Culture Matters Lindsay Laprise

Understanding Culture CH.1  It is important to understand that what people do and say in a particular culture, whether it be yours or that of your host country, are not arbitrary and spontaneous, but are consistent with what people in that culture value and believe in. By knowing people’s values and beliefs, you can come to expect and predict their behavior. Once host country people are no longer catching you off guard with their actions and once you are no longer simply reacting to their actions, you are well on your way to successful cultural adjustment.

A different perspective  Once you accept that people behave the way they do for a reason, whatever you may think of that reason, you can go beyond simply reacting to that behavior and figure out how to work with it.

What is Culture?  Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another.  - Geert Hoftsteade  Culture is the shared set of assumptions, values, and beliefs of a group of people by which they organize their common life.  Gary Wederspahn

Comparing Icebergs  Culture is compared to an iceberg. The tip that you can see is all of the visible traits of one’s culture..like their dress, actions, food, social activities and language. The underlying of the iceberg is so much bigger, and includes all of the stuff that makes up culture in general! This is where the meat and potatoes of a culture is found: their thoughts on society, their outlook on life, educational morals, and religion and personal beliefs.

Important Points to remember  Because of universal behavior, not everything about people in a new culture is going to be different; some of what you already know about human behavior is going to apply in your host country.  Because of personal behavior, not everything you learn about your host culture is going to apply in equal measure, or at all, to every individual in that culture.

Conditioning  While conditioning occurs mostly in early childhood, adults continue to be conditioned as they acquire new behaviors throughout their life. The differences between the two are these:  In Childhood conditioning, infants and young children learn such basic activities of life as eating, walking, talking, dressing, bathing, etc.  In Adult conditioning, people learn new behaviors or new ways to perform already conditioned behaviors, as, for example, learning to use a Turkish toilet or eat with your hands rather than with silverware.

In the mind of the beholder  Culture is in the mind of the beholder. People looking in to a culture might find it intimidating or weird, but if you look at the factors that helped make this behavior up, getting into the “mind” of the beholder, you will see why they do the things they do.

Chapter 2: American Culture& Diverstiy  An important tool: KNOWING how your culture is different and the same as another culture.  People from a culture are in many ways the least able to see and recognize it! American’s can’t recognize their own culture!

Recognizing Values  No ONE American is just like the rest. HOWEVER, most Americans share the same value and belief systems. These beliefs permeate our entire Nation.

 The people who are not pleased with America must be those whose sympathies are fossilized or whose eyes have no power of observation. Such delightful and entertaining schemes for hoodwinking nature you never saw, such ingenuities for beating the terrible forces of the seasons, such daring inventions.  —Edmond Gosse The Life and Letters of Sir Edmond Gosse, 1884

Our Beliefs  1. Attitude Towards Age  Emphasize physical beauty and youth.  Fire older people to hire younger people for less money.  Judge a worker’s worth based on production, not seniority.  2. Concept of Fate and Destiny  You can be whatever you want to be.  Where there’s a will there’s a way.  The American dream is rags-to-riches.  3. View of Human Nature  Courts consider a person innocent until he/she is proven guilty.  People should be given the benefit of the doubt.

 4. Attitude Towards Change  New is better.  A better way can always be found; things can always be im- proved upon.  Just because we’ve always done it that way doesn’t make it right. 5. Attitude Towards Taking Risks  A low level of personal savings is typical.  You can always start over.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  A high level of personal bankruptcies is common.

Bottom line: Living in another culture makes you aware of your own culture!  The happy ending is our national belief.  Mary McCarthy

Jamaica!

How Jamaica is changing

My expectations of Jamaica  By reading this information, my expections of Jamaica changed a little.  I learned that they are a small country, a little smaller than Connecticut.  They have mostly mountains for terrain  Their population is 2,889,187  Their government is a constitutional parliamentary democracy and a Commonwealth realm.

And some more..  The Jamaican economy is heavily dependent on services, which now account for nearly 65% of GDP. The country continues to derive most of its foreign exchange from tourism, remittances, and bauxite/alumina  16.5% of the population is below the poverty line.  $1.613 billion is in exports.  They have 27 airports (does this seem high!?)

I am so excited…  I am so excited to visit Jamaica this upcoming Winter Semester! I have learned a lot of surface information about Jamaica and Can’t wait to learn so much more!!

My Resources!  df/introduction.pdf df/introduction.pdf  df/chapter1.pdf df/chapter1.pdf  df/chapter2.pdf df/chapter2.pdf  factbook/geos/jm.html factbook/geos/jm.html