..it makes no sense to speak of ‘culture’ as an independent body of context-free knowledge, that is available for transmission prior to the situations of its application.
In short, a technique such as interstice foraging is not passed on as part of any systematic body of cultural representations; it is rather inculcated in each successive generation through a process of development, in the course of novices’ practical involvement with the constituents of their environment – under the guidance of more experienced mentors – in the conduct of their everyday tasks. The accomplished hunter consults the world,not representations inside his head. The implications of this conclusion cannot be overemphasised, since they strike at the very core of neo-Darwinian theory itself. It is a fundamental premise of this theory that the morphological attributes and behavioural propensities of individual organisms must be specifiable, in some sense, independently and in advance of their entry into relations with their environments, and that the components of these specifications – whether genes or (in humans) their cultural analogues – must be transmissible across generations. It is my contention, to the contrary, that such contextindependent specifications are, at best, analytic abstractions, and that in reality the forms and capacities of organisms are the emergent properties of developmental systems.
(..)
Far from confronting one another across the boundary of nature, both the people who call themselves scientists and the people whom scientists call hunter-gatherers are fellow passengers in this world of ours, who carry on the business of life and, in so doing, develop their capacities and aspirations, within a continuing history of involvement with both human and non-human components of their environments. If we are to develop a thoroughgoing ecological understanding of how real people relate to these environments, and of the sensitivity and skill with which they do so, it is imperative to take this condition of involvement as our point of departure.
In short, a technique such as interstice foraging is not passed on as part of any systematic body of cultural representations; it is rather inculcated in each successive generation through a process of development, in the course of novices’ practical involvement with the constituents of their environment – under the guidance of more experienced mentors – in the conduct of their everyday tasks. The accomplished hunter consults the world,not representations inside his head. The implications of this conclusion cannot be overemphasised, since they strike at the very core of neo-Darwinian theory itself. It is a fundamental premise of this theory that the morphological attributes and behavioural propensities of individual organisms must be specifiable, in some sense, independently and in advance of their entry into relations with their environments, and that the components of these specifications – whether genes or (in humans) their cultural analogues – must be transmissible across generations. It is my contention, to the contrary, that such contextindependent specifications are, at best, analytic abstractions, and that in reality the forms and capacities of organisms are the emergent properties of developmental systems.
(..)
Far from confronting one another across the boundary of nature, both the people who call themselves scientists and the people whom scientists call hunter-gatherers are fellow passengers in this world of ours, who carry on the business of life and, in so doing, develop their capacities and aspirations, within a continuing history of involvement with both human and non-human components of their environments. If we are to develop a thoroughgoing ecological understanding of how real people relate to these environments, and of the sensitivity and skill with which they do so, it is imperative to take this condition of involvement as our point of departure.
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