The Logic of Cultural Evolutionary Theory: problems and possibilities - Seminar Workshop: Global History and World Archaeology
Since Spencer in the 19th century, scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences have sought to create a cultural equivalent of the biological theory of evolution. Numerous proposals have been made, but none has become an agreed paradigmatic basis for the study of human cultural behaviour. In addition, because of the extreme racist misuse of evolutionary concepts in first half of the 20th century some scholars reject outright any use of evolution as an explanatory principle. The debate is extremely confused, in part because the cultural evolutionary theory derived from the 19th century which the Humanities regarded as Darwinian was in actually based on the propositions of Spencer and was progressivist, deterministic and racist. There has also been a tendency for scholars outside biology both who oppose and advocate the use of evolutionary theory to erroneously regard the biological theory as deterministic and progressivist when it is not. The broader problem, however, is that the advocates of theories of cultural evolution have mistakenly sought to causally interconnect all scales of operation or have privileged the familiar, small, human scale; and have made an erroneous analogy between brain functions in culture and genetic functions in biology to derive a singular code for cultural phenomena – a mentalist model. The implication is that the lack of agreement about an evolutionary theory of culture is not that such a theory is inherently invalid but that the fundamental logic of theories of cultural evolution has been flawed and does not adequately describe how culture operates. An alternative to the previous theories is to propose that the operations of different scales of process such as human decision-making, economic functions and ecological balance form a hierarchy of decoupled levels of operation which would be consistent with the logic of the biological theory; and that the replication of culture is managed by three code systems for speech, action and materiality which themselves operate at different rates and magnitudes, unlike the single primary code of genetics. There are some implications for archaeological theory.

Prof. Roland Fletcher
BIO :
Roland Fletcher is Professor of Theoretical and World Archaeology at the University of Sydney. He has worked at the University of Sydney since 1976 where he has implemented a global, multi-scalar, interdisciplinary approach to Archaeology. In 1995 he published The Limits of Settlement Growth with Cambridge University Press, a study of the constraints on settlement growth over the past 15,000 years. In 2000 he initiated the Greater Angkor Project, an international collaboration with APSARA – the Cambodian government agency which manages Angkor – and the Ecole francaise d’Extreme Orient. The research has led to new insights into the form, size, history and environmental context of large, low-density settlements and a redefinition of urbanism. The overall program has been funded by five major Australian Research Council grants – currently 2017-22 – and has produced 15 PhD theses and 14 professional academics. He is the Director of the University of Sydney’s Angkor Research Program; he has been a Distinguished Fellow of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study; an invited speaker at the Falling Walls Conference in Berlin; and a keynote speaker at UrbNet in Aarhus, the Chinese Institute of Urban Planners symposium in Nanjing and at the Shanghai World Archaeological Forum. In June 2018 he was invited to the Global Solutions Summit on G20 issues in Berlin. He is currently an annual Visiting Research Fellow at UrbNet for 2018 to 20.
Date: 3 July 2019, 10:00 (Wednesday, 10th week, Trinity 2019)
Venue: History Faculty, George Street OX1 2RL
Venue Details: Colin Matthew Room
Speaker: Professor Roland Fletcher (Professor of Theoretical and World Archaeology, University of Sydney)
Organisers: Michael Leadbetter, Phacha Phanomvan (St John’s)
Organiser contact email address: michael.leadbetter@arch.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Laura Spence