Finding Culture Change in the Second Factor

Abstract

This article reports the replication after 10 years of cultural consensus analyses in four cultural domains in the city of Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. Additionally, two methods for evaluating residual agreement are applied to the data, and a new technique for evaluating how cultural knowledge is represented by residual agreement is introduced. We found that overall cultural consensus observed in 2001 was replicated in 2011 in four cultural domains. Significant residual agreement in all four cultural domains was observed using a technique for assessing the structure of the respondent-by-respondent agreement matrix. Analysis of loadings on the second factor from the cultural consensus analyses indicated that time period was associated with residual agreement in the domain of lifestyle, while other variables were associated with residual agreement in other domains. The variation in the configuration of elements in the cultural model of lifestyle within each time period, relative to the overall consensus, was examined using deviation scores. Implications of these results for the study of culture and the distribution and sharing of culture are discussed.