In this post-modern society each and every one of us has
been exposed to countless cultures throughout our lives. But how do you assess
your experiences with culture and identity? Wadham, Pudsey and Boyd (2007)
states that, “humans are cultural beings and we can’t understand them without
recognizing the cultural dimension of their lives”. These dimensions refer to
an individual’s social status, background and education. It is these things
that inter-link to create a person’s cultural experience, and it is also these
things that people in the post-modern society use to judge, and be judged by.
But judging someone, is the process in which one assesses a particular cultural
influence on the individual, and then denotes which social group he or she may
belong to. It is how we may identify one another by placing identity markers
upon those we meet and those we know of. Keeping these conceptions in mind, my
personal experience with culture and identity is taken up mostly by my high
school life and my personal hobbies. In which I was exposed to a multitude of
differing cultures and different people. In hindsight I am aware now of just
how great a number of cultures were in my school, and as such it also becomes
apparent that through experiencing so many cultures and different people I have
become an increasingly accepting individual. This is also the case with my
close friends who have experienced the same high school. Then I can argue, that
the greater number of cultures one experiences in high school/education, the
greater their perception of the worlds, “cultural dimensions” (Wadham, et.al,
2007) and thus, the greater their acceptance of the varying dimensions.
Talk about dimensions is great and all, but what specific
dimensions were the greatest for me in high school. It’s safe to assume that
this is the case for many people, where the greatest cultural thing a person
interacts with is another person’s background. Of course a person’s background
is complex, as it is my firm belief that a cultural background is subjective to
a person’s cultural characteristics, things such as, “language, traditions,
food, clothes, arts, dance, music and sports” (Leo F. Parvis (2005). I cannot
simply denote the mainstream identity marker to an individual, as I understand
that individuals are not so simple, but are complex and made up of countless
cultural influences that may not just differentiate them as individuals, but
also differentiate their cultural backgrounds. For example, in my High School, I
shared the cultural background of growing up in a Turkish family with the Turkish
social group in my high School. But during those years of education I was
primarily surrounded with a multicultural group of friends and teachers. This
caused me to completely differentiate myself from people whom I shared the same
cultural background with. Thereby I am reinforcing the notion that you cannot
simply explore or denote an individual’s identity simply by association with
certain primary and mainstream backgrounds.
Finally, I find that being exposed to many cultures allows a
person to begin creating identity markers, such as, ‘the Turkish social group’,
and that everybody partakes in the identity game. It is only natural to attempt
to understand another individual, and as such you will associate that individual,
dependent on the information you know of them, with an identity that you have
previously been exposed to. And also, when an individual cannot place an
identity marker on someone, the automatic response is to place the identity
marker of being weird/strange to the person/s. Then education becomes a system
where an individual begins to learn associations to categorize people, that
they will then carry and continually shape throughout their lives. I was
exposed to a multicultural school that has shaped my perspective on cultural
diversity and the importance of education within the conceptions of culture,
and identity that shape our modern society.
~Emre G
References
1. Parvis, L. (2006). Understanding Cultural Diversity in Today's Complex World. Lulu. com.
2. Wadham, B. A., Pudsey, J., & Boyd, R. M. (2007). Culture and education. Pearson Education Australia.
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