scholarly journals Evaluating trust and shared group identities in emergent social learning processes in the Zambezi river basin

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline K. Lumosi ◽  
Claudia Pahl-Wostl ◽  
Geeske Scholz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
Transboundary Cooperation ◽  
Transboundary River ◽  
Transboundary River Basin ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Social Learning Processes

AbstractSocial learning in natural resource management is considered important for addressing complex problems by supporting multi-stakeholder interactions in problem framing and co-construction of solutions. Despite the considerable progress in the social learning discourse, few scholars have empirically examined relational features in social learning interactions. Relational features such as trust and shared group identities are important for supporting engagement and interaction among actors. This study analyzed emergent social learning processes in transboundary river basin cooperation processes in the Zambezi basin. To do this, data was conducted through in-depth interviews with diverse actors, observations of participatory workshops, and review of documents on transboundary cooperation processes in the Zambezi basin. The study evaluated how trust and shared group identities shaped learning spaces (opportunities for interaction, deliberation and reframing) and in turn impacted transboundary river basin cooperation. The study found that trust and shared group identities had a crucial impact on learning spaces and in turn impacted transboundary river basin cooperation in the Zambezi basin. The results suggest that leveraging on trust and shared group identities can play a critical role in stimulating cooperation processes. However, it is not a guarantee for cooperation. This study highlights that structural-learning spaces such as institutions support the development of binding commitments and enduring shared practices. However, success of such institutionalization is strongly influenced by the prior development of trust and a shared social identity.

A cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture is useful and necessary but only if it also applies to other species

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Social Learning Processes

Abstract The debate on cumulative technological culture (CTC) is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

scholarly journals The Psychological Reach of Culture in Animals’ Lives

2021 ◽  
pp. 096372142199311
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Social Learning Processes ◽  
Learning From Others ◽  
Behavioral Domains

Culture—the totality of traditions acquired in a community by social learning from other individuals—has increasingly been found to be pervasive not only in humans’ but in many other animals’ lives. Compared with learning on one’s own initiative, learning from others can be very much safer and more efficient, as the wisdom already accumulated by other individuals is assimilated. This article offers an overview of often surprising recent discoveries charting the reach of culture across an ever-expanding diversity of species, as well as an extensive variety of behavioral domains, and throughout an animal’s life. The psychological reach of culture is reflected in the knowledge and skills an animal thus acquires, via an array of different social learning processes. Social learning is often further guided by a suite of adaptive psychological biases, such as conformity and learning from optimal models. In humans, cumulative cultural change over generations has generated the complex cultural phenomena observed today. Animal cultures have been thought to lack this cumulative power, but recent findings suggest that elementary versions of cumulative culture may be important in animals’ lives.

scholarly journals Experimental studies illuminate the cultural transmission of percussive technologies in Homo and Pan

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1682) ◽  
pp. 20140359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Special Power ◽  
Social Learning Processes

The complexity of Stone Age tool-making is assumed to have relied upon cultural transmission, but direct evidence is lacking. This paper reviews evidence bearing on this question provided through five related empirical perspectives. Controlled experimental studies offer special power in identifying and dissecting social learning into its diverse component forms, such as imitation and emulation. The first approach focuses on experimental studies that have discriminated social learning processes in nut-cracking by chimpanzees. Second come experiments that have identified and dissected the processes of cultural transmission involved in a variety of other force-based forms of chimpanzee tool use. A third perspective is provided by field studies that have revealed a range of forms of forceful, targeted tool use by chimpanzees, that set percussion in its broader cognitive context. Fourth are experimental studies of the development of flint knapping to make functional sharp flakes by bonobos, implicating and defining the social learning and innovation involved. Finally, new and substantial experiments compare what different social learning processes, from observational learning to teaching, afford good quality human flake and biface manufacture. Together these complementary approaches begin to delineate the social learning processes necessary to percussive technologies within the Pan – Homo clade.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document