Chapter 2: Culture and people

Question 1

It is difficult to define the concept of culture, therefore many defintions exist.
* All defintions have the following in common:

Answer 1

• culture is pervasive (alomtegenwoordig, doordringend) in human life & culture governs people’s behaviours.
• people use methaphors to describe cultures.

Question 2

People use methaphors to describe culture

Answer 2

for example: people see the world through a window/ cultural glasses,
culture is the luggage we carry, the air we breathe, culture is like the water fish swim in.

Question 3

Another metaphor: culture is like a web people have spun’’

Answer 3

Culture confines members to their social reality and facilitates their functioning in it: culture is product and process.
Culture provied context for behaviour

Question 4

Another metaphor for culture: Iceberg view from Hall

Answer 4

visible: above the surface
(symbols, rituals)
invisible: below the surface
(values, norms)

Question 5

Another metaphor for culture: culture is like an onion

Answer 5

Hofstede:
Symbols, heroes, rituals, values

Question 6

Another metaphor for culture: culture is like a software of the mind

Answer 6

Culture as hardwired program which needs to be installed

Question 7

Another metaphor for culture: culture is like a tree

Answer 7

Roots below the surface, hidden values, its dynamic

Question 8

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Culture may be defined as:

Answer 8

• The particular way of life of a group of people and the meaning-making process by which people make sense of their social world.
• Culture comprises the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, traditions, relgion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, world views, material objects, and geographic territory.

Question 9

Dodd’s model of culture, viewed as ‘‘layered’’ (like an onion)

Answer 9

Inner core of culture aspects: underlie and shape a culture and behavior in that culture
it consists of:
* History:
* Identity
* Beliefs:
* Values:
* Worldview

Question 10

History

Answer 10

carrier of cultural heritage, provides continuity

Question 11

Identity

Answer 11

a sense of ‘‘who we are’’ or ‘‘who I am’’

Question 12

Beliefs

Answer 12

what a culture believes as true or false

Question 13

Values

Answer 13

What a culture regards as good or bad

Question 14

Worldview

Answer 14

what a culture believes about nature and the working of the universe.

Question 15

Intermediate layer of culture

Answer 15

Observable activities as manifestations of culture.

• expressed in material objects, roles, rules, rituals, customs, communication patters, and artistic expressions.
  They reflect the behavioral and social rles and communication patters a gropu shares and agrees on.

* Popular culture: the daily interactions, needs and desires that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It includes practices pertaining to for example coocking, clothing, sports, arts, mass media.

Question 16

Outer layer of culture

Answer 16

involves** institutions of culture**, which are the formalized systems that structure and govern a culture or society.

• it includes relgious, economic, political, family, healthcare and educational systems and infrastructures.
• it comprises numerous aspects of a culture that are generally accepted and often sanctioned by law.

Question 17

Characteristics of cultue

Answer 17

1. Holistic
2. Learned
3. Dynamic
4. Ethnocentric

Question 18

Culture is holistic

Answer 18

All components make up integrated and interrelated whole. You need to look at all aspects (of an event) to fully understand a culture: none of the individual components makes sense on its own.

Question 19

Culture is learned

Answer 19

We are socialized into our culture: its learned through instruction (conscious learning) and culture is absorebed, e.g. through exposure to our envornment (unconcioous learning): it passes from generation to generation & is a lifelong process.

Question 20

Culture is dynamic

Answer 20

it is not fixed or static but dynamic: it changes over time, though influence from other cultures in contact or from changes in its enviornment (political, etc.) aspects of culture may change at different rates (inner core aspects are most resistant to change).

Question 21

Culture is ethnocentric

Answer 21

Means that our own culture is superior to other cultures: it is found in every culture. It builds barriers between cultures: it gets in the way of/ affects intercultural understanding.

Question 22

Emic approach to investigate culture

Answer 22

views each culture as a unique entity that can only be examined by constructs developed from inside the culture.

Question 23

Etic approach

Answer 23

Assumes that culture can be examined with predetermined categroies that can be applied to all cultures in the search for cultural universals.