theory by Victor de munck
The Cambridge Handbook for Psychological Anthropology, Lowe, T. (ed): Cambridge University Press., 2025
This chapter traces the linkages between cognitive theory and methods as if they are like Ravel’s... more This chapter traces the linkages between cognitive theory and methods as if they are like Ravel’s Bolero, first comes theory as abstract and then comes its empirical companion, the method, then another; the process continues in a dynamic creative intertwining of theories and methods to this day. This is the story of the amazing success of this little corner of anthropology. It is in an antipodal relationship to cultural anthropology which is all tzimmes while cognitive has the dynamism of a science accumulating new knowledge standing on the shoulders of earlier theorists and methodologists. This chapter shows that methods and theory in cognitive anthropology have progressed in a logical and orderly fashion. In the three historical sections of this chapter, the intricate linkages across historical period are conceived as a fluid movement rather than as hard bounded stages. We start with Goodenough reducing culture to rules for behavior in the micro contexts that constitute life. This reduction is vital and necessary for anthropologists because humans have constructed micro-contexts that are derived from meso-level institutions and practices (like marriage), which again are subsumed by the macro-level evolutionary dictate to procreate or die out. While I do not dwell on the three level awareness of this twining growth, one can collate this chapter with that of Bennardo’s theory chapter and recognize the dynamic lock-step relationship between theory and method in cognitive anthropology.
Modern Folk Devils Frederiksen, M.D. and Harboe Knudsen, I., 2021. Modern Folk Devils: Contemporary Constructions of Evil. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-13, 2021
using the concepts of "cryptotype" (from Whorf) and the "imaginary"--now a rather common term tha... more using the concepts of "cryptotype" (from Whorf) and the "imaginary"--now a rather common term that refers to culture. I explain why Sri Lankan villagers shunned one woman for allegedly committing adultery but not other women who did. cryptotype is for Whorf the subconscious pool of semiotics that underly phenotypical meaning. It emanates an imagined but covert category. this idea is fully explored to show how villagers imagine the shunned woman's adultery as somehow worse than those adulteresses who are accepted in the social spheres of life
Our goal is to use prototype analysis to distinguish the folk or culturally held understandings o... more Our goal is to use prototype analysis to distinguish the folk or culturally held understandings of love, romantic love, and sex and to specify, from the obtained data, the semantic relationship among these three associated concepts. By considering the semantic distinctions between these three concepts, we come to an unintended insight: if romantic love is a socio-cultural universal it does not appear to have the same evolutionary history as love or sex and this may account for its somewhat ambiguous status in the scholarly literature on romantic love. We demonstrate that, in the United States, sex, in and of itself, is seldom conceived of as a relationship while love and romantic love are primarily viewed as relational. Our findings, though preliminary, strongly suggest that romantic love is a synthesis of two evolutionary drives: love (or bonding) and sex.
Journal of Globalization Studies, 2020
This study provides an emic, ethnographic and cross-cultural view of courtship practices in the '... more This study provides an emic, ethnographic and cross-cultural view of courtship practices in the 'modern' world. There are limits to our ability to generalize our conclusions to posit a global process. As such this study is suggestive of a larger movement towards new forms of courtship that favor individual autonomy, the pursuit to satisfy personal desires, even at the expense of interpersonal interests. Ilouz and Finkleman (2009) referred to this shift as a move from a 'premodern modal configurations' to a 'modern modal configuration' of love and desire. Our findings support the theoretical and interview data of the above study and work by many other researchers (e.g.
Journal of Globalization Studies, 2021
This study provides an emic, ethnographic and cross-cultural view of courtship practices in the '... more This study provides an emic, ethnographic and cross-cultural view of courtship practices in the 'modern' world. There are limits to our ability to generalize our conclusions to posit a global process. As such this study is suggestive of a larger movement towards new forms of courtship that favor individual autonomy, the pursuit to satisfy personal desires, even at the expense of interpersonal interests. Ilouz and Finkleman (2009) referred to this shift as a move from a 'premodern modal configurations' to a 'modern modal configuration' of love and desire. Our findings support the theoretical and interview data of the above study and work by many other researchers (
Scant attention has been paid in the social sciences to the problem of defining units of analysis... more Scant attention has been paid in the social sciences to the problem of defining units of analysis. The problem of using culture as a unit of analysis is that culture is not a unit of analysis like a jury is a unit of analysis. It is also a more ambiguous unit of analysis than religion, ethnicity or gender, units which are possible to identify and define. It is concluded that the individual is the least problematic unit for analysis. The limitations of using the individual as the unit of analysis are that group characteristics and behaviors can only be measured indirectly and studies are prone to the 'individual differences fallacy.' It is dubious that one can generalize from individuals beyond the community. There are no ultimate primitive units of culture and whatever unit for analysis the researcher selects depends on the questions asked. Always however, a unit of analysis must be clearly defined, it cannot be used as a variable rather variables are extracted from the unit of analysis. Most importantly, there should always be a theory of analysis that justifies the choice of the units for analysis. KEY WORDS: socio-cultural anthropology, units of analysis, culture, individual differences fallacy, religion, ethnicity, gender. ANOTACIJA Socialinių mokslų tyrimuose pastoviųjų analizės vienetų nustatymo problemoms yra skiriamas nepakankamas dėmesys. Metodologiniai klausimai visų pirma yra orientuoti į kintamųjų objektų aprašus, koordinates bei tyrimus. Tuo tarpu kiekviename moksliniame tyrime yra būtina aiškiai apibrėžti tiek pastoviuosius, tiek kintamus tyrimo objektus. Šios sąlygos ignoravimas tiesiogiai veda prie metodologiškai nepagrįstų, klaidingų išvadų. Analizuodami bendruomenės dėsnius, antropologai tokiais vienetais yra linkę laikyti individus, o tirdami kultūras, vienetais laiko atskiras bendruomenes, aptardami geografinius, kalbinius arealus -vienetais laiko vienokias ar kitokias kultūras. Ši metodika laikytina individualiųjų skirtybių paklaida, kai smulkesni vienetai (individai, bendruomenės) laikomi identiškais stambesnio mastelio vienetams. Visada abejotinos yra išvados apie individo elgseną, remiantis vien bendraisiais jo visuomenės dėsningumais. Nėra pirminių, pirmapradžių kultūros sampratos vienetų, ir tik pats tyrėjas savo analizės vienetu renkasi tai, ką jis nori ištirti. Labai svarbu yra remtis straipsnyje aprašoma visuotine analizės vienetų teorija, leidžiančia neklystamai pasirinkti tinkamą analizės vienetą konkrečiuose antropologiniuose tyrimuose. PAGRINDINIAI ŽODŽIAI: sociokultūrinė antropologija, analizės vienetų teorija, kultūra, individualiųjų skirtybių paklaida, religija, etniškumas, lytis.
I feel as if I have been standing at a cross-road in terms of my commitment and understanding of ... more I feel as if I have been standing at a cross-road in terms of my commitment and understanding of culture and cognition, particularly in terms of the role and reality of cultural models. not the legendary cross-roads of robert johnson but one where all roads are without signs and radiate out across a vast empty plain. Or, alternatively, it feels as if we anthropologists are standing at a cross-roads in the center of a market place where one can go in any direction to buy anything. I am speaking of course not just of my cross roads but that of anthropology as a discipline...where everything goes and no one listen to anything; where we live in the permanent subjunctive. We are at the crossroads where Wolfe's vision of anthropology as the most humanistic and scientific of the Social sciences has long ago combusted, and pockets of anthropologists like asteroids wander with no direction home. It seems appropriate that these wayfaring clubs of anthropologists question the utility of the concept of culture given that there is no culture of anthropology that serves as the family home.
Current Anthropology, 2019
Anthropology has an ambivalent relationship with its core disciplinary concept: culture. Beyond t... more Anthropology has an ambivalent relationship with its core disciplinary concept: culture. Beyond the rather vague but important notion that culture is shared and learned, there is little agreement about how to define and identify something as culture(al). In order to move beyond the "mush stage" of defining culture, we offer a disciplinary framework for considering how culture can be a collective that is individually held and used. Our emphasis is predominantly on the shared aspect of culture and the sociocognitive mechanisms that allow us to know something is shared and how this second-order knowing frames our actions. We posit that while culture does not actually exist, humans nonetheless take it to exist. We rely on researchers from anthropology, cognitive sciences, and sociology to show how culture can possess a causal force even though as a collective symbol system it has no agency in itself. We furthermore propose that cultural models are potentially the basic units of culture. The notion of social action as collectively meaningful human behavior is central to both symbolic and cognitive anthropology. Yet we lack a comprehensive understanding of mental representations that incorporates both cognitive and sociological dimensions of meaning. (Bradd Shore 1991:10)
Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 2020
In this paper I examine the strengths and weakness of both Radical Enactivist (i.e. anti-represen... more In this paper I examine the strengths and weakness of both Radical Enactivist (i.e. anti-representational) theories of cognition and Cultural Model theory. I show that the two are not fundamentally incompatible if one adopts a prototype property to cultural models. The paper examines how prototype properties that encompass connotative meaning defuse the critique of Cultural Model theory as unable to deal with the contingencies and ever changing contexts that comprise everyday life. I also critique the concept of affordances, the concept most often used by enactivist theorists as an alternative to representational models of cognition and show how affordances can be embedded in cultural model theory
Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 2016
We propose that romantic love is a biosocial phenomenon that may well be a universal and that its... more We propose that romantic love is a biosocial phenomenon that may well be a universal and that its cultural aspects are a product of social conditions. This position is unique because romantic love is promoted as a cultural rather than social universal. We argue that culture, social, and psychological phenomena are too frequently conflated and their core definitional features underdefined by researchers. Culture refers to learned practices that have collectively shared meanings to the members of a society. Under social conditions in which romantic love does not confer reproductive and health advantages to a mother and child, it will often be suppressed, undeveloped, and rejected as a cultural component. Through a cross-cultural study, we show that female status and family organization are important features that help in regulating the sociocultural importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage. The authors propose that romantic love is more likely to be a biosocial universal than a biocultural universal. We understand that there is a great deal of overlap between social and cultural, but we intend to make clear the distinctions, as we see them, between these two concepts. Boyd and Richerson (1985, 2005) and Boehm (1999, 2012) have been proponents of a biocultural approach to the study of ''the origin and evolution of cultures.'' These researchers have developed a biocultural approach that remains true to the ethnographic cross-cultural approach of anthropology first advocated by Tylor (1889). Our work fits into this model for cross-cultural research, with the notable addition that the focus is on social conditions and practices from which cultural configurations emerge. In this study, we hope to accomplish the following tasks: First, we intend to demonstrate that the social aspect of romantic love has been neglected in cross-cultural research on love and is just as important as culture, if not more so, for the study of romantic love; second, we intend to show that female status and family organization are important features in regulating the sociocul-tural importance of romantic love, particularly (but not exclusively) as a basis for marriage; third, in our discussion, we present an argument for attending more carefully to definitions of core concepts (e.g., culture, romantic love) and the explanatory limits and strengths (or parameters) of those definitions ; and fourth, we seek to stimulate interest in developing better (i.e., more reliable and valid) codings of the concept of romantic love (and other expressive/subjective concepts) in the cross-cultural databases. We began such studies over 15 years ago (de Munck & Korotayev
Ethos, 1992
In this paper I explore the relation of culture and self through an
analysis of folk narratives p... more In this paper I explore the relation of culture and self through an
analysis of folk narratives produced by Sri Lankan Muslim villagers.
Using Douglas R. Hofstadter's theory of self, I argue that there is no
integrated, single self, but only a self symbol that gives the illusion
of a unified, coherent self. I depict the self as consisting of a constellation
of selves. Subselves are variously foregrounded according to the social situation of the person and of the observer.
American Anthropologist, 2003
Edward Tylor had envisioned anthropology to be comprised of ethnology and ethnography in equal p... more Edward Tylor had envisioned anthropology to be comprised of ethnology and ethnography in equal parts, but today ethnography dominates the field. In this paper, we examine two reasons for the refugee status of ethnology. First, we look at the notorious "Galton effect." Second, we
examine the problem of defining and using cultural units, particularly
when positivistic and static theories and methods of culture have been
largely discredited by anthropology. We argue against any formulaic
solutions to these problems and show that for each research question
one needs to reconsider the criteria for how to construct cultural units
and how to ensure that the cultures under study are not merely replicas
of one another.
We show that previous solutions to these issues are limited because they fail to appreciate the contingent and multidimensional nature of culture.
We also argue that, instead of a "Galton problem," there is actually a
"Galton asset," which can be used to study historical and emergent
communicative networks.
[Keywords:cross-cultural, research, Galton problem, cultural units, methods and theory]
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theory by Victor de munck
analysis of folk narratives produced by Sri Lankan Muslim villagers.
Using Douglas R. Hofstadter's theory of self, I argue that there is no
integrated, single self, but only a self symbol that gives the illusion
of a unified, coherent self. I depict the self as consisting of a constellation
of selves. Subselves are variously foregrounded according to the social situation of the person and of the observer.
examine the problem of defining and using cultural units, particularly
when positivistic and static theories and methods of culture have been
largely discredited by anthropology. We argue against any formulaic
solutions to these problems and show that for each research question
one needs to reconsider the criteria for how to construct cultural units
and how to ensure that the cultures under study are not merely replicas
of one another.
We show that previous solutions to these issues are limited because they fail to appreciate the contingent and multidimensional nature of culture.
We also argue that, instead of a "Galton problem," there is actually a
"Galton asset," which can be used to study historical and emergent
communicative networks.
[Keywords:cross-cultural, research, Galton problem, cultural units, methods and theory]
analysis of folk narratives produced by Sri Lankan Muslim villagers.
Using Douglas R. Hofstadter's theory of self, I argue that there is no
integrated, single self, but only a self symbol that gives the illusion
of a unified, coherent self. I depict the self as consisting of a constellation
of selves. Subselves are variously foregrounded according to the social situation of the person and of the observer.
examine the problem of defining and using cultural units, particularly
when positivistic and static theories and methods of culture have been
largely discredited by anthropology. We argue against any formulaic
solutions to these problems and show that for each research question
one needs to reconsider the criteria for how to construct cultural units
and how to ensure that the cultures under study are not merely replicas
of one another.
We show that previous solutions to these issues are limited because they fail to appreciate the contingent and multidimensional nature of culture.
We also argue that, instead of a "Galton problem," there is actually a
"Galton asset," which can be used to study historical and emergent
communicative networks.
[Keywords:cross-cultural, research, Galton problem, cultural units, methods and theory]
of prototypical ‘‘caring’’ love and noncrude attributes of sex.
Using a freelisting technique and interviews we obtained fifteen even that were mentioned most frequently as being part of the courtship process. We wrote each event on an index card and asked a new sample to sort them in terms of which they thought was the most typical courtship pattern followed by their peers. From this we obtained a hypothesized prototypical courtship sequence. We took five sequences that were variations from the prototype sequence and asked a new sample to rate each sequence on a five point scale of in terms of how likely it was to be followed by their peers. We also asked them to point out events that came too early or late in the sequence.
We found that two models represented traditional courtship sequences, two transitional ones, and two modern courtship models. The main shifts in these models were that sex came earlier while parental involvement later in the modern models relative to traditional models. We also found that the prototypical sequence was considered as a transitional model. Our findings show that autonomy, the pursuit of pleasure, as well as the hook-up culture have significantly modified the courtship process.
for marriage will occur only in societies that allow both males and
females to give or not give love freely. Based on their belief that sexual
attraction or passion is a primary criterion of romantic love, the
authors hypothesize that there will be a positive correlation between
the importance of romantic love and social indicators of sexual
equality. Rosenblatt’s 11-point rating scale of romantic love is used
to test this hypothesis. The authors find that societies that allow
premarital and extramarital sex for both males and females rate romantic love significantly higher than societies that have a double
standard or have strong sanctions against female sexuality out of wedlock. It is concluded that the type of sanction against female
sexuality is the critical factor for predicting the cultural importance
of romantic love as a basis for marriage.
or gender differences between three national cultures: the United States,
Russia, and Lithuania.