Reasons for Cultural Differences between China and Brazil

There are many different views on the definition of culture, and its rich content can be divided into:

material culture

Intangible culture

The former is tangible and the latter is intangible.

* Material culture

Refers to artificial products and technological products created and used by people. It includes: chopsticks, knives and forks, skyscrapers and bridges.

Sociologists are more interested in material culture: what is the purpose of designing and creating this tangible thing? Why is everyone rushing to buy? As far as a car is concerned, it doesn't matter whether it is good or bad. It depends entirely on the needs of users. Another example: At present, some teenagers wear nose ring earrings because of their motivation to participate in fashion.

* Intangible culture

It is knowledge, beliefs, values and norms that guide people to communicate and solve difficulties. For example, the wedding ring is a kind of material culture, but its significance goes far beyond its material level. It represents a kind of belief, commitment, oath and intangible culture deeply involved in it.

100 years ago, British scholar Taylor (Edwrd B.Taylor, 1832- 19 17) once defined culture as follows: "culture includes knowledge, belief, art, morality, law, customs and any other abilities and habits people acquire in society. Sociologists now define culture in a similar way.

* Cultural characteristics

Understanding the characteristics of culture is of great significance for understanding culture and analyzing cultural phenomena. Culture has the following characteristics:

1, symbol

Cultural symbol means that all specific cultural phenomena are only the reflection or symbol of a certain cultural type.

For example, the stone axe reflects the ability and technology of human beings to make tools in primitive society, so it is a symbol of primitive society and culture. For another example, Tai Ji Chuan is a symbol of China culture, and sumo is a symbol of Japanese culture.

2. Complexity

Cultural complexity refers to the combination of cultural phenomena and a series of internal relations.

For example, religious activities include religious teachings, rituals, buildings and organizations.

3. Diversity

Cultural diversity mainly means that different countries, nationalities, social groups and communities have their own unique cultures.

For example, national cultures include China culture and American culture.

4, * * * enjoy

The enjoyment of culture means that culture has the characteristics of being enjoyed by a group, a society and even all mankind.

For example, culture has permeability and diffusion, inheritance and acquisition. It is precisely because of the above characteristics that culture can be enjoyed by others and future generations.

* Cultural elements

culture

standard

know

material

Matilda

folk custom

approve

taboo

law

value

language

believe

formal

informal

Cognitive culture

language

Language is the basic tool for social members to communicate. Through language, members of society can understand the unique history, culture and experience of a society, and members of society can also create new cultures and ideas through language, and language gradually forms a complete system in its development process.

believe

Faith can be said to be some beliefs about the nature of society or nature, which can't be proved by scientific knowledge and technology. As long as people believe and accept these beliefs, they are true. For example, believing in the existence of God is a set of religious beliefs, and once a person accepts a certain belief, it is difficult to change it, because the belief involves a person's basic view of the outside world. The existence of faith has a very important contribution to the spiritual life of social members. Faith puts forward some ideas about the universe or unknown environment, which makes human beings feel a lot of unknowns.

Normative culture

Normative culture refers to the rules and standards used to restrict people's social interaction. It tells people what to do and what not to do. What to do and what not to do, such as violating social norms, will be punished. Normative culture includes norms (folk customs, ethics, laws and taboos), sanctions and values. Norms are the expectations of social members for others' behaviors, thoughts and concepts.

folk custom

Folklore is simply the habit and etiquette of daily life, such as courtesy to the old, the weak, women and children when taking the bus, or shaking hands with the right hand. People who don't abide by folk customs may be pressured by some groups, but they will not be formally punished, because folk customs are customs handed down from society or groups. For example, if a young man does not respect the old man, society will only criticize him for being rude, but will not severely punish him.

Matilda

People's morality is a more binding standard of behavior than folk customs. Violating people's morality will be punished by society, because these violators will affect the cultural existence of the whole society. For example, adultery and homosexuality are not allowed in traditional society.

law

The difference between law and civic morality lies only in the high degree of formalization; The law institutionalizes people's moral content and culture, and establishes an independent judicial system to explain, examine and punish, so that the interaction between people and organizations can be carried out in accordance with objectively set standards and norms. For example, people must obey the road regulations when driving or walking. If they violate the regulations, they will be fined or prosecuted. Therefore, the legal relationship that violates social norms will be punished the most.

sense of worth

The difference between values and norms is that values are broad and abstract. For example, is the death penalty right or wrong? Is homosexuality right or wrong? Is premarital sex right or wrong? These questions all contain some value. Some people may think that the death penalty is correct because it is an appropriate punishment for murderers. However, some people strongly object to this statement. They think the government has no right to deprive anyone of his life. Values represent basic beliefs, which are the behavior patterns or results that individuals or the whole society prefer or oppose. Values are moral because they contain what the individual thinks is right, what is good and what is worthwhile.

Different societies have their members pursuing the same value goals, such as freedom, democracy, equality, order, security, harmony and happiness. These are what everyone pursues and contain strong feelings and expectations. Values are a loose system, and different values may conflict with each other. For example, when western values are integrated into China's value system, the conflict becomes more obvious. Although values are pursued by most members of society.

Values will affect people's behavior, but attitude and behavior are not necessarily related. For example, some people think that "personal achievement" is a very important value, and they achieve their goals through good education and hard work. Others don't want to work hard, but rely on illegal acts such as stealing, robbing and cheating to accumulate wealth.

Values are the goal of behavior, and norms are the norms of behavior. Social life depends on people's compliance with laws, regulations, customs and morality, and its existence is conditional on everyone's compliance and support.

:: Cultural diversity

Cultural creation

Accumulation and dissemination

cultural integration

cultural conflict

Subculture group

Counter-mainstream culture

Cultural egoism

Cultural creation

Culture is the product of interaction among social members. When members' lifestyles or viewpoints change, the content of culture will naturally change. With the rapid development of language knowledge system and science and technology, human creativity can be brought into full play.

For example, with the development of building technology, the single-storey house of neem tree has become a multi-storey and multi-group building; However, this lifestyle limits the interaction between neighbors, making neighborhood relations indifferent, impersonal and lacking mutual assistance.

The generation and innovation of cultural materials are easy to be observed and understood, but the changes of cultural cognition and norms are difficult to be detected, because the changes of norms, values and beliefs often have a great influence on people.

For example, in the United States, the legalization of abortion is a goal that feminists constantly strive for, while Catholics and those who emphasize the right to fetal survival strongly oppose it. These two types of people constantly convey their ideas through the media, street demonstrations, speeches, etc., in order to gain public support and become socially recognized concepts and norms. It was not until the precedent of American courts in 1970s that abortion was legalized. This example is enough to show that social values and norms are constantly innovating and changing.

Accumulation and dissemination of culture

When culture is constantly being created and generated, it is not necessary to ignore the sustainability of culture. If every generation abandons the primitive culture and starts from scratch, and does not accumulate the created culture and pass it on, then human beings will always stay in the primitive stage of making stone axes and have no future. The superiority of human beings over animals lies not only in the ability to create culture, but also in the ability to accumulate and pass on the created culture from generation to generation through various channels, thus continuously promoting the development of production and society.

Because culture can be continuously accumulated and passed down, it has a strong historical inheritance. The inheritance of culture does not mean that all previous cultural heritages are completely compatible at any time, but must be processed and transformed according to the needs of social development, and selectively inherited and absorbed. Therefore, no cultural heritage will be passed down unconditionally.

cultural integration

Cultural integration refers to a cultural phenomenon in which different cultures contact and accept each other's influence. Because culture has the functions of diffusion, dissemination and infiltration, the two cultures will inevitably influence and penetrate each other in the process of contact.

There is a phenomenon of "assimilation" in the process of cultural integration. Generally speaking, the assimilation phenomenon in culture does not refer to the assimilation of the whole nation, but refers to the changing process of individuals or groups integrating from one culture into another. For example, China immigrated to the United States, and the Japanese ruined Brazil. Assimilation is very difficult in the case of huge cultural differences. Immigrants themselves are generally not assimilated, only their children or the next generation of children will be assimilated. There are many cultural differences.

cultural conflict

Cultural conflict is the contradiction and confrontation between native culture and foreign culture in the process of mutual contact and influence between different cultures. The cultures of different nationalities and countries often have great differences or even opposites in values, codes of conduct, customs and habits. For example, after China implemented the open policy, a large number of western cultures flooded into China. Many things in western culture are very different from the original culture in China, such as individualism and collectivism, money and morality, competition and modesty. These opposing ideas will inevitably conflict in contact, and this cultural conflict is most obvious in the process of society moving from closed to open.

The result of cultural conflict will lead to complete rejection or adaptation to foreign cultures. For example, the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran was completely westernized and was strongly opposed by Islam. As a result, the Islamic revolution succeeded and western culture was shut out. For example, after the implementation of the open policy in China, state-owned enterprises gradually moved towards joint-stock system, collective enterprises moved towards individual enterprises, and western rock music also moved from opposition to acceptance.

Subculture group

In the same society, different groups still have different norms, values and behaviors. Those cultures that are different from the mainstream culture are called "subcultures". For example, in American society, blacks are different from whites in language, writing, music hobbies and family organization, which is called "black culture". Another example is the Portuguese who were born and raised in Macau. They have their own language and customs, which are different from those of China people in Macau.

The scope of subculture can include youth subculture, homosexual subculture, Muslim subculture and so on. As far as a society is concerned, the more social groups there are, the more types of subcultures there are. For different subcultures, members of society should also respect and preserve them, instead of overemphasizing the superiority of a certain culture and deliberately distorting and destroying the subcultures of various social groups.

Counter-mainstream culture

Anti-culture is a sub-culture, and its values, beliefs or behavior patterns are antagonistic and conflicting with the mainstream culture. For example, the youth movement in the United States in the 1960s was a subculture aimed at resisting the existing cultural norms or values.

In a society, no culture is always wrong and not accepted by the mainstream culture of society. With the changes of ideological patterns and power relations of different groups in society, some phenomena that were once regarded as anti-culture have been accepted, such as the recognition of homosexual subculture in some western societies.

Cultural egoism

In the process of comparing different cultures, it is very natural to distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of cultures. In particular, some countries with highly developed economy or science and technology are often obscured by their own material achievements and think that other cultures are inferior and uncivilized. This evaluation of other cultures is based on one's own culture and firmly believes that other cultures are not good. This evil attitude is called ethnocentrism. Arrogant attitude is often one of the causes of major disasters in human society, such as Nazism in Germany, militarism in Japan and chauvinism among white people. Cultural egoism lacks understanding of its culture, and tolerance is closely related to respect. Therefore, an educational method that emphasizes multiculturalism and different cultures is through mass media. It is necessary to communicate or travel with international students. Try to let members of different societies know that culture is relative, no culture is the best, each culture has different conditions, and each culture has its contribution and value to the local society. This is not bad, because our lifestyles are different. We should all tolerate and respect other cultures.

* Interpretation of cultural theory

Functionalism theory

Conflict theory

ecology theory

Theory of material condition life

Functionalism theory

Functionalism theory emphasizes the importance of culture in maintaining social order, and the function of culture is to make members of society have codes of conduct to abide by, so as not to cause social conflicts and social problems.

A particular culture comes into being because it plays an important social function. For example, Christmas and Easter in the west play an important role in western society. Another example: In the old China society, a woman's little feet represented a kind of beauty, which was one of the standards of marriage. Because women with small feet are easily bound at home, raising children and serving in-laws, according to this concept, the emergence of a culture meets some social needs.

Conflict theory

Conflict theory regards the cultural system as a collection of conflicts and contradictions, and the harmony within the cultural system is only temporary. When the contradiction between different elements cannot be concealed or suppressed, social changes will follow.

Conflict theorists also believe that culture is a tool for the ruling class and vested interest groups to consolidate their position and control the most vulnerable groups. Through the transmission of culture, the values of rulers are rooted in the thoughts of members of vulnerable groups. For example, American society emphasizes individualism, and individual efforts are the key to success. A family is poor because it is not diligent enough. As long as they work hard, they will become rich families. All success or failure is attributed to individuals. All kinds of discrimination against social structure and differences in educational opportunities are ignored, mainly focusing on safeguarding advantageous interest groups. Another example is that some cultural features promoted by China during the Cultural Revolution were inseparable from the ideas and routes promoted by the leadership at that time.

ecology theory

Ecological theory can be summed up as the influence of environment on culture. Ecologists believe that the characteristics of different national cultures are determined by the characteristics of their resources and surrounding environment and the changes of these environments. For example, in a nomadic hunting society, social groups are small in scale, members share food, and most social members are equal, with only informal leaders. Entering the agricultural society, due to the increase of food, population and wealth, social division of labor and social stratification, the ruling class and code of conduct have emerged.

The cultural characteristics of many ethnic groups or regions are closely related to their environment. For example, Japan's superiority, inferiority, solidarity and other national characters are formed because Japan is an island country with poor resources.

The argument of ecology does provide some explanations for the change and development of culture, but the applicability and universality of its explanation are open to question, because not all societies with the same ecological environment have developed the same social structure and culture.

Theory of material condition life

The theory of material living conditions is Marx's explanation of cultural phenomena. They pointed out that people's ideas change with the changes of people's living conditions, social relations and social existence. Their theory is an important basis for analyzing the formation of cultural characteristics of different nationalities, countries and regions. For example, for thousands of years, the people of China have been living on the land and relying on the production of small farmers to make a living. In case of natural and man-made disasters, chaos and displacement, the people will suffer. Therefore,

Material living conditions are not the only factors that determine cultural characteristics, because political, geographical and ecological factors will have an impact on the formation of cultural characteristics. The formation of cultural characteristics of different nationalities, countries and regions is the result of the comprehensive action of these factors.

Characteristics of China culture

The characteristics of China's traditional culture are mainly reflected in Confucianism, specifically the Confucian moral system centered on "benevolence" and the education system centered on "ceremony".

Some scholars have pointed out that the social personality theme emphasized by China traditional culture is ethics. China's humanistic thought is the most humane relationship, which ingeniously cancels people's independence and turns people into moral tools. China people's value judgment is linked to goodness, and everything that conforms to moral principles is good, while westerners' value judgment is linked to truth, and only the principle of truth is good.

Scholar Liang Shuming pointed out that western culture is forward-looking, individual-oriented, pursuing material interests and advocating science and democracy. China culture pays attention to reality, social problems and interpersonal relationships.

From the perspective of China's traditional culture, the basic characteristics of China citizens are as follows:

1. Stick to the old way.

2. Respect face and emphasize form.

3. Ethics first, abide by morality.

4. Be content with your destiny.

5. compromise, the middle way.

6. Pay attention to human feelings and be tolerant.

7. Pay attention to family relations.

8. Worship power and fear authority.

China's traditional culture has advantages and disadvantages, but we can't simply choose between them. When dealing with China's traditional culture, we should not exaggerate the excellent tradition of national culture unilaterally, resulting in arrogance and blind xenophobia. One-sided exaggeration of the negative aspects of national culture will reduce national self-confidence and produce national inferiority complex, both of which are not conducive to China's modernization.

Respondent: Ke Yu-Juren Level 412-2216:19.

Your answer is very detailed.

And it also meets my needs.

But I can't quote.

Because your article doesn't indicate: Where did you find these materials?

I can quote when I write a book.

Culture refers to the spiritual wealth created by human beings such as literature, art, education and science. In archaeology, it refers to the synthesis of relics and remains in the same historical period. The same tools, appliances, manufacturing technology, etc. Is the characteristic of the same culture. Sometimes culture also refers to civilization.

Although as early as the primitive society, the first division of labor that human beings have formed produced the agricultural nation and the animal husbandry nation, the early cultures were all produced in the agricultural nation, because the animal husbandry nation depended on weeds for a living and had no fixed place, so it was not easy to produce large-scale settlement and there was no urgent demand for writing; However, agricultural nations are easy to form big tribes, and building water conservancy requires a large number of people and Qi Xin to work together, so the earliest big countries and slavery were born in agricultural nations. Only with great powers and slavery can a large number of idle classes be produced. They invented writing, which promoted the second division of labor between mental and physical labor. As a result, a narrow sense of culture has emerged (a broad sense of culture refers to all human activities and can be called culture).

The concept of culture

The word culture comes from the Latin verb "Colere", which means to cultivate the land, and later it is extended to cultivate people's interest, spirit and intelligence. The concept of culture is English anthropologist Edward &; #8226; Taylor proposed it in 187 1. He defined culture as "a complex whole, including knowledge, belief, art, law, morality, customs, abilities and habits acquired as members of society". Since then, the definition of culture has emerged one after another, Clyde &; #8226; Kluckhohn collected more than 100 cultural definitions in the late 1950s.

Some views on culture

Different disciplines have different understandings of culture.

Explain culture from a philosophical point of view, and think that culture is essentially the expression of philosophical thoughts. Because of the epochal and regional nature of philosophy, different styles of culture are determined. Generally speaking, the change of philosophy leads to the change of social system, accompanied by the suppression of old culture and the rise of new culture.

From the perspective of existentialism, culture is a description of the way of existence of a person or a group of people. People exist in nature as well as in history and times; Time is an important platform for a person or a group of people to exist in nature; Society, country and nation (family) are another important platform for a person or a group of people to exist in history and times; Culture refers to people's way of speaking or expressing, communication or behavior, consciousness or cognition in this process of existence. Culture is not only used to describe the external behavior of a group of people, but also includes the individual's spiritual consciousness and perception mode. A way for a person to return to his inner world for self-dialogue and observation.

The core of culture is its symbol system, such as writing. Every writing system has its own cognitive psychology.

Cultural characteristics

Only through the comparative study of different cultures can we understand the characteristics of culture.

First of all, culture is * * *, it is a series of ideals, values and codes of conduct, and it is the same standard that makes individual behavior ability acceptable to the collective. Culture and society are closely related. Without society, there is no culture, but there will also be a society without culture. Within the same society, culture is also inconsistent. For example, in any society, the culture of men is different from that of women. In addition, there are differences in subcultures of different ages, occupations and classes.

Culture is learned, not inherited. The way of physiological satisfaction is determined by culture, and each culture determines how these needs are met. From this point of view, non-human primates also have various cultural behaviors, but they are far less developed than humans.

The foundation of culture is symbolic symbols. The most important of these is language and writing, through which human beings pass on culture from generation to generation. In addition, culture, as an interrelated whole, shows a trend of integration.

Cultural classification

Prehistoric culture

ancient culture

Yellow river basin culture

Nile valley culture

Two rivers basin culture

Indus valley culture

Medieval culture

Ancient Greek and Roman culture

Ancient Persian culture

Ancient Indian culture

Ancient Chinese culture

Medieval culture

Christian culture

Islamic culture

Indian culture

Confucian culture

Modern culture

Imperialist culture

Colonial culture

Modern culture

Socialist culture

Capitalist culture

Third world culture

Postmodern culture

Developed country culture

The culture of developing countries

The culture of the least developed countries

Future culture

Culture is the sum of material civilization and spiritual civilization.

~~

The smallest cultural concept is often synonymous with "knowledge" in the mouth of ordinary people. To say that someone is "literate" means that he has gone to school, received formal education, is literate and knows some scientific knowledge. In our goal of "cultivating new people with four qualities", "educated", which is juxtaposed with "having ideals, morality and discipline", is also the narrowest concept Broadly speaking, "four haves" all belong to the cultural category;

-The slightly "small" cultural concept is an administrative operation concept-"cultural work", especially those fields and departments under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. It excludes not only economy, politics and military affairs, but also science, theory and education. In this sense, "culture" mostly refers to "literature", "literature" and "cultural relics". Obviously, this is an artificially defined cultural "work" scope. This division is purely for the convenience of work, and does not mean a strict scientific definition of culture;

-"Culture" in the Chinese file is a general concept, which refers to "spiritual culture", including science, theory, education, literature and art, politics, morality and religion. In short, it is the whole field of human spiritual life. What people usually say about culture mostly refers to this level, and the so-called "cultural people" mostly refer to people in these fields. So some people simply advocate that culture should only be understood as a spiritual phenomenon. The basis of their argument is that Mao Zedong once said "culture as an ideology ……". But this statement seems far-fetched. Because Mao Zedong's formulation itself does not rule out the possibility of the existence of "culture as a material form" and "culture as an institutional form". Moreover, this definition directly confuses "culture" and "social ideology", which is equivalent to canceling the division of labor between the two concepts. Therefore, there are still many people in academic circles at home and abroad who advocate the concept of "big" culture.

-"Grand culture" includes material culture, spiritual culture and institutional culture. It brings the material, spirit and system of human society into the vision of cultural investigation, which is equivalent to taking all human societies and their history as the carrier and form of culture, and it is equivalent to declaring that "everything that is human and related to people has cultural problems and belongs to the scope of culture!"