MECHANISMS OF CULTURAL CHANGE

Why and how do culture change? Thru-

A- Diffusion

• Diffusion - borrowing of traits between cultures.
• Such exchange of information and products has gone on throughout human history because cultures have never been truly isolated.
• Diffusion is direct when 2 cultures trade with, intermarry among, or wage war on one another.
• Diffusion is forced when 1 culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the dominated group.
• Diffusion is indirect when items or traits move from group A to group C via group B without any first hand contact between A and C.

B- Acculturation

• Acculturation -exchange of cultural features that results when groups have continuous firsthand contact.
• With acculturation, parts of the culture change, but each group remains distinct.
• One example of acculturation is a PIDGIN, a mixed language that develops to ease communication between members of different cultures in contact. This usually hapens in situations of trade and colonialism.
• PIDGIN English is a simplified form of English. It blends English grammar with the grammar of a native language, like PIDGIN ENGLISH used for commerce in Chinese ports.

C- Independent Invention

• This is the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems.
• Example is the independent invention of agriculture in the Middle East and Mexico which led to social, political, and legal changes, including notions of property and distinctions in wealth, class, and power.

National Culture - embodies the beliefs, learned behavior patterns, values, and institutions shared by citizens of the same nation.

International Culture - extends beyond and across national boundaries.

Ethnocentrism - the tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to apply one's own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures.

Cultural relativism- the viewpoint that behavior in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture.

Human rights refers to the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which are often thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, the right to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and the right to education.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
—Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

Four United Nations documents descrbe nearly all the human rights that have been internationally recognized. Those documents are the UN Charter; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

• Alongside the human rights movement has arisen an awareness of the need to preserve cultural rights.
• Cultural rights are vested not in individuals but in groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies.
• Cultural rights include a group's ability to preserve its culture, to raise children in the ways of its forebears, to continue its language.
• Indigenous INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR) - attempts to conserve our society's cultural base - core beliefs, knowledge and practices.
• Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.
• Intellectual property is divided into two categories:
• Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and
• Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs.