In American society, it is often difficult for immigrants to find their place in the vast sea of varying cultures an immigrant is thrown into. The stark difference between an immigrant’s home country and a new, foreign world often leaves a person adrift, unable to firmly pronounce for him or herself a singular identity due to pressures to conform to their new location. Oftentimes, individuals float along surrounded by other people who are experiencing similar situations. They create their own microcosms of culture, as exemplified by the ghettos and other historically minority-dominated communities across America. Author Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club notes the struggles that minorities face in such geographical areas and depicts them through
Firstly, I will discuss how the indigenous people are represented through the colonizer 's dominant gaze as the inferior Other and how this notion is used to assert the colonizer’s identity as the superior Self in America. The West Indies is a very different environment compared to Europe and the natives are unlike the European colonizer. Their culture, lifestyle and appearance would be considered alien, unusual and even primitive to the colonizer. And because of the profound differences between the colonizer and the indigenous people, between Europe and the New World, the natives are perceived by the colonizer as strange, peculiar, bizarre, primitive and overall different. Because the colonizer is unable to identify and distinguish himself
His father named Mohammad Taqi Shariati was a reform minded cleric and lived his life by doing lecture in his own religious hall (Bayat, a: 1990). His father strong advocacy for reforms in Iran had influenced Shariati’s intellectual mind the most. Despite their family including his father being shiites, the conservative Ulama of Iran accused his father as a Sunni Muslim and a Wahhabi (Abrahamian, 1982). Wahabbi the ideologue of Sunni Saudi Arabia, is Iran’s enemy in terms of propagation of religion due to some differences although both are Muslims. The major difference between Sunni and Shi’a is the issue of who succeeds Prophet Muhammad.
There are many examples of this idea within multiple texts and resources. In the poem “Legal Alien”, by Pat Mora, the speaker was criticized for being a part of an opposing culture. The author says,” viewed by Anglos as exotic, perhaps inferior, definitely different,” and gives the implication that while the speaker is part of the American culture, she isn’t accepted because she also associates with the Mexican culture. This shows that the American culture produces people that resent Mexicans, only because of where they come from. Another example of where cultures put biases in place can be seen in the essay “Where Worlds Collide” by Pico Iyer.
My mother once told me, “Never make fun of, or stereotype others, because you do not know how they will take it or what they have been through.” This saying is an example of today’s problems because cultural conflict is a major issue in the world. Based on the text, discrimination, cultural identity, and stereotyping seem to be the most prevalent causes of cultural conflict. One of the most important reasons why there is cultural conflict is discrimination. Discrimination is when a person treats another person differently based on their race, background, sex, or ethnicity. In the poem, “Legal Alien” the author states how Mexicans do not view her as a Mexican and Americans do not view her as an American, so she feels like she does not belong
Though directed at society during the Vietnam War, and a later series on the war in Iraq, the same idea in House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home can be applied to society today and the conflicts in the Middle East. Media is still a very large influence on how well the American people understand the conflicts in the world. Like in the Vietnam War, society today is distanced from the contention that occurs in the Middle East. More or less, the American people live in impunity, not directly affected by global conflict. There have only been a few instances of conflict that have occurred on American soil, particularly 9/11, the Boston bombing, and various shootings.
It is because within these examinations, one can witness theories used in international relations and one can also see how these theories were created, from real life situations like this genocide. This film builds on the reality of conflict within a state and between states, thus exploring not only conflict but how the conflict is started and possible solutions, this is all the study of international
With the emergence of the global marketplace, cross-cultural differences are increasingly recognized as a key factor in successful marketing strategies (Lee & Harada, 2000). Prior studies conducted within various contexts have observed that tourist behavior is affected by cultural background (Chen, 2000; Crotts & Erdmann, 2000; Litvin, Crotts, & Hefner, 2004; Litvin & Kar, 2003). For example, cross-cultural differences have been found to affect the use of external information sources by Japanese, South Korean and Australian tourists traveling to the USA (Chen, 2000); the behavior of German and Japanese tourists traveling to the USA (Litvin et al., 2004); self-image in travelers departing from Singapore (Litvin & Kar, 2003); and the evaluation
Under the rubric of Commonwealth Literature, there is always a bewildering array of overlapping and intersecting experiences between ‘home’ and ‘abroad’. The ‘rootlessness’ which is central to an immigrant consciousness also connotes an underlying phenomenon of ‘give-and-take identity politics’ of a pre-defined identity along with the coterie of religious, cultural, racial, social values and norms thus become a site of hope, of a new beginning. All these issues come up in a unique fashion in One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This is unique from the perspective that unlike her other works where India is mostly viewed through the eyes of Indian natives, here in this novel there are some non- native characters who aspire to settle nowhere but in India with the hope of fulfilling their dreams which were otherwise lost in the materialistic soil of America. In One Amazing Thing, there are only nine characters and the plot is neatly developed around there lives and individual experiences.
Cultural encounters occur in a society that has been over crowded with people from different countries due to migration, war, economic recession. The most important part has been played by colonization because of which people from different cultures has flocked Europe and America. Due to which most of the European countries have become a home of immense variety of minority cultures. The reason to this is because when certain group of people settles in a new culture they try to adopt it and also attracts the host nation to adopt a bit of theirs. We can see many multicultural societies in Britain, France, and Belgium etc.