Cultural evolution and the beneficiary question

The ecological approach to culture extends the inclusive fitness tradition by proposing that cultural phenomena are best understood as extended phenotypes of producers aiming to maximize the replication of their genes. An important implication of this view is that cultural evolution can be modeled using traditional concepts from ecology, without positing a separate system of inheritance. This article presents a challenge to the ecological approach. If we take the gene's-eye view of evolution seriously, then we also have reason to believe that cultural phenomena may evolve by their own system of inheritance, since both positions are motivated by their ability to answer the beneficiary question from evolutionary biology.