ABSTRACT
My approach to understanding concepts and conceptual change focuses on forms of representation, like a number system, and the shifting functions to which individuals use those forms in collective practices of daily life. I pose questions about the micro-, socio-, and ontogenesis of form-function relations, the regulative processes that constrain and enable their developments, as well as the interaction between them. I illustrate the approach through a published study on number and collective practices of economic exchange conducted in remote and rapidly changing Oksapmin communities in Papua New Guinea, where I completed fieldwork in 1978, 1980, 2001, and 2014.
