Changes in foodways were an object of literary reflection on the Roman past in the early empire. They offered a rich set of ingredients with which to characterize social, economie, and cultural change. Varro is prominent in attesting and shaping this tradition, but it is an older, and more broadly based means of narrating Roman social history. Varro developed this material in his treatise, On t...

Alcohol consumption levels in Denmark are high with the risk of increased morbidity and mortality in the population. It is suggested that people's views of "normal" use of alcohol must be the platform for formulating effective alcohol education and prevention strategies. However, little is known about the cultural norms for alcohol use. The aim of this article is to examine the perceptions of c...

In constructing a distinctive polemic, postmodern architecture presented itself as a reaction to the modem movement, embodying both its negation and transcendence. In the ongoing debate over the definition of postmodernity as a cultural condition, the position of negation continues to come under severe criticism. This thesis attempts to understand constituents of the ideological discourse of po...

Diasporas are rarely analysed from a hospitality perspective. The paper reviews and expands on existent literature regarding the Lebanese Diaspora and focuses on the Lebanese Diaspora in London. The paper discusses the conditional and absolute notions of hospitality in relation to western and non-western cultural norms. Hospitality is thus examined from a cultural perspective in order to unders...

Changes in diet, reducing animal products and increasing consumption of vegetables can not only benefit human health and the overall use of land, but can also play a decisive role in the politics of climate change mitigation. In this sense, the Mediterranean diet (MD) is presented as a sustainable cultural model, respectful of the environment, whose adherence in Mediterranean countries should c...

Many psychologists and philosophers have suggested that religious ideas emerge because they are motivationally attractive. This paper attempts to support a version of the motivational thesis by relying on religious creeds as a source of historical evidence. This simple source of evidence indicates that the cultural evolution of religious ideas is partly a function of the motivational attractive...

Research in cultural evolution has focused on the spread of intuitive or minimally counterintuitive beliefs. However, some very counterintuitive beliefs can also spread successfully, at least in some communities-scientific theories being the most prominent example. We suggest that argumentation could be an important factor in the spread of some very counterintuitive beliefs. A first experiment ...