In this paper I will answer one question, what is my cultural identity? This includes a lot of different feathers such as family, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and more. I believe that everything I have done, seen, said, and been through in my life has helped to shape my personality into the individual I am today.
“Cultural identity is considered a special case of social identity pertaining to the ideals and values of the cultural in-group with which the person identifies (Ferguson et al., 2016, Schwartz, Montgomery, & Briones, 2006, p. 10)”. According to Ferguson et al., (2016) we can explain human limitations with “genetic determinism”, “psychic determinism”, and “environmental determinism”. According to the same …show more content…
I identify myself as a white, Persian-American, spiritual, healthy, and heterosexual woman. In Persian culture, the majority of people left Iran for the United States following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. My family stayed. In my own country I lived a very comfortable life. My family belonged to a higher socioeconomic group and I never experienced any difficulty or distress while I was living with my parents. However, having had to leave my country which considers a third world country, and moving on into a first world country changed a lot of things for and in me.
Gratefully, I sill did not have to worry about work and was being able to focused on school, education, and acculturation. However, slowly I had to learn how to budget and how to manage my life. There were a lot of sanctions against Iran, and sending money through bank from there to any first world country banks was impossible. All of a sudden I had to face the reality of life. I knew that my socioeconomic status was changing due to immigration. On top of that, having exposed to a completely new culture I had to learn how to adjust myself, therefore I experienced stress during acculturation. Lee et al. (2013) mentioned that acculturative stress is a main result of exposing to the mainstream culture. In the other hand, the same study suggested that an individual will experience more distress if is not acculturated enough …show more content…
Persian/ Iranian culture is neither collectivist nor individualist. Hence, Iran is somewhere in between both collectivist and individualistic culture. In the other hand, we are somewhere in between western and eastern culture. Iranians teaches their children to be hard worker, independent, and responsible. They also teach them to be unique, sympathetic, and expressive. According to Khajehpour et al. (2013) Iranians are very proud of their culture, history, and people. According to the same study, Iranian parents have the least value for religious faith and they do not teach it to their children. However, this study shows that religion is more important among Iranian women than men. “Religion is losing its significance in the Iranian society and we need to understand what problems this could create in the long term (Khajehpour, Namazie, & Honari, 2013, p.
“Cultural identity is considered a special case of social identity pertaining to the ideals and values of the cultural in-group with which the person identifies (Ferguson et al., 2016, Schwartz, Montgomery, & Briones, 2006, p. 10)”. According to Ferguson et al., (2016) we can explain human limitations with “genetic determinism”, “psychic determinism”, and “environmental determinism”. According to the same …show more content…
I identify myself as a white, Persian-American, spiritual, healthy, and heterosexual woman. In Persian culture, the majority of people left Iran for the United States following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. My family stayed. In my own country I lived a very comfortable life. My family belonged to a higher socioeconomic group and I never experienced any difficulty or distress while I was living with my parents. However, having had to leave my country which considers a third world country, and moving on into a first world country changed a lot of things for and in me.
Gratefully, I sill did not have to worry about work and was being able to focused on school, education, and acculturation. However, slowly I had to learn how to budget and how to manage my life. There were a lot of sanctions against Iran, and sending money through bank from there to any first world country banks was impossible. All of a sudden I had to face the reality of life. I knew that my socioeconomic status was changing due to immigration. On top of that, having exposed to a completely new culture I had to learn how to adjust myself, therefore I experienced stress during acculturation. Lee et al. (2013) mentioned that acculturative stress is a main result of exposing to the mainstream culture. In the other hand, the same study suggested that an individual will experience more distress if is not acculturated enough …show more content…
Persian/ Iranian culture is neither collectivist nor individualist. Hence, Iran is somewhere in between both collectivist and individualistic culture. In the other hand, we are somewhere in between western and eastern culture. Iranians teaches their children to be hard worker, independent, and responsible. They also teach them to be unique, sympathetic, and expressive. According to Khajehpour et al. (2013) Iranians are very proud of their culture, history, and people. According to the same study, Iranian parents have the least value for religious faith and they do not teach it to their children. However, this study shows that religion is more important among Iranian women than men. “Religion is losing its significance in the Iranian society and we need to understand what problems this could create in the long term (Khajehpour, Namazie, & Honari, 2013, p.