Consumer culture theory helps us take note of the cultural forces and dynamics in which technology consumption is entangled. It enables people to articulate the cultural processes (ideological, mythic, ritualistic, etc.) through which cultural meanings become granted to or denied to technological innovations, thus shaping the value of technologies as cultural resources sustaining consumer ident...

People’s control over their sexual lives and choices is in turn shaped by gender-related values and norms defining masculinity and femininity. These culturally-defined gender values and norms evolve through a process of socialization starting from an early stage of infancy. They determine and reinforce themselves through traditional practices such as wife sharing, widowhood related rituals, ear...

This work was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) N000141512797 Minerva award for Dynamic Statistical Network Informatics, and the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organization Systems (CASOS). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or i...

Political and economic risks arise from social phenomena that spread within and across countries. Regime changes, protest movements, and stock market and default shocks can have ramifications across the globe. Quantitative models have made great strides at predicting these events in recent decades but incorporate few explicitly measured cultural variables. However, in recent years cultural evol...

samanidgovernment was established in the fourthcentury (ah) in the east of islamic caliphate, within a rich socio-cultural context. samanid dynasty needed to prove its rights and legitimacy because of its conflict with the political discourse of their rival governments. this had to be done by taking advantage of thevalues and conceptsembedded in the rational, cultural, and conceptual contextsan...

Kurt Squire is a PhD candidate in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University, and is currently working as a research manager at MIT on the Microsoft-MIT funded Games-to-Teach Project. His research interests include the design of games and simulations, the use of games and simulations in formal learning environments, video game industry & culture, socio-cultural learning theory, perf...

Using a unique dataset (N=2,014), we examine the preand post-migration determinants of socio-cultural integration among first-generation immigrant groups in southern Europe: Moroccan and Senegalese migrants in Spain, and Egyptian and Ghanaian migrants in Italy. The results of the pooled and immigrant-group specific regression analyses partly highlight the dominance of pre-migration factors. Imm...

during last century and in a period of time called modern history of middle east, we have seen different changes in life of urban communities as whole, and urban and rural of the mentioned region in particular. the range and power of such changes has been in such a level that we can claim: it has changed the “life world” of people noticeably. among all parts of the region our field study (iran’...

In addition to words and grammar, socio-cultural knowledge is also of vital importance in the interpretation of conversations. Socio-cultural knowledge helps participants to get contextualization cues and together with other signaling channels, participants will be able to perceive the context-bound information and prepare their appropriate responses. Socio-cultural knowledge is indispensable i...