READING

Exercise 1. Read and listen to Part7 of the series about culture using the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/tae_whoonearth_archive.shtml

What are the differences between individual and collective based cultures? If you are someone who likes privacy, your own space, making your own decisions, you probably belong to a culture where the individual is central. But if you like to have other people around you, and feel the need to ‘do the right thing’, your culture is probably one where the group - or the ‘collective’ - is the most important unit. This individual/collective distinction is very important in the study of culture.

The individualism / collectivism dimension or model refers to the relationship between any individual in a society to any group or collective in that society - now what do we mean by collective? A collective could be a small group such as a family or a workplace or a group of friends or a club or it could be big groups like an individual's relationship to the nation as a whole. Obviously how you are brought up and integrated into your society and live together with the people in your society will very much affect the way that your society's organized, the way families live together, the way institutions work the way education, politics and religion are organized and so on.

In individualist cultures people are linked together very loosely. They are brought up to follow their own individual goals and their own preferences and everyone in the society is rewarded differently according to what they personally manage to achieve. So they will make choices about which work groups they belong to who their friends are which religion they want to belong to which clubs they want to belong to and so on. This may mean that people don't have very much loyalty to any particular group, so they could switch company for example if they felt that their personal growth in one particular company had come to an end and in order to develop they would have to move to another company and do something different.

In collectivist cultures people's own personal preferences are downplayed and their loyalty is first and foremost to a group or a collective. So what happens is that the group goals become the most important thing and people act in accordance with the duties of any particular collective that they are in. You will probably have a very strong affiliation with your family group not by choice but because that's part of how your society is organized and it will be very important that within these groups you work together and there will be a mutual search for a collective harmony within these groups.

But why should some cultures value the individual while others value the group? Well, some cultural experts believe that there are historical reasons for this.

It has been suggested that individualist cultures may have started as the hunter gatherer type societies who had to be more self sufficient who had to survive at all costs and therefore became quite aggressive in their approach, more competitive. Collectivist cultures may have started more as the agrarian societies - more peaceful collectives of people living on the land, farming together, working together, sharing resources and so on.

On the whole in South Asian culture (0n India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) the individual is less important than the community. The USA and parts of Europe for example - tends to be ‘individualistic’. Britain is very individualistic - it starts with the family and it goes on through education and through to the workplace in business because we want more we've become very competitive. What’s more, the individualistic modern industrial world seems to be influencing the character of some collective cultures.

In the collectivist societies there will be much greater need for social harmony and action as defined by other people - virtuous action, action that will be accepted and approved of by a group and there will be a lot of loyalty within those groups.

It's very important when talking about individualism and collectivism to remember that these are very broad categories. In fact, they are really the two extreme ends of a long line. No culture really falls at either end. Cultures tend towards one end or the other. So where does your culture fall along the line? Do you belong to a more individualist, or more collectivist culture?

Exercise 2. Are the following statements are true or false? Correct the false ones.

1. You belong to an individual culture if you like privacy, you belong to a collective culture if you like to have other people around you.

2. A collective could be only a big group.

3. In individualist cultures people are linked together very closely.

4. In individualist cultures people do not have much loyalty to the company they work for.

5. In collectivist cultures people act in accordance with the group goals.

6. In South Asian culture the community is more important than the individual.

7. Globalisation seems to be influencing the character of some collective cultures.

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