Challenge 4: How do we cope with cultural dilemmas in an increasingly globalized world?
There are certain concepts of culture. First of all we did a little brainstorming and collected ideas related to the concept of culture. Religion, values, traditions, norms, habits, moral, language, diversity, identity, history, rules and laws came into our mind when we talked about the concept of culture. We came to the conclusion that there is no precised definition, everybody has a personal definition on the concept of culture, every group of people or even every single human being has its own cultural understanding. Therefore culture does not seem to be very usefull and can cause harm. The evolutionary concept of culture is therefore linked to assimilation. In the 18th century people thought that some cultures were better and more right than others, especially some western cultures rank higher than others. Our teacher just gave us an anekdote, where she told us about some people who tried to find the stupiest clan in the world. They put the Pygmeas in the lowest and the Eskimos in the highest position. That had to be changed because they were western Europeans and they wanted themselves to be the most intelligend clan and therefore put themselves in the first position. They claimed that the goal of every nation should be to become more cicilized like western countries. The problem that occurs with such views is that we only see it from our perspective and from our point of view.
Concerning the relativistic concept of culture, it says that all cultures are equal, there is no more ranking among them. All are right in their own ways, culture is therefore a homogenic island it is not dynamic but static. Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human beliefs should be understod by others in terms of individuals own culture. These impressions are all based on concepts, therefore you should look at other cultures from the culture point of view. Concepts of culture stereotype people and describe them as being the same.
Is the concept of culture useful when we talk about human differences?
The concept of culture is not very usefull because it ranks people. I think that we as western europeans are used to rank people, we do that a lot. We have competitions in sports, in education in payment and in our life in general. But it is not very usefull to say that all cultures are equal, we have to try to understand other cultures and to defend stereotypes. But this understanding is some what impossible, because you can never be a different culture, you will always be the culture you´ve born in or you lived in your life. Therefore I think that you can just judge the culture you experienced yourself and lived. We can not say that nation and culture are the same, therefore we can´t ignore cultural differences. The concept of culture sometimes even feels like it is being used as an excuse for doing nothing about differences like poorness in some developing countries. This relates to challenge 6, which we talked about last week. The concept of culture seems to ignore individual differences of human beings. Culture is therefore fluid, concrete and dynamic.
Why is it important to be aware of and have knowledge about the concept of culture when working as a social worker or teacher?
I think it is important to be aware of the concept of culture because you have to know that you can´t judge children from their social background. You can´t say because of a certain name the student must be stupid because he is from a lower social background. In Germany we call it the "Justin, Kevin Komplex", it seems that boys who are called Justin or Kevin are coming from a lower social background and therefore won´t get a chance in school because they "have to be" stupid. If they are not you might even be surprised as a teacher. I personally think that this is really shocking and you can´t blame those children for their names and for their social background, everybody needs to get the same chances for their lifes and future.
In class we talked about the western model which looks like a "V", it means that there is a possibility of showing that you get more freedom the older you get. The opposite of this model is the "^" (the V turned around). This is the Arabic model, it shows that people get less freedom the older they get. Some teachers who know about these models, excuse the behaviour of parents and children with these models. I think you shouldn´t except certain given things without asking why.
What challenges do you see in the concept of culture?
I think the concept of culture is a challenge itself. We read a text in class "Body ritual among the Nacirema", it is a very cruel text about how weird the Nacirema live and their strange customs. But in the end we found out that "Nacirema" is just turned around and acutally means "Americans", therefore the text talks about ourselves. Who shave themselves, who go sun bathing until we get burned, who do operations to look younger or to have smaler noses and who hide pregnancy. When we read the text first we were shocked about that culture of that country, but when we talked about it later on we realised that this is actually what we do in the western countries. Therefore I think it is always important to proof your prejudices before you claim certain countries for being or doing something you find weird.
Further on we discussed different cases, where we were supposed to decide how we would react. I found the most interessting case a situation taking place in North Africa. You are invited for dinner which was prepared through a whole day of work by the wife of the headmaster of the school. You are sitting with the headmaster in a room eating while his wife eats in the kitchen. How do you react? In our group we agreed that we wouldn´t trie to change the situtation because this is their culture and the wife might even find it weird if you would ask her to sit with her and her husband in the dining room. Everybody would feel uncomfortable because this is just their culture. We as western europeans find that situation strange because we are used to eat all together on a table, men and women. But these people are not used to and who says that our way is better than their way of doing things. You can´t judge their culture. We just do it differently compared to them, but both ways have to be accepted. I think the challenge of culture is to accept different cultures and not to judge them by their different behaviour. Not to regard them as lower developed or poorer, because they might be richer in other ways. In their traditional values and their importance of their family, the love and time they can give their children. Every culture has its own good and bad parts. I just found it important to accept these differences and would therefore regard this as the morst important challenge of the concept of culture.
