Understanding Culture

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THE ROLE OF CULTURE

All of us are cultural beings. All of us have culture. Our culture shapes how we see the world and make sense of it. Culture influences all our behaviours and interactions. Our culture also mediates how we make sense of disability and respond to people with disability.

In Australia there is a tendency to use the term 'culture' only in relation to people from a non-English speaking background and Indigenous Australians, which suggests that Anglo-Australians are culturally neutral. If we use the above definition of culture we need to view all beings as cultural, including Anglo-Australians.

CULTURE - A CONSTANT STATE OF CHANGE

Culture is not static - it is constantly changing and responding to shifting environments and circumstances. Within each culture there are many sub-cultures, which means that not all beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours are shared amongst all people of one cultural group.

For example, in Australia, second generation migrants often create new cultural practices, mixing the culture of their parents with the Anglo-Australian culture.

Except for a very few isolated communities, all cultures are exposed to external influences. While external influences have always existed - how else would the knowledge of how to make noodles have travelled from China to Italy? - the rate at which cultures are exposed to external influences today is greater than ever before.

In addition to external influences, within each culture there are also internal tensions and pressures. It is mostly sub-cultures and non-dominant sections of the community that mount challenges to the dominant culture.

For example, in Australia, one such cultural practice under challenge has been and continues to be, the concept of 'mateship'. Women and minority groups continue to expose the inequities arising out of mateship and this has led, for example, to more accountable and transparent employment practices.

Pressures on any culture thus come both from within and without. In the main, cultures may initially respond to these pressures through vilification, ridicule, tightening the norms, etc. In the longer term, cultures are more likely to survive if they come to incorporate and mould different influences without losing the 'essence' of the culture.

ROMANTICISING

The idea of culture as fixed and static is almost always wrong and has varying consequences. One common way of 'fixing' culture is to romanticise it, i.e. the idea of 'the noble savage' or the notion that people with intellectual disability are 'perpetual children'.

·For example, older migrants, after decades of working in Australia, return to their country of origin, expecting it to be just the same as when they had left it. Of course time has not stopped in their country of origin and they find that the place where they want to spend the rest of their lives may no longer exist in the way they remembered.

STEREOTYPING

Another consequence of attempts to 'fix' culture is stereotyping. Stereotypes are often expressed in sentences beginning with 'All Australians…' or 'All women…' followed by a broad sweeping statement. While the statement may be true for many people within a culture, there are many others within the culture for which it is not true.

One of the problems with stereotypes is that they become the principle identifying characteristic for a person from a particular culture and distort further understanding of that culture. Yet we all make sense of the world and our place in the world through identifying with parts of the community. There is a huge difference between an Australian saying 'In my country we are all sports mad', and someone else saying 'All Australians are sports mad'. The difference is that the Australian person is claiming their own identity - their 'belonging' to a particular group of people - by referring to things he or she has in common with others. The second person is making a judgement about a group of people whom they do not belong to and with no understanding of what it is to be part of that group. Another way of expressing the difference between 'identity' and 'stereotype' is to say that the first is about first-hand experience, while the second is about second-hand labels or views.

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

You can learn about a culture by reading a book and by talking to 'experts', to really understanding a culture comes slowly by talking to many people from that culture and by learning about diversity across and within that culture.

• To understand a culture is to learn about its history and to hear about the effects of that history.
• To learn about a culture is to learn about class, gender relations, treatment of minority groups, etc. To understand a culture is to talk with people from that culture about class, gender and other issues.
• Learning about a culture is to learn about its poetry and its music, its pottery and its paintings. Understanding a culture is to listen to its music, read the poems and literature and watch its movies.
• To understand a culture is to talk with people with disability from that culture about their experiences and their understanding of disability.