Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA09494 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 30 Oct 2000 15:49:27 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 10:46:06 -0500 Subject: Re: culture as niche construction? From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B62301ED.5474%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745AC3@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 15:00:18 -0000
> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> Subject: culture as niche construction?
[snip]
> Some proponents of this view have suggested that human culture is the same
> thing- niche construction. (I forgot to bring the magazine into work with
> me, so I forget the names of the authors who've published this in an
> academic journal- apologies for tardiness on my part).
>
> I just wondered what people thought about this, and how it affects memetics
> (if at all)?
I think it's just fine, and is probably complementary to William Wimsatt's
call. For one of the things that traditional students of culture do is
identify styles, and styles generally go into niches.
For example, in his book on The Death of Rhythm and Blues, Nelson George
argues that hip hop arose when cross-over pop (such as Michael Jackson,
Lionell Richee) became so successfull that the niche for rhythmically strong
black music started to empty. So hip hop arose and filled that niche.
George may or may not be correct in his argument, but it is an argument
about niches. Similarly, a standard observation about the rise of the novel
in Western Europe in the 18th century is that the audience was mostly
middle-class women. Hence a major subject of those novels was love and
marriage. So, how did this arise? What happened that we had a large class
of literate women with time to read?
To some extent, all you've got to do to begin exploring the niche idea in
culture is simply to translate traditional scholarship into the right
vocabulary. Once you've done that the challenge them becomes one of seeing
whether or not the models of ecology and population biology suggest new ways
of looking at culture.
And, of course, the whole world of advertising is about markets and niches,
and I'd think a memetics brand could play well there.
--William L. Benzon, Ph. D. 708 Jersey Avenue, Apt. 2A Jersey City, NJ 07302 201 217-1010
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