2.2 Theory of Cultural Diffusionism

Claim: culture change comes chiefly by borrowing — inventions migrate, complexes spread from centres; humans are imitative more than inventive.Exponents: the German-Austrian Kulturkreis school (Graebner, Schmidt — "culture circles" spreading outward, reconstructed by trait-lists); the British hyperdiffusionists (Elliott Smith, Perry — everything from Egypt: the discipline's cautionary caricature); the American culture-area school (Boas's students, Kroeber — areas of shared traits in native North America: diffusion domesticated, mapped).Concepts to know:trait, complex, area; independent invention vs diffusion (the debate); acculturation (change under sustained contact — Sociology Unit 4's processes).Nepal application: Nepal's whole culture-history is diffusion's textbook — Sanskritic and Buddhist complexes from the south and north; the mandala cosmology of the Valley; Chinese-ritual and Tibetan trade flows; today's remittance consumerism and smartphone culture diffusing through every tol — Boas's historically particular borrowings visible at road's end.Critique: diffusion explains spread, not origin or meaning (who invented, and why it matters to borrowers); hyperdiffusion was pseudo-history; borrowing is always reinterpretation — the borrowed trait lives differently in its new home (Christmas in Kathmandu's malls is not Christmas in Ohio).