Cultural Evolution: Adaptive Diversification in Language and Religion

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Doebeli
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Adaptive Diversification ◽  
Historic Record ◽  
Mainstream Culture

This chapter examines adaptive diversification in language and religion. The historic record contains many examples of the types of diversification occurring in these models. Diversification in languages has been rampant throughout history, and must have often occurred under substantial contact between hosts of diverging language memes. Similarly, it seems clear that religious diversification has often occurred, and continuous to occur, under conditions of substantial contact. The models illustrate that diversifying processes should be expected to operate whenever the likelihood of secession from a dominant culture increases with increasing dominance of the mainstream culture. Intuitively, it is not hard to imagine that the attractiveness of a culture diminishes as the culture becomes more dominant, dogmatic, and perhaps oppressive, and that the desire to stand out and be different increases in increasingly conformist cultures.

scholarly journals “Too Smart to be Religious?” Discreet Seeking Amidst Religious Stigma at an Elite College

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kateri Boucher ◽  
Jaime Kucinskas
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Institutional Commitment ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Elite College ◽  
Culture Influence ◽  
Religiosity And Spirituality ◽  
Mainstream Culture ◽  
Spiritual Expression

To advance understandings of how religion manifests in subtle, nuanced ways in secular institutions, we examine student religiosity and spirituality at an elite liberal arts school marked by a strong intellectual collective identity. Using mixed research methods, we examine how the college’s structures and dominant culture influence students’ religiosity and spirituality. Despite an institutional commitment to promoting students’ self-exploration and inclusion of social “diversity,” we found both campus structures and mainstream culture deterred open spiritual and religious exploration and identification. The structure of the college and its dominant secular, intellectual culture reinforced: (1) a widespread stigma against religious and spiritual expression, (2) a lack of dialogue about the sacred, (3) discreetness in exploring and adhering to sacred beliefs and practices, and (4) a large degree of religious and spiritual pluralism. Our findings additionally illustrate that early exposure to the campus culture’s critical regard for religion had a long-lasting impact on students’ religiosity. A majority of students kept their religious and spiritual expressions hidden and private; only a marginalized minority of students embraced their expressions publically. To increase students’ comfort with religious and spiritual exploration, we propose that colleges foster intentional peer dialogues early in the college experience. Furthermore, we recommend that campus communities prioritize religious and spiritual literacy and respect.

Intercultural Communication Challenge

2018 ◽  
pp. 258-273
Author(s):  
Sophia Ra
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Professional Interpreting ◽  
Mainstream Culture ◽  
Diverse Cultures ◽  
Communication Challenge

A leader in community interpreting, Australia provides professional interpreting services within its public health system. Healthcare interpreters face various challenges for a variety of reasons, including cultural differences. Existing research on healthcare interpreting focuses on differences between a mainstream culture of healthcare professionals and ethnically diverse cultures of migrant patients. Interpreters are widely regarded as bicultural professionals able to provide cultural information on behalf of patients as necessary or whenever healthcare professionals ask for it. However, research on healthcare interpreting in a globalized era should consider the changing nature of culture. The question of whether the interpreter should be a cultural broker remains controversial. Based on an ethnographic study of healthcare interpreters at a public hospital in Australia, this chapter aims to survey how multiple perspectives on cultural evolution affect healthcare interpreting.

scholarly journals Later-generation Descendants of Immigrants and Scholastic Effort

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Giuseppina Autiero ◽  
Annamaria Nese
Keyword(s):  
Negative Influence ◽  
Social Rejection ◽  
Ethnic Background ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scholastic Effort ◽  
Mainstream Culture

Later-generation descendants of immigrants generally negotiate their heritage and mainstream culture, and all the factors that affect the mediation play a crucial role. During early adolescence, the extent to which individuals may identify with the two cultures is largely determined by the attitudes of family towards integration and the attitudes of host countries in terms, for instance, of social rejection. We empirically assess the influence of heritage and dominant culture on teens’ scholastic effort and attitude towards school. The analysis relies on a sample of teens aged 14, born in the UK between 2000 and 2002; the data are drawn from the Millennium Cohort Study Sixth Sweep. The results show that ethnic background along with religion count and that the experience of social rejection has a negative influence. Overall, the evidence shows the possibility that all the factors that help the mediation between ethnic background and mainstream culture by promoting the development of a cohesive identity foster the motivation of scholastic effort.

Revelation, Realia, and Religion: Archaeology in the Interpretation of the Apocalypse

1995 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Friesen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Mainstream Culture

The use of archaeological materials for interpreting New Testament texts poses many problems. While many archaeologists have interpreted the Hebrew Bible, this early interface of archaeology and the study of the Hebrew scriptures is due in part to the fact that the relation-ship between biblical texts and the realia from Palestine seemed more direct. Since archaeological materials tend to deal with mainstream culture and since the texts from Israel and Judah were connected to institutions that were part of that area's dominant culture, the study of archaeology has contributed much to an understanding of the Hebrew scriptures.

Becoming and being goth: How goths remember the scene’s transition from the eighties into the nineties

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Trevor Bamford ◽  
Joseph Ibrahim ◽  
Karl Spracklen
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
The World ◽  
Mainstream Culture ◽  
The Way

Goth emerged from post-punk, and by the 1980s became an identifiable feature of the popular music scene and wider popular culture. Fuelled by the success of bands such as the Sisters of Mercy, goth music and culture spread around the world, interacting with wider alternative, gothic fashions. At the end of the 1980s, goth reached a peak of interest followed by retrenchment into the alternative, subcultural spaces from which it had emerged. Nonetheless, it survives. In this article, we interview goths who became active in the 1980s and who remain engaged in order to understand how they became goths and what goth meant to them then. Using memory work, we are interested in how these goths construct their own histories and mythologies, and what this might tell us about the political and sociological importance of goth as a counter-hegemonic space at a time of globalization, consumption and commodification. We explore how they remember goth emerging from the post-punk scene with its radical politics and alternative, anti-mainstream culture. We examine the way these individuals remember becoming goth and their awareness of being in a goth scene. We then show how they remember and construct stories of when goth retrenched in an alternative underground that reconstructed the counter-hegemonic politics of punk and post-punk. Finally, we show what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s and argue that the scene, or that part of the scene represented by our goths, is following a dialectical path carved out of the neo-Gramscian concept of negotiation when faced with the culturally and aesthetically hegemonic effect of a dominant culture.

scholarly journals Pepe the Frog: A Case Study of the Internet Meme and its Potential Subversive Power to Challenge Cultural Hegemonies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Pettis
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Mainstream Culture ◽  
And Control

This thesis examines Internet memes, a unique medium that has the capability to easily and seamlessly transfer ideologies between groups. It argues that these media can potentially enable subcultures to challenge, and possibly overthrow, hegemonic power structures that maintain the dominance of a mainstream culture. I trace the meme from its creation by Matt Furie in 2005 to its appearance in the 2016 US Presidential Election and examine how its meaning has changed throughout its history. I define the difference between a meme instance and the meme as a whole, and conclude that the meaning of the overall meme is formed by the sum of its numerous meme instances. This structure is unique to the medium of Internet memes and is what enables subcultures to use them to easily transfer ideologies in order to challenge the hegemony of dominant cultures.Dick Hebdige provides a model by which a dominant culture can reclaim the images and symbols used by a subculture through the process of commodification. Using the Pepe the Frog meme as a case study, I argue that Hebdige’s commodification model does not apply to Internet memes, because traditional concepts of ownership and control affect Internet memes differently. As such, the medium enables subcultures to claim and redefine an image to challenge a dominant culture. Unlike with other forms of media, it is difficult for the dominant culture to exert its power or control over Internet memes. Internet memes, therefore, have significant real-world implications and potential to empower subcultures.

Social transmission bias and the cultural evolution of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Beliefs ◽  
Over Time

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.

Refining our understanding of the “elephant in the room”

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Technological Culture

Abstract The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.

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