ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the unit of cultural microevolutionary analysis which permits to take account of the specific phenotypic characters peculiar to particular individuals. Like any other study of human beings, the study of human behavior can be pursued without any evolutionary reference. Where the purpose of an investigation is an analysis of the ways in which a culture provides the framework for the mobilization of human energies or for meeting crises, this inquiry may be pursued as an end in itself. For the study of cultural micro-evolution, detailed records of the way in which a specific group of identified individuals has participated, in a given society, in cultural change is needed. For full understanding of the process, accounts of innovation which show how the contributions of each of a group of individuals, each one fully specified, who together constitute the unit of sociocultural micro-evolution, are combined to produce the evolutionarily significant innovation is needed.
