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Culture and Cultural Change

Culture and Cultural Change. Geography 107. culture: the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits constituting a distinct complex of tradition of a racial, religious, or social group cultural landscape: visible evidence of our tastes, values, aspirations, and fears

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Culture and Cultural Change

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  1. Culture and Cultural Change Geography 107

  2. culture: the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits constituting a distinct complex of tradition of a racial, religious, or social group • cultural landscape: visible evidence of our tastes, values, aspirations, and fears • innovation: introduction of new ideas, objects, or technologies that generally originate within the culture group. Traditional and low technology societies generally not as innovative as modern, urban ones. • cultural lag: when a social group is slow to adopt innovations and to adapt to changing circumstances. Generally leads to a competitive disadvantage with competing regional peoples. example: African droughts associated with ice ages stimulated hunting technology changes in our modern human ancestors. • diffusion: the process by which an idea or innovation is transmitted across geographic space • relocation diffusion occurs via carriers who relocate • expansion diffusion spreads to areas neighboring the source through contact and exchange of information.

  3. hierarchical diffusion: ideas leapfrog from one influential person to another, or from one urban center to another, bypassing rural areas • examples: new modes of dress, hairstyles, language • stimulus diffusion: where a specific trait is rejected, but the underlying idea is accepted • example of Siberian Chukchi domesticating reindeer, but only after observing horses and cattle domesticated by peoples south of them • distance decay: the declining intensity of any activity, process, or function with increasing distance from its point of origin • absorbing barrier: something that halts diffusion • permeable barrier: a barrier that allows part of the innovation to diffuse through but acts to weaken and retard the continued spread • sigmoidal adoption • acculturation: the process of adopting some aspect of another culture

  4. Forces in cultural development: • Endogenous factors: elements of the specific local environment or of local cultural history (site, region specific) • Exogenous factors: the influence of elements of other places/regions (situation) • Which of the above two were most significant 5,000-10,000 years ago? • Which has become increasingly more significant in more recent times? • Through trade, global communication, and transportation, the balance has shifted to exog. factors, away from engog. factors.

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