...American Culture Since the beginning of the Second World War in 1945, America appears as the first world economic power. Nowadays, it is the most powerful country in a lot of domains, that’s why it represents a model for most of the countries and particularly for the developing countries. However, like Ian Ralston said in The Christian Science Monitor, America’s supremacy is mostly spread through its culture. It leads us to wonder how American culture invades the world. In order to answer this question, we will see in a first step the different areas of it and the major role played by globalization. Then, in a second step, the consequences of this domination. First, the term globalization can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. Obviously, we can say that the world is unified into the American society through its widespread culture. Indeed globalization implies all the communication systems such as television, radios, magazines, newspapers, advertisement…etc. These communication systems are essentials in order to diffuse the American culture. Moreover, as it is mentioned in the statement, by American culture, we understand Hollywood, popular music and literature. Hollywood is the place where the most broadcasted and the most famous movies are produced like, for example, Gone with the Wind or Titanic. Then, American artists, poor before to get rich and famous, have introduced new kinds of...
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...American Culture I don’t think that there is such a thing as an all American culture. I think that the American culture is exceptional because we have a concoction of different cultures. In spite of this, having a cultural mixture also disappointingly segregates us. We have so many different ethnicities living all together, with each having its own diversity and traditions. Some individuals believe that a blend could mean that they will get away from their own culture, and have nothing to leave behind for future generations. Most cultures are based on strong rules on how things are done. Music from the Ivory Coast is different than the music from Ghana because they follow slightly different rules. The way you do everything in a traditional society is based upon rules. The key to understanding American Culture is that since we have no singular culture, we have no singular set of rules. Our culture is based on taking the products we like from other cultures and mixing them with our tradition or with other traditions. The strength of the American culture is we draw on the best of all cultures. We mix and match to make new results. The strength of our culture is evident when you see that our music, our entertainment (television and movies), and in many cases our values in giving people the freedom to create these combinations and profit from them, are duplicated around the world. I believe you can say, "America has no culture of its own." we take the best the world has to offer...
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...America as a Foreign Culture DeVita and Armstrong (2002) point out that it is difficult for an American student to truly appreciate the strangeness of our culture. We grow up with similar assumptions, the same language and follow the same patterns of behavior. Interestingly, outsiders take ass much for granted about American culture as Americans do. Distant Mirrors (2002) articles are written by anthropologists who have had their own experiences with every day American life, and are arranged in categories. It thought the goal of the anthology to better understand ourselves interesting at first when I began reading articles that seemed terribly misunderstood. I quickly realized that the point was that our cultural norms and values are often not noticed or realized by individuals within the culture and that our customs can seem extremely bizarre to individuals from other cultures. I have read approximately half of the book at this point and have found it very interesting. The first article by Ralph Linton, titled One Hundred Percent American, I found interesting. Historically, this country is based on immigrants who have assimilated into a single culture that is now considered American. I wonder what is truly American culture. Linton’s point is that what Americans consider 100% American is most commonly borrowed from other parts of the world. This is common sense to me as each immigrant culture brought along their values, norms and technologies upon assimilation. In my view...
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...Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho once said, “culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers.” Culture is a way of thinking, behaving, and representing a group of the same morals and art. Culture gives us a sense of belonging in society, and differences in cultures lead to diversity in people from different parts of the world. Our cultural values and beliefs manifest themselves through lifestyle, making the United States a multicultural society. In our daily lives, those who live around us, those we socialize with, and those we work with, come from different parts of the world and have different cultures, so we are forced to...
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...When I moved to Colorado for the summer of 2009, I couldn’t have prepared myself for the culture shock. I grew up in a small town in Northern Ohio. The town that I grew up in has backwoods feel were everyone knows each other and space was very limited. These influences defined my sense of culture. I’ve never experience a dense type of culture until I went to Denver, Colorado. At first, I didn’t fully understand what culture shock is until I experienced it. To most people, culture shock is when traveling to a new country or state and experiencing all sorts of new stuff. Culture shock can be a little overwhelming, but it can be exciting as well. Upon my arrival to Denver, I noticed that the culture was completely different from what I am use to....
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...and birth as well as death which direct various forms of culture. The Heritage Assessment tool is used in order to build a greater understanding of cultural beliefs. Although the assessment is only composed of a few questions, it is used as a pathway to open up discussions regarding one’s own values about sickness, health, religion, and family support systems. This assignment will discuss and measure diversity and similarities between Americans and the sub groups of African Americans and Middle Eastern culture groups. Though Middle Easterners generally respect Western Medicine, they have common folk beliefs such as other people having powers to cause others illness...
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...Culture is the essence of life; living the majority of my life in the United States has taught me the differences and similarities of Mexican and American cultures. Since both of my parents come from Mexican heritage, my roots align more with the Mexican culture. Therefore, I have learned the essential values of the Mexican culture from my parents, such as language and behavior. My appreciation for both cultures has come from all the experiences I have gathered from living in El Paso the majority of my life. Although I have spent the majority of my life All of my years living in the United States, I find myself abiding by traditional Mexican values. Due to this I have been able to differentiate the values and norms of both cultures. One aspect...
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... 1. The American mass culture was primarily dominated by movies, radio and television. As technology advanced we saw a decline in one of the above categories and an explosion in the other. As they replaced each other in the role of providing americans entertainment, each left behind a legacy that is important to the history of America. In the early 1940's radio was considered vital to the every day life of an American. The radio provided entertainment as well as news to the broad audience that listened. Due to the inexpensive nature of the radio, it quickly became a very popular and common thing for people to have and use. While the radio is commonly known for broadcasting news and music, it also broadcasted shows that resembled soap operas. This shows would go on everyday at a set time frame and would engage the listener and cause them to imagine the scene that was acted over the radio. Some of the more popular radio broadcasts such as Abbott and Costello eventually transitioned to the television when it went mainstream. (Cross and Szostak 263) For the government, the radio in the 1940's was an outlet for propaganda. Countless advertisements where broadcasted about the war. Since the radio had a good deal of the population listening, it allowed for government to make mass speeches to people and for those people to receive it in almost real time. Radio in prime had successfully grabbed the attention of the American Mass Culture and allowed for our culture to grow at a...
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...Culture is a very integral part of making people who they are. The culture one exists in effects and can be affected by their beliefs, social norms, race, religion, and social group. My friend can't I was born in South Korea, but moved to the United States when he was an infant. He, therefore has lived in the United States for as long as he can remember. Growing up in America with Korean parents has created a co-culture within my friends family. I am going to compare Hyun Tae’s Korean-American culture with my own African-American (actually from Africa) co-culture. As I interviewed can take, I learned that the American culture that he most assimilates with, contrast a great deal with the Korean culture of his parents. The first contrast in hyuntae...
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...Native Cultures of the Americas Gallery: National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) has exhibits spanning a variety of topics including animals, plants, ecosystems, fossils, earth sciences and human diversity. The Native Cultures of the Americas Gallery (NCAG) is one of five exhibitory spaces within the museum devoted to cultures from around the world and offers visitors a condensed walking tour of the distinct cultural areas of North America, encapsulated through select and supposedly representative objects (Rubin 2015). In this section I focus on three displays within the gallery that remove Native American experiences from time and history and as a consequence depict Native American cultures as ahistorical...
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...I believe that to some extent culture protection was a motivator, however the sale of popular American magazines put an economic pressure on local Canadian magazine vendors to compete with sales that they saw was going to hurt them economically. American magazines would attract advertisers and resources would be diverted to the publication of the American magazines that they felt would be a major issue to compete for readership and advertisers. These American magazines would show the American lifestyle and I do believe that those images and readings may have presented a concern to conservative groups and felt that young readers would be influenced by the American pop culture. An example of one such magazine that could be a major influence...
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...Samir Moussa was born in the United States both his parents were immigrants. He spent most of his adulthood traveling the world and volunteering and learning about tribal medicine. Samir felt a connection with his parent’s respective homeland he was not only a family oriented person, but a person that love to connect with people in general. Although Samir was an American he shared the views of his friends and family throughout their respective countries. Globalization had a profane effect on Samir; frequently living in very different cultures and setting than his own Samir learned to speak several different languages just by associating with people of different cultures. According to Samir exposure to cultural diversity has opened his eyes,...
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...crowd participation provided evidence of the popularity of these attractions. Levine noted that parodies do not work and have no place culturally without having first-hand knowledge of the primary source. However, this open and common culture soon mirrored the social hierarchies present in America in the early nineteenth century. Those same organizing practices were turned onto culture, as historians, critics, and theorists started defining culture as something much different than...
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...There are five dimensions of national culture that compare different countries and their culture. These dimensions include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/ collectivism, masculinity/femininity, and long-term/short-term orientation.While the United States and the Netherlands are similar on four out of the five national culture dimensions, their drastically different on the masculine/feminine dimension. The US is known as a masculine society in which the men are seen as more aggressive and the females are viewed as gentle and caring. The Netherlands are known as a feminine society, in which both males and females alike are viewed as being gentle and modest. The two countries are useful to compare views on virginity loss and...
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...Almost all customs America has developed over the years has evolved from the ancient Roman culture. One of the many customs America has taken from ancient Romans and slightly changed to make it unique is beliefs about life after death. Roman and American customs are very similar and very different at the same time, such as the way the dead are buried, what to do with their personal items, and a dead person's existence in the world today. Roman customs are very different to the ones American has today. One of the most obscure Roman traditions after someone died was the burning of all of that person's possessions. The Romans believed if they did not burning all of their possessions the person who had died would never be at rest and haunt everyone...
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