Growth Of Culture

PROJECT REPORT ON-

CULTURAL GROWH IN ALVIN TOFFLER’S PERSPECRIVE

PROJECT SUBMITTED TO-

DR. UTTAM KUMAR PANDA

(FACULTY OF SOCIOLOGY)

PROJECT SUBMITTED BY-

AJAY BHATT
ROLL NO – 05
SEMESTER – I
SECTION – “B”

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, RAIPUR

[Type text]
 Growth Of Culture

CERTIFICATE OF DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project work entitled “CULTURAL GROWTH IN ALVIN
TOFFLER’S PERSPECTIVE ” submitted to HNLU, Raipur, is record of an original work
done by me under the able guidance of Dr.Uttam Kumar Panda, Faculty Member, HNLU,
Raipur.

AJAY BHATT
Roll No. - 05
Semester – I
Section – “B”
Batch - XIV
Date- 15th Noveber, 2019

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 Growth Of Culture

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is not just a customary acknowledgement of help that I received but a sincere expression
of gratitude to all those who have helped me to complete this project and made it seem
apparently more readable than otherwise it would have been.

I am in debt to my faculty advisor DR. UTTAM KUMAR PANDA for giving such an interesting
and wonderful topic “CULTURAL GROWTH IN ALVIN TOFFLER’S PERSPECTIVE ” and who
has been extremely kind to make space for all my enthusiasm & endeavors and making it
seem easy by clearly explaining its various aspects.

I am also grateful to all my friends and seniors who have given their valuable suggestions
pertaining to the topic and have been a constant source of help and support.

Thanking everyone.

AJAY BHATT

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF DECLARATION.................................................2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................3
INTRODUCTION................................................................................5
DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE............................................................6
THEORY OF CULTURAL DETERMINISM.....................................7
GROWTH IN CULTURE....................................................................8
ALVIN TOFFLER’S VIEWS............................................................11
WHAT HE GOT RIGHT....................................................................................13
CONCLUSION..................................................................................15
BIBLIOGRAPGHY............................................................................16

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INTRODUCTION

Cultural growth in the twenty-first century has heightened the emphasis on interpersonal
communication in an intercultural setting. As our world grows, expands and becomes
increasingly more interconnected by various technological advances, the need for effective
interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become quite clear. Due to the
advancement of technology in today's world, a world in which some businesspeople are
involved in transactions with other businesspeople in faraway countries, the call for
knowledge of intercultural communication within this setting has become a reality.
Interpersonal communication is a form of communication that involves a small number of
people who can interact exclusively with one another and who therefore have the ability to
both adapt their messages specifically for those others and to obtain immediate interpretations
from them (Lustigetal, 1993). Although interpersonal communication is usually thought of as
being performed in small, centralized groups, a need to broaden these groups and bring about
a general feeling of cultural awareness has become apparent. To a certain degree, all
communication could be called interpersonal, as it occurs between two or more people.
However, it is useful and practical to restrict the definition to distinguish those relationships
that involve a relatively small group of people, such as couples, families, friends,
workgroups, and even classroom groups from those involving much larger numbers of
people, as would occur in public rallies or among massive television audiences. Unlike other
forms of communication, interpersonal communication involves person-to-person
interactions. Additionally, the perception that a social bond has developed between the
interactants, however tenuous and temporary it may seem, is also much more likely.

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DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE

Culture is a notoriously difficult term to define. In 1952, the American anthropologists,

Kroeber and Kluckhohn, critically reviewed concepts and definitions of culture, and
compiled a list of 164 different definitions. Apte (1994: 2001), writing in the ten-volume
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, summarized the problem as follows: ‘Despite a
century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990s no agreement
among anthropologists regarding its nature.’

 Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values,

attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations,
concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of
people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.1
 Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
 Culture is communication, communication is culture.
 Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's
learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly,
behavior through social learning.2
 A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and
symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed
along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
 Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills,
knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned
and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
 Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of
traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one
hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning
influences upon further action.3

1
http://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html
2
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/culture
3
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/culture.html

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 Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are
generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from
generation to generation.4
 Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of
one group or category of people from another.

THEORY OF CULTURAL DETERMINISM

The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members of society
determines human nature.5 People are what they learn. Optimistic version of cultural
determinism place no limits on the abilities of human beings to do or to be whatever they
want. Some anthropologists suggest that there is no universal "right way" of being human.
"Right way" is almost always "our way"; that "our way" in one society almost never
corresponds to "our way" in any other society. Proper attitude of an informed human being
could only be that of tolerance. The optimistic version of this theory postulates that human
nature being infinitely malleable, human being can choose the ways of life they prefer. The
pessimistic version maintains that people are what they are conditioned to be; this is
something over which they have no control. Human beings are passive creatures and do
whatever their culture tells them to do. This explanation leads to behaviorism that locates the
causes of human behavior in a realm that is totally beyond human control.

4
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture
5
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Cultural_determinism

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GROWTH IN CULTURE

Culture is subject to gradual change:

Any anthropological account of the culture of any society is a type of snapshot view of one
particular time. Should the ethnographer return several years after completing a cultural
study, he or she would not find exactly the same situation, for there are no cultures that
remain completely static year after year.6 Early twentieth-century anthropologists –
particularly those of the structural/functional orientation – tended to deemphasize cultural
dynamics by suggesting that some societies were in a state o equilibrium in which the forces
of change were negated by those of cultural conservatism. Although small-scale,
technologically simple, preliterate societies tend to be more conservative (and, thus, change
less rapidly) than modern, industrialized, highly complex societies, it is now generally
accepted that, to some degree, change is a constant feature of all cultures. Students of culture
change recognize that cultural innovation (that is, the introduction of new thoughts, norms, or
material items) occurs as a result of both internal and external forces. Mechanisms of change
that operate within a given culture are called discovery and invention. Despite the importance
of discovery and invention, most innovations introduced into a culture are the result of
borrowing from other cultures. This process is known as cultural diffusion, the spreading of
cultural items from one culture to another. The importance of cultural borrowing can be
better understood if viewed in terms of economy of effort. That is, it is much easier to borrow
someone else’s invention or discovery than it is to discover or invent it all over again. In fact,
anthropologists generally agree that as much as 90 percent of all things, ideas, and
behavioural patterns found in any culture had their origins elsewhere. Individuals in every
culture, limited by background and time, get new ideas with far less effort if they borrow
them. This statement holds true for our own culture as well as other cultures, a fact that North
Americans frequently tend to overlook. Since so much cultural change is the result of
diffusion, it deserves a closer examination. Keeping in mind that cultural diffusion varies
considerably from situation to situation, we can identify certain regularities that will enable
us to make some general statements that hold true for all cultures. First, cultural diffusion is a
selective process. Whenever two cultures come into contact, each does not accept everything
indiscriminately from the other. If they did, the vast cultural differences that exist today
would have long since disappeared. Rather, items will be borrowed from another culture only
if they prove to be useful and/or compatible. Put another way, an innovation is most likely to

6
http://www.studymode.com/essays/Cultural-Growth-143643.html

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be diffused into a recipient culture if: (1) it is seen to be superior to what already exists; (2) it
is consistent with existing cultural patterns; (3) it is easily understood; (4) it is able to be
tested on an experimental basis; and (5) its benefits are clearly visible to a relatively large
number of people. These five variables should be considered by international business
strategists when considering the introduction of new marketing or managerial concepts into a
foreign culture. Second, cultural borrowing is a two-way process. Early students of change
believe that contact between “primitive” societies and “civilized” societies caused the former
to accept traits from the latter. This position was based on the assumption that the “inferior”
primitive societies had nothing to offer the “superior” civilized societies. Today, however,
anthropologists would reject such a position, for it has been found time and again that cultural
traits are diffused in both directions. European contact with the American Indians is a case in
point. Native Americans, to be certain, have accepted a great deal from Europeans, but
diffusion in the other direction has been significant. For example, it has been estimated
(Driver 1961: 584) that those crops that make up nearly half of the world’s food supply were
originally domesticated by American Indians. These include corn, beans, squash, sweet
potatoes, and the so-called “Irish potato”. Third, very infrequently are borrowed items ever
transferred into the recipient culture in exactly their original form. Rather, new ideas, objects,
or techniques are usually reinterpreted and reworked so that they can be integrated more
effectively into the total configuration of the recipient culture. Lowell Holmes has offered an
illuminating example of how the form of a particular innovation from Italy (pizza) has been
modified after its incorporation into U.S. culture. “Originally, this Italian pie was made with
mozzarella or scamorza cheese, tomatoes, highly spiced sausage, oregano spice, and a crust
made of flour, water, olive oil and yeast. Although this type of pizza is still found in most
eastern cities, and in midwestern ones as well, in many cases the dish has been reinterpreted
to meet Midwestern taste preferences for bland food. Authentic Italian pizza in such states as
Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, or the Dakotas is often considered too spicy; therefore, it
is possible to purchase in restaurants or in supermarkets pizzas that are topped with American
process cheese, have no oregano at all, and in place of spiced sausage, hamburger or even
tuna fish rounds out the Americanized version. In many home recipes, the crust is made of
biscuit mix. Although the Italians would hardly recognize it, it still carries the name pizza and
has become extremely popular.” Fourth, some cultural traits are more easily diffused than
others. By and large, technological innovations are more likely to be borrowed than are social
patterns or belief systems, largely because the usefulness of a particular technological trait
can be recognized quickly. For example, a man who walks five miles each day to work does

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not need much convincing to realize that an automobile can get him to work much more
quickly and with far less effort. It has proven to be much more difficult, however, to
convince a Muslim to become a Hindu or an American middle-class businessperson to
become a socialist.It is important for the international businessperson to understand that to
some degreeall cultures are constantly experiencing change.7 The three basic components of
culture (things, ideas, and behavior patterns) can undergo additions, deletions, or
modifications. Some components die out, new ones are accepted, and existing ones can be
change in some observable way. Although the pace of culture change varies from society to
society, when viewing cultures over time, there is nothing as constant as change. This
straightforward anthropological insight should remind the international businessperson that
(1) any cultural environment today is not exactly the same as it was last year or will be one
year hence. The cultural environment, therefore, needs constant monitoring. (2) Despite
considerable lack of fit between the culture of a U.S. corporation operating abroad and its
overseas workforce, the very fact that culture can and do change provides some measure of
optimism that the cultural gap can eventually be closed.Moreover, the notion of cultural
diffusion has important implications for the conduct of international business. Whether one is
attempting to create new markets abroad or instill new attitudes and behaviors in a local
workforce, it is imperative to understand that cultural diffusion is selective. To know with
some degree of predictability which things, ideas, and behaviors are likely to be accepted by
a particular culture, those critical variables affecting diffusion such as relative advantage,
compatibility, and observability should be understood.An understanding that cultural
diffusion frequently involves some modification of the item is an important idea for those
interested in creating new product markets in other cultures. To illustrate, before a laundry
detergent – normally packaged in a green box in the United States – would be accepted in
certain parts of West Africa, the color of the packaging would need to be changed because
the color green is associated with death in certain West African cultures.Also, the idea that
some components of culture are more readily accepted than others into different cultural
environments should at least provide some general guidelines for assessing what types of
changes in the local culture are more likely to occur. By assessing what types of things, ideas,
and behavior have been incorporated into a culture in recent years, strategic planners should
better understand the relative ease or difficulty involved in initiating changes in consumer
habits or workplace behavior.

7
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/interculturalskills/global_pad_-
_what_is_culture.pdf%20

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ALVIN TOFFLER’S VIEWS

“At its worst, this shock can lead to the alienation of individuals and for
cracks to appear in social order due to an "information overload"'

Alvin Toffler, in his 1970s bestseller ‘Future Shock’, argued that the rate of technological
change and progress was accelerating at a rate faster than individuals could
handle.Considering the course of history, from the earliest societies who lived off the land
through to the industrial age and our post-industrial age — Toffler highlighted that the
dramatic changes were leaving people in a state of “future shock.”The level of change Toffler
put forward could cause not only disorientation for those caught up in it, but also a state of
immobility when provided with too many choices.At its worst, this shock can lead to the
alienation of individuals and for cracks to appear in social order due to an ‘information
overload’ (a phrase that was originally coined by Toffler).For its time, these predictions were
amazingly accurate. We are in an era where the pace of change can barely be managed with
constant development being faced on a daily basis.This is the case with consumer
technologies, where the laptop or phone is virtually obsolete by the time you take it out of the
packaging.But we also struggle on a daily basis with the volume of information we have to
process via email, text messages, the Internet and Twitter. We are all likely to be suffering
from some degree of information overload.This pace of change is accelerating business,
making it increasingly difficult for organisations to keep up, not only for IT, but also for
management.The trends such as cloud, BYOD, big data and the Internet of Things are all
powering the information overload for today’s businesses, putting pressure on lines of
business to respond faster to market drivers, data-driven imperatives and internal
demands.Toffler posited that the only way to tackle this future shock was to learn to adapt on
a constant basis.Toffler compared it with a new kind of illiteracy, with those unable to adapt
being left behind. “The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write
but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn,” he said.Most organisations today are not in
a position to handle these rapid change or to adapt quickly.The Open Group Convergent
Technologies Survey highlighted that only 52% of organisations surveyed felt they were
equipped to deal with the convergence of new technologies, while 27% said they were ill
prepared.Regardless of the state of preparedness, the tide of convergence is coming. And to
thrive in our current economy, companies must learn to architect themselves in the
moment.Agile software development has emerged in the past ten years as one of the ways for

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IT developers to adapt to the cycle of constant change.A definition for agile development was
coined in 2001 in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, which characterised it as
an iterative, incremental and rapid development that evolves through collaboration.Instead of
making a process that took years of painstaking planning through collaboration, an agile
method puts a product out to the market at the earliest moment, with corresponding tests by
users resulting in adaptions. This process is then repeated with feedback and changes made
on a constant circuit.Flexibility plus the ability to respond quickly and keen up with endless
changes in the market are what drive agile development.Through the use of agile principles,
organisational focus shifts from processes and tools to individuals and interactions, from
negotiation to collaboration, and by responding to changes rather than sticking to defined,
inflexible plans.In line with Toffler’s predictions, business change is happening at such a rate
that if too much time is taken over anything, an organisation is likely to lose out.The
principles of agile development are even being taught at business schools to graduate
students. One of Toffler’s comments stands out in particular: “If you don’t have a strategy,
you’re part of someone else’s strategy.”Businesses today should be combatting ‘future shock’
by placing adaptability at the core of every organisation’s strategy.For businesses to survive
and thrive in this environment, they will have to learn from IT, agile development and start-
up cultures to become quicker paced and agile organisations.The process of becoming agile
will take significant shifts in culture for many organisations, but business and IT need to
collaborate to ensure that the changes work in each setting.Enterprise architects and IT
leaders can help this process by driving the change within their organisations by helping the
C-Suite to first understand agile development principles, but also by showing the potential
consequences of being slow to adapt.Architecting on an ongoing basis is difficult for most
organisations and most industries.The majority are not used to that level of flexibility or a
need to adapt that quickly. We are more at ease with planning ahead and sticking to a plan
that has been developed over time.Being agile does not prevent planning or forethought —
but it is part of the process instead of a precursor to it.  Many organisations are likely to
experience a significant case of ‘future’ shock in the coming years, but adaptation and
business transformation is crucial if organisations don’t want to be left behind.8

8
https://www.information-age.com/future-shock-race-embrace-agile-development-123458062/

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WHAT HE GOT RIGHT

Rise of internet and cable television

The author rightly predicted a knowledge-based economy would eclipse the post-industrial
age, shifting focus from manufacturing and labour to information and data.

"The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who
cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn," he wrote in one of his observations.

Toffler also predicted the spread of interactive media, online chatrooms and devices that
remind you "of your own appointments".

"Advanced technology and information systems make it possible for much of the work of
society to be done at home via computer-telecommunications hook-ups," he wrote.

Genetic engineering and cloning

Though his predictions focused on the human condition more than scientific advancement,
Toffler foresaw a future where a woman would be able to "buy a tiny embryo, take it to her
doctor, have it implanted in her uterus...and then give birth as though it had been conceived in
her own body".

His forecast that humans would breed babies with "supernormal vision or hearing" and other
abilities may now seem a bit outlandish, but he did foresee the advancement of cloning.

"One of the more fantastic possibilities is that man will be able to make biological carbon
copies of himself," he wrote.

The demise of the nuclear family

Toffler predicted a symptom of rapid change would be the dissolution of the family unit. The
author noted it would lead to a rise in divorce rates while society would also begin to
embrace the LGBT community.

He wrote, "we shall... also see many more 'family' units consisting of a single unmarried adult
and one or more children. Nor will all of these adults be women... As homosexuality becomes
more socially acceptable, we may even begin to find families based on homosexual
marriage."

He also acknowledged the societal shift in delaying the decision to have children.

"Why not wait and buy your embryos later, after your work career is over? Thus
childlessness is likely to spread among young and middle-aged couples; sexagenarians who
raise infants may be far more common."

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Consumerism

In the age of Amazon and the proliferation of online marketplaces and share economies,
Toffler's thoughts on consumerism as a global trend ring true.

"People of the future may suffer not from an absence of choice but from a paralysing surfeit
of it. They may turn out to be victims of that peculiarly super-industrial dilemma:
overchoice."

In coining the term "prosumer," Toffler predicted the emergence of the combined role of
producer and consumer, or the trend of do-it-yourself (DIY) in every aspect of life.9

9
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36675260

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CONCLUSION

The state of society today is a manifestation of the brilliance and power of humankind.
Necessities of the past have been long removed from the worries of today as inventions and
innovations came into play. Dreams and wishful thoughts of people in history are paraded as
milestones of the 21st century. Change, the only constant thing in the world, occurred and has
been integrated throughout various sectors of the social order. Alvin Toffler’s book, The
Third Wave, tackles how society moved from wave to wave, with each wave overpowering
older societies and cultures. This happened due to the emergence of technologies that proved
more efficient and effective. For instance, the evolution of the first wave (Agricultural Age)
to the second (Industrial Age) up to the third wave (Information Age)was a product of the
introduction of new processes and equipment. Similarly, Walter J. Ong’s concept of “second
orality” arose with the advent of electronic modes of communication such as television and
radio. According to him, “information technologies are not mere external aids but internal
transformations of consciousness for the better.” If there is another common denominator
between the two aside from technological development, that is its contribution to culture
change and impact to people’s way of life. In any change introduced to society like a new
technology, resistance is normal because of fear of uncertainty or the unknown. Every new
technology is regarded with suspicion that is because people do not fully grasp its use. The
same negative comments recur like it is damaging to health, social skills, etc. Most people
want to play safe so they prefer the tried and tested way. Knowledge and practices that are
tradition and have been incorporated in our everyday lives for the longest time are hard to
replace (especially for old people). Once we get used to these, it becomes routine and any
disturbance might cause stress and problems. More importantly, it became our culture and
reality. Through the years, our society has been slowly building its own culture. Norms,
beliefs, and practices were passed from one generation to the next via oral, written or a
combination of both means of communication. Part of the transition is the construction of
reality and creation of meaning, which are both through socialization or interaction among
people within social groups.

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BIBLIOGRAPGHY
1. McClenon, James. "Tylor, Edward B(urnett)". Encyclopedia of Religion and Society

2. Stark, Rodney. 2007. Sociology: Tenth Edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning,
Inc. ISBN 049509344-0
3. Walker, Gavin. 2001. Society and culture in sociological and anthropological tradition.
Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications.
4. Peacock, James L. 1981. Durkheim and the Social Anthropology of Culture. Social
Forces, Vol. 59, No. 4, Special Issue.
5. ALVIN TOFFLER 1970 . Future Shock : Penguin Random House LLC.
6. ALVIN TOFFLER 1980 , The Third Wave : Bentam Books

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WEB REFERENCES

 http://www.academia.edu/456901/
Reality_Now_Changing_Culture_Changing_Society
 http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/interculturalskills/
global_pad_-_what_is_culture.pdf%20
 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture
 http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Cultural_determinism
 http://www.sociologyguide.com/culture/theories-of-cultural-growth.php
 http://www.studymode.com/essays/Cultural-Growth-143643.html
 https://www.information-age.com/future-shock-race-embrace-agile-development-
123458062/
 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36675260

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