Topic 1 Interculturality : main concepts
OBJECTIVES
- Discovering the notion of culture
- Exchanging on cultural diversity in our society and the consequences
You must think about elements that are visible and not visible in each culture.
Fill the different part of the iceberg to reflect on what is visible in a person’s culture and what is not visible (it is both personal and professional elements here)
“Iceberg animation” which makes it possible to reflect on the visible and invisible cultural habits of different cultures.
The idea of culture as an iceberg reminds us that only a small proportion of cultural aspects are more “visible” and so more obvious than many other dimensions of culture that, while much less tangible and visible, are no less essential to our comprehension of how cultures work. In fact, the sub-surface aspects presented above directly influence those on the ” head ” of the iceberg.
-CULTURE-
Definition
Basic definition = Set of material and ideological phenomena that characterize an ethnic group or nation, civilization, as opposed to another group or nation
Transmission of traditions: my family and my community
Culture takes into account all of the behaviors, productions, values, beliefs that exist in a human group and which lead to it being identified as a cultural community … but, it is also a particular, singular component that is taken for each their acts and their productions. Culture is, in this perspective, what is made by man, and what exists as having meaning in a particular community. If we want to deepen this definition, we can say that culture also means reproducing and representing what has been transmitted to us, while integrating these elements as if they were our own.”
Not linear but on going process
This cultural identity is in no way perceived as a stable and definitive state, but as a process in relative becoming as a function, on the one hand, of adhesions and identifications with the ways of doing, being, thinking of a community and, on the other hand, of oppositions relating to the ways of doing, being, thinking of neighboring communities. Cultural identity will be energized and disrupted when, in today’s world, the individual will be involved in regular and functional relationships with other cultural communities.