Cultural identity can be described as an aspect of our lives that shapes different things about us. It helps define who we are and what led us to become the person we are today, but most people don’t recognize that their lives characterize their cultural identity. Traits can include languages, religion, ethnicity, nationality, food, and even one's name. My cultural identity is what I represent which consists of my personal beliefs, traditional meals, and different celebrations. All which represent who I am and what makes me Adilman.
My household has always been Catholic which opened my mind to it. When I was a younger, being a religious person was the most important thing to me at the time. My religion was so important to me that I became an acolyte, a priest’s assistant during mass, which made me feel happy because I thought that I was coming closer to god. Eventually, I started to distant myself from the church when I they found out, I fell asleep during a mass service. Although, I never truly detached from my religion, I just shifted focus in my life. Throughout different epochs I
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I am Salvadorian, so my culture in food is very wide, as a result I inherited some of this culture. During the time I lived in my country, I got to see and enjoy all kind of food, some of them were too exotic for me, so I never ate them. At that time, I found out my favorite food was the Pupusa, a traditional food of El Salvador, which now when I eat makes me feel the presence of my family in my of origin. In addition, there a lot of other food that represent my culture, despite of it, only the pupusa represent my cultural identity, but this makes me feel awful because I am sure that my Salvadorean’s culture woulded like for me to get all of it’s arts. Anyways, I still get to eat this precious food that it is to me, principally in traditional
“Cultural identity is a broader term: people from multiple ethnic backgrounds may identify as belonging to the same culture” (Elise Trumbull and Maria Pacheco). Though people may identify themselves with a certain culture, their beliefs and actions varies and adjust to their experiences. “…We do not consciously pick and choose attributes from the total set; rather, the conditions and events in our individual lives…” (Elise Trumbull and Maria Pacheco). A person is easily influenced by their culture which also makes an impact on their beliefs as well as their view of the world which can cause conflict with another person.
What is culture? Culture is the idea of what is wrong or right, the concept of what is acceptable within our society. Culture serves us as a guide, taking us to the "right way" and helping us to make sense of things that surrounds us. There are many different cultures around the world. A lot of them are similar in specific ways and others are just completely different, this difference explains why we think that people from different backgrounds are "weird".
Starting with one of the surface aspects of my cultural identity is my language. I speak English, like most people who were born in America I learned English and only English right from the start. I
I am a 52-year-young white female, with ethnicity that spans from England and Ireland to
One’s cultural identity consists of their race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, religion, and so on. Being aware of your own cultural identity is just as important as being aware of other’s. People’s cultural identity defines who they are, the privilege (or lack of privilege) they receive, and how society views them. It is important to understand that White individuals have more privileges than individuals of color. White individuals do not experience detriment and difficulties due specifically to their skin color and instead receive advantages. White privilege is defined as benefits that white individuals have that people of color do not (Kendall, 2012). The following walks through my personal cultural background, how it was shaped, defined, and developed, and limitations to my personal competencies.
I was born and raised in Vietnam, so I naturally observed my culture from my family and my previous schools. I learned most of my culture by watching and coping the ways my family do things. My family and my friends all spoke Vietnamese, so I eventually knew how to speak and understand deeply about my language as I grew up. At home, my mom cooked many Vietnamese foods, and she also taught me to cook Vietnamese food. So I became accustom Vietnamese food. I also learned that grandparents and parents in my culture are taken care of until they die. At school, I learned to address people formally and greet higher-ranking people first. In Vietnamese culture, ranking and status are not related to wealth, so they are concerned with age and education.
I am proud to be who I am. I love everything about my culture. Music, food. and religion are all important aspects in my cultural. My parents and family members are huge role models to me of helping me understand my background. Although I do try my best to represent who I am as a Palestinian I do face many external and internal problems in my culture. The main idea of this is to explain my cultural identity and how it has affected my life.
My personal cultural identity is a lot different compared to the society I am surrounded by. I am considered an outsider in my society. I am an outsider living in a constantly changing environment where there are many different kinds of people and many different cultural identities. In my culture we know how to respect people and their belongings, know how to work hard, use what we have while being thankful for it at the same time, and last we know how to stay true to ourselves in this very fast pace world of ours. I am a cowboy.
Growing up as a first generation Chinese-American, I felt as if I was stranded in the void between two worlds, isolated and alone. At school, I hid my Chinese self and tried to be more ‘American’ in order to fit in. At home, I then carefully tucked away my American half and acted the dutiful Chinese son to please my parents. If Chinese and American were two planets, I was a vagabond flitting back and forth between them, unsettled and insecure, never quite belonging in either one.
Cultural identity refers to a sense of belonging to one’s cultural or ethnic group. It is a collective phenomenon. Here the person shares certain common characteristics with his/her cultural group members, identifies with the values, beliefs of the cultural group. There are stages of cultural identity development given by James Bank (1976, 2004). They are as follows:
Identity-“Ones personal qualities.”Identiy is something only he or she can fully define. My uncle says I am affectionate,cheerful, and calm. My grandmother sees me as slim, pretty and sweet. My dad described me as perky, cheerful and happy, my mom says beautiful, gentle, and self-conscious. These adjectives describe me accurately, yet they are only abstract versions of me. Adjectives cannot begin to describe me and I aknowlege these descriptions for what they are, a condensed translation from my outward self to the world. It is impossible for anyone to understand me completely because nobody has experienced the things I have. My mother has never cherished a raggedy doll named Katie and my father never spent hours upon hours making collages and scrap books for his future children. My uncle never hid in the back of a pick-up-truck and traveled four hours to New York and my grandmother has never walked hours in the rain looking for the Queen of England. My identity is something only I can define.
In the books, Sacred Rice by Joanna Davidson and The Anti-Politics Machine by James Ferguson we see how cultural misunderstandings or ignorance by development agencies can lead to their projects at their intended goal. In fact within these two books we see how two resources that many may see as unimportant or trivial led to these failures due to the fact that development organization did not look into such possibilities. With this in mind I am going to compare and contrast the idea’s, history, and developmental attempts that have occurred in Lesotho and rural West Africa in order to see how understanding a culture is needed in order to aid it in development. To start off we should examine how Ferguson and Davidson did their ethnographical
Cultural identity. Some think of it as where they come from. Others think of it as the same as ethnicity. Both of these types of people are wrong. Cultural identity is the way that a person identifies with a group, especially based on how they were raised. In this essay I will be giving an explanation on what cultural identity is, how it affects people, and what kinds of things develop a cultural identity.
The main difference between a person’s cultural and social identity is the historical roots that create and help shape their cultural identities (“Communication in the Real World”). Unlike someone’s personal and social identity, cultural identity is not something that constantly changes. This is due to the fact that a person is born into this type of identity. However, the development of “culture is an ongoing negotiation of learned patterns of beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors” (“Communication in the Real World”). Although others may view this as a way of saying that people cannot change the identity they have, even though their cultural identity does not change as much as the others, the different types of identity that form who they will become and shapes their overall identity will change throughout life. There is more than just a person’s personal, social, and cultural identities, they also develop an ethnic identity that changes as they
How many times have people asked themselves, who am I? What defines me? Culture plays a very important role in the identity of people. People are born in a culture, their family's culture, but not with an already established culture. The term culture refers to the values, beliefs, customs, style of dress, food, songs and stories that are shared and learned in a characteristic group. On the other hand, identity is a set of features, attributes and characteristics that define a person. Identity is constructed by language, social structure, gender orientation and cultural patterns. Although many do not relate these two themes, there is a complex relationship between culture and identity.