In 1956, Anthony F. C. Wallace published a paper called "Revitalization Movements" to describe how cultures change themselves. A revitalization movement is a "deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture" (p. 265), and Wallace describes at length the processes by which a revitalization movement takes place.
Overview
Wallace' model 1956 describes the process of a revitalization movement. It is derived from studies of a Native American religious movement, The Code of Handsome Lake, which may have led to the formation of the Longhouse Religion.
- I. Period of generally satisfactory adaptation to a group's social and natural environment.
- II. Period of increased individual stress. While the group as a whole is able to survive through its accustomed cultural behavior, changes in the social or natural environment frustrate efforts of many people to obtain normal satisfactions of their needs.
- III. Period of cultural distortion. Changes in the group's social or natural environment drastically reduce the capacity of accustomed cultural behavior to satisfy most persons' physical and emotional needs.
- IV. Period of revitalization: (1) reformulation of the cultural pattern; (2) its communication; (3) organization of a reformulated cultural pattern; (4) adaptation of the reformulated pattern to better meet the needs and preferences of the group; (5) cultural transformation; (6) routinization, when the adapted reformulated cultural pattern becomes the standard cultural behavior for the group.
- V. New period of generally satisfactory adaptation to the group's changed social and/or natural environment.
Wallace derived his theory from studies of so-called primitive peoples (preliterate and homogeneous), with particular attention to the Iroquois revitalization movement led by Seneca religious leader and prophet Handsome Lake (1735-1815). Wallace believed that his revitalization model applies to movements as broad and complex as the rise of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Wesleyan Methodism.
Revitalizaton is a part of social movements.
Scholars such as Vittorio Lanternari (1963), Peter Worsley (1968) and Duane Champagne (1988, 2005) have developed and adapted Wallace's insights.
See also
- Ghost Dance: a famous Native American revitalization movement
- Great Awakenings: a controversially named reference to revitalization movements in the USA.
- Christian revivalism
- Language revitalization
Notes
- Wallace, Anthony F.C. 1956. "Revitalization Movements", American Anthropologist 58: 264-281.
- Champagne 2005.
References
- Champagne, Duane (1988). "The Delaware Revitalization Movement of the Early 1760s: A Suggested Reinterpretation." American Indian Quarterly 12 (2): 107–126.
- Champagne, Duane (2005). "North American Indian Religions: New Religious Movements". In Lindsay Jones (ed.). Encyclopedia of Religion: 15-volume Set. Vol. 10 (2nd ed.). Farmington Hills, Mi: Macmillan Reference USA – via Encyclopedia.com.
- Kehoe, B. Alice, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization, Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, Thompson Publishing, 1989. ISBN 1577664531
- Lanternari, Vittorio. The Religions of the Oppressed; a Study of Modern Messianic Cults. (London: MacGibbon & Kee, , 1963; New York: Knopf, 1963).
- Lindstrom, Lamont. Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beynd. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 1993).
- Worsley, Peter. The Trumpet Shall Sound; a Study of "Cargo" Cults in Melanesia. (New York,: Schocken Books, 2d augmented, 1968).
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