Cultural Change in Modern World History

Cultural Change in Modern World History
Author: Peter N. Stearns
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release:
Genre: Civilization, Modern
ISBN: 9781350054363

"In this innovative textbook, leading world historian Peter Stearns analyses key examples of culture change from around the world, highlighting what culture change involves and how it can be explained and assessed, both historically and in the contemporary world. Culture change is one of the most interesting and significant features of human society, but until now there has been no book for the classroom which looks explicitly at this phenomenon. Cultural Change in Modern World History covers different kinds and levels of culture change since 1500 - from colonial culture contact in British India to modernization in Meiji Japan and changing attitudes towards gay marriage in the past decade - considering how we should define culture change, how to deal with causation and how to evaluate continuities and consequences. Stearns addresses fundamental questions: why do groups of people change their beliefs and values, and what happens when they do? Conversely, why do some groups resist culture change, and how do some manage to combine novel and more traditional cultural components? Figuring out how better to understand why groups or societies change their minds - or refuse to do so - provides a crucial perspective on human behaviors and values. As the first book to explore this important question, Cultural Change in Modern World History is a ground-breaking text for students of world history, cultural history and anthropology."--

Cultural Change in Modern World History

Cultural Change in Modern World History
Author: Peter N. Stearns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-12-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350054321

In this innovative textbook, leading world historian Peter Stearns analyses key examples of culture change from around the world, highlighting what culture change involves and how it can be explained and assessed, both historically and in the contemporary world. Culture change is one of the most interesting and significant features of human society, but until now there has been no book for the classroom which looks explicitly at this phenomenon. Cultural Change in Modern World History covers different kinds and levels of culture change since 1500 – from colonial culture contact in British India to modernization in Meiji Japan and changing attitudes towards gay marriage in the past decade – considering how we should define culture change, how to deal with causation and how to evaluate continuities and consequences. Stearns addresses fundamental questions: why do groups of people change their beliefs and values, and what happens when they do? Conversely, why do some groups resist culture change, and how do some manage to combine novel and more traditional cultural components? Figuring out how better to understand why groups or societies change their minds – or refuse to do so – provides a crucial perspective on human behaviors and values. As the first book to explore this important question, Cultural Change in Modern World History is a ground-breaking text for students of world history, cultural history and anthropology.

The Acceleration of Cultural Change

The Acceleration of Cultural Change
Author: R. Alexander Bentley
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2017-08-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262036959

How culture evolves through algorithms rather than knowledge inherited from ancestors. From our hunter-gatherer days, we humans evolved to be excellent throwers, chewers, and long-distance runners. We are highly social, crave Paleolithic snacks, and display some gendered difference resulting from mate selection. But we now find ourselves binge-viewing, texting while driving, and playing Minecraft. Only the collective acceleration of cultural and technological evolution explains this development. The evolutionary psychology of individuals—the drive for “food and sex”—explains some of our current habits, but our evolutionary success, Alex Bentley and Mike O'Brien explain, lies in our ability to learn cultural know-how and to teach it to the next generation. Today, we are following social media bots as much as we are learning from our ancestors. We are radically changing the way culture evolves. Bentley and O'Brien describe how the transmission of culture has become vast and instantaneous across an Internet of people and devices, after millennia of local ancestral knowledge that evolved slowly. Long-evolved cultural knowledge is aggressively discounted by online algorithms, which prioritize popularity and recency. If children are learning more from Minecraft than from tradition, this is a profound shift in cultural evolution. Bentley and O'Brien examine the broad and shallow model of cultural evolution seen today in the science of networks, prediction markets, and the explosion of digital information. They suggest that in the future, artificial intelligence could be put to work to solve the problem of information overload, learning to integrate concepts over the vast idea space of digitally stored information.

Cultural Change in Modern World History

Cultural Change in Modern World History
Author: Peter N. Stearns
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-12-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350054356

In this innovative textbook, leading world historian Peter Stearns analyses key examples of culture change from around the world, highlighting what culture change involves and how it can be explained and assessed, both historically and in the contemporary world. Culture change is one of the most interesting and significant features of human society, but until now there has been no book for the classroom which looks explicitly at this phenomenon. Cultural Change in Modern World History covers different kinds and levels of culture change since 1500 – from colonial culture contact in British India to modernization in Meiji Japan and changing attitudes towards gay marriage in the past decade – considering how we should define culture change, how to deal with causation and how to evaluate continuities and consequences. Stearns addresses fundamental questions: why do groups of people change their beliefs and values, and what happens when they do? Conversely, why do some groups resist culture change, and how do some manage to combine novel and more traditional cultural components? Figuring out how better to understand why groups or societies change their minds – or refuse to do so – provides a crucial perspective on human behaviors and values. As the first book to explore this important question, Cultural Change in Modern World History is a ground-breaking text for students of world history, cultural history and anthropology.

Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789-1860

Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1789-1860
Author: Scott C. Martin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780742527713

In this exciting new work, Scott C. Martin brings together cutting-edge scholarship and articles from diverse sources to explore the cultural dimensions of the market revolution in America. By reflecting on the reciprocal relationship between cultural and economic change, the work deepens our understanding of American society during the turbulent early nineteenth century.

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History
Author: Jon Thares Davidann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315507951

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History explores cultural contact as an agent of change. It takes an encounters approach to world history since 1500, rather than a political one, to reveal different perspectives and experiences as well as key patterns and transformations. It studies the spaces between cultures historically to help us transcend human differences today in a rapidly globalizing world. The text focuses on first encounters that suggest long-term developments and particularly significant encounters that have changed the direction of world history. Because of the complexities of these encounters, the author takes a user-friendly approach to keep the text accessible to students with varying backgrounds in history.

Global History, Visual Culture and Itinerancies

Global History, Visual Culture and Itinerancies
Author: Francisco José Díaz
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre:
ISBN: 9781527560703

National studies have demonstrated their inability to correctly understand global phenomena, and the way in which they affect societies. This chronologically ambitious book investigates methodological and theoretical issues from Roman times to the present, in terms of globalization. In this context, one of the most relevant parameters of change emerges: the itinerancy of culture and knowledge. Therefore, this volume argues that itinerant agents carry with them cultural baggage, transporting and transmitting it to other spaces. In this way, interconnection begins, producing active changes in global history and visual culture. Contributions to this book focus on comparative studies, the evolution of global phenomena, historical processes in their diachrony, regional studies, changing economies, cultural continuities, and methodological questions on globalization, among others. In addition, the book opens with a contribution from Professor Peter Burke.

Cultures and Societies in a Changing World

Cultures and Societies in a Changing World
Author: Wendy Griswold
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2012-01-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452289409

In the Fourth Edition of Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, author Wendy Griswold illuminates how culture shapes our social world and how society shapes culture. She helps students gain an understanding of the sociology of culture and explore stories, beliefs, media, ideas, art, religious practices, fashions, and rituals from a sociological perspective. Cultural examples from multiple countries and time periods will broaden students′ global understanding. They will develop a deeper appreciation of culture and society, gleaning insights that will help them overcome cultural misunderstandings, conflicts, and ignorance; equip them to be more effective in their professional and personal lives, and become wise citizens of the world.

Civilizations and World Systems

Civilizations and World Systems
Author: Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780761991052

Leading figures in the fields of civilizational studies and sociology and political science join to compare and contrast their assumptions and conclusions about broad-scale social and historical change.

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History
Author: Jon T. Davidann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-08-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781138475786

Cross-Cultural Encounters in Modern World History explores cultural contact as an agent of change. It takes an encounters approach to world history since 1500, rather than a political one, to reveal different perspectives and experiences as well as key patterns and transformations. It studies the spaces between cultures historically to help us transcend human differences today in a rapidly globalizing world. The text focuses on first encounters that suggest long-term developments and particularly significant encounters that have changed the direction of world history. Because of the complexities of these encounters, the author takes a user-friendly approach to keep the text accessible to students with varying backgrounds in history.