Singh emphasizes how individual-level processes, including motivation, shape cultural evolution. I suggest this approach can be enriched by considering cultural affordances – the goal-relevant opportunities and threats that a cultural variant might provide to an individual. This framework might be useful for explaining not only cultural universals but also nuances in variation between and within cultures.

A merit of the subjective selection framework is to focus on individuals’ motivations in shaping cultural trends. To gain explanatory strength, the model should be completed with a proper assessment of the role of natural selection. In contrast to some formulations in the target article, natural selection shapes not just organisms’ overall goals in “selecting” cultural materials but also the detailed mechanisms whereby they assess and produce cultural material.

The commentators mostly endorsed the value of attending to goals and evaluations in explanations of cultural patterns, including super-attractors. They also voiced concerns about subjective selection, enumerated other factors influencing goals and evaluation, proposed additional super-attractors and processes that might shape them, and demanded greater engagement with power and influence. Many issues signal larger disagreements in the naturalistic study of culture. Here, I respond.

We are sympathetic to Singh’s argument for ascribing a central role to agency within cultural evolution. In our opinion, however, his account oversimplifies the relation between agents and their environments, treating goals merely as internal cognitive states. Work in cognitive ethnography reveals that goals emerge in interaction with, and are constrained by, physical and social features of the environment.

The history of post-war climate science has been written with a strong focus on the role of global geopolitics and climate models. In this article, I will broaden this perspective with a smaller-scale approach and a different technology. Drawing on the history of a radiocarbon dating laboratory in Switzerland, I show, on one hand, how local political and cultural contexts could influence the development of climate science and, on the other, how research technology beyond computer modelling also played a crucial role in this development. I argue that such a smaller-scale approach can help us to better understand the process of the interdisciplinarization of climate science, as well as the role of technology in this process.

Singh’s notion of subjective selection is ambiguous between (i) the subjective selections of individual agents, and (ii) a form of cultural selection that ranges across populations. His notion of super-attraction is also ambiguous: it spells out a target for explanation, but also suggests a hypothesis for how these phenomena should be explained.

This article explores how people imagine a 21st-century persona-indexing register as emanating from a 19th-century person-indexing register. The persona in question is the Philippine conyo, regarded as spoiled, empty-headed, rich kids who speak a distinct style of “Taglish” (Tagalog-English). The person in question is José Rizal, one of the most celebrated Filipino historical figures. Drawing on ethnographic and media data, I trace how Rizal is regarded as “the original conyo,” as its first author or animator. Examining how this type-token interdiscursive link between persona and person plays on the inversion of a chronotopic frame, I consider what conceptualizing elite historical continuity accomplishes socially and economically. I argue that citing Rizal creates a channel to move value.

Singh convincingly argues that understanding culture requires understanding subjective selection. Here, I (1) suggest an extension to Singh’s cultural manifold, namely status signaling systems and (2) argue that Singh’s approach might unfold its greatest impact on the study of modern culture and economics. Indeed, subjective selection seems to readily predict numerous modern phenomena such as highly addictive digital interfaces.

The Climate Change Anxiety Scale (CCAS), developed by Clayton and Karazsia (2020), assesses the negative emotional impact of climate change on well-being. However, its psychometric properties have not yet been sufficiently explored for Spanish spoken in Spain and Spanish culture. This research introduces the Spanish version of the CCAS (CCAS–S), examines its psychometric properties, and provides validity evidence supporting its intended purpose. Two studies were conducted: first, the original version of the CCAS was translated into Spanish using a committee approach to translation design; second, 806 participants completed the CCAS–S along with additional assessment instruments to gather validity evidence. The 13-item Spanish version showed adequate reliability and internal structure validity evidence for the two-dimensional model, aligning with theoretical expectations. Nevertheless, a refined 10-item version distinguishing metacognitive impairment, emotional distress, and functional interference dimensions optimized the scale’s intended purpose. The study discusses the conditions for using the CCAS–S measures and its practical implications.

The Little Ice Age (LIA, ∼1400–1850 CE) was characterized by colder winters and more frequent extreme weather events in the Northern Hemisphere. While changes in ocean circulation likely contributed to global cooling, the specific mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate how ocean circulation changed before, during, and after the LIA using marine sediment cores from the Laurentian Channel in the lower St. Lawrence Estuary. We first established a Mg/Ca–temperature calibration for Globobulimina auriculata using instrumental temperature data and a century-old box core. Applying this calibration to a longer piston core, we reconstructed bottom-water temperatures during the LIA. Coupling these results with existing δ1⁸O calcite data allowed us to isolate the δ1⁸O seawater signal, which reflects changes in the relative contributions of the Labrador Current and Gulf Stream. Our results indicate an increase of fresh and cold Labrador Sea–derived waters around 1500 CE. Throughout most of the LIA, we observed a slow and steady warming of the bottom water associated with a gradual increase in the proportion of Atlantic-derived waters until ∼1850 CE. The ∼1800–1950 CE interval shows high-amplitude variability, including a sudden freshening event at the LIA’s end. After 1950 CE, regional warming dominates, consistent with previous studies documenting increased Atlantic influence over the Canadian shelf.

I read Singh’s stimulating proposal as a comeback to methodological individualism: social and cultural phenomena are driven by individual motivations, given by individuals’ subjective reasons for action. Singh’s version of this classic doctrine is useful when it leads him to question cultural group selection. But contrary to methodological individualism, the cognitive mechanisms shaping culture are not necessarily conscious, coherent, or causal.

The commercialisation of ‘payment-like’ digital currencies in the financial system challenges our pre-existing state-centric legal conception of money due to their self-governing and decentralised nature. Stablecoins – particularly those which are backed by reserves and pegged to a single fiat currency on a 1:1 basis (SCS) – have the potential to reduce the transaction costs of cross-border payments. By drawing insights from a comparison of the Singapore and United Kingdom regulatory approaches towards facilitating SCS as a means of payment, the objective of this article is to consider how the legal characterisation of money under the common law should respond to, and facilitate the increasing use of, such digital currencies as a means of payment. It proposes a substance over form approach towards the characterisation of ‘money’. Under this proposed characterisation, the legal form or origin of an instrument should not be determinative of its monetary status; instead, the touchstone of the monetary status of an instrument is whether it serves as an effective means of the transfer of monetary value between parties, regardless of its underlying technology. On this basis, ‘payment-like’ digital currencies which bear these functional characteristics, such as SCS, may be recognised as money and the functional equivalent of fiat currency, subject to the appropriate regulatory safeguards that enable them to serve this monetary function.

This paper analyzes the use of rubu unpaid “traditional” labor in Toro District in western Uganda during the colonial period. It explores how the “traditional” roots of the unpaid labor system were negotiated and reinterpreted by African elites through their attempts to gain more control over the labor through wrangling over exemptions and commutations for the work which, then, shaped British responses to the forced labor regime. Chiefs managed rubu labor on the ground and wielded a lot of exploitative power. However, the British administration used intermediaries, luwalo inspectors, to monitor rubu labor and delimit the power of chiefs. This paper also investigates the growth of commutations from so-called traditional labor as a colonial revenue generator.

Females with autism, and especially young females, have been underrepresented in research on students with autism. Females with autism are typically diagnosed later than are males, due in part to differences in their presentation and lack of awareness of autism in females. This means that potentially serious mental health disorders originating in preadolescence in females can go unnoticed and untreated. We addressed this gap by examining the school-related wellbeing of females with autism aged 7–14 through an anonymous online survey completed by 38 parents. Seven key themes were identified: social issues, sensory issues, change issues, bullying, lack of understanding of autism, academic issues, and issues related to food or eating. By mapping these issues against aspects of wellbeing identified in the literature, we highlight their negative impacts on social and emotional wellbeing among females as young as 7 years and conclude that greater awareness and understanding of autism among young females is needed.

The concept of super-attracters downplays the impact of basic emotions upon decision-making. The complexity of emotions belies the instinctual nature of such emotional systems, which are ultimately established by genetics and evolutionary processes. Examples of super-attractants may perhaps be better framed as evolutionary adaptiveness versus vestigial/byproduct behaviors.