What is culture?

What elements make up a culture?

Why do cultures change?

Culture is

1. All the features of a society’s way of life.

Culture is

2. Learned and passed down from generation to generation.

Think: Santa Claus

Culture

3. Includes all of a society’s shared values, beliefs, institutions, and technologies.

Think: US Flag, Freedom of Speech

Culture . . .

4. Gives roles to individuals and establishes relationships within groups in a society.

Think: School relationships

Cultural Traits

•Activities and behaviors that people repeatedly practice.

•They can vary

Think: eating US: fork, knife, spoon China: chopsticks Malaysia: fingers/hands

Culture Traits, cont.

•Change through time

Think: clothing styles in the USA from colonial period to today

How do cultures change?

•Assimilation•Innovation•Diffusion•Acculturation

Assimilation

•When one culture group adapts to the attitudes, belief systems and ways of life of another culture.

Think: Native Americans

Innovation

•New ideas that are accepted into a culture.

Think: Horse v. cars, etc.

Diffusion

•The spread of an innovation or other culture trait into another culture region, which then adopts that element into its own culture.

Think: Hip Hop or Rap Music

Diffusion, cont.

•The spread can be gradual.

Think: Country music from Nashville, TN

Diffusion, cont.

•Or the spread can happen when people move from a region and carry the innovation with them.

Think: Christianity from Europe

Acculturation

•When one culture changes a great deal through its meeting with another culture.

Acculturation, cont.

•Usually a two-way process in which each culture changes the other.

Think: USA fast food and the growth of ethnic foods.