Cultural change happens whenever societies come into sustained contact with one another. Understanding how and why cultures change is central to anthropology, especially as globalization accelerates these processes. This unit covers the main mechanisms of cultural change (acculturation, diffusion, imperialism) and the theoretical frameworks anthropologists use to make sense of them.
Cultural Interaction and Transmission
Acculturation and Diffusion Processes
Acculturation is the process of cultural change that happens when two groups are in prolonged, direct contact. It's not just "picking up" new habits; it involves deeper shifts in values, language, and daily practices.
- Most visible in immigrant communities adapting to a host country's culture, such as second-generation immigrants who grow up speaking both their parents' language and English
- Can produce entirely blended cultural forms. Mexican-American cuisine is a good example: dishes like Tex-Mex aren't purely Mexican or purely American but something new that emerged from sustained contact.
- Acculturation is rarely equal. The less powerful group typically changes more than the dominant one.
Diffusion is the spread of specific cultural elements (ideas, technologies, practices) from one society to another. Where acculturation involves broad, deep change from ongoing contact, diffusion can be more piecemeal.
- Happens through trade, migration, conquest, or media
- Can be gradual (the slow spread of agricultural techniques across ancient civilizations) or rapid (a viral TikTok dance spreading worldwide in days)
- Diffused elements almost always get adapted to fit local contexts. Pizza is Italian in origin, but Japanese pizza topped with mayo and corn or Indian pizza with paneer tikka are distinctly local adaptations. Anthropologists call this localization.
Cultural Imperialism and Power Dynamics
Cultural imperialism occurs when a more powerful society imposes its cultural values, practices, and institutions on a less powerful one. The key distinction from diffusion is the element of power and coercion.
- Historically tied to colonialism: European colonial powers imposed their languages, religions, and education systems on colonized peoples
- Today it often operates through media, consumer brands, and economic policy. The global dominance of Hollywood films and American fast-food chains are frequently cited modern examples.
- Consequences can include the erosion of indigenous languages and traditions. UNESCO estimates that roughly 40% of the world's 7,000 languages are endangered, many due to the dominance of colonial languages like English, French, and Spanish.
Revitalization movements are organized efforts by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture, often in direct response to cultural imperialism or rapid, destabilizing change.
- They aim to restore, strengthen, or reinvent traditional practices
- Tend to arise during periods of intense social stress, such as colonization, economic collapse, or forced assimilation
- Can blend religious, political, and social elements. Two classic examples:
- The Ghost Dance among Native Americans in the late 1800s, which emerged as a spiritual response to the destruction of Indigenous ways of life by U.S. expansion
- The Rastafari movement in Jamaica, which drew on African identity and resistance to British colonial culture
Theories of Cultural Development
Evolutionary Approaches to Culture
Early anthropologists like Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Tylor proposed unilineal evolution, the idea that all societies pass through the same stages of development (e.g., "savagery" to "barbarism" to "civilization"). This framework has been widely rejected because it's deeply ethnocentric: it treats Western industrial society as the pinnacle of human progress and ranks other cultures as "less developed."
Modern anthropologists recognize that cultures change along multiple pathways. There's no single ladder that every society climbs.
Modernization theory is a more recent (mid-20th century) version of evolutionary thinking. It argues that societies progress from "traditional" to "modern" forms by adopting industrialization, urbanization, and new technologies.
- It assumes Western industrial nations are the model other countries should follow
- Critiqued for oversimplifying cultural change and ignoring the costs of rapid modernization, such as environmental degradation, loss of community structures, and growing inequality
- Tends to blame "traditional" cultures for their own poverty rather than examining global power structures
World Systems Theory and Global Interconnections
World systems theory, developed by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1970s, offers a very different lens. Instead of looking at individual societies evolving on their own, it examines the global economic system as a whole.
Wallerstein divides the world into three zones:
- Core countries (e.g., the U.S., Western Europe, Japan) control most of the world's capital and technology, and they profit from the labor and resources of other regions
- Peripheral countries (e.g., many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Southeast Asia) provide raw materials and cheap labor but receive less wealth in return
- Semi-peripheral countries (e.g., Brazil, India, South Korea) fall in between, acting as a buffer and sometimes moving toward core status
This theory traces the current global system back to European colonial expansion and the rise of capitalism. Its strength is that it explains persistent global inequality, not as a failure of individual cultures to "modernize," but as a structural feature of how the global economy is organized. Cultural changes in peripheral nations (adopting Western consumer goods, losing local industries) become visible consequences of their position in this system.
Anthropological Perspectives
Cultural Relativism and Ethical Considerations
Cultural relativism is the principle that a culture's beliefs and practices should be understood within their own context, not judged by the standards of another culture. It's one of the foundational ideas in anthropology.
- It pushes back against ethnocentrism, which is the tendency to view your own culture as the "normal" or "correct" one and to judge others accordingly
- In practice, it means an anthropologist doing fieldwork tries to suspend their own cultural biases and understand why a practice exists within its own cultural logic
- This helps avoid misrepresenting or oversimplifying the communities being studied
Cultural relativism gets complicated, though, when it bumps up against questions of harm and human rights. If a cultural practice causes physical harm to individuals (female genital cutting is the most commonly debated example), does respecting cultural autonomy mean staying silent?
Most contemporary anthropologists don't treat cultural relativism as an absolute rule. Instead, they try to balance two commitments:
- Respecting cultural diversity and avoiding ethnocentric judgments
- Recognizing universal human rights and the obligation to speak against practices that cause serious harm
This tension doesn't have a clean resolution, and that's worth sitting with. The point of cultural relativism isn't to say "everything is fine." It's a methodological tool that helps anthropologists study cultures more carefully and honestly, while still leaving room for ethical engagement.