Event Sequencing as an Organizing Cultural Principle

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2277611
AutoresNaomi Quinn (Duke University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen39
Número3
Páginas249-278
Fecha de publicación2011-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEthos (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0091-2131 • E-ISSN: 1548-1352
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1548-1352.2011.01193.x
OpenAlexW2128645527
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas41

One common cultural organizing principle is event sequencing. This article describes and illustrates two widespread examples of this kind of organization, cultural routines, and cultural templates. Cultural routines organize recurrent activities in time and space. Cultural templates rely on causally linked sequences of more abstract events to support reasoning and narrative. Why should so much of culture be organized thusly? My argument rests on evidence from childhood development and evolutionary history. Recognition of discrete events and their sequencing in routines occurs early in childhood. Although event sequencing is an ancestral trait in humans, it is the full-blown human capacity to understand how the events in such a sequence are causally linked, including intentionally linked, that finds its way into the organization of cultural templates. In taking advantage of event sequencing and causality, culture has piggybacked on human cognitive capacities. It follows that a full accounting of human culture requires recognition of the way both world and brain are organized

Argument (complex analysis) · Biology · Causality (physics) · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Event (particle physics) · Linguistics · Narrative · Trait · Child and Animal Learning Development · Computer Science · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Language and cultural evolution · Neuroscience · Psychology