Unit 4: Culture (Lessons 1-2)

What is Culture?

Culture is the mix of values, beliefs, behaviors, and material objects that reflect the way of life of a particular nation or group of people. Historians sometimes refer to culture as “lifeways.” While there are many different definitions of culture, most people see culture as connected to the customs and beliefs of a group of people. For example, a culture is reflected in holiday traditions, child-rearing practices, or spiritual/religious beliefs and customs. Many of our own beliefs and behaviors have roots in what we learned growing up in our own particular culture.

The many different aspects of culture are often called cultural components. These include such things as food, music, art, architecture, rituals, ideas, language, and family structure. Let’s begin thinking about culture by exploring some cultural components and how they may vary from place to place.

· Ways of greeting people: In the United States, we greet people by shaking hands. In Egypt, however, people greet each other by kissing three times on alternating cheeks. In Japan, greetings consist of a bow at the waist, but in Tibet people stick out their tongues to greet each other and as a symbol that the greeter has no evil thoughts.

· Rules about polite behavior: In the United States, it is impolite to belch at the table. Yet, in China, Taiwan, and much of the Far East, a belch at the dinner table symbolizes a compliment to the chef.

· Ideas about personal space – Americans tend remain about an arms-length or two away from friends and family members during conversations. However, with strangers, Americans tend to stand even further away. In Brazil, people tend to stand closer and touch each other during their conversations. In fact, if you do not touch during your conversation, you may be considered cold.

· Grooming: Don’t wear yellow in Malaysia -- it is a sign of royalty. However, wearing the color red in China is a sign of luck. In Russia, you should remove your shoes before entering a home as a sign that you are leaving the outside world where it belongs.

· Gender roles: While many developed nations have made progress towards gender equality, such is not the case everywhere. For instance, in some countries in Africa and the Middle East, women do not have the same educational opportunities.

· Courtship: Courtship is when two people get know each other to see if they will start a life together. It differs from dating because the goal of a courtship is marriage. Ways of courting differ. In most European-influenced cultures, including the United States, courting is rather casual and develops from dating. However, in some cultures courtship can be a highly planned activity with formal rules. For instance, in the Philippines the woman’s entire family is courted to gain approval. In Japan, some people still are married through arranged marriages. In such situations, the woman may not even meet her life partner until the day of the wedding.

In most cases, the cultural components of a given society have connections to the different perspectives within social studies: geographic, historical, economic, social, and political. Cultural components also reflect beliefs, values and aesthetic standards of a group of people. Let’s take a look a how a simple cultural component like food can reflect these perspectives in our own culture:

· Geographic: The type of foods we eat most certainly is influenced by our geographic resources. Given the type of farmland available, wheat has become a main staple of our diet.

· Historical: Some of the foods we eat reflect our past. The traditions of eating turkey at Thanksgiving or cake on birthdays have been passed down over time.

· Economic: How we produce and distribute food reflects our economic system. Prices are set by the interaction of buyers and sellers in the marketplace. Most food is purchased from stores and not grown by individuals.

· Social: Who we eat with, when, and where also reflect one’s culture. People tend to eat with family or friends, and three meals a day is typical. Dinner is usually the largest meal of the day.

· Political: Who prepares, serves, and cleans up from meals reveals a lot about a culture. It is traditional in our culture for women to take on these tasks although over time, this traditional role is changing with many families.

· Aesthetic: How much attention is paid to the aesthetic aspects of preparing and eating food tells a great deal about a culture. We enjoy the luxury of eating for more than mere survival. How our food looks is very important, and a great deal of marketing dollars is spent on making food look as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

· Values and Beliefs: Some foods in our country, like steak or lobster, seem to be very highly valued. Other foods, such as wine, may carry religious value. Furthermore, there are foods, such as insects, that others cultures embrace, but we consider taboo.

Despite the huge variety of cultures on Earth, they all share cultural universals such as the need for food, shelter, raising children in some sort of family setting, and playing games. Some other examples of cultural universals are:

· Communicating with a verbal language

· Using age and gender to classify people (e.g. teenager, senior citizen)

· Having a concept of privacy

· Distinguishing between good and bad behavior

· Having art

· Having some type of leadership roles for community decisions

Important Characteristics of Culture:

Culture is like an iceberg or an onion. Some aspects of culture are visible, such as the clothes we wear and the food we eat. Other aspects of culture, such as our values and beliefs, cannot be seen.

Culture is both complex and unique. There are six distinct characteristics of culture:

· Culture is both shared and learned. It is developed through a collective sharing of ideas and behaviors that are reflected in a society. People are not born knowing how to act or what to believe. Moreover, culture results from living in groups -- you cannot have a culture by yourself. For example, people are not born knowing a language. Yet, the American culture is English-speaking. This is because people learn language from those around them.

· Culture is dynamic; in other words, it is always changing. In our country, corsets or petticoats used to be commonplace. Moreover, your grandparents probably did not have computers in their schools or listen to rap music. Pizza and tacos are not foods that originated in the United States but have become staples of the American diet. Culture changes because people continuously create, learn, experiment and interact with other cultures.

· Culture is adaptive and can be changed to meet new circumstances. As our resources change, so does our culture. For example, when colonists came to the new world, they adapted their diet by eating corn as a staple. Homes across the country vary depending on the climate and the resources available to build them. While homes in Florida do not have basements because of the water table, homes in the Midwest often have basements that are used as shelter from tornados.

· Culture is integrated since the components of a culture are connected. Hot dogs are associated with holidays (Fourth of July) as well as entertainment (baseball games). American culture reflects a love of sports that is integrated in many ways. Americans watch sporting events, wear sporting attire, decorate rooms with sport themes, have sport-themed parties, sing sports chants, and encourage young people to play sports.

· Culture is elastic because it is stretched and adjusted by people. People make their culture fit their own unique personality. While it common for Americans to wear t-shirts and jeans, the graphics on t-shirts and types of jeans people wear reflect their individual personality.