Cultural Belonging Essay

A sense of belonging is a strong an inevitable need, just as food, and shelter are, which makes it one of the most important values in life, weather it is for a family, a country, a church, or to friends. This feeling of belonging is deep rooted within all humans, it is a common experience that makes us all feel like a member, a part of something bigger than ourselves. In all cultures belonging is a universal desire without which one cannot identify himself clearly within their culture, ethnicity, and even family. The concept of ethnicity is connected to the idea of belonging, therefore I believe that is not our ethnicity that makes us part of a culture, but rather it is our sense of belonging to that culture. The concept of ethnicity is connected

Throughout this ethnographic assignment I interviewed my friend Amanda, who has an American-German ethnicity, and I will analyze her membership in society, the foundations of her family, the cultural practices of her ethnicity, and her perception of belonging to these two culture.

I met my best friend on my first day of college at SBCC, her name is Amanda and we immediately bonded as we shared the same love for travelling, adventure, and also the same internal conflict of the concept of belonging to our own ethnicity and cultural upbringings. Amanda grew up until the age of nine in Bloomington, Illinois where she lived with her dad, and relocated in the south of Germany with her mother and sister until the age of nineteen, when she moved to California for college. Therefore, she lived exactly half of her life in two very different far apart countries, ethnicities, cultures, and families with particular traditions and values. As we studied in class, family dynamics are the most important elements of study for an anthropologist when trying to understand a culture, therefore in my vests of anthropologist for this assignment, I interviewed