What does it mean to have cultural identity?

As a student of anthropology, the subject of culture is one that I feel very passionate about. Culture (at least from an anthropological perspective) is a combination of abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions that manifest and reflect themselves in people’s behaviours. There are four specific characteristics of culture;

1) Culture is shared. Culture is something unique that binds people together and is intelligible to other members of that culture. Specifically, culture is a means by which groups of people become able to predict one another’s behaviour and know how to react accordingly. It is important to note that the concept of culture differs from that of society. Society refers to geographic groups of people, and often a society can have within it a wide array of cultural groups (like Quebec). In addition, while it is shared, culture is not uniform! No two members of a culture will have identical interpretations of their culture. Smaller subculture groups exist within larger cultural groups.

2) Culture is learned. Culture is NOT BIOLOGICALLY INHERITED! Culture is learned and transmitted from one generation to the next through the process of enculturation. The color of your skin DOES NOT determine your culture, the environment you grew up in, the groups you belong to, and the resulting values, customs, beliefs, and norms that you learn determine your culture.

3) Culture is based on symbols. Art and religion are both parts of culture that involve symbols. Take, for example, a Christian cross, an Islamic crescent, a Jewish Star of David, these symbols mean something to the cultures that use them; they are symbolic of a specific cultures philosophy or creed. At the heart of the symbolic aspect of culture is language, the shared use of words (symbols) to describe the world around oneself.

4) Culture is integrated. I don’t want to get into this point too much since I could go on for pages, and this isn’t an anthropology class, but generally speaking, it refers to the fact that all parts of a culture function together in an interrelated whole.

Source: Crawford, G., Fedorak, S., Haviland, W., & Lee, R. (2002). Cultural Anthropology. Toronto: Nelson.

The video that I would encourage everyone to watch is can be found through the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAARrZpX2l0 it is called Mifugo Ni Mail which means “Herd is richness” and depicts the Maasai Paracuyo culture. It includes images of their daily lives, traditions and rituals and you can get a glimpse of the integrated and interrelated element of their culture. In addition it is very interesting to see how they have incorporated Catholicism within their culture, and how they interpret it as a result of their culture. Furthermore, there is a section that talks specifically about education, and the man who speaks at the end of the clip has some very profound words that I think are important for everyone to remember. While it may seem disconnected from our lives here in Canada, it’s important to recognize that individual, distinct cultures exist within the framework of our society, and it’s vital that we acknowledge, treasure, protect and respect those things that make us unique as well as those things that tie us all together.