I remember growing up when I was younger and listen to my granddad would often moan about how the English culture was being ruined by influx of immigrants coming into the country, bringing their own culture causing the English society to change over the years. As we would often watch the cricket being played, he would often say "that man would never play for Yorkshire" pointing out a man with Indian heritage. My granddad was old school and by his comments he meant, that only local Yorkshire men would ever represent Yorkshire and outsiders wouldn't ever be apart of that team. Looking back to those times, I don't think my granddad was aware of how our world was starting to change in regards to influxes of people from around the world migrating to different countries to settle, live and work.
The world we live in today is ever changing as many people are migrating away from their country of origin to a new country elsewhere in the world.Today over 214 million people live outside their country of origin. This is called globalization.The word culture has many different meanings, but was first defined by E.B Taylor as a culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. McCurdy describes it in his book as 'knowledge that is shared and that people generate behavior and interpret experience'. Because we cant see knowledge that is in people heads, a groups culture has to be inferred from its members behaviors and objects that people have produced. These two sources of evidence are called, cultural behavior and cultural artifacts.
There are many key attributes that can be identified when talking about cultural knowledge.
1. Culture is learned, not biologically inherited. Children learn their culture from their parents and group members. They will imitate what others do around them and are often corrected when they do something wrong. The same applies to adults when they find themselves in situations such as new groups or trying something new.
2. Culture is shared is the social knowledge, not knowledge unique to an individual. This can apply when a group of people speak a certain language and you don't. The distinction between shared and unshared knowledge is unshared knowledge is not shared with any other group members.
3. Behavior can be treated as an outcome of culture.People use their cultural knowledge to generate behavior. The way people greet each other changes from different cultures and countries such as America from shaking hands to china with the bowing of the heads.
4. If a teacher were to walk into class wearing a clown costume, the class would look very surpassed as it is not what is expected from the students of a teacher. We tend to judge actions as culturally inappropriately.when we enter any kind of social situation , we use our knowledge to identify where we are and what is going on so we will know how to behave.This is seen as Cultural interprets experiment.
When we do ethnographic research, we must be concerned about two types of research, which are Tacit Culture and Explicit Culture.Tacit Culture is the cultural knowledge people dont put into words.Explicit culture consist of cultural categories that are coded in language.Tacit cultural categories must must be inferred from observation as they are not named. People can be interviewed of simply listened to when discovering their cultural knowledge with Explicit Culture.
What is Ethnography? Ethnography is the process of discovering and describing a culture. It is the formal research approach used to a quire the cultural knowledge of a social group. It is often written but sometimes visually or orally presented, as a use to convey information of a groups culture to a larger audience.
Naive Realism is the unconscious belief that the way we culturally see the world is actually the way it is. For example: with our Western culture, we difene colors with different names such as blue and green, however, in certain parts of India, people interpret colors as one color. The reason it is call Naive realism is because you cannot assume that people around the world see and interpret the same things like you do. This can cause you to miss cultural differences and interpret them fro m your own personal perspective.
Ethnocentrism is the feeling that one persons culture is better then the rest. It causes one culture to judge the other culture. For example: the many people of Germany were influenced to think that there culture was the right culture and other culture groups such as Jews, Blacks, Gays and Gypsy's etc were not excepted and should be got rid of.Ethnocentrism makes us judge other people and cultures and so inhibits our ability to learn from it.
Up until to the 19 Century, many Europeans considered countries outside of Europe as lacking culture and were seen a barbaric and low down the pecking order. Up until WW1, 9/10ths of the world countries had been colonized by the European countries. Culture soon took a turn and focused on people who were put in categories for what they did for work, wealth, where they went, such as the ballet and if they read literature etc. This was called High Culture compared to the people considered low culture who enjoyed street activities, folk art and didn't earn as much money as the wealthy people. Years later low culture took a slight turn and changed its name to Popular culture although it is generally used to describe something that is popular in that time frame.
Today, you do not need to go to far to see the varieties of cultures that are ever present in any country. By 2042 the minority groups of America with become the majority group. You can look at this in a positive or negative way. Either way, the world is ever changing and you must learn to adapt to your surrounding. I think it is important to learn from all the different culture around the world so you can become more rounded as a person and not become a small minded person.
The video shows how different things offend people in different countries and cultures around the world
