THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE

In his thought‐provoking book, Alex Mesoudi argues for an evolutionary, unifying framework for the social sciences, which is based on the principles of Darwinian theory. Mesoudi maintains that cultural change can be illuminated by using the genotype‐phenotype distinction, and that it is sufficiently similar to biological change to warrant a theory of culture‐change based on evolutionary models. He describes examples of cultural microevolution, within‐population changes, and the biologically inspired population genetics models used to study them. He also shows that some aspects of large‐scale (macro‐evolutionary) cultural transformation can be studied by using ecological models and phylogenetic comparative techniques. We argue that although Mesoudi's evolution‐based perspective offers many useful insights, his ambition—the unification of the social sciences within a Darwinian framework through the use of the methods and models he describes—suffers from a major theoretical limitation. His reductive approach leads to overlooking culture as a system with emergent processes and features. Mesoudi therefore does not engage with any of the central past and present theories in sociology and anthropology for which the systems view of culture is central, and he does not analyze the emergent, high‐level properties of human cultural‐social systems. We suggest that a systems perspective, using some analogies and metaphors from developmental biology, can complement the evolutionary approach and is more in tune with a systems view of society. Such an approach, which stresses feedback and self‐sustaining interactions within social networks, and engages with the insights of sociological and anthropological theories, can contribute to the understanding of cultural systems by highlighting the evolution of processes of social cohesion, and by making use of the mathematical approaches of complexity theory.     

1. CONSTRUCTING A SELECTIONIST PARADIGM

In his latest contribution to the application of Darwinian evolutionary thinking to the social sciences, W. G. Runciman conceives of human behavior as resulting from three levels of selection—biological, cultural, and social. These give rise, respectively, to evoked, acquired, and imposed patterns of behavior. The biological level is hardly controversial, but to draw a distinction between separate cultural and social selective processes is more problematic. Runciman takes memes to be the variants competitively selected at the cultural level and the practices constituting rule‐governed roles to be the variants competitively selected at the social level—thus preserving separate spheres of research for anthropology and sociology. It is not clear, however, what drives cultural and social evolution. Nor are the three levels theoretically well integrated. The book's strength lies in the numerous examples provided of how the application of selectionist theory illuminates and enriches sociological and historical explanations and contributes to the construction of historical narrative.     

Naming,dedicating: street names and tradition

Naming is always dedicating, that is to say offering to the ancestors, inserting the person or the named object in a lineage of some sort. Only street names will be considered here because they have two characteristics of sociological relevance: they are chosen and they pertain to a social group in relation to which they are supposed to express some deep and ancient value. They can be studied from two different perspectives: the kind of action that is the naming of a street and the fact that street names express something of the social reality. Or, in other words, if naming is dedicating, when and how is it possible to shift from one tradition (to which the name refers) to another? A further question could be if street names express something of the social reality, does it imply that different types of social stratification are linked to different types of street names? Both questions will be examined here in reference to two different situations—Paris, France and Évora, Portugal.     

THE CHALLENGE OF ‘TECHNOLOGICAL CHOICES’FOR MATERIALS SCIENCE APPROACHES IN ARCHAEOLOGY*

Recently several anthropological and sociological studies have interpreted technologies as cultural choices that are determined as much by local perceptions and the social context fly any material constraints or purely functional criteria. Using the example of ceramic technology we consider how materials science studies can contribute to and benefit from this understanding of technology as a social construct. Although we acknowledge some potential difficulties, it is our contention that both materials scientists and archaeologists have gained much and have much to gain by cooperating together to study ancient technologies, and that the concept of ‘technological choices’can facilitate a wider consideration of the factors shaping technological developments.     

Beyond exploitation/empowerment: re-imagining Southern producers in commodity stories

One of the most dominant strands of research within cultural geography's ‘materialist turn’ is that of commodity stories. Through everything from phones to flowers, geographers have attempted to reveal the myriad connections between (Northern) consumers and (Southern) producers. Following commodities and tracing their networks, this research tends to privilege consumption as the primary site of social and cultural meaning within the global economy. Where producers are the focus, the theoretical framework for understanding their lives is typically a developmentalist one, foregrounding exploitation and/or empowerment. Thus, we learn little from commodity stories about the ordinary lives of Southern producers and the co-production of the sociocultural and the economic through their everyday practices. This paper argues that deeper sociocultural analysis of the processes of production is necessary to balance the current dominance of consumption-led commodity stories and, more importantly, to open up space for a re-imagining of Southern producers. Through the personal accounts of fourty beadwork producers in Cape Town, I explore how the everyday practices of craft production sustain existing social relations, generate new networks, and help to shape both a sense of belonging and a sense of self. This commodity story reveals Southern producers' lives to be both richer and more mundane than dominant constructions suggest.     

Plastic arts and nation‐building in Israel

This article begins as an attempt to analyse an apparently paradoxical situation created by two events, which occurred simultaneously in 1948: the establishment of Israel as an independent state and the emergence of the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) group of artists, acknowledged as the most renowned local artists at the time. The creation of the state of Israel may be considered the high point of Jewish nationalism, when the nation celebrated its distinctiveness. On the other hand, Ofakim Hadashim was a group of intellectuals who aspired to disengage their artistic work from the dominant political processes of the time. The basic claim of its members was l'art pour l'art, which ostensibly contradicted the significance of the general political process. This situation is highly interesting since it challenges the general sociological assumptions about the role of intellectuals in nation‐building processes, and also contradicts the usual explanation regarding the Israeli state‐building process. It concludes that an explanation of the social complexity existing in 1948 can be found in an understanding of modernity as a multifaceted phenomenon embracing a diversity of inherently contradictory practices.     

Social practices and lifestyles in Italian youth cultures

Abstract

In recent decades, social research on youth in Italy has explored a wide range of issues through different interpretative and methodological approaches. However, there are very few studies that seek to identify the keynote features of the juvenile condition. This article argues that collective identities and forms of identification among youth are shaped more and more frequently through the sharing of social practices, of the meanings connected to these practices, and of more comprehensive lifestyles. With reference to four main fields (sport, music, politics, religion) and focusing on youth cultures, it analyses the connections between behaviours, attitudes, values and representations of youth actively involved in each of these different fields. The aim is to identify transversal processes through which young people today elaborate and adopt social practices and cultural profiles, create new social forms, and develop innovative signification processes.     

Local history as productive nostalgia? Change,continuity and sense of place in rural England

Local history groups are often negatively associated with a tendency to indulge in nostalgic practices that yearn for a romanticized past and propagate resistance to change. Their role in local politics and power networks (particularly in relation to planning and development processes) has also been critiqued as exacerbating issues of social inequality and exclusion. While not contesting the realities of such arguments, this paper adds nuance to such debates using the notion of ‘productive’ or ‘mobile’ nostalgia to explore possibilities for more positive renderings of local history and heritage activities. Empirical evidence from qualitative research in a rural village in Norfolk, England, is drawn on to demonstrate the role of these practices in providing a sense of continuity amid a continuously changing locale through the reassertion of place identities and attachments. Although by no means apolitical, this process need not necessarily be one of preservationism and resistance to change, but can be a mechanism through which residents are able to accept, or even welcome, changes to the social and physical constitution of their village. The paper also critically considers the value of productive nostalgia as a concept through which to explore local history practices and wider heritage movements.     

When Natural met Social: A Review of Collaboration between the Natural and Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper investigates the opportunities for further collaboration between the natural and social sciences. From 81 systematically identified and reviewed papers published in scientific journals, it became clear that complex situations that depend on human behaviour as well as natural processes require natural–social science collaboration. The creation of a community of collaborative natural–social science research, that learns from and can contribute to best practice across the sciences, is advocated to support natural– social science collaboration. Across disciplines, it became clear that such a community should deal with (1) difference between paradigms in the current sciences; (2) creation of skills and competences of the involved scientists; (3) scarcity of institutions sympathetic to collaborative research; and (4) the internal organization of collaborative projects.     

Human corpse manipulation and the body as symbol: A case study from the Eastern Pampa–Patagonia transition (Argentina) during the Final Late Holocene

Human body manipulation and secondary burials are widespread funerary practices in many areas of the world. The archaeology of the Pampas and North-Eastern Patagonia, Argentina, is no exception. In this paper, archaeological case studies from the lower basin of the Colorado River during the Final Late Holocene (ca. 1000–250 years BP) are presented and discussed. Secondary burials were recovered that indicated an intentional manipulation of bodies. Evidences of cut marks and the coloring of bone surfaces were recorded. The bundles were composed of individuals of both sexes and diverse age categories. The Pampean region and North-Eastern Patagonia witnessed significant hunter–gatherer population dynamics during the last 1000 years BP. Climatic, ecologic, demographic, and economic explanations have been proposed as the background to these changes. In this paper, it is argued that accompanying these factors, as part of a broader socio-cultural scenario, were significant social interaction networks and processes of social complementarity between groups. In this context, it is proposed that the complexity observed in relation to the handling of bodies is part of a worldview in which the body was seen as material culture – as a symbol – that played an important role for the community in group identity maintenance in a cultural context undergoing significant organizational changes.     

Comments on Bertil Hallert,photogrammetry and culture history. Discussion continued from NAR vol. 4, page 28

In archaeology experiment can be used both as a topic and as a research tool. In the former case, through identification of past experimental activities, we can obtain one of the indices of the social and cultural level. In the latter, experiment may help us in verifications of our hypotheses or in searching for facts that are so far unknown. This may take place in all spheres of archaeological procedure, thus not only in physical modelling of ancient technologies of production and in simulation of various economic and social processes—i.e. in the sense in which the contemporary concept of ‘experimental archaeology’ is usually delimited.     

基于文化地理学视角的秦腔文化起源与扩散

秦腔起源于古代陕甘一带民间歌舞,流行于陕、甘、青、宁、新等地。本文从文化地理学的角度,采用文化扩散和整合的思维着重分析了秦腔文化形成的自然地理与社会原因,系统探讨了不同时期和地区秦腔文化的扩散类型、传播路径与整合特征。结果认为,秦腔文化扩散的主要方式是人口迁移与艺人游走,特点是多级化。秦腔文化景观反映当地发展史,是多种地域文化要素相互作用的产物,传播时的屏障作用具有正负双重影响。未来秦腔文化的发展要根植于群众并植入现代元素,以实现秦腔文化新的繁荣。     

Enacting power through networks

We argue here that processes of political centralization and hierarchy building can be profitably explored by focusing on how resources were strategically manipulated in search of power by people organized in social networks of varying sizes and spatial extents. Adopting this perspective encourages reconsideration of the ways in which such core concepts as structure, agency, and society can be redefined to cast new light on ancient power contests. In addition, we suggest that a network approach complements traditional emphases on processes of domination and resistance by drawing attention to the importance of alliances in shaping political formations. The potential utility of these precepts is illustrated in an example drawn from our research on Terminal Classic (800–1000 AD) political struggles in the Naco valley of northwestern Honduras. Special attention in this case centers on the manner in which craft products were manipulated by people of varying ranks to define and achieve goals as well as to control the actions of others. The study’s broader implications for the analysis of ancient political relations are highlighted at the essay’s conclusion.     

Introduction to Relations in Multicultural Fiji: The Dynamics of Articulations,Transformations and Positionings

Focussing on three historically constituted domains of relations of great importance to all inhabitants of the Fiji Islands, this essay draws attention to cultural modalities and political strategies implicated in shaping these. By way of introduction to six papers which together with this preface and an epilogue are presented in the form of a collection, we distinguish three domains of relations: those between past and present; those between people and land; and (not least) those between people. We argue that social actors in Fiji reflect on and deal with such relations in all of which they are simultaneously embodied, i.e. they articulate, transform and position these relations with a view to shaping their identity and place in today's multicultural (and indeed intercultural) Fiji. We conclude that there operates a complex of dialectical processes: while social actors work on relations that exert influence on them, there is also a dynamic in play between articulations, transformations and positionings of relations.     

Regional perspectives on Wari state influence in Cusco,Peru (c. AD 600–1000)

The archaeological reconstruction of ancient states requires consistent regional measures of state-directed power and influence. This paper presents data from a series of systematic archaeological surveys in the Cusco region of highland Peru to evaluate patterns of influence by the Wari state during a period of colonization from ca. AD 600–1000. We discuss interpretive debates over the nature and intensity of Wari social power, suggesting that site-based studies can be contextualized meaningfully using our large-scale dataset, which offers settlement patterns at varying distances (0–70 km) from Pikillacta, a Wari administrative center. We discuss local settlement patterns before and during Wari colonization, as well as the distribution of Wari pottery and local Wari-influenced wares. We then use a geographic information systems analysis of travel time from key sites to evaluate the broad regional distribution patterns of local and Wari ceramic styles. Although the regional survey data do not inform us reliably about all kinds of social power, we conclude that the Wari cultural, economic, and political influence over the Cusco region was limited and discontinuous—an example of colonization that resembles the practices of other early states.     

中国古村镇保护利用中的悖论现象及其原因

中国的古村镇保护利用工作经过了30多年的发展取得了积极的进步,但是也出现了因保护而破坏的严重问题。本文尝试从对古村镇定义的修订切入,将古村镇作为一种文化综合体和文化生态系统进行分析,强调古村镇是由器物、行为、制度、精神四个层面构成的文化综合体,是具有自组织性的文化生态系统,对系统中任意环节的破坏都会造成保护利用的悖论现象。在此基础上,本文总结出保护环境与破坏环境、重现建筑特色与消解建筑特色等四重"中国式悖论",并进一步从社会文化环境、理念认知、管理机制以及开发模式等层面分析了中国式悖论产生的原因。     

Continuity and Discontinuity in Palestinian Cultural Expressions: Baal, El Khader and the Apotheosis of St. George

The analogical use of Biblical, archaeological and historical discourses on ancient Semitic religious, social and economic practices to interpret aspects of modern Palestinian cultural expressions does not seek to establish a homologous relation. Rather the use of analogical argument is of a typological order which points to mutually shared patterns, regularities, attributes or functions that have survived from ancient times to modernity. The dynamic process of ecological adaptation to the environment, the cultural diversity of which the Canaanite nascent city–states were composed, and the influences of the various peoples with whom the Palestinians came into contact have never ceased. Ethnographic fieldwork reveals a tapestry of life that has witnessed continued adaptations that structured and conditioned the unique socio-economic system, religion and spiritual legacy that the diverse Semitic and non-Semitic ethnic later settlers adapted themselves to. The concept of an authentic, fixed Palestinian identity is a myth. There was never a period of true identity, a genuine moment that encapsulates a ‘cultural essence’ or ‘cultural core’. Palestinian cultural identity has been produced within the context of Palestinian geography and bears structural continuity with primordial Semitic categories of thought. Throughout history, each period was merely a fleeting moment that in its transient fragility represented a momentary socio-economic dynamic adaptation of the culture to the available resources, thus ensuring the survival of the family within the tribe. Palestinians remain a tribal people whose elementary kinship unit was dynamically structured by the early pattern of cave dwellings that formed the ancient cities and hamlets that remained inhabited well into the twentieth century. In modernity the locus of the extended family, the sub-unit of the tribe (hamuleh) in the Palestinian village, is invariably the hosh, the four-generation family-living courtyard.     

Working at the ambivalence of race: ethnomimesis and the cancellation of St Paul's Carnival

The ambivalence of race is taken as a starting point in exploring the cancellation of the 2012 St Paul's Carnival, an African-Caribbean arts event in Bristol, England. That race is unstable, that it can be done and undone, has long been a focus of scholarship in social and cultural geography and beyond. This article asks instead how such a fragile state is maintained and with what implications. This necessitates regarding racial ambivalence as an activity; a condition that has to be worked at to be sustained. Ethnomimesis is used to frame these operations of racial ambivalence. Ethnomimesis is the way in which we encounter, stereotype and recognise cultural practices for ourselves and manifest them to others. It demonstrates how different configurations of race are precariously held between the creative possibilities and contingencies of situated cultural practices. Three moments of cancellation are narrated to show how ethnomimetic processes work through multiple formulations of race. This racial ambivalence is central to Carnival's failure. The organisers attempted to produce a performance of African-Caribbean culture that simultaneously denied the histories of racism that motivated the event. Ethnomimesis exposes how the racial ambivalence emergent in these cultural practices both opens and closes the possibilities to belong.     

The Mystery of Capital: Eurasian Entrepreneurs' Socio-Cultural Strategies for Commercial Success in Early 20th-Century Hong Kong

Unlike economic capital, which is visible and easy to calculate, social capital is intangible and difficult to assess. Although both types of capital are crucial in determining social relations and social behaviour, little solid research has been done on the latter. This paper attempts to use the rags-to-riches story of Sir Robert Ho Tung, a first-generation Hong Kong Eurasian entrepreneur who commenced life without traditional social/cultural capital as the illegitimate son of a Chinese woman and a Dutchman, to illustrate the processes involved in cultivating and accumulating social capital. With special reference to economic development in early colonial Hong Kong and major social transformations in the Chinese mainland, this paper also demonstrates how a group of so-called social/racial “half-caste bastards” (Eurasians) were able to form their own social networks of mutual help and protection. It also considers how they worked to consolidate, mobilise, aggrandise and transmit their social capital. In conclusion, it is argued that Eurasians in early twentieth-century Hong Kong constructed their personal networks like a web, with different interconnecting layers that functioned at different socio-economic-political levels to serve different purposes.     

Rules for Cultural Radicals

Abstract: This article explores the various forms of “social skill”, what we call “rules for cultural radicals”, that the Amber Film and Photography Collective (and primarily its founder and leading visionary, Murray Martin) used to create and sustain an egalitarian arts organization and oppositional cultural movement in the Northeast of England. The collective represented a radical challenge to the world of British filmmaking, featuring innovative practices of cultural work, non‐commodified forms of cultural economy and a commitment to a democratic culture. These “rules” constituted innovative forms of strategic action—visionary leadership, improvisation, risk taking, brokerage—that helped create a durable collective identity and networks of solidarity. We explore the extent to which Amber's “rules” are prefigurative of contemporary forms of cultural activism and radical artistic practice.