Culture

Culture

Culture is a modern concept based on a term first used in classical antiquity by the Roman orator Cicero, culture animi. This non agricultural use of the term culture re appeared in modern Europe in the 17th century referring to the betterment or refinement of individuals, especially through education. During the 18th and 19th century it came to refer more frequently to the common reference points of whole peoples, and discussion of the term was often connected to national aspirations or ideals. Some scientists such as Edward Tylor used the term culture to refer to a universal human capacity.

In the 20th century, culture emerged as a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. Specifically, the term culture in American anthropology had two meanings,

The evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively,

The distinct ways that people, who live differently, classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively

Hoebel describes culture as an integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not a result of biological inheritance.

Distinctions are currently made between the physical artifacts created by a society, its so called material culture, and everything else, the intangibles such as language, customs, etc. that are the main referent of the term culture.

Etymology

The modern term culture is based on a term used by the Ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations, where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or cultura animi, using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleological as the highest possible ideal for human development. took over this metaphor in a modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use and that of many writers after him refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human.

The term culture, which originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meanings in the writings of the 18^th century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau critic of modern liberalisms and Enlightment. Thus a contrast between culture and civilization is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Two primary meanings of culture emerge from this period: culture as the folk spirit having a unique identity, and culture as cultivation of waywardness or free individuality. The first meaning is predominant in our current use of the term culture, although the second still plays a large role in what we think culture should achieve, namely the full expression of the unique or authentic self.

Change

Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global accelerating culture change period, driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors.

Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structure and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change.

Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural modeals, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.

Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce or inhibit social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something moves from one culture to another. For example, hamburgers, fast food in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. Stimulus diffusion refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. Direct Borrowing on the other hand tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.

Acculturation has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation and transliteration.

Early modern discourses

German Romanticism

The German philosopher Immanuel Knet has formulated an individualist definition of enlightenment similar to the concept of Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self incurred immaturity. He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged, Sapere aude, dare to be wise in reaction to Kant, German scholars such as argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms, is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of bildung For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people.

In 1795, the great linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt 1767 to 1835 called for anthropology that would synthesize Kant and herder interests. During the Romantic era, scholors in Germany out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Astro Hungarian Empire developed a more inclusive notion of culture as worldview. According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between civilized and primitive or tribal cultures.

In 1860, Adolf Bastin argue for the psychic unity of mankind. He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of elementary ideas different cultures, or different folk ideas, are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States.

English Romanticism

In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold used the word culture to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of the best that has been thought and said in the world. This concept of culture is comparable to the German concept of bildung, culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.

In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music and haute cuisine. As these forms were associated with urban life, culture was identified with civilization. Another facet of the Romantic Movement was an interest in folklore high culture, which led to identifying a culture among non elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture, namely that of the ruling social group, and low culture. In other words, the idea of culture that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies.

Matthew Arnold contrasted culture with anarchy, other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau, contrasted culture with the state of nature. According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native American who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature, this opposition was expressed through the contrast between civilized and uncivilized. According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert spencer theory of social Darwinism and lewis hentry morgan theory of cultural evolution. Just as some critics have argued that the distinction between high and low cultures is really an expression of the conflict between European elites and non elites, some critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is really an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects.

Other 19^th century critics, following Rousseau have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people essential nature. These critics considered folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, in English it shares the same name, and it often shares the same performers and venues as traditional folk music. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two.

Cultural studies

In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism, such as Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams, developed cultural studies. Following nineteenth century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities. Nevertheless, they understood patterns of consumption and leisure to be determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations and the organization of production. In the United States, Cultural Studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture, that is, the social meanings of mass produced consumer and leisure goods. The term was coined by Richard Hoggart in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for contemporary cultural studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as a limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western Civilization, or Globalism.

From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall pioneering work, along with his colleagues Paul willis, Dick Hebbidge, Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie, created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed it began to combine political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film or video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies and a at history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and or gender. A cultural study is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things in a given culture. This field studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television in order to view a public perspective on a historical event should not be thought of as culture, unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally, however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends in order to fit in certainly qualifies, since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice. Recently, as capitalism has spread throughout the world, cultural studies has begun to analyse local and global forms of resistance to Western hegemony.

In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes written language, but also films, In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text not only includes , but also, the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture for a cultural studies researcher not only includes traditional and, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is, based on the discipline of and cultural studies

Scholars in the United Kingdom and the developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the field's inception in the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies was developed in the 1950s and 1960s mainly under the influence first of Richard Hoggart and later Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. This included overtly political, views, and criticisms of as capitalist, it absorbed some of the ideas of the critique of the. This emerges in the writings of early British cultural studies scholars and their influences.

Whereas in the United States Lind of & Taylor said, Cultural studies grounded in a pragmatic, liberal pluralist tradition. The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, for example, American cultural studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of .The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the, but especially from the Marxism of and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing. In a Marxist view, those who control the essentially control a culture.

 Other approaches to cultural studies, such as cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view is best exemplified by the book Doing Cultural Studies, The Case of the Sony Walkman, which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist and art historian contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints. The writer is among influential voices in the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical.

Early researchers and development of cultural sociology

The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology, as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and with the growing discipline of anthropology where researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field is still felt in the methods much of cultural sociological research is qualitative in the theories a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities and substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.

Sociology

The sociology of culture concerns culture usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a society as it is manifested in society. For Georg Simmel, culture referred to the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history. Culture in the sociological field can be defined as the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people way of life. Culture can be any of two types, non material or material culture.

Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany, where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie. Cultural sociology was then reinvented in the English speaking world as a product of the of the 1960s, which ushered in strcturalist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may loosely be regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis. As a result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science. Cultural sociology is one of the largest sections of the American Sociological Association. The British establishment of cultural studies means the latter is often taught as a loosely distinct discipline in the UK.

Culture Explanations

Integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that is both a result of an integral to the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Culture thus consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, and works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and symbols. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system. Variation among cultures is attributable to such factors as differing physical habitats and resources, the range of possibilities inherent in areas such as language, ritual, and social organization, and historical phenomena such as the development of links with other cultures. An individual attitudes, values, ideals, and beliefs are greatly influenced by the culture in which he or she lives. Culture change takes place as a result of ecological, socioeconomic, political, religious, or other fundamental factors affecting a society. See also culture contact, sociocultural evolution.

Culture Definition

Some definitions

Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.

Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.

Culture is communication, communication is culture.

Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.

A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.

Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.

Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.

Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation.

Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

Theory of cultural determinism

The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members of society determines human nature. People are what they learn. Optimistic version of cultural determinism places no limits on the abilities of human beings to do or to be whatever they want. Some anthropologists suggest that there is no universal right way of being human. Right way is almost always our way, that our way in one society almost never corresponds to our way in any other society. Proper attitude of an informed human being could only be that of tolerance.

The optimistic version of this theory postulates that human nature being infinitely malleable, human being can choose the ways of life they prefer.

The pessimistic version maintains that people are what they are conditioned to be, this is something over which they have no control. Human beings are passive creatures and do whatever their culture tells them to do. This explanation leads to behaviourism that locates the causes of human behavior in a realm that is totally beyond human control.

Cultural relativism

Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There are no scientific standards for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another. Studying differences in culture among groups and societies presupposes a position of cultural relativism. It does not imply normalcy for oneself, or for one society. It, however, calls for judgment when dealing with groups or societies different from one's own. Information about the nature of cultural differences between societies, their roots, and their consequences should precede judgment and action. Negotiation is more likely to succeed when the parties concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints.

Cultural ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one own culture is superior to that of other cultures. It is a form of reductionism that reduces the other way of life to a distorted version of one own. This is particularly important in case of global dealings when a company or an individual is imbued with the idea that methods, materials, or ideas that worked in the home country will also work abroad. Environmental differences are, therefore, ignored. Ethnocentrism, in relation to global dealings, can be categorized as follows:

Important factors in business are overlooked because of the obsession with certain cause-effect relationships in one's own country. It is always a good idea to refer to checklists of human variables in order to be assured that all major factors have been at least considered while working abroad.

Even though one may recognize the environmental differences and problems associated with change, but may focus only on achieving objectives related to the home country. This may result in the loss of effectiveness of a company or an individual in terms of international competitiveness. The objectives set for global operations should also be global.

The differences are recognized, but it is assumed that associated changes are so basic that they can be achieved effortlessly. It is always a good idea to perform a cost benefit analysis of the changes proposed.  Sometimes a change may upset important values and thereby may face resistance from being implemented. The cost of some changes may exceed the benefits derived from the implementation of such changes.

Manifestations of culture

Cultural differences manifest themselves in different ways and differing levels of depth. Symbols represent the most superficial and value the deepest manifestations of culture, with heroes and rituals in between.

Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particular meaning which is only recognized by those who share a particular culture. New symbols easily develop, old ones disappear. Symbols from one particular group are regularly copied by others. This is why symbols represent the outermost layer of a culture.

Heroes are persons, past or present, real or fictitious, who possess characteristics that are highly prized in a culture. They also serve as models for behavior.

Rituals are collective activities, sometimes superfluous in reaching desired objectives, but are considered as socially essential. They are therefore carried out most of the times for their own sake.

The core of a culture is formed by values. They are broad tendencies for preferences of certain state of affairs to others. Many values remain unconscious to those who hold them. Therefore they often cannot be discussed, nor can they be directly observed by others. Values can only be inferred from the way people act under different circumstances.

Symbols, heroes, and rituals are the tangible or visual aspects of the practices of a culture. The true cultural meaning of the practices is intangible; this is revealed only when the practices are interpreted by the insiders.

Layers of culture

People even within the same culture carry several layers of mental programming within themselves. Different layers of culture exist at the following levels.

The national level: Associated with the nation as a whole.

The regional level: Associated with ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences that exist within a nation.

The gender level: Associated with gender differences.

The generation level: Associated with the differences between grandparents and parents, parents and children.

The social class level: Associated with educational opportunities and differences in occupation.

The corporate level: Associated with the particular culture of an organization. Applicable to those who are employed.

Measuring cultural differences

A variable can be operationalzed either by single or composite measure techniques. A single measure technique means the use of one indicator to measure the domain of a concept, the composite measure technique means the use of several indicators to construct an index for the concept after the domain of the concept has been empirically sampled. Hofstede has devised a composite measure technique to measure cultural differences among different societies,

Power distance index:  The index measures the degree of inequality that exists in a society.

Uncertainty avoidance index: The index measures the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain or ambiguous situations.

Individualism index: The index measure the extent to which a society is individualistic. Individualism refers to a loosely knit social framework in a society in which people are supposed to take care of themselves and their immediate families only. The other end of the spectrum would be collectivism that occurs when there is a tight social framework in which people distinguish between in groups and out groups, they expect their in groups to look after them in exchange for absolute loyalty.

Masculinity index: The index measures the extent to which the dominant values are assertiveness, money and things, not caring for others or for quality of life. The other end of the spectrum would be femininity.

Reconciliation of cultural differences

Cultural awareness

Before venturing on a global assignment, it is probably necessary to identify the cultural differences that may exist between one's home country and the country of business operation. Where the differences exist, one must decide whether and to what extent the practices may be adapted to the foreign environment. Most of the times the differences are not very apparent or tangible. Certain aspects of a culture may be learned consciously e.g. methods of greeting people, some other differences are learned subconsciously e.g. methods of problem solving. The building of cultural awareness may not be an easy task, but once accomplished, it definitely helps a job done efficiently in a foreign environment.

Discussions and reading about other cultures definitely helps build cultural awareness, but opinions presented must be carefully measured. Sometimes they may represent unwarranted stereotypes, an assessment of only a subgroup of a particular group of people, or a situation that has since undergone drastic changes. It is always a good idea to get varied viewpoints about the same culture.

Clustering cultures

Some countries may share many attributes that help mold their cultures the modifiers may be language, religion, geographical location, etc. Based on this data obtained from past cross cultural studies, countries may be grouped by similarities in values and attitudes. Fewer differences may be expected when moving within a cluster than when moving from one cluster to another.

Determining the extent of global involvement

All enterprises operating globally need not have the same degree of cultural awareness. Figure 2 illustrates extent to which a company needs to understand global cultures at different levels of involvement. The further a company moves out from the sole role of doing domestic business, the more it needs to understand cultural differences. Moving outward on more than one axis simultaneously makes the need for building cultural awareness even more essential.

What is culture Definition of culture

Culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Today, in the United States as in other countries populated largely by immigrants, the culture is influenced by the many groups of people that now make up the country.

Western culture

The term Western culture has come to define the culture of European countries as well as those such as the united states that have been heavily influenced by European immigration. Western culture has its roots in the Classical Period of the Greco Roman era and the rise of Christianity in the 14th century. Other drivers of the Western culture include Latin, Celtic, Germanic and Hellenic ethnic and linguistic groups. Today, the influences of Western culture can be seen in almost every country in the world.

Eastern culture

Eastern culture generally refers to the societal norms of countries in Far East Asia  China, Japan, Vietnam, North Korea and South Korea and the Indian  subcontinent. Like the West, Eastern culture was heavily influenced by religion during its early development. In general, in Eastern culture there is less of a distinction between secular society and religious philosophy than there is in the West.

Latin culture

Many of the Spanish-speaking nations are considered part of the Latin culture, while the geographic region is widespread. Latin America is typically defined as those parts of the Central America, South America and Mexico where Spanish or Portuguese are the dominant languages. While Spain and Portugal are on the European continent, they are considered the key influencers of what is known as Latin culture, which denotes people using languages derived from Latin, also known as Romance languages.

Middle Eastern culture

The countries of the Middle East have some but not all things in common, including a strong belief in Islam and religion is a very strong pillar of this society. The Arabic language is also common throughout the region, however, the wide variety of dialect can sometimes make communication difficult.

African culture

The continent of Africa is essential two cultures North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa. The continent is comprised of a number of tribes, ethnic and social groups. One of the key features of this culture is the large number of ethnic groups some countries can have 20 or more and the diversity of their beliefs

Northwest Africa in particular has strong ties to European and South western Asia. The area also has a heavy Islamic influence and is a major player in the Arab world.

The harsh environment has been a large factor in the development of Sub Saharan Africa culture, as there are a number of languages, cuisines, art and musical styles that have sprung up among the far flung populations.

What are the characteristics of culture

The 6 characteristics of culture start with the fact that culture is learned and shared. Culture is transgenerational. It is adaptive without losing the original roots. Culture is cumulative. It is transmitted either orally or through writing.

Outline of culture

Culture set of patterns of human activity within a society or social group and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Customs, laws, dress, architectural style, social standards, religious beliefs, and traditions are all examples of cultural elements.

Cultural Types

Several authors have proposed ways to classify cultures, highlighting the contrasts between them. A general awareness of these may help you in communicating with people from different cultures. In cultures such as in Arabic countries, Mexico or India, power distance is high. In these cultures, subordinates tend to respect and accept their boss merely because of his position. Relevance to Medicine, This tends to lead to unquestioning acceptance of a doctor orders. Patients from societies with lower power distance may not automatically respect a doctor opinion and may tend to question your reason for saying what you do. Countries such as Japan, France or Greece tend to avoid uncertainty, they prefer predictability and so develop strict hierarchies, laws and procedures. Deviant ideas are discouraged and consensus is important, so there is typically a strong sense of nationalism. In Nordic and Anglophone countries, people seem to tolerate uncertainty more, they dislike structure, thereis less nationalism. Relevance to Medicine, People from cultures that avoid uncertainty may wish their doctor to provide clear guidance on what they must do. People from cultures that tolerate uncertainty may accept that there are always alternative approaches; a therapy may be tried and if it works, great, but if it does not, another one may. In individualistic countries, people are responsible for themselves and initiative is valued; people have relatively weak ties to their organization. In collectivist countries such as China or Japan, a person’s identity is based on their group membership, so they value tight social frameworks and a feeling of belonging to an organization.

Relevance to Medicine People from individualistic cultures may expect to make their own decisions regarding their health. Countries such as Mexico, Germany or Japan espouse traditionally masculine values such as assertiveness, materialism and lack of concern for others. People work long hours and their job is of central importance. Gender roles are clearly distinguished often the husband will make decisions for the wife. By contrast, low masculinity cultures Sweden, Denmark value quality of life, concern for others. However, universal trends such as dual career families are eroding the gap between high and low masculinity cultures. Relevance to Medicine Masculine values tend to coincide with a clear distinction between gender roles, often the husband will make decisions for the wife. It is common for people from collectivist cultures to take therapeutic decisions as a member of a group, social pressures may strongly influence the individual, who may fear a sense of humiliation if he does not comply. Collectivist societies value harmony whereas individualistic societies value self respect and autonomy. Western societies typically have a short term focus and view time as a valuable resource. There is an emphasis on focusing on one thing at a time. For other societies time urgency is much less important. They may be polychronic lots of things can happen at once and things can be put off to later. Expect patients from such cultures to be late Eight clock Jamaica time means any time after around nine or nine thirty. In some Arabic cultures, deadlines may even be viewed as an insult: important things take a long time and cannot be rushed.

Personal Cultural

In personal cultures, obligation is defined universally; obligations are imposed consistently, without regard for individual circumstances

In personal societies, communication is subtle and restrained, so may be hard to read for someone brought up in a social culture

In personal cultures, relationships tend to be direct, open and, if needed, confrontational USA. Work and personal life are separated

In personal societies, respect is based on the person competence and achievements. Women can gain access to senior positions, and newcomers are respected if they prove themselves.

Societal Cultures

In a societal culture, obligations are particular and based on relationships, personal trust is high and so is duty to family

Societal cultures are effective, physical contact is accepted and people express their feelings openly, body language is strong

In society based cultures, relationships are diffuse and indirect, private and work life may be linked the family business, China and direct confrontation is avoided

In a society based culture, status is ascribed based on age, gender, family origins, social position, etc.