IDEERNES EPIDEMIOLOGI OG KULTURENS IMMUNOLOGI: Et forsvar for et kulturhistorisk forklaringsniveau

Resumé

In recent developments in anthropology and the science of religion, the concept of

culture has been criticised as being without any explanatory value. Thus, proponents of

cognitive anthropology have argued that culture, instead of explaining anything by

itself, is the thing in need of explanation. Dan Sperber and Pascal Boyer have

independently argued that in order to understand the diffusion of cultural ideas, we

need to pay close attention to two selective factors: domain-specific cognitive mechanisms

and pragmatic relevancy. This theoretical development has been successful in

demolishing any remnants of a reified concept of culture and has, in contrast to

postmodernist critiques, supplied a scientifically viable alternative. Their approach should

thus be endorsed, but in their eagerness to promote a purely cognitive approach, Sperber

and Boyer have failed to explain the relative local success and stability of some

representations in contrast to other equally cognitive optimal representations. Why do

some religious representations thrive while other, equally cognitive optimal

representations, disappear? In order to address this problem, the metaphor of an

epidemiology of representations, suggested by Sperber, is extended by an “immunology

of cultural systems”. In addition to the selective forces described by Sperber and Boyer,

the immunological approach argues that the relative success of new representations is

largely dependent on how well they fit already existing cultural models. The success of

religious ideas is not only a product of how often they are expressed and how well they

fit cognitive structures. Their relative position in a constantly evolving ecology of ideas

will have a substantial impact on whether they are transmitted to new individuals or

whether they disappear together with countless other unsuccessful representations.

Describing the systematic relations between public representations and their historical

development is thus a necessary supplement to the epidemiological approach.