Rememberings: The Roots of Our Voices
What is culture?
Spring 2010
Some definitions
Culture as Knowledge
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“Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and
generate behavior.” -- James Spradley,l anthropologist
Edward Hall's ideas and metaphors
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Culture is the medium we live in, like the air we breathe.
Culture is innate but learned (i.e. we are born with the physical necessity and
capacity to specialize our bodies, brains, hearts in line with cultural patterns.)
Culture is living, interlocking system(s)--touch one part, the rest moves.
Culture is shared, it is created and maintained through relationship.
Culture is used to differentiate one group from another.
A word that means several different things
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National / ethnic culture (meanings and behaviors groups of people develop
and share over time)
Secondary or subgroup culture
Nitza Hidalgo’s 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.
What sunk the Titanic?
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