What Culture Is and How Can it Change - Assignment Example

WHAT IS CULTURE AND HOW DOES IT CHANGE? APPLY RACE AND ETHNICITY. Culture is a term that can be difficult to define. Not because, it has never been defined, but due to the fact that there has been an extensive authorship of what culture means by several people (Billington et al). Over and above, culture can in simple terms be defined as a set of shared prototypes or patterns of interactions and behaviours. Consequently, a number of hypotheses have been conceived throughout history to define culture by several educationists, some of who include Hofstede, Linton, Linderach, and American anthropologist, Kroeber (Spencer-Oatey, 2012). Besides culture, are terms of race and ethnicity, both of which are applied on the foundation of culture and often the derivatives of the three terms are very similar, making them sometimes confusing. They are common in our daily conversations, yet their meanings are not so much shared among people. This only leaves the question, what do they mean and how culture is applied in the race and ethnicity perspective. Nonetheless, culture is not static, and it keeps on shifting from time to time with the causes of the change either being perceived as natural of artificially invoked. In expository paper, I seek to explain what culture is, and how it is applied ethnically and racially among our society together with how it changes. What is culture? Culture is a shared artificial aspect of the environment both touchable and intangible including languages, social institutions, and symbolic systems. It is also either explicit i.e. employment, marriage, education and laws or implicit which include norms- undeclared rules oiling social interaction (Bassnet,2003) Culture is transmitted over generations and is often relational- meaning culture is in much extent of who we are, but such is not obvious to certain groups such stereotypes. As shown in the pretext, culture is basically anything that is learned by humans and therefore a clash is bound to result because each society has its cultures. Such can be explained by various definitions that have been made by various educationists. According to Hofstede on national and corporate cultures, he defines culture as the collective indoctrination of the mind which distinguishes one society or member of a class of people from another (Inglis, 2005; Carla.umn.edu) Almost similar in meaning is Lederach’s definition of culture as the shared schemes and knowledge created by people for perceiving, expressing, interpreting and responding to the collective social realism around them. Consequently, in his work on the background of personality on cultural premise, Linton reveals that culture is a pattern of learnt behaviours whose componential elements are shared among or transmitted from a particular society to another (Carla.umn.edu). From the three educationists’ definition it is worthwhile to restate that culture is within us, and various societies have varied cultures that are sometimes transmitted and shared from one society to another. Culture is also closely associated with colonialism and imperialism. The two terms are often closely related as they are both used to describe cultural, political and economic dominance of one group or region by another. These colonial and imperial actions, same as culture are conveyed from one age to the other. Despite colonies and protectorates having ended for some years now, imperialism and colonialism can be interpreted as an extension of European interests overseas (Ryan, 2011). Modern imperialism and colonialism are inextricably directed to the advancement of capitalism in Europe. Clearly as defined, they are cultural pretexts that are held by European powerhouses to extend the interests. Characteristics of culture: Culture influences behaviour and understanding of behaviour: From Hofstede’s perspective, despite certain characteristics of culture being physical their meaning is undetectable: their cultural sense lies exactly and merely in the way the insiders (Spencer-Oatey, 2012) construe these acts. For instance, gestures like thumbing and raising forefinger may be construed as conveying agreement, endorsement, or acceptance in some countries like the UK, USA, and Canada, but as an obscene or insult gesture in some Mediterranean countries. The similar connotation can also be seen in terms of choice for clothing as diverse groups of people interpret it differently and they are often used as indication of riches, showiness, appropriateness, and so on. (Spencer-Oatey, 2012) Secondly, Culture as both social and individual construct: what this characteristic simply notes is that besides culture being an individual, psychosomatic construct it is also a social construct. Individual distinctions in culture can be observed amongst people in the extent to which they agree to and engage in the outlooks, values, philosophy, and behaviours that, by compromise, make up their culture. If one acts in accord with those values or behaviours, then that culture dwells in him or her; if people do not agree with those principles or behaviours, the converse is true. Thirdly, Culture is a matter to gradual change: Anybody studying about culture or any anthropological explanation of a culture of a particular society is simply a snapshot outlook of one particular occasion when the study was done. If the ethnographer goes back several years after carrying out a cultural study, he or she might not come across the same exact situation, for there are no cultures that linger static year after another (Spencer-Oatey, 2012) Application of race and ethnicity of culture: Race and culture: A race is a human populace that is alleged to be distinct in some way from other human beings on the premise of actual or imagined physical distinction. Race’s derivatives such as racism and racist are often regarded as morally tricky, and such is easy to understand why (Ballard). How does then race get its application in culture? From a biological perspective, the race is referred to species or subspecies having less or more distinct populace with corresponding anatomical traits that differentiate it from the rest of races. This definition has a deficit, for the fact that all humans are almost 99.9% genetically identical and the only definite difference is between female, males, and our distinct personal behaviours (O’Neil, 2006) .As from this stance, it is clear that “races” are largely cultural creation of individuals and not biological reality. It then follows that the existent human races are based on the premise of false cultural assumptions of attributes such as skin colour and therefore do not clearly distinct black or white or any other race (O’Neil, 2006). Consequently, racism is closely associated with prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is the making of assumptions about somebody based on beliefs both inaccurate and accurate about what people perceive of his or her origin ( Dorling, 2011) Such beliefs are components of culture, for some are learned and others unconsciously generated- they are what people know, do, and think about others. The same is for discrimination which is acting based on what one believes of prejudice (Bassenet, 2003). That way racism becomes an expression of abuse. Those whose views stink with xenophobic prejudice have extensively learnt to preamble their arguments with declarations on how much they detest racism. They thereafter, go on making all sorts of scandalous criticisms of the behaviour of individual of colour, and the degree to which such treatment are undermining the customary order of civilisation (Ballard, 2002) Culture and ethnicity: Whilst Ethnicity is related to race, it refers to certain cultural and sometimes physical behaviours used to categorise individuals into groups considered significantly distinct from others (O’Neil, 2006). Some of the common cultural traits used to classify ethnical people include tribe, nationality, religion, culture, language, and shared tradition. For most people, categorization of ethnic groups implies a correlation between anatomical inheritance and culture. They hold that biological inheritance can determine different cultural identities, and if this was true, it means that African-American cultural attributes such as Black English would be a result of hereditary inheritance. The reality is that this is not valid, for culture and biological race are not identical. An English anthropologist, Edward Taylor in 1871 when he wrote cultural traits, are entirely learnt (Bollaffi etl, 2003), substantiated this fact. Consequently, a baby can transferred from one culture to another immediately after birth and afterwards brought up by foster parents in another country will grow up to the foster parents’ culture regardless of their body shape, skin colour and other supposed racial characteristics. As with dynamism of ethnic polarisation, cultural borders may be somewhat deliberately convoluted, to give rise to an ethnic polarisation course. In many instances, it is not so greatly the profundity of the cultural disparity between the competing parties which brings about processes of border elaboration, but somewhat the differences in their political and economic concerns and interests. The ethnic consolidation and polarisation are more uptight when the contradictions perverse (Ballard, 2002). Nonetheless, despite the enormous correspondence and application of ethnicity there is a need to distinguish ethnicity from culture vividly. As held by Roger Ballard, ethnicity is not an artefact of cultural characteristic per se, but rather an outcome of the expression of cultural uniqueness in aspects of economic and political antagonism (Ballard, 2002). It is actually a response of inequality patterns those who feel they are excluded, and therefore deem to resist. When each side of the divide retaliates against each other, the upshot is an escalated process of joint ethnic polarisation. How does culture change comes up? Whatsoever human beings perceive, think, and know, feel and value is most likely a result of participating in a cultural system. This simply means that the human capacity is only measurable within an individual culture via growth in close contact with other humans (Clarke, 2008). Since it is a learning process, and if you have examined the history of a society, culture has obviously changed over time. Some of the shared traits and ideas that were common at some time in the past, are likely not the same currently due to replacement by different ones. Change of culture with race and ethnicity has resulted through assimilation, economic and language universality and deliberations by organisations to end discrimination. Assimilation has brought a significant role in transforming culture based on racial and ethnic lines and is evident in contemporary society. One of the agents of assimilation is intermarriages. Initially, culture defined marriage on ethnic or racism lines- the black marry the black and white marry the white (Spencer-Oatey, 2012). The same was held in terms of ethnicity, persons felt their marriage partners should be from their tribes, chatting same language and so forth. Current intermarriages have changed the way these cultural settings are viewed. Intermarriages are considered as a suggestion of social incorporation because it brings about intimacy and deep relations between persons of diverse groups. Intermarriage lessens the capability of intermarried couples to pass on to their children a constant racial or ethnic culture and thus is a means of assimilation. Other measures of how assimilation is working in changing discrimination include but not limited to social, economic status, spatial concentration and language attainment. The economic status realization is defined in terms of education accomplishment, career and income. The initially discriminated ethnic lot are able to march UK indigenous-born in terms of human capital emolument. In the realization of a mixed society, though not immediately, language achievements as agents of assimilation have brought change, for non-natives are encouraged to speak English and relinquish their mother tongue (Cohen, n.d). Another reason for the change of how racism and ethnicity is viewed today is a consequence of deliberate efforts by organisations both local and international, together with governments to end racial based discrimination. For instance, the United Nations over time has initiated several steps to combat ethnic and racial discrimination. Consequently, a number of conventions have been made to marshal civic opinion and awareness. Together with other human rights initiatives and treaties geared to contest ethnic and racial prejudice have resulted in a number of affirmative changes (Hrea.org, 2003). There have been constitutional amendments to engross provisions that will prohibit the discrimination practice. There are also methodical reviews of existent regulations and acts to amend those which are likely to perpetuate ethnic prejudice, or passage of new regulations to satisfy the obligations of the International declarations on the abolition of Racial and ethnic discrimination (Hrea.org, 2003). In wrapping up, culture is an aspect of the environment both touchable and intangible including languages, social institutions, and symbolic systems. It is also either explicit i.e. employment, marriage, education and laws or implicit which include norms- undeclared rules oiling social interaction. Culture affects our behaviour and through it we can understand ourselves better, as it is both an individual and social construct. Consequently, culture does change from time to time and among the contributors to this change are culture assimilation, language and economic status universality, and deliberations by organisations such as UN to prohibit racial or ethnic based discrimination. It is also apparent that a culture is not a creation the nature, but rather the creation of our identities done by different people in different societies. Ethnicity and the presumed racial groupings are largely chronological and cultural constructs. They are first and foremost social rather than genetic phenomena. That is not saying that they are not existent. To the contrary, ethnicity and races are very real in the contemporary world, and as construed in the discussion herein, we ought to look into the culture and societal interaction rather than from a biological viewpoint. 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