Global cultural change and the role of anthropology

• Autores: J.A.R. Wembah - Rashid
• Localización: Bulletin of the International Committee on Urgent Anthropological and Ethnological Research, ISSN 0538-5865, Nº. 36, 1994, págs. 9-22
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Cultures change through learning, unlearning, diffusion, rebellion and revolt, and conquest and oppression of weaker nations by powerful ones. From about 1600 AD acculturation through peaceful and military conquest became main agent for cultural change. By the mid 1980s the West and the Soviet Block culturally subjected the world into accepting their cultural patterns. Today the super-ordinate power that calls the shots in the West.

    This paper examines the role of anthropologists in the wake of Western oriented global acculturation through commercial, technological, educational, economic and religious activities and its impact on the African cultural scene. It poses several questions as a mechanism for provoking discussion on the topic. It challenges anthropologists to play a more active role in the whole issue of global cultural change.

    Applied anthropologists assist in the introduction of planned packages of some innovation to specific cultural groups. Western anthropologists earned themselves a bad reputation for assisting colonization. We know that this support was effective albeit negatively for the colonies.

    Because of this past negative history many African anthropologists shy away from it. I think it is high time for African anthropologists to utilize it aggressively for a positive cause, that is, to assist in saving Africa from unselectively accepting Western acculturation Processes.