CULTURE

Cultural Intelligence



Cultural Intelligence

Assignment 1: Cultural Blue Print/Mind Map

Assignment 2: Critical Reflection

Introduction

Chatman (2000) found that cultural and social norms do affect ways in which people choose to respond, are passive, or ignore information. Hjørland (2000) addressed an information seeking behaviour theory should define the essential characteristics in human information seeking, including a description of its cultural and social determinants. It is generally agreed that information seeking and use are not processed objectively but rather interpreted through expectations about life experience.

Culture shapes the meaning of people's information behaviour and rules determine who is to be considered an information agent. The way we handle, exchange and use information is determined to a large extent by the culture of our environment. Through living and working, people discover, shape, or create information during the process of interacting with the environment or other people. The interaction specifies or shapes what the information is, what makes sense and what information is sought out or neglected.

The thesis statement for this paper is Culture has been addressed as an influential factor of human information behaviour.

Body

The role of culture or its influence on human information behaviour is not stated explicitly. How should the relationship between culture and information behaviour be considered? Culture is usually seen as a situation which triggers people's information need. This paper argues that we not only can view culture as a situation but also as a big, boundless and invisible feeling of community, in which people's information behaviour is embedded. Culture as a situation not only stimulates people's information need, but also influences people's way of seeking and using information. Also, people filter information through the various components of culture.

Berger and Luckmann (1966) discussed the social construction process of reality and pointed out that a society is both a subjective and objective reality and can be understood through reviewing the sustained procedure of the internalizing and externalizing that people go through after they are born. In this way, people form their subjective views and establish an inter-subjective world, which becomes a foundation of knowledge in everyday life.

Since the society exists before the birth of each individual, the social norms and tradition normalize people's behaviour imperceptibly and form a society called a symbolic universe. The symbolic universe gives people a direction and lets individuals judge whether or not their behaviour is legal. The symbolic universe is a reference to people's actions and provides the chance for people to share with others the collective memories. Each individual accepts and follows the standards of the symbolic universes and identities himself as belonging to one symbolic universe. This is the externalization process (Berger and Luckmann 1966).

Concerning the internalization process of personal knowledge, the authors describe the process of each person's entering into school and having contact with others. It is the process of socialization: people learn from the environment and those whom they encounter, especially the significant others and establish their personal stock of knowledge. People continue correcting and re-establishing the meanings during the process (Berger and Luckmann ...