From the notes:
- Culture are "templates for living"
- Tells us who we are, what groups we belong to and, how we live our lives
Even without me saying, most of you guys already have an idea on what culture is, no? Without further ado, let's jump straight to what I want to touch on, which is, the characteristics of culture, NOW! :)
The characteristics of culture include:
- Culture is learned.
It is obvious that we, as humans, cannot choose which family we want to be in before we're born. In the family in which we're destined to be in, has its own existent family members (e.g. grandparents, parents, siblings etc) and their way of life. Hence, after becoming a member of the family after birth, the adults/members of the family slowly nurture us and mould us into the way (in their opinion) they were brought up when they were young. In another way, teaching us about their beliefs(e.g. religion), habits(how things are managed at home) and many more, that can be ranged from the dialect or language they use for communication (e.g. some of us may speak Cantonese at home), the way they communicate in the family(e.g. verbally and non verbally/mannerisms) where certain gestures or usage of words can only be understood within the family and not by others, etc.. that we know nothing of initially then slowly as we grow up, we find certain character traits of ourselves resembling those of our parents. Well, do yours? Perhaps this is due to the fact that we learn how things are done in our own family as we grow up and every family's culture differs from one antoher. Hence, we can only say our family work in "similar ways" but not the "same". 'Cos no family are exactly identical. Am I right to say that? :P
=> In short, we follow the set of rules that are set within our family and abide by them as we grow up.
- Culture is shared.
Like, duhhh, isn't it! I do not know if I'm right to say that no culture belongs to an individual. It is rather shared among many people of a certain part of the world in which the culture belongs to a single community and not to any single human being. Am I right or wrong? Reason for me saying so is due to the fact that though our family may be different in one way or another, there are similarites that we resemble on a whole with other families. For example, people in the same religion group such as Christianity, have common beliefs and teachings written in a bible where their personal set of rules are adopted from there. And since bibles all have the same content, likelihood will be that there can be more than a family who form the same set of values and beliefs. However, the only difference would be that the method those values and beliefs are brought to the people around them, varies.
- Culture is dynamic.
Culture is dynamic becuase people are dynamic! Since a culture consists of people that belong to it, it is constantly reformed by those individuals. Alright, do you have any "policy" or "rule" at home that you do not like?If yes, the probability of you bringing the "policy"/"rule" to your next generation is almost zero. Why? 'Cos when you start your own family, YOU and your partner will be the ones who'll be setting the rules! And since you and your partners come from different families, you guys will compromise with one another with some rules from his/her family and some rules from your family. Like this, a "new" culture is formed. Agree?
- Culture is multifaceted.
Just as there're dynamics to one culture, it is also true that a person can belong to more than one culture at the same time. That is to say, culture is multifaceted. As each individual, we are never defined by just one characteristics, isn't it? In addition, we belong to many different cultural groups at any given time.
Take me for an example! I am an undergraduate student and I am also a member of my family, a Chinese, a musician, a female, (the list can just go on and on)... I can easily fill this page with a list of different culture groups I belong to and so can you! Like me, a friend of mine, is too, an undergraduate, member of his own family, a musician, a female and so on.. However, though we share the culture of musicians, she belongs to the subculture of the guitarists ,while I belong to the subculture of the pianists. See the difference? And yet we all belong to the subculture of the performing group in which we perform!
- Cultural identities are overlapping.
Lastly, the overlapping of cultual identies simply refers to the core values that are very important to us in a particular way and using your itto justify your own actions or behavior. A silly example would be when asking someone why he or she does something in a particular way, he or she would probably answer you, "'cos I'm brought up this way what~~". (I'm not sure of how true this is though.. just my own personal thought) Hee :P
After discussing about the characteristics of culture, does it help you understand why sometimes you behave in a particular way and not the other? Or, why the way you respond to something may be different from your friends? Mmmmm, though not culture may not be entirely the reason to your behavior, but it does play a big part right? :D
Yeah you're right, culture plays a major role in influencing our behavior.
ReplyDeleteAn example of a Singaporean behavior that i shared with fellow Singaporean is bilingualism.
However, like many Singaporean, my mandarin and english are mixed of singlish. Compared to native english and chinese speakers, my languages are pathetic :/
Although it is not something that i am extremely proud of, it makes me miss home whenever i hear that familiar accent in a foreign country.
Hi Dumb dumb!
ReplyDeleteWell defined post about culture. You managed to explain each point well! Well done! =)
However, about this point you stated in 'culture dynamic'...
"do you have any "policy" or "rule" at home that you do not like? If yes, the probability of you bringing the "policy"/"rule" to your next generation is almost zero. Why? 'Cos when you start your own family, YOU and your partner will be the ones who'll be setting the rules!"
I don't think the probability of bring it to the next generation is zero lei. Although it is true that when you start your own family, you and your partner will set new rules to the house, however, you do see some rules that your mummy & daddy used to use it on you will be used on your child in future. Even some cultures your parents used to have will be seen on you too. Erm, at least that was what I see and heard from some couples around me la. haha!
Well other than that... It's nice reading your blog! Little examples given have elaborated each points well. =)
Cheers,
ShiWen
(remember-my-blog.blogspot.com)
culture. it is diverse. i guess if i started takling about various different cultures there'd be no end to this post.
ReplyDeletei'd say the cultures around the worldare slowly mixing. it's like a large melting pot of culture. take singapore for example. we have many dfferent races, mainly the chinese, malays, and indians. because we live together, our cultures mix around here and there. perhaps, a fusion of styles.
which may not necessarily be a bad thing.
Yeah, culture does play a big part in how we act.
ReplyDeleteEspecially when you say that culture is overlapping...look at Singapore's rojak mix of people from all ocver the world! Culture is something that we are all connected to that gives us an identity-although we may not always be proud of it, but it also gives us comfort to know that there are people like us out there.