Elizabeth Brumfiel

"...[h]uman actors, and not reified systems, are the agents of culture change. Human actors devise complex strategies to solve their problems and meet their goals, and these strategies are neither random nor shaped solely by differential survival either at the population level as ecosystem would have, or at the level of the individual as more recent evolutionary cultural theorist claim. This is not to say that humans always “get it right” or that their actions do not have unforeseen consequences. It is simply to argue that human goals are relevant to cultural outcome."