Culture, Theory and Critique is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal for the transformation and development of critical theories in the

humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique's approach to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridisation via recontextualisation and transculturation. The reconceptualisation of critical theories is achieved by:
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assessing how well theories emerging from particular spatial, cultural, geographical and historical contexts travel and translate into new conjunctures. confronting theories with their limitations or aporias through immanent critique. applying theories to cultural, literary, social and political phenomena in order to test them against their respective fields of concern and to generate critical feedback. interfacing theories from different intellectual, disciplinary and institutional settings.

Given its interdisciplinary character, Culture, Theory and Critique will appeal to anyone working at the interface between disciplines such as gender studies, cultural studies, critical geography, historiography, literary theory and criticism, film studies, philosophy, postcolonialism, social and political theory and visual culture. Culture, Theory and Critique is an intercultural journal whose success depends on contributions from a variety of sources, so that debate between different perspectives can be stimulated. One of the aims of the journal is to break down theoretical hierarchies and latent intellectual hegemonies, which can be achieved only if voices from places other than Anglophone centres are heard. Every endeavour will be made for each issue of the journal to incorporate perspectives from diverse cultural, intellectual and geographical contexts. See the Instructions for Authors for further details.
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/RCTC

cultural theory
A Dictionary of Sociology | 1998 | GORDON MARSHALL | 700+ words | Copyright

cultural theory This term has been applied to diverse attempts to conceptualize and understand the dynamics of culture. Historically these have involved arguments about the relationship between culture and nature, culture and society (including material social processes), the split between high and low culture, and the interplay between cultural tradition and cultural difference and diversity. Cultural theory has also been marked by an engagement with concepts which have often been taken to cover some of the same ground signified by the notion of culture itself. Prominent here have been the concepts of ideology and consciousness (particularly its collective forms).

The works of Raymond Williams (The Long Revolution, 1961) and E. P. Thompson (The Making of the English Working Class, 1963) have been particularly influential in the development of post-war British cultural theory. Williams's emphasis on culture as a whole way of life and Thompson's emphasis on culture as the way in which groups handle the raw material of social and material existence opened up new ways of thinking about culturein particular uncoupling the concept from a narrow literary and aesthetic reference. Both Williams and Thompson studied the lived dimension of culture and the active and collective process of fashioning meaningful ways of life. The so-called culturalist reading of the term developed by both Thompson and Williams was subsequently challenged by other more obviously structuralist interpretations. These emphasized the external symbolic structures of culture, as embodied in cultural languages and codes, rather than its lived forms. In this formulation culture could be read as a signifying system through which the social world was mapped. The structuralist version of cultural theory was also strongly informed by Louis Althusser's version of Marxism. Althusser offered a reworking of Marxist theories of ideology which gave greater scope to the efficacy of the ideological realm. In particular he emphasized the relative autonomy of the ideological or cultural domain whilst holding on to the principle of the ultimately determining character of economic relations and processes.
HYPERLINK "http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-

-culturaltheory.html

Cultural Theory
Integrated assessment models attempt to account for interactions between social and natural systems. One of the more recent bold initiatives in this regard is the attempt to account for the role that cultural perspectives play in framing outcomes in the TARGETS integrated assessment model (van Asselt et al., 1995; Rotmans, 1994; Janssen and Rotmans, 1995). The TARGETS group is to be commended for their attempt to make explicit the role of cultural perspectives on model outcomes. The TARGETS group base their representations of cultural theory on the work of Schwartz and Thompson (1990) and Thompson et al. (1990), which combines anthropological and ecological insights. This work raises a number of important issues in doing integrated assessments. Among them is the issue of how a hybrid community like that of integrated assessment, that is often isolated from the disciplines that contribute to it, provides quality control over theoretical and analytical perspectives that are imported into the integrated assessment realm for the first time. This problem is especially acute, as in this case, where the field from which the theoretical perspective is imported (cultural anthropology) is relatively

distant from the usual areas of expertise of integrated assessment practitioners. There is a distinct danger that ill-formed or untested insights from outside disciplines can too easily become entrenched in integrated assessment models without undergoing critical review. These formulations might then provide the archetype for future representations of that type in integrated assessment models. Rotmans et al. (1994) note that ``Thompson et al. (1990) claim that their cultural theory is universal. They argue that distinctive sets of values, beliefs and habits (in nations, neighborhoods, tribes and races) are reducible to only a few cultural biases and preferences''. Cultural theory is one of many approaches that have been used to cope with the subjectivity inherent in analyzing long term global change. As we discuss below, claims of universality are highly controversial and difficult to defend; they also provide a primary distinction between Thompson et al. cultural theory and other approaches. Other classification schemes, for example, Ecocentrists vs. Technocentrists (O'Riordan, 1995), and Environmentalists vs. Industrialists (Lave and Dowlatabadi, 1993) make no claims of universality[FN]. In fact, the limitations of their taxonomies are self-evident. Thompson et al. cultural theory on the other hand claims to provide a universal basis for its taxanomy. It is not clear to us that it does. For that matter, it could be argued that cultural theory is not a theory at all; and, like the others, is another interpretive scheme. We dispute the claim that the Thompson et al. cultural theory represents a realistic model of the richness, diversity, and complexity of universal cultural underpinnings. We also question whether it is appropriate to apply it to biophysical phenomena in integrated assessment models as the TARGETS group does. In other words, we are concerned about what is left out when the Thompson et al. cultural theory is explicitly put in to integrated assessments, and what is arbitrarily introduced in the process. We are also concerned that the integrated assessment community has few mechanisms in place to critique good cultural theory from bad cultural theory, and good implementations of cultural theory in integrated assessment models from bad implementations of cultural theory. These concerns take on added significance in light of the claims of universality. The range of our concerns might best be summarized under the headings robustness, incompleteness, and model bias as follows:
Robustness:

The egalitarian, individualist, and hierarchist groupings in the Thompson et al. cultural theory are necessarily idealizations and generalizations, and this is generally understood by the users of Thompson et al. cultural theory. However, this raises the question of the robustness of these cultural classifications. It is unclear whether different people would make the same assignments of a set of cultural characteristics to the different groupings. The users of cultural theory in integrated assessment models make the assumption that because people have different perspectives, the role of these perspectives can therefore be elicited and characterized. It is not clear at all that this can be done, and the great difficulty of doing this contributes to a lack of robustness in the implementation of cultural theory in integrated assessment models. The problem of robustness is even more acute when the Thompson et al. cultural theory is extended to categorize biophysical phenomena such as CO2 fertilization, soil moisture changes,

and aerosol effects in integrated assessment models (van Asselt et al., 1995). The uncertainties in these sorts of parameters are very weak functions of world view, and arguably have more to do with epistemological ignorance about complex properties of the Earth system than they do with cultural characteristics. The assignment of cultural attributes to variables whose cultural associations are very weak or hard to tease out is bound to lead to arbitrary analyses.
Incompleteness (what gets left out) :

The cultural theory of Thompson et al. leaves out numerous important facets of culture, though it is not our purpose to provide a complete listing here. Suffice is to say that cultural features such as kinship, esthetics, historical backgrounds and chance, and personality are difficult to capture in the Thompson et al. cultural theory framework. In the implementation of Thompson et al. cultural theory in the TARGETS model, policy options are determined by setting various model parameters according to the preferences classified by the different cultural perspectives. In other words, policies and outcomes are determined by who we are as egalitarians, hierarchists, or individuals. But just who we are changes according to the sorts of choices we make. Any static view of cultural theory fails to capture the dynamic nature of human perspectives which change over time, partly as a result of earlier decisions made according to earlier preferences.
Model Bias (what gets put in) :

It is also important to bear in mind that much of what is left out when cultural theory is added to integrated assessment models may not even be amenable to the modeling form. In the words of Shackley and Wynne (1995), ``much of the cultural, political and institutional is highly variable, ever changing and uncertain, or possibly, indeterminate and unpredictable. It does not lend itself to ready quantification in an integrated modeling framework''. Furthermore, use of the model framework selectively employs from the cultural domain only those attributes which can be expressed in parameterized form in the model. IA models with different structure and design will be able to represent different aspects of culture, perhaps spanning much of what we value in this domain, though any single model will always exclude certain facets when a particular model structure is chosen. The fact that implementation of any particular version of cultural theory in IA models lacks robustness, entails incompleteness, and introduces a model bias in representation of the theory is not reason not to engage in the exercise. However, we have to be aware that selective compromises will be made in the exercise, and the shortcomings of the theory and the biases introduced in model implementation of the theory should be explicitly articulated. As part of this latter process, it will be necessary to initiate studies of cultural theory and global change in nonmodelling integrated assessment frameworks as well. Unless we pursue non-modelling IA approaches in tandem with modelling approaches, the insights from integrated assessments will be skewed by incorporating only that which is most easily represented in model frameworks
HYPERLINK "http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mva/iamcc.tg/RKP95/node12.html"http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/ html

Social and Cultural Theories

Kendra Knudtzon
kendra@cs.umd.edu October 2002

Overview
Social and cultural theories strive to explain how people relate to each other and/or the surrounding environment. As people increasingly use technology to communicate with one another, either as individuals, groups, or communities; social and cultural theories become more relevant for HCI. Technology needs to be designed in a way that supports this cooperative behavior. Sociability becomes as important as usability when designing interfaces for collaborative/communicative technologies. Social and cultural theories can help define new areas and give new perspectives to HCI research. Social and cultural theories are very broad topic to discuss in a paper of this scope, so instead of specific details, this paper attempts to give a general picture of the type of research that is important to the HCI community. Many of these topics warrant full descriptions (or books) to understand the impact, so in addition to the general overview, the reader is encouraged to investigate the theories further by looking at the links and references.

Scope, Application, and Limitations

Social and cultural theories have broad scope in HCI research. These theories affect HCI research and are affected by HCI research. In addition, while individual behavior (cognition) is fairly well understood, group or cooperative behavior (social/cultural) is an active area of research: there is still much to be understood. Social and cultural research is still at a defining stage, as such; it may be difficult to apply the preliminary theories of this research to HCI. The CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) community is a new field that tries to merge these areas (HCI and social and cultural models); Olson & Olson report that they are still at the stage of building illustrative point systems, or examples of what can be done to support work with computers. Evaluation, characterizing relationships, and finding models or theories that guide system design are still primarily unexplored areas of research (Olson & Olson 1997). Another limitation is that there is dispute about social theories and computer related socialability: there is fear that online communities, email, or usage of the Internet destroys personal social relationships. Technology greatly affects the social patterns of people, and thus traditional theories of sociology might not be relevent when these new factors (like the technology) are introduced. The way that social theories is understood can also affect technology; and so the two

interact in a complex way, which leads to very qualitative research, often with unclear or disputed models or theories of interaction.

Principles
There are many social and cultural theories that relate to HCI, but this relationship is not straightforward. Social and cultural research is not "neat" scientific research: there are too many factors that complicate the research. Much of the research in this area is qualitative, and thus the theories tend to be more descriptive. Social and cultural theories can be useful in HCI research, but the interaction goes both ways. This section outlines some of the areas of active research in these domains, some of these domains center around one encompassing theory, but others pull descriptive theories from several areas and try to start understanding the areas of research that might produce new theories. Social informatics studies social aspects of computerization, including use, design, and consequences of technology. The social context of information technology development and use plays a significant role in influencing the ways that people use information and technologies, and thus influences their consequences for work, organizations, and other social relationships(Kling). This field studies the aspects of technology and system design that are relevant to peoples lives. Its a new field that is still formulating theories about how social aspects relate to computing in general, trying to predict under what conditions systems might fail, or trying to understand and describe technical areas with complex or ambigious outcomes. Similarly, social networks analysts try to describe fundamental patterns of social structure and how social networks can affect the behavior of people using them (Wellman). More information at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI/ and http://www.slis.indiana.edu/si/si2001.html http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/electronicgroup/electronicgroup.pdf The CSCW community, another growing field, looks at how technologies affect human behavior. Because the understanding of groups and organizations is just emerging (and is more limited than understanding of individual behavior), this community is looking at groups/organizations and cooperative technologies and thinking about the human contexts, analyzing individual, group/team, organization, and industry perspectives. The CSCW community also focuses on the socio-technical gap (the difference between what social aspects are necessary for a system and the ability to support those aspects in the technology.) The theory of situated action, which says that a description of an activity should include details of how it is situated in its physical, social, cultural, and historical environment, challenges theories of cognitive psychology, is influential in CSCW research (Olson & Olson). More information at: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ackerman/pub/00a10/hci.final.pdf Or in Olson and Olson: Research on computer supported cooperative work

Online Community research is a good example of how social theories and reseach interacts, influences, and is influenced by HCI research. According to Preece, an online community consists of:
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People, who interact socially as they strive to satisfy their own needs or perform special roles, such as leading or moderating. A shared purpose, such as an interest, need, information exchange, or service that provides a reason for the community. Policies, in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, protocols, rules, and laws that guide people's interactions. Computer systems, to support and mediate social interaction and facilitate a sense of togetherness. (Preece 2000)

The study of online communities looks at how HCI design affects community development. Preece encourages looking at sociability and usability separately to allow designers to focus on specific issues separately. In addition, her book (chapter 9) offers guidelines for sociability and usability. The following diagram (Preece 2000) demonstrates the sociability and usability needs that should be addressed when developing communities.

According to Whittaker, core attributes of an online community are: (Whittaker 1997)

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members have some shared goal, interest, need, or activity that provides the primary reason for belonging to the community members engage in repeated active participation and there are often intense interactions, strong emotional ties and shared activities occurring between participants

y y y

members have access to shared resources and there are policies for determining access to those resources reciprocity of information, support and services between members shared context (social conventions, language, protocols).

A community is a process; it develops and continuously evolves. Researchers studying online communities look at what makes successful communities. Guidelines (like Preece's) try to help designers creating new communities. Online community research is currently building theories focusing on attributes of online communities that can be used to predict which will flourish and which will die out. In addition, this field is looking at long-term research issues, such as studying theories from sociology about physical communities and testing if these theories scale-up to online communities. More information at: http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/onlinecommunities/index.asp http://www.acm.org/sigchi/bulletin/1997.3/whittaker.html http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/design.htm Activity theory looks at the relationships between a human and objects in the world. It offers a set of perspectives on human activity and a set of concepts for describing that activity(Nardi). Russian psychologists started this theory in the 1920s and 1930s, with Leontjevs model of activity as the most influential. A key idea of this theory is that human mind comes to exist, develops, and can only be understood within the context of meaningful, goal-oriented, and socially determined interactions between human beings and their material environment (Bannan in http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/act_dff.html) This theory helps to look at HCI in terms of activity, action, and operation, and to recognize that a full understanding of a users situation is necessary for useful design and evaluation. More information at: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/act_dff.html http://www.acm.org/pubs/interactions/vol2no4/depts/book.htm Distributed cognition studies cognition, from a cognitive, social, and organizational perspective. Researchers in cognitive systems assume that when you have more than one person participating in a system, the cognitive properties are different than the individuals properties, and that information from the group is redundant and variable. There are complex interactions between people within a system, and distributed cognition theories look at these interdependencies and try to understand the nature of communication and communication breakdowns in a system. Application of distributed cognition uses domain knowledge to warrant judgments about cognitive processes and aid in sifting through massive amounts of data (Halverson 1994). These applications can lead to discoveries about group processes, and these discoveries can influence HCI system design. More information at: http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/yvonner/dcog.html http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/cogsci/publications/9403.pdf Cultural theories examine people within in a culture and try to understand or predict how or why they act or react a certain way. In one study, Marcus and Gould looked at several dimensions of culture and applied them to global web interface design. Cultural anthropologist

Geert Hofsteade outlined five dimensions of culture that Marcus and Gould used as a basis for understanding global web design. The dimensions of culture were power-distance, collectivism vs. individualism, femininity vs. masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long vs. short-term orientation. These dimensions can act as models or theories for understanding the user when developing HCI systems.
HYPERLINK s/tichi/social.html

Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory (CCCT)

Chair: Professor Chris Weedon Director of Postgraduate Research: Dr Laurent Milesi

Situated in the Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy and with strong links to the Cardiff Humanities Research Institute, the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory (CCCT) is embedded within a rich and vibrant research environment offering excellent opportunities for both discipline based and interdisciplinary research. Many members of the Centre are also members of the English Literature Research Group, and there is regular dialogue with the Schools Philosophy Group, particularly those working in the area of Continental Philosophy. The Centre has a long and distinguished history as a field-leader. It was established in 1989 to create an institutional space for teaching and research in the (then) new field of theory. The first of its kind in the UK, and indeed one of the first anywhere in the world, the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory quickly built a strong international reputation for research into the work of Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan, among many other key names. The centres founding members wrote pioneering works e.g. Catherine Belsey (1980) Critical Practice, Terence Hawkes (1977) Structuralism and Semiotics, Christopher Norris (1982) Deconstruction: Theory and Practice and Chris Weedon (1987)

Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory that contributed significantly to the establishment of the field of theory as an area of teaching and research in the contemporary university and still today function as standard points of reference for scholars and students. After marking its twentieth anniversary with an international conference on Zoontotechnics (Animality / Technicity), at which Bernard Stiegler gave one of the distinguished keynote addresses, CCCT continues to be at the forefront of teaching and research in the now very well established field of theory, as its recent conferences and publications amply demonstrate. (See the Centre's Annual Report.) The Centre for Critical and Cultural Theorys main fields of research include:
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Critical theory: Deconstruction, Deleuze Studies, Poststructuralism Cultural history Film and media studies Gender and sexuality Postcolonialism, nation and culture, collective memory Posthumanism Postmodernism

In addition, individual projects exist in law and literature and music and culture. Members of CCCT are involved in interdisciplinary networks on Crime Narratives in Context and Wales-Ireland. They also participate in activities in the Schools Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research. Members of the Centre edited a number of journals and book series: Journals and Book Series
Research Seminars, Conferences and Workshops

In addition to its regular seminar series, the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory regularly hosts international conferences attracting high profile speakers from all over the world. In recent years it has organised conferences on Alain Badiou (2002), Deleuze and Cinema (2006) and Theory, Faith and Culture (2007). In 2008 the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory hosted the inaugural international Deleuze Studies conference.
Postgraduate Research Students and Visiting Scholars

The School offers two Postgraduate courses in this field:

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MA in Critical and Cultural Theory MPhil/PhD Programme in Critical and Cultural Theory

The School very much welcomes applicants from students from outside the United Kingdom. More information is provided on the Schools international page.

The Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory has a number of Erasmus exchange programs in place supporting both staff and students.
Cardiff Humanities Research Institute (CHRI)

The Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory maintains an active affiliation with Cardiff Humanities Research Institute, which is a founding member of the Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/research/ccct/

The Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT) is a project of the European Union Regional Development Fund (20082015), based on earlier collaboration in the Research Centre of Culture and Communication of the University of Tartu. The CECT is made up of the following research groups: Archaeology, Folkloristics, Ethnology, Semiotics, Religious Studies, Cultural Communication Studies, Landscape Studies, and Contemporary Cultural Studies. The CECT depends on transdisciplinary and inter-university (University of Tartu and Tallinn University) cooperation. The leader of the CECT is Valter Lang, Professor of Archaeology at Tartu University; decisions relating to the CECT involve the leaders and representatives of all research groups. The Centre of Excellence focuses in its research on the inheritance and creativity of cultural practices through the 11 000-year history, from ancient times to nowadays. In cooperation research groups search for connections between viewpoints in different disciplines such as ancient social and cultural systems, folklore heritage, contemporary everyday practices, evolution and translatability of sign systems, landscape and sociological processes, media and life story research, etc. The Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory contributes to developing the methodological and theoretical levels in cultural research, and the sustainability of cultural research in Estonia. We strive towards significant changes in both the self-understanding of disciplinary fields and in the comprehension of general theoretical models by juxtaposing and comparing data, theories and analytical methods, through the creation of an interdisciplinary environment, the development of cooperation, and by becoming acquainted with other spheres of research.
http://www.ut.ee/CECT/eng.html

Culture theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about culture. For Cultural Theory, see Cultural Theory of risk.

Culture theory is the branch of anthropology and semiotics (not to be confused with cultural sociology or cultural studies) that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms. In the 19th century, "culture" was used by some to refer to a wide array of human activities, and by others as a synonym for "civilization". In the 20th century, anthropologists began theorizing about culture as an object of scientific analysis. Some used it to distinguish human adaptive strategies from the largely instinctive adaptive strategies of animals, including the adaptive strategies of other primates and non-human hominids, whereas others used it to refer to symbolic representations and expressions of human experience, with no direct adaptive value. Both groups understood culture as being definitive of human nature. According to many theories that have gained wide acceptance among anthropologists, culture exhibits the way that humans interpret their biology and their environment. According to this point of view, culture becomes such an integral part of human existence that it is the human environment, and most cultural change can be attributed to human adaptation to historical events. Moreover, given that culture is seen as the primary adaptive mechanism of humans and takes place much faster than human biological evolution, most cultural change can be viewed as culture adapting to itself. Although most anthropologists try to define culture in such a way that it separates human beings from other animals, many human traits are similar to those of other animals, particularly the traits of other primates. For example, chimpanzees have big brains, but human brains are bigger. Similarly, bonobos exhibit complex sexual behaviour, but human beings exhibit much more complex sexual behaviours. As such, anthropologists often debate whether human behaviour is different from animal behaviour in degree rather than in kind; they must also find ways to distinguish cultural behaviour from sociological behaviour and psychological behavior. Acceleration and amplification of these various aspects of culture change have been explored by complexity economist, W. Brian Arthur. In his book, The Nature of Technology, Arthur attempts to articulate a theory of change that considers that existing technologies (or material culture) are combined in unique ways that lead to novel new technologies. Behind that novel combination is a purposeful effort arising in human motivation. This articulation would suggest that we are just beginning to understand what might be required for a more robust theory of culture and culture change, one that brings coherence across many disciplines and reflects an integrating elegance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_theory