Literature Review: What’s Out There on Memetics

What makes us who we are? How do the practices we engage in and the ideas we create constitute our culture? These are some of the questions that inspire the essence of anthropological research. Memetics, a relatively recent theory and the product of thought by scientists, psychologists and philosophers attempts to get at the core of this issue – how and why cultural practices are transmitted. As such, this theory is of great interest to anthropologists who draw on these different fields to gain a holistic picture of why we do what we do. Richard Dawkins, credited with creating the term “meme” was one of the primary researchers in this area, though his ideas largely relied on similarities to Darwinian cultural evolution. There are two main camps of thought within memetics – the so-called “internalists” and “externalists” as well as a healthy crop of critics skeptical of the sweeping explanations of cultural practice that memetics claims to offer. Here is a brief review of the literature available on the topic. While my project focuses on linguistic memes and their place within the larger framework of (anonymous) online speech, this review will deal with memetics itself for the sake of consistency and focus.

The first group within the larger school of memetic thought is that of the “Externalists.” A brief overview of the core principles of memetics will demonstrate an externalist perspective; the roots of the theory are based in this camp. “Meme” itself, from the Greek word mimema, or “mimic” gives the basic idea of what it is – a unit of cultural information that is reproduced and transmitted. Dawkins uses the example of DNA transmitting itself to produce biologically sound organisms; his ideas of DNA that “wanted” to be transmitted or perpetuated was the basis for his theory, and most prominent book, The Selfish Gene. He also takes the theory further, comparing computer viruses and even cultural behaviors as objects or practices that “catch” and are transmitted from person to person. He begins to transition to the “Internalist” camp when he proposes that ideas and beliefs can be transmitted from brain to brain the way that information for healthy organisms is transmitted through DNA and coded information is passed through computer viruses. However, he sticks to a more concrete idea of transmitted “cultural artifacts” that are observable – ways of building, wearing clothes, speaking. This exploration of the parallel of strictly coded information to that of the transmission of behavior, is explored in his essay Viruses of the Mind. While he implicates that ideas and beliefs can be spread in a similar way, he still propagates these entities as information that “wants” to be copied.

The second camp, that of the “Internalists,” is more oriented toward the perpetuation of belief and practice, but falls along a more philosophical line. Information and knowledge are what is passed along, not just an object or a trait. Daniel Dennett is one of the primary scholars of this camp; he is a follower of Dawkins’ work, but approaches the theory from a more philosophical perspective. He looks at how practices and behaviors “catch” and how the information and knowledge is transmitted from brain to brain. Several similar books have been written along this line, notably one aimed at a less scientific audience – Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie.

A third group, those who recognize memetics as lacking a recognition for human agency in the perpetuation of culture. They are skeptical of the broader claims of (especially internalist) Memeticists who claim that their theory can explain human cultural transmission. Authors like Stephen Dougherty, in his article Culture in the Disk Drive, criticize Dawkins (and other scholars like Susan Blackmore) of reducing the human to a “meme machine” that simply plays host to information that “wants” to be copied. They also criticize the internalists’ camp for creating too many examples of memes without a concrete definition; in their eyes, scholars like Dennett have turned all aspects of cultural behavior into memes; critics are skeptical of this broad view, as well as the sweeping claims that they see internalist scholars trying to explain. Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained is an often-cited example of a title that is too presumptuous. Three questions brought up by David Holdcroft and Harry Lewis in their article Memes, Minds and Evolution are these: “Can memes and their tokenings play the causal roles they need to play if memetics obeys the laws of ‘natural selection exactly’? Second, how and why did memes acquire the vehicles they needed to colonise the brains of a hominoid? Finally, is an appeal to them qua semantic entities genuinely explanatory of the development of human culture?” These questions are what this camp explores as they question the primary theories of memeticists.

As has already been raised, human agency in the process of cultural transmission is one of the primary points of contention among scholars of meme theory. This is an important issue not to be overlooked in a survey of this topic, as humans are indeed the ones primarily involved in creating and perpetuating culture. Another conflict is that of the definition of “meme” itself. Whether this concept should be taken as simply the phenotypic appearance of a cultural practice or the code/idea itself being transmitted has caused heated debates at conferences on the subject; in fact it brought one such conference to a halt, and it was decided that it may not be best to define “meme” outright in order to prevent such negative interaction. Another issue within the field is the current lack of research being done; as many of the prime scholars realized the publication of memetics research was not a lucrative field, they have moved on to other areas of research. However, with an interest in understanding the perpetuated culture of Anonymous in specific and humanity in general, I believe this theory is worth deeper investigation.

I intend to deepen my study of memes and meme theory by questioning both the initiators and the critics of this theory. Both groups agree that information is transmitted, but disagree about humans’ role in the process. I intend to look more into this, but also into why it is transmitted. Humans are definitely either agents or media for the transmission, but even if the “selfish” information is perpetuation itself, to what end does this occur? Externalist memeticists argue that information perpetuates itself to create genetically fit or knowledgeable organisms. If this is so, the seemingly “mindless” pop-culture internet memes that spread through sites like 4chan in a virus-like way are a seeming exception. Of what value is the information that is being replicated? I intend to do this by studying the existing literature as well as by engaging in participant observation of online message/imageboards and entering into the virtual communities where this language has become a meme, a piece of cultural information that is copied and spread. While both camps of research can be helpful in understanding the basis for this replication, a new, less scientific-based perspective may be beneficial as well.