Transcript CULTURAL CHANGE and GLOBALIZATION:

CULTURAL CHANGE and
GLOBALIZATION:
• Cultures are always changing.
Because cultures consist of learned
patterns of behavior and belief,
cultural traits can be unlearned and
learned anew as human needs
change.
• Discovery and invention have been
primary sources of culture change.
Yet only when a society accepts an
invention or discovery and uses it
regularly can culture change be said
to have occurred.
• Some inventions are probably the
result of dozens of tiny, perhaps
accidental, initiatives over a period of
many years.
• Other inventions are consciously
intended. Yet why some people are
more innovative than others is not
really understood. A margin for
risk? Or nothing else to lose?
• Diffusion is the process by which
cultural elements are borrowed from
another society and incorporated into
the culture of the recipient group.
• There are three basic patterns of
diffusion.
• diffusion by direct contact in which
elements of a culture are first taken
up by neighboring societies and
then gradually spread farther and
farther afield
• diffusion by intermediate contact, in
which third parties , frequently
traders, carry a cultural trait from
the originating society to another
group
• stimulus diffusion in which
knowledge of a trait belonging to
another culture stimulates the
invention or development of a local
equivalent
• Diffusion is a selective not automatic
process. A society accepting a foreign
cultural trait is likely to adapt it in a
way that effectively harmonizes it
with the society’s own traditions.
• When a group or a society is in
contact with a more powerful
society, the weaker group is often
obligated to acquire cultural
elements from the dominant group.
• Acculturation is a process of
extensive borrowing in the context of
superordinate—subordinate relations
between societies.
• Acculturation in contrast to diffusion
comes about as a result of some sort
of external pressure.
• Revolution is the most dramatic and
perhaps rapid way a culture can
change.
• Usually revolutions indicate a violent
replacement of a society’s rulers.
• Rebellions occur customarily in state
societies where there is a ruling elite.
• Not all peoples who are suppressed,
conquered or colonized eventually
rebel or successfully revolt against
established authority.
• Many cultural changes in the modern
world have been generated, directly
or indirectly, by the dominance and
expansion of Western societies.
• Commercial exchange is a
fundamental change for many
cultures that have had other modes
of exchange or kinds of economies.
• Some examples:
• 1. increased migration for economic
necessity or better opportunties
• 2. self-sufficient economies change
to trade or cash cropping
• The growing influence of Western
societies has also led to religious
change in many parts of the world.
• In many societies such change has
been brought about intentionally
through the efforts of missionaries.
• Ethnogenesis is the process by which
new cultures are created.
• Globalization is the spread of cultural
features around the world.
• Globalization is minimizing cultural
diversity but not eliminating it.