Processes of Culture Change: Why and How Cultures Change

1. Chapter 26 Processes of Change

2. Chapter Preview • Why Do Cultures Change? • How Do Cultures Change? • What Is Modernization?

3. Why Do Cultures Change? • All cultures change. • Some changes may be unforeseen, unplanned, and undirected. • Changes will result in existing values and behavior changes. • This may even involve the massive imposition of foreign ideas and practices through conquest of one group by another.

4. How Do Cultures Change? • The mechanisms of culture change include all of the following: • Innovation • Diffusion • Cultural Loss • Acculturation/Ethnocide • Genocide • Directed Change

5. Innovation • This is the ultimate source of change in all societies. • Innovation is any new idea, method, or device that gains widespread acceptance in the society. • Can be primary innovation- chance, discovery, or invention of completely new idea, method, or device. • Can also be secondary innovation- a deliberate application or modification of an existing idea, method, or device.

6. Diffusion • Diffusion is the spread of ideas, customs, or practices from one culture to another. • Cultures that are geographically close in proximity are known to have a lot of diffusion between them. • Travel, trade, modern communication can all help diffusion to occur and slowly change certain aspects of a culture.

7. Cultural Loss • When cultural loss occurs or the abandonment of an existing practice or trait it can often be replaced with a new practice or technology. • This replacement can result in cultural change, although not all cultural losses result in a replacement. • If a trait is lost and not replaced it can hinder a cultures growth and thus still causing a change.

8. Repressive Change:Acculturation and Ethnocide • Massive culture change that occurs in a society when it experiences contact with a more powerful society is known as acculturation. • This can lead to a forced change (often ethnocide) or change by power alone. • In other words the change is inevitable because the stronger culture will “force” change onto the weaker culture.3

9. Ethnocide & Genocide • Not all acculturation is violently forced as mentioned. However ethnocide is certainly a violent eradication of an ethnic groups cultural identity. • May include the killing of people which is better known as genocide- the physical extermination of people by another outside group. • Hitler's Germany Nazi regime is the most well known example of genocide.

10. Directed Change • Genocide and ethnocide are not focused on “change” rather eradication of a group of people. • Directed change can often be seen when colonial entities attempt to “help” indigenous peoples. • Often these powerful forces do not handle or assist the weaker groups in a positive way, whether their intentions were good or not. • Due to a lack of understanding of native cultural practices and life ways.

11. Response to Repressive Change • Inevitably there is some type of response of indigenous peoples to the changes that have been thrust upon them • Two documented responses to this type of change are tradition and syncretism.

12. Tradition & Syncretism • Tradition- the customary ideas and practices passed down from generation to the next, which in a modernizing society may form an obstacle to new ways of doing things. • Syncretism- in acculturation, change is the creative blending of indigenous and foreign beliefs and practices into new cultural forms. • Trobriand Islanders embracing European Cricket with their own style is a great example of syncretism.

13. Revitalization Movements • As discussed in the chapter on religion and spirituality, revitalization movements can be used as a mechanism of change. • Most commonly a reaction to repressive change- cargo cults are an example of this.

14. Rebellion and Revolution If societal discontent reaches its boiling point one can witness rebellion and or revolution. • Rebellion • Organized armed resistance to an established government or authority in power. • Revolution • Radical change in a society or culture. In the political arena, it refers to the forced overthrow of an old government and establishment of a completely new one.

15. Conditions for Rebellion and Revolution Factors that lead to resistance or overthrow of government: • Loss of prestige of established authority. • Threat to recent economic improvement. • Indecisiveness of government. • Loss of support of the intellectual class. • A leader or group of leaders with enough charisma or popular appeal to mobilize the population against the establishment.

16. Modernization • Modernization is the process of cultural and socioeconomic change, whereby developing societies acquire some of the characteristics of Western industrialized societies. • This process can be best understood by looking at the five sub processes of modernization.

17. Subprocesses of Modernization • Technological development • Agricultural development • Urbanization • Industrialization • Telecommunication

18. Globalization • The western view has held that non-western societies should be able to reach and maintain a level of living close to that of westerners. • The reality is that the global population can not consume at the rate of westerners. • A depletion of non-renewable resources will be inevitable and quick.