Culture as an ontological universe: Toward a broader model of culture in the globalizing era

This article proposes a model of culture that adds an ontological dimension to conventional wisdom that approaches culture as social-ecological environments and associated practices. This new model entails a paradigm shift from epistemology to ontology and from a downstream to an upstream analysis of culture. The heuristic value of this novel model of culture consists in (1) rendering visible and intelligible the ontological universe of cultural agents; (2) bringing to light the rationality and niche connections essential to building a coherent ontological universe; (3) providing an explanatory framework of cultural loss as the disruption of coherence in one’s ontological universe; and (4) suggesting guidelines for undertaking viable interventions against the disruption and loss of cultures in this era of rampant globalization. Potential contributions of this model to building cultural and cross-cultural psychologies and to suggesting future research directions are discussed.