2. ONCE AGAIN,WITH MORE FEELING

This book summarizes in a compact volume Runciman's arguments to comparative sociologists that their discipline belongs under the theoretical umbrella of neo‐Darwinian selectionism. In his view, heritable variation and competitive selection govern cultural and social as well as biological evolution. Runciman makes a strong case for the usefulness of selectionism, but two of the theory's central features are problematic: his choice of units of selection; and the notion that culture can be distinguished from society historically as well as analytically. No one friendly to the basic project would argue against the need for hypotheses about units that undergo selection, but arguments can be made, also on pragmatic grounds, that he has chosen the wrong kinds of units. Runciman's learning and wisdom show to good effect in the book's fundamental approach: in the overall human story, the biological, cultural, and social coevolve. The quickly accumulating evidence of evolutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and neuroscience strongly supports the hypothesis that there is a biological basis for a great deal of human behavior, and also that sociocultural evolution modifies genes. History, in this way of thinking, is like a “braided stream” of unpredictably mutating, blending, and coevolving biological, cultural, and social processes. The old Darwinian image of branching fails to capture the complexity of evolutionary processes in biology, culture, and society. Runciman outlines a unified bio‐social science relying upon information theory. If his program were carried out consistently it would relegate to a non‐scientific level the traditional historical narratives about “carriers” or “vehicles”. The scientific‐explanatory level would instead feature replicators. Gametheory strategies play a prominent role in the selectionist picture. The emphasis on units of information stored in human brains or in exosomatic brain prostheses pushes neuroscience and information theory to the fore. An argument for the analytic‐heuristic value of “memes” and “practices” should be weighed against the value of other hypothetical units undergoing selection in a sociocultural evolutionary approach.     

THE PROBABILITY OF THE IMPROBABLE: SOCIETY–NATURE COEVOLUTION

This article aims to show how evolutionary theory, social‐metabolism and sociological systems theory can be utilized to develop a concept of society–nature coevolution. The article begins with a conception of industrialization as a socio‐metabolic transition, that is, a major transformation in the energetic and consequently material basis of society. This transition to industrial metabolism was essential for the emergence and maintenance of industrial societies and is at the same time the main cause of global environmental change. The article proceeds by asking what the notion of society–nature coevolution can potentially contribute to understanding environmental sustainability problems. An elaborated concept of coevolution hinges on (1) a more precise and sociologically more meaningful concept of cultural evolution and (2) understanding how cultural evolution is linked to the environment. Next I briefly outline major lines of thought and controversies surrounding the idea of cultural evolution. The direction proposed here commences with an abstract version of Darwinian evolution, which is then re‐specified for social systems, understood as communication systems, as developed by Luhmann. The re‐specification implies three important changes in the theoretical outline of cultural evolution: first, shifting from the human population to the communication system as the unit of cultural evolution and to single communications as the unit of cultural variation; second, shifting from transmission or inheritance to reproduction as necessary condition for evolution; and third, shifting from purely internal (communicative) forces of selection towards including also environmental selection. Adopting elements from the work of Hägerstrand and Boserup, the primary environmental selective force in cultural evolution is conceptualized as the historically variable constraints in human time–space occupation. In the conclusions I tie the argument back to its beginning, by arguing that the most radical changes in human time–space occupation have been enabled by major socio‐metabolic transitions in the energy system.     

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.     

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.     

The descent of nations: social evolutionary theory,modernism and ethno‐symbolism

This article explores the use of a revised conception of social evolutionary theory towards an understanding of nationalism. First, I review the debate between ethno‐symbolism and modernism, through the lens of the Warwick Debate between Gellner and Smith, arguing that both are partly right. Secondly, I outline what the revised conception of social evolution is looking first at its traditional conception before outlining a Darwinian view of social evolutionary theory. Finally, I examine how Darwinian social evolutionary theory can help fruitfully bring the ethno‐symbolic and modernist perspectives together. This is done by a sustained engagement primarily with the theories of Anthony Smith and Ernest Gellner pointing to how Darwinian social evolutionary theory can provide a link between the two theories that makes them mutually supportive rather than opposed.     

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL INCLUSION IN BRITAIN

This paper attempts to distinguish the different meanings of “audience development” and “social inclusion” – two areas receiving increasing attention in British cultural policy – by discussing their overlap and close relation to “access”. These policy areas are fraught with inherent contradictions when examined in the light of sociological theories on culture. Consumption skills, the level of which is determined socio‐economically, and the function of culture for distinction suggest problems and paradoxes for audience development and social inclusion. Discussion on representation in culture, which can work to institutionalise inequality, also leads to a call for a “target‐driven” approach to these areas. This would be fundamentally different from the dominant “product‐led” approach that tries to leave the core product intact whilst making changes in presentation. To become truly inclusive is a most formidable challenge for cultural organisations as it inevitably brings them into a wholesale review of their core products.     

Culture,Information, and Inheritance: New Perspectives on Old Questions

Two books under review investigate the relationship between biological and cultural transmission of information. This perspective offers a promising basis for a definition of culture with broad applicability in contemporary anthropology. Lamb and Jablonka stress the complexity of biological transmission and the importance of behavioral and symbolic variation to evolutionary biology. Richerson and Boyd present a rigorous model-based approach to the analysis of cultural transmission. The approach reduces cultural phenomena to simple models for methodological purposes. Modeling cultural transmission has value for anthropology but cannot replace approaches drawn from social theory and from detailed contextual studies.     

THE PRICE OF METAPHOR

In his critical response to our skeptical inquiry, “Does Culture Evolve?” (History and Theory, Theme Issue 38 [December 1999], 52–78), W. G. Runciman affirms that “Culture Does Evolve.” However, we find nothing in his essay that convinces us to alter our initial position. And we must confess that in composing an answer to Runciman, our first temptation was simply to urge those interested to read our original article–both as a basis for evaluating Runciman's attempted refutation of it and as a framework for reading this essay, which addresses in greater detail issues we have already raised. Runciman views the “selectionist paradigm” as a “scientific”“puzzle‐solving device” now validated by an “expanding literature” that has successfully modeled social and cultural change as “evolutionary.” All paradigms, however, including scientific ones, give rise to self‐validating “normal science.” The real issue, accordingly, is not whether explanations can be successfully manufactured on the basis of paradigmatic assumptions, but whether the paradigmatic assumptions are appropriate to the object of analysis. The selectionist paradigm requires the reduction of society and culture to inheritance systems that consist of randomly varying, individual units, some of which are selected, and some not; and with society and culture thus reduced to inheritance systems, history can be reduced to “evolution.” But these reductions, which are required by the selectionist paradigm, exclude much that is essential to a satisfactory historical explanation–particularly the systemic properties of society and culture and the combination of systemic logic and contingency. Now as before, therefore, we conclude that while historical phenomena can always be modeled selectionistically, selectionist explanations do no work, nor do they contribute anything new except a misleading vocabulary that anesthetizes history.     

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.     

A study of social‐market interventions in the shaping of the field of cultural production

A social analysis based on extensive evaluation of the Dance and Drama Awards programme reveals the social‐market political paradigm underpinning the formation of cultural policy in the UK underthe New Labour government. This specific intervention in the field of cultural production is placed in the context of broader government interventions in the cultural domain that seek to give respect to undervalued social and cultural groups. There is a political analysis of the characteristics of the social‐market political formation that underpin New Labour’s “affirmative” actions, and the political strategies informing the government’s “access” and “inclusion” agendas and their impact on the cultural and creative industries. The authors argue that the construction of a “social‐market” position in New Labour’s cultural policy represents an attempt to bridge or “hyphenate” the contradictory claims of social democracy, on the one hand, and economic fatalism, on the other. Despite the rhetoric of social and cultural “transformation”, the authors argue that a “faith” in the market prevents New Labour from transforming the political‐economic and cultural structures that generate economic and cultural injustices.     

Cultural Barriers to Activist Networking: Habitus (In)action in Three European Transnational Encounters

Transnational coordination is a key aspiration of activists seeking to mobilize globally, yet the literature pays insufficient attention to the impact of cultural differences on transnational networking. In this article I draw on ethnographic data from three European autonomous social movement encounters in the Global Justice Movement (2002–2004) to demonstrate the impact of culture clashes between activists on transnational networking. I use the concept of habitus to explore how routinized, taken for granted, symbolic systems of meaning that individuals from shared locations have in common shape their interactions in transnational encounters. This conception of culture is underutilized in social movement analysis yet offers important insights into internal movement dynamics. I argue that despite the autonomous commitment to radical openness and plurality, a lack of attention to the empirical reality of place‐based activist subcultures and habitus actually works against the “cosmopolitanism” that many activists and scholars aspire to.     

Rethinking Justice: Struggles For Environmental Commons and the Notion of Socio‐Ecological Justice

This article introduces a notion of socio‐ecological justice based on theoretically informed empirical research on community struggles against run‐of‐river hydropower plants in Turkey. Framing this particular case as representative of a broader movement for environmental commons, and adopting an action‐theoretical perspective, it translates the emergent justice claims produced by grassroots environmental movements to the conceptual vocabulary of the theory of justice. Using Fraser's tripartite model as a starting point, it explores possibilities of expanding the borders of justice as a concept. Maintaining the intrinsic relationship between social and ecological phenomena, it calls for rethinking “sociality” and “social justice” in the light of a relational ontology of human and non‐human worlds. The notion of socio‐ecological justice, thus, extends the community of justice, framing the relational existence of human and non‐human ecologies as a matter of justice.     

Organic Public Geographies: “Making the Connection”

Abstract: A new field of “public geographies” is taking shape ( Fuller 2008 ) in geography's mainstream journals. While much is “traditional”, with intellectuals disseminating academic research via non‐ academic outlets ( Castree 2006 ; Mitchell 2008 ; Oslender 2007 ), less visible is the “organic” work and its “more involved intellectualizing, pursued through working with area‐based or single‐interest groups, in which the process itself may be the outcome” ( Ward 2006 :499; see Fuller and Askins 2010 ). A number of well‐known projects exist where research has been “done not merely for the people we write about but with them” ( Gregory 2005 :188; see also Cahill 2004 ; Johnston and Pratt 2010 ). However, collaborative writing of academic publications which gives research participants authorial credit is unusual ( mrs kinpainsby 2008 ; although see Sangtin Writers and Nagar 2006 ). This paper is about an organic public geographies project called “Making the connection”. It is written by a diverse collection of (non‐)academic participants who contributed to the project before it had started, as it was undertaken, and/or after it had finished. This is a “messy”, process‐oriented text ( Cook et al. 2007 ) working through the threads (partially) connecting the activities of its main collaborators, including a referee who helped get the paper to publication.     

Theoretical reflections

The article starts with a discussion about the frequent statement that culture is a marginal area in politics. It proceeds with an analysis of the phenomenon and concept of “the cultural turn” and its possible consequences for cultural democracy. Then there follows a reflection on the potential power of religion and culture in political developments. After these introductory sections I present and discuss what I call five “democracy dimensions” of cultural policy: norms and ideologies; distribution of economic resources; institutional structures and decision‐making procedures; agents and interests in the policy‐making process; and access to and participation in cultural life. The conclusion is that under certain circumstances culture may mobilise huge masses of people in political actions but this is unlikely to happen in Western European democracies where culture in a long historical process has been privatised and isolated from big politics by the establishment of a specific sphere with its own structures, norms, logics and discourses. It is questionable if cultural policies will be more democratic under the reign of global capitalism and new liberalism. “The cultural turn” is an ambivalent phenomenon which cannot by itself bring about more cultural democracy. The future of cultural democracy cannot be decided for by cultural life or the cultural policy system themselves, it is dependent on what will happen to democracy as a total political system, of which cultural policy is only a small part.     

A Brief History of Evolution

I present in this paper a non-reductionist framework of eight nested modes of evolution that have successively emerged to organize the reproduction of all organisms, from the blue-green algae to our societies. The processes of biological, “Darwinian” evolution are those of drift during reproduction, and of selection. The key unit of evolutionary time is the generation, and its locus is the organisms' life-cycle setup. Different life-cycle setups support different mechanisms of reproduction, and therefore different modes of evolution. By tracing the different life-cycle setups attested throughout life's history, we can characterize the successive modes of evolution with which they are associated as follows: basic; reptilian; archaic mammalian; progressive mammalian; sociocultural; extrasomatically enhanced sociocultural; tinkering; and finally parabiological. These successively emerging modes govern a progressively reduced number of life-forms. The first four modes are “Darwinian” in the strict sense. The fifth, or sociocultural mode, which governs whales and elephants' societies in addition to hominoids, is already not “Darwinian” in the traditional sense. The last three modes have emerged with the genus homo, through the progressive extension of its life-cycle setups. The present framework is to be used heuristically, as a prism with which to separate the evolutionary spectrum of the constituent elements of human behavior. An example of such a behavioral evolutionary spectrum is presented in conclusion, and used to compare the present framework with those recently proposed by Maynard Smith and Szathmáry and by Foley.     

“Don’t call me a Cajun!”: race and representation in Louisiana’s Acadiana region

In southwestern Louisiana, the public sphere is dominated by the image of the Cajuns, presented as a hardy, likable people who have overcome significant obstacles since their arrival as Acadians in the late eighteenth century. Across the cultural region designated “Acadiana,” which comprises 22 counties, nearly 30% of the population is black (or Creole, mixed-race peoples generally identifying as black). Contributions of non-whites to the region’s history are usually not incorporated into the public historical narrative, and the erasure of these groups’ influences on the state’s cultural “gumbo” has profound symbolic and material consequences. Black/Creole residents note that much of their culture – primarily music and foodways – has been repackaged as Cajun or subsumed under the Cajun label and that they are unable to take advantage of the benefits that Creole-oriented tourism could bring to a region in which half of the counties are designated “black high poverty parishes.” Using mixed methods, including interviews, archival analysis, and census data, this paper explores the social, political, and economic consequences of the domination of Cajuns in the south Louisiana memorial and representational landscape and argues that commemorative silences in what Alderman et al. have called the “memorial arena” perpetuate a hegemonic social order.     

Modern China's cultural transformation – problems and prospects

Modern China's cultural transformation has been a long, torturous, and complex process that even now has yet to come to a conclusion. Previous publications on China's intellectual and cultural history have touched on this issue to some extent, but there have been few wide‐ranging, focused, and systematic studies. This article is based on the author's systematic research into this question and argues that the Chinese people, burdened with the weight of a long history and with deeply ingrained cultural traditions, must negotiate the complexities and uncertainties of the present as they adapt to a new era and build a new culture. Questions of culture manifest themselves in many different ways: in distinctions between Eastern and Western culture and between “Chinese” and “barbarian”, in the different resources and possibilities inherent in ancient and modern culture, in the fate of China's ethnic minorities, and in the relationship between material and spiritual “civilization”. In addition, social conditions can pose almost insurmountable problems in the process of cultural transformation. These problems can only be solved when the whole nation is engaged in the practice of study and struggle, and the cultures of the world become more intimately linked through communication and the flow of ideas. Even then, solutions will not be quick in coming and the process of cultural change is necessarily gradual in nature. The transformation of China's culture in recent times and the modernization of the country as a whole are fundamentally concurrent processes that show a marked tendency towards globalization and individualism. Thus, externally, China must adhere to the idea of greater cultural openness while, internally, we must support the liberation of the people, and foster a positive creative spirit to the fullest potential.     

选择性环境、能力与农区特色文化产业集群的演化——以宝丰县赵庄乡魔术产业集群为例

通过二手资料和半结构式访谈法,以赵庄魔术产业集群为例,研究了我国农区特色文化产业集群的演化。发现该集群演化是行动者能力与选择性环境互动的结果。当地悠久历史文化传统,与市场、制度和空间结构等地方环境相结合,催生了大量魔术表演团体的地理集中。农村经济体制变迁提供了文化产业化的市场推力和拉力,增强了集群竞争力。而基于血缘、亲缘、地缘、业缘等,由不同行动者互动所建构的子承父业、师徒制、以团代培和行话制,形塑了知识溢出与集体学习的地方化网络。这两方面有别于城市文化创意产业集群的成因。依靠声望、信任等农区社会资本迅速组团,并以较高的弹性应对市场风险。     

Cultural policy and evaluation of quality

Based on Danish experiences the article discusses the increasing role that the discourse of “quality” is playing in cultural policy. Throughout the 1990s, from the general cultural debate, this discourse has spread to more instrumental considerations and practices in the field of cultural policy. The article presents this process in a historical perspective and characterises the present tendency towards a technocratisation of the discourse of quality under the auspices of New Public Management and the general trend in modern state policy towards instrumentalising all societal resources in the global economic competition. Opposing this line of development, it is argued that “quality” could serve as a progressive, non‐instrumentalist discourse if it is defined in relation to a modernised understanding of the “rational core” of the cultural policy tradition of the Nordic countries. In this perspective, the article suggests a contextualisation of the concept of quality and possible ways of implementing the discourse in practical cultural policy.     

NEO‐LIBERALISM,CULTURE AND POLICY

This article looks at the hegemonic process of neo‐liberal globalisation and its implications for culture in general and cultural policy in particular from a critical perspective. A consideration of its ideological features is a necessary supplement to the economic analysis of neo‐liberal globalisation. Ideology mediates economics and culture. As it is used here, the concept of “ideology” refers to how dominant power relations and inequalities are legitimised by distorted representations of reality at various levels. While these include abstract theory and professional expertise, it is argued that everyday language and “common sense” exemplify the operations of ideology most profoundly in securing consent to prevailing and otherwise questionable arrangements. Culture is now saturated with a market‐oriented mentality that closes out alternative ways of thinking and imagining. The general argument is illustrated with several examples drawn from across the range of lived experience and institutionalised structures, especially in the arts and broadcasting. The logic of the annual European Capital of Culture competition is also discussed with reference to the neo‐liberal framework for urban regeneration. Specifically, the experience of Glasgow 1990 and the plans for Liverpool 2008 are addressed in this regard.