Cultural Influence
A group (a state or an ethnicity) can spontaneously adopt a different culture due to its political relevance, or to its perceived superiority. The first is the case of the Latin language and culture, that were gradually adopted by most of the subjugated people.
The second is not the case of subjugated, but of the older and richer culture, which see itself imitated by the new masters, e.g. the victorious Roman Republic adopted more from the Hellenistic cultures than it imposed in most domains, except such Roman specialties as law and the military.
Cultural assimilation can happen either spontaneously or forcibly. A culture can spontaneously adopt a different culture or older and richer cultures forcedly integrate other weak cultures. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. A new culture and new attitudes toward the origin culture are obtained through contact and communication. Cultural changing is not simply a one-way process. Assimilation assumes that relatively tenuous culture gets to be united to one unified culture. This process happens through contact and accommodation between each culture. The current definition of assimilation is usually used to refer to immigrants, but in multiculturalism, cultural assimilation can happened all over the world, not just be limited to specific areas. For example, a shared language gives people the chance to study and work internationally, not just being limited to the same cultural group. People from different countries contribute to diversity and form the "global culture" which means the culture combined by the elements from different countries. This "global culture" can be seen as a part of assimilation that causes cultures from different areas to affect each other.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Assimilation
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