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The role of consumer culture on our sense of self and identity
Identity and consumer culture
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On February 15th, 2014, I took a trip to the drinking fountain at the University of California, San Diego that was assigned by Professor B for my second writing assignment. The drinking fountain is made out of granite that has been polished. It is situated on a cement pathway across from Yogurt World and the iconic Triton statue, which is next to the Price Center. The drinking fountain is in front of the Student Services Center building and next to the fountain, close to several outdoor seats and tables. The cement pathway is in between grasslands and several trees. On the same walkway, I see a large American Flag on a flag tower. I would later go on to discovery the rich history surrounding the monument on the walkway behind the flag tower. The area where the drinking fountain is situated was formerly a United States Marine Corps military base from 1917 until 1964. The area was used for marksmanship training for Marine recruits. During the military base’s early years, this area of the drinking fountain were used as rifle ranges and had no official name for the military base. Throughout World War II and the Korean War, more and more Marine recruits completed the marksmanship training at this base. The military base was officially named as Camp Calvin B. Matthews after famous Marine marksman Calvin B. Matthews in 1942. After WWII, local residents of the city of La Jolla became increasingly concerned over the existence of a military base in their community. In 1959, a bill was passed in Congress to transfer the military base to the University of California. On October 6th, 1964, Camp Calvin B. Matthews was deeded to UCSD, in same year, the first undergraduate college, Revelle, took in the first undergraduate class. Through careful o...
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...irected, I take a drink from the drinking fountain while some others who were also observing the site hesitated or even refused to drink from it. I could taste the metallic tinge of the fountain water, but the heat of the sun made it nonetheless a refreshing drink. This can be connected to taste because I found the drinking fountain to be remarkable based on my cultural background and identities, which is my culturally specific taste. Others who visited the fountain that do not share this “experiences relating to one’s class, cultural background, education, and other aspects of identity.” (Cartwright 56) might find it hard to appreciate the drinking fountain in the manner I did. Nonetheless, viewers do have the right to experience, interpret, and use this cultural representation differently by being situated in a set of actual and relational social practices.
The concept of culture spurs many individuals to study, understand, and obtain knowledge of certain customs, values, standards, and rituals that create another perspective to empathetically grasp, and each relatable truth, discovered by its researcher, can establish foundational, inalienable traits to argument the researcher’s identity. Each human is elected to be a researcher of culture with or without the knowledge of the research, but ironically, identity is not a firm state of being; it is continually shaped and molded after each new experience. The Amish society is not the exception from the foundational consistencies of culture and identity, and furthermore, this society, akin to other cultural entities, has created an interesting form of identity exploration from a rite of passage known as Rumspringa. Consequently, Rumspringa relies on thin layers of accountability with many standards, which inevitably, induces negative consequences to an adolescent’s search for personal identity affirmations.
Cultural diversity is an important element. Often times we acknowledge cultural diversity but we don’t quite understand it simply because we do not live it. With this novel, readers can understand cultural
In “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker exemplified how the loss of heritage can contribute to the loss of one’s true self. As introduced in the story,
“Everyday Use” shows readers that heritage and culture is not speaking in a foreign language, wearing different clothes, or the changing of one’s name. One’s heritage and culture is taught and learned through generations, not just picked up. Walker illustrates that a person who truly has heritage and culture makes use of it every day of their life.
... was not present to see. Through poetics and story telling, authors give a more emotional feeling to important events that must be witnessed and remembered. Although resurrecting the past can be a struggle and cause emotional pain, it can also help to soothe people’s spirits. In The House on Mango Street, Ceremony, “Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” and Zoot Suit each tell a unique story that offers a new perspective and understanding of a culture. Texts that offer a look into the multicultural world we all live in, enables us to reconfigure our understanding of diversity and allows us to revaluate the importance and the presence of race and culture in daily life. Through writing and storytelling, we can also extend our knowledge about parallel cultures by exposing ourselves to the differences and similarities between our own culture and that of other groups.
On February 6, 2016, I had the privilege of being a chaperone for Byron Elementary School 5th grade class in Byron, Georgia on a trip to Washington D.C. However, when the students and I began to tour the different memorial sites at in Washington D.C. we came across a lot of sculptures, but the one sculpture that I felt was amazing was the Marine Corps Memorial. The Marine Corps statue was designed in honor of the men and women that served in the Marines during World War II, who gave their lives to protect the United States during the war since 1775 (Marines, 2016). The sculpture is known as the Iwo Jima Memorial, which we visited outside of the Arlington National Cemetery, which is located in the Arlington Ridge Park. The sculpture is adjacent to the Potomac River from Washington D.C.
For Stanley Forman, a photographer of the Herald American news, it was unlike any other day heading to work. News in Boston, which had been going on for months, stated that the protest over a “court-ordered school desecration” was still being held as active. Assigned the task, Forman’s job was to take photos at the City Hall Plaza, where a couple of high school students would demonstrate to the crowd. It seems that Forman wasn’t in such a hurry; however, what came next soon baffled a life as the “agitated” students made their way to a well-dressed black man and attacked as he was walking to City Hall. As the man tried to flee, he found himself about to be assaulted with an American flag by one of the protestors. Forman, who had already snapped over a dozen photos at the scene, caught the image (Sullivan). Although the photo taken was nearly three decades ago, The Soiling of Old Glory caused shock towards the entire nation, which stirred emotions and confusion. It caused a wide range of effects, which drastically changed the lives of the photographer and two main people in the photo. However, because of Boston’s negative view from the public made the photo unnecessary to publish.
remaining in touch with a proximate history and immediate cultural reality can one lay claim to
Spradley, J. P. & McCurdy, D. W. (1972). The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in a Complex Society. Chicago: Science Research Associates.
Experiencing a society of multi-cultures is beneficial through a variety of concepts to epitomize each individual identity. A person may vary in the degree to which he or she identifies with, morals, or...
Humanities 1301 (Introduction to Humanities) is a literature course which links student between their lives and the works of human creativity and ideas. This is done through participation in art work, research, reading literature, providing peer review and summary of the selected books, watching cultivating video, visiting museum, monuments, and architectural building. Students are also exposed to several cultures around the world to which they are asked to comment. Their work are expressed through presentations, exposé, written memos, peer review, book summary, oral presentation, and journal articles. The purpose of this writing prompt is to review all portions of course number CRN 92776, Spring 2016, delivered by Dr. Laurel Lacroix, PhD, in Houston Community College, Stafford Campus, on Wednesdays from 14:00 to 15:30.
Alice Walker uses a substantial amount of symbolism in her short story “Everyday Use”. Walker describes each characters personality and how it correlates with the way they view their heritage. She [Walker] also uses this story to show the difference between culture and heritage as the two are often mistaken to be one and the same.
In our ever-changing world, and its societies, the things one is exposed to, in terms of their communities, peers, their own thoughts, etc. can have an impact on what they believe in or their personalities/identities. In simpler words, what’s around you and what you go through can change who you are and what you think of life. These changes occur not only in reality but often times in books and novels. In the texts The House on Mango Street and “Only Daughter” by Sandra Cisneros, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the authors demonstrate how one’s experiences and environment can both positively and negatively impact their identity as well as help them push past social and cultural boundaries, shown through Esperanza Cordero’s observations
Sometime in 1978, my mother brings my sister and me to escape Viet Nam to Songkhla, Thailand. We arrived in San Antonio, Texas nine months later in July, 1979. It is here where I began my “American” education. It is this education system, and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) through the medium called “television”, which shred lights on me as I become conscious of what happened to my home country was not the fault of my own people. Regrettably, growing up in “America” as a foreign kid, barely speaking English, moving from town to town, and changing school annually is not straightforward. In a flash, the realization of what happen to my country vanished as it comes down to a mean of survival. I am on my own in this strange country and society, and I must do what I do to get through at the age of twelve. The recollections of my beautiful country, home, schools, and friends, appeared in the back of my mind from time to time, nevertheless I did not have time to reflect upon them. The questions of why we left our country and came to such a distance place called the “United State of America”, never get a “real” answer. Until now, July 9, 2011, I am attending history 21, conducts by Professor Toshio Whelchel. Thirty-two years later, I am asked to compose an essay for my midterm title: “Modern American History: From the Overthrow of Hawaii to the Philippines War”. The anxiety in my stomach agitates and my eyes begin to tears, not because it is the “midterm” paper, not because I forget how to write, not because lettering is my weakness…but the memories. April 30, 1975, the reverberation of bullets piercing through the night, the gloomy stench of smoldering dead bodies, as bombs rained down upon us, and guns fired upon innocent ci...
An individual shows their identity through their use of language, gesture and clothing. The way one enacts identity can depend on the situation/occasion. A dimension of cultural identity performances is one 's scope of identity performance, i.e. the aspects of one’s behaviour expressed through their cultural identity. For instance, when Keith visits China, for sometimes months at a time, he chooses to eat a few ethnic-related foods, but rejects the traditional ethnic dress. The second dimension is the intensity of identity performance that outlines how powerfully one enacts their identity. For instance one may make a point of proclaiming their national origin, details Clarke (2008). Keith returns from China each time, re-iterating the point that he was treated like royalty; he still finds this somewhat incredible given his humble working class origins. An additional aspect is one 's salience of identity performance- how obvious is the cultural elements of identity in one’s daily routine. When Keith visits China he still reads the Economist a British publication and watches BBC television, which he prefers to CNN, an American television channel. Keith 's reliance solely on ethnic mass media are all ways in which one asserts