CULTURAL LAG

CULTURAL  LAG

The term “Cultural Lag” was first coined by sociologist William F. Ogburn  in 1922.It describes what happens in a social system when the cultural ideas are used to regulate social life do not keep pace with other social changes.Culture takes time to with technological innovations, and social conflicts are caused by this lag.Dr. James W.Woodward explains that when the material conditions change , changes are occasioned in the adaptive culture, but these changes in the adaptive culture donot synchronise exactly with the change in the material culture, this delay is the cultural lag.

          Culture is of two types.

1.     Material Culture

2.     Nonmaterial Culture

          Material culture includes all of the physical objects that people create and give meaning to. For example cars, clothing, schools and computers etc. Nonmaterial culture consists of thoughts and behaviors that people learn as part of the culture they live in. It includes politics, economics, language, rules, customs, family, religion or beliefs, values and knowledge.

CULTURAL  DIFFUSION

The term Cultural Diffusion was first conceptionalized by Alfred L. Kroeber in his influential 1940 paper Stimulus Diffusion between individuals, whether within a single culture or from one culture to another. It is distinct from the diffusion of innovations within a single culture. Cultural Diffusion is the process through which the idea(s) of a particular culture are spread or diffused through an area beyond the culture that came up with the idea(s). For example, Buddism was started in india,but spread throughout Asia.Cultural diffusion happens  when cultural traits, traditions, behaviors or things are transferred from one society to another. Countries that have been colonialized have undergone cultural diffusion. Diffusion across cultures is a well-attested and also uncontroversial phenominan. There are different types of diffusion.The following are some of them.

Expansion diffusion: A innovation or idea that develops in a source area and remains strong there, while also spreading outward to other areas.

Relocation Diffusion: An idea or innovation that migrates into new areas, leaving behind its origin or source of the cultural trait.

Hierarchical Diffusion: An idea or innovation that spreads by moving from larger to smaller places, often with little regard to the distance between places, and often influenced by social elites.

Contagious Diffusion: An idea or innovation based on person-to person contact within a given population.

There are three major theories of cultural diffusion. They are,

1.     Hyper Diffusionalism: According to this theory all cultures are originated from one culture.

2.     Culture Circles Diffusionalism: It maintains that all cultures originated from a small number of cultures.

3.     Evolutionary Diffusionalism: It says that societies are influenced by others and that all humans share psychological traits that make them equally likely to innovate, resulting in development of similar innovations an isolation.

CULTURAL INERTIA

The term inertia has its root in Latin. The latin word means lack of skill or slothfulness. Cultural inertia is the tendency for a group of people to cling to traditions and ways of thinking that have outlived their usefulness even when better ways are presented. Throughout the world  immigration and ensuring social reactions become dominant social problems in the 21^st centuary. One contributor to these problems is continual social change. In the United States, ethnic minority populations are growing while the white majority is becoming proportionally smaller.It is proposed that change, in and of itself, can produce intergroup tension. Here the concept of cultural inertia is introduced as one contributer to intergroup tension. Cultural inertia entailes a resistance to change, unless change is already occurring.Change is perceived differently across groups as a function of how well the groups already match the current dominant culture.Cultural inertia causes differential preferences for cultural change as a function of the extent to which people identify with a cultural group, and the perception that a culture is already changing.

So once an unwanted culture has been created it takes a lot of effort and energy to turn it around. People have to commit to it and ensure the resources the leadership is provided for as long as it takes to make the change.Think of it like trying to push a slow moving car in another direction. One person can’t do it, but get enough people together working towards the same goal and it can be done.Once that car is moving in other direction it requires less effort to keep it going that way. If it is going fast enough in the right direction, it requires very little effort to maintain.  Creating a good culture takes effort, but once it created it is established and easy to maintain. Once it is embedded it has its own cultural inertia people along with it.