Traditional practices are customs, rituals, and ways of life passed down through generations that persist even as globalization spreads new technologies and ideas. In AP World (Topic 9.9), they're your go-to evidence for CONTINUITY when arguing about change in the period 1900 to the present.
Traditional practices are the customs, rituals, beliefs, and everyday ways of life that a community hands down from one generation to the next. Think traditional medicine and healing, religious rituals, folk foodways, indigenous farming methods, language, and family structures. They carry a group's values and history, which is why people hold onto them even when shiny new alternatives show up.
In AP World, this term lives in Unit 9 (Globalization, 1900-Present), specifically Topic 9.9, Continuity and Change in a Globalized World. The whole point of that topic is that globalization did NOT erase local cultures. Antibiotics spread worldwide, but traditional healing persisted alongside them. The Green Revolution transformed agriculture in India and Mexico, but it also collided with traditional farming practices. So traditional practices aren't just trivia about culture. They're the historical evidence that change in the 20th century was partial, uneven, and often resisted or blended rather than total.
This term anchors Topic 9.9 and supports learning objective AP World 9.9.A, which asks you to explain the EXTENT to which science and technology brought change from 1900 to the present. That word 'extent' is doing all the work. A strong answer can't just list new technologies (the internet, air travel, antibiotics, petroleum, the Green Revolution). It has to show what stayed the same or pushed back, and traditional practices are exactly that. They also plug into the Cultural Developments and Interactions theme. On the exam, continuity-and-change is one of the core historical reasoning skills, and traditional practices give you the continuity half of the argument. Without them, your essay reads like a one-sided tech timeline. For the full picture of how change and continuity balance out in this era, head to the Topic 9.9 study guide.
Keep studying AP World Unit 9
Cultural Heritage (Unit 9)
Cultural heritage is the bigger umbrella, everything a society inherits, while traditional practices are the part you actually DO, like rituals, healing methods, and farming techniques. Both show how communities protect identity as globalization spreads a more uniform global culture.
Green Revolution (Unit 9)
The Green Revolution's chemical fertilizers and high-yield crops in 1960s-70s India and Mexico are the classic foil for traditional practices. New agricultural science boosted yields, but it also displaced or blended with traditional farming methods, which is exactly the change-versus-continuity tension Topic 9.9 tests.
Migration Patterns (Unit 9)
Migrants carry traditional practices with them, which is why globalization spreads local cultures as much as it homogenizes them. Diaspora communities keeping food, religion, and language alive abroad is continuity in motion.
Rituals and Folklore (Unit 9)
Rituals and folklore are specific forms traditional practices take. They make great concrete evidence in an essay because they show, not just claim, that older ways of life survived radio, the internet, and mass consumer culture.
Multiple-choice questions in this area love the 'new technology arrives, old practice persists, explain why' setup. A common stem points out that antibiotics and vaccines transformed survival rates in the early-to-mid 20th century, yet traditional healing practices persisted in many societies, and asks you to pick the best explanation (cultural identity, uneven access, and trust in local knowledge are the usual correct directions). Other stems use the Green Revolution in India and Mexico to test whether you can connect technological change to its effects on existing ways of life. No released FRQ has used 'traditional practices' verbatim, but the term is built for the LEQ and DBQ continuity-and-change prompts that Unit 9 generates. When a prompt asks the EXTENT of change from technology or globalization, traditional practices are your counterweight evidence. Use them to complicate the argument, which is exactly what the complexity point rewards.
Cultural heritage is everything a society inherits from the past, including monuments, languages, art, and ideas. Traditional practices are the active, behavioral slice of that heritage, the things people still perform, like rituals, healing, and farming methods. Quick test: heritage can sit in a museum, but a practice has to be practiced.
Traditional practices are customs and ways of life passed down through generations, and in AP World they serve as evidence of cultural continuity from 1900 to the present.
Topic 9.9 and learning objective AP World 9.9.A ask about the EXTENT of change from science and technology, so traditional practices are how you argue that change was real but not total.
Antibiotics and vaccines spread globally, yet traditional healing persisted in many societies, a favorite MCQ setup showing that new technology and old practice can coexist.
The Green Revolution in 1960s-70s India and Mexico shows new agricultural technology colliding with traditional farming, a ready-made example for continuity-and-change essays.
Migration spreads traditional practices around the world, so globalization can actually preserve and transplant local cultures, not just homogenize them.
In an LEQ or DBQ on globalization, pairing one technological change with one persistent traditional practice is a fast route to a complex, two-sided argument.
Traditional practices are customs, rituals, and ways of life handed down through generations, like traditional medicine, religious rituals, and indigenous farming. In AP World they appear in Topic 9.9 as evidence of cultural continuity during globalization, 1900 to the present.
No, and that's the whole point of Topic 9.9. Traditional healing persisted even after antibiotics and vaccines spread in the early-to-mid 20th century, and traditional farming continued alongside Green Revolution technology in India and Mexico. Globalization changed a lot, but it blended with local cultures more than it erased them.
Cultural heritage is the full inheritance of a society, including monuments, art, and language, while traditional practices are the actions people still perform, like rituals and healing methods. Heritage can be preserved in a museum; a practice survives only by being practiced.
Because medicine doesn't just compete on effectiveness. Traditional healing carries cultural identity and community trust, and access to modern medicine was uneven across the world. AP multiple-choice questions test exactly this, asking why traditional healing persisted despite 20th-century antibiotics and vaccines.
Use them as your continuity evidence. If the prompt asks the extent to which technology changed life from 1900 to the present (LO AP World 9.9.A), describe the change, like the Green Revolution or the internet, then show a traditional practice that persisted alongside it. That two-sided structure is what earns the complexity point.