Cultural Anthropology: Culture Change and Globalization

How and Why Cultures Change?

  • Romantic Primitivism and Cultural Essentialism:
    • Held a closed view of culture change.
    • Viewed cultures as idealized and unchanging.
    • Change was generally seen as undesirable.
  • Change as Constant:
    • It is now understood that change is the only constant.
  • Causes of Change:
    • "Errors" in social reproduction.
    • Invention: new technologies and methods.
    • Diffusion: the spread of ideas and material culture.
    • Migration: the spread of peoples with new ideas and ways of living.
  • Acceptance or Rejection of Changes:
    • Forced culture change: political, economic coercion.
    • Voluntary culture change: based on perceived usefulness.
    • Unforeseen effects of culture change.

Cultural Change Examples

  • Sears Catalogue:
    • Advertised men’s summer underwear in the early twentieth century.
    • Reflects changing ideas about beauty.

Causes of Change: Inventors and Innovators

  • Marginal People:
    • Inventors and innovators tend to be marginal people living on the fringes of society.
    • Marginal people are non-mainstream people on the fringes of their own culture.
    • Not bound by tradition or convention, they see problems and solutions with a fresh perspective.

Causes of Change: Diffusion

  • Definition:
    • The spreading of a thing, an idea, or a behavior pattern from one culture to another.
  • Importance:
    • Without diffusion, human progress would be slow.
    • Diffusion enables cultures to pool their creative/inventive resources.

Cultural Diffusion: Selectivity

  • Factors Influencing Adoption:
    • Perceived superiority over existing alternatives.
    • Consistency with existing cultural patterns.
    • Ease of understanding.
    • Ability to be tested on a trial basis.
    • Clearly visible benefits.

Cultural Diffusion: Reciprocity

  • Two-Way Process:
    • Diffusion is a two-way process.
  • Example: Europeans and Native Americans:
    • Europeans introduced their culture to Native Americans and received cultural features in return.
      • Clothing: ponchos, parkas, and moccasins.
      • Medicines: quinine, pain relievers, and laxatives.
      • Food: corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, yams, avocados, and the so-called Irish potato.

Cultural Diffusion: Modification

  • Change in Form or Function:
    • Once a cultural element is accepted in a new culture, it may change in form or function.
  • Example: Masai of Kenya and Tanzania:
    • Pierce earlobes and enlarge the hole with increasingly larger round pieces of wood until a loop of skin is formed.
    • Observed using Eveready flashlight batteries obtained from the U.S.

Cultural Diffusion: Likelihood

  • Material vs. Non-Material Culture:
    • Material culture is more likely to be diffused than ideas or behavior patterns.
  • Example: Traditional Farmer in Senegal:
    • More likely to understand the advantages of a bulldozer over a shovel than of substituting Buddhism for his form of ancestor worship.

Cultural Diffusion: Variables

  • Factors Affecting Diffusion:
    • Duration and intensity of contact.
    • Degree of cultural integration.
    • Similarities between the donor and recipient cultures.

Acculturation

  • Definition:
    • Takes place as a result of sustained contact between two societies, one of which is subordinate to the other.
  • Process:
    • Involves the widespread reorganization of one or both cultures over a short period of time.
  • Impact:
    • Both the dominant and subordinate culture experience changes, but the subordinate culture changes most dramatically.

Consequences of Acculturation

  • Possible Outcomes for the Subordinate Culture:
    • Extinction.
    • Incorporation as a distinct subculture of the dominant group.
    • Assimilation (blended) into the dominant group.

Culture Change: Linked Changes

  • Definition:
    • A single innovation may set off changes in other parts of a culture.
  • Example: Television:
    • Introduced during the 1950s.
    • Replaced the radio as the major form of electronic communication in U.S. households.
    • Had consequences for other parts of the culture, such as the family system, the political process, and religious institutions.

Globalization: Indigenous Populations

  • Definition:
    • Original inhabitants of a region.
    • Identify with a specific, small-scale cultural heritage.
    • Have no significant role in the government.
  • Examples:
    • The small-scale cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Americas that came under the influence of the colonial powers during the past several centuries.

Globalization: Modernization Theory

  • Definition:
    • The theory that explains economic development in terms of the inherent sociocultural differences between the rich and the poor.
  • Relationship to Culture of Poverty:
    • Includes many of the same assumptions as the Culture of poverty view, an interpretation of poverty that suggests that poor people pass certain cultural features on to their children that tend to reinforce and perpetuate poverty.

Globalization: World Systems Theory

  • Definition:
    • An attempt to explain levels of economic development in terms of the exploitation of the poor by the rich nations of the world, rather than in terms of innate socioeconomic characteristics of each.
  • Key Concept:
    • Economic development occurs when one group purposefully increases its own wealth at the expense of others.

Globalization: Neocolonialism

  • Definition:
    • The economic, political, and military influence that developed nations continue to exert over less developed countries, even though the official period of colonization ended in the 1960s.

Globalization and its Effects

  • Definition:
    • Globalization refers to integration of technology, markets, and information on a global scale.
  • Historical Context:
    • Arose with the first civilizations and has shaped the world to varying degrees ever since.
    • Seems likely to increase.
  • Debate: Good or Bad?
    • Bad:
      • Western cultures are forcing their way of life on the rest of the World.
      • U.S. hyper-power is technologically, economically, and culturally imperialist.
      • Some say societies are resisting Western influences.
    • Good:
      • The technology of the West, as in past civilizations, is providing advances in travel, communications, medicine, and other technologies that would not be possible otherwise.
      • Non-Western societies want many aspects of Western culture.

Factors in the Rise of Globalization

  • Revolution in Computer Technology:
    • Made communication faster and cheaper for a growing segment of the world’s population.
  • Changes in Investment Methods:
    • Money is now, to a large degree, in the hands of individuals.
  • Fundamental Change in the Flow of Information:
    • Information is flowing all over the world.

Globalization: Examples of Global Interconnectedness

  • Major League Sports:
    • Major league baseball and football teams have their preseason games in Europe and Japan.
  • Franchise Operators:
    • More than half of U.S. franchise operators are in markets outside the United States.
  • Coca-Cola:
    • Coca-Cola sells more of its products in Japan than it sells in the U.S., even though Japan has half the population of the U.S.

Technological Change in Human History: Exponential Growth

  • Graph Description:
    • The graph shows population growth (in millions) over time (years).
    • Plots milestones in human history correlated with exponential growth, from the beginning of the 1st agricultural revolution to the Genome project, PCs, etc.

How Much Culture Change Can Humans Live With?

  • Technological and Economic Change:
    • Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1970).
    • Are we there yet?
  • Democracy and Technological Change:
    • Can democracy keep up with rapid technological change?
  • Social and Political Instability:
    • Can rapid culture change breed social and political instability?
  • Reactions Against Technology:
    • Neo-Luddism.
  • Extremist Movements:
    • Domestic and international terrorist/revolutionary movements?

Revolutionary Technologies: Helpful or Harmful?

  • Computers and Information:
    • Benefits: More powerful computing devices, large-scale data networks (via Facebook or Twitter).
    • Possible Abuses: Terrorist attacks, loss of privacy, surveillance techniques, loss of jobs.
  • Materials Science:
    • Benefits: Liquid metals, shape-changing materials, composite materials/adhesives.
    • Possible Abuses: Use in new weapons.
  • Biotechnology:
    • Benefits: Genetically designed foods, better medicine and diagnostic tools.
    • Possible Abuses: Destruction of natural ecosystems, human cloning, eugenics/humans become a commodity.
  • Nanotechnology:
    • Benefits: Molecular machines/devices, new building materials, better, less expensive goods.
    • Possible Abuses: New weapons, economic chaos, human extinction.