Our families are like unique cultures. Each culture has its own way of communicating, arguing, eating, sharing, and showing affection. Most cultures remain intact by passing along their nuances, habits, and sayings for hundreds of years, with only slight variations occurring within each generation. The same is true for families.
When two people get married, it can be like a clash of cultures. Each person brings to the relationship their own unique way of communicating and dealing with conflict. As the infatuation stage wears off in most relationships, awareness of those differences become more apparent. This is around the time when couples start asking questions like:
* Why won't you talk to me?
* Why do you treat me that way?
* Why do you shut down like that?
* Why won't you do the things I asked you to do?
* What's wrong with us?
No matter how hard we try to be different from our families (mainly our parents), we will repeat many of their behaviors throughout our marriage. It is important for couples to discuss with each other how their families behave in different circumstances, and explore reasons why. Couples then need to talk about how they would like to handle things in their own relationship. This will most likely involve a lot of compromise and will be something that couples will work on throughout their marriage.
Part of having a meaningful and enjoyable marriage is having an awareness of each other's family culture. From there, couples can develop their very own unique way of communicating that incorporates positive aspects from both families, and hopefully filters out unwanted patterns.
source => http://www.familyresource.com/relationships/communication/different-cultures
7/21/09
Is society culture or is culture society ?
Not at all
As we mentioned before in the first pages culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
A society is a body of individuals of a species, generally seen as a community or group, that is outlined by the bounds of functional interdependence, comprising also possible characters or conditions such as cultural identity, social solidarity, or eusociality. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive culture or institutions. Like other groups, a society allows its individual members to achieve individual needs or wishes that they could not fulfill separately by themselves, without the existence of the social group .
To make it Claire; society made culture and role it .
As we mentioned before in the first pages culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
A society is a body of individuals of a species, generally seen as a community or group, that is outlined by the bounds of functional interdependence, comprising also possible characters or conditions such as cultural identity, social solidarity, or eusociality. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive culture or institutions. Like other groups, a society allows its individual members to achieve individual needs or wishes that they could not fulfill separately by themselves, without the existence of the social group .
To make it Claire; society made culture and role it .
12/13/08
Different Country, Different Culture
Living in a new country means experiencing a different way of life. This is very exciting and interesting, but it can also be a little challenging at times. The cultures of all countries are unique, which means that people who have grown up in different places will have different ways of behaving, different ways of thinking about things and different ways of expressing themselves. Before you travel it is useful to think about culture - and the things that are affected by it - as doing so will help you prepare for living in a new country.
Think for a moment about culture. What does it mean?
(Please go to the link on the right hand side of the page called "Culture Exercise". Take 5 minutes to write down your ideas and either print them or save them to your computer. We will consider a possible answer a moment...)
Culture is. . .. . . very difficult to define!!! One way of completing this sentence could be:
Culture is the values, attitudes, behaviours and beliefs shared by a group of people.
This means that culture is like a kind of glue that holds society together. We learn about the culture of our own society in a very natural way as we grow up - it is in the "do's" and "don'ts" about how we treat people, how we behave and what we believe in that we learn as children.
Think for a moment about culture. What does it mean?
(Please go to the link on the right hand side of the page called "Culture Exercise". Take 5 minutes to write down your ideas and either print them or save them to your computer. We will consider a possible answer a moment...)
Culture is. . .. . . very difficult to define!!! One way of completing this sentence could be:
Culture is the values, attitudes, behaviours and beliefs shared by a group of people.
This means that culture is like a kind of glue that holds society together. We learn about the culture of our own society in a very natural way as we grow up - it is in the "do's" and "don'ts" about how we treat people, how we behave and what we believe in that we learn as children.
12/12/08
Culture Shock
Any person, including an anthropologist, who goes to live in another society that is culturally very different is likely to initially develop culture shock. This is a feeling of confusion, distress, and sometimes depression that can result from the psychological stress that commonly occurs during the first weeks or months of a total cultural immersion in an alien society. Until the new culture becomes familiar and comfortable, it is common to have difficulty in communicating and to make frustrating mistakes in interactions with people in the host society. This is usually compounded by feelings of homesickness. These feelings can be emotionally debilitating. However, culture shock eventually passes and productive fieldwork can begin.
Gathering Data About Culture
In most ethnographic fieldwork, only a portion of the host society is actually studied intensively. Due to the practical impossibility of observing and talking at length with everyone, only a sample of a community is selected. If the sample of people is chosen carefully, there is an expectation that it will be representative of the entire community. This is referred to as a probability sample --i.e., a sample that has a high probability of reflecting the entire population. Choosing who will be in the sample can be difficult, especially at the beginning of a research project when the first contacts are made and the composition of the society and its culture are still poorly understood.
Usually ethnographers opt for one of three types of probability samples--random, stratified, or judgment. A random sample is one in which people are selected on a totally random, unbiased basis. This can be accomplished by assigning a number to everyone in a community and then letting a computer generate a series of random numbers. If a 10% sample is needed, then the first 10% of the random numbers will indicate who will be the focus of the research. This sampling approach is reasonable for ethnographic research only when there does not seem to be much difference between the people in the population. Since this is rarely the case, random sampling is not often used for ethnographic research.
A stratified sample is one in which people are selected because they come from distinct sub-groups within the society. This is essentially what the U.S. Census Bureau does in its national census every 10 years. One member from each family is asked to answer for the entire family. This approach may be used by ethnographers as well if there are distinct, identifiable groups of people in the society and the information that is being sought is not specialized knowledge such as the esoteric activities of a secret organization with restricted membership.
Most ethnographers rely on a judgment sample . This is a limited number of key people selected on the basis of criteria deemed critical to the research questions. For example, religious leaders would be the focus if research concerns religious beliefs and practices. Likewise, talking mostly to women would make sense if the research concerned women's roles within society. The judgment sample approach works best if good informants can be found. These are people who are not only knowledgeable about their own culture but who are able and willing to communicate this knowledge in an understandable way to an outsider. Not everyone has the ability to do this. The quality of data usually depends on the relationships with informants. Ethnographers try to develop a warm and close relationship with their informants. This makes it more likely that they will learn what the host culture is really like.
Usually ethnographers opt for one of three types of probability samples--random, stratified, or judgment. A random sample is one in which people are selected on a totally random, unbiased basis. This can be accomplished by assigning a number to everyone in a community and then letting a computer generate a series of random numbers. If a 10% sample is needed, then the first 10% of the random numbers will indicate who will be the focus of the research. This sampling approach is reasonable for ethnographic research only when there does not seem to be much difference between the people in the population. Since this is rarely the case, random sampling is not often used for ethnographic research.
A stratified sample is one in which people are selected because they come from distinct sub-groups within the society. This is essentially what the U.S. Census Bureau does in its national census every 10 years. One member from each family is asked to answer for the entire family. This approach may be used by ethnographers as well if there are distinct, identifiable groups of people in the society and the information that is being sought is not specialized knowledge such as the esoteric activities of a secret organization with restricted membership.
Most ethnographers rely on a judgment sample . This is a limited number of key people selected on the basis of criteria deemed critical to the research questions. For example, religious leaders would be the focus if research concerns religious beliefs and practices. Likewise, talking mostly to women would make sense if the research concerned women's roles within society. The judgment sample approach works best if good informants can be found. These are people who are not only knowledgeable about their own culture but who are able and willing to communicate this knowledge in an understandable way to an outsider. Not everyone has the ability to do this. The quality of data usually depends on the relationships with informants. Ethnographers try to develop a warm and close relationship with their informants. This makes it more likely that they will learn what the host culture is really like.
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