A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning

Publications of the Society for Psychological Anthropology

by Claudia Strauss, Unknown Author

Anthropologists must draw on modern psychological theories of cognition in order to understand how the shared schemas of a culture are learnt, and come to shape everyday actions and decisions. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn review a range of current psychologic al theories of cultural meaning, many unfamiliar to anthropologists, and formulate a new approach which draws particularly on 'connectionist', or 'neural network', modelling This is illustrated by original research on understandings of marriage, and ideas of success, in the United States.

Genres: Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural, Language, Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Khawla Tomaleh · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, a reader is invited to explore a culture as a piece of a puzzle, and to dig inside any of these pieces, to find an individual puzzle piece, each piece holds a puzzle of internal meanings, interacting with a pile of external inconsistencies, impacting any other puzzle piece that can be solved, so they can create together a new picture. This book also insists on the theme of “changing”; it addresses how humans receive meanings, patterns, systems, schema, and how they participate in recreating them by having their own internal system, which creates new thematic practices, “They recreate the public world of objects and events that they knew, reproducing patterns of experience from which the next generation learns.”

[Tonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a framework for looking at the hows, whys, and what influences make us behave, think and act towards one another in specific cultural ways ranging from gender roles to automatic responses when we perceive physical and/or psychological threats. Take time with this piece it can really change the way you see yourself and influence how you deal with others.

[Lyndsey Wolfe]

Kind of difficult to read and understand. I read it awhile ago but it is interesting if you want to learn more about cognitive theory.

[Kass · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was actually not that terrible! I hate theory, but Strauss and Quinn did a pretty descent job of explaining cognitive theory in a way that I was able to grasp. Surprisingly helpful!