At Lux for Predictive Anthropology, we understand culture by decoding **topics** of conversation to determine what those topics mean to people.
But we’re not interested in the dictionary definition of these words. We want to figure out how those topics play a role in shaping meaning for people, when they put those topics in the contextual web of meaning that makes up their daily life.
<aside> 💡 In other words, we understand a culture as a group of people (consumers) who share a set of meanings when they use language.
</aside>
We analyze topics to decode the role that topic of conversation plays in defining a culture.
Let’s dive into a simplified example, before we get to a definition: an example is worth hundreds of pages of explanation.
In our work, the AI Anthropologist analyzes hundreds of thousands of consumer verbatims before the data is presented. But in this case, lets look at three consumer verbatims on the **topic** of chocolate cake: a number much more suitable to humans!
The hardest thing to say no to is chocolate cake.
I grabbed a chocolate one on the way home because it’s not a birthday without chocolate cake.
Yes! And the best thing about it is you can really play with different kinds as decorative accent, so you can show off your skills and ultimately you know everyone will like it.
When we perform cultural analysis, we understand this conversation about chocolate cake as portal into the culture of chocolate cake.
By analyzing this conversation, we determine what chocolate cake means to these people.
We call the totality of these meanings the macroculture: the broadest culture of chocolate cake and all those engaged with it.
We call the distinct subgroups of meaning the microcultures: the smaller, sub-cultures that share a unique meaning of chocolate cake.
To really make this clear, we need to talk about meanings.
Let’s go back to those consumer verbatims about chocolate cake, through the lens of cultural anthropology.
We can see a bunch of different meanings that highlight the role chocolate cake plays in people’s lives.