Cultural adaptation and cultural change Essay

Culture is the set of all society’s spiritual, emotional, material and intellectual features of a social group or a whole society. It incorporates lifestyles, literature, traditions, value systems and beliefs with which the people from a certain society or even a group should follow. Individuals are made to respect their culture as a tool towards safeguarding it. Generally therefore, culture can affect one’s behavior both positively and negatively when individuals seek to adhere to the ways and authorities of their culture. Societal culture is an important tool towards shaping the people’s behavior. It provides norms, values, and traditions with which the people are supposed to adhere to in order to be in harmony with the societal rules, regulations and foundations. The cultural diversity within a society therefore seeks to provide respect on the fundamental human rights and freedoms. Through culture, the society is provided with a harmonious system through which they can interact with one another through various social integrations. Therefore, culture constrains our behavior when its promulgations require us to go by its standards. The personal feeling about a certain behavioral conception is dictated and shaped by the cultural dictations which require them to abide by these cultural dispensations. This is to say that, the people’s behavior within a society is constrained towards a certain behavioral conception by the requirements and dictates of their culture. (Lee, 1999) The role posited on the cultural constrain towards shaping our behavior can be argued diversely about its authenticity. At one level, it is good and recommendable since it helps in shaping and restoring the people’s behavior towards conceptions that are acceptable within a specific society. However, a counteractive argument can be placed on the negative implications allied to the cultural constrains in the societal behavior. By and large, the overall effect of this constrain is that it is wrong and a bad conception that is aimed at pulling the people behavior towards specific societal expectations. These expectations may be illogical to the changing societal structures. Behavioral constrain by culture has only acted to limit the people behavior towards a global behavioral change which would be a requisite to the requirements of societal change. This has therefore led to dogmatic scores and backwardness in behavioral expectations from such people who lack adequately borrowed behavior from the changing course of the global imagery from the effects of their society’s cultural dictates and authorities. Some major cultural dispensations are far below the scale that promotes a projected individual development since they are shaped and governed by traditional societal scores. (Lee, 1999) However, cultural change would perhaps be the most eminent tool towards governing strong behavioral changes. Cultural change can only be possible through cultural integration. This is the process with which different cultural groups come together to exchange their cultural imageries. Different cultures are intermingled through exchange and concept borrowing to bring up cultural diversity. A diversified culture is that which incorporates various cultural scores in its regulations and abandon specific cultural dispensations which could be underscored by traditionalism and dogmatic backwardness. Consequently, through cultural integration, people come to learn about new cultural systems embodied by other groups which bring more realistic sense towards modeling the societal behavior above its growth. Perhaps, cultural integration is what has rooted out various traditional cultures through models of westernization. Cultural diversity therefore opens more practical cultural developments that concur with the change in societal structures. Reference Lee, C (1999) The Complex Whole: Culture and Evolution of Human Behavior. West View Press