CH 15 Review Flashcards
Stability may be a striking feature of many traditional cultures, but all cultures are capable of adapting to changing conditions
Climatic, Economic, Political, or Ideological.
Dynamic processes involved in cultural change include
Accidental discoveries, deliberate inventions to solve some perceived problem, and borrowing from other peoples who introduce—or force—new commodities, technologies, and practices.
Progress is a relative term that implies improvement
As defined by the people who benefit from the changes.
Major mechanisms involved in voluntary cultural change are
Innovation, Diffusion, and Cultural Loss.
Innovation is any new idea, method, or device that gains widespread acceptance in society. A primary innovation is the creation, invention, or discovery of a new idea, method, or device.
A secondary innovation is a deliberate application or modification of these innovations.
A culture’s internal dynamics may encourage certain innovative tendencies while discouraging others.
Force of habit may obstruct the acceptance of an innovation.
Diffusion, the spread of certain ideas, customs, or practices from one culture to another, may account for up to 90 percent of a culture’s content.
Many domestic food plants developed by American Indians spread around the world, including corn, also known as maize. Typically, people borrow only those cultural elements that are compatible with their own.
Cultural loss involves the
Abandonment of some practice or trait.
Frequently, one group forces changes upon another
Usually in the course of conquest and colonialism.
Acculturation is the massive cultural change that occurs in a society when it experiences intensive firsthand contact with a more powerful society.
It may occur as a result of military conquest, political and economic expansion, or the substantial influx of dominant newcomers.
Ethnocide is the violent eradication of an ethnic group’s collective cultural identity as a distinctive people.
It occurs when a dominant society deliberately sets out to destroy another society’s cultural heritage. Among many examples is the experience of Yąnomami Indians of the Amazon forest in Brazil and Venezuela.
Although the process of acculturation often unfolds without planning, powerful elites may devise and enforce programs of cultural change
Directing immigrant or subordinated groups into learning and accepting a dominant society’s cultural beliefs and practices.
Applied anthropology—the application of anthropological insights and methods to solving practical problems
Arose as anthropologists sought to provide colonial administrators with a better understanding of native cultures, either to better control them or to avoid their serious disruption.
An alternative type of practical anthropology emerged in the latter 20th century. Known by various names including action anthropology, it involves community-based research and action in collaboration with indigenous societies, ethnic minorities, and other besieged or repressed groups.
A serious ethical issue for applied anthropologists is how far they should go in trying to change the ways of other peoples.
Some have retreated to inaccessible places in hopes of being left alone
Whereas others have lapsed into apathy.