Folk-Lore Meetings in California

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Studying cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory

Cumulative cultural evolution is the term given to a particular kind of social learning, which allows for the accumulation of modifications over time, involving a ratchet-like effect where successful modifications are maintained until they can be improved upon. There has been great interest in the topic of cumulative cultural evolution from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines, but until recently there were no experimental studies of this phenomenon. Here we describe our motivations for developing experimental methods for studying cumulative cultural evolution, and review results we have obtained using these techniques. The results that we describe have provided insights into understanding the outcomes of cultural processes at the population level. Our experiments show that cumulative cultural evolution can result in adaptive complexity in behaviour, and also can also produce convergence in behaviour. These findings lend support to ideas that some behaviours commonly attributed to natural selection and innate tendencies could in fact be shaped by cultural processes

Lexical evolution rates by automated stability measure

Phylogenetic trees can be reconstructed from the matrix which contains the distances between all pairs of languages in a family. Recently, we proposed a new method which uses normalized Levenshtein distances among words with same meaning and averages on all the items of a given list. Decisions about the number of items in the input lists for language comparison have been debated since the beginning of glottochronology. The point is that words associated to some of the meanings have a rapid lexical evolution. Therefore, a large vocabulary comparison is only apparently more accurate then a smaller one since many of the words do not carry any useful information. In principle, one should find the optimal length of the input lists studying the stability of the different items. In this paper we tackle the problem with an automated methodology only based on our normalized Levenshtein distance. With this approach, the program of an automated reconstruction of languages relationships is completed

Inclusion of additional studies yields different conclusions: Comment on Sedikides, Gaertner, & Vevea (2005), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75100/1/j.1467-839X.2007.00211.x.pd

Ceremonial organization

p. 151-229, [4] leaves of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.Includes bibliographical references."The Arapaho bäyaa[superscript n]wu consists of a form of the widely spread sun-dance and of a series of men's ceremonies graded by age, and a single but analogous ceremony for women. The men's ceremonies are performed by groups of men of the same age. These companies are not voluntary organization, but consist of all the individuals of a certain age in the tribe. There is a symbolic reference to war in most of the ceremonies; and the companies, or sometimes certain members of them, have social and warlike functions. All the ceremonies are under the direction of the members of the oldest society. Intermediary between these and the dancers are men known as the dancers' grandfathers, who instruct them in the parts to play in the ceremony, and provide them with regalia. The ceremonies are held in a lodge in the centre of the camp-circle, and consist of a three days' period of dancing. Very characteristic of these ceremonies are the numerous degrees of rank, which are indicated by differences in regalia. These differences in rank do not depend at all upon any previous religious experience or training. They have little purpose except their own existence, and are bestowed a marks of honor. While there are many similarities of detail between the sun-dance and the age-ceremonies of the bäyaa[superscript n]wu, due to their being ceremonies of the same tribe, there is nevertheless a fundamental difference in scope and character"--P. 225-226

Impact of culture towards disaster risk reduction

Number of natural disasters has risen sharply worldwide making the risk of disasters a global concern. These disasters have created significant losses and damages to humans, economy and society. Despite the losses and damages created by disasters, some individuals and communities do not attached much significance to natural disasters. Risk perception towards a disaster not only depends on the danger it could create but also the behaviour of the communities and individuals that is governed by their culture. Within this context, this study examines the relationship between culture and disaster risk reduction (DRR). A comprehensive literature review is used for the study to evaluate culture, its components and to analyse a series of case studies related to disaster risk. It was evident from the study that in some situations, culture has become a factor for the survival of the communities from disasters where as in some situations culture has acted as a barrier for effective DRR activities. The study suggests community based DRR activities as a mechanism to integrate with culture to effectively manage disaster risk

The Evolution of Norms

Biologists and social scientists need one another, and must collectively direct more of their attention to understanding how social norms develop and change