MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Margaret J. King, Ph.D. – 6.30.15 – for MAPCA 11.2015 Cultural Analysis: Collective Thinking, Decision-making, and Behavior

Two decades as a cultural analyst have provided hundreds of case studies in cultural intelligence for major companies, nonprofits, and educational and cultural organizations. Business problems are inevitably problems in culture, values, community, and human factors. I have built up my academic background in Popular Culture through customized models and definitions that crack complex issues and artifacts by getting at the core human needs and goals involved. These tools often work around hidden assumptions about culture that prevent a working appreciation and understanding of social bonds, gender, age-based change, and context—to reveal how these dimensions all work to drive thinking, behavior, and decision making. The aim of cultural analysis is to derive the core culture values, or the preferred states, that drive any culture as its engine of meaning. I will use selected case studies to illustrate how this knowledge is used to identify and frame the cultural values equation active in any number of domains, from gender agendas and mall design to the high-stakes decisions we all make: college, career, car, house, and spouse. How do the short list of cultural values serve as the defaults to making these decisions? Inherent in much of American decision-making are issues of class that even ad agencies won’t identify by name – especially as applied to higher education.
I will elaborate on the uses of a cultural approach to problems in Popular Culture, American Studies, decision theory, evolutionary psychology, and social science to show how academic work can be fashioned to serve the great needs of business to understand their customer / guest / client, using current and past consulting engagements.