From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Mon 06 Oct 2003 - 15:04:55 GMT
Greetings, Vincent,
We treat memes, if I understand your terms, as both determined by and
determining of socio-cultural processes. That is, the linguistic/symbolic
form of memes evolves out of socio-cultural activity, and in turn memes can
modify eventual socio-cultural activity. That this doesn't set up positive
feedback loops that lock society into unyielding and unchanging patterns is
very interesting and, I concluded, has several reasons, including those of
the initial contrarian variety of the memes and socio-cultural patterns, and
the inherent polarities within the socio-cultural environment.
Your course sounds fascinating. I wish I could be there to audit.
Cheers,
Lawry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Vincent Campbell
> Sent: Mon, October 06, 2003 9:21 AM
> To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'
> Subject: memes and determinism
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> A quick question, conceived whilst reading over some set reading for a
> lecture I'm doing today on media technology and society, looking
> at theories
> of technological determinism and cultural materialism.
>
> My question is: are memes determined or determining? Or to put it another
> way, are memes causes or effects (of socio-cultural processes)?
>
> I think this could be very important for the reaction to and
> interpretation
> of memes.
>
> For example, if memes are effects of socio-cultural processes, then you
> could (hypothetically) take away the roman occupation of palestine, or the
> treaty of versailles from post-WWI Germany, and perhaps christianity and
> nazism never rise? (in both cases the context of societies
> unified in their
> feelings of oppression, unfairness caused by "others" etc. contributed to
> their success as ideologies)
>
> Just throwing it out there, in the hope that someone out there
> might like to
> discuss memes.
>
>
> Vincent
>
>
> (Incidentally, I may not get a chance to follow up responses
> until later in
> the week or next week as I've got a lot of teaching over the next
> few days,
> but I will respond to anyone who feels like chipping in eventually.)
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
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> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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