Cohort replacement – the replacement in a population of older cohorts by their successors who developed under different conditions – is an important process behind cultural change. Research on public opinion indicates that a large proportion of aggregate change is the result of cohort replacement rather than of individuals changing their minds. However, some publicly salient issues, like gay rights, appear to be exceptions. Why different issues show different patterns of change is not well understood. In this paper, we investigate whether opinions on sensitive – that is, hard to discuss – issues might change differently than opinions on less sensitive issues. We use data from the 1981–2020 World Values Surveys and newly collected data on the sensitivity of survey items to compare aggregate changes in public opinion on 56 survey items in eight countries. Our key finding is that survey items on more sensitive issues seem to change more through cohort replacement.

The socio-cultural and environmental shifts that have taken place in southern Italy over the last 30 years can usefully be traced by their impact on folkloric texts which present modifications that tend to emerge progressively over time. An analysis of such modifications to a body of southern Italian folkloric texts – as used in practice over the last three decades – finds that these reflect and are driven by changes in the people's living environment denoting a cultural dilution and a growing distance between people and the natural world, particularly the land. These modifications also expose a shift of emphasis from ends (e.g. food) to means (e.g. money), indicating increased commercial dependence driven by socio-economic changes. These changes are also reflected in folkloric texts which demonstrate a decline of direct, physical experience of some aspects of the natural world while including references relating to the local environment. Understanding these processes allows us to gauge the extent to which verbal folklore connects contemporary societies to past knowledge.

Previous research has demonstrated that unique names increased in Japan, which shows a rise in uniqueness-seeking and individualism. To increase the validity of the prior findings, it is important to confirm the robustness of their results. Therefore, this study examined another indicator of historical changes in names in Japan. Specifically, I investigated whether the rates of common names decreased in Japan between 2004 and 2018. The dataset used in the previous study was analyzed. The results consistently showed that the rates of common names decreased for both boys and girls for the period. These results were consistent with the previous research, which further increases the validity of the finding that Japanese culture became more individualistic.

A high number of migrants returned from their transatlantic sojourn to their native Hungary between the 1880s and the 1930s. Despite being pauperised and marginalised in the United States, they encountered norms and mechanisms of a democratic society and cultural patterns unknown to the rural society they hailed from. Upon returning, they implemented some of these practices. The paper investigates the durability of this cultural change and argues that the transatlantic transmission of norms was outweighed in significance by internal, regional movements.

Archaeological research demonstrates that an agropastoral economy was established in Tibet during the second millennium BC, aided by the cultivation of barley introduced from South-western Asia. The exact cultural contexts of the emergence and development of agropastoralism in Tibet, however, remain obscure. Recent excavations at the site of Bangga provide new evidence for settled agropastoralism in central Tibet, demonstrating a material divergence from earlier archaeological cultures, possibly corresponding to the intensification of agropastoralism in the first millennium BC. The authors’ results depict a more dynamic system of subsistence in the first millennium BC, as the populations moved readily between distinct economic modes and combined them in a variety of innovative ways.

Cultures around the world are converging as populations become more connected. On the one hand this increased connectedness can promote the recombination of existing cultural practices to generate new ones, but on the other it may lead to the replacement of traditional practices and global WEIRDing. Here we examine the process and causes of changes in cultural traits concerning wild plant knowledge in Mbendjele BaYaka hunter–gatherers from Congo. Our results show that the BaYaka who were born in town reported knowing and using fewer plants than the BaYaka who were born in forest camps. Plant uses lost in the town-born BaYaka related to medicine. Unlike the forest-born participants, the town-born BaYaka preferred Western medicine over traditional practices, suggesting that the observed decline of plant knowledge and use is the result of replacement of cultural practices with the new products of cumulative culture.

This paper summarizes the talk given at this conference in which the cultural aspect of the low participation of women in science, mainly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) areas, is emphazised. A few personal recollections will be presented and some some striking numbers to illustrate the current situation will be given. In addition, some thought provoking ideas on what is known as “neurosexism” are explicited and a tribute is made to three women that overcame the challenges posed to them in different times in history (including current times) and helped paved the way to the new generation. However, there is still a long way to go. The inclusion of women and of other relegated sectors of society in scientific and technological activities is an important pending issue which will be achieved when our society as a whole reaches the necessary cultural maturity.

Development scholars have identified several Hofstede (1980, 2001) cultural dimensions as critically important determinants of long-run economic development across countries. Does economic progress, in turn, shape culture in a predictable direction? This paper investigates whether economic change since 1970 has induced shifts in five of the Hofstede value orientations in a sample of up to 72 countries. To achieve identification, we employ a unique data set on country-level cleavages in the values of two non-overlapping age cohorts approximately one generation (30 years) apart, on average. We find evidence that faster-growing countries during the period of coming of age and personality development of the younger cohort witnessed the rise of more individualistic and politically egalitarian generations, suggesting the existence of a self-perpetuating cycle between certain “good-for-development” cultural attitudes and economic development.

Networks are increasingly recognised as advantageous when creating and embedding cultural change within organisations. This paper explores and problematises ideas around networks for education for sustainability (EfS), specifically in relation to the implementation of the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI), a national, whole-school approach to EfS. In three Australian states - New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland – AuSSI has been implemented in different ways. In examining the use of products, facilitators and networks to embed initiatives such as AuSSI in Australian schools, we propose a “continuum of cultural change strategies” as a framework for thinking about each of these approaches to creating organisational and cultural change for sustainability. We anticipate that such a framework may assist where choices need to be made in relation to the kinds of capacity building processes that might best achieve “deep and wide” change within schools hoping to engender significant cultural change.

Drawing upon the dynamic interrelationship between human agency and space, this article sheds light on the constitution of and relation between “place” and “path” among the pastoral Pokot of East Pokot District in the Kenyan North Rift Valley. It discusses the transformation from a more mobile pastoralist model of spatialization, which relies on a flexible network approach combining paths and places, toward a more “place-making,” postpastoralist model linked to increasing sedentariness, privatization of land, a clearer definition of external and internal boundaries, and a rapid emergence of schools, churches, and other physical structures.

This study explores the impact of recent discoveries on our understanding of the transition from the Roman to early medieval periods in northern England. Using the Tees Valley as a case study, it shows how modern interpretations of this process have focused primarily on the afterlife of the military sites in the region. However, the increased identification of significant Roman civilian settlements forces us to reconsider the dominant narratives and rethink the underlying processes that influenced the move from Roman-controlled frontier society in the fourth century to a fifth century society comprising both culturally Anglo-Saxon social groups and sub-Roman successor polities. A wider consideration is also given to how the changing patterns in the use of space and in refuse disposal strategies can be used to shed light on wider patterns of changing social identity in the later fourth century AD.