Thursday, January 24, 2013

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture


This week I am diving into looking at different people’s definitions and ideas amour culture and diversity. I have found 3 people that have shared their views with me that are all culturally diverse from myself in either the areas of gender, race, class, religion, abilities, or age.

The first person I asked was my husband.
His definition of culture is – People that have a commonality in ethnicity or language.
His definition of diversity is – How people different from each other.

The second person I asked was a co-worker.
Her definition of culture is – People that have the same basis of language and writing system
Her definition of diversity is – what makes people unique

The third person I asked was one of my neighbors.
His definition of culture is – People that are located in a certain area with genetically similar traits.
His definition of diversity is – How individuals are unique and how people are categorized.

When looking at these answers and how different they were, they all had key points in them about what culture really is and how people view it. Culture to me contains so much. Culture is; a person’s beliefs, social forms, traits, religion, race, values, goals, traditions, attitudes, and language. Culture involves so much that it can be hard to find a short definition of what culture truly means. I feel that all of my three interviewees made a good attempt at defining culture, but I also feel that not all of them thought about all the different aspects that go into culture. I feel that for diversity, the people I interviewed has good definitions for that. I specifically liked the definition my co-worker gave. It is a definition that puts a focus on the positive of diversity instead of the negatives that can come with it. I feel that by interviewing these people about their definitions I now have a better understanding of how others view these two major concepts of our world. The influence these definitions have had on my own thinking about these topics is to look beyond the basics and into the details and to also turn these definitions that can be thought of as negative, into something with rejoice and with pride. 

4 comments:

  1. Abigail,

    I love how you concluded this post. If we could turn what can be perceived as negatives into positives, how much more could we as a diverse society interact? What I have been reminded of through this course is that we are all different, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

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  2. I love your post, you really brought forth the essence of our assignment and I loved the answered given by your interviewees. You are so right culture and diversity are so immense we can not put them in a box and say this is the definition for it is not static.

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  3. Hi Abigail,

    I also have the same experience with the interviews about culture. The people that I interviewed went to the easy aspects of culture such as language, food, music and folklore. Unlike you, my people have a hard time defining diversity and stuck with variety and options that people have.

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  4. Your post was great-I really liked how you talk about how culture and diversity are a part of our everyday lives and are ever changing. These two words encompass so much that it is hard to put into a simple phrase for someone to understand. I always enjoy reading your posts as I never fail to learn something new from you!

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