Culture Change and Globalization

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Chapter 16

• Culture Change and Globalization

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What We Will Learn

• How do cultures change?
• What are some obstacles to cultural change?
• In what ways do civilization and
  industrialization threaten the cultures of
  Indigenous populations?
• Do planned programs of economic development
  always benefit the local people?
• What is globalization, and how does it affect the
  cultures of the world?

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Cultural Change

• No culture remains unchanged.
• Cultures change in two ways
• Internally - through the processes of invention
  and innovation
• Externally through the process of diffusion.

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Cultural Change
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Inventors and Innovators

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

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Diffusion

• The spreading of a thing, an idea, or a behavior
  pattern from one culture to another.
• If every culture had to rely solely on its own
  inventions, human progress over the centuries
  would indeed be slow.
• Cultures have been able to develop rapidly
  because the process of diffusion has enabled
  humans to pool their creative/inventive resources.

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Cultural Diffusion Selectivity

• The adoption of an innovation by a culture and
  the speed with which it is adopted depends on the
  following
• Is it seen as superior to what already exists?
• Is it consistent with existing cultural patterns?
• Is it easily understood?
• Can it be tested on a trial basis?
• Are the benefits clearly visible?

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Cultural Diffusion Reciprocity

• Diffusion is a two-way process.
• While Europeans introduced their culture to
  native Americans, they 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.

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Cultural Diffusion Modification

• Once a cultural element is accepted in a new
  culture, it may change in form or function.
• The Masai of Kenya and Tanzania pierce their
  earlobes and enlarge the hole by inserting
  increasingly larger round pieces of wood until a
  loop of skin is formed.
• One group of Masai was observed using Eveready
  flashlight batteries obtained from the U.S.

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Diffusion

• The pizza pie has made a number of changes in
  form as it diffused from Italy to the Americas in
  the early 1900s.

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Cultural Diffusion Likelihood

• Some parts of culture are more likely to be
  diffused than others.
• Material culture is more likely to be diffused
  than ideas or behavior patterns.
• A traditional farmer in Senegal is more likely
  understand the advantages of a bulldozer over a
  shovel than of substituting Buddhism for his form
  of ancestor worship.

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Cultural Diffusion Variables

• Diffusion is affected by
• Duration and intensity of contact.
• Degree of cultural integration.
• Similarities between the donor and recipient
  cultures.

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Question

• A/an ________ is any new thing, idea, or behavior
  pattern that emerges from within a society.
• Creation
• Innovation
• Construct
• invention

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Answer d

• An invention is any new thing, idea, or behavior
  pattern that emerges from within a society.

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Question

• ________ is the spread of a thing, an idea, or a
  cultural pattern from one culture to another.
• Diffusion
• Enculturation
• Innovation
• Acculturation

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Answer a

• Diffusion is the spread of a thing, an idea, or a
  cultural pattern from one culture to another.

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Acculturation

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

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Consequences of Acculturation

• The subordinate culture could
• Become extinct
• Be incorporated as a distinct subculture of the
  dominant group
• Be assimilated (blended) into the dominant group

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Acculturation

• The Skolt Lapps adopted snowmobiles in the 1960s
  to help them become more efficient reindeer
  herders.

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Linked Changes

• A single innovation may set off changes in other
  parts of a culture.
• Television
• Introduced during the 1950s.
• Replaced the 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.

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Linked Changes

• The increased use of cell phones by inattentive
  pedestrians on busy streets has led to a
  significant rise in auto accidents.

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Question

• _______ is a special type of diffusion that takes
  place as a result of sustained contact between
  two societies, one of which is subordinate to the
  other.
• Modification
• Acculturation
• Reciprocity
• Enculturation

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Answer b

• Acculturation is a special type of diffusion that
  takes place as a result of sustained contact
  between two societies, one of which is
  subordinate to the other.

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Cultural Boundaries

• Strengthen a cultures traditions and discourage
  cultural borrowing
• Language
• Eating habits
• Clothing
• Folklore
• Humor

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Indigenous Populations

• Refers to a group of people who are
• 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.

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Indigenous Populations

• If the Shasta Dam, located in Northern
  California, is elevated by 18 feet (as proposed),
  the last remaining sacred sites of the Winnemem
  Wintu Indians will be destroyed.

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Change And Development

• Todays world can be roughly divided into two
  broad categories of countries the haves and the
  have-nots.
• In terms of comparative income, Canadas per
  capita income is 170 times higher than
  Mozambiques, and the average U.S. citizen earns
  approximately 178 times more money as the average
  Ethiopian.

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Economic Disparity

• The income of the average Canadian is 170 times
  greater than that of this man from Mozambique,
  Africa.

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Modernization Theory

• The theory that explains economic development in
  terms of the inherent sociocultural differences
  between the rich and the poor.
• Includes many of the 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.

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World Systems Theory

• 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.
• Economic development occurs when one group
  purposefully increases its own wealth at the
  expense of others.

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Neocolonialism

• 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.

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Question

• According to the ________ theory, the wealthy
  countries of the world achieved high levels of
  development by exploiting other regions,
  plundering their resources, using their people as
  cheap sources of labor, and dominating their
  markets.
• colonialism
• voluntaristic
• world systems
• modernization

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Answer c

• According to the world systems theory, the
  wealthy countries of the world achieved high
  levels of development by exploiting other
  regions, plundering their resources, using their
  people as cheap sources of labor, and dominating
  their markets.

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Less Developed Countries (Ldcs)

• Countries that have a relatively low gross
  national product (GNP) and low annual family
  income.

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Multinational Corporations

• Large corporations that have economic operations
  in a number of different countries throughout
  the world.

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Multinational Corporations

• Vietnamese Buddhist monks walk past an inflatable
  Pepsi can in Ho Chi Minh City.
• Multinational corporations have more assets than
  the countries in which they operate, giving them
  enormous control over governments and economies.

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Factors in the the Rise of Globalization

• Revolution in computer technology made
  communication faster and cheaper for a growing
  segment of the worlds population.
• Methods of investing money has changed, today it
  is, to a large degree, in the hands of
  individuals.
• There has been a fundamental change in the flow
  of information all over the world.

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Globalization

• The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the
  symbolic beginning of our present period of
  globalization.

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Globalization

• As yet one more leading indicator of rapid
  globalization, more than half of all U.S.-based
  franchises are now located in other parts of the
  world, as is this KFC restaurant in Shanghai,
  China.

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Globalization

• Examples of Global Interconnectedness
• Major league baseball and football teams have
  their preseason games in Europe and Japan.
• In 2003, 56 of U.S. franchise operators were in
  markets outside the United States as compared to
  46 three years earlier.
• 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.

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Multiculturalism

• A public policy philosophy that recognizes the
  legitimacy and equality of all cultures
  represented in a society.