1. Processes of Cultural Change
Chapter 15
Processes of Cultural Change 1

2. What Will You Learn? Analyze why and how cultural systems change
Identify the key mechanisms of cultural change, providing examples
Explain the consequences of unequal power in culture contact
Compare directed and undirected change
Recognize and discuss reactions to repressive change
Assess the importance of self-determination in successful cultural change
Connect modernization ideology to international resource exploitation and the global market 2

3. How Do Cultures Change?
The mechanisms of culture change include all of the following:
Innovation
Diffusion
Cultural Loss
Acculturation/Ethnocide
Genocide
Directed Change 3

4. Innovation A major factor in cultural change.
Innovation is any new idea, method, or device that gains widespread acceptance in the society.
primary innovation- the creation, inventions or chance, discovery of a completely new idea, method, or device.
secondary innovation- the deliberate application or modification of an existing idea, method, or device. 4

5. 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. 5

6. Diffusion The extent of cultural borrowing can be surprising.
paper, the compass, and gunpowder were all invented in China long before Europeans became aware of them about 700 years ago.
Europeans then analyzed and improved them where needed. 6

7. Critical Thought
What elements of our society do you suppose are diffused into other societies?
In your travels abroad (if applicable) what signs of “America” have you witnessed. 7

8. Cultural Loss
Cultural loss is the abandonment of an existing practice or trait.
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 causes change. 8

9. Repressive Change: Acculturation and Ethnocide
Acculturation is the massive culture change that occurs in a society when it experiences contact with a more powerful society.
Always involves an element of force either directly or indirectly.
This can lead to ethnocide.
Change is inevitable because the stronger culture will “force” change onto the weaker culture.
Merger or fusion occurs when the two cultures lose their separate identities and form a single culture. 9

10. Ethnocide & Genocide
Not all acculturation is violently forced as mentioned.
Ethnocide is 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. 10

11. Case Study on the Yanomami (Suggested Activity)
Upon reading the section titled Ethnocide in Amazonia: Yanomami (pgs: ) gather into small groups and reflect on the following questions.
1. What types of change were the Yanomami faced with, list each.
2. How were elements of western culture forced onto the Yanomami. Furthermore what consequences did these have on the group?
3. What solutions were offered to help the Yanomami? Were/are they effective? 11

12. Directed Change
Applied anthropology was originally focused on advising government programs of directed cultural change and solving practical problems through anthropological techniques.
In the 20th century the scope of this field expanded.
Due to cultural changes other types of anthropology have emerged such as action anthropology, committed, engaged, involved, and advocacy anthropology.
They all involved community-based research and action in collaboration and solidarity with indigenous societies. 12

13. Reaction to Change
Inevitably there is some type of response of indigenous peoples to the changes that have been thrust upon them.
Resisting assimilation, a process of cultural absorption of an ethnic minority by a dominant society, people often seen emotional comfort from tradition.
Customary ideas and practices passed through generations, which in a modernizing society may form an obstacle to new ways of doing things. 13

14. Reactions to Change
Traditions play an important role in a cultural process identified as accommodation.
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 an example of syncretism. 14

15. Revitalization Movements
As discussed in the chapter on religion and spirituality, revitalization movements can be used as a mechanism of change.
They are often, but not always, religiously or spiritually based.
Some can take on an armed revolutionary character, as did the Taliban in Afghanistan. 15

16. Cargo Cults A type of revitalization movement is the cargo cult
A spiritual movement (especially noted in Melanesia) in reaction to disruptive contact with Western capitalism, promising resurrection of deceased relatives, destruction or enslavement of white foreigners, and the magical arrival of utopian riches. 16

17. Rebellion and Revolution
If societal discontent reaches its boiling point one can witness rebellion and or revolution.
Rebellion or insurgency
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. 17

18. 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. 18

19. 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. 19

20. Subprocesses of Modernization
Technological development
Agricultural development
Urbanization
Industrialization
Telecommunication 20

21. Indigenous Accommodation to Modernization
Many ethnic groups, unable to resist changes but unwilling to surrender their distinctive cultural heritage, may pursue a strategy of accommodation. 21

22. Sami Reindeer Herding
Sami native reindeer herders of Scandinavia’s arctic tundra turned to using snowmobiles for herding as opposed to their traditional methods.
An economically and physically easier accommodation. 22

23. Globalization in the “Underdeveloped” World
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.
Despite rosy predictions of a better future, hundreds of millions of people in our world remain trapped in a wretched reality. 23