Chapter 7: Cultural perspectives

Practices, products, persons and communities embody cultural perspectives and vice versa. Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meanings shared by members of the culture manifested in products and practices.

These meanings reflect the member’s perceptions of the world, the beliefs and values they hold and the norms, expectations and attitudes that they bring to practices.

Perspectives are a combination of perceptions, values, beliefs and attitudes. There are three different orientations or views of culture: functionalist, interpretive and conflict. They can also be classified into tacit or explicit and emic o ethic.

Explicit and tacit perspectives

Perspectives can be tangible. Perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes can be explicitly stated in oral or written form. They are expressed through sayings, proverbs, creeds, proclamations, myths, mottoes, principles, guidelines, social studies or other forms of expression.

Perspectives consist of 5 aspects and they come from perceptions (tacit) to attitudes (explicit).

Emic and Etic perspectives

There are two kinds of perspectives: emic and etic.

Emic are those articulated by members of the culture to explain themselves and their culture. Emic explanations are perspectives that members of the culture use to describe or explain their own way of life. These members may have difficulty finding words to explain. 

Etic perspectives are those of outsiders to the culture, who use their own criteria to explain other’s culture and it consists of explanations from one’s own cultural background.

Members of the culture have their own explanations, emic perspectives. Outsiders bring etic perspectives, their own ways of explaining other's cultures using criteria that they apply to all cultures. The interplay between emic and etic perspectives is crucial when comparing cultures and to understand them. 

Three points of view on culture.

1. Functionalist view

Culture as an integrated, harmonious whole. Holds that society constructs systems or structures (institutions) to ensure the harmonious functioning of society. 

2. Interpretive view

Culture as defined by distinct communities and members. Assumes that cultural perspectives are defined by the members of the culture in the circumstances in which they find themselves, either as individuals or as members of communities.

3. Conflict view  

Culture as separate communities in conflict. Makes up the culture, particularly on their interactions with the core culture and its institutions and among others. 

So, as we have seen ethics can change from culture to culture. It will depend on how different is other culture from yours. People will see different points of view because they will compare other's culture with their own and they will find some things in common and some totally different, they will agree and also disagree with what other cultures propose. 

Perspectives are extremely important. They are part of every culture as the other four dimensions. People are always expecting something to happen, people always have perspectives. 

A good example of how perspectives affect people's life is for example with religion. When people pray they have a perspective: be listened by God. 

Other people such as Muslims practice the pilgrimage to Mecca. During the Hajj, several million people of varying nationalities worship in unison. Every adult  who has the financial and physical capacity to travel to Mecca and can make arrangements for the care of his/her dependents during the trip, must perform the Hajj at least once in a lifetime. So as you can see if you lived in a Muslim culture you would be expected to do this.

In some cultures like the most of Latin American cultures people are expected to be friendly, keep close relationships and stand very close to people when talking or expressing their emotions by hugging, shaking hands, etc. In the other hand american have a different culture, they expect people to respect the "personal space", they don't expect people to hug, or stay really close, even if they're really close friends. 

There are some topics like politics and religion that sometimes may end in an uncomfortable situation. In this topics perspectives are very linked, people expect and believe that they are right, so when discussing about it if someone disagrees the other person might feel offended because they're offending  they things they believe in. 

In my personal opinion we couldn't live without religion or politics. We need something to believe in, we need to have something that gives us hope, like in the case of religion. Or in the other case, believe in a better political system.