Cultural transmission and market participation in a Congo Basin village

Guided by cultural evolutionary theory, this study investigates people's economic activities in a village in the Republic of the Congo as shifting sets of traits that, at the individual level, are learnt according to their perceived advantages in relation to the current environment, but can scale up to influence population-level adaptation. Using systematic interviews (n = 181), we examine the cultural transmission pathways and social learning processes through which people integrate earning cash into subsistence strategies, and use Bayesian regression modelling to test four hypotheses around which demographic attributes are associated with greater participation in the (limited) formal wage-earning sector. We show that market integration through the sale of forest and agricultural products follows the same cultural transmission pathways and social learning processes as traditional subsistence practices themselves. In contrast, integrating the earning of cash through wage labour requires non-local pathways and disembedded, higher-cost social learning. Also, males and migrants to the village were more likely to engage in wage labour. We conclude that a mixed economy seems sustainable at the study village, but that integration of the wage-labour market can lead to economic inequality resulting from fundamental cultural evolutionary properties of globalization. This article is part of the theme issue 'Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures'.