Eps 1515: Cause we do it for the culture!
— The too lazy to register an account podcast
| Host image: | StyleGAN neural net |
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| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Fred Rodriguez
Podcast Content
Culture may include beliefs, traditions, languages, objects, ideas, behaviors, practices, values, or institutions. Being mindful of your diverse identities may help you to realize what it can feel like to belong to a culture group. When working with individuals of varying cultural backgrounds, it may be helpful to become familiar with the practices, values, and beliefs in their culture. For instance, learning about the languages spoken in their communities, practices for raising children, or religious traditions can help us understand and engage with individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds.
There are a number of ways that individuals can learn about the cultures of others while also building relationships. Many of us have been told that asking questions is nosy; but asking questions, when done with thought, can help you learn about people from different cultures and foster relationships.
Building relationships with people from different cultures, and often from many different cultures, is critical in building a diverse community powerful enough to accomplish meaningful goals. We can create neighborhoods and institutions where people make it their mission to work toward building lasting relationships and coalitions with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds.
In other words, while we have always lived in an ethnically diverse society, we are all operating in increasingly culturally diverse environments, and must be able to interact, relate, establish relationships, and function effectively with people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Successfully navigating our increasingly globalized society requires being able to understand and value diversity in its myriad forms, as well as effectively engage with and communicate with people of diverse cultures.
It can be natural to merge and mix cultures when people of different backgrounds are coming together and engaging. If you reflect on the people that you see and interact with on a daily basis, you might be more aware of the cultural differences around you.
When you are exposed to two cultures, you are likely to find aspects of each you enjoy, as well as others that you dislike. As much as you can, try to suspend judgement until you have understood how the parts of the culture fit together to form a cohesive whole.
When done right, appreciation for cultures leads to creative hybrids that merge cultures. When aligned appropriately with individual values, motivations, and needs, cultures can release enormous amounts of energy towards shared goals and cultivate the organizations ability to flourish. Over time, the organizations leaders may also shape the culture, either through conscious or unconscious actions . We have also suggested ways culture can help leaders drive change and create organizations that flourish in even the toughest times.
Much like the definition of a new strategy, creating a new culture must start with analyzing your current culture, using a framework you can talk about publicly across your organization. Our integrated culture framework can be used to discuss the current and desired style of culture, as well as differences in the way senior leaders are operating. For instance, to improve our cultural competency, we may want to ask members of the culture group open-minded, open-ended questions, or to seek additional information, for example, IAd love to know more aboutA.A.A. Also, making efforts to identify verbal and nonverbal behaviors that certain cultures might find inappropriate can create inclusive environments.
In addition, mass culture, as opposed to folk culture or higher culture, provides individuals the opportunity to modify the predominant attitudes and behavioral norms, as we will see. Popular culture attracts individuals because it provides opportunities both for personal happiness and communal bonding. Moreover, rooting for your sports team or your favourite athletes is one way that any person can be a part of popular culture, as I and Tim Delaney explain in our new book, The Sociology of Sports.
The line is drawn when the dominant cultural group uses elements from the non-dominant group in ways the non-dominant group perceives as exploitative. A person of color may face discrimination for having a haircut related to his or her culture, whereas you, as a member of a dominant group, may be able to get away with appropriateing the same haircut, making it hip, and never understanding the experiences that contributed to the invention of the haircut in the first place. The most glaring example of cultural vilification is blackface, which originated as a way of demeaning people of color for having certain undesirable personality traits.
In this sense, Cultural appropriation is a multilayered, nitty-gritty phenomenon, one that many people might struggle to understand--or might not even recognize they are doing it themselves. Many people are surprised when they feel the effects of cultural shock, and it may help to recognize that what you are experiencing is actually pretty normal. The obvious things that hit you right away upon arrival, like sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, every culture has unspoken rules that influence how people relate to one another.
If a young person sees their parents having relationships with people in their dominant culture, this may help them to feel like their own family is accepted. We have to be accepting of the differences in cultures, and we need to try to help young people feel like they can have two worlds - not that they need to abandon one set of values in order to embrace the other.
People who lived once in homogeneous little villages or farms are finding themselves in busy cities marked by greater cultural diversity. Most people were scattered across smaller cities and rural areas--conditions not conducive to mass culture.