Cultural Dynamics

pdeed6306Cultural dynamics

External dynamicsInternal dynamics

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Absorbtion or Rejection?

Organic dynamics

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Accomodation or assimilation?

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Midnapore

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Mutus- muteTetrapedes – four leggedHirsutus- hairyLinnaeus, 1748

Java Man (reconstruction)

Buchenwald: ‘Human’ parts for sale?

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Simple Tools

In conversation withProfessor Volker Sommer, AnthropologyUniversity of London

Chimp tools

Source http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool accessed 30/06/2010

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Humans like wolves Chimps like humans

Amala and Kamala Chimp funeral Uganda 2009

Quotes

• “The mere inability to understand the expression, movements and rituals of a strange culture creates distrust, suspicion, and fear in a way which can easily lead to overt aggression” (Lorenz, 1975, 149)

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Assimilation to ‘human’ race

• Gk. phylon "race, stock," related to phyle "tribe, clan," and phylein "bring forth“ giving phyletic and phylogenetic

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljVd6XS-J0s&feature=player_detailpage

Oxana Malaya 1996

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Tibet 1949-1979

• 1.2 million killed• 6,254 monasteries and

nunneries destroyed• 60% libraries burned• 2/3 land absorbed into

China• Amdo province turned

into an open prison• 100,000 in labour camps• Entire wildlife wiped out

Mary Craig, Tears of Blood, p.222

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Aztek (16 century)

• 1519 – estimated 25,200,000

• 1532 – estimated 16,800,000

• 1548 – estimated 6,650,000

• 1563 – estimated 2,650,000

• 1605 –estimated 1,075,000

Source : Jucquois who gives Chaunu, Conquête et exploitation des Nouveaux Mondes, Paris: 383

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Armenians- southern Turkey

• Sultan Abdul Hamid (Abdulhamit) II (1876-1909), massacred up to 300,000 Armenians

• By 1915 – population stood at about 2 million

• 1918 – 1 million• 1923 - almost eliminated

from territory• 1990s destruction of

artefacts and churches

Dying to be different?

• Enawane-nawe, 2009

• Brazilian government about to dam up the river• Adaptation, association, ideology?

• “Culture groups behave toward one another in many respects as do different but very closely related animal species” (Lorenz, 1988. The Waning of Humaneness (London: Unwin)

Adjustment and GrowthMat

ure Encounter

Initiation

Culture

Internal Dynamics

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Effects of Encounter

• Within a culture: – Enculturation

• When cultures meet: – Deculturation

• When cultures meet: – Acculturation

• When educated to live in a plurality of cultures:– Inculturation

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Patterns of encounter

• How can cultural relations be improved?– Assimilation (melting-pot)– Populism (Leave alone) (laissez-faire)

• Salad bowl or mosaic

– Intervene• Mediate?

Multiculturalism – a layered reality?

• Learned behaviours?– Evolutionary or phylogenetic ( over millenia)– Historical (group history going back over centuries)– Biographical (ontogenetic) – the individual learns by combining

natural development with information– Microgenetic, from moment to moment

Adapted from Tharp (1994) Research Issues and Policy Knowledge in Cultural Diversity and Education www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/presrvce/pe3lk1.htm as accessed 13/09/2010

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