Diffusion: The process by which a cultural trait spreads from one place to another over time
Cultural hearth: An area where cultural traits develop and from which cultural traits diffuse
Remember that flow is an important concept in human geography.
Just as humans flow physically, so do their cultures, innovations, and trends.
Historically, this happened through imperialism and colonialism, which drove conquest, missionary work, trade, and migration.
Today, diffusion continued through some of the same ways, but also through mass media and the internet.
Diffusion has introduced people all over the world to customs, traditions, language, technology, means of communication, consumer products, and other aspects of culture.
Relocation diffusion (from Ch. 5) is the spread of traits or ideas through the movement or relocation of people.
Throughout history, people migrating to new places brought artifacts and mentifacts of their culture with them.
Religions, for example, often spread through relocation diffusion as people bring their beliefs with them and continue to practice their faith in their new homes.
In the late 15th century, as Europeans began moving to the Americas, they brought aspects of their culture with them.
The languages spoken by most people in the Americas today (Spanish, English, Portuguese, French) are the result of this relocation diffusion.
Europeans also brought Christianity and Judaism, changing the religious beliefs and practices of many with whom they came into contact (often through force.)
Relocation diffusion is also illustrated in the example of the African diaspora, the spread of people of African descent from their ancestral continent as a result of forced migration.
The 10 to 12 million people taken from their homes in Africa during the transatlantic slave trade inevitably left its mark on the cultures of the Americas.
The men, women, and children brought their cultures with them, and despite brutal conditions, many cultural traits and practices survived.
Over time, some of these cultural traits were adopted by the greater population.
Traditional African music influenced the blues and jazz, which went on to influence rock music. The farming techniques the Africans brought with them greatly improved rice production in the South.
Relocation diffusion can happen on smaller, or even individual, scales as well, and doesn’t always include a new physical region.
For example, if a CEO were to leave their originally company and begin work at another one, they may bring ideas from the first company into the new one.
Expansion Diffusion
Expansion diffusion: The spread of a cultural trait outward from where it originated
As a trait spreads it also remains in it’s original location, spreading outward from the hearth.
In expansion diffusion, cultural traits move even if the people of that culture do not relocate.
Movement of the people is required for relocation diffusion.
Contagious Diffusion
Contagious diffusion: The process by which an idea or cultural trait spreads rapidly among people of all social classes and levels of power
Occurs among people of all social classes and levels of power.
The outbreak of a disease is an example of contagious diffusion, as it spreads from direct person-to-person contact.
More abstractly, a slang word being adopted by an entire school because one person started using it is another example.
Originally, contagious diffusion only referred to the spread of a trait from people by direct contact.
Technology has changed the ways in which people connect and so this kind of diffusion no long occurs only through physical contact.
Because traits spread by contagious diffusion are available to any social status, wealth, power, etc. they spread quickly and widely.
Like a wave through a population.
Hierarchical Diffusion
A hierarchy is a system in which people are ranked above one another according to a certain metric.
Hierarchical diffusion: The spread of an idea or trait from a person or place of power or authority to other people or places
A trait that originates in an urban center will spread down the urban hierarchy to midsize cities, then small cities, then towns and villages.
Traits can diffuse hierarchically through people as well.
When a new trend is created by a celebrity, it’ll travel to others and be recreated to become marketable to the average person.
Professional innovations can spread hierarchically as well.
A farmer may create a new way to plant or plow that is more effective, but can only be adopted by nearby farms that can afford it.
The innovation will spread and possibly be adapted to become cheaper, spreading to even more people.
Traits can also spread from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top.
Sometimes referred to as reverse hierarchy.
Blue jeans were originally designed for miners in California, but soon other laborers and cowboys started wearing them as well because of their durability.
The garment became a symbol of the American West and the working class, working its way up the hierarchy and eventually being worn by actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean.
From then on, jeans traveled back down and became popular with younger generations, now a staple of the American wardrobe.
Stimulus Diffusion
Stimulus diffusion: The process by which a cultural trait or idea spreads to another culture or region but is modified to adapt to the new culture
Innovation can often take this form.
For example, someone who notices that a tool from somewhere else could be more effective and alters it, then spreading it in their own culture.
More recently, Elon Musk made all Tesla patents public, in hopes that more people could use them to further innovation of electric cars. This may lead to stimulus diffusion.
A Mix of Diffusion Types
While it’s important to know the individual types, cultural diffusion usually takes place through a combination of methods.
For example, something might first spread through hierarchical diffusion due to it being relatively expensive, but if the price drops enough to be accessible to most everyone, it can then spread through contagious diffusion, person-to-person.
7.2 Processes of Cultural Change
Historical Causes of Diffusion
The patterns of today have roots in the past.
Countries with strong military and economic power have always imposed their culture on countries with less, purposely or not.
Trade also facilitates the transfer of ideas, and migrations have all kinds of impacts worldwide.
Colonialism and Imperialism
Many countries have south to gain wealth, power, or other advantages through colonialism and/or imperialism.
Colonialism is when a powerful country establishes settlements in a less powerful country for economic or political gain.
Imperialism is related, occurring when a country enacts policies to further extend its influence over other countries through diplomacy or force.
These two processes have had strong impact within the world. The dominance of European countries in the 17th century and on reshaped the world map and spread European culture in ways still felt today.
In the 19th century, European countries increased imperialist activity, racing to establish colonies across Africa that could provide them with raw materials and geographic control.
At a conference in Berlin in 1884, European powers met to split up Africa diplomatically, but included no African leaders.
Europeans drew their borders through African territories, splitting up people and cultures.
The effect on culture is particularly evident in the languages of varied African countries.
The impact can be seen in Asia as well.
The British East India company held control of all of India from the 1820s. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh only gained independence in 1947.
Linguistic, religious, and recreational remnants of the British are still visible today in those countries.
Military Conquest
Some of the most significant cultural changes have occurred when powerful military leaders took over new lands.
Military conquest can cause cultural change to take place more rapidly than through processes like trade or migration, because the conquerors impose their way of life on the conquered people.
As global forces come to bear on a society, interactions between different cultures can lead to new forms of cultural expression.
Lingua franca: Common language used among speakers of different languages
A lingua franca can develop through conquest, but also more peaceful means.
Through trade, speakers of different languages might develop a simplified combination of two languages or a third language altogether.
Sometimes interactions between cultures result in two or more cultural elements blending together.
Creolization: The blending of two or more languages that may not include the features of either original language
Trade
Trade brings people together. They must interact to buy and sell goods.
The Silk Road, which spread from East Asia to the Mediterranean, brough unprecedented exchange of ideas that transformed many cultures it touched.
Alongside material goods, Buddhism and Christianity also spread along the Silk Road.
New ideas also spread along it, including those about medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and technology.
The innovations and ideas spread along the Road enabled European powers to discover the Americas and extend control over other parts of the world.
Trade and culture can go hand in hand.
American entertainment is popular around the world. Although American Media boosts other countries’ economy, they may take measures to ensure the culture shown on screen doesn’t overtake the native culture.
Migration
Migration has helped shape the patterns and practices of culture through the spread of ideas and traits between countries and regions.
Global patterns in language developed largely due to migration.
The Romance Languages developed from Latin which spread across Europe as the Roman Empire spread, and Latin speakers moved into new territory.
Language is always changing. People who migrate may create or adopt new words for unfamiliar things they see or experience.
Words from a foreign language may be folded into the dominant language. Resultingly, people in different places may speak different dialects of the same language.
Isolation can also influence a language developing differently compared to another location.
Contemporary Drivers of Change
Cultural ideas and practices are socially constructed, meaning they are created by a group of people.
Interactions between places and populations expose people to new artifacts, sociofacts, and mentifacts, subsequently spreading some of those traits.
Contemporary cultural change is driven by both large and small scale processes.
Globalization, urbanization, migration, technological advancements affect culture through media, politics, economics, and social relationships.
Globalization
Globalization is the process by which people across the world have become increasingly connected through travel, trade, and technology.
As these factors become more accessible, people can more easily communicate with people in other locations.
Globalization also means people have more access to a variety of goods from diverse places around the world.
Individuals experience cultural traits when traveling and bring the experiences home, where they may influence values, beliefs, and behaviors.
Immigrants also bring their cultures with them into new locations, as previously explained.
Broadly, the internet is available to many people around the globe, spreading ideas and spreading aspects of cultures in moments.
Popular culture has the potential to spread globally, because it appeals to a diverse group and can spread quickly.
Pop culture can usually be traced back to a single person, group, or place.
Urbanization
55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and that number is growing.
More people are living in large, diverse settlements where many cultural ideas and practices are brought together.
City dwellers interact routinely with others of different races, religions, ethnicities, and cultures.
Urbanization can drive change on a small scale, such as hearing new music in the city, or large scale, like when cultural interactions between urban centers spread to surrounding areas.
Migration
When they move, migrants bring with them the language, traditions, customs, political values, and cultural norms from home.
Over time, these cultural traits have an impact on the culture of the migrants’ new home.
In recent years, conflict, drought, and poverty have caused many migrants from Muslim majority countries to seek asylum in Europe.
These immigrants may bring their religious practices with them. Many Muslims may gather for traditional daily prayer and may choose to veil.
These aspects of Muslim culture are highly visible, and some of the reactions to them illustrated how some people resist cultural change.
Some European countries have put bans on certain veils, and many Muslim immigrants report feeling discriminated against in European countries.
Migration is connected to urbanization as a driver of cultural change.
Ravenstein’s laws state that long-distance migrants tend to settle in urban areas.
Immigrants from the same country or region tend to cluster together in the new city.
As a group, they have more of an impact on a city’s culture and more voice in political and social issues.
Technology
The internet, smartphones, and social media allow for great connectivity between people and provide access to a wider variety of cultural traits.
Global news and the internet spread information about faraway events as they occur.
This technologies enable ideas and traits to spread further and faster than ever before.
Often, however, having access to all the media and culture of any country in the world leads to less variety than more.
Teens across the world listen to the same music, families stream the same shows, the same movies play in theatres everywhere with the same opening day.
The world perspective and culture becomes more uniform, causing some to worry that places and people are losing what makes them unique.
Cultural Convergence
As cultures interact, they become more similar, sharing and adopting each other’s traits.
Cultural convergence: The process by which cultures become more similar through interaction
Historically, spatial relationships has a major impact on their interaction.
Cultures in close proximity were more likely to interact, and therefore more similar.
Groups within a region often spoke the same language, ate the same food, and practiced the same traditions.
Physical, cultural, and political barriers stopped or slowed the spread of ideas and cultural traits to faraway groups.
This is related to distance decaymodel, stating that the further people are from the hearth of an idea, the less they are affected by it.
The model also suggests that as an idea travels, the friction of distance causes it to “decay,” or change.
Like in a game of telephone, as an idea moves further, it can be warped over large distances.
Distance decay explains why people in different parts of the world speak the same language speak with different accents or why people have different practices for the same religion.
It also explains why traits can be very unfamiliar to another, faraway location.
Arranged marriages are a common tradition in South Asia but are very unusual in the US today.
Time-space compression has made it so distance decay doesn’t have the same impact on cultural interaction.
Cultural convergence occurs much faster today than in the past.
Remember that time-space compression describes the shrinking of the world due to improvements in communication and transportation technologies.
Every time technology advances, ideas flow faster, people and goods can move quicker.
Their values, ideologies, behaviors, arts, and customs begin to reflect these interactions, driving cultural convergence.
Cultural Divergence
Just as increased interaction can cause similarity, conflict can cause the opposite.
Cultural divergence: The process by which cultures become less similar due to conflicting beliefs or other barriers
Divergence can happen when a person or group moves away from their core culture and is exposed to new cultural traits.
Access to technology may vary considerably from one culture to another.
As technology speeds up cultural change, the divide will grow between people who have technologies and those who lack them.
Different cultures may view new technologies differently. Some may reject them, contributing to divergence.
Divergence also happens to physical barriers, such as mountains and rivers, which separate groups of people living in different parts of a cultural region.
As time passes, each group may develop different cultural traits.
Barriers to Diffusion
Besides physical barriers, cultural and political barriers can slow or stop the spread of culture as well.
Cultural barriers include taboos or bans on certain practices.
Language can act as a cultural barrier to diffusion as well.
People cannot adopt a cultural idea or trait if they don’t understand the language in which it is communicated.
Political barriers include policies and borders.
A country that allows free expression and has no limits on communicatory technologies will be more open to diffusion.
7.3 Consequences of Cultural Change
Acculturation
Acculturation: The process by which people within one culture adopt some of the traits of another while still retaining their own distinct culture
This often occurs as the result of prolonged contact between two or more cultures and can happen at a group or individual level.
Acculturation can happen with almost any cultural trait. It is often discussed in terms of a minority culture that adopts elements of a majority culture.
Immigrants go through a process of adapting to their new cultural surroundings, learning the languages, wearing the fashion, and following customs.
In the process of taking on these new traits, some aspects of their original culture can be lost over time.
Fashion is a clear example of acculturation.
Muslim women who immigrate to a western country might adopt aspects of the new culture by wearing fashions of the new location, but retain their own culture through continuing to veil.
Destination countries experience acculturation as well.
Acculturation is a complicated processes, and factors such as age, personality, upbringing, education, and many others determine how much immigrants incorporate a new culture into their life.
Some immigrants embrace the new culture and drop as much of their own as possible. Others hold onto their culture entirely.
Some adopt cultural elements and retain others. Some marginalized immigrants reject both the receiving and heritage cultures.
Cultural psychologist John W. Berry studied the ways in which individuals choose to acculturate and the effects of these choices.
He found that no matter how people attempt to handle the collision of cultures, they will experience some stress.
Those who integrated elements of their old and new cultures experienced the least stress, while those who rejected both experienced the most.
Assimilation
Assimilation: A category of acculturation in which the interaction of two cultures results in one culture adopting almost all of the customs, traditions, language, and other cultural traits of the other.
An individual or group that has fully assimilated will be indistinguishable socially and culturally from others in the culture.
It is the most comprehensive form of acculturation, and it might happen voluntarily or be forced upon a group by a dominant culture.
Because it involves replacing deeply held beliefs and practices, complete assimilation is rare.
The US government once removed Native American children from their families and placed them into boarding schools. They were forced to speak English and take on new names.
This is a very clear case of forced assimilation.
Sometimes, however, the line between forced and encouraged assimilation can be blurry.
Some countries have policies that encourage assimilation.
Voluntary assimilation can occur when it is advantageous for an immigrant group to fit in with its adopted culture.
The downside of assimilation is the loss of cultural identity.
There are many historical examples of colonial forces that have minimized or banned cultural traditions.
Whole languages have been lost to time as people from colonized groups have been forced to learn the colonizer’s language.
Syncretism
Sometimes traits from two or more cultures blend together to form a new custom, idea, value, or practice.
Syncretism: Process of innovation combining different cultural features into something new
Cultural syncretism can occur through immigration, military conquest, marriages, etc.
Religious syncretism is common. As many religions established themselves in new regions, traditional customs were incorporated into their practices.
Cultural syncretism is often evident in celebrations.
Halloween, for example, has roots in Christian and pagan practices.
Syncretism occurs in music as well, as new musical styles often combine the musical traditions of several different cultures.
Multiculturalism
Sometimes diverse cultures coexist within a shared space. People in these spaces do not belong solely to one culture or another.
Multiculturalism: A situation in which different cultures live together without assimilating
This often occurs in large cities, where people from many different cultures live in close proximity.
The United States is a classic example of a multicultural country.
Although Americans share a dominant culture based on democratic ideals, there are many different ethnicities that retain aspects of their own cultures.
Multiculturalism can create an atmosphere of acceptance and lead to a rich, vibrant blend of cultural traits.
The coexistence of culture can also cause conflict, and lead people to feel caught between two cultures.
These difficulties are typical of cultural changes caused by diffusion, and the severity depends on a number of factors.
The cultures of Africa and Asia are collectivist cultures.
Collectivist culture: A culture in which people are expected to conform to collective responsibility within the family and to be obedient to and respectful of elder family members
These expectations are at odds with the spirit of individualism and independence of the culture of western societies.
The disparity between these sets of values can make it difficult for young people to assimilate into new western cultures and can lead to conflict at home.
The fact that these issues are less obvious than other challenges of acculturation, such as learning a new language, means that they can be even more difficult to overcome.
Cultural Appropriation
Cultural appropriation: The act of adopting elements of another culture
It is usually used to describe the adoption by a dominant culture of one or more elements of a minority culture.
The term is most often used to describe instances when such adoption is inappropriate or out of context.