Mobility-driven cultural transmission along the forager-collector continuum

Hunter-gatherers mobility regimes are often treated as discrete adaptive strategies. Here we present a model of forager mobility which treats collectors and foragers as two ends of a continuous spectrum. We show that a mobility regime can be situated along this spectrum by specifying the number of foraging moves a group makes before returning to its home base. The model allows us to explore the behavioural space between forager (i.e. residential mobility) and collector (logistical mobility) adaptations. We discuss the heuristic value of the model by showing how it can be used to make testable predictions about the impact of mobility strategies on archaeological measures such as occupation intensity and raw-material transportation distance. We then use the model to investigate the impact of mobility on rates of cultural transmission. We show that mobility-driven cultural transmission may be equivalent to a Poisson process and that the time it takes for a cultural behaviour to be transmitted between two mobile groups is optimized when the mobility regime is somewhere between pure forager and pure collectors adaptations. In addition, we find that rates of cultural transmission decline in a very regular way, as the inverse of the square root of the number of moves made before returning to home base. This suggests that there is a mechanistic connection between the mean-squared displacement of hunter-gatherers in space and the transmission of cultural traits.     

华人网络的再认识：一个空间的视角

现有关于华人跨国网络的研究,为我们描绘了华人网络的三张面孔,即作为“文化载体”、“社会纽带”和“经济圈”的华人网络。本文从空间的角度,对以上研究进行了补充。它以香港及其邻近的东南亚地区的华人移民经验为依据,在检讨了滨下武志、王赓武和和斯金纳等人有关中国社会经济地理、文化中心和市场结构理论的基础上,提出了一个东南亚华人网络空间结构的理论模型。该模型以国际大都会为中心,形成了“去中心”、“多层次”和“多维度”的钻石型网络结构。在该模型中,华人网络的经济、社会和文化的面向获得了互动和统一。若干类似的子网络相互联结,共同构成了全球华人网络的宏观地域系统。     

Blood talks: Eugenic modernity and the creation of new Japanese

In fin-de-siècle Japan, the ideal of "eugenic modernity," or the application of scientific concepts and methods as a means to constitute both the nation and its constituent subjects (New Japanese), crystallized in the space of imperialism. Three of the main themes explored are the application of eugenic principles to make connections between biology, kinship, and the plasticity of the human body; to contemporize historical stigmas; and to promote "pure-bloodedness" and "ethnic-national endogamy" as cultural ideals.     

非物质文化遗产的传承特点

世代传承是非物质文化遗产最重要的本质属性。非物质文化遗产的传承具有五个方面特点:口传心授的传承方式、生动鲜活的传承形态、文化独特的传承土壤、藏量丰厚的传承领域、与时俱进的传承变异。探究这些特点,可以加深人们对非物质文化遗产及其传承、保护的理解。     

博物馆讲述“她”故事:博物馆与女性主题展览

博物馆展览的女性文化属于社会建构的一种身份文化。因受传统男权文化的影响,"她"故事在"他"历史中,长期处于被叙事、被表征的从属地位。作为公共文化空间的博物馆,早期受"他"文化叙事模式的影响,展示中较多充斥着男权话语。20世纪80年代,受新博物馆学运动的多元叙事方式影响,女性主题叙事逐渐进入博物馆。近年,国内博物馆在展览实践中也开始改变传统"国之重器"观的宏大叙事模式,从"小历史"视角重新审视、诠释和再现女性文化,先后策划了一系列颇具变革性的女性主题展览,为消解男权表征体系中单调的女性形象,重构女性文化身份,实现"她"故事的自我讲述等提供了重要的公共文化平台。     

台湾地区郑成功信仰之历史研究

“郑成功信仰”在台湾汉人社会中的发展,早自清领台湾时期,便已超越了乡土的情感和地域的观念,统合宗族性、地缘性、民族性等多重特质,而成为台湾此一移民社会的共同信仰。“郑成功信仰”别于其它一般汉人社会里常见的民间信仰,官方的介入极深,其中隐藏着强烈的政治意图。在探讨“郑成功信仰”的时,民间与官方为两大方面,加上台湾特殊的历史背景,不同主政者接二连三地为郑成功重新定义,而有了不同的诠释,使得此一信仰文化复杂而影响深远。     

Hardworking Newcomers and Generations of Poverty: Poverty Discourse in Central Washington State

This research is part of a project that aims to reinterpret geographies of poverty in the American Northwest by focusing on the intersections of cultural and political–economic processes that produce poverty differences. This paper contributes to this aim by unpacking poverty beliefs by race at the local county level. This qualitative analysis is grounded in a brief discussion of the political economy of Kittitas County in Central Washington State, which provides space to analyze the theoretical linkages between structural and cultural constructions of poverty differences. Specifically, this paper argues that first generation “hardworking” Hispanic immigrants embody the “working poor”, while individual explanations of poverty are articulated as the “intergenerational poor”, who are racialized as white and choose poverty as a lifestyle. In this vein, many local residents use the marker of “generation” to distinguish between white, lower class individuals who choose to be poor from a group of Hispanic newcomers whose poverty stems from structural forces such as non‐living‐wage jobs and discrimination. This forms one part of a larger strategy to “blame the individual” for the existence of white poverty. This analysis poses new theoretical insights into the intersection between difference markers such as race, class, and generation and contributes to the literature on racial differences in poverty explanations. The geographical specificity of poverty discourse argues for further grounding of the poverty literature in material conditions, which will allow for more nuanced understanding of the creation and persistence of poverty in poor communities.     

Does Culture Evolve?

The drive to describe cultural history as an evolutionary process has two sources. One from within social theory is part of the impetus to convert social studies into "social sciences" providing them with the status accorded to the natural sciences. The other comes from within biology and biological anthropology in the belief that the theory of evolution must be universal in its application to all functions of all living organisms. The social--scientific theory of cultura evolution is pre-Darwinian, employing a developmental model of unfolding characterized by intrinsic directionality, by definable stages that succeed each other, and by some criterion of progress. It is arbitrary in its definitions of progress, and has had the political problem that a diachronic claim of cultural progress implies a synchronic differential valuation of present-day cultures. The biological scheme creates an isomorphism between the Darwinian mechanism of evolution and cultural history, postulating rules of cultural "mutation," cultural inheritance and some mechanism of natural selection among cultural alternatives. It uses simplistic ad hoc notions of individual acculturation and of the differential survival and reproduction of cultural elements. It is unclear what useful work is done by substituting the metaphor of evolution for history.     

The accumulation of stochastic copying errors causes drift in culturally transmitted technologies: Quantifying Clovis evolutionary dynamics

The archaeological record is the empirical record of human cultural evolution. By measuring rates of change in archaeological data through time and space it is possible to estimate both the various evolutionary mechanisms that contribute to the generation of archaeological variation, and the social learning rules involved in the transmission of cultural information. Here we show that the recently proposed accumulated copying error model [Eerkens, J.W., Lipo, C.P., 2005. Cultural transmission, copying errors, and the generation of variation in material culture and the archaeological record. Journal of Anthropology archaeology 24, 316–334.] provides a rich, quantitative framework with which to model the cultural transmission of quantitative data. Using analytical arguments, we find that the accumulated copying error model predicts negative drift in quantitative data due to the proportional nature of compounded copying errors (i.e., neutral mutations), and the multiplicative process of cultural transmission. Further, we find that the theoretically predicted rate of drift in long-lived technologies is remarkably close to the observed reduction of Clovis projectile point size through time and space across North America.     

Mortgage finance and culture

Using a nationally representative sample of 12,344 immigrants from 41 different countries of ancestry living in Spain in 2007, we find that the higher the housing‐loan penetration in the country of ancestry, the higher the likelihood of having a mortgage in Spain. Similarly, the higher the mortgage depth in the country of ancestry, the higher the present value of the monthly mortgage payments. Our results suggest that social norms regarding mortgage finance in the country of ancestry matter in determining immigrants’ mortgage finance in the host country. More specifically, the effect of social norms on the decision to have a mortgage (the extensive margin) and the amount of the mortgage payments (the intensive margin) is about one third and tenth the size of the effect of having a college degree on mortgage debt, respectively. Evidence of strong persistence of culture among those with longer tenure in the host country, those who immigrated as children or young adults, and second‐generation immigrants suggests that vertical transmission of beliefs (from parents to children) is a plausible channel of transmission. Perhaps most importantly, we find that cultural attitudes regarding property rights are most relevant when explaining individuals’ decision to get a mortgage, but those regarding credit information matter most when explaining the amount of the mortgage debt.     

中国城市地理研究的若干问题:海外学者的观点

海外学者是中国城市地理研究的一支重要力量,取得了许多重要的研究成果,提高了中国城市地理在国际学术界的地位。本文就海外学者对中国城市地理研究的主要问题:经济发展与城市化、全球化与城市发展、体制改革与城市转型及城市地理的理论与方法等方面进行归纳总结,期望加强了解,取长补短,相互学习,共同促进中国地理学的发展。     

基于城市适应的外来民工群岭南文化融入剖析

在珠三角地区,外来民工因数量庞大而逐渐成为相对独立的社会群体。作为迁移者,外来民工异地打工的同时,自身原有的文化基因会与迁入地的文化产生交融和碰撞,这种文化冲融伴随着外来民工城市适应的全过程。笔者首先通过走访,明晰外来民工对岭南文化的基本感知点:生活商业化、观念开放化、人情淡漠化和行事务实化,进而以此构筑外来民工基于经济、社会、文化的城市适应研究视点,采用问卷对外来民工的岭南文化认知和适应范式进行调研,剖析外来民工群基于城市适应的岭南文化融入特征。     

五四前后外国名哲来华讲学与中国思想界的变动

1919--1924年,杜威等五位外国名哲来华讲学,实为欧战后西学东渐的文化壮举。讲学在助益思想深化的同时,也促进了中国思想界的分化与演进：其一,对其时中国反省现代性思潮的兴起起了推波助澜的作用,并为梁启超等所谓“东方文化派”理论观点的形成与文化诉求提供了立论的依据,进而为新文化运动的发展和中国思想界思维空间的展拓,增加了内在的张力。其二,五四后新文化运动最终归趋“以俄为师”的社会主义,其在思想层面上的展开过程,也明显地打上了名哲尤其是杜威与罗素讲学的印记。至于泰戈尔讲学受到了中共的抵制,杜威与罗素受中国思想界的影响,于自己的观点与学说有所修正,则反映了名哲讲学与中国思想界间的互动。     

Multiple environments: South Indian children’s environmental subjectivities in formation

This article explores the formation of South Indian children’s (11–15 years old) environmental subjectivities based on five months of qualitative fieldwork with children in their school and non-school lives. By doing so, this paper aims to widen the scope of the existing literature on children’s environmental subjectivities, which so far focused on separate aspects of children’s lives such as environmental education, social relations or children’s life courses. To do so, I use [Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press] concepts of field, habitus and cultural capital along with a non-teleological notion of environmental subjectivity and insights from wider geographical literature on the formation of subjectivities. The paper shows how children’s environmental subjectivities are constituted by and partially constitute the material environments and fields in which children live, their cultural capital and habitus, their movements through their life course and their environments and a wide range of practices through which children experience their environments.     

The adult North and the young South: Reflections on the civilizing mission of children's rights

The civilization of the children of the "savages" in the colonial world was seen as a crucial issue from early on was an inherent part of the colonization project in Africa, America and Oceania in the 19th century. The idea of civilizing "the savages," today's South, through children has continued in the post-colonial era with the development of mass-schooling systems and various child-focused development projects. This has led to an export of internationally defined standards for a "good childhood" through various foreign funded development programs in South. While many NGOs, legitimizing their work on the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), are genuinely working for an improvement of children's conditions, they have also taken on the role as a second guardian in order to cultivate "proper" children and parents who can live up to the supposedly universal ideals of a "good childhood." The article adopts a critical view on the child rights movement by shedding light on the crucial role, which NGOs play as civilizing institutions in the South. The article specifically draws attention to the double-sided patronization of children and parents, and "infantilization" of nations in South, which implicitly lies beneath CRC and the child rights movement.     

The Last Episode of an Iranian Teacher’s Bag: Children’s Lives as the Smaller Copies of their Parents’ in Contemporary Iran

How can the desired culture of a dictatorial system be transmitted from one generation to another? The focus of dictators on children could be an answer. Factually in such a system, children are located in a value system which teaches them what to do or what not to do in purpose of being good for the political system since the very beginning of their lives. In Iran, the traditional educational system teaches children to act as adults; people who are able to discern which action is bad and which is good. The exceptions are usually the ones who deconstruct the cultural/political structure and begin to resist based on their agencies. In the present paper, we argue the process of education (formal and informal) in Iran based on two sets of material cultural remains. The first is the Qajar (nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photos of children) and the second is the school compositions of 19 students found in the bag of a teacher who died in the devastating earthquake of Bam in 2003, in South Eastern Iran. The bag was found during a contemporary archaeological project.     

西夏语“头项”词义考

以往学界认为有关西夏汉文文献中的"头项"意为"头领、首领",也是西夏的一种军事组织,这一认识并不准确。传世汉文西夏文献中的"头项"乃是"头绪、种类"等义,而西夏文文献中的"头项"则是"事宜、事项"的意思,可以用作"同位语"。同一常用词在夏汉文本中词义的不对等,说明西夏语在词义衍生的思维模式层面与汉语是不一致的。     

Towards a Theory of Cultural Evolution

Abstract

Previous experience in the development of the mathematical theory of biological evolution, has helped the authors toward their theory of cultural evolution. In this review a constant comparison between the two evolutions, in both directions, has led to an interdisciplinary understanding. Cultural transmission is discussed in detail and the ten major modes of transmission are enunciated; cultural traits are defined and the variance within, as well as between, groups considered. Cultural and environmental selection as well as complex transmission are further aspects leading the authors to the conclusion, that in spite of gross oversimplification, their theory is essential for a rigorous qualitative investigation of cultural evolution.     

陕西文学地理初探

本文通过对形成现当代陕西文学地域差异的自然地理因素与人文地理因素进行研究,探索文学空间分异机制,构建文学地理学相应的理论框架。陕西文学发展程度存在地域不平衡,其中地理条件优越,经济、文化发达地区以及交通要道、文化交流较多的地区多是文学发展程度较高的地区。自然景观的单调与繁复除直接影响着文风的质朴与瑰丽外,更多的通过在地理环境基础上形成的有着独特区域特点的经济类型、生活方式,以及由此所衍生的民风民性等方面曲折地影响着文学家,进而影响其风格。     

原始农耕信仰与祖先英雄崇拜的现代展演——湖南新晃侗族傩戏“咚咚推”调查

有"中国戏剧的活化石"之称的傩戏"咚咚推"保存了侗族先民遗留下来的多种傩戏剧目,向世人展现了侗族人民各种繁复有序和神秘有趣的习俗,是侗族先民原始农耕信仰的现代展演;"咚咚推"以盘古大王和飞山大王为傩神,除了在表演时对傩神举行各种请、迎、会、送的舞祭仪式外,演出的剧目也表现了作为移民后代的天井寨人为增强家族凝聚力而保持的祖先英雄崇拜。"咚咚推"作为天井寨人独有的一种戏剧形式,为研究南方民族在迁徙过程中的文化传承与文化交融提供了极为难得而生动的活动文本。