Friday, March 09, 2007

about Wednesday 7

about Wednesday 7

A few things about Culture:

First I need to say that I know there are more than... maybe 100 definitions of Culture.Obviously i cant ennumerate each one of them but I can say that Culture is a constant moving concept that can even be called Process. This means that every group can be influenced by the culture but at the same time influence the culture. Culture is integrated by peobple behaviour or likes, places, space, time and all factors that afect human behaviour. Then, Psychological or personal factors afect people at the same time that the places, time and the existing culture do. What I mean with this statements is that when trying yo analyze the culture of a small group it tends to be more important the personal culture or individual characteristics rather than a bigger culture, like country culture.
It is an error to think that you are ahead on the way of understanding a culture just by knowing the BIG culture they belong.
In a small group, like in an organization, there are a lot of different types of people. Some of them can have a strong influence in its friends and colaborators. As I said, culture influence and is influenced by its integrants at the same time. This means that when trying to understand smaller groups, we should better aim to personal factors more than a nation view. In other words, dont blame the culture of a nation whenever you see negative (or positive) things in a person, and so, I would not recomend trying to fix a personal problem with a Nation-Culture perspective.
What I would do is to get everyones profile, scan work-groups, networks and groups of friends, in order to know power relations, and detect conflictive people. With that information it would be easier to find problems or even define the culture of that company. The best we know people, the best we can know how to make them "move".
Yet, the BIG culture is very important, as you may know. But as I said it is just a little part of the way on understanding a group of people.
If interested on culture stuff (long and boring literature...) review Stuart Hall or Pierre Bourdieu firstly cause is more related to this subject I think.
Ahi nos vemos, görüşürüz.

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