Question

Define culture and explain the terms related to culture.

Define and describe ethnocentrism and prejudice. Give personal examples to support your descriptions.

Explain the dimension of culture that research has focused on in the past 30 years.

Answer 1

CULTURE

Culture is everything that characteristise a community or a group of people. It is the knowledge and other factors like language, the social habits, art, music, food, religion and so on. It describes the beliefs of people and what they believe and what is right to their knowledge. It is usually acquired through the interaction from society and family and it is a complex system in which so many factors are interconnected to each other. It can also be said as the social behaviour of people and it is the central concept of anthropology.

Terms related to culture :-

1. Cultural anthropology :- It is the study of a social system. It emphasize on the culture change, the society's economic system and connection between people.

2. Cultures and nation :- Most often it is perceived that a nation shows a specific kind of culture but in real case scenario a nation contains many different types of culture. It shows the variety of characteristics of people. A culture influences the functioning of nation it can make a nation grow and regulate them to become towards development.

3. Subculture and co-culture :- Subcultures are the minority groups on the basis of race or ethics with have similarity in culture with other nations and within the nation or a larger culture. Co -culture refers to the interdependence or co-existence between different cultures.

4. Cultural universals:- When the traits or characteristics are shared by many people it becomes cultural Universals.

5. Culture and race :- Race is defined as the similarity among prople on the basis of genetics or biological features. These people share unique features that distinguish them from other race.

6. Culture and ethnicity :-Ethnicity can be defined as the variety of same group having same historical background, speaking same language, religion etc. It shows the relation between the people group.

ETHNOCENTRISM

Ethnocentrism is the act of believing that one's own culture is far more superior or better than any other culture that exist in the world. It is a judgement made by a certain group of people on which they judge other culture based on the values and standards like languages, religion, characteristics, way of behaving etc. It is a cultural ignorance.

Eg :- people in southern part of kerala use banana leaf to have their meals. And this is not accepted many other countries and they find it foolish to do this. They are not willing to accept the way other culture follows.

PREJUDICE

Prejudice can be said as an opinion that has been already made prior having a good knowledge about th situation, person or an object this may be favourable or unfavorable but mainly it would be unfavorable. It is perceived on the basis of one's gender, race, behaviour, ethnicity, nationality, value, religion etc.

Eg :- There are many areas where people prejudice. One of them is sexual discrimination. It is a discrimination between men and women or any other category of people towards other. In many organisation men are paid more than women who are performing the same level of work, which is an example of Sexual discrimination.

DIMENSIONS OF CULTURE

Culture is one thing that is perceived by people through interaction between people in the society. The main dimensions of culture that are studied in the past are,

1. Masculinity- Feminity :- It is used to define a specific characteristic of society. In this,  masculinity is a dimensions where men and women in a society is more competitive and aggressive even though women may be less than men. But in feminity dimension both men and women are soft and caring and dosen't resort to aggressive behavior. In this men are also sensitive.

2. Indulgence and restraint :- Indulgence is a state of mind where people totally engage in activities and are more to have fun and enjoy the moments. They try to keep themselves involved. In restraint is a culture in which people follow strict rules and control gratification.

3. Long and short term- orientation :- Long- term orientation is based upon the forward looking approach in which long term reward is to be expected. In short-term orientation the culture of people is something of which things are to be done quick and fast. In this employees expect quick reward and people tend to change jobs fastly.

4. Individualism and collectivism :- In individualism culture people gives importance to the individual rights and in collectivism people tend to co-exist with all the members in family or their group. They have more close ties between the people.

5. Power distance :- It focuses on to the extend to which the less powerful member expect and accept power is distributed unequally. Here if a person has experience with international culture he will realise that societies are unequal, and some societies are unequal than others.

These are the different dimensions of culture.