Cultural Change
Cultural changes occur. This is not usually a quick process, more of a slow drawn-out one. Essential to the study of culture is this fact. Students can begin to think about how these changes occur as they are a part of the process. Students are changing as individuals as well as assisting in the gradual process of cultural changes on a bigger level, shaping what Delaware will look like in our case. There are a few ways in which change can occur. Innovation refers to the "Changes to a culture that result from ideas created within the social group itself and adopted by the culture." 17 Diffusion "process by which an idea or innovation is transmitted from one individual or group to another across space." 18 My students move and they and their families take their culture with them (transculturation). They bring their favorite food recipes and continue to enjoy the traditional meals they were accustomed to such as arroz con gandules or enchiladas poblanas. Contagious is the term for a second way in which culture changes. This refers to how it affects all uniformly from the source (e.g. infectious disease) sensitive to time and distance. 19 Another means of cultural change is referred to as hierarchical. In this case, it means "the transfer of information from the important to less important; big to smaller e.g. large metropolitan city to smaller cities to towns to rural communities." 20
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