CCI in Retrospect and Prospect is an in-depth exploration of CCI's influence, impact and contributions since 2005, as well as its ongoing agenda.

1. Intro
1. Curiously Parallel – The Nature of Culture
Part I: Culture Makes Groups
2. Externalism – Identity (‘Me’ is ‘We’)
3. Demes – Universal-Adversarial Groupishness
4. Malvoisine – Bad Neighbours
5. Citizens – Demic Concentration Creates Knowledge
Part II: Groups Make Knowledge
6. Meaningfulness – The Growth of Knowledge
7. Newness – Innovation
8. Waste – Reproductive Success
9. Extinction – Resilience and Ossification
Part III: Outro
10. A Natural History of Demic Concentration

2. The purpose of a cultural science is to
provide an analytic framework for a
general reconceptualisation of the theory
of culture – in the original cultural studies
‘ordinary uses’ sense – one that is focused
not on its political aspect but rather its
evolutionary significance as a generator of
newness and innovation.

3. Rereading Darwinian’s
evolutionary theory
Raymond Williams
'culture is ordinary’
semiotics
(Lotman)
economic theory
(from Schumpeter
to McCloskey)
evolutionary
science
(Pagel & Gintis…)
Building blocks of
Cultural Science
A Natural History of Stories, Demes, Knowledge & Innovation

4. Externalism
We don’t make culture,
Culture makes us
Communication creates individuals - Luhmann
H. Sapiens is an extremely
groupish animal – that is our
evolutionary niche

5. Demic concentration
• deme (biology) inter-breeding pop.
• deme/demos (political) inter-voting pop./citizen
• Deme (cultural science) inter-knowing group
• Demic diffusion (Cavelli-Sforza 2000)
– Knowledge in a population changes because individuals move
into new populations
• Demic concentration (Hartley-Potts 2014)
– Knowledge in a population changes because the group
boundaries change

6. Demes
• ‘We-group’ (against ‘they-group’)
• Universal adversarial
• Demes are created by culture, especially
storytelling
– Girlworld (Tavi Gevinson)
– Australian national character (& war journalism)
– Granddads (& stories they tell)
– Neolithic revolution (Göbekli Tepe)
• Demic concentration makes
knowledge/identity/meaningfulness

7. Malvoisine
• A groupish animal
– Bad neighbours have different knowledge: when you fight
& defeat them: what happens to knowledge?
– Biologists say: group selection theory
– Cultural science: this (conquest) is actually cooperation
• The clash of systems & demes is productive of
newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of
culture
• What happens when culture gets big/global?

8. citizens & cities
urban culture and citizenship can best be
explained by investigating how culture is
used, and how newness and innovation
emerge from unstable and contested
boundaries between different meaning
systems

9. meaningfulness
• Evolutionary theory resisted in the humanities
• growth of knowledge: elements of culture/‘memes’ etc?
1. Culture is not the issue, meaningfulness is
2. Meaningfulness evolves
3. Meaningfulness is complex and semiotic
Example: the invention of the gentleman: a cultural innovation that
created new demes

10. newness
• Culture is Janus-faced
– Looking back: preservation/protection
– Looking forward: newness
Three theories of dynamic origin
1. Randomness makes variety
2. Consciousness makes creativity
3. Demes make newness Hutter & Stark’s
economic sociology
of newness:
structural
folds, tension, irrita
tion

11. waste
• Optimal efficiency of cultural production is …
really, really wasteful (just like in nature)
• Because that’s how communication works
• Example: the childish invention of culture

12. extinction
• ‘a prosocial groupish animal, honed by conflict & extinction’
• Cultural protection & cultural extinction
– Cultural protection (UNESCO) = ossification
– Cultural extinction is loss of meaningfulness, not failure to replicate
– it is also ‘demically relativistic’ (conquest as cooperation)
– Creative cities as model of open cultural systems

13. Two applications
[1] A Cultural Science Model of Innovation
– Cultural explanation for innovation
[2] A Natural History of Demic Concentration
– A new theory of long duree/communications technology/economy

14. The cultural (science) model of innovation
1. Culture makes groups
2. Groups make knowledge
3. Newness occurs at the boundaries of groups
– A new approach to cultural studies
– A new approach to cultural economics
– A new approach to innovation economics

15. What is culture?
Cultural studies/ anthro/ sociology/ Cultural science
Capital Stock Makes groups
(a) Produced and consumed (high-culture,
cultural industries, etc)
Source of newness
(b) Common knowledge, socially learned,
institution-like, for social coordination
Identity Statics/Politics Identity Dynamics/Evolution

16. Origin of innovation
economics Cultural science
Production function model Group dynamics and conflict model
Invest in more inputs ‘We-group’ dynamics of meaningfulness
‘Externalized demic concentration’
Cooperation: combine factors/resources conflict, citizenry, childishness, cities
Innovation policy = economic policy Innovation policy = cultural policy

17. A Natural History of Demic Concentration
Updating McLuhan/Ong (human groups/ not minds)
Deme = unit of semiosphere (Lotman)
Hypothesis: number of demes-per-person grows with
technology of knowledge reproduction. This gives us
evolution in types of economy

19. Natural history of culture, knowledge-
technology & economy
• These epochs are a process: cumulative, separated by an ‘explosion’
• The plot is logarithmic, meaning acceleration
• Increasing specialization; time/space expansion of demes; literacy; …
What happens when demes-per-person increases?
• Extent of access increases, & level of abstraction
• Scale & wastefulness increase
• Choice & imagination increase
A scientific theory, makes predictions, a testable hypothesis…