Dynamics Of Cultural Change Research Articles

Same Language, Different Diet

This study uses faunal and epigraphic evidence from the valley of Cabrera de Mar in present-day Catalonia (Spain) as proxies for understanding complex processes and dynamics of cultural change between the late Iron Age and early Roman times. The faunal remains indicate significant dietary change, although the epigraphic evidence implies that language—in contrast—changed at a slower pace, as shown by the use of indigenous onomastics and the continued use of the Iberian script, coin legends included. To ensure an interdisciplinary analysis, the study also discusses change as perceptible in architectural remains, ceramics and funerary practices. Our study shows that cultural change can take place at different levels and according to different rhythms, not only on regional and settlement planes but also at neighbourhood and household scales. Finally, our results highlight the value of archaeology as a tool for studying and understanding colonial encounters.

Arqueología del Bajo y Medio río Magdalena: apuntes sobre procesos de poblamiento prehispánico de las Tierras Bajas tropicales interandinas de Colombia

En este artículo se dan a conocer datos e interpretaciones arqueológicas basados en más de cincuenta años de investigaciones realizadas en el valle del Río Magdalena en Colombia. Nuestro objetivo es describir sus principales características fisiográficas, revelar cambios experimentados en el paisaje y plantear aspectos destacados de las estrategias adaptativas, modos de vida y organización social durante distintos periodos. Se priorizaron las dinámicas de cambio cultural en las tierras bajas de los sectores Bajo y Medio Magdalena, a partir de una síntesis sobre aspectos relacionados con la tecnología lítica y cerámica, las prácticas funerarias y la cronología en un marco temporal amplio desde el final del Pleistoceno al Holoceno tardío. Se trata de una reflexión que recoge resultados de estudios anteriores del autor y de quienes han contribuido al desarrollo de la arqueología del valle del Magdalena y se plantean preguntas de investigación a largo plazo, con la pretención de integrar distintas líneas de evidencia, en particular desde la geoarqueología, interrogándose sobre si es posible proponer modelos para adelantar explicaciones de la presencia o no, y el tipo de evidencias arqueológicas. Surgen consideraciones sobre la existencia ?dispersa? de vestigios de alta calidad tecnológica y estilística relacionados con asentamientos denominados ?formativos? o contextos ?clásicos?, caracterizados por conjuntos de cerámica y orfebrería sobresalientes, con cronologías entre 2800AP a 1400AP. Actualmente estas evidencias presentan discontinuidad en el paisaje a lo largo del valle. Al contrario, las relativamente menos elaboradas realizaciones tardías ?enmarcadas en el denominado ?Horizonte de Urnas Funerarias? del Magdalena?, muestran recurrencia en vegas, terrazas recientes y colinas, y demuestran ocupaciones en el último milenio AP, incluyendo los contactos con los europeos desde el Siglo XVI.

Binding significance to form: Cultural objects, neural binding, and cultural change

In sociology, a cultural object is the “binding” of significance to a material form. But, how do people “bind” otherwise discrete elements as a single element? In cognitive neuroscience and the philosophy of mind, this is known as the “binding problem.” Sociologists can learn from research on binding, as it deepens our understanding of cultural objects, learning, and social change. Binding is the process by which a material “token” is assimilated into (or expands the boundaries of) a cognitive “type,” or resists such typification thereby leading to the formation of a new cognitive “type.” Cultural objects are simultaneously types and tokens, and the interplay between them results in a fundamental cultural instability. “Binding” is an attempt to stabilize meaning in two ways: the first, innovating, is implicated in the emergence of a cultural object, and the second, indexicalizing, in its maintenance and extension. However, even the process of indexicalizing a well-established type—i.e., the proliferation of tokens—provides the material fodder from which to innovate new types. Attention to binding processes in the production and reception of cultural objects reveals important insight into the dynamics of cultural change and stability.

Reverie and Reading: Encounters with Modern Jewish Culture in the Work of Alan Mintz

Reverie and ReadingEncounters with Modern Jewish Culture in the Work of Alan Mintz Anne Golomb Hoffman In his last book, Alan Mintz described Agnon's creation of a narrative persona who is not so much "a consumer or a beneficiary of the tradition of sacred song that goes back to the Temple" as someone who is "himself a belated link in that chain."1 I'd like to highlight the belatedness of our friend, Alan, as fundamental to his critical practice: the concept of belatedness brings the writer or the critic into the long line of conversation—debate, interpretation, elaboration—that is so central to Jewish tradition. The very distance from the sources serves to energize the creativity of the writer or critic under the sign of belatedness. In fact, I think this awareness occasioned Alan's goal in undertaking his last unfinished project of an Agnon biography that would have included reflections on his own Jewish journey. I didn't know Alan in the years when he made the decision to leave Victorian literature and pursue Jewish studies, but I'm intrigued to imagine his deliberations as he came to choose modern Hebrew literature rather than midrash or the medieval piyyut. Modern Hebrew literature offered Alan a field of engagement with existential issues that were close to his heart. It positioned him, moreover, to highlight belatedness as a mode of critical reflection well suited to our modernity. From the vantage point of the twentieth-anniversary issue of Prooftexts in 2001, Alan looked back to his first encounter with Agnon as a college freshman writing a [End Page 430] paper in Hebrew on the novella Bilvav yamim (In the Heart of the Seas). He would translate this essay into English a few years later and rework it as a critique of American Judaism for the inaugural issue of Response, the journal he helped to create in 1967. Reflecting with some bemusement on his own youthful passion as a critic of American Jewish life, Alan nevertheless found, on returning to Agnon's novella in 2001, that his earlier encounter had been driven just as much by "the desire to experience the poetry of religion." Whatever his youthful frustrations with mid-century American Judaism may have been, returning to the novella gave Alan the pleasure of an experience of reading that made him feel again that he "was peering directly into the inner romance of faith and hearing its music in its original tones." Looking back, he found evidence in his earlier reading that "I was ready to listen, and grateful to be given the chance to seize through the reverie of reading what could not be given to me in life."2 The word "reverie" comes up occasionally in Alan's writing and suggests something of what literary experience made available to him. The phrase conveys awareness of a reader's absorption in a text as something that is outside and yet part of the self. In this instance, for Alan, the reverie of reading opened the potential space of absorption in Hebrew literature. As he noted elsewhere, Hebrew provided "the internal resources to negotiate the distance between old and new. Substitution, retrieval, containment, synthesis, reconciliation—all the dynamics of cultural change could take place within Hebrew literature because in that medium alone did the new meanings and old meanings exist simultaneously."3 In a 1984 essay on the siddur for the anthology Back to the Sources, Alan took note of the "roomy space of the synagogue service," highlighting its capacity to hold the currents of Jewish life.4 For Alan, Hebrew language and Jewish literary traditions offered spaces in which we might hear the voices of past and present mingling, arguing, and interacting in an ongoing conversation. This is abundantly evident in Ḥurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature, a major opening move in a career devoted to the roomy spaces of Jewish textuality. Alan tells us that the motivation for the project grew out of the need to historicize the Holocaust. Yet, while his original intention may have been "to take the Holocaust literature of one interpretive community, Israeli culture and Hebrew literature, and read it against the...

Transculturalism and Globalization as Implied in the Revolution Poetry of Ahmad Fou'ad Najm and Carl Sandburg

The intermingling of transculturalism and globalization has become a hybridized phenomenon in the 20th and 21st centuries. Whereas globalization seeks for connectivity as “the founding tenet of the global age” (Loriggio 55), transculturalism “evokes the movement of ideas and practices, as well as cultural phenomena, from one society to another” (Danyte 26). It points to cultural fluidity and the dynamics of cultural change. Transculturalism and globalization are closely related because they are both defined by the collapse of boundaries as well as the collapse, to some extent, of the nation state. For the purpose of this paper, an analysis is made of literary works that accurately capture the form of globalization and transculturalism that goes beyond the traditional definitions of globalization such as geography, the ideological dichotomy between East and West and colonialism. The core argument of the present paper is that transcultural literary works illustrate a move towards what can be defined as a new age of transcultural political, social and economic thinking. To support this argument, reference using a Transcultural lens is made to the poetry of revolution as outlined in the works of Egyptian poet Ahmad Fouad Najm and the American poet Carl Sandburg. This paper argues that these works deconstruct and demystify culture by promoting liberation from the chains of culture such as sex, race and social class while Transculturalism and Globalization as Implied in the RevolutionPoetry of Ahmad Fou'ad Najm and Carl Sandburg8 I (14)supporting equality and common humanity. Najm and Sandburg provide a blueprint for literary works that promote action at the local level. Sandburg conjured topics in a direct and frequently inconsiderate style for which he was known. Sandburg, a populist writer of the American society, commended the lives of low class workers in a tongue with which the target audience could relate. Like Najm, Sandburg composed poems for the American average citizens. His work celebrated both the regular individual and regular daily existence. In the same manner, Sandburg's poetry addressed the range of American life, especially that of the common laborers. What's more, he made poems that touched on the horrors of modern urban life. Sandburg broke with poetic tradition by tending to unpoetic subjects. Like Najm, he broke with ordinary rhyme plans and structures as observed from the broad utilization of exchange and long lines. Sandburg's poetry, like that of Najm, emerges as a vehicle for conveying his message of confidence in the general population. He did not brood over verse and what constitutes craftsmanship but rather had a practically flippant demeanor towards the theories of style. The primary outcome from this paper is a greater awareness of the role that literary works can play in triggering action in society in a manner that transcends culture.

Anthropotechnology: Sloterdijk on Environmental Design and the FoamWorlds of Co-Isolation

The paper has two primary goals. The first is to re-examine the dynamics of cultural change by applying the innovative interpretations of German theorist and cultural historian Peter Sloterdijk, who contends that the ways we traditionally have made and understood our built environment are grossly inadequate in our contemporary media-saturated, war-weary, biotechnological world. The second is to show how such a reinterpretation of space, architecture, and culture could help us to learn to design better and act by way of an “anthropotechnology” (Sloterdijk’s word) that is simultaneously developmental and threatening – that might enable us to find an orientation in a world of complexity, and thus more positively shape our lives and future world. Sloterdijk’s intriguing concepts – spheres of immunization (bubbles, globes, foams), co-isolation, dyads, tensegrity – hold great promise for the next pulse of architectural, planning, and construction theory.

Cultural Value Shifting in Pronoun Use

By investigating the use of first-person pronouns in nine languages using the Google Ngram Database, we examined the degree to which different cultural values skewed toward individualism or collectivism over a span of 59 years. We found that in eight of nine languages (British English being the exception), first-person singular pronouns (vs. first-person plural pronouns) have become increasingly prevalent, which in turn points to a rising sense of individualism. British English showed a U-shaped curve trend in the use of first-person singular pronouns (vs. first-person plural pronouns). Although they initially decreased, British English’s first-person singular pronouns (vs. first-person plural pronouns) use was higher than most other languages throughout the whole period. Chinese displayed a fluctuating pattern wherein the use of first-person singular pronouns (vs. first-person plural pronouns) increased in recent periods. The dynamics of cultural change and culture diversity were discussed.

Dialogic control: Power in media evolution

This article discusses the phenomenon of power in the process of media evolution. It argues that Juri Lotman’s ‘semiotics of culture’ is not only useful for interpreting this complex process and the role societal power might have in this, but it might have a potential to innovate the mainstream of western media and cultural studies. The article demonstrates the way to apply Lotman’s framework to interpret the evolutionary dynamics of media and proposes how the textual dynamics of cultural change can be interpreted to contribute to the social dynamic – to the dynamics of social organisation and power relations among social agents. Lotman’s framework is put also into dialogue with the western path-breakers in de-ontologising societal power: Michel Foucault and Niklas Luhmann. The article puts a focus on Lotman’s core concepts such as auto-communication and dialogic communication, and demonstrates how these can be seen to facilitate the heterogeneity (divergence) of systems as well as their striving for homogeneity (convergence).

Of Mandarins, Legal Consciousness, and the Cultural Turn in US Legal History: Robert W. Gordon. 1984. Critical Legal Histories. Stanford Law Review 36:57–125

This article traces the impact of Robert Gordon's “Critical Legal Histories” on scholars writing at the intersection of law and history. While Gordon's central claim about the constitutive character of the law has come to serve as a working assumption in the field, the case he made for the intellectual history of doctrine as articulated by legal mandarins has proven less influential in the twenty-five years since the article was published. Instead, legal historians have focused their attention on the interaction between official and lay forms of law-making with a decided emphasis on popular legal consciousness. For precisely this reason, the time may be ripe for reconsideration of mandarin materials, not only for what they have to tell us about the dynamics of cultural change, but also as sources of insight into basic puzzles of the human condition that have tended across time to be expressed in and through legal forms.

Ties that Bind: The Strategic Use of Transnational Relationships in Demarcating Identity and Managing Difference

Transnational migration is disrupting definitions of cultural identity as its processes of cross-border mobility unsettle associations between people and place. Relationships, as one element of everyday cultural practice that circumscribes identity and belonging, are also affected by this mobility. Using data from qualitative research with Australian transnational professionals working in Asia, this paper elaborates on the interaction between identity and relationship formation. The findings indicate that participants’ attempts to develop professional and social relationships in a new cultural context lead to a re-evaluation of identity and the development of mobile subjectivity to manage difference and re-find points of comfort defined by shared meanings. The analysis is placed within broader reflections on the processes of migration and the dynamics of cultural change that are taking place within transnational global flows, supporting arguments that processes of deterritorialisation do not necessarily equate with declining allegiance to a national identity.

The modern Weberian thesis: a short review of the literature

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of conceptions and misconceptions relating to Weberian thought after 100 years of synthesis.Design/methodology/approachExtensions of the theories espoused are discussed and a brief review of several relevant empirical research projects is highlighted. Weberian theory is taken as the basis for the discussion of the paper. Its fundamental assertions are discussed and current discussions elucidated. Modern (post‐1980) research directions and findings are summarized for helping the scholar understand the current state of Weberian research and the potential for future paths.FindingsThere are numerous areas for future theoretical and empirical exploration discussed. Such areas as the effects of the Protestant work ethic on social networks across multi‐cultural (of which religion and religiousity play a role) boundaries and the dynamics of cultural change within, and between cultural dimensions will provide ever‐changing opportunities for at least another century. Inter and intra‐national diversity and its dynamics will also provide munificence in this field of study.Originality/valueThis paper provides scholars a brief review of the status of Weberian research and should evoke new thought related to this theoretical base as well. With the renewal of interest in entrepreneurship and its effects on communities, this area should be a fertile field for researchers, practitioners, and the public in general.

Ludwik Krzywicki

Ludwik Krzywicki, a classical author of Polish sociology, is generally known and presented as a Marxist and evolutionary theorist. The present article analyses the past major presentations and historical reception contexts of Krzywicki's work, and finds that this understanding of him as a ‘Marxist’ and ‘evolutionist’ essentially employs synthetic categorizations' which are not only misleading, but essentially wrong. The recent claim that the present lack of interest in Krzywicki's work is the result of a contemporary shift away from Marxism and evolutionism in Polish sociology is here confronted with the argument that it is actually the result of a much older process arising from these very synthetic categorizations of Krzywicki's work. Upon the basis of this critical analysis and then the insightful commentaries of Krzywicki's humanistically oriented contemporaries Znaniecki and Obrębski, which after World War II up until the present have been neglected, a first attempt is made to open up Krzywicki's work as a non-synthesizable ‘primary dynamics of cultural change’.

Mixed Marriages and Transnational Families in the Intercultural Context: A Case Study of African–Spanish Couples in Catalonia

One of the consequences of international migration and the permanent settlement of immigrants in southern EU countries is the growing number of inter-country marriages and the formation of transnational families. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this article examines patterns of endogamy and exogamy (i.e. marriage within/outside a particular group or category) among African immigrants in Catalonia, focusing on bi-national Senegalese– and Gambian–Spanish couples. Socio-demographic profiles, transnationality, the dynamics of cultural change or retention, and the formation of transcultural identities are explored. The evidence presented suggests that social-class factors are more important than cultural origins in patterns of endogamy and exogamy, in the dynamics of living together and in the bringing-up of children of mixed unions. Such a conclusion negates culturalists’ explanations of endogamy and exogamy while, at the same time, emphasising the role of social actors as active subjects in these processes. I further argue that mixed couples and their offspring deal—to a greater or lesser extent—with multiple localisations and cultural backgrounds (i.e. here and there), rather than experiencing a ‘clash between two cultures’. Therefore, it would be a mistake to pretend that multicultural links do not exist and that they cannot be revitalised and functional. The paper starts and ends by addressing the complexities of processes of interculturalism, resisting an interpretation of hybridity and segregation as contradictory or exclusive realities.

Dynamics of Cultural Change among the Toraja of Sulawesi. The Commoditization of Tradition

Dynamics of Cultural Change among the Toraja of Sulawesi. The Commoditization of Tradition

THE CHANGING MEANING OF SMALL ARMS IN NUER SOCIETY

The economic value, social status and symbolic meaning of small arms are particular and temporal in nature. This is demonstra ted through a historical account of the dynamics of cultural change and adaptation in Nuer society. Specifically, the article shows how attitudes towards small arms shif ted over time from a positive valuation of guns as prestigious objects, to ambivalence between the need for protection and the experience of increased local lawlessness and violence. More generally, it demonstrates how weapon-rela ted activities can only be fully understood when seen against a specific cultural background. Even if the display, use and circulation of weapons appear to carry cross-cultural references, typically as expressions of power and masculine identity, the meaning is always primarily local. Therefore, strategies to reduce the destructive impact of small arms through demand side programs, based on voluntary participation, can only be carried out successfully if built on an in-depth understanding of a particular cultural context.

Cultural Erosion and the Crises of Development in Nigeria

The paper explores the dynamics of cultural change and the erosion of cultural heritage vis-a-vis the consequent developmental crises that have enveloped the Nigerian nation for several decades. It is divided into five sections. In the introductory section, the concept of culture is defined, described, and contextualized within a general theoretical discourse. The second section discusses the essence of cultural heritage and identities and stresses the impracticality of conceptualizing development in any sphere of a nation's life without a thorough understanding of the cultural experience. The inevitability of cultural change is the focus of the third section. Yet, change, it is argued and illustrated, can be significantly premeditated, planned, and implemented to suit variously defined purposes. The fourth section gives ample examples that are illustrative of the erosion of cultural heritage in Nigeria. Supported by data from an extensive field research, it depicts how the youths especially are abandoning the various elements of their heritage (indigenous languages, clothes, music, festivals, arts and crafts, work ethics, religion, etc., for foreign, especially western, materials and values. Yet, the predominant modes of living in the country are far from being modern. The result, it states, is the pervasive `molue' culture that now characterizes every sector of the nation's life, and makes intellectual, socio-political and economic development a mirage. The paper, in the last section, is concluded on the note that a national cultural rediscovery and rebirth is not beyond the capability of any determined nation. Hence, it proffers various strategies of exploring national development in the context of premeditated, planned and thoroughly implemented programmes of cultural engineering. (J Cultural Studies: 2002 4(1): 1-55)

Population, Culture History, and the Dynamics of Culture Change

If archaeology is to succeed in explaining culture change, it must view the archaeological record from the perspective of cultural “descent with modification,” in so doing returning to many of the issues addressed by the culture‐history agenda rejected 30–40 years ago. This involves a consideration of the processes affecting cultural transmission. Many of these are strongly affected by the history of the biological populations in which cultural transmission occurs. It can be shown that prehistoric populations fluctuated much more than used to be thought and that these fluctuations can be hard to detect archaeologically. They can often be associated with cultural changes, and, in fact, the size of populations affects the nature of cultural processes in a variety of ways. These general points are illustrated with reference to a case study from the circum‐Alpine Neolithic, where dendrochronology provides high‐resolution dating.

The King and I: Bronislaw Malinowski, King Sobhuza II of Swaziland and the vision of culture change in Africa

Recent research into the life and work of Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the most important figures in British social anthropology in the 20th century, has concentrated upon his early life up to and including the years he spent in the Trobriand Islands undertaking his epoch-making fieldwork. However, very little of this research has been into the last decade of his life, especially his work on the impact of imperialism upon Africa’s colonized peoples. The purpose of this article is to extend this interest to his later research by contextualizing, describing and analysing Malinowski’s relationship with King Sobhuza II of Swaziland to whom he was introduced in 1934. I demonstrate that over the following four years, Malinowski sought to assist Sobhuza in regard to a number of matters, most notably his efforts to establish a national school linked to the Swazi age-grade system and his negotiations over the proposed transfer of Swaziland to the Union of South Africa. I argue that Malinowski gave this assistance because Sobhuza personified for him his vision of colonial and even postcolonial Africa which is contained in the largely ignored works of Freedom and Civilization and The Dynamics of Culture Change. Thus, these works reflect not only his background as a Pole in the Hapsburg empire, but also his contemporary experiences of colonial Africa.

Population, Culture History, and the Dynamics of Culture Change

Population, Culture History, and the Dynamics of Culture Change

Todavía en La Luna

TodavÃ-a en La Luna A Round Table Discussion with DarÃ-o Alvarez Basso, Antonio Bueno, Pierluigi Cattermole Fioravanti, Ignacio MartÃ-nez Lacaci Fortuny, Javier Timmermans de Palma and José Tono MartÃ-nez Some fifteen years have passed since a group of young friends decided to found a magazine to take the pulse of what was happening in Madiid. Theii creation, La Luna de Madrid, published its first issue in November of 1983. For more or less half a decade, La Luna was ar the center of the cultural transformations fashioned in Spain's urban centers in the wake of the political changes which moved Spain from dictatorship to democracy. La Luna was an integral part of a period of cultural effervescence in Madrid summed up by such popular slogans of the era as "De Madrid al Cielo," and "Madrid Me Mata" that adorned everything from napkins to postcards to tee shirts. Perhaps Javier de Juan captured it best in a particularly vivid cover design for the graphic magazine/adult comic book Madriz. He portrays a red bus much like the kind belonging to Madrid's public transportation system, the EMT. Alongside strides a young man moving effortlessly but forcefully in a fashionable suit. He grasps a copy oÃ- Madriz. The slogan complementing this image became Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 1, 1997 154 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies one of the battle cries for young Madrileños: "Vamonos que nos vamos." This slogan captured rhe impatience of a whole youthful generation longing to catch up with the rest of the modern world and leave the past behind. La Luna documented this generation's efforts to transform Spain's cultural landscape in their own image. The magazine quickly transcended the role of scribe and became a promoter and driving force for that cultural shift. It was one of the first publications to promote the work of Almodovar and other young filmmakers. In fact his Borgesian alter ego, Patti Diphusa, had her/his own column in La Luna for over a year. Young musicians, photographers, painters, designers and writers also found a home in the magazine's pages. La Luna was eventually identified with that slippery and poorlyunderstood phenomenon, L· movida. While the magazine had no specific intellectual agenda, it promoted the liberating forces of the postmodern because La Luna's intellectual brain rrusr believed rhat radical posrmodernism provided the best way to challenge the Habermasian vision of modernity championed by the young politicians who swept into power as a result of the PSOE's victories in the municipal elections in 1979 and in the general elections of 1982 generally referred to as the "elecciones del cambio." La Luna at first tentatively collapsed the difference between L· movida and the postmodern but the editors eventually found it in their best interest to disavow this position. This disavowal became necessary when hordes of "hangers on" who wished to become up to date and "in" attached themselves to the surface manifestations of what La Luna espoused without understanding the strongly-held motivations for advocating a wholly different version of what Spain should and could be. The elections held in Spain in the Spring of 1996 ended a decade and a half of Socialist hegemony, installing in their place the more politically conservarive Parrido Popular. This party's polirical agenda is considerablly different from that of the Socialists. For this reason we believe that a retrospective examination on culture in Spain in the 1980s provides an insightful look into the dynamics of cultural change and indicates how Cultural Studies can contribute to this enterprise. Cultural Studies provides a solid vantage point from which to investigate the cultural dynamics to which publications like La Luna responded. It is particularly adept at unraveling the economic, political, and cultural threads of the fabric of a society like that of Spain during the 1980s. In its May, 1986 issue, La Luna featured an important round table discussion about the state of Spanish culture from 1975 onward. It was Round Table Discussion with La Luna 155 significantly titled "Diez, cinco, dos años atrás: ¿qué ha pasado?" A number of young artists (Miguel Angel Arenas...