CH 12: One concept or term I found interesting.
It is amazing to think of how many different cultures one individual can be from in a lifetime. For example, you can find many families who celebrate multiple holidays based everywhere from religion, age to nationality. With that said, I found the concept of 'overlapping cultural identities' very interesting mostly focusing on today's generation located in the US. For example, I have a friend who celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah because both parents are from different religious backgrounds. Trenholm expresses, how some of the culture overlapping can benefit an individual or completely clash with ones many cultural aspects (p. 347). Sadly, many individuals do not even understand what cultural identity helps make them who they are today. Nevertheless, the text shows how overlapping cultural identities is more common then many of us would believe.
Hope you had a great weekend!
Thanks,
Blondie
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I too had friends/neighbors where one parent was Jewish and the other was Catholic. They have a son and when it came time to celebrate the holidays they would celebrate both Hanuka and Christmas.
My kids would often go next door and celebrate Hanuka with them. I thought it was such a good idea that my kids could celebrate traditional holidays from two cultures.
In adittion, at my kids school they would not only do art projects about Christmas, but also they would make Menorah's and discuss the significance they hold in Jewish cultures, and they would also participate in and discuss the celebration of Kwanza.
I cannot express the importance of people learning and sharing other cultural experiences outside of their own. Not only will it open their minds to many different ways of life, but also create bridges between cutural beliefs rather than having walls that seperate us from one another.
Happy Blogging:)
I grew up feeling the overlap of cultural identities that you discuss in your blog. My parents immigrated to Canada from India in the late 1960s with very strong cultural and religious views. They identify themselves as being Indian (rather than Canadian). However, when my siblings and I were growing up, we would celebrate Christmas because that's what everyone else did and hey, you even got days off of school for that. So we wouldn't feel left out, my parents put up the CHristmas tree, we had stockings, the traditional Christmas dinner, and did the rest of the things involved with celebrating Christmas including getting and giving presents.
We also celebrated Diwali, which is equivalent to Christmas - lots of food, lights, and gifts. Diwali is usually in October but it depends because it is based on the lunar calendar. So we got double the gifts.
For 2 of the years growing up, we lived in Kuwait. People there observe Ramadan. Because we lived there, my parents believed that we should follow the local customs which include not eating between sunrise and sunset, even though we are not Muslim...they believe in the saying "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".
Sometimes while I was growing up, I would get confused and think to myself - is this part of Canadian culture or is it just my family that does that? I often think of the question.....what IS Canadian (or American) culture? A lot of times, its things taken from other cultures and blended together (except for the tradition of eating turkey and watching football on tv).
Because America is such a mosaic of cultures, I believe that there is a strong cultural overlap in many situations. It really makes us be more accepting of others when we learn at a really young age..I think it's great in the Bay Area with all of the cultural diversity we have - we learn to accept other people and recognize that despite the fact that we are many colors and come from many different backgrounds, we are all people!
I totally agree with this post. I think until we are able to experience other cultures, it's really difficult for us to see how our culture completely defines who we are. I have a friend who is a very active volunteer, and lately she has been volunteering as a tutor for a Chinese community center. She has learned so much about another culture just from this experience. I agree that we don't understand that our cultural identity completely defines us. Great post!
I find it interesting to watch two cultures come together. Whether the culture differences be religous in nature or are simply an upbringing in a different neighborhood. Often when discussing culuture we don't even realize that there can be a huge divide even between two people that are in the same city but separated by income and neighborhood status. Culture can be drastically different even within the space of three city blocks. This is especially true of places like San Francisco, California where you can have entire neighborhoods that identify with certain cultures, such as China town and Japan town.
Post a Comment