What is Culture?
Culture is a complex and abstract idea, which is hard to define. Usually, we will connect “culture” with “ethnicity” or “race”, but is culture such a direct, measurable idea?
Although there are so many definitions of “culture”, 3 are chosen in this course for a deeper discussion.
From this definition, we can see that culture are sometimes related to artistic and intellectual behaviors of people, such as painting and music. This is the case since these endeavors and products always reflect human emotions and lifestyle.
However, more and more people disagree with this viewpoint due to 2 reasons. First, culture is not always descriptive and can be presented in aphysical manifestation. For example, when a patient is diagnosed with OA knee, he/she can react differently based on their cultural background. A pessimistic patient may rely heavily on doctor and physiotherapist during her rehabilitation pathway, but for an optimistic person, he/she may want to gain as high independence as possible. Their attitudes and behaviors can be the manifestations of their personalities and beliefs, but it is hard to show “how culture affect their personalities and thoughts” in this example.
Second, culture is obviously wider and more than concerning “arts” and “intelligence” only. For example, the style we speak and write, the way we greet each others, the lifestyle we enjoy… All these can be classified as “culture”, but barely related to “arts” and “intelligence”.
In this sense, this definition is incomprehensive for us to understand the whole picture of Culture.
This definition gives rise to an interesting idea — we always use our own culture to define and justify others. By continuously performing this, we can classify those similar to us as “same cultural background”, and those different from us as “different cultural background”. On the other words, culture is the accumulation of a group of people sharing same or similar characteristics.
Here is an example to better illustrate this idea.
Here, we have Mr A, Miss B and Mr C. If you were Miss B, when concerning ethnicity, you would probably think that Mr C shares the same culture as you since Mr A is Caucasian while Mr C is Asian, just like you. From the definition, we can also see that we always think that our culture is “normal”, this means that you will continuously evaluate how “strange” and “different” Mr A is.
You may think that “I never think that a foreigner is strange！” Indeed, we, as physiotherapists, always encounter this problem during our clinical practice — have you ever encountered a patient that never follow you and practice the home exercises you recommended? When facing this problem, we may feel frustrated since we believe that our exercises can definitely improve the patient’s condition, and it is “strange” and “stupid” that the patient does not listen to us. Actually, we will think like this because we think that our clinical thinking, value and idea are “normal”, and therefore those having different thoughts with us are “strange” and “incomprehensible”. And most probably, we will explain this phenomenon by saying that “my patient and I are sharing different values and thoughts”.
In this sense, we start to understand “culture” in a more abstract but realistic manner. Yet, the example above also illustrate another complexity of culture — If you were Mr C, you could consider Miss B as your own cultural members when concerning ethnicity, but if gender is the determining factor, should Mr A share the same culture as you since both of you are male?
This definition is unable to solve our puzzle, and therefore, the third definition is needed to fill in this final missing piece.
Matsumoto and Juang (2016) agreed with Ramsden (1992) that culture is the characteristic shared by a group of people. However, a point is highlighted in this definition.
This shared “characteristic” is not specific to “ethnicity” only. Indeed, culture is such a board term that every personal and social characteristics can be included as “culture”, and even if you have different races with another person, you can still share some identical culture with him/her.
Look at the example below to explore more!
As you can see, Mr D shares certain degrees of identical characteristics (culture) as Mr E and Dr F respectively, and same in the condition of Mr E and Dr F. Indeed, since all of them are health care professions, you can say that all of them share same “occupationally culture” as well.
In this world, even our parents and family will have different background, experience and therefore social identities with us. The concept “culture” is actually concerning how many similarities and differences we have with others. When we are compared with people in our nations and cities, obviously more similarities will exist than comparing with those foreigners. However, it does not mean that we cannot share same cultures with foreigners — all depends on what “characteristics” you are concerning.
In fact, these “characteristics” can be gender, ethnicity, language, accent, generation, occupation, personal experience, family background, appearance, interest and habits… All these contribute to who we are and how we react to different things. To make it simple, these characteristics is our cultural identities.
From these 3 definitions, we have gained much more insights and understandings about “what is culture”. Indeed, culture is much more complicated than that, but before we discuss this further, it is good time for us to learn some special cultures in different countries first!
In Module 4, we have invited several students who have placement experience in foreign countries. How were their lives there? What difficulties did they encounter? How did they overcome this?
Let’s go to Module 4 and check this out!
Reference
Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council. (2005). Cultural Competency in Health: a guideline for policy, partnership and participation. Retrieved from https://www.mhahs.org.au/images/cald/CulturalCompetencyInHealth.pdf
Gray, B. (2018). Culture, cultural competence and the cross‐cultural consultation. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 54(4), 343-345.
Matsumoto, D., & Juang, L. (2016).Culture and psychology. Nelson Education.
Ramsden, I. (1992). Teaching cultural safety. N Z Nurs J, 85(5), 21-23.
Saver, C. (n.d.). Cultural competency benefits patients, therapists. Nursing., 37 Suppl Therapy, 6-9.
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2012) What is culture? A compilation of quotations. GlobalPAD Core Concepts.