--- abstract: 'This is the text of the Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthopology 1999 (To appear in the Proceedings of the British Academy). In it, I argue that to approach society and culture in a naturalistic way, the domain of the social sciences must be reconceptualised by recognising only entities and processes of which we have a naturalistic understanding. These are mental representations and public productions, the processes that causally link them, the causal chains that bond these links, and the complex webs of such causal chains that criss-cross human populations over time and space. Such causal chains may distribute and stabilise representations and productions throughout a human population, thereby generating culture. The lecture introduces several conceptual tools useful for such a naturalistic approach, and illustrates their use with the case study of ritual activity in a Southern Ethiopian household.' altloc: - http://perso.club-internet.fr/sperber/ - http://www.dan.sperber.com chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: November 25 conference: Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthopology 1999 confloc: 'British Academy, London' contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Sperber given: Dan honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 1999 date_type: published datestamp: 2000-03-23 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/04/04 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 404 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/404/1/Rad%2DBrow.htm full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: unpub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'anthropology, culture, society, naturalism, divination, phisolophy of the social sciences, philosophy of the cognitive sciences, cultural evolution, cognition, communication, Ethiopia, anthropological theory, epidemiology of representations, Radcliffe-Brown' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:53:53 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: ~ relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 8 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:27:23 subjects: - evol-psy - phil-mind - phil-sci - soc-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: CONCEPTUAL TOOLS FOR A NATURAL SCIENCE OF SOCIETY AND CULTURE type: confpaper userid: 465 volume: ~