My cultural information research began as part of a larger project investigating the self-organization of social structure in Hualien County, Taiwan.  In that research I have continued with methods and theory developed in my ecotourism research, which ‘locates’ the product of any process within a regional energy transformation hierarchy.  This research will have implications for understanding of class and inequality, and for the evolution of social structure, and can be scaled-up to shed light on world-systems theory.

My previous research project was as a member of an 8-person interdisciplinary team, studying whale watching ecotourism on Taiwan.  My research examined the impacts of ecotourism development on the local people, culture and ecology of the effected areas.  My dissertation research was a similar study of eco-dive tourism impacts on the island of Bonaire in the south Caribbean Sea.

Finally, an ongoing research focus of mine is our human presence in the biosphere and the energy, material, and information processes that are shaping that presence.  Of special importance are the big, slow curves of natural resource availability, perhaps the most important of which is oil.  Social processes should be understood in light of changing resource flows.  Relating society and the production curve of oil, H.T. Odum made a number of predictions about the past and coming periods of growth, transition ('peak oil'), and descent.  His hope was that humanity could discover a 'prosperous way down'.

Cultural evolution is a unifying theme for much of my work and thought.  I conceptualize evolution as an expanded synthesis that includes thermodynamic self-organization.  I am interested in the "positive interactions" afforded by cultural evolution, and their effect particularly on social organization.  I am interested in self-organization at all scales in the biosphere, which includes new research into Gaia, or geophysiology. I am currently exploring the cultural evolution of China, from foragers to contemporary states.  I am using systems modelling to generate simple but informative computer models of the pulsing dynamics generated by the consumption of natural resources.  These ideas are all being applied to my related interest in the historical ecology of Taiwan.

My interest in cultural evolution has led me to the study of world-systems (from Wallerstein).  World-systems are a scale of social self-organization larger than individual states, in which states are joined hierarchically into a system of production and control.  I am particularly interested in placing world-systems thought within an environmental framework.

My other major area of academic interest is cognitive science, especially the study of cultural models.  As a graduate student advisor I have assisted one student with an exploration of ‘place identity’ as it represented in cultural models in two communities in southwestern Taiwan.  Cultural models theory intersects with my current research into cultural information as information cycles..