Understanding Cultural Stereotypes

Stereotypes in short, are often about seeking patterns. It cannot be helped but to use them as not only a function in society, but also as a way to understand it as humans today are known to identify well with patterns. This question will be explored using the following areas of knowledge; human sciences and history. As well as using the above areas of knowledge to explore this question, ways of knowing, in particular, emotion, perception, language and reason, will be used in conjunction. Taking the story of Gandhi as a prime example, it is important on two levels; most importantly however, the way in which it exposes not only the negative cultural stereotype of the “stupid foreigner”, but how at the same time it undermines and replaces these stereotypes with the celebration of a more positive – the “heroic Englishmen”. The story of Gandhi is quite ironic as Gandhi himself embodies his response into this very idea and stereotypical humour that the “Englishmen” are notorious for, which he then turns against his Professor to underline a reversal of roles.

One way in which this question can be approached is through the area of knowledge, human sciences and the ways of knowing, emotion and reason. Looking firstly at emotion, there is a clear link between stereotypes and the survival fear driven fight and flight responses of our early ancestors whose cultural behaviour, to this day, continues to develop the way our society advances. The way society uses emotion in day to day life also creates a tie with intuition, and how this affects our ability to make quick judgements without the use of reason, and the outcome of these judgements. For example, should you find yourself face to face with something dangerous or life threateni...

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...es into the mental mind map that we’ve developed for ourselves. As mentioned above, humans function well if they have patterns to follow by. Therefore, this set of patterns that society has created, or the ones that have been handed down to us through the generations prior to ours have formed an important and substantial part of our mental mind map and these patterns are what we use today to navigate through our society today, and overcome the hurdles we face with the unequal ideals, data and the various human behaviours we encounter. These mind maps we develop so that the thoughts, people and environment of today’s society can be controlled and made sense of. However, in certain circumstances, it is possible that these areas of knowledge and ways of knowing can get in the way of clear thinking and maintaining sophisticated interactions with those around us.