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Intercultural Spr2006 Sess03

Some references relative to a question last time about having a Slavery Museum

US National Slavery Museum (opens in 2007): http://www.usnationalslaverymuseum.org/
Smithsonian Museum of Black History (the site has been selected: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/arts/design/31museum.html
Slavery Museums (other places): http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/slave.htm#Public1

Agenda

Collect questions
Answer questions from last time
Discuss sources of culture
Give assignment for next time

Sources of Culture

Where does our sense of culture come from
- The roots of culture
  - Growing up
    - Practice
    - Learning and Forgetting
      - The substrate quality of knowledge
      - What we forget still shapes us
        Who we are
        What we want
        What we believe
        What seems normal
      - Culture is, to a certain extent, what seems normal
    - Friends
      - The games we play
      - The things we talk about
    - Family
      - The routines we experience as "the way you do things"
    - Education
      - The subjects we are taught
      - The options we are given
    - Our experience of how our culture works
  - Media
    - Music
    - Television
    - Radio
    - Movies
  - Religion
    - Ways off acting and reasons for doing so
    - The things that connect religions are greater than the tings that seperate them
    - Note that the Kakayama and Martin article contradicts Moon here.
      - They make banket statements about Eastern religions
      - Incorrectly implying that Buddism and Hinduism are similar to Confusism
      - They are, in many ways, more similar to the Western Religions
      - Indeed, scholars find many references in Jesus words that resonate closely with Buddist philosophy
    - Note also that the miss the really big thing
      - All of these religions value the same fundamental things
        Truth
        Family
        Justice
In all of this, it is useful to differentiate Surface Culture from Deep Culture
- Surface culture is the pretty details
  - Music
  - Dress
  - Rituals
- Deep culture are the underlying forces that drive those details
  - The roots of the culture in human DNA
  - the roots of culture in the requirements of needs
  - The roots of culture in human behavior
    - Power
    - Selfishness
    - Repetition and Recurrence
- Somewhere in deep culture, we encounter values
  - Fundamental decision criteria that change little over the course of our lives
  - Its not that different cultures value different things
  - Its that even as they value the same things, they make different choices
    - Consider the Rokeach Value scales: http://foulger.info/davis/oswego/Fall2002/CommunicationEthics/valuesScale.htm
    - There are cultural differences in the importance of Freedom and Equality
      - Social Democracies tend to value both
      - Capitalist Democracies tend to value Freedom over Equality
      - Communist cultures tend to value Equality over Freedom
      - Dictatorships tend to value neither
        The same is true, in general, for police
    - Note that its not that we necessarily value equality any more or less than freedom.
      - It is that when we have to choose, we pick one over the other
    - The issue is not that value anything more or less
      - Its what we pick when we can't pick both
      - Wars are fought over such things
  - But they sometimes to value different things, at least to some extent
    - A Japanese Value Scale adds measures of Respect for Tradition, Honoring of Parents and Elders, Detachment, Humble, and Preserving Public Image
    - A Chinese Value Scale adds measures of FILIAL PIETY, OBSERVING RITES & SOCIAL RITUALS, ADAPTABILITY, HUMBLENESS, and PROTECTING YOUR FACE
  - Worldview is ultimately an issue of values

Notes From Moon article
- The visibility of culture
  - erasing culture with welfare reform
  - ethnic cleansing/genocide
  - erasing culture with ahistorical/acontextual research
- Variants
  - High Culture versus Low Culture
  - National culture
  - Regional culture
  - Social Class
  - Ethnicity
  - Language
- Our approach to culture can privilege
- Concerns
  - Effect of technology on indigenous cultures and developing societies
    - <the prime directive?>
  - Objectivist Approach (Gudykunst)
    - Dimensions of Culture
      - Individualism/Collectivism
    - Blanket stereotypes
- Ways of approaching
  - Culture as contested zone
    - Constant change ... construction and reconstruction
    - the role of communication in cultural life (Carey, 1989): a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.
    - by changing meanings, we change reality
  - Popular Culture
    - We can learn a lot about culture by watching media texts
    - The media texts we consume help to define us
    - The problem of "hate speech"
    - Corporate cooptation of cultural products
- Varying meanings of culture
Notes from Nakayama and Martin article: Worldview and Religion
- Fundamentally about religion as a cultural object
- But starts with a consideration of "worldview"
  - Elements of an individuals worldview
    - values and beliefs about how the world and human behavior should be
      - fundamental: we don't question them
  - Sources
    - Environment
      - Family
      - Friends
      - Grows from neighborhood to a wide world
      - Religion
    - Issues
      - Neutral descriptions of worldview
      - Things that make no sense to us
- Three groups of religions
  - Western (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
  - Eastern (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism)
  - Primitive (Indigenous, tribal)
- Three bases of comparison
  - Nature of God/conception of ultimate reality
  - Absolutism versus relativism
  - Origin and destiny of the world
- Comparisons
  - Nature of God/conception of ultimate reality
    - Western: Monotheism and duality
    - Eastern: Pantheism and continuity
    - Primitive: Interrelatedness of things
  - Absolutism versus relativism
    - Western: Absolutist: One truth
    - Eastern: Relativistic: Situational relativism; many truths; Ethics are absolutely desirable, but not absolute
    - Primitive: Relativistic
  - Origin and destiny of the world
    - Western: focus on beginnings and defined ends
    - Eastern: Circularity
    - Primitive: Highly variable
  - Beyond that
    - Western: Individual centered: Personal relationships with god
    - Eastern: Group-Centered: Importance of self and social relationships
    - Primitive: Highly variable
  - Emigration patterns have marbled the world religiously
  - Change breeds fundamentalism
  - Religious identity and national identity combine
  - Religion and Colonialism

A Chinese variation on the Rokeach Value Scales: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:j4RWNcnvj_sJ:www.hicsocial.org/Social2003Proceedings/Bryce%2520T.%2520McIntyre.pdf+rokeach+%22value+scale%22+intercultural&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&lr=lang_en
A Japanese Values Scale: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:y1Ab-zWkRwoJ:www.trinity.edu/org/ics/ICS-X-2001/ICS-X-2-Kapoor.pdf+rokeach+%22value+scale%22+intercultural&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4&lr=lang_en

-- Last edited August 27, 2008

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Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this page were written by participants on the Media Space Wiki, operated by Davis Foulger, and should be cited accordingly. For example (APA):
Foulger, D. and other participants. (August 27, 2008). Intercultural Spr2006 Sess03. MediaSpaceWiki. Retrieved on from http://evolutionarymedia.com/wiki.htm?InterculturalSpr2006Sess03.