The ecological approach to culture

The prevailing view in the literature treats cultural dynamics as fundamentally distinct from other ecological processes—governed by a second system of inheritance and requiring a separate set of theoretical foundations. Yet at its core, culture is simply an emergent outcome of interactions among individuals and with their shared environment—the very kind of phenomenon ecologists routinely study. In fact, in many ecosystems not considered cultural, such interactions do produce stable population differences, rapid innovations, informational changes, or even cumulative dynamics. These phenomena are more pronounced in cultural ecosystems, but they are not different in kind. Accordingly, we argue that cultural ecosystems should be studied through the same mechanisms as other ecosystems—ecological modifications, phenotypic responses, legacy effects, and ecological cascades. Different ecosystems may require specific methods or concepts, but not fundamentally different theoretical frameworks. The main strength of this deflationary view of culture lies in its parsimony. If culture is not fundamentally special, we can rely on the same robust and well-tested framework—namely, inclusive fitness theory—to understand human behavior in cultural ecosystems, just as we do for animal behavior more generally. Inclusive fitness theory, in turn, can help explain both (i) individual behavior in culturally rich ecosystems and (ii) how the interaction of such behaviors gives rise to the large-scale ecological patterns we call culture.