In his article, The Self and the Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts, Harry Triandis shows the fact “the human self is totally emerged in one’s culture.” Culture is a social reality, which is given and no one can refuse to imbibe it when once born. When a child is brought into existence, he is already “thrown” into the culture of his origins.
Man is a “being-in-the-world,” as Heidegger claims. The world that one happens to dwell on is a network of meaning. This meaningful world is somehow elegantly decorated with what is in there in one’s culture. For Taylor, culture refers to the beliefs, practices, thoughts, worldviews of the group of people. All of these characteristics of culture are like icing on the cake –that is, the world we are living in. It goes without saying that man is not living in a vacuum.
In deeper analysis, culture is embedded in one’s self. It somehow defines the nature and behavior of the self. One’s culture influences his self –thoughts, feelings, behavior; the self, on the other hand, is also understood as a “blank slate” so that its capacity to absorb the meanings is fertile and sufficient.
However, culture differs from one group of people to another. Thus, it is undeniably true, human self differs from one culture to another. Triandis mentions that a society having an individualistic culture hubs an individualistic self. Likewise, a society having a collectivist culture hubs an individual with a collectivist paradigm.
This is, I think, one of the breakthroughs made in Sociology and Anthropology, which we cannot neglect its impact on the way we understand the self.
Related article:
1) Society and Culture posted on May 10, 2017
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