Which Of The Following Statements About Ongoing Cultural Change Is Correct?

Cultural Change

As the hipster example illustrates, culture is always evolving. Moreover, new things are added to material civilization every day, and they affect nonmaterial civilisation equally well. Cultures change when something new (say, railroads or smartphones) opens up new ways of living and when new ideas enter a culture (say, as a result of travel or globalization).

Innovation: Discovery and Invention

An innovation refers to an object or concept'south initial appearance in gild—it's innovative considering it is markedly new. In that location are ii ways to come across an innovative object or idea: discover it or invent it. Discoveries make known previously unknown but existing aspects of reality. In 1610, when Galileo looked through his telescope and discovered Saturn, the planet was already there, only until then, no ane had known nigh it. When Christopher Columbus encountered America, the state was, of course, already well known to its inhabitants. Notwithstanding, Columbus's discovery was new cognition for Europeans, and it opened the way to changes in European culture, as well every bit to the cultures of the discovered lands. For case, new foods such as potatoes and tomatoes transformed the European diet, and horses brought from Europe changed hunting practices of Native American tribes of the Great Plains.

Inventions event when something new is formed from existing objects or concepts—when things are put together in an entirely new mode. In the belatedly 1800s and early 1900s, electric appliances were invented at an astonishing pace. Cars, airplanes, vacuum cleaners, lamps, radios, telephones, and televisions were all new inventions. Inventions may shape a culture when people use them in place of older ways of conveying out activities and relating to others, or as a way to bear out new kinds of activities. Their adoption reflects (and may shape) cultural values, and their apply may require new norms for new situations.

Consider the introduction of modern communication technology, such every bit mobile phones and smartphones. Every bit more than and more people began carrying these devices, phone conversations no longer were restricted to homes, offices, and phone booths. People on trains, in restaurants, and in other public places became bellyaching past listening to 1-sided conversations. Norms were needed for cell telephone employ. Some people pushed for the idea that those who are out in the world should pay attention to their companions and surroundings. However, engineering enabled a workaround: texting, which enables tranquillity communication and has surpassed phoning as the chief way to run across today's highly valued ability to stay in touch on anywhere, everywhere.

When the pace of innovation increases, it can pb to generation gaps. Technological gadgets that catch on speedily with one generation are sometimes dismissed by a skeptical older generation. A culture'due south objects and ideas can crusade not but generational but cultural gaps. Fabric culture tends to diffuse more rapidly than nonmaterial culture; engineering can spread through society in a matter of months, but it tin accept generations for the ideas and beliefs of social club to modify. Sociologist William F. Ogburn coined the term culture lag to refer to this time that elapses between the introduction of a new item of material culture and its credence as office of nonmaterial culture (Ogburn 1957).

Civilization lag can besides crusade tangible problems. The infrastructure of the Usa, built a hundred years ago or more, is having trouble supporting today's more heavily populated and fast-paced life. Yet there is a lag in conceptualizing solutions to infrastructure issues. Rising fuel prices, increased air pollution, and traffic jams are all symptoms of culture lag. Although people are condign aware of the consequences of overusing resources, the ways to support changes takes fourth dimension to achieve.

Sociologist Everett Rogers (1962) adult a model of the diffusion of innovations. As consumers gradually prefer a new innovation, the item grows toward a market place share of 100 percent, or complete saturation within a society. (Graph courtesy of Tungsten/Wikimedia Eatables)

Diffusion and Globalization

The integration of world markets and technological advances of the terminal decades have allowed for greater exchange betwixt cultures through the processes of globalization and diffusion. Beginning in the 1980s, Western governments began to deregulate social services while granting greater liberties to individual businesses. As a issue, world markets became dominated by multinational companies in the 1980s, a new state of affairs at that time. We have since come up to refer to this integration of international trade and finance markets equally globalization . Increased communications and air travel take further opened doors for international business relations, facilitating the flow not only of goods just also of information and people besides (Scheuerman 2014 (revised)). Today, many U.S. companies ready offices in other nations where the costs of resource and labor are cheaper. When a person in the United states of america calls to get data virtually banking, insurance, or computer services, the person taking that call may be working in some other country.

Alongside the process of globalization is diffusion , or the spread of material and nonmaterial civilisation. While globalization refers to the integration of markets, improvidence relates to a similar process in the integration of international cultures. Heart-course Americans tin can fly overseas and return with a new appreciation of Thai noodles or Italian gelato. Access to television and the Internet has brought the lifestyles and values portrayed in U.S. sitcoms into homes effectually the globe. Twitter feeds from public demonstrations in one nation accept encouraged political protesters in other countries. When this kind of diffusion occurs, textile objects and ideas from one culture are introduced into another.

Officially patented in 1893 as the "clasp locker" (left), the attachment did not diffuse through social club for many decades. Today, it is immediately recognizable around the earth. (Photograph (a) courtesy of U.S. Patent Office/Wikimedia Commons; Photo (b) courtesy of Rabensteiner/Wikimedia Commons)

Further Inquiry

The Beats were a counterculture that birthed an entire movement of art, music, and literature—much of which is however highly regarded and studied today. The man responsible for naming the generation was Jack Kerouac; even so, the man responsible for introducing the earth to that generation was John Clellon Holmes, a writer often lumped in with the group. In 1952 he penned an article for the New York Times Mag titled, "This Is the Beat Generation." Read that commodity and learn more than about Clellon Holmes and the Beats: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/The-Beats

Call back Information technology Over

What are some examples of cultural lag that are present in your life? Do you recollect technology affects civilisation positively or negatively? Explain.

Exercise

ane. Your eighty-three-year-old grandmother has been using a computer for some time now. As a manner to keep in bear upon, you frequently ship emails of a few lines to allow her know about your day. She calls after every email to answer point by point, but she has never emailed a response dorsum. This tin can exist viewed as an instance of:

1. cultural lag
2. innovation
3. ethnocentricity
4. xenophobia

2. Some jobs today annunciate in multinational markets and permit telecommuting in lieu of working from a chief location. This broadening of the task marketplace and the way that jobs are performed tin exist attributed to:

1. cultural lag
2. innovation
3. discovery
4. globalization

iii. The major departure between invention and discovery is:

1. Invention is based on technology, whereas discovery is ordinarily based on culture
2. Discovery involves finding something that already exists, but invention puts things together in a new way
3. Invention refers to material civilization, whereas discovery tin can be textile or theoretic, similar laws of physics
4. Invention is typically used to refer to international objects, whereas discovery refers to that which is local to one's culture

4. That McDonald'south is plant in near every state around the world is an example of:

1. globalization
2. improvidence
3. civilisation lag
4. xenocentrism

Self-Check: Pop Civilization, Subculture, and Cultural Change

Yous'll have more success on the Self-Check, if y'all've completed the two Readings in this section.

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/cultural-change/

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