Family Interview
Culture offers a very interesting topic to study and internalize within one self. The availability of an array of countless cultures within our society, offers anyone interested with learning the other cultures a valuable resource for reference as well as for making comparisons and contracting of two or more cultures without any biasness pegged on any of the cultures(Fitzgerald, 2004). I choose to interview my grandmother to get to understand the cultural beliefs and family values since she understood most of the cultural aspects of our family, being the senior most and elderly person within the family circles. To have a deeper understanding of the other culture, I choose to interview a neighbor, Mrs. Sabrina, who has her roots from the Asian country of Sri Lanka and just moved to the neighborhood from her country just a few months before. Her deep understanding of her culture and her people was what informed the decision for me to choose her as one of my interviewee for the purpose of this paper. Her unique view of the various aspect of everyday life was very much astounding as well as the urge she had for learning everything new about my own culture and the way of life of our people made her very resourceful to me. I felt that both my Grandmother and Mrs. Sabrina were the perfect choice for those I would interview.
The main similarities that I found to exist between the two cultures are the belief in a strong family values and ties that unite members of the family together. Each of the two interviewees had a strong opinion about the family unit and their responses showed that as far as the family is concerned, the unity and wellbeing of the family is what matters to them. Another similarity that I found out exists between the two cultures is the way they view work and education on the impact that these two have on the family. The two interviewees agree that education and work plays a significant role in the modern family set up. Furthermore, they were consensus about the value of communication within the family and as a cultural tool of laying down information and instructions within the family set up. However, as much as the two cultures had some similarities, there was a number of contrasting issues that i identified existed between the two cultures. One of the main differences was in the religion and spirituality values within the families. While my culture believed on the existence of a single deity and Supreme Being called God, the other culture believed in the existence of numerous gods, with each of these gods having a certain mandate within their realms. Although the two cultures believed on the afterlife after death, the difference was on how this afterlife was supposed to be. While my family’s cultural belief is that there will be resurrection of the dead and judgment thereafter, Mrs. Sabrina’s belief was that there is a reincarnation of a person immediately after death into some other form of life depending with how the person lived their lives on earth.
Based on the findings of the two interviews that I made, I can conclude that family values play a significant role into how the cultural beliefs are portrayed to the society at large. A close knit family unit always brings out the feeling of love and care towards the individual members of the family and therefore, relations are fostered that are strong and therefore leads to the propagation of the cultures and traditions of the society from generations to generation(Huntington & Harrison, 2000). The two cultural setups are formed by a strong belief in the family that stays close together and share the same beliefs and ethics.
References
Fitzgerald, M. H. (2004). A Dialogue on Occupational Therapy, Culture, and Families.American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 58(5), 489-498. doi:10.5014/ajot.58.5.489
Huntington, S. P., & Harrison, L. E. (2000). Culture matters: How values shape human progress. New York: Basic Books.
