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Reflection on cultural diversity
Cultural diversity
The diversity of culture, ethnicity
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Every society and culture has different ways of interpreting and defining occurrences by the way their own culture or society functions. “A society’s culture, consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members”(Geertz 242). The rituals, customs, ethics and morals that are attributed to the cultures have caused these differences. To understand how the people of one culture interpret a situation or event, one must evaluate the attributes that a culture has. The criteria that an event is based on changes as one culture applies their own ideas to the given situation. Heroism and violation are two concepts that are easily misinterpreted depending on culture’s ideals. Since cultures have different attributes it is impossible for two cultures to exist and share a view of a situation or event.
Heroism and violation are two concepts that are addressed by Geertz in his relating of Ryle’s story of the sheep raid. From the different cultures involved, two different interpretations are concluded. To the protagonist, Cohen, and the perpetrators of the crime, his raid on the Berbers was seen as heroism. Cohen risking his life for his redemption of crime that was committed against him is viewed as heroic. On the contrary, when Cohen returned to his French counterparts, they saw his redemption as a violation of the Berbers, and accused him of being a spy:
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“reconciliatory pattern found its most typical incarnation…in one particular narrative: the story of the private man attempting to keep from being drawn into action on any but his own terms. In this story, the reluctant hero’s ultimate willingness to help the community satisfied the official values. But by portraying this aid as demanding only temporary involvement, the story preserved the values of individualism as well.” (284)
Beckwith described many situations that would have us believe that certain aspects of other cultures have radically different moral values. The most predominant example he uses from philosopher James Rachels, agreeing with his claim he used over Eskimo culture and infanticide. In the Eskimo culture, it is a social and moral norm to kill a child to ensure the family’s survival. When looking at it from an ethnocentric view, many see that as morally wrong, but what Beckwith argues is that if we dig deeper and gain more knowledge of particular facts on these cultures that differences in cultures may not be too far off from our own. So from a morally objective standpoint, Beckwith believes that disagreements are overrated due to the lack of factual information and biases over issues.
These sagas reveal the contentions that can arise between men in a stateless society, and follow a deliberate sequence of injuries; then cases of revenge and then settlement. They also valued heroic qualities like courage, loyalty, physical ability, and over-zealous defense of rights and honor.
As examples regarding the death penalty and police brutality show, the state of exception is common in modern life. Agamben has foreseen a situation where this state of affairs is not only common, but ubiquitous. “The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.” (Agamben, 1998, P.68). He refers to this phenomenon as the “camp” or a society where the government routinely exercises the prerogative to kill citizens in ways civilians cannot. Therein, the citizens accept the government’s exemption from the laws of morality and this state of affairs becomes
In the world we live in today, deviance happens to play an integral role in within the societies that scatter our globe, whether we like it or not. Deviance describes actions or behaviors that violate the social norms of our society. These behaviors can violate formally enacted rules, such as laws that are put into place by government, as well as the informal type of “guidelines” that various cultures have informally established and shaped for themselves. As one may come to understand, norms are essentially expectations that are standard to a certain culture. These norms gently guide people in a society in “what to do,” and “what not to do,” in compliance with their societies' norms. With this said, it is important to keep in mind that social norms differ from culture to culture. One act that may be considered deviant in a particular society, may be generally accepted in another. Three main sociological theories of deviance include the cultural transmission theory (also known as the differential association theory), the labeling theory, and the control theory.
Bandura’s main argument is on moral agency which is evident in both ability to avoid from behaving inhumanely and the proactive ability to act humanely. Moral agency which is implanted in a wider socio -cognitive self-theory all-embracing self-regulatory mechanisms, proactive, self-organizing and self-reflective fixed in personal standards connected to self-sanctions. Self-regulatory mechanisms that regulate moral conduct cannot set in motion unless they have been triggered. The moral disengament which may have its focal point on the cognitive of which there are many psychological different ways to manipulate through by which moral self-sanctions discriminately detached from inhuman behavior reconstructing of inhumane behavior into compassionate be it either by using acceptable language, moral justification, preferable comparison or shifting of responsibility or even dehumanization of victims. It’s Bandura’s view that countless inhumanities in the world have always been piloted through an approving of authorized franchises by decent individuals who are the main cause and also disperse disastrous projects by
Nowadays, the reaction of individuals toward certain facts or situations of our days is considered as deviants. However, it is important to notice that not all individuals reacted the same way in different situations. As individuals, we react differently when facing same as well as different situations,
The module two, the Kwakiuti Indians had a custom in which a person who suffers hardship or loss may “lash back” at the situation by inflicting pain or trouble on another party. This custom, which may seem cruel to most, is acceptable to few. The justification for such a crude action can be found in ethical relativism. Ethical relativism is the theory that morality is based upon the standards of one’s own society. This would explain as to why this action of bringing pain upon others seems harsh to Americans but was socially acceptable to Kwakiuti Indians. An ethical relativist would argue that this action is socially acceptable because we can only judge morality from society to society. No society would have the exact same stance on morality but because the Kwakiuti Indians accepted this
In the pursuit of safety, acceptance, and the public good, many atrocities have been committed in places such as Abu Ghraib and My Lai, where simple, generally harmless people became the wiling torturers and murderers of innocent people. Many claim to have just been following orders, which illustrates a disturbing trend in both the modern military and modern societies as a whole; when forced into an obedient mindset, many normal and everyday people can become tools of destruction and sorrow, uncaringly inflicting pain and death upon the innocent.
Cultures vary depending on the extent to which they build virtues based on all the five foundations. Therefore, the liberals who only rely on the two foundations, find it hard to comprehend the moral motivations of the conservatives and therefore the culture of war. To them, the two foundations are all they require to make sound moral judge...
Great philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and Plato unwittingly weighed in on this story, long before it ever occurred. Immanuel Kant is considered a significant and influential figure in modern philosophy. He may have single handedly set the tone on how humanity conducts itself in society. Kant’s Categorical Imperative is basically a set of principles that we should follow. Essentially, it is our moral duty to uphold these laws, whether you want to or not, and that they are universal, meaning no one is immune to the rules.
The codification of deviance can vary widely between different cultures, a norm in one culture can be considered deviant in another. For example, the notion of cannibalism has been proved by anthropologists to be a spiritually divine form of ritualistic sacrifice in the ancient Aztec culture of Mexico. Yet in Western culture murder and the consumption of human flesh is considered highly revolting, dealt with by harsher consequences by law than most other deviant crimes. These differences are due to the way each individual society develops their own moral codes. These codes are often defined by cultural ideologies, adversity to other cultures and ritualistic practises which have become accepted, as well established patterns in the development of culture. Lloyd, M 2007 implies this by saying 'we are born into a pre existing (social) order the comes ready made with a large stock of norms and rules we must learn if we are to participate as c...
Humans have notably different ethical standards which dictate what is or isn’t correct. Those standards are shared and followed by a group of people. For example, the concept of killing is not unknown. The typical response is to punish the one who commits that “crime,” even if that person was “right” to do so. However, killing may not seem like a crime to some people. Rather, to them killing is necessary for protection. Given that there are many cultures in the world, one can assume that each of those cultures is not like the other. They must all have their own ethical standards. In addition, it is suggested that a person refrains from assuming that one’s ethical standards are superior or inferior to another person’s standards. Cultural Relativism
Every individual is taught what is right and what is wrong from a young age. It becomes innate of people to know how to react in situations of killings, injuries, sicknesses, and more. Humans have naturally developed a sense of morality, the “beliefs about right and wrong actions and good and bad persons or character,” (Vaughn 123). There are general issues such as genocide, which is deemed immoral by all; however, there are other issues as simple as etiquette, which are seen as right by one culture, but wrong and offense by another. Thus, morals and ethics can vary among regions and cultures known as cultural relativism.
For Cultural Relativism, it is perfectly normal that something one culture sees as moral, another may see as immoral. There is no connection between them so they are never in conflict relative to their moral beliefs. However, within the context of Ethical Relativism there’s a significant difference. Normally, two cultures will possess varying proportions of the same normal and abnormal habits yet from a cross-cultural standpoint, what is abnormal in one culture can be seen as properly normal in an...