Final answer:
Identifying a culture in relation to time is challenged by culture lag, the influence of diffusion and globalization, and the ever-evolving nature of cultural elements. The continuous integration of new technologies and ideas into societies creates a dynamic cultural landscape that resists simple definition.
Step-by-step explanation:
What contributes to the challenge of identifying a "culture" as it pertains to time? One significant factor is the concept of culture lag, which refers to the gap between the appearance of new aspects of material culture, like technology, and the acceptance and integration of these aspects into nonmaterial culture, such as values and norms. Coined by sociologist William F. Ogburn in 1957, culture lag highlights how societies may struggle to adapt to rapid changes in material culture, leading to various social issues like outdated infrastructure unable to support contemporary populations and lifestyles.
Diffusion and globalization also play influential roles. While some had predicted a global monoculture emerging from increasing connections between societies, the reality of the 2020s has been a reassertion of diverse cultural identities, illustrating how cultures maintain distinct features even while adapting to new influences. Cultures constantly evolve as they absorb new technologies and ideas, which then interact with existing cultural components, altering them in the process. This continuous evolution makes it difficult to define and understand a culture at any given point in time, particularly when viewed through the lens of cultural relativism, which seeks to understand cultures on their own terms without imposing an external value judgment.
Considering the multifaceted nature of culture, which includes tensions within societies regarding dominant values and practices, the identification of culture over time can be quite intricate. These tensions arise from how different social groups may experience the shared culture in dissimilar ways, further complicating a stable or uniform definition of culture. The fact that culture is both shared and contested within societies adds to the complexities of determining cultural attributes over time.