cultural changes

Wch

apte

r 2 Culture and CultureChange

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Defining Culture

Cultural Constraints

Attitudes That Hinderthe Study of Cultures

Cultural Relativism

Describing a Culture

Culture is Patterned

How and Why CulturesChange

Culture Change andAdaptation

Globalization: Problemsand Opportunities

Ethnogenesis: The Emergence of New Cultures

Culture Diversity in the Future

14

e all consider ourselves to be unique individuals with our own set of per-sonal opinions, preferences, habits, and quirks. Indeed, all of us are unique;and yet most of us also share many feelings, beliefs, and habits with most ofthe people who live in our society. If we live in North America, we are likelyto have the feeling that eating dogs is wrong, have the belief that bacteriaor viruses cause illness, and have the habit of sleeping on a bed. Most peo-ple hardly ever think about the ideas and customs they share with otherpeople in their society, assuming them to be “natural.” These ideas and be-haviors are part of what we mean by culture. We only begin to becomeaware that our culture is different when we become aware that other peo-ples have different feelings, different beliefs, and different habits from ours.So most North Americans would never even think of the possibility of eat-ing dog meat if they did not know that people in some other societies com-monly do so. They would not realize that their belief in germs was cultural ifthey were not aware that people in some societies think that witchcraft orevil spirits causes illness. They might not become aware that it is their cus-tom to sleep on beds if they were not aware that people in many societiessleep on the floor or on the ground. Only when we compare ourselves withpeople in other societies may we become aware of cultural differences andsimilarities. This is, in fact, the way that anthropology as a profession began.When Europeans began to explore and move to faraway places, they wereforced to confront the sometimes striking facts of cultural variation.

Most of us are aware that “times have changed,” especially when wecompare our lives with those of our parents. Some of the most dramaticchanges have occurred in attitudes about sex and marriage, changes inwomen’s roles, and changes in technology. But such culture change is notunusual. Throughout history, humans have replaced or altered customarybehaviors and attitudes as their needs have changed. Just as no individualis immortal, no particular cultural pattern is impervious to change. Anthro-pologists want to understand how and why such change occurs. Culturechange may be gradual or rapid. Although there has always been contactbetween different societies, contact between faraway cultures through ex-ploration, colonization, trade, and more recently multinational business hasaccelerated the pace of change within the last 600 years or so. Globaliza-tion has made the world more and more interconnected. We conclude thischapter with a discussion of the future of cultural diversity.

� � �

DEFINING CULTUREIn everyday usage, the word culture refers to a desirable quality we can acquire by attendinga sufficient number of plays and concerts and visiting art museums and galleries.Anthropologists, however, have a different definition, as Ralph Linton explained:

M02_EMBER1208_13_SE_C02.QXD 10/21/09 9:05 PM 4

15

M02_EMBER1208_13_SE_C02.QXD 10/21/09 9:05 PM Page 15

16 PART I � Introduction

Culture refers to the total way of life of any soci-ety, not simply to those parts of this way which thesociety regards as higher or more desirable. Thusculture, when applied to our own way of life, hasnothing to do with playing the piano or readingBrowning. For the social scientist such activities aresimply elements within the totality of our culture.This totality also includes such mundane activities aswashing dishes or driving an automobile, and for thepurposes of cultural studies these stand quite on apar with “the finer things of life.” It follows that forthe social scientist there are no uncultured societiesor even individuals. Every society has a culture, nomatter how simple this culture may be, and everyhuman being is cultured, in the sense of participat-ing in some culture or other.1

Culture, then, refers to innumerable aspects of life, in-cluding many things we consider ordinary. Linton empha-sized common habits and behaviors in what he consideredculture, but the totality of life also includes not just whatpeople do, but also how they commonly think and feel. Aswe define it here, culture is the set of learned behaviors andideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values, and ideals) thatare characteristic of a particular society or other socialgroup. Behaviors can also produce products or materialculture—things like houses, musical instruments, and toolsthat are the products of customary behavior.

Different kinds of groups can have cultures. People cometo share behaviors and ideas because they communicatewith and observe each other. Although groups from familiesto societies share cultural traits, anthropologists have tradi-tionally been concerned with the cultural characteristics ofsocieties. Many anthropologists define society as a groupof people who occupy a particular territory and speak acommon language not generally understood by neighbor-ing peoples. By this definition, societies may or may notcorrespond to countries. There are many countries, par-ticularly newer ones, that have within their boundariesdifferent peoples speaking mutually unintelligible lan-guages. By our definition of society, such countries arecomposed of many different societies and therefore manycultures. Also, by our definition of society, some societiesmay even include more than one country. For example, wewould have to say that Canada and the United States forma single society because the two groups generally speakEnglish, live next to each other, and share many commonideas and behaviors. That is why we refer to “NorthAmerican culture” in this chapter. The terms society andculture are not synonymous. Society refers to a group ofpeople; culture refers to the learned and shared behaviors,ideas, and characteristic of those people. As we will discussshortly, we also have to be careful to describe culture as ofparticular time period; what is characteristic of one timemay not be characteristic of another.

Culture Is Commonly SharedIf only one person thinks or does a certain thing, thatthought or action represents a personal habit, not a pattern

of culture. For a thought or action to be considered cul-tural, some social group must commonly share it. We usu-ally share many behaviors and ideas with our families andfriends. We commonly share cultural characteristics withthose whose ethnic or regional origins, religious affilia-tions, and occupations are the same as or similar to ourown. We share certain practices and ideas with most peoplein our society. We also share some cultural traits with peo-ple beyond our society who have similar interests (such asrules for international sporting events) or similar roots (asdo the various English-speaking nations).

When we talk about the commonly shared customs of asociety, which constitute the traditional and central con-cern of cultural anthropology, we are referring to a culture.When we talk about the commonly shared customs of agroup within a society, which are a central concern of soci-ologists and increasingly of concern to anthropologists, weare referring to a subculture. (A subculture is not necessar-ily the same as an ethnic group; we discuss the concept ofethnicity further in the chapter on social stratification, eth-nicity, and racism.) When we study the commonly sharedcustoms of some group that includes different societies, weare talking about a phenomenon for which we do not havea single word—for example, as when we refer to Westernculture (the cultural characteristics of societies in or de-rived from Europe) or the culture of poverty (the presumedcultural characteristics of poor people the world over).

We must remember that, even when anthropologistsrefer to something as cultural, there is always individualvariation, which means that not everyone in a society sharesa particular cultural characteristic of that society. For ex-ample, it is cultural in North American society for adultsto live apart from their parents. But not all adults in oursociety do so, nor do all adults wish to do so. The customof living apart from parents is considered cultural because

A daughter braids her doll’s hair, imitatingwhat her mother is doing.


Chapter 2 � Culture and Culture Change 17

most adults practice that custom. In every society studiedby anthropologists—in the simplest as well as the mostcomplex—individuals do not all think and act the same.2

Indeed, individual variation is a major source of newculture.3

Culture Is LearnedNot all things shared generally by a group are cultural.Typical hair color is not cultural, nor is eating. For some-thing to be considered cultural, it must be learned as wellas shared. A typical hair color (unless dyed) is not culturalbecause it is genetically determined. Humans eat becausethey must; but what and when and how they eat arelearned and vary from culture to culture. Most NorthAmericans do not consider dog meat edible, and indeedthe idea of eating dogs horrifies them. But in China, as insome other societies, dog meat is considered delicious. InNorth American culture, many people consider a bakedham to be a holiday dish. In several societies of the MiddleEast, however, including those of Egypt and Israel, eatingthe meat of a pig is forbidden by sacred writings.

To some extent, all animals exhibit learned behaviors,some of which most individuals in a population may shareand may therefore consider cultural. But different animalspecies vary in the degree to which their shared behaviorsare learned or are instinctive. The sociable ants, for instance,despite all their patterned social behavior, do not appear tohave much, if any, culture. They divide their labor, constructtheir nests, form their raiding columns, and carry off theirdead—all without having been taught to do so and withoutimitating the behavior of other ants. Our closest biologicalrelatives, the monkeys and the apes, not only learn a widevariety of behaviors on their own, they also learn from eachother. Some of their learned responses are as basic as thoseinvolved in maternal care; others are as frivolous as the tastefor candy. Frans de Waal reviewed seven long-term studiesof chimpanzees and identified at least 39 behaviors thatwere clearly learned from others.4 If shared and sociallylearned, these behaviors could be described as cultural.

The proportion of an animal’s life span occupied bychildhood roughly reflects the degree to which the animaldepends on learned behavior for survival. Monkeys andapes have relatively long childhoods compared to otheranimals. Humans have by far the longest childhood ofany animal, reflecting our great dependence on learnedbehavior. Although humans may acquire much learnedbehavior by trial and error and imitation, as do monkeysand apes, most human ideas and behaviors are learnedfrom others. Much of it is probably acquired with the aidof spoken, symbolic language. We will have much more tosay about language in a later chapter. Using language, ahuman parent can describe a snake and tell a child that asnake is dangerous and should be avoided. If symboliclanguage did not exist, the parent would have to wait untilthe child actually saw a snake and then, through example,show the child that such a creature is to be avoided. With-out language, we probably could not transmit or receiveinformation so efficiently and rapidly, and thus would notbe heir to so rich and varied a culture.

To sum up, we may say that something is cultural if it isa learned behavior or idea (belief, attitude, value, ideal)that the members of a society or other social group gener-ally share.

Controversies About the Concept of Culture

Although we have explained what we mean by culture andwe have tried to give the definition most anthropologistsuse, some would disagree with the definition. One of thedisagreements is whether the concept of culture shouldrefer just to the rules or ideas behind behavior,5 or shouldalso include the behaviors or the products of behavior, asis our choice here.

Cognitive anthropologists are most likely to say thatculture refers to rules and ideas behind behavior, andtherefore that culture resides in people’s heads.6

Every individual will have slightly different constructsthat are based in part on their own unique experiences.Because many people in a society share many of the sameexperiences, they will share many ideas—those sharedideas anthropologists describe as culture. This view allowsfor individual differences within a society, and also sug-gests that individual variation is the source of new culture.

Observers of human life often point to the seemingforce of “culture,” the profound effect on individuals ofliving in social groups. As we will see shortly in the sectionon cultural constraints, these social constraints suggestthat culture exists outside of individuals. In the strongestview, one that was more acceptable in the past, culture isthought of as having a “life” of its own that could be stud-ied without much regard for individuals at all.7 Accordingto this view, people are born blank slates, which culturecan put its stamp on in each generation. Individuals mayacquire their culture in the course of growing up, butunderstanding culture does not require understandingpsychological processes.

There are a number of problems if we view culture ashaving a “life” of its own. First, where does it reside ex-actly? Second, if individuals do not matter, what are themechanisms of culture change? And lastly, if psychologicalprocesses are irrelevant, how is it that there is considerablesimilarity across cultures?

As we will see in the next section, people do behavedifferently in social groups in ways that they might noteven imagine ahead of time. Mob behavior is an extreme,but telling example. Therefore, we think we should lookat behavior as well as rules or ideas in people’s heads indescribing a culture. It is not necessary to postulate thatculture has a “life” of its own to explain why people some-times behave differently in social groups. Humans are so-cial beings and respond to others. So, in contrast to manycognitive anthropologists, we include behavior and theproducts of behavior in describing culture. But like cog-nitive anthropologists, we believe that one must considerindividual variation in describing culture to sort out whatis individual and what is shared. Those commonly sharedand learned behaviors as well as ideas are the stuff ofculture.



CULTURAL CONSTRAINTSThe noted French sociologist Émile Durkheim stressedthat culture is something outside us, exerting a strong co-ercive power on us. We do not always feel the constraintsof our culture because we generally conform to the typesof conduct and thought it requires. Social scientists referto standards or rules about what is acceptable behavior asnorms. The importance of a norm usually can be judgedby how members of a society respond when the norm isviolated.

Cultural constraints are of two basic types, direct andindirect. Naturally, the direct constraints are the more ob-vious. For example, if you choose to wear a casual shortsoutfit to a wedding, you will probably be subject to someridicule and a certain amount of social isolation. But ifyou choose to wear nothing, you may be exposed to astronger, more direct cultural constraint—arrest for inde-cent exposure.

Although indirect forms of cultural constraint are lessobvious than direct ones, they are no less effective.Durkheim illustrated this point when he wrote, “I am notobliged to speak French with my fellow-countrymen, norto use the legal currency, but I cannot possibly do other-wise. If I tried to escape this necessity, my attempt wouldfail miserably.”8 In other words, if Durkheim had decidedhe would rather speak Icelandic than French, nobodywould have tried to stop him. But hardly anyone wouldhave understood him either. And although he would nothave been put into prison for trying to buy groceries withIcelandic money, he would have had difficulty convincingthe local merchants to sell him food.

In a series of classic experiments on conformity,Solomon Asch revealed how strong social pressure can be.Asch coached the majority of a group of college students togive deliberately incorrect answers to questions involving

visual stimuli. A “critical subject,” the one student in theroom who was not so coached, had no idea that the otherparticipants would purposely misinterpret the evidencepresented to them. Asch found that, in one-third of the ex-periments, the critical subjects consistently gave incorrectanswers, seemingly allowing their own correct perceptionsto be distorted by the obviously incorrect statements ofthe others. And in another 40 percent of the experiments,the critical subject yielded to the opinion of the groupsome of the time.9 These studies have been replicated inthe United States and elsewhere. Although the degree ofconformity appears to vary in different societies, moststudies still show conformity effects.10 Many individualsstill do not give in to the wishes of the majority, but a re-cent study using MRIs has shown that perceptions can ac-tually be altered if participants consciously alter theiranswers to conform to others.11

ATTITUDES THAT HINDER THESTUDY OF CULTURES

Many of the Europeans who first traveled to farawayplaces were revolted or shocked by customs they observed.Such reactions are not surprising. People commonly feelthat their own behaviors and attitudes are the correct onesand that people who do not share those patterns are im-moral or inferior.12 People who judge other cultures solelyin terms of their own culture are ethnocentric—that is,they hold an attitude called ethnocentrism. Most NorthAmericans would think that eating dogs or insects is dis-gusting, but most do not feel the same way about eatingbeef. Similarly, they would react negatively to child be-trothal or digging up the bones of the dead.

Our own customs and ideas may appear bizarre or bar-baric to an observer from another society. Hindus in

Because we are ethnocentric about many things, it is often difficult to criticize ourown customs, some of which might seem shocking to a member of another society.The elderly in America often spend their days alone. In contrast, the elderly in Japanoften live in a three-generational family.



India, for example, would consider our custom of eatingbeef disgusting. In their culture, the cow is a sacred animaland may not be slaughtered for food. In many societies, ababy is almost constantly carried by someone, in some-one’s lap, or asleep next to others.13 People in such soci-eties may think it is cruel of us to leave babies alone forlong periods of time, often in devices that resemble cages(cribs and playpens). Even our most ordinary customs—the daily rituals we take for granted—might seem thor-oughly absurd when viewed from an outside perspective.An observer of our society might justifiably take notes oncertain strange behaviors that seem quite ordinary to us,as the following description shows:

The daily body ritual performed by everyone in-cludes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these peo-ple are so punctilious about the care of the mouth,this rite involves a practice which strikes the uniniti-ated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me thatthe ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hoghairs into the mouth, along with certain magicalpowders, and then moving the bundle in a highlyformalized series of gestures. In addition to the pri-vate mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouthman once or twice a year. These practitioners havean impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of avariety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use ofthese objects in the exorcism of the evils of themouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture ofthe client. The holy-mouth man opens the client’smouth and, using the above-mentioned tools, en-larges any holes which decay may have created inteeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. Ifthere are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth,large sections of one or more teeth are gouged outso that the supernatural substance can be applied. Inthe client’s view, the purpose of these ministrationsis to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremelysacred and traditional character of the rite is evidentin the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouthman year after year, despite the fact that their teethcontinue to decay.14

We are likely to protest that to understand the behaviorsof a particular society—in this case, our own—the observermust try to find out what the people in that society sayabout why they do things. For example, the observer mightfind out that periodic visits to the “holy-mouth man” are formedical, not magical, purposes. Indeed, the observer, aftersome questioning, might discover that the “mouth-rite” hasno sacred or religious connotations whatsoever. Actually,Horace Miner, the author of the passage on the “daily riteritual,” was not a foreigner. An American, he described the“ritual” the way he did to show how the behaviors involvedmight be interpreted by an outside observer.

Ethnocentrism hinders our understanding of the cus-toms of other people and, at the same time, keeps us fromunderstanding our own customs. If we think that every-thing we do is best, we are not likely to ask why we do whatwe do or why “they” do what “they” do.

We may not always glorify our own culture. Otherways of life may sometimes seem more appealing. When-ever we are weary of the complexities of civilization, wemay long for a way of life that is “closer to nature” or“simpler” than our own. For instance, a young NorthAmerican whose parent is holding two or three jobs justto provide the family with bare necessities might brieflybe attracted to the lifestyle of the !Kung of the KalahariDesert in the 1950s. The !Kung shared their food andtherefore were often free to engage in leisure activitiesduring the greater part of the day. They obtained all theirfood by men hunting animals and women gathering wildplants. They had no facilities for refrigeration, so sharinga large freshly killed animal was clearly more sensiblethan hoarding meat that would soon rot. Moreover, thesharing provided a kind of social security system for the!Kung. If a hunter was unable to catch an animal on a cer-tain day, he could obtain food for himself and his familyfrom someone else in his band. Then, at some later date,the game he caught would provide food for the family ofanother, unsuccessful hunter. This system of sharing alsoensured that people too young or too old to help withcollecting food would still be fed.

Could we learn from the !Kung? Perhaps we could insome respects, but we must not glorify their way of lifeeither or think that their way of life might be easilyimported into our own society. Other aspects of !Kung lifewould not appeal to many North Americans. For example,when the nomadic !Kung decided to move their camps,they had to carry all the family possessions, substantialamounts of food and water, and all young children belowage 4 or 5. This is a sizable burden to carry for any dis-tance. The nomadic !Kung traveled about 1,500 miles in asingle year and families had few possessions.15 It is un-likely that most North Americans would find the !Kungway of life enviable in all respects.

Both ethnocentrism and its opposite, the glorificationof other cultures, hinder effective anthropological study.

CULTURAL RELATIVISMAs we discussed in the chapter on the history of theory inanthropology, the early evolutionists tended to think ofWestern cultures as being at the highest or most progres-sive stage of evolution. Not only were these early ideasbased on very poor evidence of the details of worldethnography, they could also be ethnocentric glorifica-tions of Western culture.

But Franz Boas and many of his students—like RuthBenedict, Melville Herskovits, and Margaret Mead—feltotherwise.16 They stressed that the early evolutionists didnot sufficiently understand the details of the cultures theytheorized about, nor did they understand the context inwhich these customs appeared. Challenging the attitudethat Western cultures were obviously superior, the Boasiansinsisted that a society’s customs and ideas should be de-scribed objectively and understood in the context of thatsociety’s problems and opportunities. This attitude isknown as cultural relativism. Does cultural relativismmean that the actions of another society, or of our own,



should not be judged? Does our insistence on objectivitymean that anthropologists should not make moral judg-ments about the cultural phenomena they observe andtry to explain? Does it mean that anthropologists shouldnot try to bring about change? Not necessarily. Althoughthe concept of cultural relativism remains an importantanthropological tenet, anthropologists differ in their in-terpretation of the principle of cultural relativism.

Many anthropologists are uncomfortable with thestrong form of cultural relativism that suggests that allpatterns of culture are equally valid. What if the peoplepractice slavery, violence against women, torture, or geno-cide? If the strong doctrine of relativism is adhered to,then these cultural practices are not to be judged, and weshould not try to eliminate them. A weaker form of cul-tural relativism asserts that anthropologists should strivefor objectivity in describing a people and should be waryof superficial or quick judgment in their attempts to un-derstand the reasons for cultural behavior. Toleranceshould be the basic mode unless there is strong reason tobehave otherwise.17 The weak version of cultural relativitydoes not preclude anthropologists from making judg-ments or from trying to change behavior they think isharmful. But judgments need not, and should not, precludeaccurate description and explanation.

Human Rights and RelativismThe news increasingly reports behaviors that Westerncountries consider to be violations of human rights. Ex-amples range from jailing people for expressing certainpolitical ideas to ethnic massacre. But faced with criticismfrom the West, people in other parts of the world are say-ing that the West should not dictate its ideas about humanrights to other countries. Indeed, many countries say theyhave different codes of ethics. Are the Western countriesbeing ethnocentric by taking their own cultural ideas andapplying them to the rest of the world? Should we insteadrely on the strong version of the concept of cultural rela-tivism, considering each culture on its own terms? If we dothat, it may not be possible to create a universal standardof human rights.

What we do know is that all cultures have ethical stan-dards, but they do not emphasize the same things. For ex-ample, some cultures emphasize individual politicalrights; others emphasize political order. Some culturesemphasize protection of individual property; others em-phasize the sharing or equitable distribution of resources.People in the United States may have freedom to dissent,but they can be deprived of health insurance or of food ifthey lack the money to buy them. Cultures also varymarkedly in the degree to which they have equal rights forminorities and women. In some societies, women arekilled when a husband dies or when they disobey a fatheror brother.

Some anthropologists argue strongly against culturalrelativism. For example, Elizabeth Zechenter says thatcultural relativists claim there are no universal principlesof morality, but insist on tolerance for all cultures. If

tolerance is one universal principle, why shouldn’t therebe others? In addition, she points out that the concept ofcultural relativism is often used to justify traditions de-sired by the dominant and powerful in a society. Shepoints to a case in 1996, in Algeria, where two teenagegirls were raped and murdered because they violated thefundamentalist edict against attending school. Are thosegirls any less a part of the culture than the fundamental-ists? Would it make any difference if most Algerianwomen supported the murders? Would that make itright? Zechenter does not believe that internationaltreaties such as the Universal Declaration of HumanRights impose uniformity among diverse cultures.Rather, they seek to create a floor below which no societyis supposed to fall.18

Can the concept of cultural relativism be reconciledwith the concept of an international code of humanrights? Probably not completely. Paul Rosenblatt recog-nizes the dilemma but nonetheless thinks that somethinghas to be done to stop torture and “ethnic cleansing,”among other practices. He makes the case that “to the ex-tent that it is easier to persuade people whose viewpointsand values one understands, relativism can be a tool forchange . . . a relativist’s awareness of the values and un-derstanding of the elite makes it easier to know what argu-ments would be persuasive. For example, in a society inwhich the group rather than the individual has great pri-macy, it might be persuasive to show how respect for indi-vidual rights benefits the group.”19

DESCRIBING A CULTUREEarlier we discussed participant-observation and someother methods of research that cultural anthropologistsuse in doing fieldwork. But here we focus on anotherquestion: If all individuals are unique and all cultures havesome internal variation, how do anthropologists discoverwhat may be cultural? Understanding what is cultural in-volves two parts—separating what is shared from what isvery individually variable, and understanding whethercommon behaviors and ideas are learned.

To understand better how an anthropologist mightmake sense of diverse behaviors, let us examine the diver-sity at a professional football game in the United States.When people attend a football game, various members ofthe crowd behave differently while “The Star-SpangledBanner” is being played. As they stand and listen, somepeople remove their hats; a child munches popcorn; a vet-eran of the armed forces stands at attention; a teenagersearches the crowd for a friend; and the coaches take afinal opportunity to intone secret chants and spells de-signed to sap the strength of the opposing team. Yet, de-spite these individual variations, most of the people at thegame respond in a basically similar manner: Nearly every-one stands silently, facing the flag. Moreover, if you go toseveral football games, you will observe that many aspectsof the event are notably similar. Although the plays willvary from game to game, the rules of the game are neverdifferent, and although the colors of the uniforms of the



teams are different, the players never appear on the fielddressed in swimsuits.

Although the variations in individual reactions to agiven stimulus are theoretically limitless, in fact they tendto fall within easily recognizable limits. A child listening tothe anthem may continue to eat popcorn but will probablynot do a rain dance. Similarly, the coaches will unlikelyreact to that same stimulus by running onto the field andembracing the singer. Variations in behavior, then, areconfined within socially acceptable limits, and part of theanthropologists’ goals is to find out what those limits are.They may note, for example, that some limitations on be-havior have a practical purpose: A spectator who disruptsthe game by wandering onto the field would be requiredto leave. Other limitations are purely traditional. In oursociety, it is considered proper for a man to remove hisovercoat if he becomes overheated, but others wouldundoubtedly frown upon his removing his trousers evenif the weather were quite warm. Using observation andinterviewing, anthropologists discover the customs andthe ranges of acceptable behavior that characterize thesociety under study.

Similarly, anthropologists interested in describingcourtship and marriage in our society would encounter a

variety of behaviors. Dating couples vary in where they go(coffee shops, movies, restaurants, bowling alleys), whatbehaviors they engage in on dates, how long they datebefore they split up or move on to more serious relation-ships. If they decide to marry, ceremonies may be simpleor elaborate and involve either religious or secular rituals.Despite this variability, the anthropologists would begin todetect certain regularities in courting practices. Althoughcouples may do many different things on their first andsubsequent dates, they nearly always arrange the dates bythemselves; they try to avoid their parents when on dates;they often manage to find themselves alone at the end of adate; they put their lips together frequently; and so forth.After a series of more and more closely spaced encounters,a man and woman may decide to declare themselvespublicly as a couple, either by announcing that they areengaged or by revealing that they are living together orintend to do so. Finally, if the two of them decide to marry,they must in some way have their union recorded by thecivil authorities.

In our society, a person who wishes to marry cannotcompletely disregard the customary patterns of courtship.If a man saw a woman on the street and decided he wantedto marry her, he could conceivably choose a quicker andmore direct form of action than the usual dating proce-dure. He could get on a horse, ride to the woman’s home,snatch her up in his arms, and gallop away with her. InSicily, until the last few decades, such a couple would havebeen considered legally married, even if the woman hadnever met the man before or had no intention of marry-ing. But in North American society, any man who acted insuch a fashion would be arrested and jailed for kidnappingand would probably have his sanity challenged. Althoughindividual behaviors may vary, most social behavior fallswithin culturally acceptable limits.

In the course of observing and interviewing, anthro-pologists also try to distinguish actual behavior from theideas about how people in particular situations ought tofeel and behave. In everyday terms, we speak of these ideasas ideals; in anthropology, we refer to them as ideal culturaltraits. Ideal cultural traits may differ from actual behaviorbecause the ideal is based on the way society used to be.(Consider the ideal of “free enterprise,” that industryshould be totally free of governmental regulation.) Otherideals may never have been actual patterns and may repre-sent merely what people would like to see as correct be-havior. Consider the idealized belief, long cherished inNorth America, that everybody is “equal before the law,”that everybody should be treated in the same way by thepolice and courts. Of course, we know that this is not al-ways true. The rich, for example, may receive less jail timeand be sent to nicer prisons. Nevertheless, the ideal is stillpart of our culture; most of us continue to believe that thelaw should be applied equally to all.

When dealing with customs that are overt or highlyvisible within a society—for example, the custom of send-ing children to school—an investigator can determine theexistence of such practices by direct observation and byinterviewing a few knowledgeable people. But when

In deciding what is cultural behavior, anthropologists look forcommonalities, understanding that there is always considerablevariation. In North American culture, unmarried couples areallowed and even encouraged to spend time with each other,but how they spend their time varies.


the frequency distribution takes theform of a bell-shaped curve, as shownin Figure 2–1.

There, the characteristic being meas-ured is plotted on the horizontal axis(in this case, the distance between con-versational pairs), and the number oftimes each distance is observed (its fre-quency) is plotted on the vertical axis. Ifwe were to plot how a sample of NorthAmerican casual conversational pairs isdistributed, we would probably get abell-shaped curve that peaks at around3 feet.21 Is it any wonder, then, that wesometimes speak of keeping others “atarm’s length”?

Although we may be able to discoverby interviews and observation that a be-havior, thought, or feeling is widelyshared within a society, how do weestablish that something commonlyshared is learned, so that we can call itcultural? Establishing that something isor is not learned may be difficult. Be-cause children are not reared apartfrom adult caretakers, the behaviors

they exhibit as part of their genetic inheritance are notclearly separated from those they learn from othersaround them. We suspect that particular behaviors andideas are largely learned if they vary from society to soci-ety. We also suspect genetic influences when particular be-haviors or ideas are found in all societies. For example, aswe will see in the chapter on language, children the worldover seem to acquire language at about the same age, andthe structure of their early utterances seems to be similar.These facts suggest that human children are born withan innate grammar. However, although early childhoodlanguage seems similar the world over, the particular lan-guages spoken by adults in different societies show consid-erable variability. This variability suggests that particular

dealing with a domain of behavior that appears may in-clude many individual variations, or when the peoplestudied are unaware of their pattern of behavior and can-not answer questions about it, the anthropologist mayneed to collect information from a larger sample of indi-viduals to establish what the cultural trait is.

One example of a cultural trait that most people in asociety are not aware of is how far apart people standwhen they are having a conversation. Yet there is consider-able reason to believe that unconscious cultural rules gov-ern such behavior. These rules become obvious when weinteract with people who have different rules. We may ex-perience considerable discomfort when another personstands too close (indicating too much intimacy) or too far(indicating unfriendliness). Edward Hall reported thatArabs customarily stand quite close to others, closeenough, as we have noted, to be able to smell the otherperson. In interactions between Arabs and North Ameri-cans, then, the Arabs will move closer at the same timethat the North Americans back away.20

If we wanted to arrive at the cultural rule for conver-sational distance between casual acquaintances, we couldstudy a sample of individuals from a society and deter-mine the modal response, or mode. The mode is a statisti-cal term that refers to the most frequently encounteredresponse in a given series of responses. So, for the NorthAmerican pattern of casual conversational distance, wewould plot the actual distance for many observed pairs ofpeople. Some pairs may be 2 feet apart, some 2.5, andsome 4 feet apart. If we count the number of times everyparticular distance is observed, these counts providewhat we call a frequency distribution. The distance withthe highest frequency is the modal pattern. Very often

Mode

3.01.0 5.0

Freq

uenc

y

Distance between pairsin casual conversation (in feet)

FIGURE 2–1 Frequency Distribution Curve

Distance between people conversing varies cross-culturally. The faces of the RajputIndian men on the left are much closer than the faces of the American women on the right.



languages have to be learned. Similarly, if the courtshippatterns of one society differ markedly from those of an-other, we can be fairly certain that those courtship pat-terns are learned and therefore cultural.

CULTURE IS PATTERNEDAnthroplogists have always known that culture is not ahodgepodge of unrelated behaviors and ideas—that a cul-ture is mostly integrated. In saying that a culture is mostlyintegrated, we mean that the elements or traits that makeup that culture are not just a random assortment ofcustoms but are mostly adjusted to or consistent with oneanother.

A culture may also tend to be integrated for psycho-logical reasons. The ideas of a culture are stored in thebrains of individuals. Research in social psychology hassuggested that people tend to modify beliefs or behaviorsthat are not cognitively or conceptually consistent withother information.22 We do not expect cultures to becompletely integrated, just as we do not expect individu-als to be completely consistent. But if a tendency towardcognitive consistency is found in humans, we might ex-pect that at least some aspects of a culture would tend tobe integrated for that reason alone. How this pressure forconsistency works is not hard to imagine. Children, forexample, seem to be very good at remembering all thethings their parents say. If they ask for something and theparents say no, they may say, “But you said I could yester-day.” This pressure for consistency may even make par-ents change their minds! Of course, not everything onewants to do is consistent with the rest of one’s desires, butthere surely is pressure from within and without to makeit so.

Humans are also capable of rational decision making;they can usually figure out that certain things are not easyto do because of other things they do. For example, if a so-ciety has a long postpartum sex (a custom in which cou-ples abstain from sex for a year or more after the birth of ababy), we might expect that most people in the societycould figure out that it would be easier to observe thetaboo if husband and wife did not sleep in the same bed.Or if people drive on the left side of the road, as in Eng-land, it is easier and less dangerous to drive a car with asteering wheel on the right because that placement allowsyou to judge more accurately how close you are to carscoming at you from the opposite direction.

Consistency or integration of culture traits may alsobe produced by less conscious psychological processes. Aswe discuss in the chapters on culture and the individual,religion and magic, and the arts, people may generalize(transfer) their experiences from one area of life to an-other. For example, where children are taught that it iswrong to express anger toward family and friends, it turnsout that folktales parallel the childrearing; anger and ag-gression in the folktales tend to be directed only towardstrangers, not toward family and friends. It seems as if theexpression of anger is too frightening to be expressed closeto home, even in folktales.

Adaptation to the environment is another major reasonfor traits to be patterned. Customs that diminish the sur-vival chances of a society are not likely to persist. Eitherthe people clinging to those customs will become extinct,taking the customs with them, or the customs will be re-placed, thereby possibly helping the people to survive. Byeither process, maladaptive customs—those that dimin-ish the chances of survival and reproduction—are likely todisappear. The customs of a society that enhance survivaland reproductive success are adaptive customs and arelikely to persist. Hence, we assume that if a society has sur-vived long enough to be described in the annals of anthro-pology (the “ethnographic record”), much, if not most, ofits cultural repertoire is adaptive, or was at one time.

When we say that a custom is adaptive, however, wemean it is adaptive only with respect to a specific physicaland social environment. What may be adaptive in one en-vironment may not be adaptive in another. Therefore,when we ask why a society may have a particular custom,we really are asking if that custom makes sense as anadaptation to that society’s particular environmental con-ditions. If certain customs are more adaptive in particularsettings, then those “bundles” of traits will generally befound together under similar conditions. For example,the !Kung, as we have mentioned, subsisted by huntingwild animals and gathering wild plants. Because wildgame is mobile and different plants mature at differenttimes, a nomadic way of life may be an adaptive strategy.That food-getting strategy cannot support that manypeople in one area, so small social groups make moresense than large communities. Because people move fre-quently, it is probably more adaptive to have few materialpossessions. As we will see, these cultural traits usuallyoccur together when people depend on hunting and gath-ering for their food.

We must remember that not all aspects of culture areconsistent, nor is a society forced to adapt its culture tochanging environmental circumstances. Even in the faceof changed circumstances, people may choose not tochange their customs. For example, the Tapirapé of centralBrazil did not alter their custom of limiting the number ofbirths, even though they suffered severe population lossesafter contact with Europeans and their diseases. The Tapi-rapé population fell to fewer than 100 people from over1,000. Clearly, they were on the way to extinction, yet theycontinued to value small families. Not only did they be-lieve that a woman should have no more than three chil-dren, but they took specific steps to achieve this limitation.They practiced infanticide if twins were born, if the thirdchild was of the same sex as the first two children, and ifthe possible fathers broke certain taboos during preg-nancy or in the child’s infancy.23

Of course, it is also possible that a people will behave mal-adaptively, even if they try to alter their behavior. After all, al-though people may alter their behavior according to whatthey perceive will be helpful to them, what they perceive tobe helpful may not prove to be adaptive. The tendency for aculture to be integrated or patterned, then, may be cogni-tively and emotionally, as well as adaptively, induced.




HOW AND WHY CULTURESCHANGE

When you examine the history of a society, it is obvious thatits culture has changed over time. Some of the shared be-haviors and ideas that were common at one time are modi-fied or replaced at another time. That is why, in describinga culture, it is important to understand that a descriptionpertains to a particular time period. (Moreover, in manylarge societies, the description may only be appropriate fora particular subgroup.) For example, the !Kung of the1950s were mostly dependent on the collection of wildplants and animals and moved their campsites frequently,but later they became more sedentary to engage in wagelabor. Whether we focus on some aspect of past behavioror on contemporary behavior depends on what questionwe want to answer. If we want to maximize our under-standing of cultural variation, such as variation in reli-gious belief and practice, it may be important to focus onthe earliest descriptions of a group before they were con-verted to a major world religion. On the other hand, if wewant to understand why a people adopted a new religionor how they altered their religion or resisted change in theface of pressure, we need to examine the changes that oc-curred over time.

In the remainder of this chapter, we will discuss howand why cultures change and briefly review some of thewidespread changes that have occurred in recent times. Ingeneral, the impetus for change may come from within thesociety or from without. From within, the unconscious orconscious pressure for consistency will produce culturechange if enough people adjust old behavior and thinkingto new. And change can also occur if people try to inventbetter ways of doing things. Michael Chibnik suggests thatpeople who confront a new problem conduct mental orsmall “experiments” to decide how to behave. These exper-iments may give rise to new cultural traits.24 A good dealof culture change may be stimulated by changes in the ex-ternal environment. For example, if people move into anarid area, they will either have to give up farming or de-velop a system of irrigation. In the modern world, changesin the social environment are probably more frequentstimuli for culture change than changes in the physical en-vironment. Many North Americans, for example, startedto think seriously about conserving energy and aboutusing sources of energy other than oil only after oil sup-plies from the Middle East were curtailed in 1973 and1974. As we noted earlier, a significant amount of the rad-ical and rapid culture change that has occurred in the lastfew hundred years has been due to the imperial expansionof Western societies into other areas of the world. NativeAmericans, for instance, were forced to alter their lifestylesdrastically when they were driven off their lands and con-fined to reservations.

Discovery and InventionDiscoveries and inventions, which may originate inside oroutside a society, are ultimately the sources of all culturechange. But they do not necessarily lead to change. If an

invention or discovery is ignored, no change in cultureresults. Only when society accepts an invention or discov-ery and uses it regularly can we begin to speak of culturechange.

The new thing discovered or invented, the innovation,may be an object—the wheel, the plow, the computer—orit may involve behavior and ideas—buying and selling,democracy, monogamy. According to Ralph Linton, a dis-covery is any addition to knowledge, and an invention is anew application of knowledge.25 Thus, a person mightdiscover that children can be persuaded to eat nourishingfood if the food is associated with an imaginary characterthat appeals to them. And then someone might exploitthat discovery by inventing a character named Popeye whoappears in a series of animated cartoons, acquiring mirac-ulous strength by devouring cans of spinach.

Unconscious Invention In discussing the process ofinvention, we should differentiate between various typesof inventions. One type is the consequence of a society’ssetting itself a specific goal, such as eliminating tuberculo-sis or placing a person on the moon. Another typeemerges less intentionally. This second process of inven-tion is often referred to as accidental juxtaposition orunconscious invention. Linton suggested that some inven-tions, especially those of prehistoric days, were probablythe consequences of literally dozens of tiny initiativesby “unconscious” inventors. These inventors made theirsmall contributions, perhaps over many hundreds ofyears, without being aware of the part they were playing inbringing one invention, such as the wheel or a better formof hand ax, to completion.26 Consider the example of chil-dren playing on a fallen log, which rolls as they walk andbalance on it, coupled with the need at a given moment tomove a slab of granite from a cave face. The children’s playmay have suggested the use of logs as rollers and therebyset in motion a series of developments that culminated inthe wheel.

In reconstructing the process of invention in prehis-toric times, however, we should be careful not to look backon our ancestors with a smugness generated by our morehighly developed technology. We have become accus-tomed to turning to the science sections of our magazinesand newspapers and finding, almost daily, reports ofmiraculous new discoveries and inventions. From ourpoint of view, it is difficult to imagine such a simple inven-tion as the wheel taking so many centuries to come intobeing. We are tempted to surmise that early humans wereless intelligent than we are. But the capacity of the humanbrain has been the same for perhaps 100,000 years; there isno evidence that the inventors of the wheel were any lessintelligent than we are.

Intentional Innovation Some discoveries and inven-tions arise out of deliberate attempts to produce a newidea or object. It may seem that such innovations are obvi-ous responses to perceived needs. For example, during theIndustrial Revolution, there was a great demand for inven-tions that would increase productivity. James Hargreaves,in 18th-century England, is an example of an inventor



In the years since the 1949 Commu-nist takeover in China, the centralgovernment has initiated a varietyof changes in family life. Many ofthese changes were literally forced;people who resisted them were oftenresettled or jailed. Ancestor worshipand lineage organization were at-tacked or declared illegal. Mostprivate property was abolished, un-dermining family loyalties. Why par-ticipate in family activities if therecould be no economic reward? Still,the actions of the central governmentdid not completely change family life.Even coercion has its limits.

The government may have wantedto restrict the family and kinship, butits investments in public health andfamine relief reduced mortality,thereby strengthening family ties.Fewer infants died, more children livedlong enough to marry, old age be-came more common—all of thesedevelopments allowed people in allsocial classes to have larger and morecomplex networks of kin than werepossible before 1949. To be sure, gov-ernment policies undercut the powerand authority of extended family patri-archs. But the new healthier conditionswere conducive to large, multigenera-tional households with economic aswell as social ties to other kin.

As China became more accessibleto anthropologists and other re-searchers from abroad, many investi-gators came to study the variabilityand similarity in Chinese family life.Most of these studies focused on thedominant Han Chinese (the Han con-stitute about 95 percent of the totalpopulation of China); investigatorshave also studied many of the 55“recognized” minority cultures inChina. Burton Pasternak, a U.S. an-thropologist, Janet Salaff, a Canadiansociologist, and Chinese sociologistsstudied four communities of Han whohad moved outside the Great Wall to

colonize the Inner Mongolian frontier(Inner Mongolia is part of China). Theresults of their study suggest that, de-spite strong pressures from the gov-ernment, what changes or persists ina culture mainly reflects what is possi-ble ecologically and economically. Atradition of intensive agriculture can-not persist in the absence of sufficientwatering. The government’s insis-tence on one child per family cannotwithstand a family’s need for morechildren.

Han farmers who crossed theGreat Wall were searching for a bet-ter life. They found difficulties in cli-mate and soil that forced many toreturn home. But many adjustedto the grasslands and remained.Some continued to depend onfarming on the fringes of the grass-lands. Others farther out on thegrasslands became herders. The Hanwho switched to herding are now inmany respects more like the nativeMongol herders than like Han orMongol farmers. The gender divisionof labor among the Han pastoralistsbecame much sharper than amongthe Han farmers because men areoften far away with the herds.Pastoralist children, not that usefulin herding because mistakes can bevery costly, are more likely than farmchildren to stay in school for a longtime. Perhaps because of the greaterusefulness of children on the farm,Han farm families have more childrenthan Han pastoralists. But bothgroups have more than one child perfamily. Herdsmen are less likely thanfarmers to need cooperative labor,so Han pastoralists are more likely tolive as a neolocal independent familythan as a patrilocal extended family(which was traditional). In short, theadjustment of the Han to the grass-lands seems to be explained moreby ecological requirements than byethnic traditions.

Culture Change and Persistence in China

current research and issues

Although an increasing number ofHan have become more like Mongolsin their pastoral adaptations, manyMongols have adopted an urban wayof life and moved away from their pas-toral life. The Chinese governmentwas initially responsible for encourag-ing non-Mongols to move into InnerMongolia, particularly into its newcapital, Hohhot. At the same time,many Mongols moved from the grass-lands and into the capital city. Chinesegovernment policy was intended tomake each non-Han ethnic group aminority in its traditional land, but thegovernment paradoxically also triedto encourage minority ethnic pride intheir traditional culture. So the city ofHohhot is filled with images of the tra-ditional herding culture in its buildingsand monuments.

As described by anthropologistWilliam Jankowiak, who studied theMongols in the capital city of Hohhot,the results were not what the Chinesegovernment intended. In many ways,to be sure, the urban Mongols hadabandoned their traditional cultureand assimilated to the dominant Hanculture. But we see the force of ecol-ogy more than the hand of traditionin the outcome. Many Mongols in thecity no longer speak the Mongol lan-guage. Parents find it difficult to getchildren to speak Mongol when theylive among Han. The scarcity of hous-ing makes it difficult for the Mongolsto form an ethnic enclave, or evenlive near kin as they did in the past.In contrast to life in the rural areas,which revolves around kinship, city liferequires interacting with strangers aswell as relatives. Indeed, nonkin areoften more important to you than kin.As one person said to Jankowiak,“We hide from our cousins but notour friends.”

Sources: Davis and Harrell 1993; Pasternak2004b; Jankowiak 2004.



who responded to an existing demand. Textile manufac-turers were clamoring for such large quantities of spunyarn that cottage laborers, working with foot-operatedspinning wheels, could not meet the demand. Hargreaves,realizing that prestige and financial rewards would cometo the person who invented a method of spinning largequantities of yarn in a short time, set about the task anddeveloped the spinning jenny.

But perceived needs and the economic rewards that maybe given to the innovator do not explain why only some peo-ple innovate. We know relatively little about why somepeople are more innovative than others. The ability toinnovate may depend in part on individual characteristicssuch as high intelligence and creativity. And creativity maybe influenced by social conditions.

A study of innovation among Ashanti artist carvers inGhana suggests that creativity is more likely in some socio-economic groups than in others.27 Some carvers producedonly traditional designs; others departed from tradition andproduced “new” styles of carving. Two groups were foundto innovate the most—the wealthiest and the poorestcarvers. These two groups of carvers may tolerate risk morethan the middle socioeconomic group. Innovative carvingentails some risk because it may take more time and it maynot sell. Wealthy carvers can afford the risk, and they maygain some prestige as well as income if their innovation isappreciated. The poor are not doing well anyway, and theyhave little to lose by trying something new.

Some societies encourage innovativeness more thanothers, and this can vary substantially over time. PatriciaGreenfield and her colleagues describe the changes inweaving in a Mayan community in the Zinacantán regionof Chiapas, Mexico.28 In 1969 and 1970, innovation wasnot valued. Rather, tradition was; there was the old “trueway” to do everything, including how one dressed. Therewere only four simple weaving patterns, and virtually allmales wore ponchos with the same pattern. By 1991, vir-tually no poncho was the same and the villagers had devel-oped elaborate brocaded and embroidered designs. In aperiod of 20 years, innovation had increased dramatically.

Two other things had also changed. The economy wasmore commercialized; textiles as well as other items werenow bought and sold. The other change was a shift to amuch less directed teaching style. Earlier, mothers wouldgive highly structured instruction to their daughters, oftenwith “four hands” on the loom. Later, girls were allowed tolearn more by themselves, by trial and error, and they pro-duced more abstract and varied designs.

Who Adopts Innovations? Once someone discov-ers or invents something, there is still the question ofwhether others will adopt the innovation. Many re-searchers have studied the characteristics of “earlyadopters.” Such individuals tend to be educated, high insocial status, upwardly mobile, and, if they are propertyowners, have large farms and businesses. The individualswho most need technological improvements—those whoare less well off—are generally the last to adopt innova-tions. The theory is that only the wealthy can afford to takethe substantial risks associated with new ways of doingthings. In periods of rapid technological change, therefore,the gap between rich and poor is likely to widen becausethe rich adopt innovations sooner, and benefit more fromthem, than the poor.29

Does this imply that the likelihood of adopting innova-tions is a simple function of how much wealth a possibleadopter possesses? Not necessarily. Frank Cancian re-viewed several studies and found that upper-middle-classindividuals show more conservatism than lower-middle-class individuals. Cancian suggested that, when the risksare unknown, the lower-middle-class individuals are morereceptive to innovation because they have less to lose.Later on, when the risks are better known—that is, asmore people adopt the innovation—the upper-middleclass catches up to the lower-middle class.30 So the readi-ness to accept innovation, like the likelihood of creativityamong Ashanti carvers, may not be related to socioeco-nomic position in a linear way.

The speed of accepting an innovation may dependpartly on how new behaviors and ideas are typically

Maya woman from San Martin Jilotepeque work-ing on a hip-strap loom. Designs became moreindividual and complex by the 1990s.



transmitted in a society. In particular, is a person exposedto many versus few “teachers”? If children learn most ofwhat they know from their parents or from a relativelysmall number of elders, then innovation will be slow tospread throughout the society, and culture change is likelyto be slow. Innovations may catch on more rapidly if indi-viduals are exposed to various teachers and other “leaders”who can influence many in a relatively short time. And themore peers we have, the more we might learn fromthem.31 Perhaps this is why the pace of change appears tobe so quick today. In societies like our own, and increas-ingly in the industrializing world, it is likely that peoplelearn in schools from teachers, from leaders in theirspecialties, and from peers.

Costs and Benefits An innovation that is technolog-ically superior is not necessarily going to be adopted.There are costs as well as benefits for both individuals andlarge-scale industries. Take the computer keyboard. Thekeyboard used most often on computers today is called theQWERTY keyboard (named after the letters on the leftside of the line of keys below the row of number keys).This keyboard was actually invented to slow typing speeddown! Early typewriters had mechanical keys that jammedif the typist went too fast.32 Computer keyboards don’thave that problem, so an arrangement of keys that allowedfaster typing would probably be better. Different keyboardconfigurations have been invented, but they haven’t caughton. Most people probably would find it too hard or tootime-consuming to learn a new style of typing, so the orig-inal style of keyboard persists.

In large-scale industries, technological innovationsmay be very costly to implement. A new product orprocess may require revamping a manufacturing or serv-ice facility and retraining workers. Before a decision ismade to change, the costs of doing so are weighed againstthe potential benefits. If the market is expected to be largefor a new product, the product is more likely to be pro-duced. If the market is judged small, the benefits may notbe sufficient inducement to change. Companies may also

judge the value of an innovation by whether competitorscould copy it. If the new innovation can be easily copied,the inventing company may not find the investmentworthwhile. Although the market may be large, the invent-ing company may not be able to hold onto market share ifother companies could produce the product quickly with-out having to invest in research and development.33

DiffusionThe source of new cultural elements in a society may alsobe another society. The process by which cultural elementsare borrowed from another society and incorporated intothe culture of the recipient group is called diffusion. Bor-rowing sometimes enables a group to bypass stages ormistakes in the development of a process or institution.For example, Germany was able to accelerate its programof industrialization in the 19th century because it was ableto avoid some of the errors its English and Belgiancompetitors made by taking advantage of technologicalborrowing. Japan did the same somewhat later. Indeed, inrecent years, some of the earliest industrialized countrieshave fallen behind their imitators in certain areas of pro-duction, such as automobiles, televisions, cameras, andcomputers.

In a well-known passage, Linton conveyed the far-reaching effects of diffusion by considering the first fewhours in the day of an American man in the 1930s. Thisman

. . . awakens in a bed built on a pattern which origi-nated in the Near East but which was modified innorthern Europe before it was transmitted to Amer-ica. He throws back covers made from cotton, do-mesticated in India, or linen, domesticated in theNear East, or silk, the use of which was discovered inChina. All of these materials have been spun andwoven by processes invented in the Near East. . . .He takes off his pajamas, a garment invented inIndia, and washes with soap invented by the ancient

A Masai man in Kenya can call home or aroundthe world from the plains of Kenya.



Gauls. He then shaves, a masochistic rite whichseems to have derived from either Sumer or ancientEgypt.

Before going out for breakfast he glances throughthe window, made of glass invented in Egypt, and ifit is raining puts on overshoes made of rubber dis-covered by the Central American Indians and takesan umbrella, invented in southeastern Asia. . . .

On his way to breakfast he stops to buy a paper pay-ing for it with coins, an ancient Lydian invention. . . .His plate is made of a form of pottery invented inChina. His knife is of steel, an alloy first made insouthern India, his fork a medieval Italian invention,and his spoon a derivative of a Roman original. . . .After his fruit (African watermelon) and first coffee(an Abyssinian plant), . . . he may have the egg of aspecies of bird domesticated in Indo-China, or thinstrips of the flesh of an animal domesticated in east-ern Asia which have been salted and smoked by aprocess developed in northern Europe. . . .

While smoking (an American Indian habit), hereads the news of the day, imprinted in charactersinvented by the ancient Semites upon a material in-vented in China by a process invented in Germany.As he absorbs the accounts of foreign troubles hewill, if he is a good conservative citizen, thank aHebrew deity in an Indo-European language that heis 100 percent American.34

Patterns of Diffusion The following are the threebasic patterns of diffusion: direct contact, intermediatecontact, and stimulus diffusion.

1. Direct contact. Elements of a society’s culture mayfirst be taken up by neighboring societies and thengradually spread farther and farther afield. The spreadof the use of paper (a sheet of interlaced fibers) is agood example of extensive diffusion by direct contact.The invention of paper is attributed to the ChineseTs’ai Lun in A.D. 105. Within 50 years, paper was beingmade in many places in central China. Although the artof papermaking was kept secret for about 500 years,paper was distributed as a commodity to much of theArab world through the markets at Samarkand. Butwhen Samarkand was attacked by the Chinese in A.D.751, a Chinese prisoner was forced to set up a papermill. Paper manufacture then spread to the rest of theArab world; it was first manufactured in Baghdad inA.D. 793, Egypt about A.D. 900, and Morocco about A.D.1100. Papermaking was introduced as a commodity inEurope by Arab trade through Italian ports in the 12thcentury. The Moors built the first European paper millin Spain about 1150. The technical knowledge thenspread throughout Europe, with paper mills built inItaly in 1276, France in 1348, Germany in 1390, andEngland in 1494.35 In general, the pattern of acceptingthe borrowed invention was the same in all cases: Paperwas first imported as a luxury, then in ever-expandingquantities as a staple product. Finally, and usuallywithin one to three centuries, local manufacture began.

2. Intermediate contact. Diffusion by intermediatecontact occurs through the agency of third parties.Frequently, traders carry a cultural trait from the societythat originated it to another group. As an example ofdiffusion through intermediaries, Phoenician tradersspread the alphabet—which may have been invented byanother Semitic group—to Greece. At times, soldiersserve as intermediaries in spreading a culture trait.European crusaders, such as the Knights Templar andthe Knights of St. John, acted as intermediaries in twoways: They carried Christian culture to Muslim societiesof North Africa and brought Arab culture back toEurope. In the 19th century, Western missionaries in allparts of the world encouraged natives to wear Westernclothing. Hence, in Africa, the Pacific Islands, andelsewhere, native peoples can be found wearing shorts,suit jackets, shirts, ties, and other typically Westernarticles of clothing.

3. Stimulus diffusion. In stimulus diffusion, knowledgeof a trait belonging to another culture stimulates theinvention or development of a local equivalent. A clas-sic example of stimulus diffusion is the Cherokee syl-labic writing system created by a Native Americannamed Sequoya so that his people could write downtheir language. Sequoya got the idea from his contactwith Europeans. Yet, he did not adopt the Englishwriting system; indeed, he did not even learn to writeEnglish. What he did was utilize some English alpha-betic symbols, alter others, and invent new ones. Allthe symbols he used represented Cherokee syllablesand in no way echoed English alphabetic usage. Inother words, Sequoya took English alphabetic ideasand gave them a new, Cherokee form. The stimulusoriginated with Europeans; the result was peculiarlyCherokee.

The Selective Nature of Diffusion Althoughthere is a temptation to view the dynamics of diffusion assimilar to a stone sending concentric ripples over stillwater, this would be an oversimplification of the way dif-fusion actually occurs. Not all cultural traits are borrowedas readily as the ones we have mentioned, nor do theyusually expand in neat, ever-widening circles. Rather, dif-fusion is a selective process. The Japanese, for instance,accepted much from Chinese culture, but they also re-jected many traits. Rhymed tonal poetry, civil service ex-aminations, and foot binding, which the Chinese favored,were never adopted in Japan. The poetry form was un-suited to the structure of the Japanese language; the ex-aminations were unnecessary in view of the entrenchedpower of the Japanese aristocracy; and foot binding wasrepugnant to a people who abhorred body mutilation ofany sort.

Not only would we expect societies to reject items fromother societies that are repugnant, we would also expectthem to reject ideas and technology that do not satisfysome psychological, social, or cultural need. After all, peo-ple are not sponges; they don’t automatically soak up thethings around them. If they did, the amount of culturalvariation in the world would be extremely small, which is



clearly not the case. Diffusion is also selective becausecultural traits differ in the extent to which they can becommunicated. Elements of material culture, such as me-chanical processes and techniques, and other traits, suchas physical sports and the like, are not especially difficultto demonstrate. Consequently, they are accepted or re-jected on their merits. But the moment we move out of thematerial context, we encounter real difficulties. Lintonidentified the problem in these words:

Although it is quite possible to describe such anelement of culture as the ideal pattern for mar-riage . . . it is much less complete than a descriptionof basketmaking. . . . The most thorough verbaliza-tion has difficulty in conveying the series of associa-tions and conditioned emotional responses whichare attached to this pattern [marriage] and whichgave it meaning and vitality within our ownsociety. . . . This is even more true of those conceptswhich . . . find no direct expression in behavioraside from verbalization. There is a story of an edu-cated Japanese who after a long discussion on the na-ture of the Trinity with a European friend . . . burstout with: “Oh, I see now, it is a committee.”36

Finally, diffusion is selective because the overt form of aparticular trait, rather than its function or meaning, fre-quently seems to determine how the trait will be received.For example, the enthusiasm in women for bobbed hair(short haircuts) that swept through much of North Americain the 1920s never caught on among the Native Americansof northwestern California. To many women of Europeanancestry, short hair was a symbolic statement of their free-dom. To Native American women, who traditionally cuttheir hair short when in mourning, it was a reminder ofdeath.37

In the process of diffusion, then, we can identify anumber of different patterns. We know that cultural bor-rowing is selective rather than automatic, and we can de-scribe how a particular borrowed trait has been modifiedby the recipient culture. But our current knowledge doesnot allow us to specify when one or another of these out-comes will occur, under what conditions diffusion willoccur, and why it occurs the way it does.

AcculturationOn the surface, the process of change called acculturationseems to include much of what we have discussed underthe label of diffusion, because acculturation refers to thechanges that occur when different cultural groups comeinto intensive contact. As in diffusion, the source of newcultural items is the other society. But more often thannot, anthropologists use the term acculturation to describea situation in which one of the societies in contact is muchmore powerful than the other. Thus, acculturation can beseen as a process of extensive cultural borrowing in thecontext of superordinate-subordinate relations betweensocieties.38 There is probably always some borrowing bothways, but generally the subordinate or less powerfulsociety borrows the most.

External pressure for culture change can takevarious forms. In its most direct form—conquest orcolonialization—the dominant group uses force or thethreat of force to try to bring about culture change in theother group. For example, in the Spanish conquest ofMexico, the conquerors forced many of the native groupsto accept Catholicism. Although such direct force is notalways exerted in conquest situations, dominated peoplesoften have little choice but to change. Examples of such in-directly forced change abound in the history of NativeAmericans in the United States. Although the federal gov-ernment made few direct attempts to force people toadopt American culture, it did drive many native groupsfrom their lands, thereby obliging them to give up manyaspects of their traditional ways of life. To survive, theyhad no choice but to adopt many of the dominant soci-ety’s traits. When Native American children were requiredto go to schools, which taught the dominant society’s val-ues, the process was accelerated.

A subordinate society may acculturate to a dominantsociety even in the absence of direct or indirect force.Perceiving that members of the dominant society enjoymore secure living conditions, the dominated people mayidentify with the dominant culture in the hope that theywill be able to share some of its benefits by doing so. Or,they may elect to adopt cultural elements from the domi-nant society because they perceive that the new elementhas advantages. For example, in Arctic areas, many Inuitand Lapp groups seemed eager to replace dog sleds withsnowmobiles without any coercion.39 There is evidencethat the Inuit weighed the advantages and disadvantagesof the snowmobile versus the dog sled and that its adop-tion was gradual. Similarly, rifles were seen as a majortechnological improvement, increasing the success rate inhunting, but the Inuit did not completely abandon theirformer ways of hunting. More recently the Inuit are tryingout GPS devices for navigating.40

Acculturation processes vary considerably dependingupon the wishes of the more powerful society, the attitudesof the less powerful, and whether there is any choice. Morepowerful societies do not always want individuals fromanother culture to assimilate or “melt into” the dominantculture completely; instead, they may prefer and evenactively promote a multicultural society. Multiculturalismcan be voluntary or it may arise out of deliberate segrega-tion. Then too, even though the less powerful group maybe pressured by the dominant group to acquire some oftheir culture traits, they may resist or even reject those cul-tural elements, at least for a considerable length of time.

Many millions of people, however, never had a chanceto acculturate after contact with Europeans. They simplydied, sometimes directly at the hands of the conquerors,but probably more often as a result of the new diseases theEuropeans inadvertently brought with them. Depopula-tion because of measles, smallpox, and tuberculosis wasparticularly common in North and South America and onthe islands of the Pacific. Those areas had previously beenisolated from contact with Europeans and from thediseases of that continuous landmass we call the OldWorld—Europe, Asia, and Africa.41 (See the DK Map



Most countries of the world todaywant to “develop.” They want to in-crease their crop yields and their ex-ports, build major roads and irrigationprojects, and industrialize. Anthropol-ogists interested in development havepointed out that many developmentschemes have failed in part becausethey do not adequately consider theculture of the people whose lives theyaffect. Thus, the international agen-cies that lend money have increasinglyturned for advice to anthropologiststo help plan and evaluate develop-ment projects.

Governments often view tradi-tional ways of life negatively and failto recognize that the old ways of lifemay be adaptive. Because culture isintegrated, people cannot be ex-pected to change an aspect of culturethat is central to their lives. It is notthat people do not want to change,but change is unlikely if it doesn’tintegrate well with other aspects oftheir lifestyle.

In many countries of the MiddleEast, governments want theBedouin—people who herd animalsover vast stretches of semiarid grass-land—to settle down. Governmentshave tried to settle them by force orby enticements, but settlementschemes have failed time after time.In retrospect, such failures are not sur-prising. The Bedouin continue to tryto herd animals near newly con-structed settlements, but such grazing

often results in human-made desertsnear the settlements, so the settle-ments are abandoned. The traditionalBedouin pattern of herding animalsdepends on mobility. When the ani-mals eat the tops of the grasses in aparticular place, the people need tomove on. When water starts dryingup in one location, the herds need tobe moved. Overgrazing near a settle-ment and plowing land in a semiaridenvironment can lead to quick ero-sion of the soil and the loss of plantcover. After the failure of many settle-ment schemes, governments may tryto encourage a return to more tradi-tional methods of grazing.

It is not that the Bedouin are reluc-tant to change in all respects. ManyBedouin readily gave up relying oncamels for transport in favor of trucks.Trucks are a modern adaptation, yetthey still allow mobility. Now theBedouin are able to get water fromwells and transport water to their ani-mals by truck. The adoption of trucksled to other changes in Bedouin life.Small animals can be more readilytransported to new pastures by truck,so many Bedouin have given up theirdependence on camels and shifted tosheep and goat herding. Money is re-quired to buy trucks and pay for gaso-line and repairs, so more time is spentworking for wages in temporary jobs.

In the 1980s, Dawn Chatty wasasked by the government of the Mid-dle Eastern country of Oman to help

Why the Bedouin Do Not Readily Settle Down

applied anthropology

design a project to extend basic so-cial services to the Bedouin withoutcoercing them to alter their way oflife. It isn’t often that governmentsfund in-depth studies to understandthe needs of the people being af-fected, but Chatty was able to per-suade the Oman government thatsuch a study was necessary as a firststep. With United Nations funding,she began a study of the Harasiis pas-toralists of southern Oman to evalu-ate their needs. The governmentwanted some action right away, sothe project soon incorporated a mo-bile health unit that could begin aprogram of primary care as well asimmunization against measles,whooping cough, and polio. After aperiod of evaluation, the project teamalso recommended an annual distri-bution of tents, the establishment ofdormitories so children could live atschools, a new system of water deliv-ery, and veterinary and marketingassistance.

Unfortunately, a development proj-ect often ends without any guaranteethat health and other services willcontinue to be provided. As Chattyfound out, long-term change is not aseasy to achieve as short-term change.Along with other applied anthropolo-gists, she continues to push for whatMichael Cernea called “putting peo-ple first.”

Sources: Chatty 1996; Cernea 1991, 7.

“Biological Exchanges” in the back of the book.) The storyof Ishi, the last surviving member of a group of NativeAmericans in California called the Yahi, is a moving testi-monial to the frequently tragic effect of contact with Euro-peans. In the space of 22 years, the Yahi population wasreduced from several hundred to near zero. The historicalrecord on this episode of depopulation suggests that Euro-pean Americans murdered 30 to 50 Yahi for every EuropeanAmerican murdered, but perhaps 60 percent of the Yahidied in the 10 years following their initial exposure to Eu-ropean diseases.42

Nowadays, many powerful nations—and not just West-ern ones—may seem to be acting in more humanitarianways to improve the life of previously subjugated as well as

other “developing” peoples. For better or worse, these pro-grams, however, are still forms of external pressure. Thetactic used may be persuasion rather than force, but mostof the programs are nonetheless designed to bring aboutacculturation in the direction of the dominant societies’cultures. For example, the introduction of formal school-ing cannot help but instill new values that may contradicttraditional cultural patterns. Even health care programsmay alter traditional ways of life by undermining the au-thority of shamans and other leaders and by increasingpopulation beyond the number that can be supported intraditional ways. Confinement to “reservations” or otherkinds of direct force are not the only ways a dominant so-ciety can bring about acculturation.



The process of acculturation also applies to immi-grants, most of whom, at least nowadays, choose to leaveone country for another. Immigrants are almost always aminority in the new country and therefore are in a subor-dinate position. If the immigrant’s culture changes, it is al-most always in the direction of the dominant culture.Immigrant groups vary considerably in the degree andspeed with which they adopt the new culture and the so-cial roles of the new society in which they live. An impor-tant area of research is explaining the variation inacculturation and assimilation. (Assimilation is a conceptvery similar to acculturation, but assimilation is a termmore often used by sociologists to describe the process bywhich individuals acquire the social roles and culture ofthe dominant group.) Why do some immigrant groups ac-culturate or assimilate faster than others? As we will see inthe chapter on language, a comparative study by RobertSchrauf assessed the degree to which immigrant groupscoming to North America retained their native languageover time. He looked at whether they lived in tightly knitcommunities, retained religious rituals, had separateschools and special festivals, visited their homeland, didnot intermarry, or worked with others of their ethnicgroup. All of these factors might be expected to lead to re-tention of the native language (and presumably other cul-tural patterns), but only living in tightly knit communitiesand retaining religious rituals strongly predicted retainingthe native language over a long period of time.43

CULTURE CHANGE ANDADAPTATION

Earlier in this chapter when we discussed the fact that cul-ture is patterned, we indicated that adaptation to the envi-ronment is one reason why certain culture traits willcluster, because more than one trait is likely to be adaptivein a particular environment. We make the assumption thatmost of the customary behaviors of a culture are probablyadaptive, or at least not maladaptive, in that environment.Even though customs are learned and not genetically in-herited, cultural adaptation may resemble biologicaladaptation in one major respect. The frequency of certaingenetic alternatives is likely to increase over time if thosegenetic traits increase their carriers’ chances of survivaland reproduction. Similarly, the frequency of a newlearned behavior will increase over time and become cus-tomary in a population if the people with that behaviorare most likely to survive and reproduce.

One of the most important differences between cul-tural evolution and genetic evolution is that individualsoften can decide whether or not to accept and follow theway their parents behave or think, whereas they cannotdecide whether or not to inherit certain genes. Whenenough individuals change their behavior and beliefs, wesay that the culture has changed. Therefore, it is possiblefor culture change to occur much more rapidly thangenetic change.

A dramatic example of intentional cultural change wasthe adoption and later elimination of the custom of

sepaade among the Rendille, a pastoral population thatherds camels, goats, and sheep in the desert in northernKenya. According to the sepaade tradition, some womenhad to wait to marry until all their brothers were married.These women could well have been over 40 by the timethey married. The Rendille say that this tradition was a re-sult of intense warfare between the Rendille and the Bo-rana during the mid-19th century. Attacked by Borana onhorseback, the male warriors had to leave their camels un-attended and the frightened camels fled. The daughters ofone male age-set were appointed to look after the camels,and the sepaade tradition developed. In 1998, long afterwarfare with the Borana ceased, the elders decided to freethe sepaade from their obligation to postpone their ownmarriages. Interviews with the Rendille in the 1990s re-vealed that many individuals were fully aware of the rea-son for the tradition in the first place. Now, they said, therewas peace, so there was no longer any reason for thesepaade tradition to continue.44

The adoption of the sepaade is an example of culturechange in a changing environment. But what if the envi-ronment is stable? Is culture change more or less likely?Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson have shown mathemati-cally that, when the environment is relatively stable andindividual mistakes are costly, staying with customarymodes of behavior (usually transmitted by parents) isprobably more adaptive than changing.45 But what hap-pens when the environment, particularly the social envi-ronment, is changing? There are plenty of examples in themodern world: People have to migrate to new places forwork; medical care leads to increased population so thatland is scarcer; people have had land taken away fromthem and are forced to make do with less land; and so on.

It is particularly when circumstances change that indi-viduals are likely to try ideas or behaviors that are differentfrom those of their parents. Most people would want toadopt behaviors that are more suited to their present cir-cumstances, but how do they know which behaviors arebetter? There are various ways to find out. One way is byexperimenting, trying out various new behaviors. Anotherway is to evaluate the experiments of others. If a personwho tries a new technique seems successful, we would ex-pect that person to be imitated, just as we would expectpeople to stick with new behaviors they have personallytried and found successful. Finally, one might choose to dowhat most people in the new situation decide to do.46

Why one choice rather than another? In part, the choicemay be a function of the cost or risk of the innovation. It isrelatively easy, for example, to find out how long it takes tocut down a tree with an introduced steel ax, as comparedwith a stone ax. Not surprisingly, innovations such as asteel ax catch on relatively quickly because comparison iseasy and the results clear-cut. But what if the risk is verygreat? Suppose the innovation involves adopting a wholenew way of farming that you have never practiced before.You can try it, but you might not have any food if you fail.As we discussed earlier, risky innovations are likely to betried only by those individuals who can afford the risk.Other people may then evaluate their success and adopt thenew strategy if it looks promising. Similarly, if you migrate



to a new area, say, from a high-rainfall area to a drier one, itmay pay to look around to see what most people in the newplace do; after all, the people in the drier area probably havecustoms that are adaptive for that environment.

We can expect, then, that the choices individuals makemay often be adaptive ones. But it is important to notethat adopting an innovation from someone in one’s ownsociety or borrowing an innovation from another societyis not always or necessarily beneficial, either in the short orthe long run. First, people may make mistakes in judg-ment, especially when some new behavior seems to satisfya physical need. Why, for example, have smoking and druguse diffused so widely even though they are likely to re-duce a person’s chances of survival? Second, even if peopleare correct in their short-term judgment of benefit, theymay be wrong in their judgment about long-run benefit. Anew crop may yield more than the old crop for five con-secutive years, but the new crop may fail miserably in thesixth year because of lower-than-normal rainfall or be-cause the new crop depleted soil nutrients. Third, peoplemay be forced by the more powerful to change, with few ifany benefits for themselves.

Whatever the motives for humans to change their be-havior, the theory of natural selection suggests that newbehavior is not likely to become cultural or remain culturalover generations if it has harmful reproductive consequences,just as a genetic mutation with harmful consequences isnot likely to become frequent in a population.47 Still, weknow of many examples of culture change that seem mal-adaptive—the switch to bottle-feeding rather than nursinginfants, which may spread infection because contaminatedwater is used, or the adoption of alcoholic beverages, whichmay lead to alcoholism and early death.

RevolutionCertainly the most drastic and rapid way a culture canchange is as a result of revolution—replacement, usuallyviolent, of a country’s rulers. Historical records, as well asour daily newspapers, indicate that people frequently rebel

against established authority. Rebellions, if they occur,almost always occur in state societies, where there is a dis-tinct ruling elite. They take the form of struggles betweenrulers and ruled, between conquerors and conquered, orbetween representatives of an external colonial power andsegments of the native society. Rebels do not always suc-ceed in overthrowing their rulers, so rebellions do notalways result in revolutions. And even successful rebellionsdo not always result in culture change; the individualrulers may change, but customs or institutions may not.The sources of revolution may be mostly internal, as in theFrench Revolution, or partly external, as in the Russian-supported 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and theUnited States-supported 1973 revolution against PresidentAllende in Chile.

The American War of Independence toward the end ofthe 18th century is a good example of a colonial rebellion,the success of which was at least partly a result of foreignintervention. The American rebellion was a war of neigh-boring colonies against the greatest imperial power of thetime, Great Britain. In the 19th century and continuinginto the middle and later years of the 20th century, therewould be many other wars of independence, in LatinAmerica, Europe, Asia, and Africa. We don’t always re-member that the American rebellion was the first of theseanti-imperialist wars in modern times, and the model formany that followed. And just like many of the most recentliberation movements, the American rebellion was alsopart of a larger worldwide war, involving people frommany rival nations. Thirty thousand German-speakingsoldiers fought, for pay, on the British side; an army andnavy from France fought on the American side. Therewere volunteers from other European countries, includingDenmark, Holland, Poland, and Russia.

One of these volunteers was a man named Kosciuskofrom Poland, which at the time was being divided be-tween Prussia and Russia. Kosciusko helped win a majorvictory for the Americans, and subsequently directed thefortification of what later became the American trainingschool for army officers, West Point. After the war, he

Revolutionary leaders are often from high-statusbackgrounds. Here we see a depiction of PatrickHenry giving his famous speech to the aristocraticlandowners in the Virginia General Assembly onMarch 23, 1775. Urging the Virginians to fight theBritish, Henry said that the choice was “liberty ordeath.”



returned to Poland and led a rebellion against the Rus-sians, which was only briefly successful. In 1808, he pub-lished the Manual on the Maneuvers of Horse Artillery,which was used for many years by the American army.When he died, he left money to buy freedom and educa-tion for American slaves. The executor of Kosciusko’s willwas Thomas Jefferson.

As in many revolutions, those who were urging revolu-tion were considered “radicals.” At a now-famous debatein Virginia in 1775, delegates from each colony met at aContinental Congress. Patrick Henry put forward a reso-lution to prepare for defense against the British armedforces. The motion barely passed, by a vote of 65 to 60.Henry’s speech is now a part of American folklore. He roseto declare that it was insane not to oppose the British andthat he was not afraid to test the strength of the coloniesagainst Great Britain. Others might hesitate, he said, buthe would have “liberty or death.” The “radicals” who sup-ported Henry’s resolution included many aristocraticlandowners, two of whom, George Washington andThomas Jefferson, became the first and third occupants ofthe highest political office in what became the UnitedStates of America.48

Not all peoples who are suppressed, conquered, orcolonialized eventually rebel against established authority.Why this is so, and why rebellions and revolts are not al-ways successful in bringing about culture change, are stillopen questions. But some possible answers have been in-vestigated. One historian who examined the classic revo-lutions of the past, including the American, French, andRussian revolutions, suggested some conditions that maygive rise to rebellion and revolution:

1. Loss of prestige of established authority, often as aresult of the failure of foreign policy, financial difficul-ties, dismissals of popular ministers, or alteration ofpopular policies. France in the 18th century lost threemajor international conflicts, with disastrous resultsfor its diplomatic standing and internal finances.Russian society was close to military and economiccollapse in 1917, after three years of World War I.

2. Threat to recent economic improvement. In France, asin Russia, those sections of the population (professionalclasses and urban workers) whose economic fortuneshad only shortly before taken an upward swing were“radicalized” by unexpected setbacks, such as steeplyrising food prices and unemployment. The same may besaid for the American colonies on the brink of theirrebellion against Great Britain.

3. Indecisiveness of government, as exemplified by lackof consistent policy, which gives the impression ofbeing controlled by, rather than in control of, events.The frivolous arrogance of Louis XVI’s regime and thebungling of George III’s prime minister, Lord North,with respect to the problems of the American coloniesare examples.

4. Loss of support of the intellectual class. Such a lossdeprived the prerevolutionary governments of Franceand Russia of any avowed philosophical support andled to their unpopularity with the literate public.49

The classic revolutions of the past occurred in coun-tries that were industrialized only incipiently at best. Forthe most part, the same is true of the rebellions and revo-lutions in recent years; they have occurred mostly in coun-tries we call “developing.” The evidence from a worldwidesurvey of developing countries suggests that rebellionshave tended to occur where the ruling classes dependedmostly on the produce or income from land, and thereforewere resistant to demands for reform from the rural classesthat worked the land. In such agricultural economies, therulers are not likely to yield political power or give greatereconomic returns to the workers, because to do so wouldeliminate the basis (landownership) of the rulers’ wealthand power.50

Finally, a particularly interesting question is why revo-lutions sometimes, perhaps even usually, fail to measureup to the high hopes of those who initiate them. When re-bellions succeed in replacing the ruling elite, the result isoften the institution of a military dictatorship even morerestrictive and repressive than the government that existedbefore. The new ruling establishment may merely substi-tute one set of repressions for another, rather than bringany real change to the nation. On the other hand, somerevolutions have resulted in fairly drastic overhauls ofsocieties.

The idea of revolution has been one of the centralmyths and inspirations of many groups both in the pastand in the present. The colonial empire building of coun-tries such as England and France created a worldwide situ-ation in which rebellion became nearly inevitable. Innumerous technologically underdeveloped lands, whichhave been exploited by more powerful countries for theirnatural resources and cheap labor, a deep resentment hasoften developed against the foreign ruling classes or theirlocal clients. Where the ruling classes, native or foreign, re-fuse to be responsive to those feelings, rebellion becomesthe only alternative. In many areas, it has become a wayof life.

GLOBALIZATION: PROBLEMSAND OPPORTUNITIES

Investment capital, people, and ideas are moving aroundthe world at an ever faster rate.51 Transportation now al-lows people and goods to circle the globe in days; telecom-munications and the Internet make it possible to send amessage around the world in seconds and minutes. Eco-nomic exchange is enormously more global and transna-tional. The word globalization is often used nowadays torefer to “the massive flow of goods, people, information,and capital across huge areas of the earth’s surface.”52 Theprocess of globalization has resulted in the worldwidespread of cultural features, particularly in the domain ofeconomics and international trade. We buy from the samecompanies (that have factories all over the world), we sellour products and services for prices that are set by worldmarket forces. We can eat pizza, hamburgers, curry, orsushi in most urban centers. In some ways, cultures arechanging in similar directions. They have become more



commercial, more urban, and more international. The jobhas become more important, and kinship less important,as people travel to and work in other countries, and returnjust periodically to their original homes. Ideas aboutdemocracy, the rights of the individual, and alternativemedical practices and religions have become more wide-spread; people in many countries of the world watch thesame TV shows, wear similar fashions, and listen to thesame or similar music. In short, people are increasinglysharing behaviors and beliefs with people in other cul-tures, and the cultures of the world are less and less things“with edges,” as Paul Durrenberger says.53

Globalization began in earnest about A.D. 1500, withexploration by and expansion of Western societies.54 (Seethe DK Map “European Expansion in the 16th century inthe back of the book.) In the last few decades, globaliza-tion has greatly intensified such that there are very fewplaces in the world that have not been affected.55 Thus,much of the culture change in the modern world has beenexternally induced, if not forced. This is not to say thatcultures are changing now only because of external pres-sures; but externally induced changes have been thechanges that anthropologists and other social scientistsmost frequently study. Most of the external pressures havecome from Western societies, but not all. Far Eastern soci-eties, such as Japan and China, have also stimulated cul-ture change. And the expansion of Islamic societies afterthe 8th century A.D. made for an enormous amount of cul-ture change in the Near East, Africa, Europe, and Asia.

But diffusion of a culture trait does not mean that it isincorporated in exactly the same way, and the spread ofcertain products and activities through globalization doesnot mean that change happens in the same way every-where. For example, the spread of multinational fast-foodrestaurants like McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chickenhas come to symbolize globalization. But the behavior ofthe Japanese in such restaurants is quite different from be-havior in the United States. Perhaps the most surprisingdifference is that the Japanese in McDonald’s actually havemore familial intimacy and sharing than in more tradi-tional restaurants. We imagine that establishments like

McDonald’s promote fast eating. But Japan has long hadfast food—noodle shops at train stations, street vendors,and boxed lunches. Sushi, which is usually ordered in theUnited States at a sit-down restaurant, is usually served inJapan at a bar with a conveyor belt—individuals only needto pluck off the wanted dish as it goes by. Observations atMcDonald’s in Japan suggest that mothers typically orderfood for the family while the father spends time with thechildren at a table, a rare event since fathers often worklong hours and cannot get home for dinner often. Food,such as French fries, is typically shared by the family. Evenburgers and drinks are passed around, with many peopletaking a bite or a sip. Such patterns typify long-standingfamily practices. Japan has historically borrowed food,such as the Chinese noodle soup, now called ramen. In-deed, in a survey, ramen was listed as the most representa-tive Japanese food. The burger was the second most-oftenlisted. McDonald’s has become Japanese—the youngergeneration does not even know that McDonald’s is aforeign company—they think it is Japanese.56

Globalization is not new. The world has been globaland interdependent since the 16th century.57 What wecurrently call “globalization” is a more widespread ver-sion of what we used to call by various other names—diffusion, acculturation, colonialism, imperialism, orcommercialization. But globalization is now on a muchgrander scale; enormous amounts of international invest-ment fuel world trade. Shifts in the world marketplacemay drastically affect a country’s well-being more thanever before. For example, 60 percent of Pakistan’s indus-trial employment is in textile and apparel manufacturing,but serious unemployment resulted when that manufac-turing was crippled by restrictive American import poli-cies and fears about war between India and Afghanistan.58

As we have seen in this chapter, there are many nega-tive effects of colonialism, imperialism, and globalization.Many native peoples in many places lost their land andhave been forced to work for inadequate wages in minesand plantations and factories that foreign capitalists own.Frequently, there is undernutrition if not starvation.Global travel has resulted in the quick spread of diseases

Television has dramatically enhanced worldcommunication. We can see what’s happeningon the other side of the world almost in realtime. People in Niger watch television poweredby another important invention, solar panels.



such as HIV and severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS), and increasing deforestation has led to a spreadof malaria.59 But are there any positive consequences?The “human development indicators” collected by theUnited Nations suggest an improvement in many re-spects, including increases in life expectancy and literacyin most countries. Much of the improvement in life ex-pectancy is undoubtedly due to the spread of medicinesdeveloped in the advanced economies of the West. Thereis generally less warfare as colonial powers enforced paci-fication within the colonies that later became independ-ent states. Most important, perhaps, has been the growthof middle classes all over the world, whose livelihoods de-pend on globalizing commerce. The middle classes inmany countries have become strong and numerousenough to pressure governments for democratic reformsand the reduction of injustice.

World trade is the primary engine of economic devel-opment. Per capita income is increasing. Forty years ago,the countries of Asia were among the poorest countries inthe world in terms of per capita income. Since then, be-cause of their involvement in world trade, their incomeshave risen enormously. In 1960, South Korea was as pooras India. Now its per capita income is 20 times higher thanIndia’s. Singapore is an even more dramatic example. Inthe late 1960s, its economy was a disaster. Today, its percapita income is higher than Britain’s.60 Mexico used to bea place where North Americans built factories to producegarments for the North American market. Now its labor isno longer so cheap. But because it has easy access to theNorth American market and because its plentiful labor isacquiring the necessary skills, Mexico is now seeing thedevelopment of high-tech manufacturing with decentsalaries.61

There is world trade also in people. Many countries ofthe world now export people to other countries. Mexicohas done so for a long time. Virtually every family in aBangladesh village depends on someone who works over-seas and sends money home. Without those remittances,many would face starvation. The government encouragespeople to go abroad to work. Millions of people fromBangladesh are now overseas on government-sponsoredwork contracts.62

But does a higher per capita income mean that life hasimproved generally in a country? Not necessarily. As wewill see in the chapter on social stratification, inequalitywithin countries can increase with technological improve-ments because the rich often benefit the most. In addition,economic wealth is increasingly concentrated in a rela-tively small number of countries. Obviously, then, noteveryone is better off even if most countries are doing bet-ter on average. Poverty has become more common ascountries have become more unequal.

Although many of the changes associated with global-ization seem to be driven by the economic and politicalpower of the richer countries, the movement of ideas, art,music, and food is more of a two-way process. A large partof that process involves the migration of people who bringtheir culture with them. As we will see in the box titled“Migrants and Immigrants,” movements of people have

played a large role in the entry of food such as tortillachips and salsa, sushi, and curries into the United States,music like reggae and many types of dance music fromLatin America, and African carvings and jewelry such asbeaded necklaces. Recently there has even been increasedinterest in acquiring indigenous knowledge of plants, theknowledge of indigenous healers, and learning aboutshamanistic trances. As indigenous knowledge comes tobe viewed as potentially valuable, shamans have been ableto speak out on national and international issues. InBrazil, shamans have organized to speak out against“biopiracy”—what is perceived as the unethical appropri-ation of biological knowledge for commercial purposes. Ina more globalized world, shamans and other indigenousactivists can be heard by more people than ever before.Despite the fact that indigenous people constitute lessthan one percent of the Brazilian population, some ac-tivist groups have been able to keep in touch withinternational environmentalists, using tape recorders andvideo cameras to convey information about their localsituation.63

It is probably not possible to go back to a time when so-cieties were not so dependent on each other, not so inter-connected through world trade, not so dependent oncommercial exchange. Even those who are most upsetwith globalization find it difficult to imagine that it is pos-sible to return to a less connected world. For better orworse, the world is interconnected and will remain so. Thequestion now is whether the average economic improve-ments in countries will eventually translate into economicimprovements for most individuals.

ETHNOGENESIS: THEEMERGENCE OF NEW

CULTURESMany of the processes that we have discussed—the expan-sion and domination by the West and other powerfulnations, the deprivation of the ability of peoples to earntheir livelihoods by traditional means, the imposition ofschools or other methods to force acculturation, theattempts to convert people to other religions, andglobalization—have led to profound changes in culture. Butif culture change in the modern world has made culturesmore alike in some ways, it has not eliminated cultural dif-ferences. Indeed, people are still very variable culturallyfrom one place to the next. New differences have alsoemerged. Often, in the aftermath of violent events such asdepopulation, relocation, enslavement, and genocide bydominant powers, deprived peoples have created new cul-tures in a process called ethnogenesis.64

Some of the most dramatic examples of ethnogenesiscome from areas where escaped slaves (called Maroons)created new cultures. Maroon societies emerged in thepast few hundred years in a variety of New World loca-tions, from the United States to the West Indies and north-ern parts of South America. One of the new cultures, nowknown as Aluku, emerged when slaves fled from coastalplantations in Suriname to the swampy interior country



along the Cottica River. After a war with the Dutchcolonists, this particular group moved to French Guiana.The escaped slaves, originating from widely varying cul-tures in Africa or born on Suriname plantations, organ-ized themselves into autonomous communities withmilitary headmen.65 They practiced slash-and-burn culti-vation, with women doing most of the work. Althoughsettlements shifted location as a way of evading enemies,coresidence in a community and collective ownership ofland became important parts of the emerging identities.Communities took on the names of the specific planta-tions from which their leaders had escaped. Principles ofinheritance through the female line began to develop, andfull-fledged matriclans became the core of each village.Each village had its own shrine, the faaka tiki, where resi-dents invoked the clan ancestors, as well as a special house

where the deceased were brought to be honored and fetedbefore being taken to the forest for burial. Clans also in-herited avenging spirits with whom they could communi-cate through mediums.

The Aluku case is a clear example of ethnogenesis be-cause the culture did not exist 350 years ago. It emergedand was created by people trying to adapt to circum-stances not of their own making. In common with othercases of emerging ethnic identity, the Aluku came not onlyto share new patterns of behavior but also to see them-selves as having a common origin (a common ancestor), ashared history, and a common religion.66

The emergence of the Seminole in Florida is anothercase of ethnogenesis. The early settlers who moved to whatis now Florida and later became known as Seminolelargely derived from the Lower Creek Kawita chiefdom.

The modern world is culturally diversein two ways. There are native culturesin every part of the world, and todaymost countries have people from dif-ferent cultures who have arrived rela-tively recently. Recent arrivals may bemigrants coming for temporary work,or they may be refugees, forced bypersecution or genocide to migrate,or they may be immigrants who vol-untarily come into a new country.Parts of populations have movedaway from their native places sincethe dawn of humanity. The first mod-ern-looking humans moved out ofAfrica only in the last 100,000 years.People have been moving ever since.The people we call Native Americanswere actually the first to come to theNew World; most anthropologiststhink they came from northeast Asia.In the last 200 years, the UnitedStates and Canada have experiencedextensive influxes of people (see theDK map “Migration in the 19th Cen-tury”.) As is commonly said, they havebecome nations of migrants and im-migrants, and Native Americans arenow vastly outnumbered by the peo-ple and their descendants who camefrom Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin Amer-ica, and elsewhere. North Americanot only has native and regional sub-cultures, but also ethnic, religious,and occupational subcultures, eachwith its own distinctive set of culture

traits. Thus, North American culture ispartly a “melting pot” and partly amosaic of cultural diversity. Many ofus, not just anthropologists, like thisdiversity. We like to go to ethnicrestaurants regularly. We like salsa,sushi, and spaghetti. We compareand enjoy the different geographicvarieties of coffee. We like music andartists from other countries. We oftenchoose to wear clothing that mayhave been manufactured halfwayaround the world. We like all of thesethings not only because they may beaffordable. We like them mostly, per-haps, because they are different.

Many of the population move-ments in the world today, as in thepast, are responses to persecutionand war. The word diaspora is oftenused nowadays to refer to thesemajor dispersions. Most were and areinvoluntary; people are fleeing dan-ger and death. But not always. Schol-ars distinguish different types ofdiaspora, including “victim,” “labor,”“trade,” and “imperial” diasporas.The Africans who were sold into slav-ery, the Armenians who fled genocidein the early 20th century, the Jewswho fled persecution and genocide invarious places over the centuries, thePalestinians who fled to the WestBank, Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon inthe mid-20th century, and theRwandans who fled genocide toward

Increasing Cultural Diversity within the Countries of the World

migrants and immigrants

the end of the 20th century may havemostly been victims. The Chinese,Italians, and the Poles may havemostly moved to take advantage ofjob opportunities, the Lebanese totrade, and the British to extend andservice their empire. Often these cat-egories overlap; population move-ments can and have occurred formore than one reason. Some of therecent diasporas are less one-waythan in the past. People are more“transnational,” just as economicsand politics are more “globalized.”The new global communications havefacilitated the retention of homelandconnections—socially, economically,and politically. Some diasporic com-munities play an active role in the pol-itics of their homelands, and somenation-states have begun to recog-nize their far-flung emigrants as im-portant constituencies.

As cultural anthropologists increas-ingly study migrant, refugee, and im-migrant groups, they focus on howthe groups have adapted their cul-tures to new surroundings, what theyhave retained, how they relate to thehomeland, how they have developedan ethnic consciousness, and howthey relate to other minority groupsand the majority culture.

Sources: M. Ember et al. 2005; Levinsonand M. Ember 1997.



The Kawita chiefdom, like other southeastern Muskogeanchiefdoms, was a large, complex, multiethnic paramountchiefdom. Its ruler, Kawita, relied on allegiance and tributefrom outlying districts; ritual and linguistic hegemony wasimposed by the ruler.67

A combination of internal divisions among the LowerCreek, vacant land in northern Florida, and weak Spanishcontrol over northern Florida apparently prompted dissi-dents to move away and settle in three different areas inFlorida. Three new chiefdoms were established, essentiallysimilar to those the settlers left and still under the sup-posed control of Kawita.68 But the three chiefdoms beganto act together under the leadership of Tonapi, theTalahassi chief. After 1780, over a period of 40 or so years,the three Seminole chiefdoms formally broke with Kawita.Not only was geographic separation a factor, but the polit-ical and economic interests of the Creek Confederacy andof the Seminole had diverged. For example, the Creek sup-ported neutrality in the American Revolution, but theSeminole took the side of the British. During this time, theBritish encouraged slaves to escape by promising freedomin Florida. These Maroon communities allied themselveswith the emerging Seminole. The composition of theSeminole population again changed dramatically afterthe War of 1812 and the Creek War of 1814.69 First, a largenumber of Creek refugees, mostly Upper Creek Talapusa(who spoke a different Muskogean language), becameSeminole. Second, the Seminole ranks were also expandedby a large number of escaped slaves and Maroons who fledwhen the Americans destroyed a British fort in 1816.Larger-scale political events continued to influence Semi-nole history. When the Americans conquered Florida, theyinsisted on dealing with one unified Seminole council,

they removed the Seminole to a reserve in Florida, andlater, after the second Seminole war, removed most ofthem to Oklahoma.70

It would seem from this and other cases that culturalidentities can be shaped and reshaped by political andeconomic processes.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE FUTURE

Measured in terms of travel time, the world today is muchsmaller than it has ever been. It is possible now to flyhalfway around the globe in the time it took people lessthan a century ago to travel to the next state. In the realmof communication, the world is even smaller. We can talkto someone on the other side of the globe in a matter ofminutes, we can send that person a message (by fax or In-ternet) in seconds, and through television we can see livecoverage of events in that person’s country. More andmore people are drawn into the world market economy,buying and selling similar things and, as a consequence,altering the patterns of their lives in sometimes similarways. Still, although modern transportation and commu-nication facilitate the rapid spread of some cultural char-acteristics to all parts of the globe, it is highly unlikely thatall parts of the world will end up the same culturally. Cul-tures are bound to retain some of their original character-istics or develop distinctive new adaptations. Even thoughtelevision has diffused around the world, local people con-tinue to prefer local programs when they are available.And even when people all over the world watch the sameprogram, they may interpret it in very different ways. Peo-ple are not just absorbing the messages they get; they oftenresist or revise them.71

Until recently, researchers studying culture change gen-erally assumed that the differences between people of dif-ferent cultures would become minimal. But in the last30 years or so, it has become increasingly apparent that,although many differences disappear, many people areaffirming ethnic identities in a process that often involvesdeliberately introducing cultural difference.72 EugeenRoosens describes the situation of the Huron of Quebec,who in the late 1960s seemed to have disappeared as a dis-tinct culture. The Huron language had disappeared andthe lives of the Huron were not obviously distinguishablefrom those of the French Canadians around them. TheHuron then developed a new identity as they activelyworked to promote the rights of indigenous peoples likethemselves. That their new defining cultural symbols boreno resemblance to the past Huron culture is beside thepoint.

One fascinating possibility is that ethnic diversity andethnogenesis may be a result of broader processes.Elizabeth Cashdan found that ethnic diversity appears tobe related to environmental unpredictability, which isassociated with greater distance from the equator.73 Thereappear to be many more cultural groups nearer to theequator than in very northern and southern latitudes.Perhaps, Cashdan suggests, environmental unpredictability

Osceola, a Seminole chief, born of a British father and a Creekmother. He led his people against the settlers in the SeminoleWars but was captured and died in confinement at FortMoultrie, South Carolina.



in the north and south necessitates wider ties between so-cial groups to allow cooperation in case local resourcesfail. This may minimize the likelihood of cultural diver-gence, that is, ethnogenesis. Hence, there will be fewer cul-tures further from the equator.

Future research on culture change should increase ourunderstanding of how and why various types of changeare occurring. If we can increase our understanding ofculture change in the present, we should be better able tounderstand similar processes in the past. We may beguided in our efforts to understand culture change by thelarge number of cross-cultural correlations that have beendiscovered between a particular cultural variation and itspresumed causes.74 All cultures have changed over time; vari-ation is the product of differential change. Thus, the varia-tions we see are the products of change processes, and thediscovered predictors of those variations may suggest howand why the changes occurred. The task of discoveringwhich particular circumstances favor which particularpatterns is a large and difficult one. In the chapters thatfollow, we hope to convey the main points of what anthro-pologists think they know about aspects of cultural varia-tion, culture change, and what they do not know.

SUMMARY � � �

1. Despite individual differences, the members of a par-ticular society share many behaviors and ideas thatconstitute their culture.

2. Culture may be defined as the set of learned behaviorsand ideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values, andideals) that are characteristic of a particular society orother social group.

3. The type of group within which cultural traits areshared can vary from a particular society or a segmentof that society to a group that transcends nationalboundaries. When anthropologists refer to a culture,they usually are referring to the cultural patterns of aparticular society—that is, a particular territorial pop-ulation speaking a language not generally understoodby neighboring territorial populations. Althoughother animals exhibit some cultural behavior, humansare unusual in the number and complexity of thelearned patterns that they transmit to their young.And they have a unique way of transmitting their cul-ture: through spoken, symbolic language.

4. Ethnocentrism, judging other cultures in terms ofyour own, and its opposite—the glorification of othercultures—impede anthropological inquiry. An impor-tant tenet in anthropology is the principle of culturalrelativism: the attitude that a society’s customs andideas should be studied objectively and understood inthe context of that society’s culture. But when it comesto some cultural practices such as violence againstwomen, torture, slavery, or genocide, most anthropol-ogists can no longer adhere to the strong form of cul-tural relativism that asserts that all cultural practicesare equally valid.

5. Anthropologists seek to discover the customs andranges of acceptable behavior that constitute the cul-ture of a society under study. In doing so, they focuson general or shared patterns of behavior rather thanon individual variations. When dealing with practicesthat are highly visible, or with beliefs that are almostunanimous, the investigator can rely on observationon or interviewing off a few knowledgeable people.With less obvious behaviors or attitudes, anthropolo-gists must collect information from a sample of indi-viduals. The mode of a frequency distribution canthen be used to express the cultural pattern.

6. Cultures have patterns or clusters of traits. They tendto be integrated for psychological and adaptivereasons.

7. Culture is always changing. Because culture consists oflearned patterns of behavior and belief, cultural traitscan be unlearned and learned anew as human needschange. The sources of change may be external and/orinternal.

8. Discoveries and inventions, though ultimately thesources of all culture change, do not necessarily lead tochange. Only when society accepts an invention ordiscovery and uses it regularly can culture change besaid to have occurred. Some inventions are probablythe result of dozens of tiny, perhaps accidental, initia-tives over a period of many years. Other inventions areconsciously intended. Why some people are more in-novative than others is still only incompletely under-stood. There is some evidence that creativity and areadiness to adopt innovations may be related tosocioeconomic position.

9. The process by which cultural elements are borrowedfrom another society and incorporated into the cultureof the recipient group is called diffusion. Cultural traitsdo not necessarily diffuse; that is, diffusion is a selective,not automatic, process. A society accepting a foreigncultural trait is likely to adapt it in a way that effectivelyharmonizes it with the society’s own traditions.

10. When a group or society is in contact with a morepowerful society, the weaker group is often obliged toacquire cultural elements from the dominant group.This process of extensive borrowing in the context ofsuperordinate-subordinate relations between societiesis called acculturation. Acculturation processes varyconsiderably depending upon the wishes of the morepowerful society, the attitudes of the less powerful,and whether there is any choice.

11. Even though customs are not genetically inherited,cultural adaptation may be similar to biological adap-tation in one major respect. Traits (cultural or genetic)that are more likely to be reproduced (learned or in-herited) are likely to become more frequent in a popu-lation over time. Particularly when the environmentchanges, individuals may try out ideas and behaviorsthat are different than their parents.

12. Perhaps the most drastic and rapid way a culture canchange is by revolution—a usually violent replacement



of the society’s rulers. Rebellions occur primarily instate societies, where there is a distinct ruling elite.However, not all peoples who are suppressed, con-quered, or colonized eventually rebel or successfullyrevolt against established authority.

13. Globalization—the widespread flow of people, informa-tion, technology, and capital over the earth’s surface—has minimized cultural diversity in some respects, but ithas not eliminated it.

14. Ethnogenesis is the process by which new cultures arecreated.

GLOSSARY TERMS � � �

maps as to how people should behave. How wouldthese different views affect research methods and theresultant cultural descriptions? How would theseviews affect the understanding of culture change?

3. Not all people faced with external pressure to changedo so or do so at the same rate? What factors might ex-plain why some societies rapidly change their culture?

4. Does the concept of cultural relativism promote inter-national understanding, or does it hinder attempts tohave international agreement on acceptable behavior,such as human rights?

acculturation 29adaptive customs 23cultural relativism 19culture 16diffusion 27ethnocentric 18ethnocentrism 18

ethnogenesis 35globalization 33maladaptive customs 23norms 18revolution 32society 16subculture 16

CRITICAL QUESTIONS � � �

1. Would it be adaptive for a society to have everyoneadhere to the cultural norms? Why do you think so?

2. Some anthropologists think of culture as being “out-side” individuals; others think of culture as being“inside” individuals in the form of individual cognitive

Read the chapter by Regina Smith Oboler, “Nandi: FromCattle-Keepers to Cash-Crop Farmers,” on MyAnthroLab,and answer the following questions:

1. Who are the Nandi? Give a brief description of them,and include the time period and community beingdescribed by Oboler.

2. As you read about the Nandi, you may be surprised bysome of their customs. Indicate which specific cus-toms surprise you. Describe whether you think youare reacting simply because their customs are differentfrom your customs, whether you are being ethnocen-tric, or if you prefer their customs.

3. Anthropologists have to learn not to judge behaviorin another culture in terms of their own culture. Givean example from Regina Smith Oboler’s fieldworkamong the Nandi.
