ABSTRACT
One basic premise, however, underlies this argument. It is embedded in the very metaphor of transmission by which we so readily describe the twin processes of biological and cultural reproduction. The metaphor implies that information is being ‘passed along’ (D’Andrade 1981: 179) the lines of descent linking successive generations. It is supposed that in biological reproduction this information is encoded in genetic material, whereas in cultural reproduction it is encoded in words and symbols. In both cases, however, we are required to assume that the information can be ‘read off ’ from the materials by which it is conveyed, by means of decoding rules that are independent of the specific environmental contexts in which it is applied. In biology this assumption underwrites the distinction between genotype and phenotype. The genotype is imagined as the covert specification of an organism-to-be, built out of elements passed down the line from ancestors and installed through genetic replication at its point of inception; the phenotype is the manifest form of the organism as it is subsequently realised through a life history of growth and development within a particular environment. Drawing on precisely the same logic, anthropologists Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd distinguish between the ‘phenotype of a cultural organism … and its “culture-type”, the cultural message that the organism received from individuals of the same species’ (1978: 128). The culture-type is established through a process of instruction, which ensures that the informational content of the message is copied into the heads of novices. The phenotype, in turn, is the outcome of an elective process: it is the manifest behaviour that results when already copied representations are applied in specific environmental circumstances (see Figure 13.1). This is where ‘knowledge’, in Geertz’s terms, gives way to ‘functioning’. The assumption, then, is that individuals are specified in their essential genetic and cultural constitution – as genotype and culture-type – independently and in advance of their life in the world, through the bestowal of attributes from ancestors.1 This assumption is the defining feature of what can be called the genealogical model (Ingold 2000a: 134-139).
