Cultural Change
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Why do cultures change?

1.
2.
3.
Three reasons:
Discovery – women have more athletic
abilities then thought of in the past
Invention – computers have changed
the way cultures think, talk, etc.
Diffusion – food is becoming more
global, such as: tacos, Christmas trees,
piñatas
Cultural Diversity
& Social Categories
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

Social categories: groupings of persons
who share a social characteristic
Sub-culture: part of the dominant culture
but differs from it in some important
aspect (i.e. San Francisco’s Chinatown)
Counterculture: part of the dominant
culture but it deliberately opposes certain
central beliefs of the dominant group (i.e
goth or punk)
Ethnocentrism vs. Xenocentrism


ethnocentrism: judging others in terms of
one’s own cultural standards
Xenocentrism: when someone loves another
culture more than their own

American who think the British manners and
moves are superior to those of the US & who
adopt British accents and/or manners –
anglophiles)

For Example…
Cultural Universals

Behaviors or social institutions
that appear in all cultures (they
exist b/c humans have certain
common needs dictated by their
physical biology and their
environment)

Government, art, words, habitat,
toys, traditions, jobs, food, shelter,
etc.