CULTURE

AND

WORLDVIEW

CULTURE

The label anthropologists give to the

structured customs and underlying worldview

assumptions which people govern their lives.

Culture is a peoples’ way of life, their design

for living, their way of coping with their

biological, physical, and social environment. It

consists of learned, patterned assumptions

(worldview), concepts and behavior, plus the

resulting artifacts (material culture).

WORLDVIEW

The deep level of culture, is the culturally

structured set of assumptions including

values and commitments/allegiances

underlying how people perceive and respond

to reality.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE AND WORLDVIEW

Culture/Worldview provides a total design for living,

dealing with every aspect of life and providing

people with a way to regulate their lives.

Culture/Worldview is a legacy from the past,

learned as if it were absolute and perfect.

Culture/Worldview makes sense to those within it.

But no culture/worldview seems to be

perfectly adequate either to the realities of

biology and environment or the answering

questions of people.

Culture/Worldview is an adaptive system, a

mechanism for coping. It provides patterns

and strategies to enable people adapt to the

physical and social conditions around them.

Culture tends to show more or less tight

integration around its worldview. Worldview

assumptions provide the “glue” with which

people hold their culture together.

Culture/Worldview is complex. No simple

culture/worldview has ever been found.

Cultural/Worldview practices and

assumptions are based on group or

multicultural agreements.

Culture/Worldview is structural. It doesn’t do

anything.

Though analytically we need to treat people

and culture/worldview as separate entities, in

real life people and culture/worldview

function together.

THE SUBSYSTEMS OF CULTURE

WORLDVIEW

Economics subsystem

Social subsystem

Religion subsyste

m

Language subsystem

CULTURE AND EXPERIENCE

We all develop expectations based on our early

experiences. Some are biological, such as food,

comforts or pain.  But expectations are also greatly

affected by all kinds of experiences. We formulate

expectations from previous experiences, guided by the

society around us and by our own analytical faculties.

We learn from experience, but then we process and

evaluate new experiences in light of our previous

experiences.

SHARED EXPERIENCES

As a group of people go through certain experiences together,

they develop a certain bond of empathy and identification. As

they reflect on the meaning of these life experiences and adapt

to the circumstances, they further come to have a similar

perspective on their situation. This reflection and their

response to the circumstances normally lead to a

generalization of what the world must be like.

A culture group also usually shares a common language, which

is a strong identifying and unifying factor, both as

an expression of the common perspective and as a factor in

the development or change of that common perspective.

Language is one of the significant experiences of a community.

AN EARLY-EXPERIENCE MODEL

We see this when children learn language. They listen, then

they begin making noises. They continue listening and

analyzing, and before long they are generating their own

sentences which they have not heard before. They use this

early-experience model to understand the new experience.

This basic model goes for all areas of life and

learning. Previous learning and experience become the

format for later learning and experience.

We can say that culture is based on shared significant

experiences.  Each society has a collection (formal or

informal) of social institutions and practices correlating and

expressing a common perspective of a group of people

sharing an identifiable set of common or shared experiences.

INSTITUTIONS

These shared experiences and common identifying features

lead to a somewhat common perspective on reality, moral

and social values and assumptions which are entailed in the

common social "institutions." The more similar the unique

sets of experiences of two individuals or two societies, the

more similar their view of reality will normally be.

We often use the term worldview for the

shared perspective of such a culture group, or the set

of assumptions arising from their shared significant

experiences. This set of shared experiences, leading to a

shared worldview, gives identity to the members and draws

the line that separates insiders and outsiders.

OUTSIDERS The outsider entering the society or culture must learn and

assimilate the major features of the worldview, that is, to take

on the identity of the insider, in order to communicate and gain

acceptance (credibility) with insiders. Foreigners who do not

may be regarded with suspicion and mistrusted or resented,

particularly if they suggest making changes in aspects of the

society, like religion, political structure or certain social

practices or institutions.

This process of learning and assimilating (or appreciating) the

worldview includes language learning, a more obvious

characteristic of the society. The language provides a vehicle

for the worldview. The way the language works reflects the

philosophy and worldview of the society. It appears that

worldview affects language, and language affects worldview.

SHARING TO UNDERSTAND

To adequately understand and appreciate the

worldview, a foreigner needs to experience the most

important of those shared experiences. The outsider

has not shared the same set of experiences the

insiders have.

In order to communicate effectively, to operate from

within the society or culture, the outsider needs to

share at least the most significant of these

experiences with the host culture, so that the

outsider's worldview will grow to entail more of the

insider's worldview.

THANKS FOR VIEWING OUR PRESENTATION!

GROUP 2

Berro, Roy Francis A. Chua, Debilyn Mae T. San Juan, Jellien D. Tumala, Ellenoi S. Jabon, Marjelit Joy R. Manlangit, Erna B. Nabos, Gyselle P.

Submitted to: MR. MARK LLANTO

Instructor in Elective