Culture change

About: Culture change is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1531 publications have been published within this topic receiving 41922 citations. The topic is also known as: cultural change & culture changes.

Change and Continuity in the Medical Culture of the Hmong in Kansas City

Abstract: The Hmong in the United States have undergone radical culture change through their recent experiences of the war in Laos, refugee resettlement, and Christian conversion. This article analyzes the influence of these changes on the health ideas and practices of the Hmong in Kansas City, the primary study population. Although shamanism and ancestor worship have been abandoned, attenuated concepts of spirit illness and soul loss exist in health beliefs and patterns of illness, notably fright illness (ceeb). Their eclectic set of ideas and practices is derived from several systems, including Chinese medicine, Protestant Christianity, and biomedicine. To explain the varied health ideas and practices, Last's concept of medical culture is useful because it provides a framework for understanding medical traditions drawn from differing cultural systems. The Hmong have created a unique medical culture through their incorporation of new therapies as well as the use of some traditional methods of healing.

New Technology and Culture Change in Traditional Societies

Abstract: (1988). New Technology and Culture Change in Traditional Societies. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 493-498.

Cultural revitalization movements in organization change management

Abstract: The 1992 study of Kotter and Heskett on successful corporate culture change reveals one of the most empirically convincing models for organization change management. The procedure demonstrated by Kotter and Heskett's research fits the pattern and dynamics of a universal social phenomenon of culture change defined in 1956 by Wallace as revitalization. Applying the psychodynamics of revitalization explains how this procedure of corporate culture change in distressed organizational cultures creates an adaptable culture of new behavioral norms. The driving force of this procedure is the transference of dependency wishes among anxious organization members onto their perceived powerful organization leader. An understanding of how and why organizational cultures change according to this model can guide the values and behavior of organizational leaders in successfully managing organizational change.

Cultural-Ecological Aspects of the Pithouse To Pueblo Transition in a Portion of the Southwest

Abstract: Southwestern archaeologists have traditionally devoted much attention to inventory and description of material culture change between the Pithouse and Pueblo periods. Unfortunately, our understanding of the ecological, demographic, and organizational aspects of the Pithouse-to-Pueblo transition is much less advanced. The present study attempts to remedy this deficiency for at least one portion of the Southwest, relying largely on survey data from the Mogollon culture area of extreme western Texas. Three major aspects of Pithouse-to-Pueblo change are considered. These are demographic change, subsistence pattern change, and social-organizational change. Basically, the transition is seen as a fundamental adaptive reorientation in which a small-scale, extensive, generalized adaption is replaced by one which was larger in scale, more intensive, and more specialized in focus than ever before. Factors motivating this transition are considered, and the supra-local applicability of the resulting model is discussed. DURING THE FIRST MILLENNIUM A.D. settlement in much of the southwestern United States consisted of relatively small villages of semisubterranean structures termed "pithouses." Beginning around the end of the millennium, however, there occurred a transition from pithouse villages to communities composed of the blocks of contiguou ms which we know as pueblos. This transition was certainly one of the major events of Southwestern culture history, although it is presently poorly understood at both local and regional levels. Traditional Southwestern archaeological studies have been directed largely at inventory and description of stylistic and material culture development from Pithouse to Pueblo times. A few current studies (e.g., Martin and Plog 1973) have begun to consider Pithouse-to-Pueblo change in terms of ecological relations and reorientation of adaptive strategies. Nevertheless, we still understand all too little of the environmental, demographic, and organizational aspects of the transition between what appear to have been two very different ways of life. This deficiency is a significant one, in that it is only through ecological and organizational data that we can hope to approach explanation of the Pithouse-to-Pueblo transition. It is impossible, in other words, to explain the transition without reference to the fundamental modes of operation of the societies involved. Before proceeding to the data bearing on this question, it remains to specify the perspective on cultural stability and change within which the present analysis is carried out. This study contends that cultural change of the sort exemplified by the Pithouse-to-Pueblo transition is neither automatic nor random. Rather, cultural systems change when they must in order to maintain homeostasis, which has been defined as "a set of goal ranges on corresponding sets of variables which are necessary or favorable operating conditions of the system in question" (Rappaport 1971b:24). The receptivity of cultural systems to change should thus be seen as inversely proportional to achieved stability within their physical and social environmental fields. In other words, the simple availability of alternate modes of operation need not lead to systemic change. Cultures do change, however, largely because they are open, adaptive systems. Cultures are open in the sense that they exchange matter, energy, and information with their physical and