An Evaluative Framework

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Measure Change ◽  
Theories Of Change ◽  
Variational Evolution

North American anthropologists and archaeologists have long confused the Midas-touch-like transformational evolution of Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward B. Tylor, and Herbert Spencer with the variational evolution of Charles Darwin. Following Franz Boas, evolution as a theory of change was allegedly discarded by North American anthropologists and archaeologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, they used the term “development” instead of “evolution” and spoke of culture change in evolutionary terms, often mixing elements of the theories and ontologies of transformational and variational evolution. Documenting culture change under variational evolution demands the materialist paradox be circumvented. This paradox highlights the question: How do we measure change in continuously variable phenomena? Paleontologists adopted the approach that each population of organisms is polymorphic; individuals are members of the same species but formally variable. Paleontologists compare central tendencies of temporally sequent populations, or chronospecies. Archaeologists who undertook frequency seriations adopted an approach that focuses on morphospecies, forms or types that occur in two or more temporally sequent populations. The occurrence of multiple types per temporal period highlights the variation upon which a sorting mechanism such as selection works, and the occurrence of one or more types in each of two or more temporally sequent assemblages provides evidence of connection between them required of studies of change. Recognizing that graph types, how phenomena are parsed into types, and theories of change are mutually influential allows evaluation of archaeological graphs of change in terms of their implied theories and ontologies.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Temporal Frequency ◽  
Line Graphs ◽  
Visual Thinking ◽  
Frequency Distributions ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
Analytical Tools

Graphs of quantitative data are analytical tools that facilitate visual thinking. In many disciplines, the use of graphs was preceded by tables summarizing quantitative data. Graphs known by North American archaeologists as “battleship curves” are temporal frequency distributions of relative abundances of specimens in each of several artifact types. They are unimodal frequency distributions known as spindle graphs. In the early 1950s, it was suggested that the idea of spindle graphs was borrowed by archaeologists from paleontology. Archaeologists occasionally used bar graphs and line graphs to diagram change in artifact inventories in the early twentieth century. The questions addressed in this volume are: (i) did North American archaeologists borrow the idea of spindle graphs from paleontology, and (ii) what was the frequency of use by North American archaeologists of each of the various graph types to diagram culture change during the early and middle twentieth century?

Final Thoughts

2021 ◽  
pp. 228-252
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman
Keyword(s):  
Culture Change ◽  
Regression Line ◽  
Computer Software ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
Communication Tools ◽  
Major Purpose ◽  
Graph Type ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Variational Evolution ◽  
Over Time

Graphs are analytical tools and communication tools, and they summarize visually what has been learned. Granting that a major purpose of archaeology is to document and explain culture change, it is odd that the hows and whys of graphing culture change have received minimal attention in the archaeology literature. Spindle graphs will likely continue to be the most frequently used graph type for diagraming change, but continued development of computer software may result in new graph types and styles. Recent modifications to spindle graphs include scaling bar thickness to temporal duration of the represented assemblage. Classic data on temporal change in kaolin pipe stem hole diameters can be graphed using a regression line, a bar graph, and a spindle graph; the different graphs highlight that how phenomena are classified, how data are graphed, and one’s theory of change are mutually influential. Deciding which graph type to use in any particular situation will depend on what the researcher hopes to illustrate, along with the goal to produce a readily deciphered graph. The majority of archaeological graphs that appeared in the twentieth century depict variational evolution. Once developed in the late 1940s, spindle graphs quickly became the graph type preferred by North American archaeologists. There is weak circumstantial evidence archaeologists may have borrowed the idea of spindle graphs from paleontology, but it seems more likely the idea was stumbled upon by early archaeologists who perceived unimodal pulses in artifact frequencies over time and developed general models of those pulses.

American Indian Geography

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Rundstrom ◽  
Douglas Deur
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
North American ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Native North American ◽  
North American Indian

Contemporary geographical research concerning North America’s native peoples is most conspicuous for its remarkably diverse set of subjects, methods, and epistemological stances. Indeed, it would be hard to find another AAG specialty group whose members do research in as many corners of the natural and social sciences and humanities. Some perspectives developed quite recently, while others emanate from a century of prior research by geographers, especially Carl Sauer and his students. We think these observations important enough to require opening our review with a description, albeit a painfully brief one, of the historical context for the current scene. In the early twentieth century, as now, there was a great deal of cross-fertilization between anthropology and geography. Deterministic thinking associated with environmentalist theory (e.g. Hans 1925; Huntington 1919; Semple 1903) elicited many critical responses from both fields. For example, the geographer-turned-anthropologist Franz Boas and his students sought to illuminate the full complexity of Native American life, producing a vast corpus of empirical studies. Many addressed geographical topics, including Native North American place-names, environmental knowledge, and resource use. These works were frequently termed “ethnogeographies” (e.g. Barrett 1908; Boas 1934; Harrington 1916). Others attempted sweeping continental studies of regional variation based on historical and cultural processes (Kroeber 1939; Wissler 1926). The historicist critique of environmentalist theory resonated with a young geographer, Carl Sauer. Sauer (1920) long had interests in American Indian land-use practices, or “land management” in current parlance. Regular interaction with Boas’s students, especially Kroeber and Lowie, coupled with independent development of their own geographical ideas, led Sauer and his students to expand their research on North American Indian cultural geography, including such subjects as settlement patterns (e.g. Sauer and Brand 1930), plant use (e.g. Carter 1945), and resources and material and oral culture (e.g. Kniffen 1939). Sauer, his large number of Ph.D. students, and his student’s students, continued to define this research agenda throughout the twentieth century (e.g. Kniffen et al. 1987; Sauer 1971). The continued relevance of this work was signaled recently by the reissue of two classic texts in new editions (Denevan 1992a; Waterman 1993).

Tito Caula’s photographic imaginary and mid-century Caraqueño modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Russell White
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consumer Society ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Physical Changes

The photography of the Argentinian photographer Francisco ‘Tito’ Caula tracked some of the key social and physical changes that Caracas underwent during the middle decades of the twentieth century. This period saw the country transition from dictatorship to democracy. Caula’s advertising photographs together with his images of spectacular spaces and buildings such as the Sabana Grande and the Centro Simón Bolívar presented Caracas as a mecca of mid-century ‘petro-modernity’ (LeMenager 2014). In contrast to late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernity, which was predominantly European in influence, Caraqueño modernity at mid-century was more cosmopolitan, taking particular inspiration from the United States. Caula’s photographs speak to the process of Americanization, defined as the adoption of North American cultural products, urban forms and patterns of living that Venezuela underwent during the years Caula spent in the country. Venezuela witnessed an economic boom in the 1960s and 70s, which was fuelled by the US acquisition of Venezuelan oil. In Venezuela, the boom facilitated the growth of a consumer society as well as the development of such quintessentially North American urban forms as freeways, shopping malls, drive-in movie theatres, suburbs and skyscrapers. It was also accompanied by the adoption of violent security tactics by the state’s security apparatus and the political marginalization of the radical left. Given that Caula held left-wing views, it is perhaps surprising that his photographs (at least those that have been published) do not explore the tensions at the heart of the Pacto de Punto Fijo, instituted to ensure that the transition from dictatorship to democracy would hold following elections in 1958. The celebration of North American influence within Caula’s photographs puts them in dialogue with critical perspectives that have seen US cultural influence rather more negatively. Moreover, their celebration of prosperity and their presentation of Caracas as an exciting city means that, for some, they have taken on a nostalgic hue.

Wilhelm Von Humboldt and North American Ethnolinguistics

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 111-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. F. Konrad Koerner
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Wilhelm Von Humboldt ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
The Relationship

Summary Noam Chomsky’s frequent references to the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt during the 1960s produced a considerable revival of interest in this 19th-century scholar in North America. This paper demonstrates that there has been a long-standing influence of Humboldt’s ideas on American linguistics and that no ‘rediscovery’ was required. Although Humboldt’s first contacts with North-American scholars goes back to 1803, the present paper is confined to the posthumous phase of his influence which begins with the work of Heymann Steinthal (1823–1899) from about 1850 onwards. This was also a time when many young Americans went to Germany to complete their education; for instance William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) spent several years at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin (1850–1854), and in his writings on general linguistics one can trace Humboldtian ideas. In 1885 Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899) published an English translation of a manuscript by Humboldt on the structure of the verb in Amerindian languages. A year later Franz Boas (1858–1942) arrived from Berlin soon to establish himself as the foremost anthropologist with a strong interest in native language and culture. From then on we encounter Humboldtian ideas in the work of a number of North American anthropological linguists, most notably in the work of Edward Sapir (1884–1939). This is not only true with regard to matters of language classification and typology but also with regard to the philosophy of language, specifically, the relationship between a particular language structure and the kind of thinking it reflects or determines on the part of its speakers. Humboldtian ideas of ‘linguistic relativity’, enunciated in the writings of Whitney, Brinton, Boas, and others, were subsequently developed further by Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941). The transmission of the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – which still today is attracting interest among cultural anthropologists and social psychologists, not only in North America – is the focus of the remainder of the paper. A general Humboldtian approach to language and culture, it is argued, is still present in the work of Dell Hymes and several of his students.

The Cult of Beauty

2018 ◽  
pp. 192-224
Author(s):  
Robert Holland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
British Culture

This chapter details British engagement with the Mediterranean from 1890 to 1918. It has been argued that cultural despair was the distinguishing mark of modernism in the British compared to their European and North American counterparts, where a generally upbeat tone was more evident. Since the age of the Grand Tour, a pathology deeply marked by Mediterranean influences had characterized British culture. Thus, it was only logical that this remained true entering the twentieth century, and that despair and a sense of national fragility remained part of the mix. That hallmark characteristic had various roots, but critical to it was a continuing apprehension that the British remained unique as a leading European power in lacking an authentic, mature civilization of their own.

scholarly journals Theory of Change in Digital Behavior Change Interventions (Dbcis) And Community-Based Change Initiatives – A General Framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 554-569
Author(s):  
Dana Rad ◽  
Gavril Rad
Keyword(s):  
Behavior Change ◽  
Psychological Intervention ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Change Initiatives ◽  
Complex Situation ◽  
Behavior Change Interventions ◽  
Intermediate Outcomes ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Theories Of Change

A theory of change is a purposeful model of how an initiative, such as a policy, a strategy, a program, a project or an intervention contributes through a chain of early and intermediate outcomes to the intended result. Theories of change help navigate the complexity of social change. Digital behavior change interventions (DBCIs) and Community-based change initiatives represent complex designable systems. The goal of the DCBI is to provide an effective theoretical framework for behavioral change to practitioners that offer different forms of psychological intervention based on scientifically validated practices. Applying theory of change when designing digital individual and community interventions for optimizing digital wellbeing helps practitioners to achieve results in practice, as this strategic approach is generally considered an evidence-based framework. Theory of change is useful to guide the strategic thinking and action, as most of DCBI/ Community-based change initiatives research endeavors are active in a complex situation, often unplanned events happening. Conclusions and implications are discussed.

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