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Why have Singapore's unique developmental state arrangements persisted in a region which has experienced democratic change? This paper argues that this is due to the PAP state's successful legitimation of its unique brand of meritocracy, one which has both competitive and interventionist elements. During the colonial era, a culture of economic meritocracy evolved in a bottom-up process through social and commercial interactions between the British class and Chinese community. This was then transmuted by the PAP's top-down imposition of the institutions and discourses of political meritocracy. This cultural hybrid allows the state to sustain its hegemony in the face of progressive social change. Accordingly, our emphasis on the wider institutional environment within which merit is conceived helps to better illuminate Singapore's challenges of encouraging organic innovation, alleviating social stratification, and opening up its political arena. This paper suggests that the problems in these areas stem not from meritocracy per se, but from the PAP's "monocentric meritocracy" where merit is narrowly defined and singularly imposed in the post-colonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper takes a dynamic view of culture to re-examine the tradeoffs between positive and negative aspects of guanxi in China. Because of cross-border collaboration and the wide use of the internet, Chinese employees are now exposed to more diverse values. Considering this cultural shift, the current paper discusses how the widely publicized negative aspect of guanxi relations in Chinese organizations can be mitigated. We suggest that employees are likely to withdraw from peer-to-peer guanxi relations that involve ethical concerns, and the likelihood and speed of this relation change would vary in part on the focal party's heritage of Confucian cultural values. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a dynamic approach to reconcile the controversy about peer-to-peer guanxi's role in Chinese organizations. This dynamic examination can invite further research on the complicated evolution of guanxi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy PointsCultural racism—or the widespread values that privilege and protect Whiteness and White social and economic power—permeates all levels of society, uplifts other dimensions of racism, and contributes to health inequities.Overt forms of racism, such as racial hate crimes, represent only the "tip of the iceberg," whereas structural and institutional racism represent its base. This paper advances cultural racism as the "water surrounding the iceberg," allowing it to float while obscuring its base.Considering the fundamental role of cultural racism is needed to advance health equity. Context: Cultural racism is a pervasive social toxin that surrounds all other dimensions of racism to produce and maintain racial health inequities. Yet, cultural racism has received relatively little attention in the public health literature. The purpose of this paper is to 1) provide public health researchers and policymakers with a clearer understanding of what cultural racism is, 2) provide an understanding of how it operates in conjunction with the other dimensions of racism to produce health inequities, and 3) offer directions for future research and interventions on cultural racism. Methods: We conducted a nonsystematic, multidisciplinary review of theory and empirical evidence that conceptualizes, measures, and documents the consequences of cultural racism for social and health inequities. Findings: Cultural racism can be defined as a culture of White supremacy, which values, protects, and normalizes Whiteness and White social and economic power. This ideological system operates at the level of our shared social consciousness and is expressed in the language, symbols, and media representations of dominant society. Cultural racism surrounds and bolsters structural, institutional, personally mediated, and internalized racism, undermining health through material, cognitive/affective, biologic, and behavioral mechanisms across the life course. Conclusions: More time, research, and funding is needed to advance measurement, elucidate mechanisms, and develop evidence‐based policy interventions to reduce cultural racism and promote health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper looks at four factors resulting in transformation of residential open space specifically the courtyard, from centre of activities to empty enclosures. These factors are historical, cultural, society and gender. Predominantly this research looks at residential space in Lahore from a feminist perspective; tracing and analysing it from a gender based socio-cultural aspect of connectivity to individuality. Rapid social and demographic changes are resulting in a new future of residential architecture in our part of the world, leading to cultural changes where globalization is one of the major factors. The structure has evolved overtime from a traditional joint family unit to a nuclear family unit which is a major shift resulting from this phenomenon. A qualitative research approach using purposive sampling method was employed. The findings highlight the importance of these open and semi covered spaces towards a healthy and connected social life fostering activities of relaxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As field change is often explained by recourse to agentic efforts of a few or revolutionary turbulence of many, this paper provides a complementary explanation of change grounded in the quotidian dynamics of physical objects and settings. Using the culinary and mountaineering fields, we demonstrate how attending to the materiality of objects and settings offers analytical leverage into the ways fields conflict and change. More specifically, we argue field instability is normal because, at the level of social action, mass and energy are inherently finite. As a result, actors responding to effects from distal fields may nevertheless collide over the objects and settings in which they are compelled to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attributes to Nietzsche a theory of cultural development according to which pyramid societies—steeply hierarchical societies following a unified morality—systematically alternate with motley societies, which emerge when pyramid societies encounter other cultures or allow their strict mores to relax. Motley societies contain multiple value systems due to individual innovation or intercultural contact, and are less stringent in dictating individuals' roles. Consequently, many people are torn between incompatible values and lack direction, so they are drawn to a morality of mediocrity, which offers the modest goals of comfort and conformity. However, the need to mediate between conflicting values also tends to yield exceptional individuals who create new values, and can reshape the society into a new pyramid society governed by those values. I argue that Nietzsche favors neither type of society at the expense of the other, but believes the alternation itself is valuable: a pyramid society develops a value system to its full potential; then, when it encounters alternative values, the extraordinary individuals in the resulting motley society synthesize the competing systems into a fuller vision of human flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the endeavors of Christian missions seeking converts from an indigenous society. It places the concept of "cultural change", often promoted by Christian missions, against the concept of "cultural adaptability". Taking the case of the Zo people of the India-Burma borderlands, this paper argues that the ascendance of the Christian God within a traditional Zo cosmology was not simply an outcome of missionary endeavors. Rather, the stringent efforts of the missionaries, who sought to missionize by opening the "hearts and minds" of the native people through the tools of education and health services, faced serious challenges and opposition from the indigenous Pau Cin Hau movement. However, it was the attack on the lesser spirits by the indigenous movement which paved the way for the Christian God to be easily fitted into the upper tier of the traditional cosmology, and consequently led to the spread of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The culture and way of life of Slovaks and their descendants living in Canada (in the more than one hundred and fifty years of its existence on the American continent) has undergone several changes due to cultural changes (acculturation and assimilation) and the influence of globalization (and the presence of multiculturalism). These reasons are manifested by unique cultural elements and manifestations of the culture of Slovaks living outside the territory of the mother state. The paper maps and analyses the cultural potential of the Roman Catholic parish of St. Cyril and Methodius in Mississauga in the context of preserving and maintaining the culture and identity of Slovaks in this parish. It deals tangible and intangible cultural heritage, cultural organizations, institutions – associations, events and human resources. There are a number of Slovak institutions in Canada, which play a key role in maintaining the culture and identity of Slovaks. The results of the research can be the basis for further research and represent the status of activity and functioning of the Slovak community in Mississauga – a Roman Catholic Parish as an institution based on ethnic principle. The research material was obtained through short-term field research in April 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Current debates about cultural change question how and how often change in personal culture happens. Is personal culture stable, or under constant revision through interaction with the environment? While recent empirical work finds attitudes are remarkably stable, this paper argues that typifications—how material tokens are classified as a particular mental type by individuals—are more open to transformation as a result of the fundamentally fuzzy nature of classifying. Specifically, this paper investigates the social conditions that lead people to reclassify. How do we move people to see the same thing differently over time? Paying attention to type–token dynamics provides mechanisms for why and under what circumstances personal culture may change. To assess reclassification, the paper analyzes an online survey experiment that asked people to classify refrigerators as owned by "Trump" or "Biden" voters. Those participants who received definitive feedback about the correct answer were more likely to reclassify than are those receiving normative feedback about how "most people" classified the images. Implications for cultural change and persuasion are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low fertility is a growing concern in modern societies. While economic and structural explanations of reproductive hindrances have been informative to some extent, they do not address the fundamental motives that underlie reproductive decisions and are inadequate to explain why East Asian countries, in particular, have such low fertility rates. The current paper advances a novel account of low fertility in modern contexts by describing how modern environments produce a mismatch between our evolved mechanisms and the inputs they were designed to process, leading to preoccupations with social status that get in the way of mating and reproductive outcomes. We also utilize developed East Asian countries as a case study to further highlight how culture may interact with modern features to produce ultralow fertility, sometimes to the extent that people may give up on parenthood or even mating altogether. Through our analysis, we integrate several lines of separate research, elucidate the fundamental dynamics that drive trade-offs between social status and reproductive effort, add to the growing literature on evolutionary mismatch, and provide an improved account of low fertility in modern contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuity of Australian First Nations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) culture has been threatened by colonisation and effects of this continue to have devastating impacts on their social emotional wellbeing [SEWB], especially mental health. This review analyses cultural interventions aiming to improve mental health outcomes for First Nations Australians (e.g., mood, self-esteem, suicide-attempts, self-harm, risky behaviours) to uncover the effectiveness and key components of such interventions. Databases PsycINFO, CINAHL, EMBASE, EMCARE, LIt.search tool from Lowitja Inst, Australian Indigenous Health InfoNet and Google Scholar were searched. Studies published between 2000 and 2021 which reported the impact of cultural interventions on the mental health of First Nations Australians were included. From 172 studies, only eight studies met inclusion criteria and all improved measured domains of SEWB. Six studies evaluated culturally adapted interventions (i.e., Western interventions adapted to be culturally appropriate) and two evaluated culturally grounded interventions (i.e., interventions developed by First Nations Australians). Participants called for more cultural components in culturally adapted interventions. The most successful studies used collaborative and participatory approaches in the designs, included First Nations members in their research teams and presented culturally grounded interventions. The paucity of literature limit findings. There was a limited ability to identify key mechanisms of change across some intervention studies, and large outcome variations across studies meant some aspects could not be compared. Nonetheless, this review concludes that culturally grounded interventions are the most promising and successful mental health interventions currently available for First Nations Australians which has many implications for practice and funding. What is already known about this topic: First Nations Australians experience poorer mental health and wellbeing than non-indigenous Australians. Previous attempts to improve the mental health of First Nations Australians utilising Western therapeutic interventions have been largely unsuccessful. More recent attempts to improve mental health for First Nations Australians utilising culture appear promising, that is, culturally adapted and culturally grounded therapeutic interventions. What this paper adds: (1) Culturally grounded interventions are effective, preferable over culturally adapted interventions, and best to use for improving the mental health and wellbeing of First Nations Australians. (2) Limited evaluations of cultural interventions have been conducted that provide empirical data showing the effectiveness of the intervention on mental health and wellbeing for First Nations Australians. (3) Successful forms of intervention evaluations with First Nations Australians utilise participatory and collaborative research approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community mobilisation is recognised as an important strategy to shift inequitable gender norms and ensure an enabling environment to prevent gender-based violence (GBV). Yet there is a need to better understand the factors that facilitate effective community activism in particular contexts. Although fundamental to the success of mobilisation programmes, there is also limited appreciation of the experiences and agency of engaged community activists. This paper draws on qualitative evaluations from two community mobilisation GBV prevention programmes: the Gender Violence in the Amazon of Peru (GAP) Project and the Indashyikirwa programme in Rwanda. In Peru, participatory data was collected, in addition to baseline and endline interviews with 8 activists. In Rwanda, baseline and endline interviews and observations were conducted with 12 activists, and interviews were conducted with 8 staff members. The data was thematically analysed, and a comparative case study approach was applied to both data sets. The comparative study identified similar programmatic aspects that could hinder or enable activist's engagement and development, and how these are embedded within contextual social and structural factors. We discuss these insights in reference to the current emphasis in public health on individualistic programming, with insufficient attention to how wider environments influence violence prevention programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a vast proliferation of categories, descriptors and labels used to describe gender and sexual identity over the past few years, with terms now numbering in the hundreds. Many terms, such as heteroflexible, asexual, demigirl and sapiosexual actively contest masculine/feminine and hetero/homo binary arrangements of identity, and LGBTQ minority rights discourses and arguably represent an epochal shift in gender/sexual knowledge frameworks. The cultural conditions that make such change possible have yet to be explored. This paper draws on theoretical approaches to populism to analyse the role of popular culture, digital communication and contestation of institutional and expert knowledges in driving the emergence of new gender and sexual terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theoretical paper in which the theory of mentalizing and epistemic trust are applied to thinking about the relationship between social systems and individual subjective experiences, and how this relationship may be shaped by developmental history, such as attachment experiences, exposure to childhood adversity, and the experience of being mentalized. We suggest that the experience of being mentalized and openness to epistemic trust may be the mechanism by which individual experiences of psychic distress, perception of self-agency and perceptions of others, are both influenced by and shape wider social phenomena and social change. We consider the impact of social inequalities and the breakdown of political legitimacy on mentalizing, epistemic trust and psychopathology, and argue that optimal individual outcomes cannot always be achieved without adaptation of the wider social environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grassroots innovation generates possibilities for the informal and collective production of the territory that the city itself denies, from bottom‐up solutions for sustainable development and consumption, which respond to the local situation, interests, and values of the communities involved. This paper aims to identify how grassroots innovation practices take place and are shaped in 'El Faro', a self‐built settlement at the urban border of the city of Medellín; and how these have allowed the social transformation of health and well‐being. This was done from a qualitative approach with an interpretative scope, under the case study methodology. 'El Faro' is a space built by its inhabitants, in a process that they have called "dignity and resistance", becoming the promoter of what we identify as four 'grassroots innovation practices' developed around three main issues: community water management, artistic training and the creation of community public spaces. This process has allowed them, from the capacity of agency, to understand their poverty situation and face it, modifying the conditions that reproduce it and responding to unsatisfied basic needs, based on innovative solutions that guarantee conditions of life with dignity and well‐being. Likewise, it generates mechanisms that reduce inequality because the community becomes the main driving agent for the construction of the city and the transformation of the health‐disease process, through its community assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There remains an obvious gap in the acculturation literature, which relates to cultural change associated with the majority/dominant group. This paper explores how majority members react to a perceived expectation from minority members that majority members should undergo cultural change. A study was conducted exploring how majority members' perceptions of a demand by minority members that the majority should adopt the minority culture affects the majority members' preferences for minority acculturation, and whether effects are mediated by perceptions of symbolic threat. Two hundred sixty‐six participants who self‐reported being white British completed an online survey. A model was hypothesized whereby a perception that minority members demand that the majority takes on the minority culture predicted perceived symbolic threat, which was in turn negatively associated with a desire that minority members should maintain the minority culture, and positively with a desire that minority members should adopt the majority culture. Results supported the hypothesized model, with all individual paths and indirect effects significant in the hypothesized directions. Symbolic threat mediated the effect of perceived demand for minority culture adoption on majority preferences for minority acculturation. Findings are discussed in relation to implications for intergroup relations in culturally plural societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the creation and negotiation of disciplinary culture, through ethnographic fieldwork about socialization in a critical learning environment: scientific fieldwork. Field-based science has received scant research attention relative to its importance as a degree requirement, a professional rite of passage, and a site where sexual harassment and assault are disturbingly commonplace. We conducted a comparative ethnographic case study of two field-based geoscience courses, one each for undergraduate and graduate students. The data include 264 hours of participant-observation and 34 interviews with students and faculty. Three prominent qualities of the culture — eroding temporal and spatial boundaries, navigating challenging conditions, and normalizing alcohol — reflect and/or reinforce disciplinary norms of informality, togetherness, and toughness. We observed these qualities and norms could be leveraged for exclusion or inclusion; they are tools that, together, create a gendered disciplinary culture. Some women resisted the narrow definition of these norms, reframing toughness to include mental toughness, for example. Implications for course design and field leadership, as well as the possibilities and limits of disciplinary cultural change, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims the viability of building an ecological citizenship, understood as a response to the environmental crisis, a product of the advance of symbols of the instrumental rationality of modernity. The confluence of diverse theoretical, cultural, educational, philosophical and social movements gave rise to the emergence of a political ecology, which was built on the utilitarian foundations established by Western logos, while allowing a holistic, complex and heterogeneous understanding of relationality man/naturalness. However, the environmental problem was not resolved with the political emergence of ecology; it required entering into sustainable development, with the presence of an ecological citizenry, whose fines are placed on the responsibility and active role of the citizen in favor of the environment, to the communities in the processes of transformation of society. However, to consolidate this proposal, it cannot be achieved without environmental education, thought, in the bureaucratic terms of the academy, as a life training, which must be carried out from birth to death, promoting axiological training and a culture sustained, fair and sustainable. [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]