<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

The economic concept of rationality seems inappropriate in the context of creative innovation, because of its assumption that the tastes and preferences of agents are fixed. The concept of copying, of imitating the behaviour of others, has equal claim to the description 'rational' in an innovative context. Models of ‘binary choices with externalities’ are predicated on copying and potentially show us not only why most innovations fail, but also why big social changes do not necessarily require big causes. In the ‘Long-tail’ world of a huge range of choice, however, many choices are not ‘binary, either-or’. In the long-tail world, popular choices tend to become more popular, but not forever, as innovation drives a constant turnover in the popularity rankings. A very simple model of ‘neutral’ copying with occasional originality of choice can explain real-world patterns of long-tail distributions under continual turnover.</abstract>

Modelling Creative Innovation

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Cultural change constitutes a Darwinian evolutionary process, comprising the three Darwinian principles of variation, selection and inheritance. Yet cultural evolution is not identical to genetic evolution: the sources of variation, the forms of selection and the modes of inheritance found in cultural evolution may be very different to those found in genetic evolution. Here, I review research conducted in the last 30 years that has built a Darwinian theory of cultural change by borrowing the rigorous, quantitative methods developed by biologists to explain biological evolution, yet simultaneously acknowledging the differences between cultural and genetic evolution. I argue that the quantitative nature of Darwinian methods (e.g. statistical analysis, formal models, laboratory experiments) has resulted in a significantly better understanding of cultural phenomena than many traditional non-evolutionary, non-scientific approaches to cultural change in the social sciences and humanities. Evolutionary theory also provides a synthetic framework within which different branches of the social sciences and humanities may be integrated, equivalent to the “evolutionary synthesis” that integrated the biological sciences in the early 20th century.</abstract>

Evolutionary Synthesis in the Social Sciences and Humanities

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Despite a growing number of social scientists who view the evolution of culture as a Darwinian process, research in the field at large is still rooted in the orthogenetic, progressive models of cultural evolution that were popularized in the nineteenth century and brought back in a new form in the mid-twentieth century. This is unfortunate because it shifts the focus away from the fact that cultural evolution is driven by some exceedingly complicated and highly interesting mechanisms that await further analytical attention. A better understanding of human behaviour, which is at the heart of cultural evolution, depends on a general recognition that genes and culture are not separately evolving entities but rather co-evolving components of the human enterprise.</abstract>

A Few Misconceptions about Cultural Evolution

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The paper proposes a general theory of consumer behaviour in ‘social network markets’ – where individual choices are determined by the choices of others – by conceptualising such markets as examples of <italic>distributed cognition</italic>; itself part of an ‘externalist’ perspective on human identity. The paper goes on to consider the issues raised by this move, by working through the implications of a distinction between the ‘object self’ (or evaluating agency) and the ‘acting self’ (or implementing agency), a distinction that is required to account for apparent <italic>failures</italic> of choice within an individual. It transpires that ‘dysfunctional’ choices (choices that apparently harm the self) may be evidence of the evolutionary advantage of ‘dual selves,’ allowing for creativity to cope with novelty through open-ended learning. The paper uses this ‘dual selves’ approach to rethink semiotics and the emergence of meaning, building up an argument about the importance of copying, narrative and language in <italic>constituting</italic> identity though distributed cognition. Finally, the paper proposes that cultural science can reintegrate the study of meaning and cognition in order to analyse consumer behaviour and choice.</abstract>

The Cultural Science of Consumption: Brains, Networks, and Identities

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Illycaffé entered Brazil in 1991 with the simple goal of finding high quality coffee and with a simple but revolutionary procurement strategy based on a) direct interaction with farmers and b) on an Award for the best coffee quality beans. The entry of Illycaffé unleashed a series of long-lasting consequences and unintended effects that revolutionised the Brazilian coffee industry and enabled the emergence of the quality coffee sector from the undifferentiated segment of commodity production. This paper analyses the ‘butterfly effect’ of the emergence of the quality coffee in Brazil in terms of complexity theory; and more specifically in terms of constraints and sources on nonequilibrium. I show how the entry of Illycaffé worked as an attractor (pull-strategy) that caused the decommoditisation of the coffee sector, enabled the emergence of a network of quality producers, and caused the rise of a ‘long tail’ of diversity.</abstract>

Constraints and sources of nonequilibrium: a case of radical market transformation in Brazil

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The paper outlines the social forces influencing continuity or innovation in the traditional arts of Shandong Province, China. These are addressed under five headings:

<list list-type="order">
<list-item>The relative flexibility of material media</list-item>
<list-item>The gender based transmission of skills
<list list-type="alpha-lower">
<list-item>Male: Chayanov and craft production for the market during the slack agricultural season: Woodblock printing, toy-making, funeral models, ancestral and household shrine painting. Innovations take the form of new subjects, introduced to attract new buyers</list-item>
<list-item>Female: cotton weaving, embroidery, paper cutting. Most of the villages we’ve worked in still practice village exogamy (despite the law of 1950 banning compulsory exogamy), so that women take skills with them when they marry, whereas men’s skills remain in their village of birth.</list-item>
</list></list-item>
<list-item>Combined with the purpose of production:
<list list-type="alpha-lower">
<list-item>Male arts primarily produced for market, with 100s of years of market tradition</list-item>
<list-item>Female arts primarily for domestic consumption (although surplus cotton cloth has long been traded to increase family income), among which the daughter’s trousseau is an important component.</list-item>
</list></list-item>
<list-item>Disruption caused by the mid-20th century ‘social movements’ caused an enforced break in almost all crafts.</list-item>
<list-item>The acceptability of the arts to the intended audience (new but traditional themes in toys and woodblocks), and the movement toward fine art.</list-item>
</list></abstract>

Tradition and innovation in the traditional arts of Shandong Province, China

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This paper seeks to link anthropological and economic treatments of the process of innovation and change, not only within a given ‘complex system’ (e.g. a cosmology; an industry) but also between systems (e.g. cultural and economic systems; but also divine and human systems). The role of the ‘Go-Between’ is considered, both in the anthropological figure of the Trickster (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="j_csci.29_ref_025">Hyde 1998</xref>) and in the Schumpeterian entrepreneur. Both figures parlay appetite (economic wants) into meaning (cultural signs). Both practice a form of creativity based on deception, ‘creative destruction’; renewal by disruption and needs-must adaptation. The disciplinary purpose of the paper is to try to bridge two otherwise disconnected domains – cultural studies and evolutionary economics – by showing that the traditional methods of the humanities (e.g. anthropological, textual and historical analysis) have explanatory force in the context of economic actions and complex-system evolutionary dynamics. The objective is to understand creative innovation as a general cultural attribute rather than one restricted only to accredited experts such as artists; thus to theorise creativity as a form of emergence for dynamic adaptive systems. In this context, change is led by ‘paradigm shifters’ – tricksters and entrepreneurs who create new meanings out of the clash of difference, including the clash of mutually untranslatable communication systems (language, media, culture).</abstract>

Paradigm shifters: tricksters and cultural science

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This paper outlines a cultural science approach to videogames. Using the example of the independently developed <italic>Minecraft</italic>, we examine the dimensions of social learning involved in playing videogames that are characterised by relatively unscripted gaming environments. We argue that a cultural science approach offers an analytic framework grounded in evolutionary externalism, social learning and emergent institutions. We develop this framework by proposing a multiple games model of social learning.</abstract>

Towards a cultural science of videogames: evolutionary social learning

AHRC’s Emerging Themes &amp; Connected Communities

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Volume 13 (2021): Issue 1 (December 2021)

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Cultural Science Journal

 Cultural Science Journal is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original work on dynamics and change in culture, media and communications. It investigates structures, interactions, and processes of cultural systems at all levels of analysis and scales of application.  The Journal takes advantage of advances in cultural analytics, cultural data science, and cultural semiotics. It encourages active dialogue with evolutionary and institutional economics, cultural evolution studies, biosemiotics, complexity science, and network analysis, specifying the ‘uses of culture’ from personal meanings to planetary platforms and systems of meaning:   micro: individual agents, texts, objects, concepts, dialogues,  meso: groups, institutions, industries,  macro: planetary cross-system processes, the semiosphere.   Cultural Science Journal looks forward to publishing new work that could be critical, analytical and/or empirical, but is most often dialogical: interested in the production and translation of new ideas and knowledge, especially across perceived and disputed borders between systems, groups, and identities as well as academic disciplines.  Cultural Science Journal is a double-blind peer reviewed journal. There is no Article Processing Charges (APCs) or article submission charges.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 