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This paper proposes a novel framework called 'cultural affordances' to examine the dynamic interplay among technology, users and culture, as multilevel and multidirectional interactive networks. The framework includes three dimensions. 1) Cultural affordances of technology describe what technology can offer users and culture in terms of behavioural or cultural changes. 2) Cultural affordances of users describe what users can offer other users, technology and culture in terms of behavioural, technological or cultural changes. 3) Affordances of the cultural describe what culture can offer users and technology in terms of the design and use of technology as well as related changes. To establish the need for a culturally oriented extension to affordance theory, we first revisit Gibson's original definition of affordances of the environment and discuss its significance and limitations, including the need to understand the interplay between technology and users in the digital era. We contend that culture, as an assemblage of all relations and practices, should be included as an indispensable part of affordance theory, and we provide a detailed explanation of the novel, three-dimensional framework of cultural affordances. We then apply the framework to three prior empirical studies and one ongoing study to demonstrate how the framework can be used as an analytic tool to deepen our understanding of the multilevel and multidirectional interplay among technology, users and culture, and we identify related changes, focusing on WeChat. We also discuss how the framework can provide directions for designing new technologies to improve collaborations among users, between users and designers, and between an online platform and the offline world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. The proposed study examines the subversive polemics of Fo's theatre which serves as a catalyst for social, political and cultural change. It aims to foreground the revolutionary politics of Fo who uses theatre to combat the oppressive system bringing to fore the working-class struggle for a classless society. The present study will be done with the help of the analysis of Fo's select plays. These plays will be interpreted using the Gramscian framework of cultural consensus, an enabling provision of authority and control and the role of intellectuals in countering the same. Concept. The paper underlines the significance of art in facilitating a deeper understanding of the complex social realities of our world. The paper engages with the question of power and control, oppression and marginalisation as well as art and education as contextualised in Dario Fo's theatre. Results. Fo's use of drama to humanise the history of Italian working classes tells us about the experience of art to engage with matters most urgent, which implies that art and culture can be an important link in the mobilisation authoritarism. Conclusion. A comprehensive discussion on power politics is presented in the paper with the aim of keeping people informed of the subtle working of these underlying structures which govern power relations in society. Originality. The originality of the study is contingent on investigating into how power is acquired, legitimised, practised, and maintained, how it can be resisted and what role art and artists play in the construction, dissemination and opposition of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of cultural evolution rest on the assumption that cultural inheritance is distinct from biological inheritance. Cultural and biological inheritance are two separate so-called channels of inheritance, two sub-systems of the sum total of developmental resources travelling in distinct ways between individual agents. This paper asks: what justifies this assumption? In reply, a philosophical account is offered that points at three related but distinct criteria that (taken together) make the distinction between cultural and biological inheritance not only precise but also justify it as real, i.e. as ontologically adequate. These three criteria are (i) the autonomy of cultural change, (ii) the near-decomposability of culture and (iii) differences in temporal order between cultural and biological inheritance. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]