How cultures change and exchange
Cultures are always on the move: inventing, borrowing, resisting, and blending.
Invention and diffusion
New ideas and tools arise within a culture through innovation and invention. They also spread between cultures through diffusion. Much of what any society uses daily, from crops to alphabets to numbers, came from somewhere else. Diffusion rarely copies exactly: borrowed items are reshaped to fit local meanings.
Acculturation and assimilation
When cultures come into sustained contact, both change; this is acculturation. Assimilation is when a minority group is absorbed into a dominant culture, often losing its language and customs, sometimes under pressure or force. Many Indigenous communities experienced forced assimilation through boarding schools and bans on their languages.
Early theories of culture
Nineteenth-century scholars proposed unilineal evolution: all societies pass through the same stages from 'savagery' to 'civilisation', with Europe at the top. Franz Boas and his students rejected this, arguing for historical particularism: each culture has its own history and must be understood on its own terms. Later theories, such as functionalism, asked how customs meet human needs and keep societies stable.
Flashcard
The spread of cultural traits from one group to another
Check your understanding
Pizza spread from Italy and was adapted with new toppings in many countries. This illustrates: