Cultural diffusion pdf

Some people feel that the global expansion of corporations will improve and empower their lives. Others see these cultural changes as a threat to tradition and as grounds for social protest. Opponents in Mexico City argued that Wal-Mart repre- sented a form of "cultural pollution. Many Indians are veg- etarians.

In Hinduism, the cow is a protected animal, and its followers do not eat beef. Muslims, who are also a significant proportion of the country, do not eat pork. The corporation responded with burgers made of potatoes, peas, carrots, beans, rice, and Indian spices. The diffusion of culture is not always translated or adopted verbatim from its point of origin. When transplanting an idea from one place to another, one size does not necessarily fit all. Some cultural changes must be selectively modified for the receiving community.

The result is a "cultural hybrid," a literal and figurative recooking of global culture for local palates and belief systems. Each cultural moment described above—in Israel, Mexico, and India—demonstrates the multiple and some- times contradictory ways in which cultural ideas circulate globally and intersect with local geographies and lives. The fact that American personalities, businesses, and prod- ucts can be interpreted and internalized in such divergent ways—as something sacred, polluting, or hybrid—prompts us to realize that cultural change and diffusion are compli- cated concepts that defy simple explanations.

It is this complication that makes the study of cultural geography exciting and socially relevant, but also daunting. This chapter reviews how geographers have traditionally approached the study of diffusion and how recent develop- ments in critical cultural geography prompt new directions for future study. Traditional Approaches A wide range of disciplines have studied cultural change and diffusion; however, geographers have long had impor- tant things to say about the subject.

Historically, two lines of inquiry characterize the study of cultural diffusion within geography: 1 the cultural geography tradition and 2 the spatial analysis tradition. The cultural geography tradition is associated with the work of Carl Sauer and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley.

Much of cultural geography from the s to the s focused on tracing the origin and diffu- sion pathways of particular material artifacts and landscape features. These artifacts and features were treated as indica- tors of specific cultural traits. Geographers from this school of thought would examine the spatial distribution of arti- facts in a given area over multiple time periods or their frequency across different locations at a single point in time.

One of the chief advocates of this approach, Fred Kniffen , used the diffusion of folk housing architec- ture to reconstruct the settlement and migration history of the eastern United States. Other studies in this vein have examined the geographic spread of town names, cemetery markers, agricultural fairs, covered bridges, urban street patterns, cattle ranching, religion, music, and sports. The diffusion of cultural artifacts observable evidence on the landscape has often been demonstrated by mapping occur- rences or events, such as the spread of NASCAR race tracks Figure The visualization provided by maps clearly permitted cultural geography to focus on diffusion at the broad macroscale, as something that occurred from region to region and from one holistic cultural group to another Stutz, The spatial analysis tradition is associated with the s and s research of Torsten Hagerstrand , who stressed the use of statistical models to explain and predict diffusion across space and through time.

He defined diffusion in terms of the adoption of an innovation and sought to understand the communication and informa- tion process that allowed potential adopters to learn about the innovation in question.

Geographers of this tradition focused on identifying empirical regularities and spatial patterns in the spread of ideas and innovations, recogniz- ing the important role played by physical distance neigh- borhood effect and urban hierarchy.

Focusing on diffusion at the microscale of human decision making, this tradition paid close attention to the barriers and individual resis- tances that shaped patterns of adoption. Diffusion was studied in terms of the people's locational attributes, com- munication and interaction networks, and willingness to take on the risk of new innovations.

This tradition was focused more on economic geography than on cultural analysis. Later extensions and advancements of Hagerstrand examined the agents and impacts of diffusion in terms of urban growth, third world development, entrepreneurs and firms, technology and infrastructure, and market penetra- tion Brown, Yet both approaches value mapping, measuring, and explain- ing diffusion patterns.

The use of maps to document and understand the diffusion process continues to be strong within geographic research and teaching. For example, to measure cultural changes occurring in Latin America, Ben Tillman mapped "spatial succession" in the types of businesses found facing the Plaza of Ponce in Puerto Rico from to Figure Powerful multinational corporations increasingly direct the diffusion process, and in just 20 years, from to , Ponce Plaza saw a dramatic increase in the number of U.

According to Tillman, these eco- nomic and cultural exchanges are leading to the 'Anglo Americanization" of the plaza landscape. Mapping and explaining the mechanics of diffusion will continue to be a key part of the discipline, particularly in light of ongoing advancements in data analysis and visual- ization.

Yet a concern simply with the spatial form, pattern, and sequence of cultural diffusion is incomplete. Traditional cultural geography has been criticized for advancing a superorganic conception of culture that fails to adequately consider the social practices, relations, and struggles that produce mappable patterns. The Hagerstrand approach has been criticized for portraying individuals in homogenous and narrowly rational ways, hence failing to fully recog- nize how people's different social characteristics and inter- ests shape their perception of, and engagement with, the diffusion process.

An emphasis on simply mapping and measuring the spread of traits and innovations has also tended to focus on the origin and pathway of spreading ideas, devoting far less attention to the social actors and groups on the receiv- ing end of diffusion and how they react to possible cultural change. According to Christa Stutz , traditional approaches sometimes characterized nonadopters as resist- ers who were irrational or backward, a perspective poten- tially antagonistic to traditional or non-Western cultures.

Many of these cultures were treated as inferior during the days of colonialism and even now in the postcolonial era. The very word innovation seems to imply that the spread- ing idea is inherently better than what is already found on the ground locally.

Resistance to diffusion can result from legitimate differences in world views and cultural priori- ties. A more critical analysis of diffusion recognizes that it is not just a spatial process that occurs between locations, but it is also simultaneously a social process that occurs between different cultural groups.

Toward a Politics of Cultural Diffusion The "new" school of cultural geography provides a potential path for addressing the inadequacies of traditional approaches to diffusion. The word new is a bit of a misnomer because the approach has been around since the late s and early s, but its advocates have had little to say about diffusion and how they might revisit the concept. Figure At the heart of this approach is the belief that society, and hence its geographies, is characterized by diver- sity and multiple interests rather than simply being a com- mon, unitary whole Mitchell, Cultural geographers now focus on the politics of culture, that is, how social groups differ and sometimes compete with each other in the way they see, make sense of, and shape the world.

Politics also surround the diffusion of cultural ideas. The concept of politics is not limited to government and the role that nations play in facilitating or hindering the spread of culture, although this is important. Rather, poli- tics refers more broadly to how diffusion is invested with different meanings, positive and negative, and how the spread of culture is open to social control, nego- tiation, and struggle.

Diffusion is more than the sheer movement of artifacts and innovations across the space. It is about how much one cul- tural way of thinking will influence and poten- tially change another way of thinking, whether for the sake of profit, religious conversion, humanitarian aid, or sheer imposition. Diffusion is a social encounter, and it produces what Mary Louise Pratt has called "contact zones. An unequal balance of power often characterizes contact zones, and the spread of culture can come to dominate local groups, although there can be room for selective adaptation and even resistance to diffusion.

The concept of contact zones is a way of thinking about the social relations and processes that drive, and result from, diffusion. Viewing diffusion as a cultural contact zone does not necessarily mean that we abandon the principles of traditional importance in diffusion research. Instead, it is necessary to combine these traditional approaches, which focus on the spatial patterns and processes of diffusion, with a greater recognition of the social conditions, consequ- ences, and politics underlying the spread of cul- ture.

Consequently, the rest of this chapter places key diffusion-related concepts in a socially criti- cal context with an eye toward identifying themes and issues of future importance. Specifically, discussion focuses on a the concept of cultural hearths and origins, b the types of cultural diffu- sion and the distinctive routes that ideas and innovations take when spreading, c the role of distance and barriers in shaping patterns of cul- tural diffusion, and d the social consequences of diffusion given the increasing pace of cultural globalization.

Cultural Hearths and Origins In studying diffusion, it is important to identify the cultural hearth of an innovation. A hearth is the area in which an idea develops and from which it spreads to other places. Traditionally, the word hearth has been used to refer to source areas that played particularly consequential roles in the cultural development of the world. Carl Sauer placed great emphasis on the concept of cultural hearths, arguing that a few powerful cultural centers were responsi- ble for the development and dispersal of agriculture in the world.

Measuring globalization's infiuence on the cultural landscape: Spatial succession in the Plaza of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Southeastern Geographer, 49 4 , Reprinted with permission. It is also possible to identify mod- ern cultural hearths, which are those places that heavily influenced the development and spread of industrialization and its many social changes.

Although there is no denying the importance of these ancient and modern centers of innovation, the term cultural hearth need not be reserved for a limited number of important locations. James Blaut drew a useful distinction between the study of cultural diffusion and the elitist philosophy of "diffusion- ism," which holds that progressive ideas flow only from a few permanent centers of innovation. Innovation is a historically and geographically specific process and can come from any quarter.

Cultural ideas originate out of a history of social relations based in particular environments and places—all of which are impor- tant to the innovation process. Although ideas often origi- nate from powerful people and places because of advantages in location and wealth, innovation can also come from the bottom up.

An important future theme in diffusion study should be the role that historically marginalized people and places play as the cultural hearths of innovations. To dem- onstrate, let's take a page out of American cultural history. Modem skateboarding originated out the s punk surfer culture of south Santa Monica and Venice Beach, California.

Youths from low-income families adapted the low-slung, driving surfer technique to skating on asphalt, a major revolution over the traditional upright style of skate- boarding from the s. A demanding culture of innovation developed within this community of social outcasts who formed the Zephyr Team.

For many Z-Boys, skateboarding was all they had going for them. This community also believed they had the right to claim and skate, even illegally, unused and abandoned landscapes. When intense drought hit southern California, these skateboard innovators appropriated empty swimming pools, turning them into skate parks. As the story of extreme skateboarding illus- trates, cultural ideas do not originate only from mainstream society.

Social class experiences play an important yet under- analyzed role in the diffusion process. Identifying the social origin of a diffusing idea is not always clear-cut.

In some instances, the commonly perceived origin of an innovation might be incorrect. As "new" cultural geographers have suggested, the everyday landscape often hides clues to its origin and belies the social struggles that went into its making Mitchell, Prevailing thought sug- gests, for example, that the Chinese fortune cookie did not actually originate in China. Chinese Americans took over production of fortune cookies and began serving them in restaurants during World War II when many Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps and were unable to work in the industry Lee, Underlying the innocent fortune cookie is an important story about the Asian immigrant experience and ethnic exclusion that we did not expect.

Uncovering the invisible and some- times tragic histories that give rise to everyday cultural prod- ucts is a worthy theme for future work. In other cases, cultural origin can be completely fabri- cated, as is the case with Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Developers of the brand, Polish immigrants living in New York, used two made-up words to create a promotional con- nection to the dairy traditions of Scandinavia, an example of branding a product to look foreign when in fact it is not. This case illustrates that cultural hearths are not simply objective facts but are open to cultural manipulation and promotion.

The name Haagen-Dazs works because we live in a society that values the consumption of products and styles from other countries and cultures. Fascination with things from abroad is a theme that many companies cater to and market. Of course, the manipulation of origins can work the other way, such as when some U. During World War I, Australia removed German-sounding names from prod- ucts, businesses, and entire cities.

Understanding how corporations and national governments re write cultural origins allows us to investigate the role of selective place representation in advertising and nationalism Gold, Types of Diffusion Geographers classify cultural diffusion on the basis of how ideas spread across space, recognizing that culture can dif- fuse in more than one way and along multiple pathways or routes.

Relocation diffusion refers to the dissemination of a cultural idea through the residential relocation of people. This type of diffusion occurs when individuals and groups with a particular idea or custom migrate from one location to another, introducing and spreading the cultural idea to their new homeland.

Many innovations—from language and religion to notions of property ownership—were spread across the globe as a result of European overseas migration over the past years, making it one of the most important relocation diffusions in history.

Even the names given to settlements reflected the spread of a European point of view. The name Cumberland—widely found in the United States—likely originated from a county located in northwestern England. Similarly, Finnish place-names are found in Minnesota.

Geographers call this practice of migrants transplanting toponyms from their homeland cultural transfer Kaups, Some of the ideas relocated by European migrants had a profound impact on the environmental character of their new home, illustrating how culture and nature are inter- connected rather than separate realms. Many nonnative or exotic organisms were introduced by Europeans—from the honeybee to the pigeon Todd, These biological introductions were motivated by a variety of cultural visions and goals, such as economic gain, aesthetic pleasure, recreation, or simply homesick- ness.

In the s, European colonizers transplanted the sport of hunting rabbits to Victoria, Australia. Rabbits are not native to Australia and hence had to be brought to the continent.

It did not take long for the rabbit population to overpopulate and become invasive. Rabbits consumed large amounts of vegetation, which greatly contributed to soil erosion problems and the endangerment of native spe- cies.

Hundreds of miles of fences were built to impede the westward spread of rabbits, but to no avail. The fences stand as a monument to the unintended consequences of European relocation diffusion Figure Geographers have tended to emphasize the impact of European migration on cultural diffusion, but it is also important to consider other major migration histories. For the most part, European overseas migration was voluntary or elected in nature.

In contrast, the migration of Africans to the Americas via the transatlantic slave trade is an example of involuntary or forced migration. While travel- ing and living under much more restrictive conditions than most Europeans, Africans were responsible for the relocation of numerous cultural ideas and innovations Blassingame, The shotgun house, a narrow dwelling of two to three rooms, is derived from African housing.

We find African influences in jazz, blues, Figure NOTE: Despite repeated attempts to reduce the rabbit population, it has rebounded several times. The rabbit fences still remain in Australia along with fences to control the dingo native dog population.

Early versions of the banjo, the signature bluegrass instrument, were primar- ily developed by enslaved Africans in Colonial America, adapted from several African instruments. Paying more attention to the impact of the African migra- tion experience is part of a larger project of recognizing the value of historically marginalized groups and reversing white-centric perspectives of cultural change.

Along these same lines, the large-scale immigration of people from Latin America into the United States during the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century represents a fertile area for relocation diffusion investigations. This work would not only document the growing "Latinization" of Anglo- America but would also examine the public controversies and debates that surround these cultural changes. Expansion diffusion is another major type of cultural dissemination.

Unlike relocation diffusion, which involves ideas being carried to other places by people who are changing residences, expansion diffusion refers to the case of an idea moving through a fixed, non-relocating popula- tion. Of course, expansion diffusion does rely on some human movement to help disperse a cultural innovation.

These human movements, however, are not migratory but do encompass normal, daily mobility patterns, such as commuting to work or school. There are three subtypes of expansion diffusion: 1 contagious diffusion, 2 hierar- chical diffusion, and 3 reverse hierarchical diffusion. Contagious diffusion refers to the wavelike manner in which an idea or innovation spreads from a source area to surrounding areas.

As the name implies, this type of diffu- sion behaves like some diseases do. In contagious diffusion, a cultural idea or custom is transmitted through contact from a person to his or her nearest neighbor with nearly all adjacent individuals being affected, although not all of them necessarily adopt the spreading idea. Think about how a rumor or fad spreads through a community from household to household.

Cultural ideas do not always spread in a uniform way across cultures. Rather, ideas may leapfrog implying the behavior of a jumping frog from certain groups of people and types of places across other groups and spaces to arrive and be accepted by a different group or in another place.

For example, in such cases of hierarchical diffusion, an innovation or custom spreads from one large urban center to another, leapfrogging across the spaces in between, and then later "trickles down" to smaller places and rural areas once the idea has become more pervasive within society. Hierarchical diffusion can also refer to a social class dynamic in which ideas first develop and spread among the wealthiest and presumably most influen- tial people and then later to people with lower income and less influence.

Hierarchical flows of information are often long-distance and rely not only on personal contact but also on mass communication media, among them the Internet and social networking. Fashion trends often spread in a hierarchical manner, being showcased first in the top fashion cities such as New York, Rome, Paris, London, and Tokyo.

Tech- nology frequently spreads in a hierarchical style because early adoption of these innovations is often costly and risky, and the majority of people will not adopt innovations until utility can be verified and costs economic, social, and political are reduced. The corporations, organizations, and individuals willing and able to shoulder this initial cost and risk are frequently located in large urban markets.

For example, the photocopier, the fax machine, the DVD player—all considered common by today's standards— began as very expensive technological experiments for people.

Counterculture movements often follow a hierar- chical diffusion. A global example was the diffusion of punk rock in the s and s. Spiked hairstyles first appeared in London, Tokyo, Rome, and Los Angeles and later spread to smaller places.

Setting trends is not confined to urban populations, how- ever. There are instances in which cultural ideas and inno- vations spread first among smaller places, even rural areas, and then later "trickle up" to larger urban areas.

This is called reverse hierarchical diffusion. There are numerous examples of grassroots or folk innovations becoming part of mainstream society. Over the past few decades, country music has spread from its roots in rural southern culture to having crossover appeal to urbanites across the United States and other countries. Levi's jeans were first produced in the mids for ranchers, farmers, miners, and other workers in the western United States.

Tourists from the East Coast fell in love with the cowboy look and took it back home, where New York City designers popularized jeans and helped make them part of popular culture beginning in the s Sullivan, The result was the urban cow- boy cultural icon, with its western-style hat and boots, observed in urban places in many different countries.

One of the classic examples of reverse hierarchical dif- fusion was the initial spread of the Wal-Mart discount retail chain across the United States. Department store chains have a tradition of originating in or near larger urban mar- kets e.

In contrast, the first Wal-Mart opened in the rela- tively small town of Rogers, Arkansas. A more critical engagement with scale could advance research on hierarchical and reverse hierarchical diffusion.

Ideas do not simply trickle down or up the urban hierarchy, but move across and create different scales of human interaction because of the decisions, practices, and strategies of people as they seek to achieve certain social goals.

There are a number of possible reasons to explain why Wal-Mart managers chose to develop the chain at the scale of small towns rather the big cities.

Locating in rural and small-town America suited Wal-Mart's marketing approach, which stressed discount goods for ordinary people rather than high-end urban shoppers. Wal-Mart might have chosen to locate in small towns because these areas had historically been unserved by more urban-ori- ented chains. The lack of other retail chains in rural areas also meant that Wal-Mart faced little competition other than from locally owned retail establishments.

Given that business start-ups are frequently short on investment capi- tal, locating in small towns gave Wal-Mart access to cheaper land prices, taxes, and utilities as compared to metropolitan areas. Finally, by locating in small towns and rural areas, Wal-Mart was able to tap into a relatively cheap labor force in need of jobs.

The retail chain, which emerged out of a conservative southern culture, has a his- tory of hiring nonunion workers and discouraging the for- mation of unions, which are more common in urban areas.

The reverse hierarchical pattern of Wal-Mart's initial spread did not simply happen. Rather, the coiporation sought to create a specific scale of expansion that would allow it to capitalize, literally, on geographic differences in the American economy and consuming public. A sensitivity to scale as it relates to cultural diffusion recognizes that the politics of cultural change varies sig- nificantly from one scalar level to another.

Take, for example, the practice of naming U. King is now a nationally accepted icon, and race relations have certainly improved since his time, even to the point of the country electing its first black president. A map of streets named for King, which number almost , would suggest that the practice is largely embraced, but this provides us only a partial reading of the issue Figure African Americans often encounter significant local opposition from whites when trying to name roadways that stretch beyond the traditionally black community.

This opposition is evident throughout the urban hierarchy, but it is especially intense in small towns. Although many streets are ultimately named for King, they are frequently confined to African American neighbor- hoods rather than major thoroughfares, as desired by pro- ponents. To find the diffusion of King's commemoration evoking a wide range of public reactions—nationally ver- sus locally, in large cities versus small towns, and from street to street—speaks to how ideas about cultural change are interpreted and even resisted differently depending on the scale at which they are enacted.

As Vincent Del Casino Jr. Role of Distance and Barriers The spread of cultural ideas can become a site of social struggle and contest. For example, accompanying the ever- growing expansion of Wal-Mart are controversies over whether having the retail chain in so many places is a good thing.

The debate is not limited to the controversial loca- tion near Mexico City discussed earlier. Similar controver- sies have erupted across the United States as residents express concern that the arrival of a Wal-Mart store will bring traffic congestion, hurt the local feel of communities, and put "mom-and-pop" stores out of business.

Cultural diffusion is potentially controversial because it is a mate- rial process; it happens within and to places in ways that directly affect the well-being of people, whether for good or bad. It creates certain winners and losers in terms of benefits and costs depending on where one is located, spa- tially and socially, in relation to the spread of ideas.

Because diffusion involves ideas traveling across and overcoming space to reach their destination, physical dis- tance between places is especially important. Geographers have long asserted that the likelihood of an idea spreading to a place will decrease with increasing distance between that place and the origin of the idea. In other words, diffusion is more likely to occur between places in close proximity rather than places farther away from each other. This relationship between distance and spatial interaction is called the law of distance-decay.

Physical distance between places and people becomes a significant factor in shaping the spread of culture because it brings an increase in the human effort and the amount of time for diffusion to overcome this distance.

Historically, physical barriers such as mountains, deserts, and bodies of water played a major role in limiting the spatial extent and pattern of cultural diffusion because of the slowness and unsophisticated nature of early transportation. Diffusion also followed a distance-decay pattern because of the financial cost that was incurred in connecting with places farther away, although social characteristics such as race, age, gender, and income also influenced the effect of cost on spatial interaction.

Physical distance between places remains an important factor in shaping diffusion patterns, but recent technologi- cal advancements in transportation and communication have reduced the relative distance between places and speeded up the diffusion process. This accelerated move- ment of goods, information, and ideas is commonly referred to as time-space convergence or time-space com- pression.

Many technologies contribute to this conver- gence and the rapid diffusion of ideas, such as automobile and air travel, the Internet and digital telecommunications, satellites, the television, and much more.

It would be easy to assume, as some commentators have mistakenly done, that physical distance and location no longer matter in Kilometers Figure This, of course, ignores the fact that travel, however faster it might be than in the past, still incurs cost and effort when one covers long distances. Moreover, rely- ing too much on a theory of time-space convergence can ignore the fact that not all places and people have equal access to distance-overcoming technology and that con- temporary cultural groups could still be quite isolated.

Rather than dismissing the importance of physical dis- tance to diffusion, it is perhaps wiser for future work to focus on how distance continues to matter, where and for whom it matters most, and why One area in need of fur- ther examination is the diffusion of Internet technology and the communication inequalities that continue to char- acterize developing countries versus more developed ones, rural versus urban areas, and poor versus wealthy neigh- borhoods.

These percentages refer to the proportion of the region's population using the Internet. As the Internet and cell phone illustrate, diffusion is an uneven spatial and social process.

Certain people and places participate in the spread of culture more than others. Diffusion pathways often follow traditional lines of economic, social, and political power and influence. The diffusion of new cultural ideas is not felt the same every- where. The most extreme view was that there were a very limited number of locations, possibly only one, from which the most important cultural traits diffused to the rest of the world.

Evolutionism, on the other hand, proposed the "psychic unity of mankind", which argued that all human beings share psychological traits that make them equally likely to innovate. According to evolutionists, innovation in a culture, was considered to be continuous or at least triggered by variables that are relatively exogenous.

This set the foundation for the idea that many inventions occurred independently of each other and that diffusion had little effect on cultural development. The diffusionists criticized the concept of psychic unity of evolutionists. They believed that most inventions happened just once and people being capable of imitating one another, these inventions were then diffused to other places. According to them all cultures originated at one point and then spread throughout the world.

They opposed the notion of progress from simple to complex forms, that was held by the evolutionists. They also held that primitive or modern is also a relative matter and hence comparative method is not applicable. They looked specifically for variations that gradually occurred while diffusion took place. They held the view that all cultures originated only in one part of the world, that is in Egypt, and that it was the culture centre of the world and the cradle of civilization Egypto-centric.

Hence, human culture originated in Egypt and then spread throughout the world. They pointed to the Pyramid like large stone structures and sun worship in several parts of the world.

He was so impressed with the Egyptian culture and technology that he concluded that Egypt was literally the cradle of civilization which spread out to the rest of the world. According to him, civilization was so special a combination of traits that it could not have been invented more than once. He contended that the complex of irrigation agriculture, sun worship, pyramids, mummification - all of which could be found in New World societies in the Andes and Mesoamerica - was proof of the great chain of diffusion from Egypt.

Such circumstances existed only in ancient Egypt; hence elsewhere culture, except some of its simplest elements, must have spread from Egypt with the rise of navigation. William Perry was a school headmaster. His work was widely read and widely followed by the public. He was an ardent supporter of Smith and his thoughts. To explain the view that some cultures no longer had cultural traits from Egypt, he resorted to the thought that some cultures had simply become degraded.

Rivers adopted the diffusionist perspective much later in his career. He explained that diffusion took place through a series of migrations between the Melanesian islands, in the process of analysing the Oceanian culture.

He explained disruption in ethnographic evidence supporting presumed sequence or pattern of diffusion in terms of auxiliary mechanisms. Struck by the absence of Canoes on some islands, Rivers was convinced that Canoes must have been used by the people in the past, for it was not possible for them to have done without them in reaching the present area. The absence of pottery, bow and arrow, sturdy sea going vessels were explained in similar terms.

Stated clearly, Rivers sought the explanation of contrasts among Melanesian and Polynesian cultures in terms of original complexes. More interestingly, Rivers suggested that the migrants to native Australia were only small groups of men, technologically superior than that of the natives. Being small in number, they settled down and married the local women.

Their racial strain could not find expression in the large population of the natives, and consequently, the children lost the racial features of their ancestors. Due to reasons for communication and other cultural factors, the menfolk got completely assimilated into the lost culture to an extent of abandoning their own way of life.

They, however, did retain their own burial rites because of exceptional emotional attachment to their practices associated with them. The possibility that some traits could be invented independently was completely denied. The major weakness of extreme diffusionists was to propose that all innovations originated only once and at one place one place i.

The other contention was the excessive dependence on specific cultural traits rather than cultural complexes and the insistence on historical contact and diffusion based on vague similarity in the outward form.

Herskovits explains that Elliot Smith and Perry exemplify much of their argument on the basis of pyramids in Egypt.

The stone platforms in Polynesia were held to be vestigial forms of Egyptian pyramids. Similarly, the thigh bone of a dead African king, which was preserved by the people for ritual proposes was treated as an example of diffusion of the Egyptian practice of mummification. This amounts to stripping a culture of the ingenuity to ascribe its own meaning and purpose to its own practices. It is often said that British diffusionists were given to fantasies that could not gather support from facts.

The approach was to study the analysis of culture complexes identified geographically, as they spread and developed historically. It has both time and space dimensions. The British diffusionists proposed the diffusion of traits in their singular capacity, while the Germans proposed that culture complexes diffused in totality through actual movement or migration of people. Father Schmidt explained that during these migrations peoples and cultures came into contact with each other and this mutually influenced each other.

It has also been the cause of new creations and modifications of culture, and wherever positively established it makes the assumption of independent origin untenable and superfluous. It is to be noted that the German diffusionists ascribed similarities between cultures, especially those which were separated from each other by long distances, to historical contact till such time as absence of such a contact was conclusively proven.

This means that unless absence of historical contact was firmly established, they assumed that migration leading to diffusion had taken place between cultures that exhibited similarities.

They did not take the separated-ness between such cultures into account in proving or disproving contact. That was the only way through which they could conclusively establish diffusion between them. He applied this criterion of from the study of culture traits in Mongolia and Africa.

He focused on specific similarities such as cross-section of the bow-shaft, mechanism of fastening of the bow-strings, material from which they are made, and the way feathers are attached to the arrows used in West Africa and in Oceania.

He argued that these features had nothing to do with the function of the bow and arrow. This could be indisputably established because the bow and arrow could be used effectively even in their absence.

Similarly, he concluded that Mongolians have adopted the lotus flower as a symbol of Buddhism from India. Over a period of the time, the lotus flower became an inseparable part of the Mongolian culture.

In the same vein, the bow and arrow in Africa was borrowed from Indonesia. He observed that since culture traits do not diffuse as single components but together as culture complexes, diffusion between two or more regions could be established when certainty of similarity is found between multiple traits. This was referred to as the criterion of quantity.

The similarity between bow and arrow in West Africa and Oceania was supported with the similarity in types of houses, shields, masks, clothing and drums in the two regions.

Ratzel drew attention to internal changes or adjustments that the introduction of new culture traits lead to within a culture, that is, while some traits are accepted and become a part of the new culture, others that are not of much significance are rejected and tend to disappear.

Also, due to his good interest in mythology, he found out that in Indonesia several myths were interrelated to constitute an epic while in Africa they occurred independent of each other. From this observation, Frobenius concluded that these myths would have originated in Indonesia and got disjointed in the process of diffusion. Schmidt is known as one of the founding members of the Austrian school of diffusion.

Schmidt explained that culture circles can be compared to a living organism. He posited that the essential dimensions of economy, material culture, social life, custom, religion, etc. Whole culture complexes migrate, rather than discrete cultural elements or small groups of cultural elements.