An Information-Theoretic Measure of Cultural Success

I develop a simple but principled method for measuring the amount of culturally-transmitted information from a written target work that is actually retained in human minds and capable of influencing behavior. Using procedures inspired by Claude Shannon’s 1951 method for estimating the entropy of written English, I estimate the entropy of samples from the target work with a treatment group (those that have read a target work) and a control group (those who are of the same culture but who have not read the target work), using human minds as encoders-decoders in the communication model. KL divergence quantifies the information that the treatment group already knows relative to the control group. This method controls for shared cultural inheritance and does not require commitments to what information from the target work is important. The general technique can be profitably extended to a variety of domains, including evolutionary theory, methods of teaching, and the study of music.

“Internet + Tourisim” promotes the research on the inheritance and development of Jinan spring culture

With the rapid development of Internet technology, “Internet +” has enabled the development of tourism and helped the transformation and upgrading of tourism. Cultural tourism is having a profound impact on cultural inheritance and development. This paper aims to promote Ji ‘nan Spring Culture to move towards the direction of smart tourism by the deep integration of “Internet + Tourism”. Discuss reasonable and feasible inheritance, development and protection strategies. To solve the problems existing in the development of Spring Culture and tourism, protect and inherit the features of Spring Culture, and promote the orderly and healthy development of Spring Culture in Jinan.

“Présenter aux lecteurs français la littérature orale telle qu’elle sortait de la bouche des paysans”

The study of the language of publication of folklore offers a unique perspective on the sociolinguistic history of regional languages in 19th century France as well as on the wider cultural context of contemporary folklore collection. Regional languages had a subordinate sociolinguistic status vis-à-vis French, yet they had preserved a richer folklore heritage, which, during the golden age of folklore collection, was also considered to be a valuable part of French national cultural heritage. The fact that the folktales of regional languages were often published first or only in French translation reflects both the hegemonic position of French and the prevailing contemporary perception of folktales primarily as a universal human cultural inheritance rather than as the literary heritage of specific cultures; folktale publications were typically aimed at a wider national readership and the perceived universal content – tale types and motifs – was considered more important than the linguistic form and cultural context. However, the fact that folktale and above all folksong collections were also published in the original regional languages shows that there was a genuine choice of language of publication. The publication of folktales only in translation was controversial because the lack of original texts – as well as a lack of transparency concerning the collection process – potentially undermined the authenticity of the published folklore. The publication of folklore only in translation also resulted in the loss of an important part of the cultural heritage of the regional languages and its effective appropriation as French national and French language cultural heritage.

Reading with David Jones

Chapter 1 represents a major archival reassessment of Jones’s knowledge of and interest in early medieval culture and history produced in England, demonstrating that Jones knew many Old English texts in the original language and was engaged with the historiography of the period. The chapter sets out the findings of new archival research with The Library of David Jones, National Library of Wales, and in particular with The Anglo-Saxon Library (Appendix 1). This archival research facilitates a new methodology for reading with Jones and brings evidence from his reading, including previously uncatalogued marginalia, together with the drafts and manuscripts for The Anathemata. This chapter also places Jones’s innovation within the wider context of his reading of historical scholarship on the early Middle Ages, tracing the development of a scholarly poetics with which Jones reshaped a British historical and cultural inheritance for the imagined community of The Anathemata.

Analysis of Agricultural and Rural Work in Changyi City.

Agriculture is the basic industry of economic and social development, and agricultural and rural work is an important work related to the safety of food rations, increasing farmers' income, improving living environment, inheriting Chinese culture and promoting social harmony and stability. Focusing on the agricultural and rural work in Changyi City, this paper systematically introduces the experience of agricultural and rural work in Changyi from four aspects: industrial "quality improvement", environmental "optimization", cultural "inheritance" and governance "standardization". And the future development of agricultural and rural work is prospected.

What Conservatives Value: Reply to Blackburn

In reply to Dean Blackburn’s ‘In the Shadows’, it is argued that the situated nature of the conservative ideology entails that its adherents cannot have a substantive set of shared values, but that their values will typically be a cultural inheritance. The epistemological element of conservatism may not be the most electorally salient in any concrete context, but has strategic value as the common element of conservatism most likely to support a public reason defence.

Iron Age craftworks in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. An approach based in Cultural Inheritance Theory

The aim of this paper is to examine the craftwork on hard materials of animal origin from the Iron Age of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. We deal with the processes of craftsmanship, transmission of knowledge and the circulation of ivory combs and perforated bone plates. The Cultural Inheritance Theory offers a framework to help identify social dynamics in the craft productions and the transmission of the cultural knowledge between and among individuals (vertical, horizontal or oblique). Therefore, the consequences of these cultural transmission processes will be different for each artefact. This could be used to investigate relative levels of standardization within and between groups. For this we use various morphometric measurements related to the technological process of making combs and perforated plates. The results point to an oblique transmission with particularities linked to each object related to their formal and decorative characteristics and owing to their raw materials.

Die Rolle des Radiointerviews im Landeskundeunterricht Ein Mediascher in Paraguay

The tendency to apply media in regional studies for students of German as a foreign language (Deutsch als Fremdsprache, DaF) is no longer a novelty. Thus, we see media applied as such in multiple different forms, like videos, press releases, radio segments or online statements. This contribution is focused on the radio interview, as a constitutive part of the regional studies’ courses for DaF students of Germanistik in Romania. As a starting point serves the assumption, that the application of visual media can be enhanced through dialogue sequences, which further highlight the subject of the course. Through chosen interviews, that have been aired by the state channels, students can become familiar with such issues, that affect the German minority in Romania. The authenticity that is being sought for, will result from the primary situation of the interviewer and the interviewee communicating, as well as through the utilization of Rumäniendeutsch as the standard language of the German minority, living in Romania. Thus can cultural, social, historical and linguistic phenomena that are specific for the local German speaking population and that are (re)constructing the cultural inheritance of Germans in Romania, be regarded in greater detail.

Collective Imaginaries and National Identities: The Encyclopedia of Romanian Imaginaries

"This paper presents how The Encyclopaedia of Romanian Imaginaries. Historical Patrimony and Cultural-Linguistic Identities (Polirom Editing House, 2020) reflects the Romanian cultural identity. The five volumes provide a synoptic perspective on the cultural inheritance and spiritual identities of Romania. Guided by the powerful and innovative concept of social and cultural imaginaries, it uses multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies in order to highlight the main domains of Romanian collective representations. The scientific key concepts, which ensure the originality of the approach, are imagination studies (“recherches sur l’imaginaire”), semantic basins, linguistic fields, image constellations, and fractal identity."