Cultural perspectives

Cultural perspectives

Cultural practices differ from one ethnic group, race, and national origins in terms of beliefs, practices, languages, behaviors, and expressions. It can be as simple as the way certain ethnic groups and races graduate their children from childhood to adulthood, business culture, cultural greetings, and Many Cultural others. They extend to complex cultural practices like social norms where behavior and thoughts are unique within a specified cultural group or social group due to shared beliefs.

Different ethnic groups have different cultural expectations. In most communities, for example, men are believed to be the breadwinner in a family while women are given the responsibility to care for the children. Most cultural practices are commonly shared by different communities, while others are unique for a particular community. Due to the erosion of informal education in today’s world, formal life is dominating all the ethnic groups and races, resulting in the erosion of most of the traditional beliefs.

In different societies, there are various ways of how people learn within their specific cultures and gather information to inform themselves about their world or other communities. Some of the perspective norms are taught at different stages in the growth cycle of an individual. Different people from different societies can interpret an occurrence differently based on their beliefs, values, and experiences that were taught and commonly found in their own culture. For example, a Chinese citizen will smile when embarrassed while, on the other hand, an American citizen, when embarrassed, will think that they are being undermined (Gibbons, 2016). All this depends on how the cultural practices of your ethnic groups define the events. To some extent, cultural practices can influence the relationships that people have with themselves as well as emotional, spiritual, and mental well-being..

It mostly affects the relationship of people of different communities existing in the same ecosystem in terms of their behavior and communication aspects.

Cultural diversity is an essential aspect in today’s society, where people of different races coming in and going out form one place to another. Toda countries, workplaces, and schools consist of different people from different ethnic groups and races. All these groups of people need to coexist and fit in certain areas, and this is made possible by learning from one another first by understanding one another to facilitate communications, collaborations, and cooperation. This helps much more in an understanding of different perspectives within the world in which we live and also dispel negative stereotypes and personal biases of a different group.

Discussion about cultural diversity education came into realization when problems arose from different social backgrounds. For example, consideration learning institutions, there was a need for students to communicate with one another, and therefore learning of different cultural practices was the only way out. This led to social work academicians and professionals to factor in multicultural practices in the academic curriculum so that student can learn other ethnic groups and their practices (Kim, 2017). For example, it will be very hard to communicate with a white man if you are from African countries. Therefore through the academic sector, Africans are now taught how to speak in English as a way of preparing him or her to be able to explore the world without communication barriers. Through the education sector, traditional norms and practices are being eroded to pave the way for a society where each and person regarding his or her race can fit and coexist together.

Explorations and spirits of adventure led to the erosion of some traditional practices. People met with different people from different parts of the world, and this forced then to change from one culture to another to fit in the native land.This diversity due to movement played a key factor currently because each and person who may be traveling from one place to another is psychologically prepared to learn compared to dark days where informal education was dominant to all communities. Through cultural diversity, tourism was enhanced to almost every country, and this help much in the improvement of foreign exchange hence boosting the economy. Some tourists end engaging in business activities after understanding their culture, and this leads to employment opportunities.

Through cultural pluralism, some of the minor communities are now accepted by the major communities. For example, when you look at the current political climates, politicians move from ethnic group to another in search of support. This majorly shows that the values and practices of the minor community are accepted by the wider culture, provided they are consistent with the laws and values of the wider community. Due to this, communities came together and formed a common way of governance where every person is presented regarding his or her race or ethnic group (Kotecki, 2017). Different nations also merged for business purposes despite differences in cultural affiliations. This led to the inclusivity of people of different ethnic groups hence enjoying the fruits of good leadership contrary to native days where communities were rivals of each other may be due to pasture secures and boundaries, thereby unable to access resources to and fro.In workplaces, there are different ethnic groups merged to execute the business objectives. Going back to the ancient days when informal education was dominant, we can now see an improvement from the current way of living. This has played a vital role in empowering the youths as they can now learn business ideas at their tender age that will help them to start their own business in the future.

When people flock together in the business industry also creates an environment where people can share ideas and challenges.Most business industries and workplaces are composed of people of different races and ethnic groups, and therefore different ideas are brought together for discussion, and this improves the performance of the business later lone profit margins increases. Through this social convergent, intermarriage of different ethnic group members can occur, leading to peace restoration. The creations of job opportunities have forced all the ethnic groups to adopt the formal education system as a way of preparing their young ones to compete in the job market. This competition has positively improved the educations sector as today; many learned people are undertaking serious research works on cultural norms and other academic fields.

During the past days, different religion had their way of beliefs. Some were worshipping idol gods, while others majored in traditional religion. For example, in African culture, it was believed that when rain falls during rainy seasons, it was because the spirits were angry, and therefore the village elders came and performed rituals to appease them. In western countries, Africans were seen as illiterate human beings and therefore were not accorded the respect a human being deserves. Some religions, like Hindi, Islamic, and Christianity, have different ways of worshipping and burying their colleagues. For example, an Islamic religion buries their colleagues immediately; the Hindus first cremate the bodies while Christians take time to eulogies the deceased before burying then inside expensive caskets and coffin.

In general cultural norms and beliefs played a vital role in the society we live in today. It dictates the rule of law as most community leaders are involved in setting policies to govern the community of a nation.

Through cultural teaching, people from different communities and ethnic groups have come together to do business and also in cultural competitions. Through this cultural competition, people learn a lot as they coexist with different people from different cultural groups.

This topic plays a vital role in the society of today as the current generation can learn from history books how ancient ages have coexisted in society. This equips them with knowledge of research as they progress with their education in higher learning. From cultural experience, one can, therefore, compare and contrast life today and the life back when cultural norms and practices dominated the world.

People differ not only in gender, race, social, and psychological characteristics but also in cultural perspectives and prejudices. Culture consists typically of stories, language, myths, norms, and rituals from which human meanings and values are subjected to from one generation to another generation. After growing up, it also includes the groups we become part of, maybe by a change in our economic status. This means that after acquiring the community, culture believes, and practices, it will not be enough, yet as during your struggle for economic life, one will be forced to join a certain class or group of people who are from different cultural societies.

For example, considering the traditional African way of life and that of western countries, we see that their beliefs were different. Before Christianity came to Africa from western countries, Africans were divided into different traditions beliefs of worship; for example, Kikuyus were worshipping under trees, whereas other African communities believed worshipping on higher mountains. Christianity later dominated, and most African converted from their initial way of worship to Christianity way. They went ahead in the construction of the churches all over the African land, where preaching was now being done through bibles. Christianity’s way of worship gained more value as it brought people of the different ethnic groups together and also the need to let to formal education where every ethnic group can understand one another. Africans later lone shows a need to embrace the bible way of teaching rather than dwelling on topof mountains and under trees for worship.The biblical way of worship from western countries later dominated the continent of African, and up to date the there are few numbers of communities remaining in traditional way worship.

After Christianity venture into African content, Islamic religion also came with their own beliefs of worship. Christianity and Islamic theology, therefore, shined all over the Africa continent. From these two religions, each one its own beliefs in the worship, and therefore any effort to convince participants from either side to merge into one group can’t yield results (Roccas, 2017). All Islamic followers’ beliefs in Koran as their holy book while Christians on their way go with the bible. Due to these contradictions, Africans were further divided into Christian groups and Islamic groups. Each of these groups beliefs to be more powerful than the other because up to date there is no effort done about merging the two religions into one due to their differences in beliefs.

During circumcision ceremonies, Africans spent days and night dancing and taking beer as a way of celebrating the young adult as he or she graduates from childhood to adulthood. The process was taken very important as the victims were subjected to traditional lessons throughout the healing process. They were also subjected to heavy meals as a way of preparing them to be strong warriors in society. Contrary to this was the western culture, where circumcision was not heavily valued like in African tradition. In western countries, the victims were subjected to a high level of medical care during the process, and there were many ceremonies like in African tradition (Gibbons, 2019). The healing process in western countries was not as painful as medical care was the way to go.

Later after the venture of formal educations in the African continent, the traditional way of initiation started to lose value as some of the people show it as an unhygienic choice.As many people continued to get a formal education, the traditional way of circumcision loosed value and later medical way was seen as the best way to go as the victims will be subjected to better medical care. Hospital circumcision was also ruled out as the best way to prevent boys from undergoing the process from contradicting diseases (Kertzer, 2018). Also, those who underwent hospitalized circumcision were considered to be more elite than those who underwent the traditional way. Later the healthy bodies advised on the importance of formal initiation process, thereby overpowering the informal process of initiations.

From the cultural lessons practiced and taught within us, there is a need to be cautious as some of this may not be of benefit to society and to the generations to come. For example, in the way of life was not of economic importance as most of their beliefs were associated with the community rulings. There was no room to understand what other communities were doing, and therefore, the level of illiteracy was dominant from one ethnic group to another.

Considering the African tradition, for example, boys were taught how to offer security to the society while girls were, on the other hand, taught how to prepare food and traditional porridge. These cultural norms are of much importance up to date as it still dominated in most areas of the continent. Security is important in today’s world, where insecurity rates are rising day after the other. Therefore to secure ourselves and the entire community, some of these cultural norms and teachings should continue to dominated and passed from one generation to another (Assmann, 2018). Domination of western practices and teachings in the African continent played an important role not only in eroding some of the unhealthy African practices but also in bringing formal education where people of different ethnic groups can coexist. In governance, on the other part, it incorporated together different cultural norms and beliefs from different ethnic groups for inclusivity in the ruling.

References

Assmann, A. (2018). Wholesome knowledge: Concepts of wisdom in a historical and cross-cultural perspective. In Life-span development and behavior (pp. 187-224). Routledge.

Gibbons, J. L., & Poelker, K. E. (2019). From a Cross‐Cultural Perspective. Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, 190.

Kertzer, D. I. (2018). Generation and age from a cross-cultural perspective. Aging from birth to death (pp. 27-50). Routledge.

Roccas, S., & Sagiv, L. (Eds.). (2017). Values and behavior: Taking a cross-cultural perspective. Springer.

Gibbons, J. L., & Poelker, K. E. (2016). From a Cross‐Cultural Perspective. Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, 190.

Kim, H., & Stepchenkova, S. (2017). Understanding destination personality through visitors’ experience: A cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 6(4), 416-425.

Kotecki, R., Maciejewski, J., & Ott, J. (2017). Between Sword and Prayer: Warfare and Medieval Clergy in Cultural Perspective. Brill.