CULTURE

AND
WORLDVIEW
CULTURE
 The label anthropologists give to the structured
customs and underlying worldview assumptions
which people govern their lives. Culture is a
peoples’ way of life, their design for living, their way
of coping with their biological, physical, and social
environment. It consists of learned, patterned
assumptions (worldview), concepts and behavior,
plus the resulting artifacts (material culture).
WORLDVIEW
 The deep level of culture, is the culturally structured
set of assumptions including values and
commitments/allegiances underlying how people
perceive and respond to reality.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE AND
WORLDVIEW

 Culture/Worldview provides a total design for living,

dealing with every aspect of life and providing people
with a way to regulate their lives.

 Culture/Worldview is a legacy from the past, learned

as if it were absolute and perfect.

 Culture/Worldview makes sense to those within it.

 But no culture/worldview seems to be perfectly
adequate either to the realities of biology and
environment or the answering questions of people.

 Culture/Worldview is an adaptive system, a

mechanism for coping. It provides patterns and
strategies to enable people adapt to the physical and
social conditions around them.
 Culture tends to show more or less tight integration
around its worldview. Worldview assumptions
provide the “glue” with which people hold their
culture together.

 Culture/Worldview is complex. No simple

culture/worldview has ever been found.

 Cultural/Worldview practices and assumptions are

based on group or multicultural agreements.
 Culture/Worldview is structural. It doesn’t do
anything.

 Though analytically we need to treat people and

culture/worldview as separate entities, in real life
people and culture/worldview function together.
 THE SUBSYSTEMS OF CULTURE

Social subsystem

Religion WORLDVIEW Language

subsystem subsystem

Economics
subsystem
 CULTURE AND EXPERIENCE
 We all develop expectations based on our early experiences.
Some are biological, such as food, comforts or pain. But
expectations are also greatly affected by all kinds of
experiences. We formulate expectations from previous
experiences, guided by the society around us and by our own
analytical faculties. We learn from experience, but then we
process and evaluate new experiences in light of our previous
experiences.
SHARED EXPERIENCES
 As a group of people go through certain experiences together, they
develop a certain bond of empathy and identification. As they reflect
on the meaning of these life experiences and adapt to the
circumstances, they further come to have a similar perspective on
their situation. This reflection and their response to the
circumstances normally lead to a generalization of what the world
must be like.

 A culture group also usually shares a common language, which is a

strong identifying and unifying factor, both as an expression of the
common perspective and as a factor in the development or change of
that common perspective. Language is one of the significant
experiences of a community.
AN EARLY-EXPERIENCE MODEL
 We see this when children learn language. They listen, then
they begin making noises. They continue listening and
analyzing, and before long they are generating their own
sentences which they have not heard before. They use this
early-experience model to understand the new experience.
This basic model goes for all areas of life and
learning. Previous learning and experience become the format
for later learning and experience.
 We can say that culture is based on shared significant
experiences. Each society has a collection (formal or
informal) of social institutions and practices correlating and
expressing a common perspective of a group of people sharing
an identifiable set of common or shared experiences.
INSTITUTIONS
 These shared experiences and common identifying features
lead to a somewhat common perspective on reality, moral and
social values and assumptions which are entailed in the
common social "institutions." The more similar the unique
sets of experiences of two individuals or two societies, the
more similar their view of reality will normally be.
 We often use the term worldview for the
shared perspective of such a culture group, or the set
of assumptions arising from their shared significant
experiences. This set of shared experiences, leading to a
shared worldview, gives identity to the members and draws
the line that separates insiders and outsiders.
OUTSIDERS
 The outsider entering the society or culture must learn and assimilate the
major features of the worldview, that is, to take on the identity of the
insider, in order to communicate and gain acceptance (credibility) with
insiders. Foreigners who do not may be regarded with suspicion and
mistrusted or resented, particularly if they suggest making changes in
aspects of the society, like religion, political structure or certain social
practices or institutions.

 This process of learning and assimilating (or appreciating) the worldview

includes language learning, a more obvious characteristic of the society.
The language provides a vehicle for the worldview. The way the language
works reflects the philosophy and worldview of the society. It appears
that worldview affects language, and language affects worldview.
SHARING TO UNDERSTAND
 To adequately understand and appreciate the worldview,
a foreigner needs to experience the most important of
those shared experiences. The outsider has not
shared the same set of experiences the insiders have.
 In order to communicate effectively, to operate from
within the society or culture, the outsider needs to share
at least the most significant of these experiences with
the host culture, so that the outsider's worldview will
grow to entail more of the insider's worldview.
THANKS FOR VIEWING OUR PRESENTATION!
 GROUP 2
 Berro, Roy Francis A.
 Chua, Debilyn Mae T.

 San Juan, Jellien D.

 Tumala, Ellenoi S.

 Jabon, Marjelit Joy R.

 Manlangit, Erna B.

 Nabos, Gyselle P.

Submitted to:
MR. MARK LLANTO
Instructor in Elective