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Q: Is culture something that should evolve or something that should hold true to its traditions
It's not a question of "should" it's a question of "will". No culture has ever been static, and no culture has existed in a vacuum where unpredictable events never happen. A culture is a constantly changing set of guidelines and conventions which are always interpreted differently from person to person and from generation to generation.
Look at history and see if you can find one reasonable example of a culture that never changed.
kchur is right, change can't be stopped. Of course, we can reflect on the past, or even have tourist spots where you can see how people used to live. If you look, any attempt to hold on to tradition to the point where people aren't allowed to live with modern conveniences seems rather fake. People seem to be devastated when one culture intrudes on another, or a culture seems to disappear, but that's the nature of change.
While true, I do still think that aspects of a culture can endure through the generations. Something as simple as family connections, ways of parenting, music.
I also think that with todays rapid changes in technology that allow us to experience different cultures, and all the latest, greatest (and worst) so fast, blinds us to just how stable things can often be. We're used to rapid change... previous generations would remain the same for... centuries? Millenia??? Consider farming - the same techniques are still being used around the world that were in use a few thousand years ago - get up at the crack of dawn, yoke up a large domestic animal, plough some fields, sow some seed, reap some crop, go home when it's dark. Have lots of kids to do the same thing when you're older...
You might say "where's the 'culture' in that?" But what defines 'culture'? Besides, sometimes, someone (often an elder) would relate the tales of the people to everybody around some sort of campfire thing... so everyone would grow up on those tales.
It's only really been in the last hundred years or so (or less, depending on what part of the world you talk about) that that has all changed.
Kchur, to find your example... I posit Australian Aboriginals... 40,000 without a hell of a lot of change (until about 200 years ago). Various African tribes (till a few hundred years ago), tribes in South America (guess what - til a few hundred years ago). For each of those examples, I'm sure there are still a few people out there practising aspects of their culture even now... who have yet to be touched by 'modernisation'.
kchur:
The modern/tradition dichotomy sits a bit uncomfortably with me. I confess I'm not overly familiar with the areas you mentioned, but I wrote one of my theses on small cultures (the ethnohistorian's politically correct term for "primitive") changing in response to relocation, with a focus on North America. There have been many cases (I focused the westward movement of the Ojibwa in particular and southward movement of the Cree secondarily, the later having been partly inspired by the fur trade) where peoples have made significant alteration to their life habits, migratory patterns, myths, religion, etc, in response to readjusting to an unfamiliar geography, different plants and animals, etc., with minimal outside influence from other cultures. In cultures like this, religion tends to encode a lot of information about food procurement and basic survival and that's going to be quite different in a forested, well-watered area, than in a dry, desolate area where big game is the main resource, for example. Seeing as those three areas you mentioned are pretty varied, geographically, and knowing how migratory small cultures tend to be, I am fairly skeptical.
Shining_brow:
Don't those normally migratory clans tend to have myths etc connected with migration? Those peoples you mentioned for your thesis - were they traditionally migratory to those areas? The Celts seem to have retained a fairly similar culture through the times and regions they migrated to (relatively speaking- given what we have for culture now, and how it's rapidly changed recently)
The more modern, educated and ethnically diverse a country is, the more likley that the culture is a blend of everything and all.
Culture is a very broad term, and can refer to so many things.
But I would use the Amish as an example of one culture in the US that resists any outside change.
I personally think that some people use "culture" as a way to remain in the past, and force others to abide by their morals and beliefs, like suppressing women or minorities.
The word 'culture' is derived from the ancient Greek, meaning 'to grow'. If a society doesn't fit this definition then it's not, strictly speaking, a culture at all.
Shining_brow:
Thus, 5000 years of Chinese culture i sin fact...??? ;p
yian:
5000 years of culture, with a few backward blips along the line such as Colonial aggression and the Cultural Revolution.
