Cultural Observation : Canova Beach

Since the inception of time, culture has been a very important aspect that has been tried to be preserved by many societies. Culture is the manifestation of human intellect as a whole and is shaped and reflected by many things. But, language shapes and reflects culture to an extent by directly correlating with changes in language influence the culture, but language rarely changes. When it does, it directly affects the culture. Many instances of changes in language that reflect in the culture can be seen as the characters begin breaking their usual cultural values and rules.

Have you ever wondered why someone act or feels the way they do? Many combined variables develops the way a person acts and feels. These variables come from learning, watching and experiencing different aspects of life. Ultimately, these experiences shape your behaviors and beliefs creating your culture. What happens when you go to another country, state, city or neighborhood? Do you act and behave like the people in these places? In the broad sense everyone acts the same in the regards to surviving; however, the details of how they live can be very different. When you go to a place outside you own culture, you will experience a change in culture. In this anthropology research, I will take an ethnologist approach to how my husband and step mother’s culture has changed within the American society. I will give examples of how these cultures are similar and different in regards to standard of living, education and employment opportunities. I will even discuss realities and problems that exit. All together I will give you a look at what it is like to experience a culture change from Mexico to America and the Philippines to America.

Culture embraces all the manifestations of social behavior of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the product of human activities as determined by these habits.

“Culture comprises traditional ideas and related values, and it is the product of actions” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952); “it is learned, shared, and transmitted from one generation to the next (Linton, 1945); and it organizes life and helps interpret existence” (Gordon, 1964).

143). She illustrates how essential culture is to anthropology and how anthropology helps to balance culture, as well as its ties with race. She considers culture and race as opposites. “Culture is learned and can change,” (Abu-Lughod, p. 144), and race is something inborn. Although she can only depict and explain the concept of culture, and how it has become necessary and not the reasons behind it.

The author begins the article by preparing the audience what is about to come. Telling the audience that cultures around the world have unusual customs and an anthropologist would even seek out a culture that has one when everyone seems to agree. He then talks about the Nacirema tribe and the extremities of their practices.

Anthropology is a combination of the words “Anthropos” and “Logos”. It simply means the study of human. Since the human beings have both biological and cultural characteristics, anthropology extensively studies including both aspects. However, culture is the most important thing in anthropology. The culture of a particular organization, group, or country consists of the habits of the people in it and the way they generally behave. The particular traits and characteristics are held in common within that environment and are passed on generationally. Based on the culture of the community, group, or country, we can deeply research and understand their life style. The best method that is used

Concept of culture- The learned, symbolic, at least partially adaptive and ever-changing patterns of behavior and meaning shared by members of a group.

Anthropology has come a long way in getting people to understand its unique work. It is not just for the benefit of the study itself, but it allows people to be aware of how other groups of people of different backgrounds and cultures view the world. Nowadays in modern society, ignorance and prejudice have made acknowledgement and understanding of one’s cultural identity harder because many believe that their ideals or methods of living are correct. Aside from culture, anthropology aims to reveal how people interact and are able to form coherent societies despite their similarities or differences. This can be done by “making the familiar strange and the strange familiar,” which means taking a familiar phenomenon and describing it to make

Cultural Anthropology is the culture change and difference in society. The idea of Cultural Anthropology is to understand cultural traits, language, environment, and historical background. Some aspects of Cultural Anthropology include foods relationships, actions taken, insight, style and approach on how humans were able to live or exist (also known as adaptive mechanism). (O’Neil, 2002-2012). Through research studies, Anthropologist are able to establish a better perspective of society as a

Within every society, and every community or settlement across the globe, there is undoubtedly one thing that they have in common; we identify this as ‘culture’. “Culture is a design for living” (Clyde Kluckhohn, cited in Halambros et al, 2013: 5), it describes the norms, values, beliefs, and practises of a people. The economic base and division of labour, political structure, religion, and strata of the Nama Tribe

In the first paragraph, I selected to use a quotation from one of the assigned textbooks of my course. Since, the definition of a culture has been vague and there are wide ranges of different definitions that were explained by many anthropologists. Therefore, first of all, I used one citation from the Kottak’s book to integrate and define the view of culture.

Culture directs human actions and the way person present themselves in the society in order to remain in the culture boundaries and accepted by the common community as a respected member of the society. According to David (2001) “Culture is often used to refer to ideas, beliefs, representation, behaviour pattern, practices, artifacts and so forth that are transmitted socially across generations within a group, resulting in pattern of within-group similarity and between group differences”. Moreover, culture is transmitted on an unconscious level from generation to generation, influencing day-to-day behavior and ensuring a people 's survival (Norma, 2001).

It is not easy to define culture because culture is too broad a concept, can be both abstract and specific. However, what is agreed is culture covers all faces of our life as well as direct the way we behave, interact and communicate. (Liu et al., 2011). One popular definition is that “Culture is the total way of life of a group of people, comprising of the deposit of knowledge, experience, belief, values, traditions, religion, and notion of time, roles, spatial relations, worldviews, material objects and geographic territory”. (Liu et al., 2011, p.57). In this essay, I will analyse components and characteristics of culture, and based on that grounds, I will reflect on my own culture-being a Vietnamese. Dodd (1998) considered that culture is made up by three layers which consist of the core layer, the intermediate layer and the outer layer. I will examine what values and beliefs are considered important in my culture. Those are components of the inner core. Then, I will take some examples of the intermediate layer (expression of cultural activities by manifestation) such as communication patterns, customs and festivals.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,