Effects of Diffusion
Sustained contact between cultures doesn't always produce the same outcome — sometimes cultures blend or grow alike, sometimes one absorbs another, and sometimes communities push back and double down on what makes them distinct.
Sustained diffusion between cultures tends to push them toward cultural convergence — growing more alike over time, the pattern widely cited in global fast food, fashion, and media reaching nearly everywhere. Cultures that stay isolated from diffusion, by contrast, tend toward cultural divergence, growing more distinct the longer they develop apart.
When two cultures make sustained contact, several different outcomes are possible, and they aren’t the same thing. Acculturation is adopting some traits of another culture while keeping one’s own core identity. Assimilation goes further: one group fully adopts the dominant culture, largely abandoning its own original traits. Multiculturalism is a different path entirely — a society deliberately preserving multiple distinct cultural identities side by side, rather than requiring one to absorb into another.
Diffusion’s effects aren’t all neutral. A minority language spoken by a shrinking, aging population, as younger generations shift to the dominant national language, is a real cost of sustained convergence. Cultural appropriation — adopting another culture’s sacred symbols as fashion without understanding their meaning — is another. And convergence doesn’t go unanswered: neolocalism, the deliberate revival of local tradition, often emerges specifically as a reaction against the pull toward global sameness.