Meme

A concept introduced by Dawkin (1976) to designate units of imitation that he considered the building blocks of culture. Their role is similar in culture to that of genes in biological evolution {Evolution and creativity}. As (Csikszentmihalyi (1999: 316) puts it,

Memes are similar to genes in that they carry instructions for action. [...] But whereas genetic instructions are transmitted in the chemical codes that we inherit in our chromosomes, the instructions contained in memes are transmitted through learning. By and large we learn memes and reproduce them without change; when a new song or recipe is invented, than we have creativity.