Spread Of Culture Essay

Everyone has heard of culture, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they know what it means. Often times people confuse terms such as culture, society, and ethnic group, but they all mean very different things. A society is a group that shares a geographic region, a common language, and a sense of identity and culture; an ethnic group is a group of people who share a language, customs, and a common heritage; culture is how people act and their judgement towards one another. Also, not many people know how culture changes or how it’s spread. In this essay, I will describe culture, how it’s spread, and how it changes. First of all, culture is the total of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors shared by and passed on by the members of a specific group. It involves things like food, shelter, religion, security/protection, education, creative expressions, language, relationships to family and others, and political and social organization. Some people would say that culture acts kind of like a blueprint for things like how a person should act to fit in with a group. It ties everyone together into one group while separating them from other groups. Culture includes all products of human work and thought and helps us solve some problems that everyone faces.
Some groups, rather than adopting ideas, take an idea from another group and alter it to make something new. They make it their own. This is called innovation. It’s how culture is changed, whether it’s by accident or on purpose. Innovation is what allows groups to advance in things such as technology, but not all ideas and inventions are accepted by every group. The individuals in a society must decide whether or not they like the idea/invention. If they decide they do like it the way it is, diffusion takes place. If they decide they don’t like everything about it, but can make it better for themselves, innovation takes place. This process of deciding is called