According to Mizoguchi (2003), formal (heavyweight) ontology “includes ontologies developed with much attention paid to rigorous meaning of each concept, organizing principles developed in philosophy, semantically rigorous relations between concepts, etc. Instance models are usually built based on those ontologies to model a target world, which requires careful conceptualization of the world to guarantee of the consistency and fidelity of the model.”
Published in Chapter:
Structuring the Cultural Domain with an Upper Ontology of Culture
Emmanuel G. Blanchard (McGill University, Canada), Riichiro Mizoguchi (Osaka University, Japan), and Susanne P. Lajoie (McGill University, Canada)
Copyright: © 2011
|Pages: 34
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-883-8.ch009
Abstract
Study of cultural similarities and differences is an important research topic for many disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, museology, communication, management and business. This presents many potential opportunities for Information Technology specialists to develop culturally-aware technology, but it also raises the risk of inconsistent approaches of the cultural domain. In this chapter, the authors present the fundamental concepts of the Upper Ontology of Culture (UOC), a formal conceptualization of the cultural domain they developed by identifying the common backbone of culture-related disciplines and activities. As a neutral, theory-driven, and interdisciplinary conceptualization, the UOC shall provide guidelines for the development of culturally-aware applications, for the consistent computerization of cultural data and their interoperability, as well as for the development of culture-driven automatic reasoning processes.