This PPT deals with Cultural Diversity, Cultural Identity and Factors of Socio-Cultural Changes

1. Culture and Society:
Cultural Diversity, Cultural Identity and
Factors of Socio-Cultural Changes
Dr. Anil Kumar
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
STJM PG College, Bilhaur, Kanpur
E-mail: anil.aina@gmail.com, Mob. 9451087122

2. Cultural Diversity
• Societal culture refers to culture of the society as
a whole.
• Sub-culture means the culture of a specific group
within the society. There are many sub culture
exist in society based on linguistic cast religious,
political, occupational, racial, the ethnic groups in
a society.
• Indians as a whole share Indian culture which is
not synonymous with Hindu culture. Subcultures
have distinct values and norms that set them
apart from the rest of population. Religious
beliefs, food habits, agricultural practices.

3. Multiculturalism
• Multiculturalism is a principle of co-existence of different
cultures, which foster different cultures.
• A Number of cultural groups exists side by side in the same
culture.
• It is the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes
racial, religious, caste or cultural groups and is manifested in
customary behaviours, cultural assumptions and values, patterns
of thinking, and communicative styles etc.

4. Communalism
• In everyday language, the word ‘communalism’ refers to
aggressive chauvinism based on religious identity.
• Communalism is an aggressive political ideology linked to religion
• One of the characteristic features of communalism is its claim that
religious identity overrides everything else.
• Whether one is poor or rich, whatever one’s occupation, caste or
political beliefs, it is religion alone that counts.

5. Secularism
• In fact, secularism is among the most complex terms in social and
political theory. In the western context the main sense of these
terms has to do with the separation of church and state.
• The separation of religious and political authority marked a major
turning point in the social history of the West.
• Secularization in turn was related to the arrival of modernity and
the rise of science and rationality as alternatives to religious ways
of understanding the world.
• So, a secular person or state is one that does not favour any
particular religion over others.

6. Cultural Pluralism
 Pluralism is a political philosophy holding that people of different beliefs,
backgrounds, and lifestyles can coexist in the same society and participate
equally in the political process. Indian society have a long tradition of religious
pluralism, ranging from peaceful co-existence to actual inter-mixing or
syncretism.
 This syncretic heritage is clearly evident in the devotional songs and poetry of
the Bhakti and Sufi movements.
Kabir Das – A Lasting Symbol of Syncretic Traditions
• The poems of Kabir, synthesising Hindu and Muslim devotion are cherished symbols of
pluralism:
• Moko Kahan Dhundhe re Bande Where do you search for me?
• Mein To Tere Paas Mein I am with you
• Na Teerath Mein, Na Moorat Mein Not in pilgrimage, nor in icons
• Na Ekant Niwas Mein Neither in solitude
• Na Mandir Mein, Na Masjid Mein Not in temples, nor in mosques
• Na Kabe Kailas Mein Neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash
• Mein To Tere Paas Mein Bande I am with you o man
• Mein To Tere Paas Mein… I am with you …
Source: Indian Society, P-135, NCERT, New Delhi.

7. Cultural Identity
Ethnocentrism
• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to evaluate one’s own culture as superior.
Individuals believe that their culture stands best in the world.
• Many people have no chance to travel outside their village, town, city,
state or nation, hence people believe that their culture is best in the
world.
• Ethnocentrism is a major factor in the divisions among members of
different ethnicities, races, and religious groups.
• It's the belief that one's ethnic group is superior to another. Ethnocentric
individuals believe they're better than other individuals for reasons
based solely on their heritage.
• Clearly, this practice relates to problems of both racism and prejudice.

8. Cultural Identity
Cultural Relativism
 Cultural relativism refers to the idea that the values,
knowledge, and behavior of people must be understood
within their own cultural context.
 This is one of the most fundamental concepts in sociology , as
it recognizes and affirms the connections between the
greater social structure and trends and the everyday lives of
individual people.

9. Process/Factors of Socio-Cultural Changes
Diffusion
Acculturation
Cultural Assimilation
Sanskritisation
Westernization
Modernization
Globalization
Urbanization
Macdonaldisation

10. Diffusion
 The term ‘Diffusion’ is also known as cultural diffusion, is a social
process through which elements of culture spread from one society
or social group to another society or social groups.
 It is a process of social and cultural change, through which
innovations are introduced into an organization or social group,
sometimes called the diffusion of innovations. Things that are spread
through diffusion include ideas, values, concepts, knowledge,
practices, behaviors, materials, and symbols etc.
 Sociologists and anthropologists believe that cultural diffusion is the
primary way through which modern societies developed
the culture that they have today.
 Further, they note that the process of diffusion is distinct from
having elements of a foreign culture forced into a society, as was
done through colonization.

11. Acculturation & Cultural Assimilation
Acculturation
 When individuals or groups of people transition from living a lifestyle
of their own culture to moving into a lifestyle of another culture, they
must acculturate, or come to adapt the new culture's behaviors,
values, customs, and language. The word 'acculturation' is the act of
that transition.
Cultural Assimilation
 Assimilation is the process whereby persons and groups acquire the
culture of other group in which they come to live, by adopting its
attitudes and values, its patterns of thinking and behaving—in short,
its way of life.

12. Sanskritisation & Westernization
Sanskritisation and Westernisaion were coined by M.N. Srinivas.
Sanskritisation
• Sanskritisation may be briefly defined as the process by which a ‘low’
caste or tribe or other group takes over the customs, ritual, beliefs,
ideology and style of life of a dominant caste and, in particular, a
‘twice-born (dwija) caste’.
Westernization
• M.N. Srinivas defines westernisation as “the changes brought about
in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British
rule, the term subsuming changes occurring at different
levels…technology, institutions, ideology and values”.

13. Modernisation
• Modernization approximates to such a cultural order. It symbolizes a
rational attitude towards issues, and their evaluation from
universalistic and not particularistic view point; when it involves an
emotional response to problems, orientation is empathetic and not
constructive; modernization is rooted in the scientific world-view; it
has deeper and positive association with level of diffusion of scientific
knowledge, technological skill and technological resources in a
particular society (Marrion J. Levy)
• According to Wilbert Moore Modernisation is a ‘total’ transformation
of a traditional or pre-modern society into the types of technology
and associated social organization that characterize the “advanced”,
economically prosperous, and relatively politically stable nations of
the Western world.
• Modernization can become pathological, as when money and power
“colonize the life-world” and displace communicative forms of
solidarity and inhibit the reproduction of the life-world (e.g., when
universities become governed by market strategies).

14. Globalization
 It is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world’s
economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in
goods and services, technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.
• Globalization can be defined as a process of integration local characteristics into
global flows which are mostly done by means of new communication and
information technologies.
Dimensions of Globalisation
• The Economic
– Liberalisation or Liberal Economic Policy
– Transnational Corporations (TNCs)/Multinational Corporations (MNCs)
– The Electronic Economy
– Knowledge Economy/ The Weightless Economy
– Globalisation of finance
• The Cultural
• Labour and Employment
• The Political

15. Globalization
Increase in Means of Communication
Liberalization
FTA (Free Trade Agreement),
FDI (Foreign Direct Investment),
MNCs (Multi National Companies),
World Trade Organisation (WTO):
The WTO was founded in 1995 as the successor organisation to the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT). GATT was
established in 1948 with 23 countries as the global trade
organisation to administer all multilateral trade agreements by
providing equal opportunities to all countries in the international
market for trading purposes.
Privatization
All the sectors, increase of private sector in all spheres of life i.e.
Health, Education, Defense, Communication and Real State Railway
etc.

16. Appadurai’s five landscapes Related to Globalisation:
1. Ethnoscapes involve the mobile groups and individuals (tourists, refugees,
guest workers) who play such an important role in the ever-changing world
in which we increasingly live.
2. Technoscapes are the ever-fluid, global configurations of high and low,
mechanical and informational technology.
3. Financescapes involve the processes by which huge sums of money move
through nations and around the world at great speed through commodity
speculations, currency markets, national stock exchanges, and the like.
4. Mediascapes involve both the electronic capability to produce and transmit
information around the world and the images of the world that these media
create and disseminate.
5. Ideoscapes, like mediascapes, are sets of images. However, they are largely
restricted to political images produced by states and in line with their
ideology, or to images and counter ideologies produced by movements that
seek to supplant those in power or at least to gain a piece of that power.

17. Urbanization
• Urbanization refers to the process whereby ever larger numbers of
people migrate to and establish residence in relatively dense areas
of population. It is a phenomenon that has existed throughout the
ages, from ancient times to the present.
• live in what are considered urban places, and demographers project
that by the year 2050 much of the world’s population will reside in
them.
• The original sociologists of urbanization and urban areas, Simmel
and Park, for example, observed the migration of people into cities
and the emergence of new forms of life and activity there.
• Urbanisation in India is due to both ‘urban pull’ and ‘rural push’.
Many are pushed out of the rural areas by poverty, lack of
employment, caste discrimination, and the decline of traditional
occupations. At the same time many people attract to the cities due
to the better opportunities and facilities-living, education, health
etc.

18. Urbanization
• As per Benjamin Higgins (1967), Urbanisation and economic
development have been closely related ever since the industrial
revolution.
• Gerald Breese (1966) enumerates the following as ‘urban roles for
emerging nations’:
1. Point of contact with the outside world,
2. Locus of Power- Centre of Political Organisaions and Economic
Powers,
3. Agency and Diffusion point of Social Change,
4. Receptacle of Talent and Man Power,
5. Place of Investment.

19. Macdonaldisation
• The concept of McDonaldization is based on Max Weber’s ideas
about the rationalization of the West. The McDonaldization thesis
adopts a different model: Weber focused on the bureaucracy; Ritzer
concentrate on the fast-food restaurant.
• McDonaldization is the process by which the principles of the fast-
food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of
American society, as well as the rest of the world.
• The nature of the McDonaldization process may be delineated by
outlining its five basic dimensions: efficiency, calculability,
predictability, control through the substitution of technology for
people, and, paradoxically, the irrationality of rationality.
• According to Ritzer McDonaldization of society is a phenomenon
that occurs when society, its institutions, and its organizations are
adapted to have the same characteristics that are found in fast-food
chains.