ABSTRACT
In the past two decades, evolutionary cultural science (ECS) has been emerging as a transdisciplinary field crossing evolutionary economics, economic sociology, and evolutionary biology. The methodological key is co-evolutionary theory in terms of multi-level selection, evo-devo systemic approaches, and formal homologies in modelling tools, which allow to synthesize biological and humanities perspectives on culture. Specifically, these perspectives converge on a non-essentialist view of culture as performing agent identities in groups with distinctive cultural markers. The entry explores the evolutionary theory of consumption as an exemplary application, highlighting the co-evolutionary formation of preferences, the role of consumption in performing agent identity, and status competition in social networks.
