According to Michael Payne, culture can be defined as everything which is produced by humans, whereas nature applies to everything without human interaction.
The Nature – Culture Paradigm is a useful way to distinguish between culture and nature.
In his work Notes towards the Definition of Culture, T.S. Eliot defines culture as “all characteristic activities of a people”, nevertheless, his concept is not totally egalitarian
“I would then define the theory of culture as the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life” ( The Analysis of Culture) is the egalitarian definition of culture by Raymond Williams.
According to Williams, the lived culture is only fully accessible to those living in that particular time and place.
The three levels of culture are lived culture, recorded culture and culture of the traditional selection.
The four categories of culture (ideal, collective, documentary, social) deal with the content of culture and the structure of feeling.
Williams and Arnold have very different definitions of culture although they were contemporaries.
Matthew Arnold defines the culture as the best which has been thought and said in the world and has therefore an elitist understanding of culture.
The egalitarian understanding of culture includes the culture of an elite but is not limited to that.
Hofstede’s Anthropological Model of Culture makes it possible to discover values of a collective with the help of symbols, heroes, rituals and festivities.
The cultural dimension “Masculinity vs. Femininity” (MAS) refers both to the values of a society as well as the number of men and women living in that society.
The Power Distance Index is the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept an unequal distribution of power.
According to Hall’s theory of Cultural Factors, in low context cultures the communicative context is of minor importance which is common for collectivistic societies.
Although theories of communication originated in linguistics, they are used across many disciplines.
The Model of Communication shows that a message is more than just spoken word: e.g. with a message, the addresser always wants to trigger a certain reaction from the addressee.
There are verbal, visual, haptic and oligopolistic forms of communication.
Lüsebrink’s theory of intercultural competence includes behavioural, communicative and cognitive competences as well as as an affective and a visual dimension.
There are four basic collective standards, i.e. behaving, thinking, feeling, communicating.
The word “stereotype” is of Greek origin and means “simplified impression”.
Stereotypes can be devided into images of the self (autostereotype) and of the other (heterostereotypes).
The term “prejudice” is related to the concept of the stereotype, but describes the affective component (knowing rather than feeling) of stereotyping.
Prejudices have certain functions: establishing orientation, group formation, legitimatisation of power, creating a sense of identity.
Ian Fleming created the character of James Bond, a classy, powerful hero who should serve as a role-model for upper-class men after the brutality of World War II.
John Bull is a popular British heterostereotype. He is depicted as a stout, middle-aged, jolly man and is part of the working class.
Uncle Sam is the national allegory of the USA and an autostereotype with high potential for identification
Mentalities are cognitive standards which are collectively shared by the members of a culture and establish a reservoir of socially shared knowledge.
If ideologies turn out to be useful, they can become part of the collective memory.
Mentalities are dynamic and change over time whereas ideologies are rigid and followers defend them against change.
Ideologies are self-evident certainties that are acquired unconsciously.
The people who founded the first permanent British settlement in America are called the Pilgrim Fathers.
Even before they set foot on American soil, the Puritans signed the Mayflower Compact, which established a rudimentary form of democracy.
The Boston Tea Party (1773) was a political protest organized by the Sons of Liberty, who up dressed as Indians and stormed three ships in Boston Harbor.
The American Revolution did not emerge out of a feeling of national identity and unity.
When fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1776, Virginia militia men faced well-trained British soldiers.
The Declaration of Independence was mainly written by Thomas Jefferson and influenced by European political philosophy.
Life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness are enshrined as unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence.
The preamble of the Declaration of Independence states the people’s right to throw off all government that is detrimental to certain unalienable rights.
The Articles of Confederation (1777/1781) served as a first constitutional document during war time and were replaced by a new constitution in 1789.
The Federalist Papers are a series of essays by Madison, Hamilton and Jay, who argued for the advantages of the new constitution.
The amendments to the U.S. Constitution are called the Bill of Rights.
With the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, the U.S. nearly doubled its size.
The American Civil War (1880-1865) was not only caused by the issue of slavery but had economic and poltical reasons as well.
The attack on Fort Sumter (1860) marks the official outbreak of the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln is an embodiment of the American Self-Made Man since he received less than two years of formal education, yet became lawyer, senator and president of the United States.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the freedom of all slaves in America (Emancipation Proclamation).
With more than 40,000 casualities, the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) was the worst battle of the Civil War.
in 1865, the Confederate States had to surrender to the North.
Jefferson Davis, president of the CSA since 1861, was charged with treason in 1865 and not considered a U.S. citizen until 1978.
It took decades for the South to cope with the trauma of the Civil War, which became a major topic in the literature of the South during the Southern Renaissance (late 19 th century)
The Indian frontier provided white settlerswith a common enemy and served as a consolidating agent in American history.
“Manifest Destiny”, a term coined by James O’Sullivan, refers to America’s God–given mission and was used to justify the annexation of Texas in the 19th century.
Anti-social tendencies at the frontier fostered individualism and democracy in America.
The text of the U.S. national anthem, “The Star-Sprangled Banner”, is taken from a poem that was written during the Second War of Independence (1812–1814/15).
During the 19th century, American foreign policy was generally characterized by isolationism, even despite the war against Mexico and on the Philippines.
After the end of the Frontier in 1893, Americans had other challenges to face.
Kennedy’s New Frontier can be understood both geographically (expanding American influence around the world) as well as metaphorically (dealing with major challenges for the U.S. during the 1960s).
Even though the concept had been around for a long time, the term American Dream was coined only in the 20th century by James Truslow Adams.
The American Dream is constantly adapted to the zeitgeist and focuses not exclusively on the rags-to-riches idea.
The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s aimed for political and economic self-sufficency to African-Americans.
All members of the House of Representatives and roughly a third of the members of the U.S. Senate are elected every two years.
The midterm elections can be seen as a referendum on the current president and are often used to “punish” the party of the current president.
In the 2018 midterms, Democrats were able to flip the Senate, but lost seats in the House of Representatives, which is overall, still a victory for Trump.
In 2018, the Republican Party lost votes in key groups for future elections while the Democratic Party was actually quite successful with its diverse field of candidates, among them the first openly gay candidate to be elected governor.
A record number of women will be serving in the new Congress, among them the first Native American and the first Muslim women to be elected to Congress.
The migration of Angles, Saxons and Jutes (400-800) resulted in the development of big kingdoms and urban structures in Britain.
The Magna Charta Liberatum, a document of feudal resistance signed by King John in 1215, served as a basis for a paliamentary system and was the central constitutional document until the Bill of Rights was introduced (1689).
The abbreviation UK is a political term and short for “United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland”
In the Magna Charta, basic principles of today’s political organisation of the Anglo-American world were established (power of the law, rule of purpose, House of Lords).
After King Charles I was beheaded, Oliver Cromwell named himself Lord Protector and installed a republic. The period of the Interregnum is the only time when England was a republic.
The Restoration of the Stuarts marks the year of Queen Elizabeth I’s death (1603) in which King Charles I succeeded to the throne (Union of the Crowns).
Stuart reign in England lastet until the 19th century.
The Bloodless Revolution of 1688 refers to the Dutch invasion by William of Orange and his wife Mary who installed themselves in place of the deposed King James II, Mary’s popular father.
The Bill of Rights (1689) has the same content as the first ten amendments of the American Constitution.
Devolution is the antonym to federalism and describes the process of transferring power from a central government to local authorities.
In the development of the Union Jack, which combines the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish flags, the envolvement of the sovereign state UK becomes clear.
Although Scotland and England were formally united in 1707 (Union of Parliament), the Scots maintained their autonomy in some areas, as religion and public education.
With the Act of Union with Wales the English legal system was extended to Wales and Welsh identity and culture remained unchanged.
Home Rule is a synonym for devolution and is especially used when referring to the Scottish devolution.
The Act of Union with Ireland in 1801 replaced the personal (regal) union that had already been established between Ireland and Great Britain by Henry VIII.
Although their parliament had not been dissolved after the Act of Union, the Irish were still dissatisfied with the suppression of Catholics and governmental neglect.
The 1916 Easter Rising was organized by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a small group aiming to put an end to British rule and to establish an Irish republic.
The Easter Rising of 1916 came as a surprise for the Irish population and the British troops, but quickly gained support within the Irish society.
The First Empire had a protectionist economic policy. This means there
were low tariffs for goods coming in from outside of the Empire.
As the longest reigning monarch in British history, Queen Victoria drove forward the imperial expansion of the UK in the 19th century.
The construction of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibtion in 1851 is symbolic of the industrial, cultural and scientific change in the UK in the Victorian period.
The denomination Jewel in the Crown emerged in the 18th century as Britain profited from India’s natural resources (jewels, spices, textiles) and manpower.
After the First World War the British Empire was at its peak and stretched over one third of the world’s surface.
British dominions such as Canada or South Africa only became fully autonomous communities within the British Empire with the Balfour Formula which was officially confirmed by the Statue of Westminster in 1931.
The British Realm refers to all countries which currently form part of the Commonwealth of Nations. The member states consult and cooperate in common interests but do not acknowledge the British monarch as head of state.
Imperialism is an aggressive foreign policy which focuses on the expansion of an empire by means of gaining foreign territory or acquiring and holding colonies.
The burdensome obligation of colonizers to rule and civilize the non-white population is well-founded on the belief of British superiority to others (Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”)
The Little Englanders opposed to further expansion of the British Empire at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Jingoist supporter Cecil Rhodes was driven by the strong belief in the superiority of the British race as he successfully oversaw the formation of Rhodesia and built up Cape-to-Cairo Railway.
In a speech in 1897 Chamberlain attempts to justify Britain’s striving for imperialism at the end of the 19th century and divides the British Empire into three phases.
In Chamberlain’s third stage the “true conception of the Empire” represents the feeling of a British national mission and the obligation to civilise.
The British voted to leave the European Union with a large majority in a referendum on 23rd June 2016.
After the Brexit referendum in 2016 David Cameron resigned as prime minister and was replaced by former secretary of state, Theresa May.
The snap elections in June 2017, in which May failed to achieve a majority and left Britain with a “hung parliament”, were legitimated by a motion for a general election by the House of Lords.
In winter 2018 the ongoing Brexit negotiations left Britain’s politicians and population in dissent about the deal negotiated by May. As a result, May was voted out of office in a motion of no confidence.
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