The Foundations of Culture and the Moments of Social Information
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper on “The Foundations of Culture and the Moments of Social Information” addresses an important issue related to the foundational concept of culture in social science. The main assumption is that traditional approaches “do not, as yet, have a coherent definition for what culture is or what it does”. The authors argue instead, “culture then is best understood as a multilevel information-processing system, not as a static collection of traditions. Norms, institutions, and cultural patterns emerge from recursive processes that curate, stabilize, and optimize social knowledge (for social adaptation) across time.”
As an anthropologist, I could not agree more, and I believe there is no serious anthropologist who could argue with that. After all, this is the stock on trend of anthropology, that is, the anthropological concept of culture as an operational concept to investigate anything anthropologically. Roughly speaking, this is the stuff that is normally taught in any introductory anthropology class. The greatest merit of these authors is perhaps that they have couched such a stuff in more sophisticated terms.
The problem, however, is that the authors construct a strawman, which is not grounded in traditional anthropological approaches but in pedestrian folk understanding of culture, making believe that culture focuses on an external force that regulates behavior, imposed through enculturation of institutions or hierarchies, separating individual choices from societal structures, and promoting stability and continuity over change.
Actually, the paper is highly speculative and is grounded in nothing at all, except for two earlier papers by the same authors, making it even more speculative and quite circular, as it is not clear what we gain from those earlier papers to this paper under review.
I suggest the authors could highly benefit from collaborating with a well-trained social anthropologist to chart the elaboration of the anthropological concept of culture from the venerable 150-year-old definition of culture as a complex whole to the robust progress of the theoretical understanding of the world. Incidentally, they may show the overarching revival of the vigorous theoretical debate toward causal explanations that tended to disappear from anthropology after the postmodernist writing culture crisis in the 1980s. In this way, the paper could become an outstanding reading piece for anthropological teaching.
Whatever their choice, I believe the best part of this paper is the section on culture and the structural moments of information processing, which seems to be quite original. Another suggestion is therefore to focus on this issue and articulate the whole paper around it.
In all cases, the paper needs a major revision to be considered for publication in a research/academic journal.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article enters into the long debate about "culture," which has troubled anthropology for as long as the field has used the term. The authors' particular take is original and should stir some discussion. It is thought-provoking to introduce concepts like allostasis and "moments," and the paper will give scholars something to chew on for a while.
The culture concept has not only been defined in many ways but has been more controversial than the authors discuss here. For instance, 19th century anthropology hardly used the term at all. Kroeber thought that it was a "superorganic" level above us mere human "carriers." Leslie White wanted to make it the subject of a specific science, culturology, hinging on the concept of symbols (the word "symbol" or "symbolic" occurs just four times in the proposed article). British social anthropology did not have much use for the term, and Radcliffe-Brown argued that we cannot study it directly.
This takes me to the heart of my review/critique. The authors present a rather blatantly information-based, even cognitivist or intellectualist, approach to culture. That has always been one alternative, going back to Tylor and Frazer. I think that many anthropologists and other users of the term would consider that approach too constricted. At the very least, Bourdieu and his followers (which we almost all are) would want to introject the notion of tacit knowledge or "skill" as opposed to information in the normal sense. On the other hand, 1950s ethnoscientists like Frake or Tyler were also pursuing the knowledge that members have in their heads, which they believed they could elicit and construct into flow charts and classificatory trees. The authors might want to consider, and describe, what a cultural study would look like if it were actually done and written up following their recommendations.
On the other hand, there is a movement in anthropology to dispense with the culture concept altogether. Abu-Lughod years ago advised us to "write against" culture, and ontological anthropology of the last couple of decades is suspicious of culture as a manner of explaining away difference rather than taking it seriously. In other words, the culture concept and anthropology's relation to it is much more complex and contested than the authors say here.
In the end, I do not think that the article will end the debate or solve the problem, but I think it is a worthwhile entry into the fray. Anthropologists and other culture-oriented scholars will consider it, confront it, test and apply it, and probably be better for doing so. Therefore, while I think that there is much that the authors could (and probably should, at least in the long run), add to their analysis, it is worth the attention of scholars and worthy of publication.
Author Response
Please see attached response.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsMy impression of this article is that it is overly ambitious. It attempts to create a one-size-fits-all definition of the term ‘culture’, one that is universally applicable across the globe. In doing so, the authors do not discuss the limits of the applicability of their model nor the fact that in many respects it is a framework that responds to and is based on the structures of modern nation-states. In other words, the backdrop that the reader must imagine is that of a modern nation-state. Moreover, that assumption is built into terms like ‘information landscape’. As a result, their model is not applicable to the many non-national ethnicities and indigenous ‘cultures’ around the world whose ‘cultural ‘survival depends on how they navigate their interactions with and interconnections to the larger more encompassing apparatus constituted by the structures forming part the nation-state in which they find themselves.
Although the authors speak of “culture as a multilevel, emergent, and adaptive system”, there are no references to the vast amount of work that has been done on Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) over the past thirty years. I believe that the authors would profit from having greater familiarity with the research that has been done in this area and that it could feed into and strengthen the framework that they are proposing. This research would also give them a better understanding of concepts such as ‘collective’ and ‘distributed cognition’ which are key components of complexity science and CAS research.
In their ‘Discussion’ section they write the following with no references to the body of research that is already out there concerning this subject:
For archaeology, this framework redirects attention away from interpreting material remains through economic or political models that underemphasize the role of information. Instead, our model suggests we explore how knowledge was curated, transmitted, and embedded in material forms [e.g., 72]. Sites, monuments, archives, and technologies can be reinterpreted as information hubs – points in the landscape where critical knowledge was stored, protected, or exchanged.
Temples and ritual centers are no longer elite bound, but mnemonic infrastructures informative of the population as a whole. These repositories of symbolic and procedural knowledge speak to community coordination and ecological adaptation – not just heavy-handed practices by system-wide approaches.
At the beginning of their article, the authors speak of their role as ‘cultural heritage professionals’ who are interested in ‘more sustainable heritage strategies’. Indeed, the discussion that comes at the end of their article focuses nicely on this topic. But once again topics such as the role of heritage sites (e.g., monuments, etc.) as ‘mnemonic infrastructures’ are merely mentioned in passing rather than explored in depth. And, once again, there are no references to the many books and articles that have been written on precisely this subject, i.e., heritage studies (Bernbeck, Hofmann, & Sommer, 2017; Brown, 2005; Kuutma, 2016; Macdonald, 2013; Mazzocchi, 2022; Nora, 1989; Panzarasa & Jennings, 2006; Qiu, Zuo, & Zhang, 2022; Silberman, 2016; Tauschek, 2011; Testa, 2016; Trofanenko, 2016; Vaz da Silva, 2008). Instead, what is cited is a 2020 article written by the two authors themselves.
To summarize, I would suggest that the authors narrow the scope of their framework so that it focuses specifically on how CAS theory and their interpretation of it might further illuminate the work that is being done in the field of heritage studies.
Suggested references:
Bernbeck, R., Hofmann, K. P., & Sommer, U. (2017). Between Memory Sites and Memory Networks: New Archaeological Perspectives and Historical Perspectives. Berlin: Topoi.
Brown, M. F. (2005). Heritage trouble: Recent work on the protection of intangible cultural property. International Journal of Cultural Property, 12, 40-61.
Kuutma, K. (2016). From folklore to intangible heritage. In W. Logan, M. N. Craith, & U. Kockel (Eds.), A Companion to Heritage Studies (pp. 41-54). Chickester, West Sussex, UK / Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Macdonald, S. (2013). Memorylands: Heritages and Identity in Europe Today. London: Routledge.
Mazzocchi, F. (2022). Diving Deeper into the Concept of ‘Cultural Heritage’ and Its Relationship with Epistemic Diversity. Social Epistemology, 36(3), 393-406.
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations. Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, 26, 7-24.
Panzarasa, P., & Jennings, N. R. (2006). Collective cognition and emergence in multi-agent systems. In R. Sun (Ed.), Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation (pp. 401-408). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Qiu, Q., Zuo, Y., & Zhang, M. (2022). Intangible cultural heritage in tourism: Research review and investigation of future agenda. Land, 11(1), 139. https://doi.org/110.3390/land11010139.
Silberman, N. A. (2016). Heritage places: Evolving conceptions and changing forms. In W. Logan, M. N. Craith, & U. Kockel (Eds.), A Companion to Heritage Studies (pp. 29-40). Chickester, West Sussex, UK / Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Tauschek, M. (2011). Reflections on the metacultural nature of intangible cultural heritage. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, 5(2), 49-64.
Testa, A. (2016). From folklore to intangible cultural heritage: Observations about a problematic filiation. Osterreichsche Zeitschrif für Volkskunde, LXX(119), 221-245.
Trofanenko, B. (2016). Valuing the past, or, untangling the social, political, and economic importance of cultural heritage sites. In W. Logan, M. N. Craith, & U. Kockel (Eds.), A Companion to Heritage Studies (pp. 164-175). Chickester, West Sussex, UK / Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vaz da Silva, F. (2008). Archaeology of Intangible Heritage. New York: Peter Lang.
Author Response
Please see attached response.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe way the authors introduce the concept of culture is thoughtful and sets up a number of interesting questions. The paper makes a strong case for shifting the focus from what culture does to what it is, which is a valuable move. It's a solid conceptual exploration of a complex and often slippery topic.
Overall, the manuscript is clearly written and accessible, although some parts do get a bit dense. One of its major strengths is the ambition of its theoretical framework. That said, the model remains quite abstract, and the lack of empirical examples or case studies makes it harder to grasp how it might be applied in practice. In my opinion, it would really benefit from a more developed discussion section that ties the ideas to concrete situations (things like Indigenous heritage, institutional dynamics, or cultural policy). Also, giving some indication of how this model could be used in fieldwork or analysis would help to ground the theory.
On the other hand, there’s also a fair bit of repetition, especially around the role of information in shaping norms and institutions. While this reinforces the main argument, it does lead to some redundancy (particularly in Sections 2.1 to 2.4) which could be tightened up to improve the overall flow.
On a lesser level, a clearer definition of what is meant by “information” and “information landscape” would also help. Right now, these concepts feel quite open-ended, and it would be useful to contrast them more explicitly with ideas from semiotics, cultural pragmatics, or classical ethnographic approaches. That kind of clarification would situate the model more firmly within existing conversations.
Finally, as a suggestion, it might be worth weaving in some references to recent work on digital culture, algorithms, or information environments, especially if the authors aim to make the framework relevant to today’s cultural dynamics.
Author Response
Please see attached response.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
