Types of culture Flashcards
cultural diversity
This is a concept relating to culturally embedded differences in society. Parekh outlines three types of diversity:
Where members in society have a distinct way of life while still broadly serving the dominant culture within a society. EG gays and lesbians are trying to open up society by making homosexuality the norm whilst conforming the the norms and values shared in society.
Some members in society rebel against the central principles, rejecting the dominant values. The environmental group reclaim the streets is an good example. Also the goth subculture are considered to be an example of cultural diversity, though they follow the norms and values in society they differ in their customs in terms of listening to particular music and clothing they wear.
Communal diversification is where ethnic groups have long established communities adding diversity to the dominant way of life. For example the bangladeshi community living in east london.
or an area which is referred to as “China Town” because of the large number of Chinese people who reside there and the large number of Chinese restaurants in the area. Each year, during the Chinese New Year celebrations, this area becomes the focus for celebrating this particular aspect of cultural diversity and this is carried out peacefully.
2 ways of peer groups
Peers are those people who we see as similar to ourselves, they tend to be the same age with similar identities, and people will usually try to make friends with their peers.
Peers influence our education, this is due to young people identifying themselves with peer groups who are the same gender and possibly the same class. Boys tend to be negatively influenced towards education by their peers. It is often found that boys will do better at subjects such as, maths and science, than girls who tend to do better in subjects such as, English and art. This is due to some subjects being considered as feminine and others seen as masculine, as girls are expected to be more creative whereas, boys are expected to be more logical. When a boy is found to portray an image of academic succeed they may be excluded from participating with their peers with activities, such as, sports, as academic success is considered feminine and ‘nerdy’ so they aren’t considered as ‘cool’ or manly so their peers exclude them. Roberts did a study of boys in school and found that those who showed academic success were teased and bullied so would mask their academic achievements in order to be accepted among their peers, some of these boys would even start ridiculing the other boys seen as academic. This study supports hegemonic masculinity traits as traditionally men are sporty rather than academic achievers, and those boys who do not show these traits are going against the social norms of masculinity. An issue with this study is that it does not explain why girls do better than boys academically, as it states that boys mask their achievements but if that were the case boys should still achieve at least to the same standard as girls in all areas, so it may be the case that these boys rather than mask their achievements actually, deliberately start doing worse academically.
Another way in which a young person may be influenced by their peers is through fashion trends. This is due to a young person associating themselves with peer groups and possibly subcultural groups whereby, there fashion trends go against that of mass culture, such as Goth’s who tend to wear a lot of black, bulky clothing which goes against the fashion of the masses. These young people follow the fashion trends of the groups they associate with as they wish to be included with thee social groups and in order for this to occur they feel pressured into wearing clothing similar to that of the group, also it is due to fear of exclusion and ridicule. A study done by Lees found that girls are put under great stress n looking right despite this being an unnatural feminine behaviour/trend. It is something girls are forced into in order to show that they are ‘good’ girl rather than ‘slag’. Girls feared that if they dress too ‘loose’ or ‘sexy; a fashion that their reputation would be ruined. Even though the study did not find this girls also fear that if they do not wear clothes considered as fashionable for their age group they may also be teased which pressures them to try their best to keep up with fashion trends shown to be popular amongst their peers. Boys may also face ridicule when they show too much care in their appearance and clothes as this is not considered as a masculine thing to do, so they are pressured to not care about appearance and current trends as when they do they may be called names such as ‘poof’ or ‘Nancy boy’.
