Cultural Identity

1
Lecture 1

• Cultural Identity
• Ethnocentricism Cultural Relativity

2
What is Culture?

• Culture is
• in your head in your talk
• in your behavior deeply felt
• Culture is
• made up of shared experiences views

3
Time Capsule

• Imagine you are going to prepare a time
• capsule that will not be opened for 100
• years. You want to show people in the
• next century what your culture is like.
• What things would you put in it?

4
Culture is like an Iceberg

• Part of an iceberg is above the water
• and part is below the water.
• Surface culture visible
• Deep culture invisible

5
Artifacts
Values and Beliefs
Underlying Assumptions
6
Levels of Culture

• Macro-culture
• National
• Regional / Ethnic / Religious / Linguistic
• Micro-culture
• Gender
• Generational
• Societal
• Organizational
• Familial

7
Cultural Identity

• Cultural membership social identification
• Cultural identity affects expectations
• Relationships
• Activity
• Behavior
• Cultural identity leads to personal identity
• who we are ? who I am

8
Ethnocentrism

• Seeing our own culture as the center of
  everything Evaluating everything according to our
  own groups values
• Our groups way Other groups ways
• Superior Inferior
• Normal Abnormal
• Right Wrong
• Real Unreal
• Clouds our understanding of other cultures
  their patterns of communication

9
Culture Relativism

• Opposite of Ethnocentrism
• The idea that all cultures are of equal value
• Judging other cultures according to their
• own system/context

10
Discussion

• Which of the following do you agree with more?
• I consider myself an individual first and a
  member of a group second.
• I consider myself a member of a group first and
  an individual second.

11
Discussion

• What is your cultural background? (Macro Micro)
• List all the groups you belong to. Compare with
  your discussion partners. What similarities
  differences are there. How do the differences
  affect your
• personal/cultural identity?
• What are some things that you value because your
• culture values those things?
• Do you have any personal values that conflict
  with
• your culture's values?