Theorizing Cultural Friction: How the Relationship between Cultural Products and Local Environments Shapes Localization Processes

Abstract How do different types of culture spread around the world? Do norms travel much like technologies? Do media and commodities diffuse in different ways? Surprisingly, research on cultural diffusion cannot yet answer these questions. Most scholars examine the spread of only one cultural object or class of object at a time. While this can tell us much about the actors, networks, and institutions involved, it tells us little about the objects themselves. In this article, we employ a comparative approach to show how cultural objects vary, specifically how they meet different kinds of resistance in the new environments they enter. This resistance, we argue, generates different kinds of “cultural friction” which shape the strategies actors use to successfully adopt and adapt a cultural object. We propose a theoretical model based on two types of friction—normative and relational—and their relationship to four adaptation strategies—value construction, alliance building, customization, and resource exchange. We demonstrate the plausibility of our model with four empirical cases: child labor norms, the Project ECHO telementoring model, Sesame Street programs, and Sesame Street branded toys.