Liberal antiracism in cultural evolution
Brinitzer argues that cultural evolution entrenched a liberal postwar epistemology of human difference, aiming to rethink the human sciences from a modern evolutionary perspective without ranking races.
Source
Historicizing the liberal antiracism of Cultural Evolution
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Intellectual history of cultural evolution from 1970s genetics through CES founding and UNESCO race statements
- N
- Field history; CES founded 2015 with 600 members — not a primary sample N
- Population
- Cultural-evolution research communities (California/Paris schools; Cultural Evolution Society)
- Outcome
- Liberal postwar antiracist epistemology of human difference within modern evolutionary cultural theory
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
Liberal antiracism in cultural evolution
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
The Cultural Evolution Society was established in 2015 with 600 founding members.
The Cultural Evolution Society was established in 2015 with 600 founding members across the globe, though highly concentrated in North America and Europe (Brewer, , p
Richerson won over 70% of the votes for first CES president.
Richerson won over 70% of the votes cast and was elected the society’s first president; Sperber was named president-elect in accordance with a special condition of the inaugural election, intended “to ensure continuity of leadership in this fledgling stage for the society” (Brewer, , p
What they did
A historical account of cultural evolution from 1970s population genetics through California vs Paris schools, the 2015 Cultural Evolution Society (600 founding members; Richerson vs Sperber), and UNESCO's 1950/1951 Statements on Race as the political-epistemic backdrop.
What they found
The field extends the modern synthesis to culture via transmission mechanisms. CES (2015) united around knowledge synthesis despite school splits. UNESCO's 1950 Statement asserted biological unity and rejected racial hierarchy, then geneticists pushed a 1951 revision that kept races as overlapping quantitative populations. Cultural evolution inherits that liberal antiracist settlement.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is not an ethnography of all CES members, nor a test of any dual-inheritance model. It does not refute every empirical cultural-evolution paper.
Key terms
- Cultural evolution
- Late-twentieth-century field using evolutionary-genetic tools to study human culture.
- Modern evolutionary synthesis
- Neo-Darwinian framework cultural evolutionists sought to extend to cultural transmission.
- UNESCO Statement on Race (1950/51)
- Postwar scientific statements rejecting racial hierarchy while geneticists insisted race remain a technical population concept.
- California vs Paris schools
- Richerson/Boyd dual-inheritance programme versus Sperber's epidemiological/cognitive approach.
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Quiz yourself
Cultural evolution emerged to?
Common questions
What is 'modern' about cultural evolution?
The aim to account for culture inside biology's modern evolutionary synthesis, not nineteenth-century culture-evolutionism.
When was CES founded?
2015, with 600 founding members, concentrated in North America and Europe.
What did UNESCO 1950 assert?
Biological unity of humans and that races could not be ranked superior or inferior.
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