CU - Evolution of Culture Lesson

 

Evolution of Culture Lesson

The term "culture" is not synonymous with "nation" or "society."  A nation is a political distinction that signifies the people living within an autonomous political boundary. A society is a body of individuals living as members of a community in a specific area or territory. A nation may have several societies living within its borders and those societies may have several varieties of culture amongst themselves.  However, culture is what binds people together. It is those traits that they share and allow for a cultural bond to form. Therefore, culture is as old as humanity itself and predates the notions of nations and society.

The terminology used to describe the very first communities in which people gathered- cultural hearths. The seven original cultural hearths were located in Asia, Africa, and Mesoamerica (the isthmus that connects the continents of North and South America).  These were the locations of the first examples where people gathered together and formed cultural bonds.  Their suggestions of the first social structures emerged as culture developed and then diffused. Cultural Diffusion is the spreading of culture (both material and nonmaterial) within and between societies.  

Causes of Cultural Change

Cultural change has three causes: invention, discovery, and then diffusion.  All three are the result of either need or communication. They are linked to the catalyst that changes our needs or communications.

These three causes have existed since time immemorial, which is from the days of digging ditches from rivers to dry fields to introduce irrigation to the present when classes are taught online using computers to present information from teachers in one location to students in another.  Academia first became formally concerned with the notion of culture and what caused it to change around the same time as the advent of sociology as an accepted academic discipline.  Each theoretical perspective has its own spin on the three causes of cultural evolution rooted within the foundations of the approach itself. The Structural-Functional Approach will describe the causes of cultural change to stem from the ever-changing needs to maintain social order. The Social-Conflict Approach will denounce that and claim that cultural change stems from people becoming aware of their inequalities and demanding change. The Symbolic-Interactionist Approach will describe the causes of cultural change within the constraints of the ever-changing interpretation of meanings behind patterns of behavior. The fact of the matter is that culture is dependent on people and people are "ever-changing," thus culture is "ever-changing."  In a scientific field such as Sociology, one cannot dismiss the mathematical equation of "if A=B and B=C, then A=C."

Regardless of the impetus that sparks cultural change and propels the usefulness of mathematical equations in its description, there are two terms that describe attributes of the change- cultural integration and cultural lag. Perhaps it would be best to save those terms for the next section.

Culture Key Terms Review Activity

Please complete the following crossword activity to prepare for your Culture Key Terms Quiz.

 

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