Culture is learned patterns of behavior and attitudes by a group of shared people. (Martin & Nakayama, 2012, p.88) This is obviously the book definition but I believe there are many definitions that can be assigned to the idea of culture. I think that the book states it the best way though. There are many different cultures that you can identify with. Some examples being, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, age, and religion, just to name a few. Now some people might think well gender isn’t a culture. However, I believe that it is. Let us break down the definition of culture to show why gender can be considered a culture.
Take the gender of male for example. First we can determine that males are a group of shared people. We can determine this because males all share the characteristics of being male which separates them from females, creating a group. Now let’s look at the learned patterns of behavior part. Have you ever walked into a sports bar during football season on a Monday night? Just observe the patterns. There are tons of males drinking beer and cheering on their favorite football team. Now I am not saying that there are not females that do this too. Trust me I love watching football but this is a shared behavior that many men take part in.
The concept of gender identity doesn’t seem like it would be that complex. Either you are a male or a female right? However, I believe that the concept of gender identity is much deeper than that. In fact the definition of the book of gender identity is the identification with the cultural notions of masculinity and femininity and what it means to be a man or a woman. This topic is very interesting to me. Which is why being a female I plan to study the cultural construction of the male gender for my Cultural Identity Project.
As an interpretive researcher I have many options to go about studying males. First, I would like to observe males as individuals and see how they react in certain situations; second, I would like to observe males in group situations. The goal here would be to see if males react differently in group situations than they would in individual situations and if so what the cause for this would be. Thirdly, I would like to survey males and ask them open-ended questions such as what they believe it means to be a man and what characteristics are looked at as masculine. I have always been interested in why society creates different constructs for males and females and I believe this will be an interesting topic to research throughout the semester.
Below is a clip which I found very interesting. It talks about the social constructs of masculinity through Disney movie clips. At the end it talks about how the construct of masculinity can leave boys feeling physically inadequate. We often hear this brought up about the media and women but not very often about men. I think this will be a topic that will be interesting to dig deeper into throughout the semester.
Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2012). Intercultural communication in contexts (6th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.
No comments:
Post a Comment