Discourse, dynamics, and social change

Cultural Dynamics, 1988

Cultural Dynamics is a new scientific journal whose aim is to highlight the dynamic aspects of socio-cultural phenomena by treating them as processes. It is also a forum for discussing theories which model the processes of change and transformation in socio-cultural complexes. As the subtitle indicates, the journal will encourage a plurality of approaches in the study of the temporality of cultures.

If we want to study complexity, we must start out simplifying. The enormous complexity of human culture has long hidden whatever universal structures there are from view. It is a great advantage of the Tartu school model of cultural semiotics, that is presents cultures and their interrelations in a very simple way. At least this is true of the very rudimentary graphic models which I have distilled out from the numerous writings of the Tartu school. Such rudimentary models, it would seem, are the natural starting point for adding complexity, because they will permit us to realise clearly, at any point, what it is we are adding.

2013

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

We outline primary features of a theoretical perspective on processes of social change in human systems that deals with broadly defined kinds of process, the nature of variants that are expressed and consolidate as change occurs, and, with specific reference to agency, the ways in which intentional actors are implicated in the changes that befall them. Our aim is to contribute to a general theory of process that is not prejudiced by the possible misrepresentation of outcomes arising in particular contexts (e.g. modernity), or the contexts themselves, as being causal processes. We direct attention to four problems of a methodological and ethical nature that may arise when analysts strive for generality.

Primary to the discipline of Anthropology is the manifestation of cultures.

Societal dynamics is the pattern of change and stability in societies – alternating crisis and stasis. Societal dynamics is both history and contemporary news. . . . The issues we are to examine are: (1) how to analyze the complexity in such societal events and (2) how to relate this complexity to theories about society? These are two fundamental issues in the methodology of historical studies and of social science studies. Methodologically, how can one base social science theory construction upon the empiricism of historical studies? Methodologically, how can one integrate the social science disciplines to theoretically understand all of a society (instead of only disciplinary slices through society)? But before we begin our examination of history/science methodology, we review two ideas in scientifi c method – “scientifi c paradigm” and “scientifi c perceptual space.” These are central to modern methodology.

2013

This essay proposes a theoretical framework useful for the redefinition of the boundaries of analysis of the sociology of culture, and specifically in the evolution of cultural systems in relation to changes and readjustments of the social order. This idea, in these terms, is certainly nothing new, but, in this case, the element of innovation will be defined from a perspective that interprets the concept of adaptive cumulatively not only as the definition of a changing “grammar” which manages to respond on a very short timescale in evolutionary terms, under changing new socio-ecological pressures. It also utilises a model which is the result of a strong synergy between highly diverse scientific traditions. This last point could provide an important explanatory scaffolding.

Social Psychology, 2012

The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology

2008