What is culture?

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What is culture?

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Some definitions

• Culture as Knowledge
• Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to
  interpret experience and generate behavior. --
  James Spradley,l anthropologist
• A word that means several different things
• National / ethnic culture (meanings and behaviors
  groups of people develop and share over time)
• Secondary or subgroup culture

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Elements of Culture

• HISTORY
• RELIGION
• VALUES
• SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
• LANGUAGE

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Characteristics of Culture

• CULTURE IS LEARNED
• CULTURE IS SHARED
• CULTURE IS TRANSMITTED FROM ONE GENERATION TO
  ANOTHER
• CULTURE IS BASED ON SYMBOLS
• CULTURE IS DYNAMIC
• CULTURE IS AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM

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Exercise
Using a blank sheet of paper, begin drawing as
many circles as you can think where you share
meanings and behaviors with a group of people.
For example
My faith group
My workplace
My ethnic culture
My home country
Mybook group
Myfamily
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Once youve identified some cultural circles,
select one that is quite defined and make a list
of some of the norms, values, and behaviors that
define your cultural group.Find a partner and
share your list of cultural circles. Spend time
describing the one circle you selected to
unpack.Decide whether or not you would have
an easy or difficult time entering each others
cultural group. Why are some more difficult
than others?
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Nitza Hidalgos Concept of Culture as an Iceberg

• Surface Culture

Surface level (Concrete)
Deep Culture
Unspoken Rules (Behavioral)
Unconscious Rules - Symbolic
Hidalgo, N. 1993. Multicultural teacher
introspection. In Perry, T. and Fraser, J.
(Eds.) Freedom's Plow Teaching in the
Multicultural Classroom. New York Routledge.
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Deep Structure of Culture Roots of Reality
the how and why

• Deep Structure Institutions carry a cultures
  most important beliefs (family, state, religion)
• Deep Structure Institutions and their messages
  endure
• Deep Structure Institutions and their Messages
  are deeply felt
• Deep Structure Institutions supply much of a
  persons identity (one of its most important
  roles for a culture is to assist a person in
  their sense of identity)

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Deep Structures of Culture
FAMILY definition and forms of family (nuclear,
extended), changing families in the US mixed
families. The family is the most basic unit of
government (Charles Colton). Functions of
Family teach socialization core values
worldview identity development communication
training gender roles individualism vs.
collectivism aging social skills HISTORY --
economic, social development of a region/grouping
of people
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• Surface Culture

Food, dress, music visual arts, drama, crafts,
dance, literature, language, celebrations games
Deep Culture
Courtesy, contextual conversational patterns,
concept of time, personal space, rules of
conduct, facial expressions, nonverbal
communication, body language, touching, eye
contact, patterns of handling emotions, notions
of modesty, concept of beauty, courtship
practices, relationships to animals, notions of
leadership, tempo of work, concepts of food,
ideals of childrearing, theory of disease, social
interaction rate, nature of friendships tone of
voice, attitudes toward elders, concept of
cleanliness, notions of adolescence, patterns of
group decision-making, definition of insanity,
preference for competition or cooperation,
tolerance of physical pain, concept of self,
concept of past and future, definition of
obscenity, attitudes toward dependents,
problem-solving, roles in relation to age, sex,
class, occupation, kinship, and so forth
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What sunk the Titanic?