The Significance Of Culture And Multiculturalism

Culture gives each society a form of collective meaning within a variety of social contexts. Culture is described by authors of The Sociology Project as a system of learned behavior that is used to determine individual values through biography, beliefs, and knowledge (Molotch, 2013, p. 74). While integration of cultures has occurred over time, there is always an inferiority that persists and persuades one culture to reject ideas of another culture. Multiculturalism is defined by Dictionary.com as “the preservation of different cultures or cultural identities within a unified society as a state or nation.” In effect this cross-cultural connection seems to be creating a global network of shared culture instead of unity of multiple cultures; this shared culture could ultimately be construed as an Americanized society. The strict definition would ultimately fail and lead right back towards ethnocentrism on a global scale. In order to determine this occurrence, this paper examines the history of culture and language in a context comparable to where the direction of society may lead us back to today. An opposition to the acceptance of multiculturalism, especially since ideas of one true meaning in life would shift and implicate shifting values as well, and lastly how multiculturalism would have to define every way of life, and integration into society is a necessary step to a complete multicultural nation-state almost in comparison with a Utopia.

Before 19th century, taste and class determined culture; it can be argued that they still do. Hierarchical rule was common, giving power to the monarch whose customs were superior to the poor and middle class and emphasized the outcome of a superior culture. Suggesting there ...

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...directly to the middle class. This separation is one culturally that a wave of multiculturalism wouldn’t be able to change, the wealthy will always be a separate culture than lower class economy. Only recently have high class culture and middle class culture merged into a mass culture. The U.S. Is a mass consumer of its own materials and widely of foreign materials such as cars or phones that consumers believe are better simply because they're foreign. High culture literature, as another example, has been mass consumed as movies and TV series, effectively merging two cultures into one. But the elite culture still retains its high status via wealth and the ability to live without “living wages.” Taste determines class and society, even food or how we walk is determined by our status, there's always going to be cultural differences, especially between classes.