How Do Fashions in Your Conty Differ Form Those in the Unite Dstates

5 Culture

In this affiliate, you will

• MLO 5.i Identify foundational concepts and theories related to culture, identity, and dress. [CLO one]
• MLO 5.2 Identify the factors that influence dissimilar cultural aspects of clothes. [CLO one]
• MLO 5.3 Identify the dissimilar cultural perspectives an individual can take to approach understanding the clothes and identity of others. [CLO i]
• MLO 5.four Explain the role of wearing apparel in identity development. [CLO 1]
• MLO 5.5 Examine how marginalized communities in the United States use apparel and advent to negotiate their identities. [CLO ii]
• MLO v.6 Deconstruct your own perspectives and approach to understanding the dress of others. [CLO iv]

Culture refers to aspects of human being-fabricated elements including tools, apparel, and media in addition to values, attitudes, and norms. Wearing apparel is a pregnant office of virtually every culture.

As more than cultures take cross-cultural contact, people from begin to alter aspects of their   cultures by incorporating aspects of different cultures they come up into contact with. This includes changes in apparel. This process of cultural change is frequently referred to every bit cultural authentication . It should be noted though, that there is a long history of forced assimilation, especially for Native or Ethnic communities in North  America (Little, 2018). That is, Native communities were forced to assimilate into European civilization; Native people were non interested in incorporating European cultural elements.

Culture vs. Cultured

All people have culture. Culture is not something held simply by society elites, such as only the wealthiest, most educated, or nearly sophisticated.

Image Source: "Hanbok fashion testify" for Hanbok designer Lee Young-hee, South korea, CC By SA

A. Civilization is a system of learned behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of a society (Hoebel, 1958). Annotation the emphasis on the learning of behaviors or ways of doing things. Civilization is learned, and individuals acquire culture through an ongoing process of socialization. Parents, families, schools, peers, workplaces, for example, all socialize individuals to ways of doing things. We find differences across cultures in wearing apparel, language, nutrient preferences, and other behaviors in function considering these are learned behaviors—not knowledge that is innate, instinctual, or determined by genetic programming.

Cultural patterns are feature behaviors and often include a complex array of choices. A culture may afford more one fashion of doing the same affair. Hence, multifariousness in behaviors may be found in some aspects of any civilisation

B. Civilisation is a complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, fine art, morals, law, customs, and whatsoever other capabilities and habits that members of a club learn (Linton, 1936). Linton emphasized that culture is a circuitous whole—a network of behaviors related to all aspects of life. Apparel is shaped by and reflects many characteristics in any culture, and then clothes is a complex  map of cultural characteristics.

C. Culture includes both abstract and concrete components (Scupin, 1998).

Abstract components include the meanings of symbols, events, activities, or actions and how the meanings are created and selected. Concrete components include the forms of action, behavior, event, activity, or artifact. Dress may be a concrete object, such as a shirt, a pair of shoes, or a hairstyle, but those concrete artifacts develop meanings in a culture. The fashion process, situations in which nosotros utilise dress, and groups associated with wearing of types of wearing apparel all bring meaning to those artifacts.

D. Culture is mentifacts, what people know; sociofacts, what people do; and artifacts, what people brand (Spradley, 1972):

Mentifacts: Ideas, Ideals, Values, Knowledge, and How Nosotros Know

Culture shapes how people retrieve about things. Mentifacts are the ideas, values, and knowledge that shape how we encounter a civilisation and how we know or recognize patterns. This includes stereotypes that are held nearly groups of people who look a certain way. Note that "how nosotros know" likewise refers to educational and media systems. Fashion magazines are role of these media systems, and then are idiot box and the Cyberspace.

Image Source: Barbro Andersen, CC Past

How people in a culture think and what they value are frequently reflected in dress. For example, in the United States, where nosotros value the freedom to eat and fabric plenty, consumers tend to prefer large wardrobes (Sproles & Burns, 1994). In some European countries, the average consumer has a insufficiently small wardrobe that often includes several high-quality, expensive items. These few items are worn over and over during the season in which they are fashionable.

Sociofacts: Characteristics of Social Organizations and How People Organize Themselves.

Sociofacts reflect how people behave in groups and social interactions. For instance, police officers wear uniforms to indicate their occupations and rank within the constabulary forcefulness. A store like Target has a compatible wearing apparel code—red shirts and khaki pants—to help customers identify employees. Many individuals dress up or "clean up" when going to dinner at someone's house. This pocket-size act shows respect to the hosts and indicates participation in a social event.

Sometimes patterns of dress in the larger society reflect how people organize themselves. In the Us today, socioeconomic status is unremarkably only vaguely communicated in our clothing. One hundred years ago, the social form of anybody passing u.s. on the street would have been made clear past their clothes.

Artifacts: Things People Brand and Tools and Processes for Making Them

2017 NASA astronaut candidate Jasmin Moghbeli wears a spacesuit prior to underwater spacewalk training at NASA's Johnson Infinite Centre Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Image Source: NASA/Josh Valcarcel, CC Past NC ND

Clothes such as wearable, makeup, tattoos, and shoes are artifacts made by people. Artifacts reverberate multiple aspects of a culture, such as mentifacts, sociofacts, and the technological knowledge of a civilization that  shapes manufacturing processes and  materials used. For example, Gore-Tex  fabric, now used in high-functioning sportswear, was invented through the NASA infinite program.

Technological advancements and economic reality may exclude some habiliment options. In ready-to-wear clothing that nigh people in the United States buy today, just simple seams, darts, and a few gathers comprise structure. Knits and pandex rather than intricate construction details reach, a tight fit. During the 1940s and earlier, however, ordinary clothing oft had many tucks, darts, godets, complex seams, for instance. The handwork and sewing  skill required for those designs is too expensive to produce today in associates-line factories. Complex fit through construction besides requires customized fitting that is too expensive, time-consuming, and difficult for  most of us. We save that expense for business concern suits and special-occasion  garments such as wedding dresses.

Anthropologists disagree on how to distinguish the terms culture and gild. Nosotros will utilise the terms fairly interchangeably. One definition of society is "a grouping of people living and working together in a systematic way" (Mead, 1934). An important implication of this definition is that gild requires people to coordinate their actions with each other. Each private cannot haphazardly do their own thing with no concern for others. With no traffic laws, for example, we would run into each other adequately frequently. Indeed, with no coordination of human effort, automobiles and roads would never take been invented. Dress would accept no meaning; fashions and traditions in dress would not be. Nosotros would have no idea who anyone might be on first meeting of them. Clothes is a production of systematic human interaction,  and it helps us to coordinate our interactions with others.

What Factors Influence Types of Clothes Worn in a Culture?

Ruth Bridegroom (1959) drew an "arc of human potential" to indicate that every culture makes choices from among a broad array of possibilities for whatsoever form of behavior. Each civilisation, and so, chooses  different language sounds, foods, dress materials and designs, and other behaviors.

In any culture, the following factors shape choices for apparel and other behaviors:

• climate and natural resource
• religion, ideology, ritual
• technology
• culture contact and diffusion of ideas
• social and political system
• history
• aesthetic rules.

This short pic features the Korowai tribe, whose members had no contact with anyone outside of their community until the 1970s. This isolation afflicted their dress in numerous ways.

To access a transcript for the video above, download this file: The Tree House People Korowai Video Transcript [Medico]

Principles of Cultural Perspective

Taking a cultural perspective on dress throughout the semester requires that nosotros adopt specific some ways of thinking about people and the world:

Holistic arroyo

The meaning of dress tin exist understood only through the study of all aspects of a culture. Dress does non  mean 1 single thing at a time. Many meanings and aspects of a civilisation are embedded in whatsoever example of dress. And sometimes these meanings are difficult to read. For case, why is it that in the United States, where we  value individuality so much, so many students on college campuses wear jeans and T-shirts to classes?

Cultural relativism

Seek to understand dress as information technology has pregnant to a guild "insider." What dress worn in countries outside your dwelling land means to you, a visitor or tourist in the country, is non necessarily related to what it means to people in that culture. Nosotros need to examine the characteristics of a civilisation and talk to people within that culture to observe out what their dress means. Something as simple equally color may have very dissimilar meanings in dress in different cultures. For example, red  is a  mutual funeral color in Republic of zambia, Africa, and a nuptials dress color in traditional China. What would it mean if someone wore a vivid cherry dress to a shut relative'due south funeral or a bride wore a vivid red  dress to her hymeneals in the Us today?

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is judgment of people of other cultures past one's own cultural standards and behavior. Dress that is unlike from our own can be challenging to accept or appreciate.

Ethnocentricity is hard to avert, for example, when members of other cultures or some groups inside our own culture do things to the trunk that are harmful to the individuals. Acting to end these practices may  be seen as important for humanity. It is equally important to recognize, however, that these practices may have deep meanings and roots in religious values or beauty standards previously considered skillful or "healthful." Only marching in and making such practices illegal will not necessarily stop them. Nosotros must have great care when we attempt to change securely held behavior about these practices. Change is likely to be irksome.

Sometimes information technology can be quite difficult to avoid ethnocentrism. Here are some examples that individuals may or may non view every bit harmful:

Image Source: Kamaji Ogino

• corset wearing
• pes binding
• tanning
• web sites promoting anorexia
• female person circumcision
• lilliputian people lengthening their legs
• embracing one's transgender identity
• women exposing their breasts in public
• steroid use
• scarification, or the carving of permanent designs in the skin
• practicing bondage and discipline, say-so and submission, sadochism and masochism (BDSM) or kink such as wearing dog collars, chastity  belts, or other restrictive garments.

Watch this brusk video about BDSM dress, identity, and women'southward empowerment. The research presentation is titled "Paddles, Strap-Ons, Latex, and Leather: Negotiations of BDSM Women's Dress, Embodiment, and Bodies in Motion through Spatial-Temporal Dynamics."

The video highlights how these women embrace their BDSM identity when others sometimes view these practices equally harmful.

Another term related to changing cultural aesthetics or norms is cultural appropriation. The concept of cultural cribbing is highly debated. For example, in a video that went viral, Amandla Stenberg discusses her opinions about white people adopting Black hairstyles (2015). Stenberg discusses how the adoption of hairstyles such as braids or cornrows by white people is wrong because when Black people wear these styles, they are viewed as "thugs" or "gangsters," yet when white people prefer these styles they tin be seen as "absurd" or "edgy," which reinforces longstanding racial hierarchies and stereotypes of white people having power. In that location are besides arguments such as appreciation versus appropriation, where individuals will fence that their adoption of a particular style or aesthetic is non wrong; they but appreciate that part of another civilization (Brucculieri, 2018).

In the following pic, about 28 minutes long, Denise Green of Cornell University delivers a compelling lecture on cultural appropriation and the Cowichan sweater (CTV News, 2015).

To access a transcript for the video in a higher place, download this file: What is the price of not plumbing fixtures in Video Transcript [Physician]

In this short film, Bethany Yellowtail, an Indigenous designer, discusses her experiences as a way designer and cultural appropriation.

To access a transcript for the video above, download this file: Indigenous Cultural Appropriation in Mode with Bethany Yellowtail and James St. James Video Transcript [DOC]

Puri, S. "Ethnic mode" obscures cultural identity. Yale Herald. (February two, 2001). Accessed November 1, 2021, via the Internet Archive:  http://www.yaleherald.com/annal/xxxi/2001.02.02/opinion/page12aethnic.html

Benedict, R. (1959). Patterns of culture. Boston: Houston Mifflin.

Hoebel, E. A. (1958). Man in the primitive earth: An introduction to anthropology (2nd edition). New York: McGraw-Loma.

Linton, R. (1936). The study of human: An introduction. New York: D. Appleton-Century.

Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, cocky, and society (Ed. by Charles W. Morris). Chicago: Academy of Chicago Press.

Scupin, R. (1998). Cultural anthropology: A global perspective (tertiary ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Spradley, J. P. (1972). Culture and knowledge: Rules, maps, and plans. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing.

Sproles, Grand. B., & Burns, L. D. (1994). Changing appearances. New York: Fairchild.

Step 1: Become familiar with the instance written report.

1. The instance study attached below is a Discussion document and tin can be downloaded. Information technology includes the chore, evaluation, and template for the case report:

Civilization Instance Report [Medico]

Step 2: Submit your complete assignment on Sheet.

1. Format your document.
2. Remember to check the submission against the rubric.

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