Hi Bryan,
Perhaps I misread these passages, but I interpret them to mean that the culture
resides in the kids' peer groups and is transmitted from parents (when they were kids)
to current kids via the link of ongoing peer culture. Note the use of the wording
"passed down" which implies inherited -- not imposed from above (as in "passed down
from generation to generation"). Also, she says that cultures are "self-perpetuating"
not that parent group cultures change child group cultures. -- Bill
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/14/00 12:22AM >>>
Two of many quotes supporting my interpretation of Harris:
"Neighborhoods have different cultures and the cultures tend to be
self-perpetuating; they are passed down from the parents' peer group to
the children's peer group... It's the neighborhood, not the family..."
(Nurture Assumption, p.304)
"What has happened is that you've mistaken
parents'-group-to-children's-group effects for parent-to-child effects."
(NA, p.215)
I admit she does talk about autonomous child-to-child transmission of
e.g. games, but when she's trying to explain why cultures persist, it's
the "parents'-group-to-children's-group" model.
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan
"[W]hen we attempt to prove by direct argument, what is really
self-evident, the reasoning will always be inconclusive; for it
will either take for granted the thing to be proved, or something
not more evident; and so, instead of giving strength to the
conclusion, will rather tempt those to doubt of it, who never
did so before."
-- Thomas Reid, _Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind_
