No culture stands still, and every culture is largely made of things it did not invent. Anthropologists sort culture change by where it came from: born inside a society (innovation), carried in from another society at a distance (diffusion), or worked out between two societies locked in sustained contact (acculturation). Pick a mechanism, then a variety of it, and watch the two-society diagram redraw. Then sort eight real cases.
Two societies
Where it starts—
Contact needed—
How much changes—
Role of power—
One question tells them apart — where did the change come from? Inside the society → innovation. Another society, at a distance → diffusion. Another society, in continuous face-to-face contact, usually with unequal power → acculturation.
Three mechanisms of changetap one to begin
tap a variety above to redraw the diagram
Name the change
Case 1 of 80 correct
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Globalization is not erasure. Marshall Sahlins argued that people put imported goods to work saying local things — the indigenization of modernity. Arjun Appadurai described culture moving in global flows rather than radiating from a single centre. Contact reliably changes cultures. It does not reliably dissolve them.