For my culture assignment I decided to spend a couple hours with a Samoan family at their church service & family get together. The difference in the culture is very prominent between ours and theirs. Spending time with them taught me how much different cultures believe in and how religious other can be. The Samoans are very religious and take part in big church services. Their beliefs are totally different. Their kids are their servants, their last name is royalty and everything is done big.
In their life the kids act more like adults then they do in our culture. By this I mean that the kids are known to be the servants of their elders. When they are old enough to answer to their parents and do their demands they do. If the parents need something the children will be called upon to retrieve it. I witnessed this first hand at their Sunday get together. In our culture it is not unusual for the parents to make the children’s plates before theirs. At the get together the children made the adults plates and then went off to play while the adults ate. After they were done then the children were able to eat. The kids are never disrespectful or think about telling their parents no. In my culture kids are very disrespectful and get away with it. This is something that wouldn’t happen in a Samoan family.
The outfits that I witnessed were a tad different than ours. The guys were something is known as a “lava-lava”. It looks like something that we would call a skirt. A Lava-Lava is a long piece of cloth usually with some kind of island design that is just tied around the waist. This would be considered lounge wear. For church they wore button down shirts with flower designs on them and the girls wore dresses or skirts that had flower and is...
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...these tattoos it is to show their deep beliefs in their culture. In our culture people get tattoos to be cool or for meaning not to show we are into our culture.
Spending time with this family I learned a lot. The different culture beliefs is something that was a shocker. I think the biggest thing that I found interesting is how the children serve the elders. In my culture it is the opposite. The adults wait on the children. Spending time with them was an eye opener. It was a very fun time and a great way to see outside of my life. I think being Samoan is something that they take high pride in and that’s something I admire about them. Our cultures are different but the same at the same time. We have the same basic Christian beliefs but different ways of expressing ourselves. Samoans are great friendly people who welcome everyone in and love to do everything big.
In American homes, a traditional family consists of a mother, a father, and some children, who are all siblings. In these families, the parents try to guide their children on the “right” path and each child is equal in their parents’ eyes. In Sierra Leone homes, their traditional family is very different. It will have a single biological parent, an uncle, an aunt, or a community member as the head of the house. There will be many children, but most will not be siblings. While these guardians will also be caring, they will not have the time to help each child with every little problem. The aunts or uncles may pick a favorite to focus their time on, often one who is their own child. These two types of families create interesting children, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
As described by Linnekin and Bierle (2003), Hawaiians are a subsistence combination culture that are in the sub region off Polynesia. Hawaiians are indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands. They descended from Eastern Polynesians who originated in the Marquesas Islands. The current Hawaiian population is estimated to be 175,000 people. “Pure” Hawaiians, or people who are completely Hawaiian, consists of only about 9,000 people. Few Hawaiians can speak the Hawaiian language because it was suppressed in the mid-1900s. Most Hawaiians now speak Hawai’i island Creole, known as “Pidgin” by many who speak it.
The perception of tattoos and those wearing them has varied in societies since tattoos first started being used. Some of the reasons people had/have tattoos include: therapy, protection, homage, memory, religion, or a dumb mistake. In historic cases, tattoos were used as a way to communicate with others, and were a common occurrence in most societies throughout history. Schildkrout states “There is no culture in which people do not, or did not paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape, or simply adorn their bodies (Schildkrout).”Since modern technology has made tattoos relatively affordable, faster and slightly less painful to receive, tattooing has shifted from select groups to “everyone else”. There are no specific groups for tattoos anymore, they are seen everywhere on all types of people and are less discriminated agains...
I was raised in a Nepalese household, where the internal setting of my home was different from the external setting of the predominately white and Christian suburb I grew up in. My parents wanted me to still recognize Nepalese culture, even though I was not living there. My dad would always give lectures on the significance of certain Nepalese holidays and make sure the entire family celebrated each and every holiday. My
The Polynesian peoples have a lifestyle quite different than that of any other culture, as living on an island requires a level of flexible adaptability in order to cope with such a different, sometimes difficult environment. We see the way diverse cultures build their lives around their circumstances and how they respect them in their cultural myths and stories. The Polynesian legends emphasize the physical environment that they live in. They are quite different than any other region in the world, but the beauty and individuality of the Polynesian culture is prominent as seen in their mythology.
cultures and different ways of living. Living life in American Samoa is more unique from other countries. First of all, living life in American Samoa is easier then any other countries as far as I know. In American Samoa we get food free because the Samoans mainly live off the land. There is no house or rent payment. The people of Samoa grow their own plantation, go fishing and help out others. Everyone works together and helps out one another. When family is going through times of hardships the other families will step in to help, until they can survive and stand on their own feet. The cost of living is fair enough for people to live and survive. We buy many products from the store, such as our toiletries, canned good, paper goods and our clothes. But in other ways, families have no money to purchase things from the store so they borrow the money or the item from another family. Often times the storeowners will allow a family to write an I.O.U and pay it later when they have money. This is where the word "Fa'amolemole" comes in. This word simply means, "please" but it is one of the most powerful words in the Samoan language. With the word fa'amolemole a person can obtain or acquire anything that they wish. The Samoans use this word to borrow things from their neighbors, and returning it or merely replacing it when they are finished. The second most powerful word in the Samoan language is "Fa'afetai". This word means, "thank you". Because the Samoan people are of high respect a simple please or thank you can ...
...ns religion was focused around nature we need to realize its value to them and stop abusing the area. Religion is one of the main focuses of the culture, whether or not it’s still practiced, the value of what was once worshipped should never be overlooked or forgotten. I believe that if something was ever held sacred to people, even if these people have long since been deceased then it deserves to be preserved, and since the Hawaiians held nature sacred, then nature needs to be preserved. They should not have to continue to fight to keep some traditions alive and they should be free to practice many of them whenever necessary. The fieldwork has allowed me to look at Hawaiian culture in a totally new perspective. Being able to see and hear them talk to us about the history of Hawaii has been rewarding to me and it gave me a better understanding of their culture.
Many people have been getting tattoos lately. People of all ages have been getting them and from all different backgrounds. On a nice day in just about any public place one can spot a tattoo about every five minutes, from the business man who had a portrait of his daughter put on him to a young girl with a butterfly on her ankle and even people with extensive tattoo coverage. What is even more interesting is the rise in the number of people who are heavily tattooed and that they come from all different backgrounds. Not too long ago tattooing did not experience the popularity in mainstream culture that it does now. The question that must be asked in order to understand this fascination that popular culture has had with tattoos is why people get tattoos.
In conclusion, this book gave me a whole new view on life and how we can interact better with different people. The book emphasized that culture is key to understanding people. Sometimes it is hard to connect with others because they are indicated as different but in due time we can adjust. Every culture has their own traditions when it comes to what they eat, what to wear, dating, various ceremonies, holidays and more. Reading this book helped me become more accepting of who I am and where I come from.
I have chosen to research and study the Hawaiian ethnicity and to widen my knowledge of the culture. I chose this topic because it is extremely interesting and differs from mine. Also, I have visited Hawaii in the past and plan to do so much more. I am planning on visiting Hawaii next summer. Also, my current field of study is nursing. My ultimate goal is to be a traveling nurse before eventually settling into one place that I call home. I would love to travel to and work in Hawaii for a period of time. I hope to learn more about the Hawaiian culture and discover some of the traditions and customs. Even though I visited Hawaii three years ago, I only got the chance to touch the surface of the Hawaiian culture. Because my knowledge is limited
Tattoos and body modifications have been around for many generations. They first began in 3370 BC and were used by Europeans and Egyptians. Both tattoos and body modifications are defined as a cultural representation of self-expression and sometimes even religion. In the article “Tattoos and Piercing: Issues of Body Modification and the Workplace,” Dr. Elzweig states, “Although tattooing is not a new phenomenon, the number of people who have tattoos has increased significantly and continues to rise. Life magazine estimated in 1936 that only 10% of me American population was tattooed in whole or in part (One out of ten Americans is tattooed, 1936)” (Elweig, Peeples).
The fist thing that found really shocking about this culture was the social behavior; I could divide this into two groups. The first group is the touch and feels kind. Are people who really love to touch other people.
Looking at the world today there are many different traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation, but one tradition that seems to get overlooked and miss interpreted is tattoos. Tattoos have been a way of life for many years and have many different meaning to different countries, races, and social groups. Tattoos have been given to many different age groups of people in many different ways such as nails, sticks, bamboo, barracuda teeth, and many of other different tools that have been passed down throughout time. Most people think that tattoos only express people’s feelings in negative ways but there are many more important meanings for most people’s tattoos and it changes from culture to culture. This paper will discuss the history behind tattoos, and the cultural significance from several different cultures.
Several important themes emerged through this study. These themes are gender and family roles, family structure, and the effect of culture on the quality of family interactions. They will be discussed in the follow pages.
Discussing these thoughts with my group members helped me learn about new cultures and helped them out as well. One of the ladies in my group spoke about herself, because she was from Puerto Rico. She had a lot to say about the cultures. She also experienced culture shock due to the climate and the individualistic life in America. She said that the weather in Puerto Rico was tropical and i...