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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 92 92 How Culture Affects Mission one at that table has been served before anyone starts to eat. In Italy, people are expected to begin eating when they are served. To an Italian cook, letting a plate of food sit and cool down after it is served would be an affront. The Italians reason that the food was served at just the proper moment; therefore, eating must begin! Surface and Deep Levels External or surface manifestations of culture can be identified by simple observation. For example, the meanings cultures assign to colors can be quickly picked up by an outsider. In some cultures, black is the color of mourning while in others, white is the color of mourning. Many cultures now consider pink a girl color and blue a boy color, a reversal of what those colors represented in the 19th century. Another example of surface level cultural phenomena is how food is eaten. In some cultures that is done with a knife, fork, and spoon. In others, chopsticks are used and in still others, people pick up food with their fingers. Noticing a culture’s different customs, food, clothing, and language can be somewhat like seeing the tip of an iceberg. When people see a floating iceberg, they are looking at only about an eighth of it because the rest of it is below the waterline. Because so much of an iceberg is unseen, it makes a good analogy for understanding culture (see fig. 7.1). That is because, in addition to the external behavior and material objects that can be seen and even immediately understood, many significant cultural components exist only at an internal or deep level. At this below-the-waterline level are beliefs, values, and core identity thought patterns. They may be things based on kinship, gender roles, the idea of modesty, work ethic, social rules, ways of handling conflict, and decision-making processes. This deep level of culture shapes thoughts and behaviors without people even being aware that it is going on. The academic discipline that studies culture is called cultural anthropology. It is one of the sciences, but instead of working in laboratories, cultural anthropologists do fieldwork. The term anthropology combines a Greek word, anthropos, which means “man or human,” with the suffix -ology, which means “language about” or “the study of.” Thus, anthropology means “the study of humanity.” Cultural anthropology narrows that focus to human culture. Commonalities and Differences Anthropology is a word that is also used in theology to talk about commonalities of the human race. In terms of culture, however, anthropology looks at differences.
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 93 EXTERNAL CULTURE • Explicit • Objective • Conscious INTERNAL CULTURE • Implicit • Subjective • Unconscious Fig. 7.1. Iceberg analogy of culture TOUCH SEE HEAR VALUES BELIEFS CORE IDENTITY Race and Culture How Culture Affects Mission 93 THOUGHT PATTERNS In recent centuries, there has been an erroneous tendency to see skin color or eyelid contour as differentiating marks determinant of culture. Skin color or eyelid contours do not determine culture any more than does height. People with very similar genetic makeup can differ widely in culture. Anglo-Americans have been caught off guard when people with dark skin from Trinidad or Jamaica speak English with a British accent and hold views different from African-Americans from Memphis. Those encounters make it clear that trying to differentiate people based solely on skin color sets up very faulty distinctions. Indeed, many anthropologists today consider the concept of race to be meaningless and even misleading. Biologists note that all human beings have the same bone and muscle structure and even the same chemicals coloring the
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