Culture and cultural change

The essentials

E. B. Tylor (1871) defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Culture is learned, shared, symbolic (based especially on language), transmitted across generations and dynamic (it changes). It is not biologically inherited.

Key points

• Socialisation (enculturation): the lifelong process by which individuals learn the culture of their group, through family, peers, school, religion and media.
• Ethnocentrism: judging other cultures by the standards of one's own and treating one's own as superior (term associated with W. G. Sumner).
• Cultural relativism: understanding each culture in its own terms and context, without ranking it against another (associated with Franz Boas and his students).
• Diffusion: spread of cultural traits from one society to another, e.g. the spread of tea, potato or cricket.
• Acculturation: change resulting from continuous first-hand contact between two cultures; one or both adopt traits of the other.
• Assimilation: a minority group gradually loses its distinct culture and merges into the dominant culture.
• Innovation: invention or discovery of new ideas, tools or practices within a culture.
• Cultural lag (W. F. Ogburn): material culture changes faster than non-material culture (values, laws).
• Material culture (tools, houses) and non-material culture (beliefs, norms, language).

Exam tips

• Diffusion can happen through trade or media without close contact; acculturation implies sustained direct contact.
• Relativism is a research attitude; it does not mean approving every practice.

Common mistakes

• Saying culture is instinctive or genetically inherited.
• Treating acculturation and assimilation as the same; assimilation is the more complete absorption.