Components of Culture

  
You may be thinking... what is culture? Culture can be defined as "a learned and shared pattern of behaviours, knowledge, beliefs, values, laws and languages that is passed on to members through enculturation." In this blog, I will focus on two components of culture for each of the babies. The first component is mores, and the second is folkways.

     What is a mores? First of all mores is pronounced mor-rays. A mores is "strongly held norms that reflect the values and morals of a culture; violation of these cause strong reactions." In Ponijao's culture, the way you raise children is very different than Hattie's culture. He has many different families living around him, siblings and people taking care of the children and teaching them how to do specific things. They have poor access to "the easy way out" of things. He will learn that in order to live you must work for it. The females stay at home and take care of the children, relax and do house work, while the males’ work hard hunting and providing for their families. In Bayer's culture, the females do house work such as cooking and cleaning, some of the farm work, take care of the children and relax. The film shows Bayer alone most of the time either on the bed or tied to the floor. In this culture that is one of the "normal ways" to raise their children. Mari and Hattie come from very similar cultures. The females often are the ones raising the children and the fathers work. I personally liked how the film showed that the stereotype of women always stay at home with the children while the males work isn't always the case or the right way to go. Both Mari and Hattie had the presence of both parents. As you can imagine, different cultures believe and physically do raise their children differently or the same as their parents parented them. Being a parent and raising a child should be done in love. The picture below is Ponijao and his mother. She is showing love and gentleness with her baby.

     What is folkway? Folkways are "informal norms common in society; change with time and circumstances; refusal to follow may cause suspicion and bring about social disapproval." Every baby has some kind of clothing, ways of eating, personal hygiene and use of language. It may very base on culture. In California, you are clothed with nice looking clothes, and every form of clothing. Hygiene is a big deal!! If you are not clean then you are seen as being poor or disgusting. Sitting at the table and using your words to express what you mean in key in this culture. These include a shirt, pants, socks, and shoes. In the American culture it is a law and a folkway to wear clothes when out in public. If you compare that to the Mongolian culture, people wear clothing just like the American or Japanese  cultures. One main thing that is different is the level of hygiene. Bayer lives on a farm-like environment. He is surrounded by cows, goats, roosters and chickens. His playing area isn't very sanitary. The picture below shows Bayer bathing with a goat directly behind him trying to drink the water. For the North American culture that is a huge problem. I personally think that our bodies need to be exposed to bacteria and germs in order to build up the immune system. Something I found very interesting in the film is when Ponijao was walking with his other hand in hand. He showed he was hungry. She then bent down and he breast fed in the middle of the desert like area. In the North American culture, women tend to put a blanket over the child and her breast. If Ponijao's mother did that in North America she would have been seen as abnormal, disturbing.

 

As you can see, each cultural component is special and important. They can also vary from culture to culture. It is important to respect and be careful to judge because it may not be part of your culture but it is the normal way to do things in someone else's. Look around the next time you are out and see what your cultures mores or folkways are. You will be surprised what is around you.