Evaluate the claim that when talking about British culture, it is better to talk of cultures
British culture. Seen by some to have a deep rooted historical sense of practices and beliefs from within the British Isles, and by others more globally infused and diverse than anywhere on the Earth. When talking of British culture it can evoke chest pumping pride and trigger diatribes full of passionate us and them sentiments, while for others, it is seen as a representation of the full gamut of ethnicity, providing us with a deliciously rich cross section of all that is good, and bad with the human race. This essay will evaluate the claim that when talking about British culture, it is better to talk of cultures.
Culture is often immediatly related to oneselves national identity and something that is attributed to where we live, or where we have come from, indeed, who we think we are. We increasingly use national identities to connect people to places, for example, I am British or I am African. The description gives instant clarity to describing an identity. From this we can see that national identities do indeed place people, albeit not always in ways that people find comfortable.
The way nations view other national identities also involves the inevitable stereotypical description. For instance, we might describe Americans as loud, brash and wealthy, or Australians as beach loving, backpacking lager guzzlers!. So people do assign a particular charachteristic to certain national identities, and those that come from that place maybe treated on the basis of those stereotypes.
The very way that social life is organised leans heavily on the importance of national identities. They are indeed part of the everyday identities in personal and social terms, as in, who am I? who do people think I am? As a process of ordering social life and social practices,...