The role of materiality in numerical cognition

Numerical elaboration and the extension of numbers to non-tangible domains such as time have been linked to cultural complexity in several studies. However, the reasons for this phenomenon remain insufficiently explored. In the present analysis, Material Engagement Theory, an emerging perspective in cognitive archaeology, provides a new perspective from which to reinterpret the cultural nexus in which quantification develops. These insights are then applied to representative Neolithic, Upper Palaeolithic, and Middle Stone Age artifacts used for quantification: clay tokens from Neolithic Mesopotamia, notched tallies from the European Upper Palaeolithic, hand stencils with possible finger-counting patterns as documented at Cosquer and Gargas, and stringed beads from Blombos Cave in South Africa.

The role of population size in folk tune complexity

A positive correlation between population size and cultural complexity is perhaps one of the most consistent findings in the field of cultural evolution. However, previous findings are largely based on studies of technology and are not necessarily generalisable across diverse cultural domains. We investigate the relationship between population size and complexity in music using Irish folk session tunes as a case study. Using analyses of a large online folk tune dataset, we show that tunes played by larger communities of musicians have diversified into a greater number of different versions but are intermediate in melodic complexity. These results suggest that while larger populations create more frequent opportunities for musical innovation, they encourage convergence upon intermediate levels of melodic complexity due to a widespread inverse U-shaped relationship between complexity and aesthetic preference. Our results show that the relationship between population size and cultural complexity is domain-dependent, rather than universal.

Environment and culture shape both the colour lexicon and the genetics of colour perception

Many languages express ‘blue’ and ‘green’ under an umbrella term ‘grue’. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments.

Exploring the socio-cultural aspects of e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia

Purpose This study aims to explore the socio-cultural aspects of e-learning delivery in Saudi universities from the perspectives of universities’ instructors and expert designers from the Ministry of Education. More specifically, this study examined the opportunities and challenges faced in the development of online learning environments at Saudi universities from a socio-cultural perspective. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative research study addressed pervasive socio-cultural challenges connected to e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia. Data collection methods consisted of 28 in-depth insider expert interviews as well a thematic analysis of documents related to socio-cultural aspects of e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia. Findings Findings from the data analysis uncovered two main thematic areas connected to e-learning delivery in Saudi Arabia, namely, culture and female access to e-learning. Research limitations/implications This research contributes original knowledge to international online learning research about the social and cultural complexity connected to online learning development in Saudi Arabia, as well as in other areas of the Arabic world where similar e-learning development initiatives are underway. Practical implications This research contributes original knowledge to international online learning research about the social and cultural complexity connected to online learning development in Saudi Arabia, as well as in other areas of the Arabic world where similar e-learning development initiatives are underway. Social implications This research contributes unique knowledge about the social and cultural complexity connected to online learning development in Saudi Arabia, as well as in other areas of the Arabic world where similar e-learning development initiatives are underway. Originality/value The interaction between Saudi culture and online learning has nurtured a unique learning model that adapts to cultural values to provide a quality learning experience.

Shared and plural memories for new forms of proximity. A pedagogical perspective in neighborhoods with high socio-cultural complexity

This paper aims to present intercultural educational perspectives on the role that the traces of local stories stored in socioculturally diverse urban areas can play to promote new forms of inclusive communities within heterogenous educational contexts. The text will focus on some key concepts emerging in postcolonial research (Spivak, 2012a) regarding tensions and relationships between local stories – that today seem to be both plural and collective – and processes of community and identity building. It will try to underline how such theoretical perspectives can help us to read current diverse urban environments as «social laboratories» (van der Veen & Wildemeersch, 2012, pp. 9-11), in which new forms of «human togetherness» can emerge (Biesta, 2012). We will present in this perspective a few short examples from a North-East Italian diverse urban neighbourhood (In Fàula, 2011; Campo Dall’Orto, 2016).

Prophetic Sira and the Construction of Indonesian Islam

Indonesian Islam has gone through a long journey in its history since the first advent up to the present day. In this course, one should note that the process of Islamization was formed under a set of historical and cultural complexity. Among those, the role of Islamic preaching is the most important. Under this canopy, the process of transmission and transformation took the first place as the main force. As the Qur’an and Sunna are the major sources for all Muslims around the world. Both had also become the main streams in Islamicization. Seerat-e-nabi, beside the Qur’an, in this case has a place of honor. It became one of the major sources of all Islamic heritages in Indonesia. The prophet Muhammad PBUH (peace be upon him) was immersed within the Indonesian Islamic traditions in various fields and spheres. It is fair to say that the story of the islamicization of the Indonesian archipelago and the face of Indonesian Islam today is culturally formed by the determination of seerat-e-nabi, besides the Qur’anic scripture. In the other words, the birth and the face of Islam really depend on how its adherents interpret and take a cultural reception on the seerat-e-nabi. This paper tries to capture the prophetic heritage in Indonesian Islam in twofold analysis; transmission and transformation. The former tries to explore how the heritage of seerat-e-nabi flowed into the scene of Indonesian moslem life through various modes of transmission up to the present day. The latter aims at how the seerat-e-nabi became the force and inspiration for the various receptions of institutional matters.   Â

Cultural value in folktales and its representation in real cultural complexity: some personal remarks

Studying the induced meaning of folktales is a compelling field that catches great attention from scholars and anthropologists. However, there are few in-depth investigations of each story’s message related to the cultural behaviors. Cultural additivity is a concept that significantly contributes to human understanding of how folktales induce cultural lessons to social behaviors. In this paper, I attempt to comment the Cultural additivity: behavioural insights from the interaction of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in folktales in terms of its used dataset construction, equation, modern world application, and limitation.

The model crisis, or how to have critical promiscuity in the time of Covid-19

During the past forty years, statistical modelling and simulation have come to frame perceptions of epidemic disease and to determine public health interventions that might limit or suppress the transmission of the causative agent. The influence of such formulaic disease modelling has pervaded public health policy and practice during the Covid-19 pandemic. The critical vocabulary of epidemiology, and now popular debate, thus includes R0, the basic reproduction number of the virus, ‘flattening the curve’, and epidemic ‘waves’. How did this happen? What are the consequences of framing and foreseeing the pandemic in these modes? Focusing on historical and contemporary disease responses, primarily in Britain, I explore the emergence of statistical modelling as a ‘crisis technology’, a reductive mechanism for making rapid decisions or judgments under uncertain biological constraint. I consider how Covid-19 might be configured or assembled otherwise, constituted as a more heterogeneous object of knowledge, a different and more encompassing moment of truth – not simply as a measured telos directing us to a new normal. Drawing on earlier critical engagements with the AIDS pandemic, inquiries into how to have ‘theory’ and ‘promiscuity’ in a crisis, I seek to open up a space for greater ecological, sociological, and cultural complexity in the biopolitics of modelling, thereby attempting to validate a role for critique in the Covid-19 crisis.