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The purpose of the article is to consider the concert performance as a cultural phenomenon in its historical genesis and diachrony and to identify its communicative aspects. The research methodology is based on the application of interdisciplinary and systemic approaches, as well as a set of such research methods as cultural, analytical, and synthetic, which will allow a comprehensive consideration of the given problem and obtain reliable and substantiated research results. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the theoretical understanding of concert performance as a cultural phenomenon and its communicative features and main development trends in the context of modern dynamics of culture and technology. Conclusions. Concert performance is a multifaceted phenomenon that has a huge impact on culture and society, while creating new aesthetic experiences, promoting cultural exchange and the development of musical art. In today's world, where music is an important part of everyday life, concert performance remains a source of creative expression and a means of cross-cultural communication. It combines traditions and the latest technologies, global trends and individual cultural features. Concerts continue to be an important part of the cultural life of modern society, offering unique opportunities for communication and creativity. Contemporary concert performance often transcends national boundaries, contributing to global cultural exchange. International tours, participation in festivals and cooperation with musicians from different countries contribute to the mutual enrichment of cultures and the expansion of the musical horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beginning of the Bolaños culture was the inheritance of the Teuchitlan tradition disseminated in central Jalisco, Mexico, but once the settlers established themselves in the Bolaños Canyon, they initiated a new sociocultural dynamic with its own characteristics. The trade route allowed them to exchange multiple goods of all kinds with different and distant cultures and, in turn, favored their own development within two recognized periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article is to study the content of the concept of cultural creativity as an integral component of the event industry development. Research methodology. To achieve the research purpose, a systemic and cultural approach, methods of analysis, synthesis, deduction, comparison, and functional were applied, which allowed a comprehensive analysis of the concept of culture creation in the context of the dynamics of modern event industries. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the theoretical generalisation of the concept of culture creation in the development of the modern event industry as a sphere of creative economy and cultural practice from the perspective of the cultural approach. Conclusions. The development of the economy in the post-industrial information society and the dynamics of modern mass culture, combined with the latest cultural practices, have led to the formation of a creative environment in various spheres of human activity, where the factor of cultural creation plays a significant role as a generator of innovativeness in professional activity. As of today, the sphere of culture and art, which generates value content capable of influencing the spiritual component of society, and the sphere of economy and business, which represents the efficient production of goods and services aimed at meeting various needs of society, are in active interaction, where the economy has transformed into a "creative economy", ("economy of impressions"), in which creativity is the key resource. At the present stage, the event industry acts as a tool for the formation of social relations not only through symbolic involvement, but also creates certain forms of social relations between participants, activating the collective consciousness through the manifestations of feelings of belonging and interconnection with different social groups, and society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An ethnoarchaeological study document dynamics of pottery traditions in Senegal. • A fashioning technique is homogeneous in a heterogeneous cultural context. • Environmental, socio-economic and cultural factors explain technical changes. • Spatial distribution of two distinct firing procedures is related to precolonial kingdoms. • Recent transformations of potters' toolkits reveal changes in a globalized world. Ceramic traditions are constantly evolving, but the pace of change is variable and not all stages of the chaîne opératoire are affected in the same way, depending on the causes of borrowing, abandonment, or innovation. Few ethnoarchaeological studies in Africa have focused on a detailed understanding of these dynamics, which are important for the interpretation of past societies. Our study was conducted from 2012 to 2015 along the Falémé Valley in eastern Senegal, characterized by diverse cultures and environments. It aims to understand the historical dynamics of ceramic traditions by documenting the variability and spatial distribution of the different stages of the chaîne opératoire , and analyzing the factors that explain the transformations of techniques, potters' tools and finished objects over different temporalities, both long- and short-term. The results show that the same fashioning technique, molding on a convex shape, is used by all potters, whatever their cultural identity. On the contrary, firing procedures indicate two different traditions. The reconstruction of potters' genealogies and apprenticeship networks anchor both traditions in distinct social trajectories, and their spatial distribution corresponds with the ones of precolonial kingdoms expanding after the Mâli empire's collapse, between the 17th and the 19th century CE: the Fulbe kingdom of Boundou in the north, and three Mande kingdoms in the south. Beside this long-term dynamic, elements of paste recipes' or potter toolkits' transformation, and the abandonment of certain types of pots refer to recent dynamics dating back to a few decades, in a context of climate change and growing globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along the Gabonese coast, native populations and migrant fisher communities live side by side and, together, build constantly changing life spaces. In the Nyanga region, past and current interactions between fishers from Benin, Senegal, Congo and Gabon (characterized by diverse rights regarding land, sea and lagoons, specific knowledge and know-how) conduct to particular cultural dynamics: loan dynamics, innovations and knowledge transfers between communities. Based on deep ethnographical fieldwork, this paper aims to: 1) describe how migrant and native fishers in Gabon share coastal places and adapt their ecological knowledge, environmental know-how and know-being in order to enhance their livelihoods; 2) and analyse how fishers' migration in Africa is a key factor for societal changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideologically committed minds form the basis of political polarization, but ideologically guided communication can further entrench and exacerbate polarization depending on the structures of ideologies and social network dynamics on which cognition and communication operate. Combining a well-established connectionist model of cognition and a well-validated computational model of social influence dynamics on social networks, we develop a new model of ideological cognition and communication on dynamic social networks and explore its implications for ideological political discourse. In particular, we explicitly model ideologically filtered interpretation of social information, ideological commitment to initial opinion, and communication on dynamically evolving social networks, and examine how these factors combine to generate ideologically divergent and polarized political discourse. The results show that ideological interpretation and commitment tend towards polarized discourse.Nonetheless, communication and social network dynamics accelerate and amplify polarization. Furthermore, when agents sever social ties with those that disagreewith them(i.e. structure their social networks by homophily), even non-ideological agents may form an echo chamber and form a cluster of opinions that resemble an ideological group. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 global pandemic has brought into sharp focus the urgency of tackling the question of how globalized humanity responds to a global societal threat, which can adversely affect a large portion of the human population. Changing geospatial distribution of COVID-19 morbidity paints a gloomy picture of cross-national differences in human vulnerabilities across the globe. We describe the dynamic nexus among societal – particularly pathogen – threat, social institutions, and culture, and discuss collectivism (ingroup favouritism and outgroup avoidance) and tightness (narrow prescription of behaviours and severe punishment of norm violations) as potential cultural adaptations to prevalent pathogen threats. We then sketch out a theoretical framework for cultural dynamics of collective adaptation to pathogen threats, outline a large number of theory- and policy-relevant research questions and what answers we have at present, and end with a call for renewed efforts to investigate collective human responses to societal threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanity faces twin problems of adaptation—natural environmental challenges of climate change and global humanitarian challenges of ensuring well-being for all—that pose a dilemma for sustainable development. One way forward is to develop cultures of sustainability that highlight and reward the ideas and practices that will help us transition to a sustainable lifestyle. Although institutional responses are necessary and multidisciplinary approaches are required, individual citizens can also participate in cultural dynamics—the process of cultural formation, maintenance, and transformation—to craft cultures of sustainability, and psychological science can point to potential mechanisms for effecting this cultural change. Informed by the niche-construction perspective, I suggest that the critical ingredients of cultures of sustainability include (a) conceptions of human–nature connectedness, (b) conceptions of human–artifact relation, (c) interpersonal conversations about sustainability norms within social networks, and (d) visions of an achievable utopia for a sustainable future. Further research and action are called for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of cultural diversity in some social systems can be observed as the oppositional patterns in different levels, namely, the directions of the trends of diversity in different levels are opposite. In this paper, we propose a payoff-driven metapopulation modeling framework to investigate the origin of the oppositional patterns in the trends of cultural diversity. This model considers the mobile agents in multiple communities, and the cultural characteristics of an agent are represented by a vector. The diffusion of cultural characteristics is driven by two opposite effects: the communication cost positively depending on cultural difference between agents, and the cultural attractiveness single-peak-functional correlating on cultural difference. In the numerical simulations of the model, the polarization is observed in the case with the homophily principle, and two types of the oppositional patterns can emerge in the case with time-varying mobility of agents. These findings efficiently explain the emergence of the oppositional patterns and help to understand the evolution of diversity under the dynamics of both synchronization and variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article. The study is connected with the substantiation of the communicative potential of symphonic performance, carried out on the example of large-scale creative activity of the Philharmonic Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Chernihiv Regional Philharmonic Center for Festivals and Concert Programs. The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra is the first professional creative group in the region that, over the past twenty years, has systematically promoted symphonic music by domestic and foreign composers. Methodology. Following the goals and objectives, the main methodological approaches are based on historical and musicological, causal, systemic methods. It allows you to explore various aspects of symphonic performance, which had a significant impact on the formation of qualitative characteristics of the musical life of the region. The scientific novelty and significance of the results of art history research lie in the fact that the communicative potential of the symphonic performance of the first professional symphony orchestra in the Chernihiv region, actively promoting various styles and genres of symphonic music, is analyzed; It represents the performing culture of Ukraine at the international level, has a significant impact on the communication processes of the cultural life of the region on the principles of a dialogue of cultures and gives rise to new spiritual identities, demonstrating their construction in the real conditions of modern society. Conclusions. For the first time, the symphonic performance of the Philharmonic Academic Symphony Orchestra is seen as a communicative process of cultural interaction, which has a significant impact on the formation of a holistic picture of the musical culture of the region. The regional perspective of symphonic performance must allow us to explore both the national and international potential of musical art, which has developed on modern approaches to organizing tour and concert activities, based on the principles of cultural exchange in the framework of creative projects and has positive musical, professional, spiritual and aesthetic results, it becomes an influential factor in the cultural dynamics of the artistic development of Chernihiv region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culture is a critical concept for social psychology in Asia. The sociocultural models approach, as exemplified in this special issue, is a significant synthesis of the past work and a generative platform for future research. From the perspective of cultural dynamics, this commentary provides what I hope to be constructively critical reflections on this approach and attempts to point to potential directions for future investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper outlines a cultural–psychological interpretation of the current European societies' socio-institutional crisis. To this end, preliminarily, the cultural psychological view of social behaviour is outlined, focusing on the idea that socio-political choices depend on how people make sense of their world. Second, the paper provides an interpretation of the current socio-political European scenario of crisis, based on the main results of a recent study that has mapped the cultural dynamics underpinning some European countries. The interpretation focuses on two complementary facets: on the one hand, the lack of symbolic resources (defined: semiotic capital) enabling people to perceive the collective dimension of life as a lived, subjectively relevant fact of experience; on the other hand, the relevance of a cultural form (defined: paranoid belongingness) that channels a trajectory of sensemaking consisting of the affective connotation of otherness in terms of threat and enemy. Third, the paper deepens the interplay between these cultural dynamics and the social, political and economic conditions that may have been triggered by them. In that perspective, the function of semiotic regulation played by the enemization of the other is highlighted. The conclusive part of the work is devoted to discuss implications the analysis suggests for policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norm talk is verbal communication that explicitly states or implicitly implies a social norm. To investigate its ability to shape cultural dynamics, 2 types of norm talk were examined: injunction, which explicitly states what should be done, and gossip, which implies a norm by stating an action approved or disapproved of by the communicator. In 2 experiments, participants engaged in norm talk in repeated public goods games. Norm talk was found to help sustain cooperation relative to the control condition; immediately after every norm talk opportunity, cooperation spiked, followed by a gradual decline. Despite the macrolevel uniformity in their effects on cooperation, evidence suggests different microlevel mechanisms for the cooperation-enhancing effects of injunction and gossip. A 3rd study confirmed that both injunction and gossip sustain cooperation by making salient the norm of cooperation, but injunction also effects mutual verification of the communicated norm, whereas gossip emphasizes its reputational implications by linking cooperation to status conferral and noncooperation to reputational damage. A 4th experiment provided additional evidence that norm talk was superior to the promise of conditional cooperation in sustaining cooperation. Implications of the findings for cultural dynamics are discussed in terms of how feelings of shared morality, language-based interpersonal communication, and ritualization of norm communication contribute to social regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the specific features of the "Russian dream" and some of its key elements using materials from a number of national studies conducted by the Institute of Sociology over the past several years. It highlights the cultural-civilizational features of the Russian dream and its connection with the values and identities of Russians. It will show that the presence of a dream is the norm for Russian culture in general, but that in recent years this norm has eroded. Although the Russian civilizational project with its characteristic "high dream" still exists, it is gradually losing its significance; instead, the dreams of a consumer society are transforming into dreams about ordinary survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article revisits Anthony Smith's landmark collection Myths and Memories of the Nation (1999) from the perspective of recent developments in cultural memory studies. It argues for a more clearly demarcated distinction between myths and memories which acknowledges cultural memory as a site of new experiential perspectives that often work against the authority of myths, seen as the unquestioned truths about the collective past. Drawing on studies of modern memory cultures, it presents a dynamic and generative model that construes memory in terms of cultural practices of remembrance. It shows that memory is not an unchanging legacy but rather a malleable resource for making shared stories about the past. Where Halbwachs (1925) presumed that social frameworks precede and shape memory, remembrance is presented here as a cultural force that helps to redefine social frameworks and to create links between hitherto unconnected imagined communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the problem of textual/cultural dynamics linked to the issue of semiotic literariness, to be further investigated by the authors in later papers on literary semiotics. This scientific project aims to get closer to reaching an adequate disciplinary identification for semiotics of literature and a relatively precise definition of the status of this field in relation to semiotics of culture. The first step for the project is to reveal the interrelationhip between text and culture using the notion of dynamics that can be reconstructed from a historical perspective through some essential components of Formalist and Structuralist theory (Tynyanov's 'function', Jakobson's 'dominant') and also works by Lotman (the 'text--culture' relationship) and Bakhtin ('dialogue'). The notions of inclusiveness/integration, distancing and hierarchization, leading to transformation, are interpreted in some detail in the context of these theories. On these grounds, three basic categories of the analysability of textual/cultural dynamics are set up with the indication of further aspects of the dynamic function: (1) mediation; (2) transposition; (3) temporality--spatiality. The suggested classification and the implied conceptual segmentation are expected to contribute to a synthesis between "Structuralist" and Peircean theoretical and methodological orientations in semiotic literary studies. This also reveals the need for a coexistence of approaches (a) moving from particular cultural fields (literary culture tradition) towards general semiotics of culture, and (b) returning from universal transfield concepts to literary culture, including the historical traditions both in art (object-level) and its scientific interpretation (meta-level). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a reflexive analysis of the researcher's own management practices in two schools of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago and her joint management with a teaching team. The study design was autoethnographic as the diary of the school principal was used to collect information in the field and a self-discovery test was conducted to identify the values by which the team is lead. The study produced analytical knowledge about the practices of the principal and his team, thus revealing their shared values and allowing for the creation of a map of the organization's cultural development with the purpose of identifying the institution's needs and priorities. It is shown that institutional culture can move towards processes aimed at the integral development of the system, resulting in a self-learning process where conflicts are resolved collaboratively. The investigation provided a model of cultural transformation embedded in the organization's system of values and codes grounded in the Spiral Dynamics Integral theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the specific features of the “Russian dream” and some of its key elements using materials from a number of national studies conducted by the Institute of Sociology over the past several years. It highlights the cultural-civilizational features of the Russian dream and its connection with the values and identities of Russians. It will show that the presence of a dream is the norm for Russian culture in general, but that in recent years this norm has eroded. Although the Russian civilizational project with its characteristic “high dream” still exists, it is gradually losing its significance; instead, the dreams of a consumer society are transforming into dreams about ordinary survival. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: A content-management project that proceeds with an incomplete understanding of the views, reservations, agendas, and attitudes held by stakeholders could likely encounter problems in implementation. The vast majority of content-management implementation projects proceed with very little visibility into the cultural dynamics that will eventually play such a central role in determining the success or failure of the projects. This case study examines the usefulness of deploying a needs assessment questionnaire to gather qualitative data that could help content–management project leaders understand participant needs, attitudes, and perceptions, and that could potentially improve the implementation of content-management projects. Research questions: How might previously published research questions for assessing cultural dynamics be adapted for a questionnaire intended to gather input from participants in the early stages of the implementation of two separate content–management projects? What kinds of issues does the questionnaire elicit from participants? To what extent is the questionnaire useful in assessing content-management project participant needs and how might it be revised and adapted for other organizational contexts? Situating the case: Implementing a content–management project results in a change to organizational processes; careful attention to managing this change is essential to the success of the project. Specific change-management issues emphasized in literature that addresses organizational and technological change include organizational readiness, stakeholder input, communication of project goals and plans with stakeholders, and training and time to learn and practice new approaches to operations. Organizational culture—a set of beliefs and values that members of an company share in common—plays a role in implementations of technology. Assessing organizational climate and stakeholder values and attitudes—characteristics of organizational culture—as part of a change-management plan can ensure that the culture is addressed when implementing a content–management project. Methodology: This project consisted of three parts: designing a pilot questionnaire based on a previous published methodology for assessing cultural dynamics, conducting the questionnaire within two organizations implementing content–management systems, and assessing the extent to which the questionnaire was useful in the context of the content-management projects. Responses were analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach. About the case: We developed a cultural dynamics needs assessment questionnaire and deployed it within two organizations with the purpose of gathering data about the attitudes and perceptions of project participants toward the impending content–management system implementation. The questionnaires informed the implementations of content management as anticipated. Conclusions: A questionnaire can help understand the cultural dynamics impacting the adoption of new technologies and processes; this method can be included as part of an overall needs assessment for a content–management project. This study also confirms the merit of the research methodology followed; the questionnaire design elicited thoughtful responses from participants and the analysis approach illuminated insights that were then used to engage participants and modify project implementation plans. The constructive outcome of this study suggests the need for more empirical studies and field evaluation studies that build on this one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present a critical reading of the Hierarchical Model of Culture (HMC) which, based on non-historical notions of culture and rooted in an essentialist and elitist distinction of the judgment of taste, subdivides culture in a hierarchical ranking of classical culture, mass culture and popular culture. By highlighting cultural diversity and the processes of cultural interaction inherent in contemporary societies, it seeks theoretical reflections that suggest public cultural policies from the standpoint of a project of Cultural Democracy for the purpose of democratic radicalization. We have therefore concluded that a Cultural Democracy project for public cultural policies should consider the context of cultural interaction, the different actors involved, the power relations present in the very idea of public cultural policies, and also seek to maximize public participation in political decision-making spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution presents the environmental changes that occurred over the last ten millennia in a vast region of North Africa, encompassing the Central Sahara, the Greater Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa. These areas are of particular significance in the continent because of the early socioeconomic transformations that occurred there. An up-to-date review of palaeoclimate research is proposed with the aim to highlight new theoretical approaches, analytical methods and innovative techniques. Results of recent research on high-resolution and well-dated palaeoenvironmental archives for proxy data have been used to understand the climatic variability at different scales of resolution. We trace the regional changes in Holocene palaeohydrology, mostly regulated by monsoonal precipitation, and their effects on the landscape, and highlight the occurrence of short-term climatic events, arid or humid that may have had disruptive consequences on human communities. The contribution also discusses the cultural dynamics that occurred in those regions because the latter were exploited by hunter/gatherer groups from the onset of the Holocene until historical times. A reconstruction of patterns of human adjustment to climatic variability is here presented, focusing on key processes such as the origin of food production, social complexity and power, and the rise and fall of complex polities and interregional networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural dynamics have a significant impact on how sexual matters, including sexual abuse, are discussed in British South Asian communities. The ways in which these communities talk about sexual violence often reinforce patriarchal norms and values, especially those concerned with honour and shame. As a result, victims are either silenced or the blame for the sexual violence they have suffered is laid at their own feet. Addressing the fact that these problems are rooted in patriarchal norms and values is key to understanding how to tackle sexual offending effectively in such communities. Both retributive and restorative justice are necessary in responding to sex crimes; retributive approaches help to recognise victims’ suffering, while restorative approaches offer promising avenues for encouraging victims and offenders alike to speak about their experiences. Both approaches are essential components to reintegrating victims and offenders into their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cultural contexts in which sexist beliefs are considered traditional, shifts toward gender equality represent an example of cultural change. Polyculturalism is defined as the belief that cultures change constantly through different racial and ethnic groups’ interactions, influences, and exchanges with each other and, therefore, are dynamic and socially constructed rather than static. Thus, polyculturalism may involve openness to cultural change and, thereby, would be expected to be associated with lower sexist attitudes. Four studies (both cross-sectional and longitudinal) with undergraduate and community samples in the Northeastern United States tested whether endorsement of polyculturalism is inversely associated with sexism, above and beyond potentially confounding belief systems. Across studies, for both women and men, endorsement of polyculturalism was associated with lower sexist attitudes for two classes of sexism measures: (a) attitudes toward the rights and roles of women and (b) ambivalent sexist attitudes toward women. Associations remained significant while controlling for potentially confounding variables (colorblindness, conservatism, egalitarianism, gender and ethnic identity, gender and race essentialism, multiculturalism, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation). Greater openness to criticizing one’s culture mediated polyculturalism’s association with attitudes toward the rights and roles of women but not with ambivalent sexist attitudes toward women. Studying polyculturalism may provide unique insights into sexism, and more work is needed to understand the mechanisms involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Culture has become a critical concept for social psychology over the past quarter of a century. Yet, cultural dynamics, the process and mechanism of formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture, has begun to be investigated only recently. This article reports the current state of play of a research program that takes cultural dynamics as its central question. In this approach, humans are construed as meaning making animals that create, recreate, and exchange information, and turn it into a meaningful basis for action. The locus of meaning making and remaking is an everyday joint activity. The grounding model of cultural transmission describes how cultural information is deliberately or inadvertently transmitted in a joint activity. As we go about our business of living our daily lives, we ground information to our common ground, and construct a social reality that is mutually meaningful and yet only local. If locally grounded information is further generalized to a large collective and disseminated through social networks, repeated and iterative activations of the grounding process maintain the social reality of the collective that we take for granted. Implications of the grounding model of cultural transmission and future research directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we proposed a methodology in order to study the oral transmission dynamic of music, taking into account the ages of those who practice it, if they transmit their knowledge to others and if the practice of genders is mainly practiced in urban or rural areas. The results of these studies are presented in maps. The application of this method helps us to determinate if the studied genders have real possibilities of going on or not in the people cultural practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates cultural dynamics on the northeast Tibetan Plateau with a case study of the Mangghuer people of the Sanchuan (Three Valleys) Region of Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County (Qinghai Province, China). I focus on ‘models of spatialisation’—the ways in which the physical landscape is perceived, conceptualised and made meaningful. In the Mangghuer context, such models basically construe the landscape as being enlivened by flows and accumulations of positive and negative energies or entities. After providing a detailed description of this model, I attempt to locate it within a wider comparative framework of three broad models of spatialisation employed on the Tibetan Plateau: geomantic; mandalic; and itinerant. Based on this examination, I argue that the cultural dynamics of the region are not based on ethnic distinctions, but rather on the transportation of models across ethnic and other boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Measuring culture and its dynamics through surveys has important limitations, but the emerging field of computational social science allows us to overcome them by analyzing large-scale datasets. In this paper, we study cultural dynamics through the votes in the Eurovision song contest, which are decided by a crowd-based scheme in which viewers vote through mobile phone messages. Taking into account asymmetries and imperfect perception of culture, we measure cultural relations among European countries in terms of cultural affinity. We propose the Friend-or-Foe coefficient, a metric to measure voting biases among participants of a Eurovision contest. We validate how this metric represents cultural affinity through its relation with known cultural distances, and through numerical analysis of biased Eurovision contests. We apply this metric to the historical set of Eurovision contests from 1975 to 2012, finding new patterns of stronger modularity than using votes alone. Furthermore, we define a measure of polarization that, when applied to empirical data, shows a sharp increase within EU countries during 2010 and 2011. We empirically validate the relation between this polarization and economic indicators in the EU, showing how political decisions influence both the economy and the way citizens relate to the culture of other EU members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work will focus on the cultural dynamics of the Paneleiras from Goiabeiras, Vitória - ES, Brazil, and their connections with the political and economic dimensions, reflecting on these social actors, as a professional category and as producers of an immaterial heritage recognized by agencies and their struggle for socioeconomic recognition - aligned with the capitalist logic and the material needs that they have. It was found that the interpretation of the dynamics of the Culture of Clay cannot be restricted to the analysis of isolated pans made by the Paneleiras or of the "place", but has to put both together as "pan-Paneleiras-place", as well as its relations with the State's Government, the Municipality, the IPHAN and the economic sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal communication plays a significant role in the maintenance of culturally shared stereotypes. This paper reports on two experiments in which two different stories were transmitted conversationally through communication chains. In both experiments, people tended to emphasize more stereotype consistent than stereotype inconsistent ( SI) information, thus rendering the stories more confirming, rather than challenging, of the stereotypes. Although SI information sometimes attracted more attention in conversation, this did not translate into a greater likelihood of passing on SI information, thus keeping the story character's impression largely stereotypical even after a second retelling of the story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate what conditions can lead to a bias for communicating stereotype inconsistent ( SI) information, relative to stereotype consistent ( SC) information. Sixty-three undergraduate university students (22 males, 41 females; Mage = 21.25) read a story about an Arab man who exhibited characteristics consistent and inconsistent with the stereotype of Arab men. The story was transmitted through 21 three-person communication chains; each participant rewrote the story from memory for the next person in the chain to read, with only the first participant in each chain reading the original story. As hypothesized, when a surprising category conjunction was formed by pairing the primary stereotype ( Arab men) with a secondary stereotype of a contradictory nature (kindergarten teachers), SC information was circulated less than SI information. This was also the case when a causal explanation was provided that accounted for the unexpected SI information. Findings indicate the potential of techniques that elicit cognitive elaboration of SI information to encourage an SI bias in communication, and show promise for exploring ways to reduce the impact of negative stereotypical information in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We introduce a variant of the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination in which agents change their physical locations, social links, and cultures. Numerical simulations are used to investigate the evolution of social network communities and the cultural diversity within and between these communities. An analysis of the simulation results shows that an initial peak in the cultural diversity within network communities is evident before agents segregate into a final configuration of culturally homogeneous communities. Larger long-range interaction probabilities facilitate the initial emergence of culturally diverse network communities, which leads to a more pronounced initial peak in cultural diversity within communities. At equilibrium, the number of communities, and hence cultures, increases when the initial cultural diversity increases. However, the number of communities decreases when the lattice size or population density increases. A phase transition between two regimes of initial cultural diversity is evident. For initial diversities below a critical value, a single network community and culture emerges that dominates the population. For initial diversities above the critical value, multiple culturally homogeneous communities emerge. The critical value of initial diversity at which this transition occurs increases with increasing lattice size and population density and generally with increasing absolute population size. We conclude that larger initial diversities promote cultural heterogenization, while larger lattice sizes, population densities, and in fact absolute population sizes promote homogenization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article analyzes different cultures of corruption with regard to their evolutionary stability, i.e. their ability to annihilate small disturbances in the equilibria between corrupt and noncorrupt agents. The article starts with the development of an evolutionary model of the interactions between corrupt and noncorrupt citizens and functionaries of the state, which is subsequently explored by formal analyses and computer simulation. It turns out that zero-corruption is always evolutionarily stable, whereas pervasive corruption displays only conditional evolutionary stability and thus is empirically rare. Between these two extremes there is organized bureaucratic corruption, which is in most cases quasi-stable with fluctuations around an equilibrium representing the coexistence of corrupt and noncorrupt agents. Empirical analyses of corruption data from 89 countries seem to corroborate these theoretical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this editorial, we explore the growth of the International Simulation and Gaming Association (ISAGA) and Simulation & Gaming (S&G) over the past 40 years, comparing (a) the disciplines and affiliations of authors in the first volume of S&G, (b) authors who contributed papers to the ISAGA 2009 conference, and (c) authors of the most read and the most cited articles in the journal 41 years later, in September 2011. Finally, we present eight articles as an illustration of our growth and a foreshadowing of what we might attain in the next 40 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of 'Why pots are decorated' (David et al. 1988), pottery decoration has tended to become a secondary concern for Africanist archaeologists, who now favour other topics such as manufacturing techniques or consumption processes. At the time, the paper spelt the end of an endless debate about style that centred on the question of the marking of social boundaries. By illustrating the religious dimension of ornamental practices, David et al. (1988) not only opened new interpretation avenues: they also brought decoration back among other elements of the chaine operatoire, the symbolic dimensions of which were then put forward by a growing number of anthropologists. Today, this theory seems as problematic as the one that it sought to replace. Clearly, the time has come to put decor on the spot again, but favouring a broader perspective than in the past in order to eschew previous pitfalls. This is the aim of this paper, built on ethnographic observations made across the continent. First, some classical aspects of decor analysis are considered, with a view to illustrating the complexity of ornamental practices as well as the dangers of univocal interpretations. Second, new means of interpretation are illustrated that relate to the spatialisation and dynamics of social worlds in the making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on Granovetter's theory of the 'strength of weak ties,' research on 'small-world' networks suggests that bridges between clusters in a social network (long-range ties) promote cultural diffusion, homogeneity, and integration. We show that this macro-level implication of network structure depends on hidden micro-level assumptions. Using a computational model similar to earlier studies, we find that ties between clusters facilitate cultural convergence under the micro-level assumptions of assimilation and attraction to similar others. However, these assumptions also have negative counterparts-differentiation and xenophobia. We found that when these negative possibilities are no longer assumed away, the effect of long-range ties reverses: Even very small amounts of contact between highly clustered communities sharply increased polarization at the population level. [An appendix to this article is featured as an online supplement at the publisher's website.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relationship between environmental preferences and the environment. Preferences are transmitted intergenerationally and through social interactions, where we assume that agents are more likely to adopt environmental preferences the larger the amount of pollution. In the basic setting we find that both converge non-monotonically towards an interior steady state. When including technical change we notice that there will be no change in the steady state level of the environment unless technical change is sufficiently strong, which stands in stark contrast to the literature. Upon introducing environmental laws we find that these may lead to a virtually pollution-free environment. This happens if environmental laws are implemented when public support is strong enough. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) was a popular and critical success when it first appeared, and has had a notable impact on popular perceptions of “the bombing of Dresden,” although it has been criticized by historians because of its inaccuracy. This article analyzes the novel's quirky, comic style and its generic mixture of science fiction and testimony, showing how Vonnegut consistently used ingenuous understatement as a way of imaginatively engaging his readers with the horrors of war. The article argues that the text's aesthetics are closer to those of graphic novels than of realist narratives and that, accordingly, we can understand its cultural impact only by approaching it as a highly artificial linguistic performance with present-day appeal and contemporary relevance, and not merely by measuring the degree to which it gives a full and accurate mimesis of past events. The article uses the case of Vonnegut to advance a more general argument that builds on recent work in cultural memory studies: in order to understand the role that literature plays in shaping our understanding of history, it needs to be analyzed in its own terms and not as a mere derivative of historiography according to a “one model fits all” approach. Furthermore, we need to shift the emphasis from products to processes by considering both artistic and historiographical practices as agents in the ongoing circulation across different cultural domains of stories about the past. Theoretical reflection should account for the fact that historiography and the various arts play distinct roles in this cultural dynamics, and while they compete with one another, they also converge, bounce off one another, influence one another, and continuously beg to be different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randall Collins has introduced a simplified model of emotional dynamics in which emotional energy, heightened and focused by interaction rituals, serves as a common denominator for social exchange: a generic form of currency, except that it is active in a far broader range of social transactions. While the scope of this theory is attractive, the specifics of the model remain unconvincing. After a critical assessment of the currency theory of emotion, a field model of emotion is introduced that adds expressiveness by locating emotional valence within its cognitive context, thereby creating an integrated orientation field. The result is a model which claims less in the way of motivational specificity, but is more satisfactory in modeling the dynamic interaction between cognitive and emotional orientations at both individual and social levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many cross-border regions in Europe remain more political dreamscapes than examples of strong transnational integration. The development of the Öresund region through a bridge linking Copenhagen and eastern Denmark with Southern Sweden has been seen as a model for EU region building. Drawing on a multidisciplinary project, this article uses the Öresund case as a starting point, bringing in some contrastive Scandinavian examples. The aim is to discuss how regions try to make themselves visible and attractive for investments and visitors, but above all to what extent they produce regionauts actively creating integration by different border-crossing activities and contacts. The focus is on the cultural dimensions found in everyday practices and symbolic manifestations of these transnational processes. What kind of gaps between regional rhetoric and actual mundane activities emerge? A historical perspective is used to illustrate these changing border dynamics in which cultural, political and economic asymmetries often become an energizing factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William James conceptualized I, the self as subject as a stream of consciousness. When this conception is augmented with George Herbert Mead's view of self as a radically socialized and enculturated process, a result is the James-Mead model of dynamic self as a stream of enculturated consciousness. In this paper, we argue that connectionism is best suited to theorize this challenging notion. Based on the view that a connectionist model should describe psychological processes that carry out psychological functions grounded in a biological living system, we propose the I-SELF (Imitative and Sequence Learning Functional) model, which is designed to capture the temporal dynamics of a stream of consciousness whose content can be acquired via symbolically mediated social interaction with others in society. We identify four implications of the James-Mead model of dynamic self (embodiment, narrative and self, individual and collective self, and culture and self), and report computer simulations to show the utility of I-SELF in conceptualizing the dynamic self-processes in the contemporary social psychological literature. Theoretical and metatheoretical implications of the connectionist approach to self are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationships between depression and marital adjustment in Hispanic couples as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory—II and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. The participants were 98 married Hispanic couples from Las Vegas and San Antonio area churches and community centers who volunteered to participate in this study. Correlations for husbands and wives and the total group between depression and overall marital adjustment and the subscales of marital adjustment were significant. In addition, the husbands' and wives' depression scores were significantly correlated to one another Furthermore, the relationship between husbands' marital adjustment scores and wives' depression scores was significantly stronger than the inverse relationship of wives' marital adjustment with husbands' depression. The results of this study support an interactional theory of depression and thus highlight the need to take both members of a couple and the cultural dynamics into consideration when developing interventions to treat depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore communication strategies for relationship building across cultures from a linguistic as well as a culture-specific perspective. Specifically, it sees business relationships as part of social capital and compares communication strategies used to build relationships in sales firms. The research method is based on a discourse analysis of interviews with business managers, which also incorporates their success stories. In the analysis, relationship building is divided into two stages: the initiating stage and the maintaining stage. It has been found that more interpersonal strategies have been employed by Chinese and Indian business managers when initiating a business relationship. In contrast, the New Zealand and South African managers tend to use more impersonal communication strategies to promote public relations. Similar interpersonal communication strategies are employed in all the target cultures for maintaining relationships. However, a stronger orientation for long-term relationships in the Chinese and Indian cultures has been identified. Furthermore, the communication strategies are dynamic in all the countries investigated since they are becoming more and more multicultural and increasingly globalized in international business and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Scholars studying mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have proposed diverse strategies for coping with post-merger resistance to change. These strategies include the selection of similar partners for the merger, the removal of post-merger autonomy from participating organizations, and the formalization of post-merger policies and practices. In the study reported below, we analyzed the effectiveness of these strategies for the negative effects of post-merger resistance. We base our analyses on our computational model of organizational practices and derive our results from simulation experiments. Our simulation experiments show that (1) although merging similar organizations does not in general reduce resistance, it can be useful when policies and practices are tacit; (2) positive effects of removing autonomy only occur if the dominating organization provides strong, effective management and (3) formalization of the preferred practices is generally helpful when it occurs within the acquired firm but is limited when it occurs within the acquiring firm. In addition, sensitivity analyses suggest that fostering mimesis through socialization constitutes an alternative strategy to control resistance and deserves further empirical study. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article is based on fieldwork in Guyana on the legitimation of Amerindian voices within official development fora. It focuses on the material and textual context to development discourse and the relationship between legal documents and situated discourse practice within this. Documents produced by Makushi communities and the government are analysed in terms of: (i) the participant roles they construct and the representations they implicitly construe; and (ii) the meaning of such stereotyping as a move within a wider and more dynamic discourse. The possibility of exploiting discursive tensions between official texts, situated development practice and the attitudes of key participants is then considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homo sapiens is the only species in which we observe extensive cooperation among large numbers of genetically unrelated individuals. Incompatible approaches to explaining cooperation among humans have been offered by sociologists, biologists, and economists. None is wholly successful. Each discipline, moreover, has ignored basic insights of the others. This article explains cooperation by combining central contributions of these disciplines. developing a model of cultural evolution in which we use (a) the sociological concept of the internalization of norms to explain cultural transmission; (b) the biological concepts of vertical and oblique transmission to model the interaction of cultural and biological adaptation; and (c) the economic concepts of rational action and the replicator dynamic to model the interaction between self-interested and altruistic behavior. The article closes with a bioeconomic explanation of the human capacity to internalize norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic surveys and excavations were carried out during the 1990–1996 field seasons in the Tadrart Acacus and surrounding areas, shedding new light on the climatic changes and cultural dynamics which occurred during the Holocene. In this paper, the geological, geomorphological, and archaeological evidence is assembled in order to provide a preliminary synthesis on the prehistory of the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans possess limited knowledge on what generated cultural dynamics to strengthen human resilience to overcome climate-induced stresses. Although the highly developed mental ability of humans could have enabled significant human resilience in history, no study has empirically explained or has even scientifically confirmed how and when such dynamics arose. To fill the current research gap, this study therefore explores the associations among climatic conditions, the evolutional dynamics of human thinkers and their thoughts, and human ecological–socioeconomic conditions in the past 2500 years in Europe. Results from quantitative modellings and causal analyses confirm that climatic–ecological stresses led to human ecological–socioeconomic crises, and thereby dramatically increased twice of the thinkers' number and their thoughts' impact across different philosophies in truth, knowledge, and ethics for adaptation at multi-decadal to centennial temporal scales, especially in spirituality oriented mentality. The process of the stress-generated cultural dynamics displays some similarities with the stress-induced mutagenesis in organism evolution. Ultimately, climatic–ecological stresses prompt the escalation in the number of thinkers and impacts of their thoughts and flourishing of philosophy. Such stress-regenerated cultural dynamics imply that the current climate change threat may stimulate another thriving phase of cultural selection and lift humans to the next homeostatic plateau of civilization. Findings also extend the cognate scope of psychological, sociological, and civilization studies. Unlabelled Image • The associations between climate change and the cultural resilience were examined. • Dynamics of cultural resilience was strongly associated with climatic stresses. • Climatic stresses fostered innovative thoughts and reinforced human resilience. • Quantitative modellings and causal analyses have been introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]