What is Culture?
September 3, 2015Defining Culture
Global Village

•Growing awareness of ethnic
identity
•Growth of inter-ethnic hatred
Culture Defined

•Culture is Learned
Passed on from family
•Values
What is good or bad
Food for example Rats in the Kitchen
•Beliefs
What is true or false
•Norms
What is normal, proper

Hofstede’s Categories of
Culture (1994)
verbal and nonverbal language
socially essential collective activities within a culture
feelings not open for discussion within a culture about what is good or bad
real or imaginary people who serve as behavior models within a culture
•Expressed in mythic stories which can be subject of novels and literature
Maori Culture music video — can you identify unique Maori symbols, rituals, values, heroes, religious beliefs?

•Behaviors
•Way of Life
•Arts, Music, Literature, Film, Dance
•Institutions
•From Generation to Generation
•Group membership identification
•Subculture:
resembles a culture in that it usually encompasses a relatively large number of people; exists within dominant culture and is often a subdivision based on economic or social class, ethnicity, race, or geographic region
•Co-culture:
suggests that no one culture is inherently superior to the other coexisting culture; mutuality may not be easily established
•Membership groups
•Like cultures, subgroups provide members with relatively complete sets of values and patterns of behavior
•Exists within a dominant culture and dependent on that culture
•Occupation is one important subgroup
•Membership can be temporary
Culture influences our perceptions and behavior.
Cultural perspectives can be deeply ingrained and are sometimes not even noticed.
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Improving Intercultural
Communication
• You learn more about yourself when you study other cultures, which results in increased tolerance for diversity
• Know the parts of the Communication Process help us understand others
Ethnocentrism:
the common view that one’s own culture is central to perceptions of the world
and that all other cultures are judged in reference to it.
Cultural relativism:
the view that other cultures are merely different, not deficient.
Question:
Are all cultures equal?
DON RICHARDSON PEACE CHILD Part 1
”
“Culture in Breakdown”
Race and Skin Color
•Racial categorization is prevalent even in multiracial societies
•White Privilege: how a dominant culture empowers some, while denying others