So I thought this post was timely. Given my position in life, being a citizen of the "north atlantic quadrant" (as my Welsh-Canadian professor puts it), and also an Anthropologist, I've often been asked by people on both sides of the water what are the differences between Irish and American culture.
It used to be easy, back in the day to describe long lists of superficial differences when you could have said things like "Americans like Starbucks", or talk about Irish music being a uniquely Irish thing. Times have changed and globalization has hit us strong. Just looking at the surface you might be lead to think what I hear tourists say, they're just the same but we talk different. But if you are someone who has lived a year or so in both Ireland and America, you will definitely notice that there are huge differences in culture, the problem however is putting your finger on them.
Now of course, culture isn't some firmly bound set of values, beliefs and practices that are shared by all people, it is rather something that we all interact in and contribute to, and is better thought of as very general trends which can be helpful for tyring to understand cross-cultural communication.
So anyway, how do I answer that question, I usually say it's complicated and tell people to trust me that they're different. Of course I can talk about "world view" in terms of understanding of the world as a super power is different than understanding the world as a minor yet vocal player; or how Ireland's catholic roots and current relationship with the church has some interesting consequences as does America's multi-culturalism and supposed separation of Church and state.
The reason for this post though isn't to put out my musings, I want to hear if any of you have any thoughts that you'd like to share on the matter.
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2 comments:
Well, I don't know anything about the differences between the general American and general Irish cultures. But I have been more interested in the idea of seperation of church and state A LOT lately. I want to know what makes you say "supposed" in reference to this (huge) topic.
On the edge of my seat,
Your Aunt Krissy's friend
I don't mean too much by it except for the fact that for a country which likes to mention that separation so frequently there sure seems to be a lot of religious and specifically Christian influence in the state (i.e. opening Congress with prayer, having "in God we trust" on the money, One nation "under God" in the pledge of Allegiance, and then the huge influence that the Conservative Christian Right has on politics -and especially on this current President-) I'm not saying that these things are necessarily bad, but coming from a country where those things are very uncommon, it doesn't seem like as huge of separation to me for as much as it's talked about.
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