Culture

What is culture?

Culture is something that is researched and studied, with many definitions. Broadly, Culture is a collective set of beliefs, attitudes, values, norms and language that is shared by a group of people, which tend to distinguish it from other groups of people. It is acquired by learning (mostly non-consciously) at an early age and is adapted differently by each individual within the group over their lifetime, which is then passed on in a changing process from generation to generation.

Culture has a profound influence on how people think, feel, act and process information. Culture is more than traditions, music, language and religious beliefs. It also provides us with a series of frameworks for how we view the world and shapes our values, how we interpret information and define boundaries.

Where does Culture come from?

Cultural is transmitted from members of the same cultural group, usually by young children from parents, their peers and their social group, with the basic components of culture acquired at early ages (with children internalising key cultural values and norms). Culture is learned by hearing, seeing and unconsciously adopting or copying actions of those children grow up with. Culture is actively generated and created, in attempts to modify or protect or expand existing norms in face of internal and external challenges- culture is not static and solely based in the past, but an interplay between tradition and emerging new ideas.

Like other forms of non-conscious learning, culture influences us by providing us with appropriate responses and actions in different situations. This is very beneficial in most situations in that given our culture is acquired out of consciousness, through exposure to the speech, judgments, and actions of others, we don’t need to think about how to act or talk in our cultural group. On the other hand, the internalisation of our cultural values and their non-conscious operation means that we often have challenges in understanding people’s norms and values from other cultures or understanding how people can hold values different to those of us. This is usually more challenging from minority ethnic groups whose values and norms are not reflected in the institutions of the dominant cultural group.

However, as we are always learning, we are always in the process of learning about our culture and other cultures and may incorporate parts and pieces of a culture different from our own through that process known as acculturation if we have the opportunity to live in a different cultural environment or associate frequently with persons from another culture.

How does Culture influence Conflict Management?

When there is conflict between two cultures, such where non-Traveller institutions fail to provide accommodation for Travellers, we can see that how culture creates and interprets our views will play a key role in creating and maintaining conflict. How cultural values are used to enforce a particular way of living is naturally linked to organisational power.

Cultures are fluid and change over time, and given the sheer range of cultural practices any analysis that tries to understand culture will always be gross simplifications of very complex systems. However, Hofestede’s work on cultural dimensions as a way of trying to see how culture can influence values of members of a culture respond broadly to situations.

Studies carried out since have agreed on six dimensions whereby patterns can be deduced:

1. Power Distance: related to the different solutions to the basic problem of human inequality;
2. Uncertainty Avoidance: related to the level of stress in a society in the face of an unknown future
3. Individualism versus Collectivism: related to the integration of individuals into primary groups;
4. Masculinity versus Femininity: related to the division of emotional roles between women and men;
5. Long-Term versus Short-Term Orientation: related to the choice of focus for people’s efforts: the future or the present and past.
6. Indulgence versus Restraint: related to the gratification versus control of basic human desires related to enjoying life.

It should be noted that this model is naturally limited: it could be argued that it cannot begin to show the complexity of cultures or how one culture imposes constraints and conditions on another (using markers such as “control”, “happiness”, “importance of leisure”, “stress” and “power”). However, it does give a framework, however flawed for assessing what cultural dimensions they exist, and begin to see how they can influence cultural conflict styles- for example in long term and short term orientation or individualism versus collectivism and how these non-conscious norms can influence how people react and respond to situations based on cultural norms.