Among the many paradigms which appear to be undergoing a profound shift is the one concerned with the theory of knowledge and cultural transmission. Epistemology has now gone evolutionary, just as sociology has disowned Social Darwinism. I refer, of course, to the study of memetics. That this field of study is so new and unbounded is evidenced by the fact that my word-processing software has marked the word incorrectly spelled! I’m sure we’ve all heard about memes, even if we might not have encountered the word itself, but do we know exactly what this new branch of knowledge entails?
When in doubt as to how to proceed, it is often best to fall back on a time-worn tradition: that of referring to established authority and proceeding thence, either in opposition, in exposition or in explication. To wit, I refer to the Oxford English Dictionary which defines a meme thus: ‘A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene..’ First expounded by Dawkins in 1976 in his book, The Selfish Gene, it adumbrated the present frenzy over all things cultural, going even beyond Gramsci’s reworking of the classical Marxist analysis of culture, and emphasizing the active and dynamic role which culture itself exhibits. In choosing the term meme, Dawkins managed a coup de theatre in ensuring that a neologism became instantly recognizable, conveying both the meaning of mimesis or imitation, and combining it with the succinctness as well as the functionality of the analogous term, gene. To elucidate, in speaking of the transmission of culture and ideas, it is best perhaps if we view this as occurring, not in the matter of classical genetic inheritance (vertical), but rather as viral (horizontal as well as vertical), because a meme is spread within the same generation as well as inter-generationally.
Initially all seems quite clear. A meme can be classified as a cultural element which spreads like a virus, replicating itself by infecting and effecting profound changes in those it affects. But in examining more minutely the idea of memes, three questions come to mind. First of all, what are the limits of a meme and secondly, what is the specificity of a gene, and thirdly what is the usefulness of the concept of a meme? In order to help me more clearly understand, I turned to the IBSS database. Using memetics as my main search term, I only managed to unearth 9 records, all written within the span of the past 10 years. The sequence started out with the first two articles written four years apart, but then the frequency increased to three written in 2006. This illustrates a key concept common to virology and memetics: initial infection may take a while but if the virus or meme is particularly virulent, it’s spread then leaves the arithmetic progression to shoot into exponential growth. Not being satisfied with being limited to 9 results, I typed in the term ‘memetic*’ which then yielded 14 results. Then I decided to expand my search terms and typed in the terms, ‘cultural’ and ‘transfer’. This time I came up with a more gratifying 297 results. Changing the final search term from ‘transfer’ to ‘diffusion’ was even more satisfying, giving me 398 results. But trawling through these results yielded surprisingly little on the topic at hand. So I changed the last search term from ‘diffusion’ to ‘transmission’, giving 403 results, and this time the majority of the articles were much more in line with the subject, though sadly lacking in the use of the particular terms of meme and memetics. I then typed in ‘selfish’ and ‘gene’ in keeping with the spirit of the original article and came up with 18 very pertinent results, among them the most useful being, ‘The selfish meme: a critical reassessment’, Kate Distin (2005). Clicking on this link led me to the citation which included a plethora of relevant subject terms. Among the more useful ones were: social change, cultural evolutionism, and evolutionary anthropology. ‘Cultural evolutionism’ being the term which met the closest goodness of fit, I clicked on it and came up with 21 results. From this, I found, ‘Social evolutionism: a critical history,’ Stephen Sanderson (1994) and clicked on it, yielding the citation with the all-important search term, ‘sociobiology’ which yielded 831 results.
Scanning through the results of this latest and best search, I found that every result was connected with the larger idea around memetics: that ideas change in an evolutionary manner, and are transmitted successfully according to the competitive advantage that they offer to their bearer. Thus using a broadened number of search terms which are related to memetics, and clicking on the easy-to-use links and subject terms which the IBSS database offers, I developed a more lucid and holistic view of the issue, than if I had just stuck with my single original search term of memetics.
However, the initial questions still remain – none of my searching elucidated the limits of a meme, most likely because the meme has yet to be delimited, although the most recent article in my first search of the database, ‘The diffusion of management innovations: the possibilities and limitations of memetics,’ Joseph O’Mahoney (2007) seems to call for a closer examination of the concept and study of memetics. Still, just how large or small does a ‘cultural element or behavioural trait’ have to be in order qualify as a meme? By this I mean to ask, just what are the basic differences between a cultural package and a cultural element or behavioural trait, or are there differences at all? For example, is the concept of agriculture a meme? Or are the various behaviours associated in the concept of agriculture the memes themselves, such as the use of a plough in comparison with stick-planting?
Another related problem is the specificity of a meme. Is a meme still the same meme if it changes meaning, for instance when it jumps cultures? An obvious example which springs to mind, if we accept that it is a meme, is the concept of democracy. To the societies often classified as Western, democracy is often equated with liberalism (meme!!!), whereas in those classified as the Rest, it may be a one-election phenomenon. This goes right to a fundamental question: is democracy still democracy if it can only be exercised once, and that to set up a system which does away any future possibility of experiencing it? Would we dare say that Singaporean democracy is any less successful for being more authoritarian than what we are accustomed to?
The third, final question concerns the usefulness of mimetics. The concept in itself posits an evolutionary and infectious (therefore, personal) spread of information. Two articles from my first search appear to deal with this question in a utilitarian way. The first, ‘Evolutionary psychology, memes and the origin of war,’ H. Keith Henson (2006), hypothesizes that behavioural changes are activated by a resource crisis, which subsequently result in a build-up of memes, ultimately leading to coordinated attacks on neighbours. But if memes are learned behaviours, then memetics alone cannot explain the origin of war. A final, finishing leap must be made from aggression to warfare, and it is perhaps too much to expect something so simplistic as a theory involving merely a ‘build-up’ and ‘critical threshold’ to explain the origin of war. In the second article, ‘Memetics and voting: how nature may make us public-spirited,’ J.P. Conley, A. Toossi, and M. Wooders, (2006), the authors appear to have confused nature with nurture. They suggest that evolutionary dynamics give a competitive advantage to public-spirited groups, seeming to regard the evolution of ideas as merely due to ‘nature.’ This flies in the face of the concept of mimetics, which hypothesizes the spread of an idea because it is more advantageous that what is natural, the status quo. Furthermore, an article from my third search, ‘Critical social learning: a solution to Roger’s paradox of nonadaptive culture,’ by Magnus Enquist, Kimmo Eriksson, and Stefano Ghirlanda, American anthropologist 2007 (12), v.109 (no. 4), further examines this particular problem from a quasi-mimetic standpoint, without using the term itself.
Mimetics, then, is such a relatively new concept that it is only now that social scientists are beginning to adopt the specific terminology and outlook that accompany its study. We can say, therefore, that it appears to be quite a useful tool in the study of mass phenomena, i.e. the spread of religious ideas and popular myth, but appears to falter somewhat when examining post-conquest or state-promulgated cultural change or assimilation. Clearly in these instances, culture doesn’t spread via memesis but rather via decree and compulsion. Another, related, point to consider is the value of memetics in analysing tightly-controlled and rigid societies. Is a degree of openness and receptivity necessary for memes to spread, or do some people, cultures and societies hang on to their own received ideas for one reason or another? The answers are still out there waiting.
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