CHALLENGE 4

HOW DO WE COPE WITH CULTURAL DILEMMAS IN AN INCREASINGLY GLOBALIZATED WORLD?


We started the class talking about the concept of CULTURE. We told her words that the concept of culture suggested to us. The different words that we said were:
  • CULTURE --> Diversity, identity, history, rules/laws, religion, traditions and norms, habits, language, values and moral.
Then we read "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" a text which explains different rituals that seem strange for us, but the truth was that these rituals were the habits of the american people but explained in a exaggerated way, to show us that these habits like going to the hairdresser to change for example the colour of our hair is not neccesary.

The next was the explanation of the different concepts of culture:
  1. THE EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT OF CULTURE
  2. THE RELATIVISTIC CONCEPT OF CULTURE
  3. THE COMPLEX CONCEPT OF CULTURE
After this theory we read different cases and we discussed about which concept of culture was better for each case. These were the answers of my group


1)      You are in a kindergarden in the States. The food for the children is very unhealthy. How do you react?
a) You think that it has always been like that; that the parents of the children presumably would react, if they wanted more nutritionally correct diet for their children. You bring your own food for lunch afterwards.

- Relativistic concept of culture



2)      You go to Japan for 6 months to work in a kindergarten and it´s called 24 hour kindergarten. During the weekends the children go to their homes and there is a very strong disciplinary. Every Wednesday the parents are allowed to visit their children, but during these visits they have to sit in the corridor without contact between parents and social workers. How do you react?
b) In the following meeting among the staff you suggest that you can make posters where the parents can read about the activities in the kindergarten.

- Complex concept of culture



       3)      In Mongolia, when you together with the headmaster enter the room all    activities stop and the children rise/stand up for you. What do you do?
      c) You tell them to continue their activities and you are trying to blend in
      
      - Evolutionary concept of culture



4)      Kenya. You are working with young people. One day you find two of the young guys tied to their beds. Your colleague have had a conflic with them. What do you do?
c) You get in a dialogue with the colleague and try to find out more about why he did what he did.

- Complex concept of culture



5) The team of leaders decides to give the violent social worker another chance because his network outside the project is quite strong. They are afraid that the social worker will destroy all these contacts if he will get fired. What do you do?
b) You get in touch with the Danish steering group behind the project and hope they will react

- Evolutionary concept of culture




6)      You are morking in a French school. On one of your days off you meet three boys from the school smoking cigarettes. They are 9 years old. What do you do?
a) You tell them, that is very unhealthy to smoke

- Complex concept of culture



7)      North Africa. The headmaster of the school has invited you to a dinner party at his home. His wife has been cooking all day long but in the table thereis not plate for her. What do you do?
b) You ask if it wouldn't be a good idea to ask the wife to join, although you know that it is not common practice

- Evolutionary concept of culture


To finish the challenge the teacher told us to answer 3 questions as a reflexion:

1) Why is it important to be aware of and have knowledge about the concept of culture when working as a social worker or teacher?
  • It's important because we have to educate the children whose are going to be the adults of the future and they must know all about this concept to be able to have a personal opinion and to have knowledge about the all world, not only their country.

2) What challenges do you see in the concept of culture?
  • The most important of this is to minimize the cultural differences because we live all together in the same world, and we are all equal people. Our cultural differences are not important, all of us are human.
3) Is the concept useful when we talk about human differences? Why?
  • Yes, it's always useful. It's true that maybe i can be a Spanish girl and have more aspects in common with a danish girl for example, who is studying the same than me and has a family and group similar than mine, than with a spanish girl who is working since she had 16 years old and she hasn't got any interest in nothing, only in taking drugs, go to the party, and so on, but we are cases when we can use the concept, so i think that it's useful.






Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)