Assignment Takeaway 5
For the final assignment, I reviewed a Journal article from the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. This article was entitled “The Development of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in China” and talked about the ways psychotherapy has developed in regions in China over the past couple of decades. This journal allowed me to apply information we learned in the Health and Culture section module to real world issues. The main issues discussed in the journal was how for decades China had a revulsion towards westernized psychotherapy methods and how it wasn’t until after the Cultural Revolution in 1976 that psychoanalytic approaches truly begin to be utilized in the area. There are dedicated Chinese academics who are making a concerted effort to bring these approaches into the region and try to de-stigmatize mental illness in China. This journal helped me to connect some ideas that I learned from other classes- such as my Human Services Diversity Issues class- to what I learned here. De-stigmatizing mental health issues in all cultures is something that I am really passionate about. I believe that the poor portrayal of mental illness in media and the certain cultural beliefs about mental illness is the root cause of people not reaching out for help when they need it.
Assignment Takeaway 4
For this assignment I looked at 9 print ads, 5 from the U.S. and 4 from Asian countries, and inspected the way the ads utilized gender roles, or contributed to cultural gender dynamics. Most of us who live in the modern world are inundated with advertisements almost constantly. Ads can be seen during the TV shows we watch, the radio shows we listen to, the magazines we read, the billboards we pass, the websites we visit, etc. And these ads can subtly emphasize the cultural roles that society places on gender. It can be as simple as a clothing ad aimed at children labeling the elementary aged school girl as a “social butterly” and the boy as a “little Einstein” that can underline societal expectations on how children should act in school. The idea that girls use school to socialize, while boys use school to learn, can be harmful and make girls feel embarrassed to try and excel at school related things. Or it could be something like the way the ads I saw from Asian countries showed women and men of similar stature, women were tiny and slim and the men were tall and slim. There were very few variations on the body shapes in ads and this could lead people with different body types, such as a short man or a fuller bodied female, to believe that they are different than what society expects from them. Again, these ads do not exist in a vacuum and they can display and shape the values that cultures extol on different genders.
Assignment Takeaway 3
For the third assignment paper, we were tasked with analyzing the blog of a Temple University student who has studied abroad in a previous semester. We were to analyze the blog based on a theme from the text and focus on how the student captured the cultural theme in their blog. For my assignment I chose a blog by a girl named Richelle who had traveled to Madrid, Spain. There were a few reasons i chose this particular blog, mainly because Richelle was an Liberian immigrant who had moved to the U.S. and became naturalized as a young child, so I thought her cultural perspective of another culture as a American Immigrant would be interesting. I also really have always wanted to visit Madrid, so I figured why not also use Richelle as a proxy. Although Richelle seemed to have a great time, she also wasn’t afraid to open up and talk about hoer homesickness as well as political and social issues that she found perplexing about living in Spain. This is interesting, since I have always dreamed about traveling, but never really thought about how social issues of other countries should be considered before embarking on any time of long term visitation.
Of coarse, wouldn’t put me off wanting to visit Spain The lesson learned from Richelle’s blog is to, as always, do your research. The sanitation that Richelle witnessed of certain cultural heritage of Spaniards was only noticeable to her because she had researched such concepts.
Assignment Takeaway 2
For our second assignment we were tasked with picking a value from the “Values Americans Live By” text, written by L.R. Kohls, and discuss how that value applies to our own lives and American as a whole. We also needed to discuss how someone from a different country would view that value, and America’s relationship to it, from their own lens. For this assignment, I chose the value of “Equality.” This seems something that we as Americans strive for and what to obtain, the idea of equality for everybody. It’s interesting to think of this concept as it pertains to Hofstede’s five value dimensions. He would say that a cultures relationship with power distance, or the degree which which they will encourage members of that culture to accept that power is distributed unequally would define how they view equality. Since equality is something that I would want to work to make better this country, it’s a bit funny to realize that some cultures would see this idea as futile or unobtainable and that people should just be okay with where they are.
