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Social Responsibility and Intercultural Competence (2)
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Social Responsibility and Intercultural Competence
Culture can be defined in so many ways. The most simplified definition of culture is it is the shared and learned behaviour within a setup of a community which has interacting human beings. British anthropologist Edward Taylor describes culture as a complex whole within which man being a member of a community gains morals, art, knowledge, beliefs and customs (Ruben, pg. 334-354). Different communities have different cultures. By analysing each culture individually, it is easy to conclude that different cultures have common characteristics. The different definitions of culture give us various characteristics of culture.
I choose Simone Davis as my partner for this project. Simone is an African American who I met at the coffee shop. Before I met Simone I had the perspective that African Americans are very rough and rude. I also had the perception that they are into crime and drugs and that they are materialistic. I also thought African Americans are very talented when it comes to sports, music, dance and academics. My whole perception about African Americans were based on the movies I had watched since the above traits are portrayed in almost every black movie. I have never had a chance to interact one on one with an African American. My interaction with Simone was quite engaging and educative since I got to learn a lot about her culture. From our interaction I came up with a number of differences and similarities which I saw in our cultures.
Simone confirmed and at the same time refuted some of the perceptions I had about her culture. One of the major stereotypes that people have about her culture is connected to the issue of drugs and crime. As much as this is true to some extent, I learnt that it is very wrong to judge someone based on what you see being portrayed in movies. As I was listening to Simone, I learnt that our cultures are different in a number of ways. When it comes to the issue of celebrating weddings, our cultures are quite different. I learnt that African American weddings are quite simple as compared to our culture. In my culture we value celebrations and parties and to us a wedding is a very big ceremony. Weddings in her culture are mainly symbolized by a church ceremony and reception later on where the bride removes her gown and wears something comfortable for the reception. Before the newlyweds go for their honeymoon they are required to jump a broom which is symbolic that they are ready to begin a new chapter in life as husband and wife. In my culture, the bride is required to prove to the congregation that she is able to take care of the husband. The bride will feed the groom and remove his shoes as a sign that she is ready for her new role as a wife.
There is also similarities in our cultures. We are both immigrants and as a result we go through the same challenges. One of the biggest challenges we go through is racism. As immigrants, we have to work twice as hard and prove that we are also able to achieve what others can accomplish. The issue of equality in terms of treatment by others affects both our cultures. I also noticed that both our cultures value the family set up. To us family is always a priority and we can step out of our comfort zones just to ensure that our families are safe and are provided for.
During my interview with Simone Davis, I couldn’t help but feel a connection with her from knowing that our cultures face the same challenges. I also felt empathetic because I initially had a very wrong perception about her culture and all that entails to it. By the end of our interaction I was happy to have learnt all that pertains to African American culture.
Being flexible and open minded really helped me during my interview with Simone. I learnt that the more open minded I was to learning about her culture, the more I was able to see her culture for what it really is. This helped reshape my mentality and get rid of all the stereotypes I had about her culture. I also learnt that it is good to open up to people and learn from them because there something that we can learn from each other.
With my culture partner Simone, I identified quite a number of issues that affect both our cultures at the local, national and global level. One of the biggest issue that face both our culture is racism. This is experienced both locally, nationally and globally. Racism is discrimination based on one’s ethnicity and background. As Hispanics and African Americans people tend to have a low view of us. We are discriminated by the society because of our ethnicity and nativity. Poverty is another issue that both our cultures face. Being an immigrant in a foreign country is not easy. Most of our families have two or three jobs for survival. Since we both value large families, it becomes tough at times to meet all the expenses and pay all the bills. Most families struggle to get money for food, shelter and medical expenses. Access to education is also a challenge. Children in both cultures have to study twice as hard and prove that they are capable of being admitted in the same school as other students.
I also noticed that a woman has no place in both cultures. People tend to focus on men and a woman has been forgotten. Women really fight hard to be recognised by the society. I think that it is necessary to overcome the above prejudice about our cultures. It is very important to carry out civic education and enlighten people on the above issues (Ogbu, pg. 5-14). The society needs to know that any kind of discrimination on a person based on their background and ethnicity is very wrong. The government needs to come up with strict rules that protect the rights of immigrants. There are a lot of challenges that are faced by immigrants. It is the duty of the government to ensure that immigrants are free and safe from any kind of discrimination.
I also think that the society should come up with platforms that helps people from different cultures to interact. This could be in form of an annual event where different cultures meet to showcase their culture. It could be in form of showcasing the different foods and modes of dressing that we have. Interaction of different cultures helps to break down the negative mentalities that people have about other cultures. It also creates a society in which people are open minded and flexible. Interaction and mingling with other people creates harmony in the society. There is a lot to learn from other people and it is very wrong to allow issues like racism to be a diving factor in our societies. I encourage people to be open minded and empathetic. This will go a long way in ensuring that we build positive relationships regardless of our culture or where we come from.
At the end of the day, I realised that we are all humans. We need to treat each other with a lot of love and care. It is wrong to allow identities to break human interactions. We all have the same dreams and aspirations in life. The goal is to hold each other’s hand and work towards making our dreams and aspirations a reality. It is important to break cultural barriers that hinder our interaction. My interaction with Simone has taught me that every human being needs to be loved and be treated as they deserve.
References
Work Cited
Ruben, Brent D. “Assessing communication competency for intercultural adaptation.” Group & Organization Studies 1.3 (1976): 334-354.
Thomas, David C. “Cultural intelligence.” Wiley Encyclopedia of Management (2015): 1-3.
Ogbu, John U. “Understanding cultural diversity and learning.”Educational researcher 21.8 (1992): 5-14.
Triandis, Harry Charalambos. “Culture and social behavior.” (1994).
Critique of Formalism
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Critique of Formalism
Formalism is a literary theory that focuses mainly on the elements that constitute a piece of literature to make an analysis on the piece. It excludes the biographical, historical, and intellectual aspects of the piece. It uses elements of the piece such as similes, paradox, characters, plot, tension, ambiguity, and metaphor to understand the specific work. Formalists do not consider the author’s intent for the piece as important, neither do they spare a though for the circumstances that led the author to produce the piece. They exclude all forms of external influences that may have contributed to the work. They aim to separate the work from the author as much as they possibly can and carefully analyze it to discover the relationship between its elements that comes together to cohesively make a piece of work what it is. Formalism is an outdated method of literary analysis that fails to tie the author to the work itself and is therefore a misrepresentation of the literal piece.
Formalists closely read the work they need to analyze to understand how the various elements contribute to the flow and the cohesiveness of the work. They work on the premise that once they understand the individual elements of the literary work and how the elements work on the specific piece, they will understand the piece as a whole. Formalists believe that a specific piece of work is self-contained and self-referential. All that they need to do is a correct analysis of the work which is contained in the work itself; and they do not need to go outside the realm of the work to make an analysis.
Formalists use this method of literary analysis for a number of reasons. First, they believe that people have certain biases when studying a literary piece. Some biases include author biases and place of origin biases. If readers and analysts know the author and their style of writing, their critical analysis decisions will depend on past works of the author and general known facts about them. If an author is famous for preference of specific themes and writing styles, then the analysts tend to assume these known facts for every piece the author writes. This hinders a critical analysis of a literary piece. Second, there are stereotypes that are associated with certain literary pieces. Some critics consider authors from some geographical areas better than those from other areas. This clouds the judgment of some critics and their analysis of a literary piece may not be objective. In addition, when formalists analyze a piece of literature, they aim for the truth of the literary piece. Once they establish the truth, them the piece is less prone ideological changes in future interpretation based on its background and that of the authors.
Structuralism is a form of formalism that sees the literature piece as part of a system of signs. It lays emphasis on the fact that the elements that make up a piece get their full meaning only when analyzed in relation to each other and to the system in which they belong. Thus, to come up with the meaning of a given literal piece, structuralists examined the underlying aspects of the piece such as the plot, the characterization and related the patterns and similarities drawn to other literal pieces of the same genre. For instance, a structuralist does not analyze a poem in a vacuum. He or she considers the features that make the poem to be a poem. They rhyme, repetition, metaphors and similes found in one poem and drew parallels with other poems in order to draw conclusions on the poem.
Structuralists work under the assumption that a specific literal piece does not stand alone. The piece is part of a larger system and thus studies the work to identify and understand the elements of the piece and how they come together to contribute to the piece’s structure. Structuralists make connections between different elements of a literal piece of work so that they understand how each individual element contributes to the complete work. They take a step further from a literal piece they are analyzing to compare similarities in the piece to other pieces that bear similarities to them.
Structuralists consider a literal piece as part of a larger system. It is dependent on other pieces that make up a system. Therefore, they do not simply analyze the piece alone but also the larger system that the piece is part of. The structuralist uses the system to identify underlying elements of pieces of literature that are similar and produce a pattern. The pattern helps the structuralist to identify place the work into a larger system that they are part of and therefore, correctly analyze a literal piece by putting it in perspective.
Tzvetan Todorov in his work, Structural Analysis of a Narrative published in 1969 gave “an abstract description of what I believe to be the structural approach to literature.” (Todorov 70). He gives a series of points that he deems important when analyzing a literary piece. He narrowed his analysis to that of a narrative. In his opinion, the first decision to make in the structural analysis of literature is whether the narrative has a descriptive attitude or a theoretical attitude (Todorov 70). He notes that the theoretical aspect of the narrative takes precedence, as it is not the “description of the work” that the analyst is interested in, but rather the way the piece manifests itself as part of an “abstract structure” (Todorov 70). The work does not exist in a vacuum but as part of a broader system to which it belongs.
The second consideration for the analyst is to differentiate between the “internal approach” and the “external approach” to literature (Todorov 70). He insists that the analyst use the internal structuralism as opposed to the external structuralism. Though he does not advocate for the use of biographical aspects that affect the text in its analysis, he writes that structuralism requires the analysis of the system from which the specific text originates as a whole (Todorov, 71). He regards it “not as an individual aspect but as part of a greater system” and therefore must be analyzed as such.
Todorov suggests that analysts should use Meta language to provide a “visual image” of the literature under analysis. He writes that the image helps in the understanding of the piece by relating it to objects that the readers of the analysis understand and relate to. He also disagrees with the analysis of some literature critics such as Henry James who consider literature a science. He contends that most literature readers understand a piece in terms of its plot and narration and are therefore unconcerned with “theoretical problems”. He insists that the way that a piece of literature and the way that the artist puts it together is important in the structural analysis of literature. He writes that in the structural analysis of literature, “discussion of methodology is not a minor area of a larger field, a kind of accidental by-product but rather its very centre, its principal goal” (Todorov, 76).
Sigmund Freud gives his input on the analysis of a narrative. His theory states that the energy people put into tasks is at its very nature sexual. However, it is not purely expressed sexually but can manifest itself through personality disorders, dreams and fantasies that come about when the instinctual drives were limited to manifestation by the external surroundings. This he named the pleasure principle the reality principle. Freud writes that the motivation of an artist to produce a creative work is driven by desire to achieve some degree of status of the desire to own something. However, with few resources that an artist can use to acquire their desire, they result to art and literature, believing that its appreciation will bring out the recognition that they desire. To analyze a piece of literature, Freud advocates for the understanding of the author’s conflict with himself and to construct his reasons for a literal piece based on what he reveals about himself from the work.
In his book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud focuses on dreams of some of his patients as the literary pieces of analysis. He seeks to analyze the dream based on the dreamer’s life and happenings that could have in one way or the other contributed to the dreams. He writes that dreams occur for different reasons and signify different desires for the dreamers. Freud and his team discovered that dreams are not abstract and a series of factors come together to constitute a dream. These he referred to as the ‘peculiarities in the dream’ – the events of the previous day or days leading up to the dream that were of significant importance to the dreamer. The second is the fact that dreams pick not what is important and elaborate in a dreamer’s life but those aspects that the dreamer trivializes and subordinates. The dream implies their magnitude and effect, known or otherwise. Third, the dreams are composed of those memories that make up the earliest part of the dreamers childhood. These may be issues the dreamer trivializes ad may have long forgotten their existence (Freud 57).
Freud interprets that the content of a dream is based on the premise of remnants of events that took place in the life of the dreamer a long time ago. This he terms as a manifestation of the dream-distortion (Freud 61). Dreams mostly constitute events of the day. However, “If the day has brought us two or more experiences which are worthy to evoke a dream, the dream will blend the allusion of both into a single whole: it obeys a compulsion to make them into a single whole” (Freud 61). Some of the dreams the sources of which Freud interpreted were the embarrassing dreams of being naked, the dreams that contain the death of a loved one, and the examination dreams. All these he contends stem from the psyche of the dreamer.
Freud identified levels needed in interpreting a dream. The first is condensation. Here, several images combine to form a composite image. The second is displacement. This occurs when another that is more important to the life and meaning of the dream replaces an image in a dream. The third is representation. Hers, the thoughts that represent the dream take the presence of images and appear to the dreamer as images. In order for an analyst to interpret a dream correctly, they need to understand all these ways that a dream manifests itself and break down the individual components that will help to understand the meaning of the dream (Freud 93).
Non-formalists contradict the literary analysis beliefs of the formalists. In their opinion, a literary piece is dependent of other factors that came into play during its creation. Formalists believe that in addition to the different elements of a literary piece constitute a literary piece, analysts should consider extrusive elements of the piece. They insist that a piece of literature is the outcome of the of an author’s belief system, their historical, biographical and intellectual background and their mind frame at the time of writing the piece. Non-formalists believe that art of any kind, including literal art, is a result of the artist’s emotional being at the time that the artist creates the art.
Freud therefore embraces more of the non-formalist approach to the interpretation of dreams to analyze literal pieces. He sees a dream not as an individual entity but as part of a wider system that contributes to the life of the dreamer. He uses the dreamer’s back-story (who in this case is the author) to try and identify the reasons for the dream and give it a correct interpretation. Though the formalist approach is a good approach to the analysis of a literal piece, it fails to take into account the authors and their contribution into the literal piece. This in my opinion is a gross misrepresentation of the piece because, without the authors and their experiences leading up to the specific moment, the piece of literature cannot exist.
Works Cited
HYPERLINK “http://www.bibme.org/journal” o “Edit this item” Freud, Sigmund. The interpretation of dreams. New York: Modern Library, 1900. Print.
HYPERLINK “http://www.bibme.org/journal” o “Edit this item” Todorov, Tzvetan. Structural analysis of a narrative. New York: Thousand Oaks, 1969. Print.
Social Media
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Social Media
Technology has been the greatest revolution to mankind changing a lot of things including communication and exchange of ideas. When Graham Bell first invented the phone, he did not imagine communication would change this much. Social media has been a game changer when it comes to communication. Generation X who are the millennials and Generation Y can attest so much on the changes that have happened over the years when it came to use of social media. Sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and Snapchat have millions of users from all over the world who log in and attest of the great impact that social media has had. Social media has taken the greatest charge of our lives and this paper will go into depth the impact of social media as well as the cons in a world that is largely driven by these platforms.
Social media is the smart innovations interceded by computers that promote the development and exchanging of data, opinions, career goals and various types of expression via digital channels and structures. The variety of remaining quiet and underlying internet-complex life advantages as available now portrays implication challenges; however, there are a few many highlights that may include internet-based applications. For instance, product posts or comments, computer-aided photos or transcriptions, and data generated through any electronic communication is the soul of the internet-based life. As advancement has transformed internet organization into the day-to-day schedule for each, society is seen to rely on this development reliably. Its impact on people is unique in different fields. Administration of web-based systems has extended the quality and rate of a planned understudy effort. Business uses online person-to-person communication to improve the exercises of affiliation in many different ways, such as, to achieve business goals, growing annual affiliation ideas (Khamis, 191-208).The internet has been described as a social technology, which has majorly contributed in the creation of a new form of interpersonal relationships. Studies define internet relationships as relationship between individuals who met online and got to know one another via the internet. Internet relationships are however not entirely new as they can be compared to pen pal that was common a few years back. Relationships on the internet can be diverse, they can be platonic, romantic, and some may have a business basis. Many individuals today spend a lot of their time on the internet with the hope of making a special connection with someone. The discussion highlights on the research on the internet relationships.
The young generation have harnessed the internet to their advantage. Getting well-paying jobs is no longer as easy as it used to be. The millennials are entrepreneurs and not lazy as the media articles has made it look like especially when referring to their constant use of the internet. We no longer leave in generation where well-paying jobs are guaranteed but rather one needs to be inventive. The internet has helped the millenniums be inventive. Most run online businesses and the greatest part is that they have the support of their fellow millennials as you will see them sharing the posts of each other business across platforms. Blogging and networking has been embraced by teenagers “average teen chooses to spend an average of 16.7 hours reading and writing online.” (Goldwasser, pg. 239) This means if there is information that you need the teens to get, then the best way to ensure they get it is through the internet. There are individuals who have gained following and refer to themselves as influencers. Youtubers such as Liza Koshy and David Dobrik are millennials who have harnessed the social media platforms to become millionaires. These individuals at a fee will help people know about your business and it is a great way of putting a word out there about a business. Thus, when you see “kids of today”’ online, there is so much they are doing. The millennials are taking advantage of social media building an empire for themselves that is why there are teenage Youtubers who are millionaires
With everything taken into account, online life is and will continue to be terrible, aside from whether something is done about it. The power it possesses over people is dangerous and often goes unnoticed. In such a case, people should be careful that they may cause national and general problems not having tended to or considered web-based life. In many web customers, online development stunts the progress of connections and makes narcissism. They are still at risk of paying little respect if the online experience does not affect customer rationally. There is no resistance to the risky side effects of interpersonal interaction online, including extortion of information, stalkers, or software engineers.
There are other social locations such as YouTube that provide customers with a phase of chronicles exchange and sharing. Customers post their chronicles here for different customers to see. For artisans and film producers, YouTube has been an exceptional stage as their fans can access their music accounts without much stretching. Also, other social goals such as My Space have given customers the opportunity to post chronicles on their profiles. Such purposes allow essential access to histories such as music, sports, documentaries, and movies. This is the best station for professionals and film creators to channel their work and through this, when watchers visit and take a gander in their work, they get paid for it.
Social web-based networking has reduced any use of verbal correspondence and expanded any use of online consulting services. People can nowadays have phone dialogs on their PCs. For example, Skype has engaged in this by advancing social goals. Here, related people will grant by catching the discussions of individuals. This is not at all like Facebook and Twitter whereby fertilizing the soil, the strategy for correspondence is. (Garima Kakkar, 2018) For their supporters, most social destinations have now joined webcams. Webcams engage’ buddies’ in having one dialog while watching each other meanwhile. This correspondence is gradually private and incredibly supportive as endorsers are given the opportunity to see each other. Webcam dialogs contained an extension of acclaim.
The greatest challenge that has presented itself in the use of social media is bulling. Social media platforms have set certain standards that for some people for example beauty, being rich among other things. When you log in to pages such as Instagram and Facebook where you get to find people posting their lavish lives and for people who cannot afford this live, they begin feeling low about themselves. With the pressure that comes with being on social media, several people have often admitted to the fact that they may post fake posh lives so that they still get to fit in the society. Most girls due to the social pressure often want to appear they are leaving large including visiting posh places but at times such decisions dent their pockets too much and they live that they are living behind the camera cannot be compared to the lives that they live on the gram.
According to research by Jean Twenge and other researchers, increased depressive symptoms is high among the youth and this is due to media screen as well as use of social media. Their study focused on what has changed between years’ ad what was common among the children suffering from depression. After a series of surveys and research, they discovered that the changes might be traced back to their teenage years and their immediate use of a smartphone (Twenge et al., pg. 3-17). According to research by Pew center, by 2012 phone ownership crossed 50% threshold at just the same time often depression increased. By 2015 phone ownership had risen to 73%. Sadly, it’s not only teenagers who are affected, but we have adults who fall in this bracket too. We can all agree that owning a smartphone does not mean getting into depression. It is therefore imperative to understand practices that lead to depression and how digital devices and technology predisposes us to depression.
There are subsets of technology that may predispose us to depression and other mental issues such as cyberbullying and getting hacked. There is so much information of ourselves that is out there on social media that may help in . A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health indicated that prolonged cyberbullying might result in both depression and substance abuse (Gamez-Gaudix, pg. 446-452). Gone are the days when bullying involved fistfights or when a huge student picking on a small student. With cyberbullying one will pick a target and troll them online using something they know will be picked up by others. One may decide to body shame the victim or attack them because of their social class, religion or race. Getting a thousand notification where people have so many negative things to say about you may result in depression. “Thousands of teenagers suffer from depression due to cyberbullying, some of these kids end up committing suicide” (Kowalski, pg. 89). Hacking ay also predisposes us to depression. When your social media is hacked you become anxious or depressed as you do not know what the hacker may do with the personal data that you hoped only you would have access to. Hacking may result in extremely sensitive information getting linked which may lead to the onset of depression and a times suicide. although technology by itself may not lead to depression, what we do with our digital devices may predispose us to depression
Technology addiction is a thing in the present world just like phone addiction. With internet addiction, an individualist unable to stay for even a few hours without their digital devices. Nowadays people no longer need to meet up with friends and catch up. Even getting into a relationship no longer requires going out to eat with people as there are several dating apps in the market where you a hook up with your “perfect match.”