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Cultural Diversities Across and Within Cultures: The Bicultural Mind

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Understanding Cultural Traits

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Abstract

In the current transition from structural to process models in the scientific inquiry on culture dynamics, culture is not viewed as consensual, enduring, and context-general, but as fragmented, fluctuating, and context-specific (situated cognition model). Bicultural individuals that, through enduring exposure to at least two cultures, have come to possess a bicultural mind, that is, systems of meaning and practices of both cultures, can therefore switch between such cultural orientations alternating them depending on the cultural cues (cultural primers) available in the immediate context (cultural frame switching). The bicultural mind roots in a dynamic bicultural brain: although culture is limited to what the brain can or cannot do, it does also shape brain functions, that is, neural connectivity is likely modified through sustained engagement in cultural practices. Built in a theoretical framework combining a co-evolutionary perspective on biology and culture with the expert-novice dynamics of cultural transmission and appropriation, the bicultural mind thus provides an articulated theoretical milieu apt to address the “why” and “how” (rather than “what”) questions on the managing of cultural diversities within and across cultures. And, in Gould’s view on punctuated equilibria, it can even be considered as the next evolutionary jump within the human species.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Connection: Compare the coexistence of different cultural systems with the “toolkit view” of culture presented in Sect. 2.4 (see also the Connection therein). A strictly related analysis, looking at national identities, is performed in Sect. 3.2.1.

  2. 2.

    Connection: Compare this analysis with the one in Chap. 14 about organizational cultures, with particular reference to values.

  3. 3.

    Connection: On the possible dynamic relationships between cultural traits and national identities, see Chap. 3.

  4. 4.

    Connection: Cultural evolution is a complex and multifaceted concept. Chapter 13 applies it to international cooperation, and Chaps. 16 and 17 to material culture. Chapters 11 and 12 explain evolutionary mathematical frameworks. Chapters 19, 20, and 21 directly refer to biological evolution to explain the existence of particular domains of cultural variation in Homo sapiens, while notes in the introduction of Chap. 3 address the complicated relationship between cultural anthropology and evolution.

  5. 5.

    Connection: See Chap. 11 for an epistemological reflection on the work of the cited authors.

  6. 6.

    Connection: Section 18.3 talks about the active role of the novice with reference to language learning.

  7. 7.

    Connection: Compare this complexity with the relationship between artifacts and mental models postulated in Chaps. 15 and 16.

  8. 8.

    Connection: Chapter 18 takes this learner’s activity into account in models of language transmission and learning.

  9. 9.

    Connection: See Chap. 5 for an analysis of the ubiquity of education and on the tacit learning of unseen cultural traits through exercise.

  10. 10.

    Connection: The relationship between brain and culture is problematized in Chaps. 2, 16, 20, and 21.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. “Riccardo Massa” Department of Educational Human Sciences, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Olivia Realdon & Valentino Zurloni

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  1. Olivia Realdon
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  2. Valentino Zurloni
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Correspondence to Olivia Realdon .

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  1. Paris School of Economics, Paris, France

    Fabrizio Panebianco

  2. CISEPS-CenterforInterdisciplinaryStudies, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milano, Italy

    Emanuele Serrelli

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Realdon, O., Zurloni, V. (2016). Cultural Diversities Across and Within Cultures: The Bicultural Mind. In: Panebianco, F., Serrelli, E. (eds) Understanding Cultural Traits. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24349-8_7

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