EATING CULTURE

Eating Culture

Eating Culture

Introduction

In today's modern world the significance of cultural and traditional values has gained more importance than ever. Now, the world has become a global village. Therefore, the need to retain and promote culture and tradition has augmented as well. The cultural and traditional values of a society give it an identity of its own. In past, we have observed that societies who haven't protected and extended their culture and tradition have disappeared in time (Sen, 2004).

Culture is the set of all forms, models or patterns, explicit or implicit, through which a society governs the behavior of individuals within it. As such it includes customs, practices, codes, standards and rules of the manner, dress, religion, rituals, and norms of behavior and belief systems. From another point of view we can say that culture is all the information and skills that humans possess. The concept of culture is fundamental to the disciplines that are responsible for the study of society, especially anthropology and sociology.

For example: In Japan, if you are invited for a traditional Japanese dinner then you should bring a gift in order to show your gratitude towards the host.

Culture, as a concept, is one of the most complex ideas in academic use today. It is defined and applied in various and often incompatible ways and is the site of significant disagreement between academic disciplines regarding the fundamental character of human social life and the manner in which it is to be studied. For anthropologists, culture tends to refer to symbolic systems of beliefs, values, and shared understandings that render the world meaningful and intelligible for a particular group of people. While these systems-which provide the basis for such elementary concepts as food and kinship and even, influence how individuals experience time, space, and other aspects of reality-often appear to their adherents as natural and objective, they in fact represent variable, socially agreed-upon models. In turn, humans must themselves construct these models in order to find order and meaning in a world lacking an inherent sense of either (Scapp, 1998).

Real Life Situation

While my visit to India, I observed a lot of differences between the cultures of the Western countries and the Eastern countries. The traditions and the set of beliefs differ completely. The norms that are acceptable in the West are not acceptable in the East. This is the reason; people who migrate from East to West are ...