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Culture is
a descriptive not an evaluative concept
1.
Inadequate
Conceptions
of Culture
There
are at least six mutually related ideas about culture that we call inadequate.
These ideas are often found in the writings and practice of individuals.
a. Culture is homogenous.
(-) it provides clear and unambiguous behavioral
“instructions” to individuals
(-) once grasped or learned by an outsider
b. Culture is a thing.
c. Culture is uniformly distributed among members
of a group.
d. An individual possesses but a single culture
e. Culture is custom.
f. Culture is timeless.
These
six inadequate ideas about culture are related and mutually reinforcing. Using
them, we argue, greatly diminishes the utility of the culture concept as an
analytical tool for understanding social action, in this case, conflict and
conflict resolution.
2.
Levels of Analysis and Fallacies to
Avoid
Culture-level measures can best be used to explain
culture-level variation; individual-level measures can best be used to explain
individual-level variations. Since most social psychological research is
conducted with individuals, there is a pressing need for more researchers to
use such individual-level measures, rather than relying on cultural-level
characterisations such as those provided by Hofstede (Bond, 1996b)
Triandis et al. (1985) proposed that in order
to avoid confusion between analyses conducted at the level of cultures and
analyses based at the level of individuals, we should use different but related
pairs of concepts. Their suggestion was that we use the term ‘allocentric’ to
describe a culture member who endorses collectivist values, but the point of
making the distinction is that there will also be a minority of such persons
individualist cultures.
3.
Culture and Related Terms
a. Culture
and Nation.
Nation is
a political term referring to a government and a set of formal and legal
mechanisms that have been established to regulate the political behavior of its
people. The culture, or cultures, that exist within the boundaries of a
nation-state certainly influence the regulations that a nation develops, but
the term culture is not synonymous with nation.
b.
Culture
and Race.
Race commonly refers to genetic or
biologically based similarities among people, which are distinguishable and
unique and function to mark or separate groups of people from one another. Race
can, however, form the basis for prejudicial communication that can be a major
obstacle to intercultural communication. Categorization of people by race in
the United States, for example, has been the basis of systematic discrimination
and oppression of people of color.
c.
Culture
and Ethnicity
Ethnic group is another term often used
interchangeable with culture. Ethnicity is actually a term that is used to
refer to a wide variety of groups who might share a language, historical
origins, religion, identification with a common nation-state, or cultural
system. The nature of the relationship of a group’s ethnicity to its culture
will vary greatly depending on a number of other important characteristics.
d.
Culture,
Subculture, and Coculture
Subculture is also a term sometimes used to
refer to racial and ethnic minority groups that share both a common
nation-state with other cultures and some aspects of the larger culture. Often,
for example, African Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Native
Americans, Latinos, another groups are referred to as subcultures within the
United States.
4.
Culture and Identity
Culture
is not the same as identity. Identities consist of people’s answers to
the question: Where do I belong? They are based on mutual images and
stereotypes and on emotions linked to the outer layers of the onion, but not to
values.
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