The Iceberg of Culture - Readings

Week 2: An Iceberg of Culture: A Metaphor

We learn everything about our culture from parents, peers,media, and other socializing institutions.  Through these lenses, we attach values, attitudes, world views, and language.  Therefore we can consider that culture is perception.  

However, culture is more than just perception.  Culture is shared.  Culture emerges from interactions, experiences and shared meaning.

When culture is cumulative when can find that it can be formed and identified with each generation.  As societies evolve, culture is refined and defined, and thus these changes are passed (or not passed) down to the next generation.

These behavoirs, values, beliefs and world view shape of our cultural perception, and thus the cultural iceberg metaphor is commonly attributed to the idea that a large percentage of culture is not superficial, rather below the surface is values, beliefs and world views that define us.

Core Reading:

Haley, J. H (1999) Beyond the tip of the iceberg, Five Stages towards Cultural Comptences  Reaching today’s youth. Vol.3 No.2 pp. 9-12.