INTRACULTURE ADOPTION

Abstract

Some modern western nations include within their borders distinct indigenous cultural groups, each established over many centuries and maintained in accordance with traditional customs that have survived relatively intact into the 21st century. This is the case, for example, with indigenous people in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and North and South America. These indigenous cultural groups are, to a varying degree, coherent entities founded on rules and traditions governing relations within and between families and applying to the functioning of their social system as a whole. They co-exist alongside and in an uneasy relationship with the prevailing western culture; sharing time, territory and the necessities of life but often very little in the way of values, knowledge and social infrastructure.