1. Introduction. Giovanni Bennardo, Victor C. De Munck, and Stephen Chrisomalis -- Part 1 - Cultural Model Theory -- 2. Cultural Models Theory: The Mental Life of Culture - Giovanni Bennardo -- 3. Affordances, Culture, and the Self: Constituting a New Cognitive-Behavioral Paradigm - Victor de Munck -- 4. Cultural Models: A Constructed Reality - Dwight Read -- Part 2. Defining Cultural Models -- 5. What is (and is not) a Cultural Model - Claudia Strauss -- 6. Cultural Models are Intrinsically Normative - Renatas Berniunas -- 7. Thinking while Doing: Active Cognition in Bartending - John Gatewood -- Part 3. Cultural Consensus Theory -- 8. Validating Cultural Models with Cultural Consensus Theory - Susan C. Weller, Jeff Johnson, and William Dressler -- 9. Measuring Shared Collective Knowledge and Belief Systems - Kateryna Maltseva -- 10. Cultural Consonance: Extending Cultural Consensus Theory - William Dressler -- Part4. Cultural Models: Evolution, History, and Development -- 11. Culture as Cognitive Technology: An Evolutionary Perspective - Steven C. Levinson -- 12. Products, not Prerequisites: The Becoming of Cultural Models - Miriam Haidle -- 13. Relying on Grandma’s Mushrooms: How Cultural Models Affect Appraisals of Edibility - Andrea Bender and Åge Oterhals -- 14. Learning Moral Norms: “Cultural Models” in Children’s Eyes - Jing Xu -- Part 5. Cultural Models and Language -- 15. The Linguistic Encoding and Verification of Cultural Models - Stephen Chrisomalis -- 16. Cultural Concepts of Person and Social Relationships in Tongan Language and Cultural Practices - Svenia Völkel -- 17. Conclusion - Victor C. de Munck. .

This edited collection presents an agenda for the interdisciplinary study of anthropology and cognitive science. It consists of fifteen chapters written by international experts on the relationship between culture and cognition. This volume is unique in that it includes both inside (i.e., shared mental templates) and outside (i.e., extended, embedded, enactive and ecological) theories of cognition. The contributors come from the diverse disciplinary fields of anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, and cognitive science. The aim is to investigate the mental production of shared knowledge, goals, and desires around which human social life revolves. The coverage spans cultural and linguistic evolution, the importance of local histories, and the role of cultural models to understand and interact with the world. Drawing on cultural model theory, this volume is an invaluable resource for linguists, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and other social scientists willing to explore and understand how the sharedness of culture can bond us all together across relative cultural differences and (mis)perceived divisions. Giovanni Bennardo is a Board of Trustees Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Cognitive Science Initiative at Northern Illinois University, USA. With six book publications, a long list of articles, and many book chapters to his credit, he also edited three special issues for World Cultures, the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science and the Journal of Qualitative Psychology. Victor de Munck is Professor of Anthropology at Vilnius University, Lithuania. His research focuses on changes in love, marriage, and family cultural models as they affect decisions to marry and have children. This current project has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania, Grant S-MIP-21-47 (P-MIP-21-258). Stephen Chrisomalis is a Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, USA. His research focuses on the anthropology of numbers and mathematics, as well as historical, comparative, and linguistic approaches to cultural models. His books include Numerical Notation: A Comparative History, Human Expeditions: Inspired by Bruce Trigger, and Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History.