Culture Change: The Dynamic Fabric

The following materials are key presentation points developed by the instructor during class lectures. They are not a substitute for student participation in the class lectures, but a highlighting of the pertinent items considered.


General Themes Thus far we have been looking at the structural aspects of culture, as if we cut out and isolated a cross-section of society, a slice from its on-going temporal succession and then studied it - a synchronic view.   But cultures do not exist in static states, but are always dynamic and undergoing change - a diachronic process.   We'll turn now to identifying some of the change processes that interact with the structural processes we've already discussed - in art and religion, kinship and marriage, and ecology and economics within Indigenous societies and beyond.

Specifically, we'll focus on two sets of intriguing questions relating to culture change:

A.  What are the range of possible reactions and adaptations taken by an Indigenous society to Euro-American conquest?  What are the ways in which the "conquest" and "domination" of one society by another are played out?   Or rephrased and as it is being played out even within our own lives, what is the interplay between modernity and tradition? - To what extent are the rapid changes in technology overwhelming our humanity? 

B.  What is the interplay and relationship between the influences and contributions of the individual, as expressed in "innovation," and the larger infrastructural influences of history and culture on those individuals?

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A. Culture Contact, War, Schismogenesis, and Revitalization. When one people become overwhelmed by the influences of another culture, as with military conquest, missionary zeal, technological and economic expansion, or imposition of modernity, what are their possible responses? We will conceptualize the responses as "stages" in process of "diffusion."

  1. Contact and diffusion, i.e., cultural contact between two autonomous societies, with exchanges of communications, technology, resources, ideas, decision making and power.
  2. Evaluation. Who is making the decisions and who is dreaming the dream, i.e., who controls power and is sovereign?  Possible scenarios:
  3. Integration.  What results from the contact?
  4. Genocide and Extinction of a society and its people

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B. Creativity, Innovation, and the Superorganic: The Interplay of the Individual and the Culture. In all that we have come define our humanity by, e.g., language, tool users, etc., nothing is more mysterious, yet more desired, than "creativity" and the ability to bring about "innovation." To consider these issues, we need to understand the interplay of the individual in relation to culture.

  1. At the Individual level:
  2. At the Collective Cultural level: if a creative act is to ultimately become a cultural innovation, the larger infrastructure will have to come into play.   Culture will either accept or reject.
    If the latter, the creative person gets labeled a "madman." 
    If accept, it must have to be integrated into the larger infrastructure of world view, religion, art, social order and ecological order.   And in Western society, the creative person is labeled a "genius."    

    Consider Alfred Kroeber's (American Anthropologist) theory of the "superorganic" and "style patterns."

    e.g., Mendel and Gene Inheritance (before his time),
    Darwin and Wallace on the "Natural Selection" (the time was right),
    the
    Flag (so you need a flag? What are its necessary antecedents?), and
    the iPhone
  3. Also re-consider the process of "domestication" of plants and animals in light of "style patterns."  Why did it occur in the first place?  Was it the result of "innovation" or the "superorganic," or the interplay of both and if so, how so?  And what are the implications of these change processes for future technological changes occurring in our society?

  4. Yet are we ultimately "pawns" to culture - determined by the "superorganic"?   Consider the many lessons offered by Indigenous peoples, e.g., power of ritual and artistic symbols to create the world.
    And consider something in parallel, that of modern quantum physicists, i.e., is reality a "wave" or "particle" ? - the
    vital act is the act of participation.  

    Thus an intrinsic dialectic of the two levels, the individual and the cultural, ultimately placing responsibility for creating and molding our worlds in our own hands

In a sense we will have come full circle in our discussions of this semester.  Again the questions: Are we "masters of our own fate," alone and adrift in a world of our own making, free to continually "discover," "innovate" and "improve upon?"   Or are we a part of an intricate "web of life," eternally linked to a finite set of "archetypal" meanings emanating from a "creation time" or "mountain tops?"  

Are we the stories we tell?   In how we respond to these questions, be cautious of our Euro-American predisposition to view the world through the eyes of the social construct, the "individual."   Might we emphasis the role of the genius given our emphasis on individualism?

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