Tracing Deep Culture with a Cultural Look: Ubuntu

I credit this photo to JP Hallet–please let me know if you know differently.

This picture has floated around the internet for many years now. I use it to get people to think about deep culture–those values in the roots of the tree or deep in the iceberg under the ocean. We see this behavior of kids running together–but what would we name as the general value it comes from?

This culture’s understanding of competition?

   friendship?

  community?

sharing?

cooperation?

Every culture has these values or ways of being in these beliefs, but they can differ widely from each other. Some cultures may feel that fair competition is the “right” way like this anthropologist thought in this situation. Some cultures may feel that the cooperation demonstrated by the kids is the “right” way. We need to get to naming these values that show up in situations and what feels “right” to people. When they don’t feel “right,” the situation is ripe for cultural misunderstandings. 

How do cultural values influence our ways of knowing what’s “right” and “not right”? I’ll be talking about that next.