Culture Characteristics:
Culture has many definitions and it affects everything people do within their society, these effects influence the individual’s ideas, values, and attitudes and normative or expected patterns of behaviour (Hall, 1976). Culture cannot be seen as a genetic inheritance and can’t exist on its own, rather it is values shared by members of a society (Hall, 1976). According to Kelleher, H. (CEO of Southwest Airlines) culture is what people do when no one is looking, for example, it is how individuals engage within societies and how this can have an impact on others and their behaviours (Armstrong, 2005). Similar to West Europeans values, Finland’s values are based around the same democratic approach, self-determinism, and equality for women and work ethic which provides a more legitimate society that engages modestly with its people (Lewis, 2005). Notably, the Finish culture is of high commitment which features a society of high cohesiveness and people eager and committed to complete action chains (Hall, 1976). Furthermore, in Finland an individual’s word is his or her bond and a promise for others to take, this is important to note when planning or doing business with the Finns (Lewis, 2005). Another Finish cultural characteristic to be aware of is they believe in doing one task at a time and carrying out these responsibilities in a modest manner, additionally Finns continue to have difficulty boasting about themselves and find it considerable impolite
I read the article ‘’ Happy in Helsinki’’ written by Christine Gemmink, Canadian who game to Finland to study her master’s degree and to be with her boyfriend. Writer seems to be happy living in Helsinki. She says that everyone she meets are friendly and helpful. She also says that she is amazed how well and happily people do their jobs. She also describes Finns as genuine in a way that she hasn’t seen in many other cultures.
People who travel abroad seem to enjoy sending back reports on what people are like in various countries they visit. A variety of national stereotypes is part and parcel of popular knowledge. Italians are said to be "volatile," Germans "hard-working," the Dutch "clean," the Swiss "neat," the English "reserved," and so on. The habit of making generalizations about national groups is not a modern invention. Byzantine war manuals contain careful notes on the department of foreign populations, and Americans still recognize themselves in the brilliant national portrait drawn by Alexis de Tocqueville more than 100 years ago.
Every day we use our culture. Whether it be to argue claims, express opinions, or make decisions, culture plays a part in each area. Culture is who we are, one’s identity, its extent is enormous over our views and actions. A person grows up surrounded with culture at a young age. This can affect how they learn and what they learn.
Knowing how to interact with people of other cultures has become an increasingly important issue as international communication and travel becomes more common. With more interactions between cultures, cultural misunderstandings become more common. The satirical book Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb attempts to address this issue, pointing out what people often do wrong. Fear and Trembling is a story which follows Amélie, a young Belgian woman who goes to work for a Japanese company and struggles to fit in, committing many cultural faux pas along the way. Nothomb uses contrasting sentence structure between Amélie 's thoughts and her dialogue and actions to demonstrate the way that Westerners often ignore other cultures despite knowing better because they view themselves as more important.
What is the importance of teaching multicultural tolerance? Holtman, Diane. " Culture in the Classroom." Culture in the Classroom. Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d. Web.
According Ballentine and Roberts (2015:81) culture consists “of ideas and “things” that are passed on from one generation to the next in a society-the knowledge, beliefs, values, rules or laws, language, customs, symbols, and material products (such as food, houses, and transportation) that help meet human needs. Culture provides guidelines for living” Ferrante (2011:60) defined culture as “way of life of a people, more specifically the human strategies created for adjusting to the environment and to those creatures including humans that are part of that environment”. In other words culture refers to the inclusion of both material and nonmaterial components that provide guidelines for the member’s behaviour. Learning and understanding our culture puts our social world in an understandable framework, providing a tool that we can use to
Most important, this model allows for investigation of clients ' level of conformity and idealized identification with the dominant culture as well as their rejection of their own culture.”
Project 1 World Cultures Marko Jocic The City of Belgrade 1. Geographical Elements Belgrade is the capital City of Serbia, it’s located southeast of Europe and is one of the 29 regions in Serbia. It has a population of about 1.7 million and is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. Belgrade is the economic center of Serbia, over 21% of the population from Serbia lives in Belgrade and it covers 3% of the country’s territory.
I learned the key to positive relationships and the cause and remedies of defensiveness. In module number twelve, I wrote three letters to three different people and observed their reactions, and I noticed that there are a lot of difference in their response because of the culture difference and the different relationship between us. Finally, I want to say that this interview assignment really made a difference in my future human service professional training. It helps me to guard against inaccurate perceptions of people and be prepared to gain multi-culture competence in the future.
Culture refers to the common beliefs and behavior patterns of a group of people. In an organizational setup, it refers to the common values that the stakeholders of the organization share, and impact their decision-making process. According to Cristina De Rossi, “Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones, and a million other things” (De Ross, 2015). Western culture refers to the cultures that are heavily influenced by European cultures, and has its roots from the Greco-Roman cultures as well as Christianity and spread through immigration to other parts of the world. Eastern culture is the culture of the Eastern Asian countries including China, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, and India (Zimmermann, 2017).
Culture is a belief system commonly shared in the society. Every human in a society share a common value and behavior distinct from other people, depending on where one was raised. That being said, I like to compare and contrast three divergent characteristics and describe which one I hail from. Individualist versus collectivist Individualistic culture is a culture where people cherish liberty and privacy and often trust their personal ability to emerge victorious and successful in their endeavors. Whereas, in a collectivist culture, people emphasizes the collective need of the society in general.
° Culture Is knowledge and the features of a special number of people, defined by everything from religion, language, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. ° An individualistic society is determined by the values of autonomy and liberty, while a collectivistic society depends upon consensus and group harmony. The values in every single society play an involved part in developing communicating designs to get a company message targeted at every particular audience. ° U.S. teenagers spend about three fifths the quantity of time on schoolwork that East Asian teenagers do and four fifths the time that European teenagers do.
For example, consumers are becoming more similar in terms of lifestyles, income, aspirations and education. In order to clarify my statement, I would like to apply Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture. Masculinity and femininity is one of the Hofstede’s dimensions. The dominant values of masculine culture are achievement and success while dominant values in feminine cultures are caring for quality of life and others. The country that possesses the most masculine culture is Japan, which scores 95 (Geert and Mariake de, 2002).
Cultural identity plays a very vital role in cross cultural communication, people from a particular culture communicate with partners and employees from many different cultures and in this situation every individual strives to keep their cultural and individual identity. According to Gardiner and Kosmitzki, identity is defined as “a person 's self-definition as a separate and distinct individual, including behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes” (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2008, p. 154). Also, Ting-Toomey defines identity as a "reflective self-conception or self-image that we each derive from our family, gender, cultural, ethnic, and individual socialization process"( Ting-Toomey, 2005). Both definitions bring out the generalisation of cultural identity
Culture is a very vast and complicated term. As a result, it is extremely difficult to provide an all encompassing definition. In layman terms, culture is used to refer to symbolic markers used by societies to differentiate and distinguish themselves from other societies. These symbolic markers range from religion to customs and traditions to something as basic as language and clothes. Basically culture is a way of living.