Who are you? What culture do you belong to?

What is culture?

‘Despite a century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990s no agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature.’ M Apte, The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2001).

Culture is shared by at least two people Large groups - national/country (or countries if migrated) Regional/ethnic/religious/language groups Gender groups Generation groups (child/parent/grandparent) Role group (student/teacher) Social class (education/wealth/occupation) Work organisation

Which means everyone is a member of several different cultural groups at the same time

A cultural group constructs an environment

A cultural group has certain behaviour patterns

A cultural group behaves the way it does because it holds certain ‘values’ which we see as:

Beliefs

Attitudes

Cultural meaning of some practices often lies only with those who are ‘on the inside’, for example some gestures and clothing might have different meanings to people from different backgrounds

How do we demonstrate our ‘cultural membership’?

Artefacts and Creations Values Underlying Assumptions Taken for granted Invisible Not thought about Visible but the meaning is not always understood Thought about, but not always visible Behaviours and environments produce Beliefs and attitudes generate Exploits of words and deeds are expressed as

Cultural Identity The way we know someone – or the way we want to be known - because a social ‘group’ influences the attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviours that are understood and observed

But Culture is not the same for all Culture is not a thing Not all members of a group have the same understanding of the group’s culture A person has or exhibits more than one culture Culture is not ‘custom’ Cultures change, die, are born anew