For example, I like salsa dancing. So does that mean I can say part of my culture is Latin? I mean hey, I can pretty much speak Spanish fluently, I studied Latin American politics at school, I lived in Latin America for a year and I prefer Corona over all other beers. I have an extensive Latin playlist on my iPod, I like Latin looking fellahs and am a serious fan of the Latin American style of writing - magical realism.So am I Latin in my culture construction? I would imagine that most Latin people would say not so much Larissa but thanks for the interest.
Let me go at it from another angle. You come to my house and I serve you perogies, teach you how to do the easter eggs and let you try on my red dancing boots. If you then told me that you considered yourself to possess Ukrainianess (new word) with your cultural identity, I'm afraid I might have to laugh you out the door.
Whaddaya think? Do I have a point or did they cut off the oxygen in my office again?
8 comments:
i like it larissa! how bout the fact that for the most part, we tend to only take part in the sexy/tasty/cool parts of other cultures? This can be pretty see through to those who are actually part of that culture. I know firsthand, i was routinely referred to as mangiacake (wannabe italian) in my tweens!
we should definitely appreciate all the great stuff that a culture offers, but I think people appreciate when you take a deeper look at their culture.
I dont know, I think that you do have some claims to being influenced by Latin American culture, and it being part of yours...For example, here at the spanish school there is a Korean guy, adapted into an American family. How Korean is he? After studying here last year he decided to learn some of his own cultural traditions, and he learned traditional Korean drumming, which he preformed for us. (it was very awesome). Now how Korean is he? Is this different from if I studied Korean drumming? Another guy, who is actually from Korea, expressed admiration and said how he knew nothing about his own culture, but this other American guy had learned about it,and how he wanted to...
Prof. Yon at York has a book called {Elusive Culture{ (spanish language keyboard can{t find punctuation keys sorry) In it he shows how in a Toronto high school culture is endlessly negotionated and renegotiated. You can have 'latino' people identifying as 'black', or a guy from Jamacia who is black but whose mother was raised by a Chinese-Jamacian who identifies as Canadian. I think its an interesting way to look at 'Canadian' culture which, at least in Toronto, is an amaglom of many things.
(hmm, i realized I havn't written my culture blog yet...maybe I'll fold this comment into it)
By that logic, no immigrant can be called "Canadian." If we cannot adopt parts of the 'other' into ourselves, then we are in fact denying people from our cultures. In one respect, spending a few days, weeks or months may not make you a part of certain culture, but you sure do learn from it. And to say that those that have embraced and adapted to something that wasn't "theirs" has a bit of elitist mentality. Must you be born a certain culture to be it?
Interesting point Francis. I was born Canadian but identify part of my culture as Ukrainian. I state that I believe part of my culture to be Ukrainian, and that seems alright with people. However, if I were to go to the Ukraine and find some of my ancestors, I'm sure they wouldn't consider me to be very Ukrainian.
I wonder if because we are in Canada that believes so strongly in multiculturalism that we are having this debate. I think if we were in Japan, it is alot more cut and dry.
It seems to me that we have gotten slightly ahead of ourselves. We are discussing whether or not adopting certain cultural practices identifies one with the particular culture from which it originates when in fact it remains just as uncertain now (if not more so!) what exactly the term 'culture' even means than before we wrote about it - others may disagree, but that is my impression at least. We may have a general idea of what 'culture' consists of, but the far more difficult task of defining precisely what is to be included and what is to be excluded from our overall conception of the term has yet to be determined and is, I think, undeterminable. Bottom line: I don't think it is useful to use such ambiguous terminology until its parameters, by whatever standard of judgement we wish to apply, are clearly delineated. Sorry to be a prude, but I just thought that it should be noted that by discussing this topic without qualifying the term first, it is as if we have a set definition of 'culture' already in place. Have I taken this thought too far or simply just stated the obvious?
I think that the desire of trying different things from different cultures is what i call YOUR culture. Your culture is the urge taht you get before trying different things about other cultures.
Ok, I think I follow. We could say that part of Canadian culture is learning about other cultures. We are indeed encouraged to do so. The government developed a ministry of multiculturalism in the 1970's to get Canadians to adapt the sentiment of being multicultural. Of course not everyone in Canada accepts multiculturalism as being part of their cultural identity but enough do to make it an identifier.
However, that means multiculturalism is part of our culture. Not those exact cultures specifically. Fair?
If you are bored at work and want a good resource that I often use:
http://www.pacific.edu/sis/culture/
Honestly I'm not the biggest fan of multiculturalism...even though I am the poster kid. My kindergarden class in scarborough was a smograsboard of people from around the world. Because my sister had red hair and no one else in my family did, I didn't understand about race at all, I thought that kids were born with totally random racial features. And I also kind of thought that every family had thier own home language, and a school language (except mine. I felt a little left out).
Sometimes I feel like I don't even have my own accent, as I pick up the accent of whoever I happen to be talking to. Which can be funny if its patois...
So, am I "multicultural?" Only if you define cultural as a unitary thing do you have to say that I have multicultures. Certainly, I have a very different culture than your typical white person from Oshawa, as I discovered when I moved there. Despite being white, and my mom being from the city, and my having spent lots of summers there, I didn't fit in at all in what was supposudly my native culutre. And if I went "back" to Ireland after 7 generations in Canada, I don't know what I would find.
Anyway, its this idea of culture as completely shared and unitary that is giving us problems here. Which makes us add the "multi", because multi implies that you can't have a hybrid. But we know that isn't true.
(o dear. this is nth comment i've made on peoples culture blogs. Am I the culture police?)
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