Cultural Consensus and Cultural Consonance: Advancing a Cognitive Theory of Culture

Theoretical and methodological developments guided by a cognitive theory of culture have advanced our understanding of cultural processes over the past 40 years. The theoretical construct of cultural models, developed in the 1970s, provided a more precise definition of culture. The cultural consensu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inField Methods Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 383 - 398
Main Author Dressler, William W.
Format Book Review Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.11.2020
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Cognition
Cultural change
Cultural Influences
Culture
Epistemology
Ethnography
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Social Behavior
Social Science Research
Theory
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Summary:Theoretical and methodological developments guided by a cognitive theory of culture have advanced our understanding of cultural processes over the past 40 years. The theoretical construct of cultural models, developed in the 1970s, provided a more precise definition of culture. The cultural consensus model, introduced in 1986, enabled investigators to verify and analyze the degree to which culture was shared and how it was distributed. Subsequent advances in the cultural consensus model, especially the analysis of residual agreement, provided a more complete approach to describing intracultural diversity. Finally, the concept and measurement of cultural consonance, introduced in 1996, demonstrated how shared cultural models link to social practice. This article provides a brief overview of these trends in the study of culture, with an emphasis on how this theory and these methods have been applied in research.
ISSN:1525-822X
1552-3969
DOI:10.1177/1525822X20935599