory model of cultural practices, i.e. behaviors of individuals in interaction with others. Two selectionnist models, an anthropological one- Cultural Materialism (Harris, 1979)- and a psychological one- The Experimental Analysis of Behavior- are presented here. These two approaches seem to be compatible. Cultural Materialism’s model categorizes cultural phenomena in three distinct entities: infrastructure, structure and superstructure. Infrastructure includes production and means of reproduction. Structure corresponds to the organization within the cultural groups and superstructure to the behaviors such as art or religious behaviors. Cultural materialism supposes the existence of an infrastructural determinism on all human behaviors; that is, all human behaviors are, finally, determined by modifications of production and means of reproduction. Morcover, the study of behaviors proposed by cultural materialism is based on the observation of these behaviors and not on the causal explanation of a situation provided by the people living in this situation. Within the framework of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, the concepts of metacontingency (Glenn, 1988) and of rule-governed behaviors help to explain the propagation and the maintenance of the practices. Metacontingencies are contingencies identical within a group of individuals, making it possible to explain partly why the individuals of a group emit a certain number of identical behaviors. Rule-governed behaviors correspond to a set of behaviors whose causality and consequences are based on verbal behaviors, generally emitted by other individuals. These two models disagree nevertheless on the importance of verbal behaviors in the study of cultural practices. Cultural materialism doesn’t rely on them whereas the experimental analysis of behavior considers them as very important in the transmission of these practices. Nevertheless, both models encounter problems when approaching cultural practices that don’t seem to be related to survival.