Intro1. Curiously Parallel – The Nature of Culture Part I: Culture Makes Groups
2. Externalism – Identity (‘Me’ is ‘We’)3. Demes – Universal-Adversarial Groupishness 4. Malvoisine – Bad Neighbours5. Citizens – Demic Concentration Creates Knowledge Part II: Groups Make Knowledge
6. Meaningfulness – The Growth of Knowledge7. Newness – Innovation8. Waste – Reproductive Success9. Extinction – Resilience and Ossification Part III: Outro10. A Natural History of Demic Concentration
The purpose of a cultural science is to
provide an analytic framework for a
general reconceptualisation of the
theory of culture – in the original
cultural studies ‘ordinary uses’ sense –
one that is focused not on its political
aspect but rather its evolutionary
significance as a generator of newness
and innovation.
Rereading Darwinian’s evolutionary theory
Raymond Williams 'culture is ordinary’
semiotics (Lotman)
economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey)
evolutionary science (Pagel & Gintis…)
Building blocks of
Cultural Science
A Natural History of Stories, Demes, Knowledge & Innovation
Externalism
We don’t make culture,Culture makes us
Communication creates individuals - Luhmann
H. Sapiens is an extremely groupish animal – that is our evolutionary niche
Demic concentration
• deme (biology) inter-breeding pop.
• deme/demos (political) inter-voting pop./citizen• Deme (cultural science) inter-knowing group
• Demic diffusion (Cavelli-Sforza 2000)– Knowledge in a population changes because individuals move
into new populations
• Demic concentration (Hartley-Potts 2014) – Knowledge in a population changes because the group
boundaries change
Demes
• ‘We-group’ (against ‘they-group’)• Universal adversarial
• Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling
– Girlworld (Tavi Gevinson)– Australian national character (& war journalism)– Granddads (& stories they tell)– Neolithic revolution (Göbekli Tepe)
• Demic concentration makes knowledge/identity/meaningfulness
Malvoisine
• A groupish animal– Bad neighbours have different knowledge: when you fight
& defeat them: what happens to knowledge?
– Biologists say: group selection theory
– Cultural science: this (conquest) is actually cooperation
• The clash of systems & demes is productive of newness,
meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture
• What happens when culture gets big/global?
citizens & cities
urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems
meaningfulness
• Evolutionary theory resisted in the humanities
• growth of knowledge: elements of culture/‘memes’ etc?
1. Culture is not the issue, meaningfulness is
2. Meaningfulness evolves
3. Meaningfulness is complex and semiotic
Example: the invention of the gentleman: a cultural innovation that created new demes
newness
• Culture is Janus-faced– Looking back: preservation/protection– Looking forward: newness
Three theories of dynamic origin1. Randomness makes variety2. Consciousness makes creativity
3. Demes make newness Hutter & Stark’s economic sociology of newness: structural folds, tension, irritation
waste
• Optimal efficiency of cultural production is … really, really wasteful (just like in nature)
• Because that’s how communication works
• Example: the childish invention of culture
extinction
• ‘a prosocial groupish animal, honed by conflict & extinction’
• Cultural protection & cultural extinction
– Cultural protection (UNESCO) = ossification – Cultural extinction is loss of meaningfulness, not failure to replicate– it is also ‘demically relativistic’ (conquest as cooperation)
– Creative cities as model of open cultural systems
Two applications
[1] A Cultural Science Model of Innovation
– Cultural explanation for innovation
[2] A Natural History of Demic Concentration
– A new theory of long duree/communications technology/economy
The cultural (science) model of innovation
1. Culture makes groups2. Groups make knowledge3. Newness occurs at the boundaries of groups
– A new approach to cultural studies– A new approach to cultural economics– A new approach to innovation economics
What is culture?Cultural studies/ anthro/ sociology/ Cultural science
Capital Stock Makes groups
(a) Produced and consumed (high-culture, cultural industries, etc)
Source of newness
(b) Common knowledge, socially learned, institution-like, for social coordination
Identity Statics/Politics Identity Dynamics/Evolution
Origin of innovationeconomics Cultural science
Production function model Group dynamics and conflict model
Invest in more inputs ‘We-group’ dynamics of meaningfulness‘Externalized demic concentration’
Cooperation: combine factors/resources conflict, citizenry, childishness, cities
Innovation policy = economic policy Innovation policy = cultural policy
A Natural History of Demic Concentration
Updating McLuhan/Ong (human groups/ not minds)Deme = unit of semiosphere (Lotman)
Hypothesis: number of demes-per-person grows with technology of knowledge reproduction. This gives us evolution in types of economy
Natural history of culture, knowledge-technology & economy
• These epochs are a process: cumulative, separated by an ‘explosion’
• The plot is logarithmic, meaning acceleration
• Increasing specialization; time/space expansion of demes; literacy; …
What happens when demes-per-person increases?• Extent of access increases, & level of abstraction
• Scale & wastefulness increase
• Choice & imagination increase
A scientific theory, makes predictions, a testable hypothesis…