DAN SPERBER EXPLAINING CULTURE A NATURALISTIC APPROACHExplaining Culture A Naturalistic Approach Dan Sperber ¢ Blackwell b PublishingCopyright © Dan Sperber 1996 The right of Dan Sperber to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 1996 Reprinted 1997, 1998 (twice), 1999 Transferred to digital print 2002 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK Blackwell Publishers Inc 350 Main Street, Malden, Massachusetts 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ACIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sperber, Dan Explaining culture: a naturalistic approach / Dan Sperber. pcm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-631-20044—4 (hbk : alk. paper) ISBN 0-631-20045-2 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Culture. 2. Cognitive psychology. 3. Social evolution. 4. Cognition and culture. 1. Title. GN357.S66 1996 96-6454 CIP 306—dc20 ‘Typeset in 11 on 13pt Bembo by Wearset, Boldon, Tyne and Wear Printed in Great Britain by Marston Lindsay Ross Incernational Ltd, Oxford