Culture As a System ─ How We Know the Meaning and Significance of What We Do and Say

A particular culture is associated with a particular community, and thus has a social dimension. However, how is culture to be viewed? Is it to be taken as the behavioral repertoire of members of that community, or as the products of their behavior, or as the shared mental content that produces the behavior?

Kronenfeld proposes a cognitive approach to culture, wherein cognition refers to knowledge--but not just verbal or conscious knowledge. Cultural cognition is the shared pragmatic knowledge that includes our behavioral as well as conceptual knowledge--our knowledge of how to engage each other (whether via cooperation or competition) or how to avoid engagement, of how to make sense of what those around us say and do, of how to make things either alone or via organized cooperation, and of how to think about novel problems.

Combining insights from cognitive psychology with collective knowledge systems and linguistic anthropology, this book argues for an understanding of culture as a phenomenon produced and shaped by a combination of conditions, constraints and logic. It is essential reading for scholars of cognitive anthropology, linguistic anthropology, sociology of culture, philosophy, and computational cognitive science.