by: Abdullah Afiq Che Kamaruzaman
The presenter, Mr. Ricardi introduced his speech by putting forward his own definition of culture, as “A system of behaviour that helps us act in an accepted and in familiar way.”. He then highlighted in his speech, the importance of the words ‘accepted’ and ‘familiar’. It is interesting to point out that the presenter highlighted his Norwegian culture which was synonymous with the Norwegian Woods, later on he differentiated the queuing culture in Norway with those in United Kingdom and the third notable example is when the presenter highlighted the difference between parking and driving culture from India, Norway and in Italy. If we were to define culture as how Jamil Farooqui defined it, as a ‘refined and sophisticated way of acting and doing things necessary to lead life’, we must not solely focus on the physical activity of a certain culture, but also why did a group of people acted the way they were, sophisticatedly. Friedrich Hagel viewed that we should analyse the role of human experience which provided meaning to the actor so that we can understand the nature of that action. He further explained that if one were to discover the internal structure or also refers to as the ‘subjective location’ of a cultural system, one can determine how does a particular cultural system exercise power to an individual or a group of individuals.
The presenter, Mr. Ricardi introduced his speech by putting forward his own definition of culture, as “A system of behaviour that helps us act in an accepted and in familiar way.”. He then highlighted in his speech, the importance of the words ‘accepted’ and ‘familiar’. It is interesting to point out that the presenter highlighted his Norwegian culture which was synonymous with the Norwegian Woods, later on he differentiated the queuing culture in Norway with those in United Kingdom and the third notable example is when the presenter highlighted the difference between parking and driving culture from India, Norway and in Italy. If we were to define culture as how Jamil Farooqui defined it, as a ‘refined and sophisticated way of acting and doing things necessary to lead life’, we must not solely focus on the physical activity of a certain culture, but also why did a group of people acted the way they were, sophisticatedly. Friedrich Hagel viewed that we should analyse the role of human experience which provided meaning to the actor so that we can understand the nature of that action. He further explained that if one were to discover the internal structure or also refers to as the ‘subjective location’ of a cultural system, one can determine how does a particular cultural system exercise power to an individual or a group of individuals.
I feel that it is important to not just look and observe one’s cultural uniqueness, instead, it is better if we took the time to dwell deeper into the reasons or as Friedrich Hagel described it as the ‘subjective location’ of a certain cultural behaviour in order to understand deeper and not only based on solid observation. There are many explanations and approaches to explain a certain culture in depth, but with the given presentation, it is appropriate to touch on the mechanistic explanations of culture. In the mechanistic explanation of culture, it stated that the universe is like a big working machine, working in a system and regulated by certain principles. Likewise, human behaviour acted as it should be, in correspond to the stimuli of the environment. The environment or external conditions have influenced human behaviours which forced them to act in certain ways. This can be proven when the speaker talk about how Norwegians behave differently from Londoners when it comes to queuing, or how Italians don’t care much about their parking habits or driving culture compared to, again, Norwegians. These cultures, had formed ways to conduct and navigate themselves in response to the external factors which they had experienced, for example how to park one’s car, how to drive a car, how to wait in line, how to move from one line to the other, which all of it are all purely a form of response from external conditions men have experienced. Human culture exists, according to Jamil Farooqui, is for “human activities to organised, shaped and direct to achieve the basic purpose of life”, hence, we must ask deeper questions on how a certain system of conduct were practiced by a certain group of people and why that certain group of people try to hold such system dear to themselves. It is fair to say that, most of the Western cultures embraced certain system of conduct as a response to the external factors influencing their lives and some of their cultures were directly determined by external conditions rather than internal conditions. This, I believe vastly differ from the Islamic definition of culture. In the Western culture, according to a thesis written by Max Webber a German sociologist, on Protestantism, scholars derived that the Western culture often change its non-material part because of the influence of its material part. This is deemed necessary as the Western culture might suffer from ‘cultural lag’.
For the Islamic definition of culture, it is the non-material part are the ones who should govern over the material part. Jamal Faroouqi viewed that the Islamic culture are governed by religious ethos and our system of thoughts determines how we view the outside world, the environment and the nature especially how we perceive the universe. Whatever the Muslims perceive the environment and respond to it, the responses must be governed and determined by holy texts and the religious doctrine, unlike most of the Western culture, the environment, material and nature influence one’s system of thoughts, and no higher doctrine is there to guide it. All are relative to the influence of the environment and other external factors. Matters of how one’s park the car, or how one should drive or wait in line is part and parcel of every society, both Islamic or Western, but when we move further into the origins of a culture, there are ways we differ from one another.
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by: Adam Khairi
For the Islamic definition of culture, it is the non-material part are the ones who should govern over the material part. Jamal Faroouqi viewed that the Islamic culture are governed by religious ethos and our system of thoughts determines how we view the outside world, the environment and the nature especially how we perceive the universe. Whatever the Muslims perceive the environment and respond to it, the responses must be governed and determined by holy texts and the religious doctrine, unlike most of the Western culture, the environment, material and nature influence one’s system of thoughts, and no higher doctrine is there to guide it. All are relative to the influence of the environment and other external factors. Matters of how one’s park the car, or how one should drive or wait in line is part and parcel of every society, both Islamic or Western, but when we move further into the origins of a culture, there are ways we differ from one another.
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by: Adam Khairi
The speaker, Mr Pellegrino Ricardi begin his speech by stating his profession is to help people to communicate better without the nationality. When we talk about cross cultural communication, it is all about perception by understanding what people see.. As the example given by Mr Pellegrino Ricardi, he had British, Norway and Italian in him. He was doing a social experiment to test people perception on him. He boarded in airplane and talk to the crews in English regarding the punctuality of the plane boarding time, because he believe when you speak in English people would take you seriously. He tried again with Italian accent and received bad reaction. This is one of the problem that working with the nationality. People see what they want to see. They don’t always see what you see. They only accepted the things that familiar with them. People only will accept the things that familiar within their social group. Plus, your assumption does not have to be other people assumption. As example, you think that this one particular social group is bad but other culture groups think differently as their perception created through the information that they received from us is different.
Hence, one of the ways to solve this matter is our ability to dig under the surface and find out the underline values are. Throw away all those status, luxury and find the equality between us. With that we will be able to laid back with each other, following the rules perfectly and make fantastic business environment. We can look on the examples given by Mr Pellegrino Ricardi that portray this issue, the efficient work that done by Singapore Airlines that serve their passenger and the queuing system in Norway. Next, curiosity also helps you to get rid the borders in cross cultural communications. To satisfy that curiosity, you can go around asking people to get the information that you are totally curious about. As example been given by Mr Ricardi, the most curious creature in planet is children. Generally, 4 years old children will ask about 390 questions per day and 82% of the questions will be asked to the mothers as when the children approach the father, the father will ask the children to go to the mother. To conclude, like Mr Pellegrino Ricardi been mentioned as been informed in the video that he has three nationality in him, take the best of all three and try to merge them as one new culture. It is not about across the border but extending the border and creates a new one around us. By that, he believes that we will create a global mindset.
