Edwin Hoffman en Arjan Verdooren - Diversity competence

1  Culture: everywhere and nowhere

artists about the nature of ‘real hip-hop’. Today, hip-hop is embraced by young sters all over the world who often sing in their own language (an innovative and inventive use of language is important in hip-hop), and address local issues or concerns. According to some, hip-hop has become an important medium for expressing social problems and marginalization, especially for minority groups (Neate, 2003; Verdooren & Holleran, 2008). Even though today’s ‘globalized’ world probably hosts more transnational cul tures than ever before, these are not new phenomena. Most religions can be considered transnational cultures as well, in the sense that they provide ideas, behaviours and symbols to people across countries and even continents. For a better understanding of intercultural interaction, it therefore makes sense to approach religion as a type of culture. Many people perceive interactions with members of another religion – besides nationality and ethnicity – as intercul tural encounters, and assume, whether or not justifiably, that their religion is highly influential to the other person and to the interaction. 1.2.1 Culture as a model of and for reality To understand how culture operates, it is important to consider its influence on perception. A helpful distinction to explain the ways in which culture affects perception is that between culture as a model of reality and a model for reality (Tennekes, 1995, p. 20). Culture as a model of reality refers to the way culture helps people to interpret and understand situations quickly, without much active contemplation. A civil servant who walks into a room and sees a group of people sitting behind desks with notebooks and pens in front of them, may deduce that this is a meeting. A rock fan who goes to a concert knows that when the band suddenly leaves the stage and other people start cheering and whistling, the band will soon come back for an ‘encore’. Culture as a model of reality helps people to interpret the events around them based on familiar experiences and examples. Culture as a model for reality refers to how cultures also prescribe how sit uations should be judged and evaluated: what is good and what is bad, what The workings of culture Now that we have discussed the main traits of culture, we will look at how and where culture exerts influence.

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