sociology Culture

Culture is a relative concept because cultural norms only make sense within the context of a specific worldview and location. Language, gestures, and other cultural signifiers are meaningless in and of themselves. However, it is so easy to take our own cultural ideas for granted; we assume that our concepts of culture are 'the norm.' For example, in America, it was considered shocking during World War II when Japanese kamikaze pilots sacrificed their lives on bombing missions. This idea was a profound affront to American ideas of the importance of the individual. However, someone from outside of mainstream American culture, such as a devout Quaker, might take a stand as a conscientious objector and state that all war is morally wrong, seeing no difference between the Japanese sending bombers out with only enough fuel for a one way flight and Americans sending their own young men out to a slightly less likely, but still possible, demise during the same war.

Cultural values are also reflected in small gestures. In relatively high-context cultures, where social gestures mean a great deal, refusing to dine at someone's house by saying "I am not hungry" might be regarded as a tremendous affront. However, someone from a low-context culture, where meanings are literal rather than highly dependent upon relationships, might simply mean that he or she was not hungry in the refusal of the dinner invitation. Perceptions of power relationships may also vary from culture to culture. In some high-context cultures, age and/or a position on a hierarchy means that a person must be deferred to, regardless of the quality of his or her ideas. In lower-context cultures, the quality of the idea, regardless of the origin is given predominance.

In this analysis, it might seem that the values of 'saying what you mean' and ignoring social status indicate that low-context cultures are somehow superior to high-context cultures. However, our perceptions of this fact are rooted in our own, American cultural concepts, not because there is an inherent truth in the idea that individualism is better.

Q2. 'It's not fair.' Because fairness is such a powerful concept, it is tempting to view the idea of fairness as something that is cross-cultural. However, the Japanese and American concepts of fairness are almost completely distinct. In Japan, fairness is based upon outcomes, or how equitably the community is treated as a whole. In America, our concept of fairness is based upon the individual, or whether each distinct person was satisfied, in terms of what he or she gave or did not give to the effort.