Adverse Situations and the Formation of Culture :: Cultural Identity Essays

An unspoken contempt of nuance has freehanded throughout white America. What benefit could possibly come from slaphappy rituals, special foods, colorful garments, jewelry and ceremonies? Even most of the relativists have forgotten the take aim of culture and blindly dispense hollow respect for it. Sociology and anthropology texts imply its that arbitrary stuff people come up with for the hell of it when they experience near one another. With such an implication, it certainly seems a little silly in todays world.Culture emerges in alone one circumstance and serves notwithstanding one purpose. When a group of people face the akin ill at the akin time, they do better if they deal with it together. A peoples embodied solutions to hardship is their culture. If theres a limited supply of food, well get used to the same fruits and meats and use the same cooking techniques. If we live in the same modality and around the same physical bodying materials, well engage to build dwe llings together. If we experience the same weather and live near cotton plants, well weave similar clothing. If were deep in thought(p) by the same astronomical phenomenon or killed by the same unfamiliar disease, well come up with myths together.Without unified adversity, problems be fleeting. If I face longing one month, infant mortality the next, and predators the third, and you face these things in the opposite order, we build no culture together. Were not going to hunt together or create a common death ritual or learn to build secure dwellings together. This is the only reason culture is geographically localized.Now, more classes of people do not face any perceptible adversity that unification is a weapon against. A non-trivial percentage of the world who are of certain races, live in certain countries, and are born to stiff families no longer see problems in their lives that could be overcome if they bonny had the help of their fellow man. There is no hunger for them, n o discrimination, no infant mortality, no predators, no droughts. As far as they know, their only enemy are the people around them competing for the same jobs, resources, and mates.Genuine culture cannot emerge in these situations. Instead, we end up with something that looks a lot care culturea common language, beliefs, some customs, ways of greeting and pleasing conversation. However, for these people, this commonality does not serve the purpose of culture. Instead, its used only to smoothly interact with those in proximity.