Culture

It is sad to admit this, but before reading this article, I had a uneducated understanding that there existed a set definition for culture (beliefs, moral, customs, norms, and values that govern the practice of everyday) (Kumaravedivelu 3) with which most scholar agreed too. But after reading the 1^st article by Kumaravedivelu I had a different understanding.  The introduction of the article proved to be very interesting as the author displayed several context in which the word “culture” seen to be problematic. As I continued with the reading, I stumbled across an idea that seemed intriguing. The comparison made by Geertz between an octopus and culture. Culture does not happen or change within a day. All changes that occur within a culture take time and happen at different time.  Just like the movement of an octopus, a particular part of the society changes then the rest follows. Another point that appeared in the article was that all cultures are interconnected thus making every culture a “hybrid culture" as it is called in the article. I found this concept fascinating because we often think of culture as the thing that sets us apart from one another, the particular aspect of our society that makes us different from the rest. To actually think of every culture as a hybrid culture was an interesting piece on information.

As oppose to having culture as a different and also similar idea as I perceived in the 1^st article, when reading the article by Atkinson I had a sense that when talking about culture as it relates to TESOL, it is not something that can be looked as having some similarities. Each student from each culture should be perceived different, as an individual. To further analyze “teachers and researchers need to view students as individuals, not as members of a cultural group”.  As mentioned before, this article put an emphasis as treating each culture/student differently. But I also found some similarities between the two articles. On page 9, Clifford refers to culture as “traveling-unrooted, ever-developing and changing”. This intrigued me because in the article by Kumaravedivelu, Brian Street shares his idea on changing the grammatical category of the word “culture” from a noun to a verb. Because culture is a concept that is ever changing and ever developing it carries attributes of a verb rather that than of a noun. Also to support this idea was Hall; he believes that the importance of culture is not what is culture rather than what culture does for a society. This opened my eyes to a different way of thinking about culture and all that it entails.