culture

Culture is common knowledge in a network that defines its boundary. The reach of culture is called a territory. Culture is a major stabilizing factor of >order in networks, because it links >structure with particular patterns of >meaning that are related to sets of cognitive schemes and >emotions.

In EE culture is an important empirical category to identify units of evolution undergoing >group selection. For example, organizations may be integrated by culture, or innovation systems or national economies. In all these cases, culture is the glue holding >hypercyclic structures together that increase functional performance of systems.

Empirical appoaches to culture draw heavily on "Geisteswissenschaften" methods, i.e. hermeneutics and interpretive disciplines that investigate into the importance of >meaning for action. In that regard, EE is closely related to Weberian sociology, which also views culture as a force of order (in paricular, religion).

Basic References
Culture has drawn much attention in economics in general. A classic study of the role of culture for network configugurations is:
Avner Greif, Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies, in: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 102, No. 5, S. 912-950, 1994.

Special interest to culture is given in the analysis of long-run development of economic systems:
Lal, Deepak, Unintended Consequences. The Impact of Factor Endowments, Culture, and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance, Cambridge/London: MIT Press, 1998.

Semantic Field
order
emotion   culture   cognition
group selection