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What Is Cultural Competence?

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CULTURAL COMPETENCE HANDOUT
In real life, we met people from different destinations of the world and talk to them. We plan for having normal friendship or business partnership but still cultures might be the limit. In this case, it is good to find how we learn to interact with people whom we don’t share the same culture.
What is Culture?
According to Zimmermann, culture is defined as a set of characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts (Zimmermann, 2017). Each society has a set of behaviors each member should know and understand very well. They might have their own taboos, language, their own way of worship or way of dancing or singing. All these characteristics form a culture of a certain society. Anyone from outside of this society should learn to be acquainted with their culture to be able to communicate to them.
What is cultural competence? …show more content…

Cultural competence is defined as the ability of a person to interact effectively with people of different cultures, helps to ensure the needs of all community members are addressed (SAMHSA, 2016). In this context, cultural relativism has to applied. Cultural relativism means that the culture of a certain community should understood and interpreted in its own cultural context. If you are new in that community, you should not judge their culture based on the values and beliefs of one’s own. So, practicing cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values and

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