Cultural Perspectives

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Practices, products, persons, and communities embody cultural perspectives, and vice versa. Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meaning shared by members of the culture, manifasted in products and practices. These meanings reflect members’ perceptions of the world, the beliefs and values that they hold, and the norms, expectations, and
attitudes that they bring to practices. To name the perspectives that underlie practices is to answer the question, “Why do the people of this culture do things in the way they do?”

Perspectives as a combination of perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes, as explicit and tacit, as emic and etic. There are three different orientations to perspectives, or views of culture: functionalist, interpretive, and conflict.

CHAPTER II

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meanings shared by members of the culture, manifested in products and practices. Perspectives as a combination of perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes, as explicit and tacit, as emic and etic.

1.      EXPLICIT AND TACIT PERSPECTIVE

Like the other dimensions of the cultural pentad, perspectives can be tangible. Perceptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes can be explicitly stated in oral or written form. A cultural perspectives that reflects a belief that anyone can achieve fame and fortune in the US through hard work, self-reliance, and sacrifice. This belief is based upon values of equality, individualism, achievement, competition, and materialism. These values, in turn, derive from a cultural perception that people possess free will, and control their destinies and the environment, and that the future is more important than the past. Attitudes of competitiveness, ambition, determination, self-centeredness, and resilience follow.

1.      EXPLICIT PERSPECTIVES

Perspectives are thus explicit, but at the same time they can be tacit, or outside awareness. This is not to say that people are unable to specify perspectives, but rather that people tend not to be aware of them. They take them for granted. The maxim “If you want to know about water, don’t ask a fish,” often used in intercultural circles, makes this point. It can demand a significant effort to uncover the tacit perspectives that govern practices.

2.      PROVERB

Proverb to identify underlying cultural perspectives it mean thats a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are oftenmetaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim. If a proverb is distinguished by particularly good phrasing, it may be known as an Jeff. 

a.       Cultural Values

In the fields related to the study of culture, there are numerous views of the content and nature of perspectives. They are variously reffered to as meanings, attitudes, values, ideas (NSFLEP, 1999); beliefs, values, thought patterns (Weaver, 1993); values and assumption (Damen, 1987); cultural patterns (Stewart and bennett, 1991); perceptions, values, attitudes, belief/disbelief systems (singer, 1987); value dinensions (hofstede); and values orientations (kluckhohn and strodtbeck). Many terms are the same, although they are sometimes defined differently.

b.      Perception, beliefs, values, and attitudes

As a discrete aspect, because, to a certain extent, they can be examined independently. More often than not, however, they intertwine and overlap, making it difficult to separate them. For this reason, others have grouped them as patterns, systems, or orientations. Despite the overlap, i believe that the distinction is useful.

3.      EMIC AND ETIC PERSPECTIVES

When discussing perspectives, we need to recognizing that there are two kinds emic and etic (Damen, 1987)

a.       Emic perspective are those articulated by members of the culture to explain themselves and their culture,

b.      Etic perspectives are those of outsider to the culture who use their own criteria to explain the other culture.     

Etic perspectives include those of visitors to the culture, the criteria they use to describe and explain what they encounter, as well as categories for cross cultural descriptions and analysis established by anthropologies and other cultural researcher to describe may culture.

Emic explanations are perspectives that member of the culture use to describe or explain their own way of life. These perspectives do not necessarily correspond to etic category, nor does the terminology that the members use for their explanations

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meanings shared by members of the culture, manifested in products and practices. Perspectives as a combination of perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes, as explicit and tacit, as emic and etic. Since many communities comprise a culture, there are an equal number of cultural perspectives. The interpretive view does not address the nation of a national culture community. The conflict view perceives power as the central future and views culture as a place where struggles for power among communities are played out.

REFERENCE

Moran, Patrick R. 2001. Teaching Culture Perspective Practice. Canada. Newburg House Teacher Development