Redefining Culture Fit
Moving beyond superficial 'culture fit' towards shared values for building truly inclusive and effective teams.
Symbiota
We’re a collective of event-focused organisations devoted to new forms of culture and enquiry, structured as a not-for-profit worker co-operative
Rational Ritual
Why do Internet, financial service, and beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why does repetition characterize anthems and ritual speech? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge. Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form “common knowledge.” Each person wants to participate only if others also participate. Members must have knowledge of each other, knowledge of that knowledge, knowledge of the knowledge of that knowledge, and so on. Michael Chwe applies this insight, with striking erudition, to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures. He shows that public ceremonies are powerful not simply because they transmit meaning from a central source to each audience member but because they let audience members know what other members know. For instance, people watching the Super Bowl know that many others are seeing precisely what they see and that those people know in turn that many others are also watching. This creates common knowledge, and advertisers selling products that depend on consensus are willing to pay large sums to gain access to it. Remarkably, a great variety of rituals and ceremonies, such as formal inaugurations, work in much the same way. By using a rational-choice argument to explain diverse cultural practices, Chwe argues for a close reciprocal relationship between the perspectives of rationality and culture. He illustrates how game theory can be applied to an unexpectedly broad spectrum of problems, while showing in an admirably clear way what game theory might hold for scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are not yet acquainted with it. In a new afterword, Chwe delves into new applications of common knowledge, both in the real world and in experiments, and considers how generating common knowledge has become easier in the digital age.
Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need
Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need
An introduction to radical participatory design: decolonising participatory design processes
Outside of community-led design projects, most participatory design processes initiated by a company or organisation maintain or even strengthen power imbalances between the design organisation and the community on whose purported behalf they are designing, further increasing the absencing experience. Radical participatory design (RPD) is a radically relational answer to the coloniality inherent in participatory design where the community members’ disappointment is greater due to the greater expectations and presencing potential of a ‘participatory design’ process. We introduce the term RPD to show how research and design processes can be truly participatory to the root or core. Instead of treating participatory design as a method, a way of conducting a method, or a methodology, we introduce RPD as a meta-methodology, a way of doing any methodology. We explicitly describe what participation means and compare and contrast design processes based on the amount of participation, creating a typology of participation. We introduce ‘designer as community member’, ‘community member as designer,’ and ‘community member as facilitator’ models and provide characteristics for the meta-methodology of RPD.
An introduction to radical participatory design: decolonising participatory design processes
Outside of community-led design projects, most participatory design processes initiated by a company or organisation maintain or even strengthen power imbalances between the design organisation and the community on whose purported behalf they are designing, further increasing the absencing experience. Radical participatory design (RPD) is a radically relational answer to the coloniality inherent in participatory design where the community members’ disappointment is greater due to the greater expectations and presencing potential of a ‘participatory design’ process. We introduce the term RPD to show how research and design processes can be truly participatory to the root or core. Instead of treating participatory design as a method, a way of conducting a method, or a methodology, we introduce RPD as a meta-methodology, a way of doing any methodology. We explicitly describe what participation means and compare and contrast design processes based on the amount of participation, creating a typology of participation. We introduce ‘designer as community member’, ‘community member as designer,’ and ‘community member as facilitator’ models and provide characteristics for the meta-methodology of RPD.
Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study
The differences across cultures in the enforcement of conformity may reflect their specific histories. , With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure). This research advances knowledge that can foster cross-cultural understanding in a world of increasing global interdependence and has implications for modeling cultural change.
Why Storytelling Matters When Changing Company Culture
A conversation with the University of Utah’s Jay Barney about how leaders who successfully drive cultural change communicate through authentic, compelling stories.
“Are Protocols Elite?” in Rythms – Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider
For a taste of what I’ve been working on this season, I have a new, tiny-little essay in the in-house journal of our Center for Media, Religion, and Culture, Rhythms: “Are Protocols Elite?” Based on a collab with Avery Edenfield. https://www.colorado.edu/cmrc/2025/11/06/rhythms-fall-2025-counter-media
From cultures to aesthetics between Asian and Western UX design
Since I moved to Europe from Asia and used to work for European company from Asia. I feel like I have to discuss the topic of design aesthetics, cultural influences and user behaviours.
Effects of Extreme Ritual Practices on Psychophysiological Well-Being
Extreme ritual practices involving pain and suffering pose significant risks such as injury, trauma, or infection. Nonetheless, they are performed by millions of people around the world and are often culturally prescribed remedies for a variety of maladies, and especially those related to mental health. What is the actual impact of these practices on health? Combining ethnographic observations and psychophysiological monitoring, we investigated outcomes of participation in one of the world’s most extreme rituals, involving bodily mutilation and prolonged suffering. Performance of this physically demanding ordeal had no detrimental effects on physiological health and was associated with subjective health improvements, and these improvements were greater for those who engaged in more intense forms of participation. Moreover, individuals who experienced health problems and/or were of low socioeconomic status sought more painful levels of engagement. We suggest two potential mechanisms for these effects: a bottom-up process triggered by neurological responses to pain and a top-down process related to increased social support and self-enhancement. These mechanisms may buffer stress-induced pressures and positively affect quality of life. Our results stress the importance of traditional cultural practices for coping with adversity, especially in contexts where psychiatric or other medical interventions are not widely available.
Meta Culture
The meta game of cultural impact and evolution
The Twelve-Factor App
When Tailwinds Vanish
Friendslop = Friendless<<Slop>> Or: Will We Ever Lock Eyes When We Play Again?
Rewilding cultures
Feral Labs – A network of temporary dislocated hubs for research in art, technology and communities.
I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline