We all have culture, since the human being is a cultural being par excellence. Without the values and knowledge that make up our culture we would not survive. We are the only species that comes into the world with almost no capacity for survival, that needs an environment that shelters it. In general, it is the family that gives us our “first culture.” We accept it with the objective of surviving and achieving social maturity and although we often question it near puberty, we always maintain a core of that family culture in our identity.
That is why when we talk about culture we have to understand what we are talking about, since we are going to communicate better, be more productive and avoid unnecessary conflicts.
Let’s talk about Culture!
We know then that we have our family culture as a base. To that are added cultural aspects that we “adopt” in the course of life and come to form our cultural identity. All people, without leaving the country or province, are constantly moving through intercultural spaces, many times this happens without realizing it or without consciously perceiving it. Within the family itself, intercultural situations arise, for example with in-laws of another ethnic origin or with younger generations and their culture so different from that of the older ones. Also at work we constantly interact with people from different professions. Many of them have a different education than us and speak another “professional language”, which distances us and complicates the relationship.
In the following lines we are going to see ways of seeing culture, which will help us understand it and use it to improve intercultural relations, which are almost all of them.
Let’s bring the lens closer to culture
Many times we say that someone – a friend or acquaintance – has culture because he or she masters a technical or artistic field. For example, because he or she knows how to play the piano or is an expert in mathematics. In this case, culture refers to something instrumental, to specific knowledge and skills, which the person in question has and is skilled at doing something, such as playing a piece of music or solving a mathematical problem.
The word culture has an instrumental meaning. It is a specific knowledge, which is used for a specific purpose. It allows us to achieve a goal or develop something through acquired skills.
In other cases we use the word culture in a different way. It is no longer defined by “what is done”, but by us ourselves. For example, when we say that a neighbour “has classical culture” or “has an Arab culture”. This is because she likes to listen to a certain type of music or her ancestors have passed on certain values (ethical, religious, etc.) and knowledge (culinary, language, etc.) to her.
And it is not only the opinion of one person that defines their culture here, there is a meaning held by a social majority, which can be a country, an ethnic group or an international religious group, etc. This meaning is often influenced by the media and politics and the scope of the word “culture” is determined by social knowledge or taste, which classifies a certain type of music as “classical or pop” and a group of knowledge and values as “European or Arab”. We take this collective value judgment and apply it to the neighbor to say what kind of culture she has, based on the music she listens to or what her grandparents cooked and what she still cooks.
The word culture here covers the definition that a social group makes about the culture, that is, the knowledge and values of another social group. In this case it takes on a social meaning.
Finally, we assign a value level to the word culture, which can be “high or low culture”, “popular or scientific”, etc., and we say that someone has a lifestyle that is “lacking in culture” or “has a bad/good culture”. This is where mechanisms based on social taste begin to work, since individual evaluation always has its roots in the collective. It is considered that there are high and low cultures, classical and popular, more or less distinguished, etc.
This is very common among people from countries with different levels of economic development. Culture is associated with the concept of “civilization” and “cultured” is considered to be that which is refined, that which is not native. On the other hand, what is indigenous, what is original, is considered “uncivilized” or “lacking in culture”, since they are popular cultural expressions or intuitive knowledge transferred from generation to generation without being so systematized.
In this last use of the concept there is an important social and political dimension, which can enable the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups, for having or not having a culture that is “desirable” for the majority. Here it acquires a political meaning.
In these three cases we saw that we used the word culture from the individual, but it has its roots in the larger dimension, in the social group, and it has political implications. Culture is a complex concept, which speaks of values and knowledge, of skills and artifacts, of behavioral tendencies, all of them more or less desirable for the social group and which precisely refer to another social group. This can bring about conflicts, since if we do not communicate in a culturally sensitive way about the values and knowledge of other people, that is, about their culture, we can be aggressive without wanting to be.
In order not to offend unnecessarily and not to exclude valuable people from our personal or professional circle, we must be aware of what we are talking about when we talk about culture and always be alert to the fact that criticism of another’s culture can arouse a lot of resistance and conflict, since it not only involves their current behavior but also has to do with their past and probably their future.
What do you think about this?
