Normative Considerations in Promoting Cultural Preservation or Change

Abstract

Both cultural persistence and change reflect, in part, the broad forces of globalization. For example, consider the decline of handwoven rugs upon the introduction of mechanical looms or the rise of Navajo arti-sanship through new markets in Europe and Asia. We need only remember that the enormous market for Corinth’s striking black-figure pottery was eclipsed in the mid-sixth century BCE by the rise of Athens as a competitor and then the new-style Attic pottery. Yet deliberate and direct human action also shapes how language, religion, artistic expression, and historical memory and interpretation are maintained or altered.