Cultural Models: Understanding Mind and Knowledge Across Cultures

Culture has long been the defining subject of anthropology, yet the concept has faced repeated calls for abandonment, largely because it resists easy definition. Rather than discard it, this Research Topic builds on Cultural Model Theory (CMT), which treats culture as an organization of Cultural Models — mental structures that represent intersubjective, assumed-shared realities and generate social commitments to act in expected ways within a given context. These models, foundational or molar, live in individual minds while being shared, unevenly, across communities, and are studied through combined ethnographic, linguistic, and quantitative methods.Over the past two decades, CMT research has expanded well beyond anthropology into psychology, economics, business, politics, and evolutionary biology. This Research Topic takes stock of that growth and pushes the theory further. Cultural models have traditionally been treated as community-bound and empirical, tied to acts like courtship or subsistence. Here we propose extending CMT to include potential universal models that behave like quantum fields — capable of holding both a fluid and a categorical state at once, with boundaries that are fuzzy yet definite, much like cognitive prototypes. This suggests that cultural models may not only operate within specific communities but also flow across humanity more broadly, and may extend beyond the mind into the world.We welcome contributions that advance the theory and methods of cognitive-cultural research and that push cultural model analysis into new, unexplored areas of culture. Relevant themes include, but are not limited to:• Theoretical development of Cultural Model Theory, including foundational and molar models• Cultural models as fluid and categorical structures, and the “human quantum field” perspective• Cultural models located outside the mind — distributed, material, and technological extensions• Methodological innovation combining ethnographic, linguistic, and quantitative approaches• Cultural model research beyond anthropology (psychology, economics, business, politics, advertising, evolutionary biology, and related fields)• The configuration, purpose, structure, scaffolding, and braiding of empirical and ideational factors in cultural modelsContributions to cultural model research from any discipline should build explicitly on the features that constitute CMT. This Research Topic will both showcase the extent of cultural model research and enrich CMT itself — an essential and positive outcome of the collective effort. Topic editors: Giovanni Bennardo, Victor C De Munck Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83220/cultural-models-understanding-mind-and-knowledge-across-cultures