Chapter 3: Defining culture

In order to understand a culture we can study it using “The five dimensions of culture” that includes:

Products: Are all the artifacts produced or adopted by the members of the culture. It includes tangible objects like plants, animals, tools, clothing, written documents, buildings; still perceptible as written and spoken language, music and complex institutions like family, education, economy, politics and religion.

Practices: Are the actions and interactions the members of the culture carry out. Include language and other forms of communication, self-expression as well as actions associated with social groups and use of products.

Perspectives: represent the perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes.

Communities:  include the specific social context and groups in which members carry out cultural practices. It refers to contexts like language, gender, race, religion, socioeconomic class, political party, social club, sports team, charity organization, coworkers or family.  They coexist by separation, cooperation, collaboration or conflict.

Persons: the individual members who embody the culture and its communities in unique ways.

Culture in TV show "Modern Family: Election Day" 

According to the five dimensions of culture we can analyze the following aspects:

Products: In this episode we can see many products, for example related to the campaign we can see flags, ballots, etc.

Election Day: Cam and Mitchell campaign. (video)

Spoken language is also part of the products, in this case we can see the use of spoken language when they the 2 guys are telling people to vote for Claire, when Claire’s family call people and we can also appreciate the use of some idioms.

We also see complex institutions of family, education and politics.

Practices: in order to win the campaign Claire had to call people and told them why they should vote for her, go to a radio program, interviews, etc.

Haley is worried because she hasn't been accepted into college. In this culture teens are supposed to go to college right after high school.

Voting is an important practice for adults including senior citizens.

Drinking alcohol is something common when you feel sad about something, in this case when Claire got a call and realized that she had lost the elections she looks for something to drink thinking that doing that she will feel better.

Phill goes and tries to help old people who can not go by themselves to vote, so he offers his car and he will take them to the voting center. 

Perspectives: we appreciate that they believe in a democratic system, they have democratic values, Claire expects to win but in the end she didn't.

It is mentioned that politicians never do what they promise.

Communities: We have different kind of member in this community.

There are women and men. We see children, teens, adults and old people. The Latin culture is represented by Gloria. They have local political parties (Claire’s and others). We also see a gay couple.

Persons: Too many people participate during the show and all of them are different because of gender, age, profession, ethnicity, etc. and all of them are an important member of the culture. We can appreciate both individual (each person) and collective (Claire’s team) culture.

Election Day: The Family Supports Claire (video)

Personal opinion 

I think this is a good method to understand a new culture because it includes all the things that could explain the reasons of why that culture is like that. Understanding a new culture is a very complex thing, especially if the culture has many different aspects from our culture.

We may not understand the reasons of why people do some things depending on their culture because we have a different one, we think differently and sometimes things from other cultures may look kind of crazy or incomprehensible for us but if we take the time to learn the reasons of why those persons think like that or act in a different way, we will be able to understand and learn more about that culture.

Before reading this chapter I wouldn't had been able to answer a question like “How could we understand a culture?” because it is a complicated question that requires analysis but now that I've read about this 5 dimensions it looks simpler.  These five aspects include everything we should know when learning about a culture and they are interrelated so that we have to learn about all of them because, for instance, I couldn't understand the practices if I don’t know anything about persons.

With this five aspects we can understand any cultural phenomena. We could even investigate about our own culture and learn or understand a lot of things we ignore, including simple things we live in our daily lives as the example of the drive through restaurants or in our work place or school.