Volume 10 (2018): Issue 1 (January 2018)

Cultural Science Journal is delighted to announce our successful migration to the Ubiquity Press platform. We are now ready to publish submissions received during 2018, which will comprise Volume 10 of the journal. We begin with several papers on the theme of ‘open knowledge’ and will add new papers on all topics as they are accepted. Each volume of the relaunched Cultural Science Journal will be cumulative over the year, so that work will be published in a timely manner once it is reviewed, revised and accepted, without having to wait for an issue. We are planning for 12 articles per annum to begin with, and are also open to reviews and commentary as well as research. Initially, the costs of publishing Open Access are borne by the Centre for Culture & Technology (CCAT) at Curtin University. In later volumes, we will encourage authors to seek funding from their own institutions to support publication of their articles. We hope to support the journal through events such as research workshops and conferences.

Audio description continues to be unavailable on broadcast television in Australia, despite the technological capabilities to provide it and the existence of a federally funded back catalogue or ‘secret library’ of audio described television content. This paper reveals findings into both the amount of audio described content that has been created but not made available to television audiences, while also reviewing existing innovative platforms for audio description, such as the app BAM-Describe. It contextualises these findings in an overview of the history of audio description in and outside of Australia, highlighting key technological and policy changes. Evoking theories of the preferred user and how this understanding of television audiences addresses disability, we argue that different interpretations of how audio description can be delivered, determined through a process of interpretive flexibility (and continued industry creativity and innovation) may finally shift the stagnating discussions around audio description provision, and thus ultimately change the accessibility of television for the blind and vision impaired.

This paper examines the development of open knowledge in China through two case studies: the development of Chinese open access (OA) journals, and national-level OA repositories. Open access and open knowledge are emerging as a site of both grass-roots activism, and top-down intervention in the practices of scholarship and scholarly publishing in China. Although the language, vision and strategies of the global open knowledge movement are undoubtedly present, so too are the messy realities of open access and open knowledge innovation in a local context. In attempting to position open access developments in China within a diverse and contested global landscape of open knowledge innovation we draw on Moore’s (2017) conception of open access as a boundary object: an object that is understood differently within individual communities but which maintains enough structure to be understood between communities (Moore 2017; Star and Griesemer 1989). Viewed as a boundary object, the concept of open knowledge is making it possible for China to engage with the global open knowledge movement, as a beneficiary of the innovation of others, and as an open knowledge innovator in its own right.

The paper distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge, productive or armed knowledge and connective or tribal knowledge, which it traces back to pre-modern antagonisms. It argues that open knowledge depends on a new ‘agonistic’ synthesis of these types. The aim is partly to show that culture is primary in determining what knowledge means and who gets to share it; and partly to compare formal knowledge institutions (especially universities) with informal knowledge systems (language and social media). Can knowledge ever be open if it is either armed or wild? If so, then how should we model openness? I suggest that situating knowledge in language, performance and play, rather than property and productivity, offers a way forward.

This paper explores the relevance of Dilthey’s conceptualisation of the ‘Geisteswissenschaften’ (human sciences) for Cultural Science. In a nutshell, I argue that Cultural Science is Dilthey plus Darwin. In this effort, I define the Geisteswissenschaften as ‘performative sciences’: Taking economics as an example, I show that the Geisteswissenschaften are sciences which are ontologically productive in creating and performing the object of their research. That means, they are inherently normative since they entail critical reflexivity as a major mode of research. Following Dilthey, Geisteswissenschaften are deeply historical, which implies that their disciplinary structure is evolving together with their objects. Therefore, I argue that the 19th century division of disciplines needs to be thoroughly overhauled in the 21st century, including the division between economics and sociology, which is a left-over from 19th century nation-state development. New disciplines, with Cultural Science and Technosphere Science as prime examples, must be established to cope with the challenges of our times: where human agency, culture and technology have blurred long-established boundaries separating nature, culture and society; where identity and meaning have become global, fluid, contested and reflexive phenomena; and where nature (the environment) and culture (cities) are inextricably interrelated in the dynamics of the emergent Anthropocene system.

Two potential forms of mutation in cultural evolution have been identified: ‘copying error’, where learners make random modifications to a behaviour and ‘guided variation’ where learners makes non-random modifications. While copying error is directly analogous to genetic mutation, guided variation is a specifically cultural process that does not have a close parallel in biological evolution. It has been suggested that the decision-making processes underlying intentional guided variation may produce similar results to cultural transmission as both are likely to be influenced by cognitive biases. This study uses a unique linear transmission chain design, without any influence of recall, to examine intentional guided variation. Participants were asked to alter news stories however they wished in order to make them more interesting, the product of their modification was then passed to the next participant and so on down the chain. The products of the chains were then compared with the original material so as to assess any underlying biases in the changed content. Through this process of guided variation, original material which scored low for bias-exploiting content significantly increased in at least one known content bias, whereas original material which scored high for bias-exploiting content was not significantly altered in this respect.