I appreciate the fact that the US is a country where people from all around the world gather together so that cultures mingle with others. I have never tried evaluating dimensions of various cultures this deeply before reading the passage “Figuring Foreigners Out”. It also provided me with a vast background of knowledge that was also used in e “Hofstede Dimensions of Culture”.
The comparison was especially impressive for me because I have been thinking of culture – what culture is, what a boundary of culture is, whether a culture is reserved to a specific group of people, and if so, to what extent – ever since I have come here. Learning others’ culture is helpful in a way that not only one learns cultures of people of different backgrounds but also one can understand better the culture that one is based on.
I, first of all, compared South Korea and the US, each of which I found similar to what I have expected. However, I was confused with the masculinity dimension, which refers to the extent of how much “the society will be driven by competition, achievement, and success”. While I thought Korea is one of the countries with the most competitive culture, the result said that the US is comparably more competitive than Korea. It turns out that, despite the academic competition of the youth population, the fact that Korean culture focuses on “working in order to live”, and “free time and flexibility” was what it meant by “Feminine society”. While I would still insist that Korean culture has a highly competitive aspect, this dimension should be understood with examples from various perspectives.
I strongly support that culture itself is neither superior nor inferior but only has positive and negative aspects. However, these aspects could not be said to be something that people must follow or abandon. Rather, one should take account of a culture and its aspects with a historical context that allowed them to shape, regardless of how they are seemingly positive or negative. In this sense, I am looking to learn my culture deeper so that I can explain what cultures they have and why they have such cultures to others.
Replies
Thank you for diving so deep into the similarities and differences between South Korea and the United States, I find the connections that you have drawn fascinating, especially when it comes to the connections between masculinity and success, and certainly within the U.S. the patriarchal definitions of a toxically masculine man are inherently linked to capitalist structures.
Hi Jason!
A lot of your ideas tie into topics I have been learning in my anthropology class. Your specific idea that no culture is superior nor inferior to another is called "Cultural Relativism". For your goal of looking at connections between cultures, we were taught that it is important to try not to evaluate other cultures using the standard of one's own culture and beliefs.