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Culture change - overview

Culture change - overview. Culture is always changing. Discoveries and inventions do not necessarily lead to change Diffusion is the source of innovations Direct contact, intermediaries, and stimulus diffusion, revolution Acculturation in the context of superordinate and subordinate relations

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Culture change - overview

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  1. Culture change - overview • Culture is always changing. • Discoveries and inventions do not necessarily lead to change • Diffusion is the source of innovations • Direct contact, intermediaries, and stimulus diffusion, revolution • Acculturation in the context of superordinate and subordinate relations • Most culture change today is the result of the expansion of Western cultures

  2. Innovation • Proceeds from invention, discovery, and diffusion. • Primary inventions (the wheel, the lever, the keystone) and secondary inventions. • Independent primary inventions are rare, but clearly do occur: • The keystone and the dome

  3. Process • Social acceptance: selective elimination according to utility. • Amaranth has never caught on in the U.S. • Integration: there is a lag between acceptance and integration and integration often requires changes in structure and infrastructure. • The automobile required roads, refineries, gas stations, mechanics.

  4. Technology and social change • Hard and soft technologies: automobiles and word processors • Changes in technology can lead to changes in roles: the case of office secretaries

  5. Unintended consequences • The automobile changed commerce, as intended, but also helped change: • Dating habits • The distribution of housing/work

  6. Invention vs. discovery • Inventions: the transfer of existing knowledge and behavior from one context to another. • Independent complex inventions occur regularly: telephone, automobile, calculus, theory of natural selection, telegraph.

  7. Diffusion • Most things, however, are borrowed • Paper: • T'sai Lun in 105 and Chinese Turkestan in 264 • Samarkand in 751 • Baghdad in 793 and Egypt around 900 • Morocco around 1100 • Then Spain, France (1189), Italy (1276), Germany (1391), and England (1494) where manufacturing was introduced

  8. Ralph Linton, 1936: the All-American man • Bed, pajamas, shaving, windows, umbrellas, coins, plates, steel, forks, spoons, watermelons, coffee, eggs, chickens, bacon, cigarettes, writing

  9. From: "100 percent American" by Ralph Linton in his 1936 publication entitled The Study Of Man, pp. 326-327). • Our solid American citizen awakens in a bed built on a pattern which originated in the Near East … He shaves, a masochistic rite which seems to have been derived from either Sumer or ancient Egypt…. He glances through the windows, made of glass invented in Egypt, and if it is raining … takes an umbrella, invented in southeastern Asia. … • On his way to breakfast he stops to buy a paper, paying for it with coins, an ancient Lydian invention. He begins breakfast with an orange, from the eastern Mediterranean and … coffee, an Abyssinian plant, with cream and sugar. Both the domestication of cows and the idea of milking them originated in the Near East, while sugar was first made in India. … • [He] may have the eggs of a species of bird domesticated in Indo-China, or thin strips of the flesh of an animal domesticated in Eastern Asia • He reads the news of the day, imprinted in characters invented by the ancient Semites upon a material invented in China by a process invented in Germany. As he absorbs the accounts of foreign troubles, if he is a good conservative citizen, he may thank a Hebrew deity in an Indo-European language that he is 100 percent American

  10. The diffusion of tobacco • It went from the northeast of NA around the world to the northwest of NA. • 1558: to Spain by Francisco Fernández; to England in 1586 by Sir Walter Raleigh. • 1591: Holland from England; English and Dutch sailors move tobacco to the Baltics. • Spanish and Portuguese traders spread it across Mediterranean to the Middle East.

  11. 1605: Turkey bans it; Japan restricts its cultivation. 1634: Russians try to stop it. • Then across Russia to Siberia and across the Bering Straits with early fur traders.

  12. Culture change in the modern world • Colonialism • Globalization • Modernization and development • Imperial conquest is as old as the state: Aztecs, Roman, Han, Ottoman • Recently: Portugal (14th-20th), Spain (16th-18th), England (17th-20th), France, Germany, Russia, the U.S.

  13. Portugal focused on trade; Spain focused on mines; Britain focused on plantations. • Spain and Britain were forced to rely on political control for their labor, leading to imperialistic colonialism. • Britain banned the looming of cloth in 19th century India.

  14. Anthropology and colonialism • Colonialism transferred diseases, technologies, and crops. It produced massive voluntary and involuntary migrations, and we can see the voluntary migrations continuing today. • Colonialism helped finance the industrialization of Europe and North America, first through gold and then through profits on cheap labor. • Anthropology has been labeled the handmaiden of colonialism.

  15. Ethnography satisfies our interest in exotic peoples. • It also serves political and economic interests. • Polygyny, bride wealth, blood feuds, were unknown in the law of colonialists, and anthropology filled in the gaps. • Peace Corps produces many anthropologists.

  16. Neocolonialsm • The legacy of colonialism is no longer simple exploitation, infant mortality, etc. Today, many countries are left behind in terms of development. • One ancient state-level society managed to avoid colonialism and has developed in a modern, market economy: Japan.

  17. China • China began developing in a socialist economy, switched to a capitalist economy, and now faces some unanticipated problems as a result of their success.

  18. Unanticipated side effects • Development is not always successful. • The Green Revolution produced high-yield crops, but the percentage of small farms drops with consolidation that comes with greater profits on crops • Fertility decline led to population increase in Mauritius

  19. Multinationals • Exxon-Mobile’s gross profits in 2004 were around $125b – about the GNP of Greece, South Africa and Thailand in 2001. • IBM’s profits were ~$33b in 2004, or the GNP of Morroco and Nigeria and five times the GNP of Ghana.

  20. The IMF and structural adjustment • The IMF is also a major source of change: structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s. • In Brazil, the austerity program sent inflation down in 1982, but drove infant mortality up after a decade of decline. (see Chapter in Kottak.) • Oil-rich countries borrowed in the 1970s and 1980s against anticipated increases in profits.

  21. Today, anthropology continues to serve the interests of former colonial nations and of multinational corporations. • We must ask, however, what the alternative would be.

  22. Theories of modernization • What accounts for the lack of development? • Modernization theory: this posits that modern ideas must diffuse to lesser developed countries in order for those countries to modernize.

  23. The obvious cure for lack of modernization, under this paradigm, is to replace bad ideas with good ones: birth control, sanitation, new crops. People are seen as locked into their cultures. • But this theory does not explain the causes of the differences.

  24. Dependency theory • Dependency theory is an alternative to modernization theory: • It isn’t peasant fatalism or peasant resistance to change. Their condition is the consequence of colonialism, which causes resistance to change. • Tanzania tried in the early post-colonial era to go it alone and reduce dependency on Britain and on MNCs. • Like Albania, Tanzania went broke.

  25. World systems theory • So, what’s the answer? Emmanuel Wallerstein showed that from 1500-present, the capitalist world system has encompassed both the developed and the underdeveloped countries of the world in a core and periphery structure. • This theory is ultimately based on the market theory for the building of wealth (Adam Smith 1776).

  26. Cultural materialism • Is structural and infrastructural convergence leading to cultural convergence? • The convergence and the independence of symbolic, expressive culture are both evident in Japan • Today, Japan faces a dilemma: to employ more women, or to import labor, or to develop more robots – or to reduce life style.

  27. The educational model of social change • Under what conditions does the simple input of information lead to behavioral/social change? • When behavior is tied to the structure or the infrastructure, then educating people will not change the behavior. • When behavior is tied to culture, then providing information does lead to desired behavioral change: brands and marketing.

  28. Anthropologists can make a contribution to development by discovering the causes of phenomena that we want to explain. • Why has baseball declined? Why does China have high longevity and low per capita GNP? • Anthropologists also contribute by examining cases at the ground level.

  29. Condon’s study of Holman • Copper Inuit at Holman in Canadian arctic • 1963: 135 in the Holman region • 1988: 350, with 52% <20 years old • Bottle feeding, pre- and postnatal care, better nutrition, economic security (with guns in 1920s)

  30. Led to autonomy of teens and less communal sharing. • Wage labor led to high security for those who had it, unemployment for those who did not. • Eventually, there was a trade-off between unemployment and hunting • 1970s seal skins brought $65. By 1985: $3.68 • 1987: 5 of the 90 youth had finished high school in Yellow Knife

  31. Demographic transition • The first transition was from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. • The second began in the 18th century in Europe and is spreading around the world today, reaching Mexico now.

  32. Twelve years ago, China had a GNP/PC of only $330, but a life expectancy of 70 and an IM rate of 31

  33. Inequality increases • The UN Human Development Index shows measures of life expectancy, literacy, and PC purchasing power. • All 114 countries in this index have risen on all measure over the last 40 years. • The top 20% of the world’s population, however, accounts for about 80% of the GNP and the bottom 20% accounts for less than 2%.

  34. The ratio: • 1960 30 to 1 • 1970 32 to 1 • 1980 45 to 1 • 1991 60 to 1 • Click here for a list of countries by inequality

  35. Gini coefficients for the United States: • 1970: 0.394 • 1980: 0.403 • 1990: 0.428 • 2000: 0.462 • 2005: 0.469 • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#_note-0

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