Our world is full of hundreds of cultures, scattered all over the place, but when we can’t travel to every country on earth, how can we find out about these cultures. We can learn a tremendous amount about a culture, just through studying their literature. First of all, we can learn a great amount about their basic culture; their everyday life. We can also learn what kind of society they live in now, and what kind they did live in hundreds of years ago. And finally we can learn about their history simply from studying their culture. Culture isn’t only defined as a country’s history or what kind of society they live in, it’s also about simple things like what you eat, or what kind of bed you have, or what you believe in.
Culture can include education, which we can also learn about through literature. In the movie “A Shower” it showed the boy walking tremendous distances just to get to school, not like in Canada where you can just catch a bus. The boy and the girl in the movie had school bags that looked like the equivalent to a Canadian briefcase; they didn’t carry them on their back. In the film the boy’s mother said “Saturday is a half day” meaning that Korean kids go to school on Saturdays, that is a part of their culture that is extremely different than ours. In Korea they take education very seriously, and the kids respect their teachers and their schooling; they also respect their history, it’s not just a subject taught in school like it is in Canada.
Just from reading some Korean poems, or stories, or watching some Korean movies we can very quickly learn about their everyday life. Korean life, and culture, is very focused on nature; from the foods they eat to where they want to go when they retire. In the film “A Shower” ...
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...ledge regarding Korean Culture, Sijo Poems started being written during the Chosŏn Dynasty, so they reflect Confucianism, these poems are still popular and are still being written to this day.
Just from studying a country’s literature we can learn a great amount about their basic culture; their everyday life. We can also learn what kind of society they live in now, and what kind they did live in hundreds of years ago. And finally we can learn about their history simply from studying their culture and literature. People might think that we can only learn about a culture if we visit that country and we can learn nothing about that culture from studying their literature, this however is completely incorrect, a country’s literature is the key to learning about a country’s culture. We can learn a tremendous amount about a culture, just through studying their literature.
Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings members of a society together. We have a sense of belonging because we share similar beliefs, values, and attitudes about what’s right and wrong. As a result, culture changes as people adapt to their surroundings. According to Bishop Donald, “let it begin with me and my children and grandchildren” (211). Among other things, culture influences what you eat; how you were raised and will raise your own children? If, when, and whom you will marry; how you make and spend money. Truth is culture is adaptive and always changing over time because
Poetry is a form of literature that some view as obsolete in the modern world, but in the poem “To the Man Who Shouted ‘I Like Pork Fried Rice’ at Me on the Street”, Franny Choi dispels that belief. She uses poetry as a medium to convey her own personal experience with the stereotyping and fetishization of Asian American women, which is an issue that millions of Asian American women still face today. When considering Choi’s background as a Korean American woman and how that has shaped her identity and philosophy, we see how being an Asian American woman is intrinsically a core part of her work, which is why much of her work is about breaking the stereotypes that come with this identity.
Other cultures are interesting because they are different and we don’t usually understand the things that they do and why they do them. Learning about other people’s traditions from all over the world shows the diversity in people’s beliefs, habits and routine occurrences in everyday lives.
By any measure, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, known as Hanjungnok (Records written in silence), is a remarkable piece of Korean literature and an invaluable historical document, in which a Korean woman narrated an event that can be described as the ultimate male power rivalry surrounding a father-son conflict that culminates in her husband’s death. However, the Memoirs were much more than a political and historical murder mystery; writing this memoir was her way of seeking forgiveness. As Haboush pointed out in her informative Introduction, Lady Hyegyong experienced a conflict herself between the demands imposed by the roles that came with her marriage, each of which included both public and private aspects. We see that Lady Hyegyong justified her decision to live as choosing the most public of her duties, and she decided that for her and other members of her family must to be judged fairly, which required an accurate understanding of the her husband’s death. It was also important to understand that Lady Hyegyong had to endure the
Diamond, Marie Josephine, ed. “Hwang Sun-won.” Bloom’s Literature. Facts On File, 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
Cultures are infinitely complex. Culture, as Spradley (1979) defines it, is "the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experiences and generate social behavior" (p. 5). Spradley's emphasizes that culture involves the use of knowledge. While some aspects of culture can be neatly arranged into categories and quantified with numbers and statistics, much of culture is encoded in schema, or ways of thinking (Levinson & Ember, 1996, p. 418). In order to accurately understand a culture, one must apply the correct schema and make inferences which parallel those made my natives. Spradley suggests that culture is not merely a cognitive map of beliefs and behaviors that can be objectively charted; rather, it is a set of map-making skills through which cultural behaviors, customs, language, and artifacts must be plotted (p. 7). This definition of culture offers insight into ...
Taking a global perspective will lead me to see that different places have different cultures. A culture can be defined as the ways of thinking and acting, along with the material objects that make up a people’s way of life (Macionis, page 54). I need to understand that people I meet may have grown up in different cultures and have different beliefs or values. If I take a global perspective, I will be able to better respect and value the cultures of the people I come into contact with. Learning about different cultures is one way to learn about people’s history. Everyone’s pasts and futures are linked by their culture (Macionis, page 54). As I prepare to go to college in the fall, I think about all the new people I will have the opportunity to meet. I will have the chance to interact with people from other countries. I will have the chance to not just learn more about them as...
As culture is being learned and transmitted from one generation to the next, there is the question as to how it is being learned? And does it change? Banking on the simplified definition of (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel, 2012) culture is learned through communication. This entails social interactions among people with common understanding of symbols, shared values and beliefs, and rules as a product of reciprocal information processing (Lustig, 2006).
My primary culture is Korean. Korean perspective is similar as those countries in East Asia, centered in Chinese Confucian tradition and family centered culture. Koreans value high context communication, indirectness, low profile, relationship first, and interdependence.
Life experiences allow individual to grasp the meaning of culture, people in our surrounding, and value the ethnic diversity into our society. Culture consists of the knowledge people use to live
Clifford Geertz once said: “Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.” I recently spent a short amount of time at a busy 5-way traffic circle near my residence. While sitting in one spot for about 25 minutes, I observed many people doing many different things (mainly driving). Observing the various people made me think of what their particular cultures may have been, and from there, I began thinking of culture in and of itself. What is culture? Culture is defined as: Ideas and behaviors that are learned and transmitted. Nongenetic means of adaptation (Park, 2008). Culture plays a vital role in anthropology. After all, anthropology is the holistic, scientific study of humankind (Park, 2008). One cannot study humans as a whole without studying and understanding their cultures as well.
Culture has a big impact on how we all fit in as individuals in today’s society, and since this assignment is about that I decided to include some of my own experiences to illustrate my point of view and compare it with those of my classmates and some of the readings.
In this essay I will be writing about the cultural awareness of North Korea. I will define the meaning of culture. Explain the characteristics that define a culture. I’ll describe the common culture characteristic of North Korea. I’ll be also writing about North Koreas physical geography and its military conflict history, weather analysis, civil consideration, the people of North Korea.
The study of Literature lends to an understanding of our history, our society and sometimes ourselves. With Literature, we see the Countries and People as they were. We experience the different climates,language and tone.
In other words, world literature contributes much more to today’s society than many people would think, yet, how is this possible when most world literature pieces we read about today are centuries old? Well, good question, world literature in itself is history, which is then passed down and translated for generations providing insight for how people think, react, live, and love. By reading literature, we gain the education about different places, people, and cultures. Therefore, after educating ones self of world literature pieces from authors long ago. An individual or society can then take that situation, experience or etc. into consideration next time humanity run into a similar circumstance. This is not only what world literature is but in fact the core meaning behind why we need to keep the topic