Processes of Change

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Chapter 15

• Processes of Change

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Chapter Preview

• Why Do Cultures Change?
• How Do Cultures Change?
• What Is Modernization?

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Why Do Cultures Change?

• Much change is unforeseen, unplanned, and
  undirected.
• Changes in existing values and behavior comes
  about due to contact with other peoples who
  introduce new ideas or tools.
• This can involve the massive imposition of
  foreign ideas and practices through conquest of
  one group by another.

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How Do Cultures Change?

• The mechanisms of culture change include
  innovation, diffusion, cultural loss, and
  acculturation.
• Innovation is the discovery of something that is
  then accepted by fellow members in a society.
• Diffusion is borrowing something from another
  group.
• Cultural loss is the abandonment of an existing
  practice or trait, with or without replacement.
• Acculturation is a massive change that comes
  about due to contact with a more powerful, group.

Innovation
A McDonalds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Businesses
as well as people can exemplify cultural
diffusion.
Cultural Loss
Acculturation
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What Is Modernization?

• Modernization refers to a process of change by
  which traditional, nonindustrial societies
  acquire characteristics of technologically
  complex societies.
• Accelerated modernization interconnecting all
  parts of the world is known as globalization.

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Causes of Cultural Change

• Accidents, including the unexpected outcome of
  existing events.
• Peoples deliberate attempt to solve some
  perceived problem (http//listverse.com/miscellane
  ous/top-10-accidental-discoveries/ ).
• Change may be forced upon one group in the course
  of especially intense contact between two
  societies.

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Innovation
Primary Innovation

• The ultimate source of change some new practice,
  tool, or principle.
• Other individuals adopt the innovation, and it
  becomes socially shared.
• Primary innovations are chance discoveries of new
  principles.
• Secondary innovations are improvements made by
  applying known principles.

Venus" of Willendorf from Willendorf Austra 20
30 thousand years old.
Secondary Innovation
9,000 year old cooking vessels from modern Syrian.
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Innovation

• Innovations through history

• http//www.ideafinder.com/history/timeline.htm

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Dvorak and QWERTY Keyboards

• Dvorak (1932) and QWERTY (1874) keyboards,
  compared.
• Although superior to the latter in virtually
  every way, the Dvorak keyboard has not been
  adopted owing to the head start enjoyed by QWERTY.

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Obstacles to Progress

• In some areas of the world strict, anti-modern
  ideology often associated with religious groups
  oppose modern development and the spread of
  foreign influences. One example is the Taliban
  an Afghanistan Pakistan Pashtun movement that
  implemented the strictest interpretation of
  Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world.

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Diffusion

• The spread of certain ideas, customs, or
  practices from one culture to another.

MIGRATIONS AND CULTURAL DIFFUSION carried the
Indo-European protolanguage from the homeland,
which the authors place in the Transcaucasus (see
Historical Armenia maps), and fragmented it into
dialects. Some spread west to Anatolia and
Greece, others southwest to Iran and India. Most
Western languages stem from an Eastern branch
that rounded the Caspian Sea. Contact with
Semitic languages in Mesopotamia and with
Kartvelian languages in the Caucasus led to the
adoption of many foreign words.
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Diffusion of Tobacco

• Having spread from the tropics of the western
  hemisphere to much of the rest of North and South
  America, it spread rapidly to the rest of the
  world after Italian explorer Christopher Columbus
  first crossed the Atlantic in 1492.

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Cultural Loss

• Abandonment of an existing practice or trait.
  Not always a progressive or regressive thing.
• Example
• In ancient times wagons were used in northern
  Africa and southwestern Asia, but wheeled
  vehicles disappeared from Morocco to Afghanistan
  about 1,500 years ago.
• They were replaced by camels due to their
  endurance, longevity, ability to ford rivers and
  traverse rough ground.
• While a wagon required a man for every two
  animals, one person manage six camels.

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Question

• The spread of cultural elements from one culture
  to another is called ______________
• cold fusion.
• transfusion.
• diffusion.
• bifusion.
• confusion.

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Answer C

• The spread of cultural elements from one culture
  to another is called diffusion.

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Question

• In biblical times, chariots and carts were
  widespread in the Middle East, but by the 6th
  century roads had deteriorated so much that
  wheeled vehicles were replaced by camels. This
  illustrates that cultural change is sometimes due
  to
• a. primary invention.
• b. secondary invention.
• c. diffusion.
• d. revitalization.
• e. cultural loss.

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Answer E

• In biblical times, chariots and carts were
  widespread in the Middle East, but by the 6th
  century roads had deteriorated so much that
  wheeled vehicles were replaced by camels. This
  illustrates that cultural change is sometimes due
  to cultural loss.

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Acculturation
Acculturation the massive culture change that
occurs in a society when it experiences intensive
firsthand contact with a more powerful society.
Ray-Ban acculturation of a young Yanomami Indian
in the Amazon Rainforest.
Aboriginal native with modern hat.
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Repressive Change

• Ethnocide
• Violent eradication of an ethnic groups cultural
  identity occurs when a dominant society sets out
  to destroy another societys cultural heritage.

• Two examples of attempted genocide in the 20th
  century
• (1) Hitlers Germany against Jews and Gypsies in
  the 1930s and the 1940s.
• (2) Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda, as in this
  1994 massacre.

• Genocide
• Extermination of one people by another, in the
  name of progress, either as a deliberate act or
  as the accidental outcome of activities carried
  out by people with little regard for their impact
  on others.

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Tradition Synercretism

• Tradition In a modernizing society, old cultural
  practices, which may oppose new forces of
  differentiation and integration.
• Syncretism The creative blending of indigenous
  and foreign beliefs and practices into new
  cultural forms.

• When British missionaries pressed Trobriand
  Islanders to celebrate their yam harvests with a
  game of cricket rather than traditional wild
  dances, Trobrianders transformed the staid
  British sport into an event that featured sexual
  chants and dances between innings.

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Rebellion and Revolution

• Rebellion
• Organized armed resistance to an established
  government or authority in power.
• Revolution
• Sudden and 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.

• Bolivias President Evo Morales officially
  launched an indigenous cultural revitalization
  movement.
• Mostly poverty-stricken, Bolivian Indians have
  seen their ancestral traditions repressed,
  marginalized, or ridiculed during the past five
  centuries.

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Armed Conflict
The majority of armed conflicts are in the
economically poor countries. Most are between
the sate and one or more nations or ethnic groups.
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Modernization

• Modernization The process of cultural and
  socioeconomic change, whereby developing
  societies acquire some of the characteristics of
  Western industrialized societies.

• Subprocesses of Modernization
• Technological development
• Agricultural development
• Industrialization
• Urbanization

• In the 1960s, Saami reindeer herders in
  Scandinavias Arctic tundra adopted snowmobiles,
  convinced they would make herding easier and
  economically more advantageous. Here, a young
  Saami man stands beside his tent and snowmobile,
  searching for his reindeer with binoculars.