How culture influences the phenomena of focus
By: Multiple Authors (see the references)
The cultural
framework for health
What culture is?
Culture consists of dynamic and ecologically based
inter-related elements that function together as a living, adapting system.
To delineate culture begins with a perspective
that contextualizes population groups within a multi-level, multi-dimensional, bio-psycho-social, ecological framework and explicitly recognizes and incorporates the geographic, historical, social, and political realities of diverse communities.
All of these elements constitute
the cultural framework its members use to “see”
the world and attribute meaning to their daily
lives.
What culture does?
Culture is a human schema that assures its members’
survival and well-being. Cultural tools and
processes enable humans to interpret the world
in which we live through social norms of
beliefs, attitudes, spiritual and emotional
explanations, and practices (e.g., Eliade, 1961,
1971).
Group members then have a
collective way to make sense of their world and
to find meaning in and for life by providing a
sense of safety and well-being, criteria for a
sense of integrity of living one’s life well, and structure in which to develop a sense of being a contributing member of one’s social network (Kagawa Singer et al, 2012; see also, Elwood, 1999; Foucault, 1961, 1970).
Through the social stratification process, culture
differentially affects life opportunities at the
group and individual levels of health decision-making
ability. Every cultural group develops and
maintains a social structure that defines and
coordinates the numerous roles and relationships
of its members. The rules of social interaction
and the complex of power relations among the
different groups that constitute the mosaic of
multi-cultural populations, however, constitute
an added dimension of complexity to the context
of the lives of cultural and subcultural group
members.
Notably, researchers “must develop knowledge
of how their (own) decisions about partners and
programs may affect existing racial or class
divisions and hierarchies of power in a community”
(Trickett et al., 2011). If researchers design interventions for target populations without understanding their existing power structures, the researchers may create an intervention curriculum that promotes behaviors that participants unlikely will accept or sustain.
In the extreme, this lack of
preparation even can have unintended negative
consequences (e.g., Elwood et al., 1997; Elwood
& Greene, 2003, 2005; Elwood, Greene, &
Carter, 2003; Elwood & Vega, 2005). For
example, both researchers and laypeople believed
“strawberries” and “skeezers” only were
African-American women who traded sex for
drugs; two studies went beyond these stereotypes to determine that trading sex for drugs is an economic behavior that occurs among people of any race/ethnicity who endure conditions of poverty and homelessness (Elwood et al., 1997). Moreover, like all human beings, skeezers maintain a social hierarchy among themselves, even though all of them engage in a stigmatized behavior, trading sex for drugs (Elwood & Greene, 2003).
Simply put, researchers must recognize that
even we are socialized into a cultural perspective
that reflects Western cultural values and
practices and are positioned within a specific
distribution of power in the communities we work
with and within (Kagawa-Singer, Dadia, Yu, &
Surbone, 2010).
This cultural perspective brings
the biases inherent in the dominant Western scientific cultural model into the foreground to recognize and understand as one way to view
reality—and that research participant groups may
have their own, equally valid views (Elwood,
1994; Hartigan, 2010; Page, 2005).
As culture and cultural processes encompass all
human behavior, the inherent complexity
involved in the application of this concept and construct requires ongoing dialogue to advance the integration of culture into the science of health.
involved in the application of this concept and construct requires ongoing dialogue to advance the integration of culture into the science of health.
References:
Marjorie Kagawa-Singer, William W. Dressler, Sheba M.
George, William N. Elwood, with the assistance of a specially appointed expert panel,
2014, national institute of health NIH.
Read Also:
Evolving effort to include a more comprehensive use of culture
Cross-Cultural Dissonance
Cultural Psychiatry
Culture, Ethnicity, and Race
Cross-Cultural Dissonance
Cultural Psychiatry
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