Transcript Culture Change and the Modern World

Culture Change
and the Modern World
Making the Modern World
• As world population grows and travel and
communication get faster,
• You can find can of soda, radio, CD player
anywhere
• But economic inequality, difference in quality
of life and life expectancy increase
Making the Modern World
• How do history and culture contribute to
differences in quality of life?
European Expansion
• In 1400
– Muslim nations from Spain to Indonesia
preserved scholarship of regions and
developed astronomy, math, medicine,
chemistry, zoology
– China’s central government managed large
area and vast trade
– European cities smaller and ruled by small
local governments
European Expansion
• In 1500-1700’s
– Missionaries spread Christianity
– Search for fortune and wonders,
fountain of youth
– Technological development and growing
population drive quest for resources
European Expansion
• In 1500-1700’s
– While traveling to world to introduce
Christianity and claim resources,
Europeans introduce diseases that kill up to
95% population of the New World
European Expansion
• Pillage – gold and silver sent to Europe
– Pizarro captured Inca emperor, Atahuallpa got $91 million
in gold and silver ransom
• Forced Labor – population drain impoverished
Africa, plantations to grow sugar and cotton
– 11.7 million slaves from Africa to Americas
• Joint Stock Companies – Dutch East India Co.
– Trade monopolies, massacres, huge profit at expense of locals
Colonialism
• Active possession of foreign territory
– Strategic locations like Yemen
– Exploit native people and resources, Africa
– Settlement by growing European population
Colonialism
• Industrialization in Europe and America
– Production of weapons
– Need for resources
• To get profit out of colony, impose taxes
– Native subjects charged taxes
– Forcing them to work for colonists or produce
products the colonists wanted
Independence and Poverty
• Most nation in the Americas gained
independence in 18th and 19th centuries
• African and Asian nations gain independence
mostly after WWII
• Expensive to suppress rebellion
• In 2001 1/5 world’s population, more than a billion
people, live on less than $1/day
half
the world’s population on $2/day
Independence and Poverty
• End of colonialism not end of forced
cultural change and foreign intervention
Independence and Poverty
• Development
– Expectation that success will come from
developing industrialized market economy
– Soviet Union and US provide aid money
– Development projects introduced often without
regard for traditional practices
Independence and Poverty
• Multinational Corporations
– Large wealthy corporations influence small, local
economy
– Profits made by manufacture and sales in poor
nations go to shareholders in wealthy nations
Independence and Poverty
• Urbanization
– 1970 – 1997
city dwellers in high income countries increased 5%
in low income
47%
– People move to cities in search of work
– Separation from family changes culture
Independence and Poverty
• Population Pressure
– Any economic gains lead to population growth until
subsistence pattern can’t support the population
– Search for more land causes conflict
– Population is a problem, consumption also problem
Independence and Poverty
• Instability
– Past 100 years very violent
• WWI, WWII, Cold War proxy (Ethiopia, Somalia,
Nicaragua, El Salvador), Rwanda
– Anthropologists can’t cause or prevent violence,
only record and document political instability
Looking to the Future
• World is very interconnected
• Anthropology is important in a world where
we encounter different cultures
• Culture is flexible, changeable, varied
• Therefore we are not locked into any bad
situation, we can create new norms