I work in a University with a rich mix of cultures. I also use the internet a lot, and come across a whole mix of ideas and cultures in chat rooms, blogs, and even games. When I ask a room of students or in a Discord chat room "what is culture" I seem to get an answer that represents the culture of the responder. They will say whay culture means for them. Of course, culture is an ever mutating quality, and as soon as we observe and try to measure it, like the elusive electron, it seems to have changed. Perhaps like the electron we just have to observe the zones of tolerance, and say 'In this zone is our culture now'; Or perhaps we can say where culture in a particular society is NOW but not where it will move to, OR we can state how quickly it is moving and in which direction, but we cant do both!
Culture has been measure by great social scientists, such as Dr. Geert Hofstede https://hi.hofstede-insights.com/models or Dr. Erin Meyer. Hofestede told us there were 6 ideas to consider and Erin Meyer has 8 ideas in her model but sadly she's decided that , in true American cultural style , to put her ideas behind a paywall, https://erinmeyer.com/ unlike Gapminder https://www.gapminder.org/ who's data is free for all to use thanks to the work of the late Dr Hans Rosling and Google who acquired it.
So what are these ideas? Well here we go for Hofstede:
So when I moved from a British culture to a French one twenty years ago, the French culture seemed mysterious even though we are neighbors; The expectations and way of behaving were completely different, from greetings (handshakes every day in France or even kisses on the cheek V never kiss in UK and handshake when you meet for the first time). Of course , many factors had different significance. Food and drink in France is seen as culturally very important, but in the UK there is a much bigger and wider choice of cusines. This is increasingly true in France, as the culture changes and even adopts dishes from other , often colonised cultures (India Cuisine in the UK or North African Cuisine in France). of course, these cuissines aren't authentic, but 'twists' on the original, slightly less spicy or with ingrediaents added. We can eve see Italians who raise their eyebrows when pineapples are added to Pizzas or cream to Carbonara!
Of course French (or any country's) culture isn't a homogenous affair. We can see huge differences between north ans south, east and west, between regions and even departments or counties or even states. these differences are still visible although disappearing, much as accents or dialect have in the UK as communication and travel endlessesly erode and change cultures.
Cultural erosion , of course in inevitable. All around us are traces of a long forgotten or even suppressed culture, be they Pyramids or standing stones, forgotten windmills or abandoned chateaux, crumbling castles or even totem poles. Some cultures have in deed been actively repressed or even destroyed.
Hofstede also talks about company cultures, and maybe this is the new culture to observe; After all, companies now become as influencial as countitries, a fact very much underlined by Dr. Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings in a new book ' No rules rules: Netflix and the culture of reinvention 'https://erinmeyer.com/books/no-rules-rules/ even though I disagree about the company paying top of the market ( they certainly don't for the translation and subtitle services from personal experience) and wonder if this isn't the equivalent of Handel asking a king to pay for his music and become a patron. Maybe research needs a patron but perhaps it should look for other ways to fund itself or risk being a tool for powerful corporations to use as advertising, or propaganda. I don't think the ideas are either new or untested, having seen very similar ideas used in Scandinavian companies https://www.sol.fi/en/the-company/about-us/ ( and even Mexican ones in the 1980's!). Perhaps what is untried and untested is trying it in a multicultural company such as Netflix.
And of Course, Dr Meyer isn't all bad; her book 'The Culture map' is an excellent guide, packed with relevant and current examples. despite all I've said about culture seeming to be this shape shifting unmeasurable idea, we certainly do get a taste of other cultures when we travel or meet people from other cultures. It just needs an open mind, and a humble attitude, and even some foresight to research the culture you will meet or visit before you get there.
So what Dr Meyer say? Erin Meyer definitely makes her cultural analytical tool easy to use and informative, a user friendly way to see for ourselves how culture is really very different and interesting and how it can explain ( as Raymond Cohen explains in his book 'Negotiating across culture' ) the huge errors in diplomatic, financial and industrial negotiations due to cultural misunderstandings. And of course, paywalls are the very thing put in place to ensure that the producer of all the work can continue to research. However I will ask questions about thought independence when big companies hoodwink researchers
Well she postulated 8 factors and they are very well explained here:
https://hbr.org/2014/05/navigating-the-cultural-minefield
And if I look at the 8th factor I can say immediately that in the region I live in its acceptable to arrive 15 minutes late, but in the culture i was brought up in, in the UK you have to arrive 15 minutes early to meetings and appointments, a cultural difference which you do need to bear in mind.
Certainly, as people travel more or simply are exposed to other countries through the different methods of communication out there, (TV, Film, Internet to name but 3) cultural awareness becomes an important skill. We certainly need to move away from the stereotype mindset that ' all people from X country behave in Y way' as we often end up drawing mental pictures or jumping to conclusions that could even be racist or sexist in our race to put people into a category.
If I ask a British person to draw a typical French person or German person, or ask them to draw a typical British person, the chances are that we'll draw a whole bunch of characteristics that no longer exist , the French man will wear a striped jumper, have a beret, smoke a cigarette, have a baguette and cheese and a glass of red wine and have onions round his neck and a typical British man will have a bowler hat, newspaper, umbrella and wear a smart city suit! And the German? Well, a man will wear leather shorts with braces, and a hat with a feather! The only thing they have in common is they all seem to have a mustache!
Well, we seem to have wandered into the stereotype zone but we all know deep down these childhood images have a tiny grain of truth, I've NEVER seen a French man look like that, nor a British nor a German. The stereotypes pander to our expectations. When I recently met an American colleague he was very happy to tell me ' We don't all chew gum and own guns" and also reminded me not to judge people on their politicians or the stereotypes we have.
Tim Marshal explores all these ideas in a series of books, "Prisoners of Geography", "Worth dying For ?" where he looks at how our boundaries and symbols catch us in their fabric. http://thewhatandthewhy.com/
Culture is the center of things, not the extremes.
Perhaps its a good thing that (or if) companies move towards a more human way of doing things. But I look at the internal and external cultures of a company like Google, who won't contribute to society through fair taxation yet promote an image of a cool place to work. GAFAM companies have escaped taxes and still complain that any demands for payment are discriminatory or retroactive. Indeed Netflix got away with not paying income tax in 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/feb/10/netflix-income-tax-2018-didnt-pay according to this article and a researcher should remain independent enough to judge IF the picture they paint is linked to the reality rather than the dogma. When did it become culturally acceptable to avoid taxes? And should we hold up company culture as excellence if it seems to be ethically or morally deficient? Don't companies have a role to play both for the individuals who work in them, in ensuring they have a fulfilling role , and for the societies they belong to, in ensuring the continuance of education, health, and infrastructure which the companies all benefit from? Companies seem to look always at keeping costs down and profits up, in a race to the bottom, where only the owners really get rich. Then we see these people engage in vanity schemes or rich-washing schemes ( Elon Musk and Mars, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation) which may bring great advances but if they had paid their taxes in the first place they really, arguably wouldn't be needed.
In France there is a quota for TV and radio that states how much of what is broadcast should be French, a rather parochial way of protecting its culture, or a way to ensure diversity . Netflix, rather predictably , tried to argue with unions and government to avoid the quoto, arguing that they would suffer, but Covid has ensured its membership has skyrocketed https://www.cartoonbrew.com/law/netflix-and-unions-clash-over-new-production-quota-in-france-196996.html.
Jacques Alleti http://www.attali.com/en/ thinks that music is a precursor to social movements and wrote a book about this. Indeed, Stars like the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger live in perpetual movement as it is cheaper to move than to pay taxation. We have seen Music move from being an object based economy to a data based one ( Spotify, Deezer ) and now we see artists such as Pascal Opisbo launch their own application ( Obispo : All access ) to have greater control over their music, or more freedom, depending on your viewpoint. Will we see culture move this direction ? we already are, as visits to museums , sports , theaters and cinema all drop due to Covid 19. perhaps the rush to avoid taxation has always been around and was just magnified by greeed and economic dogma. Certainly the post war acceptance of a welfare sate within Europe is now being challenged, and has been since the 1980's
At the end of dogma comes paradigm. Don't we need culture more than we need shopping, Isn't it just a dangerous to be in a religious building as in a cultural one? (In France you could go to mass but not to the cinema or theater). Isn't culture the thing, the very thing that makes our lives worth living?
We should be trying to understand culture, rather than judging it or measuring it. We need to have the facts and figures of a society to measure social progress and look for the opportunities to improve. There is no such constraint on culture. We need to observe cultures, and record them, as they change so rapidly. This is how people are, or how they were. Once deep rooted practice gets swept away in generational changes. Religious practices, diets, songs, clothes, political dogmas, the way society operates can and do all change. As people in a culture we need to ask " What do we do about it" rather than " How can we stop or change it?" certain in the knowledge that one day , archaeologists will be digging up our culture and wondering why we did the things we did.