Call for papers
Dear colleagues - We kindly invite submissions for the following panel:
Cognitive anthropology and cultural transmission: legacies and futures
EASA Bi-Annual Conference 2016
July 20-23, 2015
Milan, Italy
Panel organizers:
Mads Solberg, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway
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Radu Umbres, Department of Sociology, National School of Political and Administrative Sciences, Bucharest, Romania
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Abstract
Cognitive anthropology has expanded considerably beyond the research agendas articulated by primarily American ethnoscientists and other proponents of ‘the new semantics’ from the 1960s and onwards. Today, not only ethnographers, but also researchers from a multitude of disciplines across the behavioural and biological sciences have contributed with insights into how cultural cognition and practices gets distributed, is transformed, and emerge from the interplay between a rich set of social, ecological and mental mechanisms. This pluralism is perhaps a sign that cognitive anthropology has finally come of age, as a mutual partner in a larger conversation between different modes of scholarship.
Observational and interpretative studies of social dynamics ‘in the wild’ is what ethnographers do best. We propose that the framework of cultural transmission presents an excellent boundary concept that allows ethnographers to craft analysis firmly anchored in the ethnographic tradition, but that simultaneously enables them to participate in a larger scientific conversation with other naturalistic approaches (for example developmental and evolutionary models) that seek to rigorously describe and explain the encultured mind. We welcome approaches ranging from mind-informed ethnography to experimental approaches to mixed-methods takes on the relationship between culture and mind.
As a boundary object, cultural transmission in our opinion also holds the promise to bridge the chasm in anthropology between those who see anthropological knowledge as a naturalistic endeavour and those more sceptical of the naturalistic-scientific project. We expect works that tackle diverse subjects such as essentialism, kinship representations and practices, the transmission of cultural representations, moral reasoning, cooperation and communication, folk epistemology, and other domains (the list remains wide open).
This panel welcomes papers that explicitly engage with cognitive anthropology and cultural transmission on both a theoretical, methodological and empirical level so that we might take stock of current developments in the field. We are particularly interested to critically engage with the Cognitive Science of Religion e.g. the emergence of moralizing Gods (Norenzayan 2013, Baumard & Boyer 2013), the Cultural Group Selection approach (Heinrich 2015), or the epidemiology of representations (Morin 2011).
To propose a paper, please follow instructions on the following link : http://nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2016/paperproposal.php5?PanelID=4249
The deadline for submission is 15 February 2016.
For further information, feel free to contact the convenors, either Radu Gabriel Umbres ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>), or Mads Solberg ([log in to unmask]).
Cheers,
Mads Solberg
Doctoral fellow
Anthropology
University of Bergen
http://www.uib.no/en/persons/Mads.Solberg
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