Since the birth of anthropology, all schools have been talking about social and cultural changes.
The early evolutionism school explained the universality of cultural development with cultural evolutionism, and thought that human culture evolved from low level to high level and from simple to complex, forming a development order. It mainly involves cultural changes in history. Of course, rebuilding the past of mankind is also to understand the present situation, but they pay little attention to the cultural contact between ethnic groups and the ongoing cultural change process.
The school of communication focuses on the geographical, spatial and local variation of culture neglected by the theory of evolution, and focuses on the horizontal spread of culture. It believes that the process of cultural change is the process of communication, and culture mainly changes in the process of communication. However, they ignore the ability of human beings to create culture, and the explanation of cultural change process or communication sequence is unconvincing.
Although functional school focuses on the study of the function and structure of social culture and the changes of cultural phenomena, it also pays attention to the cultural changes found in the investigation. Radcliffe-Brown discussed the interaction caused by cultural contact, and thought that * * * temporal research was better than diachronic research in studying the process of cultural change, but diachronic research was also needed to discover the laws of cultural change. Malinowski wrote "The Motive Force of Cultural Change", and made a concrete discussion on cultural change.
Boas, an American historian, emphasized the particularity of each nation's history and culture, believing that this particularity depends on the internal development of society on the one hand and the external influence on the other. This takes into account both independent invention and the role of communication. They emphasize communication and oppose extreme communication theories. As early as 1920, boas pointed out that American scholars began to be interested in the dynamic phenomenon of cultural change. 1932 in the article "the purpose of anthropological research", he said, "Anthropology must study the interdependence of cultural phenomena and obtain information through the study of existing society". "We should not only know the dynamics of existing societies, but also know how they have become like this." He thinks we should study the influence of different cultural contacts. It is incomplete to study the connotation of culture, only to study the distribution of culture without studying the changes of social culture. "In short, the method we are trying to carry out is based on the study of social dynamic changes that can be observed at present. He stressed the need for a detailed descriptive ethnographic survey. Although he was criticized for his tendency to ignore theory, careful investigation can enable researchers to observe the process of cultural change.
Since 1930s, Herskovits and others have taken cultural change as a special research topic. American anthropologists are concerned about the changes caused by the cultural contact between Indians and whites. Herskovits said that the study of cultural change originated from the American historical school. At the same time, British anthropologists are concerned about the changes brought about by the cultural contact between colonial aborigines and whites. After World War II, the development of countries and nations in the Third World received more attention, prompting anthropologists to study cultural changes more. Until now, the study of cultural change is still a hot topic.
H.G.Barnett's Innovation: The Basis of Cultural Change (1953) is regarded as the basic work to study cultural change. He came to the conclusion that innovation is the foundation of all cultural changes, and pointed out that "innovation should be defined as any new idea, new behavior and new thing that is essentially different from the inherent form. Strictly speaking, every innovation is an idea or a group of ideas; But some innovations only exist in psychological organizations, while others have obvious and tangible forms of expression. " . Innovation includes evolution, invention and discovery, dissemination or borrowing.
Evolution, invention, discovery, dissemination or borrowing are all processes or ways of cultural change. Evolution is caused by the internal development of society, such as the development of production technology from low to high, and the development of social organization from simple to complex. The evolution of culture naturally causes cultural changes, and the process of evolution is the process of change. Discovery is to let some unknown things in the past be known. Invention is a new synthesis of previous materials and conditions, thus producing a new thing. Some discoveries and inventions are unconscious and accidental. For example, the ancients found that burning clay can make it hard and invented pottery. Some discoveries and inventions are conscious innovations, such as the invention of spinning machines and steam engines. When society accepts discoveries and inventions and uses them regularly, it causes cultural changes, such as the industrial revolution in Europe and the contemporary scientific and technological revolution. Discoveries and inventions can be produced within a society, or they can be produced outside and accepted by a society. Communication is an important content in the process of cultural change and a universal form of innovation. Early evolutionists not only emphasized invention and discovery. It also points out the role of communication. Morgan said that "all major inventions and discoveries will spread to all directions by themselves", and Taylor also said "the law of cultural communication". Malinowski believes that cultural changes in communities are due to independent evolution, while cultural changes caused by different cultural contacts are due to communication. He even thinks that borrowing is as creative as other forms of cultural innovation.
Dissemination and borrowing have several characteristics:
1. Communication is a process of choice. Whether cultural characteristics and cultural clusters are accepted or rejected depends on their effectiveness and adaptability to the recipient. The speed of communication varies. A.M. Rogers and others believe that the speed of specific innovation depends on the relative advantages, adaptability, complexity, feasibility and identifiability of innovation in the receiving culture. That is, the superiority of the new cultural characteristics over the old cultural characteristics, the adaptability to the existing values, experiences and needs, the difficulty of being understood and applied, the scope of the experiment and the visibility of the results.
2. Communication is a mutual and two-way contact between different national cultures. Cultural exchanges are generally mutual and two-way. They selectively adopt each other's cultural characteristics and cultural clusters.
3. The extent of cultural transmission or borrowing depends on the duration and closeness of contact between the two peoples.
4. Groups with similar cultures can easily adapt to each other and learn a lot from each other. Groups with similar cultures are easy to adapt to each other because of their similar cultural characteristics and cultural clusters, and learn from each other in a large number of cultures.
5. Reinterpretation refers to the changes in the form, function and significance of the newly introduced cultural characteristics and cultural clusters in order to meet their own needs.
6. The main reason for change Anthropologists have different views on which field is more likely to cause change. One is that technology precedes ideology; First, ideology is more fundamental; Meade and others believe that the earlier you learn, the harder it is to change. The second view, represented by L.A. White, holds that in the whole cultural system, the technological system causes changes in the social system. The technological social system causes changes in the ideological system. This view accords with the materialist view that productivity is the most active factor in production.
7. Changes in the cultural system Changes in one part of the cultural system cause corresponding changes in other parts, which is Barnett's chain reaction effect. Because culture is a whole, the change of a certain part of culture will inevitably cause the reaction of the interrelated parts of the whole, and the first change plays a decisive role.
Culture
Culturalization is the main content of cultural change. Culturalization is a concept in the theory of cultural change, which American anthropologists call cultural adaptation. The use of the word "cultural contact" by anthropologists in Britain and Asia, Africa and Oceania under its influence is equivalent to a cultural concept. Some people argue that the word cultural adaptation should be translated into "cultural transfer" or "cultural contact". The word "cultural contact" is easy to understand, but it fails to express the meaning that different cultures are similar because of contact with foreign cultures.
What is cultural adaptation? In the book Culturalization Research-Cultural Contact (1938), Heskowitz reiterated the definition of cultural adaptation that he, R. redfield and R. Linton defined in the Memorandum of Culturalization Research (1936): "Groups composed of individual elements with different cultures have continuous cultural contact, and this cultural contact. This definition has also aroused some people's doubts, but it distinguishes cultural contact from other forms of cultural change after all. In other words, cultural adaptation refers to the change of the original culture caused by the contact of different nationalities, and the study of cultural adaptation is the process and result of studying the cultural change caused by the contact of different nationalities. The term "cultural adaptation" was first put forward by J.W. Powell, the first director of the American Bureau of Ethnology. In his Introduction to Indian Language Studies written in l880, he said that under the overwhelming situation of millions of civilized people, the power of cultural adaptation has caused great changes in indigenous culture. In the United States, the word "acculturation" can already be seen in the vocabulary of ethnology in the 1920s and 1930s. In Germany, the word "acculturation" was used at the beginning of this century.
Some anthropologists devoted themselves to the study of cultural adaptation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The earliest research results were published in 1932. First of all, L.Beals's Indigenous Relics in Mayo Culture focuses on cultural contact. The second is Enwald's Implication Psychology, which puts forward the problem of implication psychology for the first time and makes a systematic analysis of its concept and process. The third part is Meade's The Cultural Changes of Indian Tribes, which describes the cultural contact between antlers and whites in a North American Indian tribe from the beginning to the end.
With regard to the definition of cultural adaptation, the memorandum 1954 defines cultural adaptation in a broader and simpler way, and holds that cultural adaptation is a cultural change that occurs when two or more independent cultural systems are linked together. "An independent cultural system is usually called' a culture' in anthropological literature". Autonomous system refers to a complete and structurally independent system, which is not a part of another large system and does not depend on it. It can continue its function without other systems. The Memorandum clearly regards cultural adaptation as the result of communication, so it focuses on describing the result of communication rather than communication itself, and more directly explains the integration of cultural characteristics.
In the book Pattern and Process, R.L.Bee puts forward the definition of cultural adaptation, which has several characteristics: First, cultural adaptation is a kind of cultural change, which will happen when two independent cultures meet. Second, cultural adaptation is a changing process, which is different from communication, innovation, invention and discovery. All acculturation takes place, and cultural characteristics and concepts are transmitted to the recipients of culture through various communication channels, resulting in influence and acculturation. But communication is only one aspect or a step in the process of cultural adaptation. The emergence of innovation or new ideas is a process different from cultural adaptation. Thirdly, the concept of cultural adaptation is closely related to its dissemination. However, acculturation and communication are not the same thing, and these two concepts should be clearly distinguished. A culture can learn its cultural characteristics from another culture without any process of cultural adaptation. Herskovits believes that communication is a successful cultural communication, while cultural adaptation is a cultural communication in the process.
The memorandum of 1954 summarizes the different and interrelated aspects that must be studied in connotation research: cultural system; Contact information; The connection between cultures; Cultural process of system connection.
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In cultural contact, the existence of each cultural system as an independent unit depends on some factors, namely, the mechanism of maintaining boundaries, the flexibility of internal structure and the mechanism of self-improvement. In some closed societies, the mechanism of keeping boundaries is strictly enforced. The elasticity of internal structure refers to the functional interconnection of various social organizations in the cultural system and even the elasticity or strictness of the relationship between individuals. Self-improvement mechanism means that a society always contains conflict forces and cohesion forces. Its balance contributes to the self-improvement of society. Generally speaking, the cultural system with more mechanisms to keep boundaries, tight internal structure and self-improvement mechanism has the least change in acculturation; Those cultural systems that rarely keep boundaries, have flexible internal structures and lack effective self-improvement mechanisms are the easiest to change in acculturation.
2. Contact situation
The change of acculturation may be the result of direct transmission of culture, or it may be caused by non-cultural reasons, the most important of which is the restriction of ecology and population.
3. The link between cultures
The connection between cultures shows what happens when different cultures come into contact. Contact actually occurs between cultures, but between groups and individuals who establish contact with each other. There are two aspects to these connections. The first is a structural, or cross-cultural interactive system, which is based on the connection between cultures (religion, business and military). This connection is a pairing and mutual relationship. The second is the connection between the elements of the paired relationship. This connection may be limited to some members of the two systems; Or spread and influence a large number of people in different ways. Exactly speaking, people are in contact with each other, not culture, but no individual or group can show the whole of their culture to the members of other groups, and no cultural characteristics and cultural clusters of a cultural system can be in a comprehensive state of inclusion.
4. Cultural process
Any independent cultural system itself is in the process of constant change. The change caused by contact is not from static to dynamic, but from one change to another. Because of the stimulation of contact, the change is faster than the original internal force. We should compare and analyze the differences between the changes within the cultural system and those caused by contact stimuli.
According to the memo preparation in 1954, the model and process of R.E. Bi, and the research of other researchers such as E.H.Spicer, it is considered that the process of cultural adaptation can include the following aspects. Through the process of cultural adaptation, new cultural characteristics and cultural clusters are integrated into the cultural system of the recipient.
The process of cultural adaptation
1. Transmission of cultural characteristics between cultures (i.e. communication)
This kind of spread can be as small as an exchange of steel axes and furs, or as large as the spread of the whole religious belief. Members who accept the culture can choose to accept or reject it. The result is generally to accept some features and reject others. In the process of communication, these communication characteristics have experienced the evaluation and transformation of the receiver in the cross-cultural interaction system, which is closely related to the value system of the receiver's culture. Choose according to your own values and decide to choose.
2, the combination of culture
Culturalization is not passive absorption, but a process of cultural acceptance. Especially when there is no pressure, acculturation is creative in nature. A cultural system may voluntarily or give up some original features and be compensated for introducing new features. In this process, in addition to many changes, there is also a creative process, that is, combining the characteristics of this cultural system with foreign characteristics, or adding new cultural characteristics to the original system. A reinterpretation of cultural changes is to clarify this issue.
replace
A combination is a new element that replaces something that existed before. But in fact, it is the new cultural characteristics that have been replaced by generations one after another, rather than the new ones replacing the old ones at once.
4. Integration and assimilation
Integration refers to the integration of the characteristics of two different cultural systems into a model, which becomes a third cultural system different from the original two cultures. The previous two systems no longer exist; But we can see from this new system that it originated from the first two systems. This new system is not only a complete system, but also a new social and cultural body. This happens when two systems are in the same city. After integration, the original two systems will disappear. If the regions of two cultural systems are not connected, but separated and merged into a new cultural system without basic regions, then the original cultural carrier of either party can still exist in theory. Assimilation means that after cultural contact, the original culture of a group is completely replaced by another culture. Assimilation is a progressive phenomenon. Generally speaking, when two cultural systems are in contact, the relatively backward culture will naturally absorb the cultural quality and cultural clusters of advanced styles, or even lose its own culture completely. This group has completely lost its own cultural characteristics, and as a result, it has become another nation. Ethnic integration in history is actually natural assimilation. Forced assimilation is a form of national oppression by using violence, privilege and other coercive means to force other ethnic groups to give up their own culture and become a part of it. Feudal dynasties in China often adopted the policy of forced assimilation.
5. isolation or isolation
This is a non-integrated model. Foreign culture is imposed on the recipient, and the recipient is unwilling to accept it, so it is only accepted on the surface as a part of his own culture, and when the external force retreats, the new characteristics of being forced to accept will also go with it. This phenomenon is common in colonial situations. 6. The reactionary movement When a nation invades and rules another nation, the former imposes its own lifestyle and values on the latter, and the pressure has not yet reached an overwhelming trend. Anti-cultural adaptation activities will take place. The ruled tried to restore their way of life, some traditional cultures and rituals, which anthropologists called the "revival movement".
The reasons affecting cultural changes
The reason of cultural change is internal, which is caused by changes within the society; Second, it is external, which is caused by changes in the natural environment and social and cultural environment, such as immigration, contact with other ethnic groups and changes in the political system. Change begins when the environment changes and members of society respond in new ways. After this way is accepted by enough people in this nation and becomes its characteristic, it can be considered that culture has changed.
The borrowing of cultural changes is selective. People don't fully accept everything in front of them, which is what the receiver can get; Strong adaptability. Meaningful content is more acceptable, otherwise it may be rejected. Because of its relative advantages, adaptability, complexity, feasibility and visibility of results, some innovations may be more acceptable than others. Otherwise, it may delay people's acceptance of innovation, if not stop completely.
Some people may innovate faster than others. In the same group, innovators have a strong desire to explore the outside world, like to take risks and have the ability to understand new technological knowledge; Be able to get some resources needed for innovation; Early adopters pay attention to the respected people in the group. They have higher social status and better education, and more innovators can gain greater vested interests from innovation.
Whether borrowing can be realized and its possible scope also depends on the relationship between nations or ethnic groups, that is, the duration and closeness of contact between them. People who are in constant direct contact are more likely to borrow money, and borrowing money is often two-way, selectively accepting each other's characteristics and clusters.
It is also found that the change is continuous. Systems with better cultural integration are more difficult to borrow. However, those systems whose cultural integration has been shaken can easily be borrowed. Changes in one part of the cultural system often lead to corresponding changes in other parts. White believes that the change of ideology stems from the change of society; Social change is caused by technological progress. Technological change will cause a series of continuous changes; Changes in ecological conditions may also cause cultural changes.
The Motive Force of Cultural Change
Boas proposed to study the dynamic conditions of cultural change, arguing that "the dynamic of the existing society comes from two aspects, on the one hand, the relationship between various cultural forms, and the relationship between culture and the natural environment; On the other hand, it is the relationship between individuals and society. " . When he emphasized the historical and cultural particularity of each nation, he thought that it depended on the internal development of society on the one hand and external influence on the other, but he did not talk about the internal development of society when he talked about social motivation. 1954 "memorandum of acculturation" puts forward that "the choice of value system, the generation of development order, the role of decisive factors and the process of adaptation, integration and differentiation of personal factors can be regarded as the driving force of acculturation change." Some anthropologists regard the process of change as a driving force, while others regard the causes of change as a driving force, or only attach importance to external influences and ignore the internal development of society.
Functionalism holds that the core of social and cultural system is function and structure. Society is a complete system, which is composed of all related parts. They do their jobs and act as a whole. An imbalance can be adjusted by other parts. Therefore, no matter how the social culture changes, the society always tends to be balanced and stable in the end. Malinowski, mentioned earlier, once pointed out that the cultural changes caused by the internal community are due to independent evolution, which only explains the reasons for the cultural changes within the society and does not involve the motive force of independent evolution.
Early evolutionists applied the theory of evolution to all fields of social culture, and believed that the evolution of culture and society led to the complexity and progress of culture and society. Morgan put forward the innovation of survival technology to promote the progress of human society. Family, politics and property systems are closely related to this. But on the whole. Evolutionists advocate that evolution is gradual, without qualitative leap, and do not understand that class struggle is the driving force of social development. Modern evolutionists emphasize that technology, economy, population and environment are the driving forces and decisive factors of social development.
Marx and Engels discussed the motive force of social development and thought that the mode of production was the foundation. "The mode of production of material life restricts the whole process of social life, political life and spiritual life." Marx pointed out that material production plays a decisive role in human social life. Material production itself contains the contradictory movement of productivity and production relations. This contradiction and another contradiction, that is, the contradiction between economic base and superstructure, are the basic contradictions of society, and these contradictory movements are the driving force of social development and change. Engels emphasized the interaction and resultant force of various factors in social development, but even more emphasized that economic conditions are decisive in the final analysis.
The resultant force of social development is a dynamic system, with longitudinal movement and lateral movement. The longitudinal movement of the dynamic system makes the internal development of human society present the replacement of different social forms; The lateral movement of the dynamic system makes the society accept the influence of the external environment, and the internal factors also interact. The lateral movement of the dynamic system promotes the longitudinal movement, and the social and cultural changes caused by the lateral movement are integrated into the changes caused by the longitudinal movement. To study the social and cultural changes, we should study the changes within the society, that is, the vertical changes, which are caused by the vertical movement of the dynamic system formed by various joint forces. Cultural contact or acculturation accepts external influences, cultural systems are in contact with each other, cultural networks are interconnected, the selection and adaptation of foreign cultural characteristics, the integration and differentiation among groups, and acculturation are all driving forces of lateral movement. Due to the different situations of various resultant forces, the results of cultural changes and cultural contacts are also different.