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Cultural Identity Chapter Summary

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The chapter presents an explanation of various perspectives of culture with the aim of helping the reader understand how cultural identity develops. The chapter achieves its objective through an open structure which introduces concepts to the reader in a sequential manner. It starts by laying out the structures and demonstrations that social scientists use to acquire information about the development of culture. This is essential because learners need to be confident of the authenticity of information they are going to get from the book. Then the chapter proceeds to explore involvements that have an impact on the development of the cultural identity of individual persons. Thus, the leader will understand the topic from a causal background which …show more content…

The structures include Big C and little c, culture as a tree and culture as an iceberg. All the three frameworks revolve around clarifying that cultural identities are composed of aspects that can be broadly categorized as visible and hidden. The idea that the book is putting across in this chapter is that the outward features of individuals that we learn about in our initial encounters with them are not key determinants of their cultural identity. Rather, the hidden aspects of a person are the biggest factors in influencing how people perceive, understand and communicate things.
Big C and little C Culture
The chapter clarifies the theme of inward and outward cultural perspectives more by dividing culture into Big C and little c cultures. While grand topics such as politics and history fall under big C culture, minor items which include daily routines such as how people eat, communicate and perceive parenting in their community define little c culture. This differentiation is important because most people tend to predict cultural identities of others through their historical and political backgrounds which are usually misleading.
Culture as a

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