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A cultural invention is any
innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entit ...
developed by people. Cultural inventions include sets of behaviour adopted by groups of
people A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of propert ...
. They are perpetuated by being passed on to others within the group or outside it. They are also passed on to future groups and generations. Sources of cultural invention can either come from outside a specific group or from within that group.
Allan Hanson Allan may refer to: People * Allan (name), a given name and surname, including list of people and characters with this name * Allan (footballer, born 1984) (Allan Barreto da Silva), Brazilian football striker * Allan (footballer, born 1989) (A ...
, a
postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
anthropologist, believed that the analytical purpose of studying cultural inventions was not to uncover which portions of a culture's belief systems are invented, but rather to study how cultural inventions become accepted as authentic within groups. This notion has been met with criticism from within the anthropological community as well as from outside sources, and has been referred to as both politically revisionist and anti-native. The fear is that viewing cultural invention as a process which leads to something authentic and widely accepted may undermine indigenous people's traditions in addition to questioning the authority they have over their own culture.


Examples

Examples of areas where cultural inventions may take place include: *
Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s *
Legal systems The contemporary national legal systems are generally based on one of four basic systems: civil law, common law, statutory law, religious law or combinations of these. However, the legal system of each country is shaped by its unique history and ...
*
Political system In political science, a political system means the type of political organization that can be recognized, observed or otherwise declared by a state. It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the govern ...
s *
Scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific me ...
*
Sport Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, th ...
s *
Social institutions Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
*
Belief systems A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take ...


Cultural transmission

One way that cultural inventions can be spread is through cultural transmission, the means by which culturally specific ideas and patterns of behavior are shared and become cultural reality. According to Marc J. Swartz, people of status within society play an important role in deciding what is understood as cultural reality. Such people have the correct kinds of skills and knowledge within society to help transmit ideas in such a way that they are accepted by society at large, which is one method by which cultural inventions can become cultural realities.


Case study: Maori

Allan Hanson proposed that several aspects of Maori culture had been invented by European scholars who were accustomed to analytical frameworks focused on long-distance migration and diffusion. Because of this, he believed that European scholars constructed the notion that a " Great Fleet", headed by a man named Kupe from a neighboring island, who was responsible for the initial discovery and peopling of New Zealand. Although Maori ancestors most likely arrived in canoes from nearby islands, Hanson believed that the account of the Great Fleet was created to simplify various Maori traditions into a single tradition. Additionally, to make the Maori seem more elevated in European eyes, scholars may have invented a cult to the named Io, who was thought to be a supreme being that controlled all the other gods in the Maori pantheon. The story of Io creating the world is so similar to that of the
Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning"). ...
in the Bible, that it is believed to have been a European invention. Hanson asserted that those and other elements of Maori tradition were incorporated and taken to be true by the Maori and that they have been passed down through generations by way of oral tradition. According to Hanson, "Io and the Great Fleet have been incorporated into Maori lore and are passed down from elders to juniors in storytelling, oratory, and other Maori contexts".Hanson, Allan 2012 989The Making of the Maori: Culture Invention & its Logic. In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Pp 549-562. New York: McGraw-Hill.


See also

* Creativity techniques


References

{{Culture Cultural concepts Innovation