Discipline: Social Science
Culture is an aspect of human life that can be viewed as an evolutionary reflex to environmental exigencies (Clifton, 1968). From this premise, it can be deduced that culture change is the result of changes in adaptive and coping strategies. "Culture is a changing continuum through time", so says Hoebel (1972:12). It is absolutely true. However, there is more to that statement than what immediately presents to human cognition. While change is accepted a pervasive phenomenon to culture, just as it is in all the other aspects of human life (Woods, 1975), anthropologists and sociologists differ in theoretical orientation as to where significant changes at the cultural level emanate (Appelbaum, 1971). The structural-functionalists see it engendered by external factors, which impinge upon the functionally interdependent and smooth-running socio-cultural system causing the later to change (Kroeber, 1963; Rocher, 1975; Appelbaum, 1971; Hoebel, 1972; & Kottak, 2000). This view is contingent to the principle that the process of innovation, diffusion, and adaptation heuristically cause culture change (Woods, 1975). Those who espouse the theory of symbolic interactionism rather emphasize the role played by the internal process and dynamic relationship between the structures of the socio-cultural system as the progenitor of change. Accordingly, this process, which is persistently reshaping and changing the system, is programmed by the plurality of interactions between and among human actors who embody that same socio-cultural system (Ritzer, 2000).
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