CULTURAL DIFFUSION AND CRICKET

touchcric was acquainted with North America through the English settlements in the seventeenth century,[11] likely before it had even arrived at the north of Britain. In the eighteenth century it showed up in different pieces of the globe. It was acquainted with the West Indies by colonists[11] and to the Indian subcontinent by East India Organization sailors in the main portion of the 100 years. It showed up in Australia nearly when colonization started in 1788. New Zealand and South Africa continued in the early long stretches of the nineteenth century.

Although there is now a rich body of important findings about this process, several major problems and gaps still exist. One major failing of the diffusion literature is the tendency to overlook cases where innovations are transmitted but eventually rejected, as well as cases where adoption might have been expected but did not occur. Palloni (2001: 73–75) highlights two aspects of this problem in his important recent review of the field.

First, he notes the common failure to try and account for the persistence of diffused practices in their new surroundings—how and why, in other words, do diffused practices become part of the lived experience of those who have adopted them? Second, he notes the obverse: that after the initial adoption of an innovation, mechanisms might arise that undermine its retention. Palloni (2001:73) adds that, “Despite the fact that this is a key part of a diffusion process, it is rarely mentioned and almost never explicitly modeled or studied.

” The problem, we suspect, is that many diffusion studies track cultural practices that are not commonly rejected, such as the adoption of new, time-tested medical or agricultural practices. Strang and Soule (1998: 268) observe, for example, that there is “a strong selection bias in diffusion research, where investigators choose ultimately popular [i.e., widely diffused] practices as appropriate candidates for study.” Issues such as the persistence and rejection of diffused practices are thus generally overlooked in the literature. Another shortcoming of diffusion studies is highlighted by Wejnert (2002:299–302), who notes a tendency in the literature to ignore the role of characteristics unique to the practice or thing being diffused.

touchcric com features of the innovation being adopted, such as its potential for replication and change, play an important but often overlooked role in the ultimate success or failure of diffusion. By confining their studies to simple physical objects or cultural routines that are diffused at the micro-social level, diffusion scholars have tended to create advanced formal models that overlook real-world obstacles to diffusion—those posed by the nature,

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