Who Decides What’s Right for Me? Morality and Cultural Norms

Various components of culture have long been in the focus of economic research. Numerous empirical studies show that cultural norms, as well as religion and language, matter for economic development and have not only statistical but also economic significance. This paper considers various examples of how culture can affect individual values and behavior. It also deals with personal names as a key marker of one’s cultural identity. Overall, the paper contributes to the more profound understanding of a famous notion that "culture matters", and helps clarify the mechanisms through which culture exerts its influence.

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Perceptions of Palestine: The View from Large Linguistic Datasets

Journal of Palestine Studies ◽

10.1525/jps.2016.45.2.41 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 41-54

Author(s):

Terry Regier

Keyword(s):

Language Use ◽

Cultural Norms ◽

Cultural Perceptions ◽

Cultural Changes ◽

Cultural Shift ◽

General Theme ◽

English Usage ◽

English Speaking ◽

English Speaking World

Cultural norms and trends are often reflected in patterns of language use. This article explores cultural perceptions of Palestine and Palestinians in the English-speaking world, through two analyses of large linguistic datasets. The first analysis seeks to uncover current conceptions of participants in the Israel-Palestine conflict, by identifying words that are distinctively associated with those participants in modern English usage. The second analysis asks what historical-cultural changes led to these current conceptions. A general theme that emerges from these analyses is that a cultural shift appears to have occurred recently in the English-speaking world, marked by greater awareness of Palestinian perspectives on the conflict. Possible causes for such a cultural shift are also explored.

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Social Science's Need for a Cultural Symbols Paradigm

American Journal of Islam and Society ◽

10.35632/ajis.v19i1.1973 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 1-28

Author(s):

Mahmoud Dhaouadi

Keyword(s):

Cultural Norms ◽

Human Beings ◽

Science Knowledge ◽

Cultural Symbols ◽

Norms And Values ◽

Cultural Components

The thesis of this paper is that human beings are remarkably distinct from other living beings (animals, birds, insects, etc.) and Artificial Jntelligence (Al) machines (computers, robots, etc.) by what we would like to call cultural symbols. The latter refers to such cultural components as language, science, knowledge, religious beliefs, thought, myths, cultural norms and values.

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A Language for Modeling Cultural Norms, Biases and Stereotypes for Human Behavior Models

10.21236/ada480481 ◽

2008 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Steven Solomon ◽

Michael van Lent ◽

Mark Core ◽

Paul Carpenter ◽

Milton Rosenberg

Keyword(s):

Human Behavior ◽

Cultural Norms ◽

Behavior Models

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Textual Events

10.1093/oso/9780198805823.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Cultural Norms ◽

Homeric Hymns ◽

The World ◽

Real Performance ◽

Textual Traditions ◽

The Aesthetic ◽

The Relationship ◽

Ritual Practices ◽

Formal Features

Recent decades have seen a major expansion in our understanding of how early Greek lyric functioned in its social, political, and ritual contexts. The fundamental role song played in the day-to-day lives of communities, groups, and individuals has been the object of intense study. This volume places its focus elsewhere, and attempts to illuminate poetic effects that cannot be captured in functional terms. Employing a range of interpretative methods, it explores the idea of lyric performances as textual events. Several chapters investigate the pragmatic relationship between real performance contexts and imaginative settings. Others consider how lyric poems position themselves in relation to earlier texts and textual traditions, or discuss the distinctive encounters lyric poems create between listeners, authors, and performers. In addition to studies that analyse individual lyric texts and lyric authors (Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar), the volume includes treatments of the relationship between lyric and the Homeric Hymns. Building on the renewed concern with the aesthetic in the study of Greek lyric and beyond, Textual Events re-examines the relationship between the poems’ formal features and their historical contexts. Lyric poems are a type of sociopolitical discourse, but they are also objects of attention in themselves. They enable reflection on social and ritual practices as much as they are embedded within them. As well as enacting cultural norms, lyric challenges listeners to think about and experience the world afresh.

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Teaching and Researching American Literature and American Realism in China

The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190642891.013.35 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 647-663

Author(s):

Yuping Wang

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

Chinese Culture ◽

Cultural Transformation ◽

Cultural Norms ◽

Careful Study ◽

Chinese History ◽

Political Incentives ◽

History Of ◽

English Speaking

The study and teaching of American literature and American realism in China mirrored the social development and cultural transformation in China and was often fueled by political incentives. This chapter examines the cultural and political forces affecting the reception of American literature in different stages of Chinese history and investigates the teaching of American literature and of American realism in Chinese university classrooms. Different from the teaching of American literature in English-speaking countries, the American literature course in China serves a twofold purpose: to provide cultural nutrient for the cultivation of a broader mind by highlighting the cultural norms and rubrics in literature and to promote students’ language proficiency by a careful study of the text and formal elements of literary works. The history of the Chinese reception of American literature thus reflects the resilience and openness of Chinese culture in its negotiation with foreign cultures.

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Ein rechtsfreier Raum? Die legale Situation auf den Färöern im Spiegel der ‚Færeyinga saga‘

Das Mittelalter ◽

10.1515/mial-2020-0004 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 30-45

Author(s):

Andreas Schmidt

Keyword(s):

Cultural Norms ◽

Old Icelandic ◽

Power Politics ◽

Starting Point ◽

Narrative Literature ◽

The Law

AbstractThe chapter argues for a more nuanced and empirically based understanding of the discourse on law and socio-cultural norms in Old Icelandic literature on the grounds of a narratological reading of ‘Færeyinga saga’ as a case study. It has often been claimed that Icelandic sources express an ideal of freedom based on communality as guaranteed by the law. By contrast, ‘Færeyinga saga’ represents a cynical discourse on power politics that renders law as an invariable concept obsolete and works solely on the principle that ‘might is right’. This cynicism, however, is presented in a form that leaves the narrative open to interpretation, showing that regardless of its possible dating, narrative literature can serve as a starting point for social discussion. Consequently, the discourse on law in medieval Iceland must be perceived as more polyphonic than has been allowed for by previous unifying readings in scholarship.

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