The impetus for this volume began with an invited session of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and the Society for Cultural Anthropology at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association in 1986, organized by Naomi Quinn and Roy D'Andrade. The symposium was titled “The Directive Force of Cultural Models.” All of the contributors to this volume gave papers at the symposium. Alan Fiske also contributed a paper which later became the basis of a book-length monograph.

The basic idea of the symposium was to investigate the theoretical and ethnographic usefulness of the concept of “directive force.” Robert Weller and Edwin Hutchins were discussants, and grateful acknowledgment is made for the assistance given by their good critiques.