Culture And Cultural Diversity

Culture. As a society, we’re surrounded by it every day, whether we are aware of it or not. It affects what we do each day and how it lives our lives as everyone, everywhere has their own culture, their own set of beliefs and traditions that shape them, their actions, and the environment around them. Because of cultures large role in the lives of people, culture also has a large role in human geography. But there are lot of questions surrounding culture, like what exactly is culture, why are their differences in culture and what arises from those differences, and how exactly does culture interact with society to shape someone’s worldview? It is in this essay I will be answering these questions. According to Merriam-Webster the dictionary

The answer to this is very complicated and involves many different factors. According to two researchers R. A. Foley and M. Mirazón Lahr, cultural diversity developed because of biological diversity (Foley and Lahr). They state that in the evolution of humans, as human populations became larger, it also became incredibly genetically diverse, and these diverse populations began to group together based on their similarities, especially after the last ice age (Foley and Lahr). While this biological explanation works to explain cultural diversity between areas that are far apart like continents, it fails to explain the difference between areas that are in proximity to each other, like for examples in the countries of Europe. Foley and Lahr actually discuss some of the differences for this also, citing things like the environment and variance in access to resources (Foley and Lahr). For example, if one culture had access to a difference resource than another nearby culture, a cultural difference could develop. The researchers also state that if a culture has a high probability of geographical isolation, a higher level of diversity is more likely to develop (Foley and Lahr). As an example, a community located high in the mountains with very little way to get around the geographic feature and a community located on a flat plain will eventually develop very different

Despite this ever-presence, there are a lot of questions surrounding culture, like what exactly culture, why are their differences in culture and what arises from those differences, and how culture interacts with society to influence one’s worldview. In this essay, these questions were answered. To summarize, culture, loosely defined, is the set of ideas, traditions, and beliefs that shape an individual’s or a group’s behavior and/or outlook on the world (Warf). Different cultures arose from biological, environmental, and geographic differences between humans back when humans were evolving and thereafter. In those differences, many things, both positive like the sharing of ideas, and negative, like the annihilation of a culture, can occur when two cultures meet. Culture can affect one’s worldview in similar ways. It can cause a sort of broadening of the mind, or it can cause stereotypes and even hate crimes. But, no matter what you think about culture, in this diverse, very global society, it is becoming increasingly important to understand what culture is and what one as a citizen, need to keep in