Nationality-Culture Myth

Before the age of rapid transportation and instant communication in which we now live, it was common to think of human cultures as being contained within nation-states. Terms such as French culture, German culture, or Mexican culture were facile currency to identify the set of values, beliefs, and predispositions to action that were presumably unique to persons from a particular country. In this view, nationality and cultural identity were closely related. Every country—or most countries—could be expected to have a culture that differed in some palpable way from that of other countries. This entry explores the effects of the nationality-culture myth.

As international travel became more common, the presumed idiosyncrasies of “foreign” cultures seemed to diminish and the importance of commonalities among cultures was recognized. Notions of nationhood began to be regarded as something distinct from culture. Social scientists who study culture and society have pointed out that the differences within national cultures are often more important than differences among them. China, India, the United States, and most of Europe are good illustrations of this phenomenon, often referred to as cultural diversity or multiculturalism. All these nations are characterized by great internal diversity in their respective populations. In these examples, no single culture embraces all of the subgroups that make up the country.

Although national cultures may have been characterized by dominant patterns that served as markers of national identity, the rise of rapid communications, fast transport, and large-scale immigration around the world have softened many of the differences that once existed among nation-states and their cultures. Modern Americans have, collectively, become more worldly, hence more comfortable with cultures other than their own. Every summer, travelers everywhere encounter young Americans backpacking through every corner of the world. Although collective U.S. embracing of diversity is certainly debatable, some evidence indicates that portions of U.S. society have become more accepting of cultural differences between themselves and people of different countries, which has not always been true. Anthropology, the academic discipline that deals with human cultures, is a relatively new science. Anthropologists first focused attention and analyses on cultures that were removed from their own. Margaret Mead's famous study of Samoan youth culture was reported at a time when few tourists went there, and many Americans did not even know where Samoa could be found on a map of the world.

Many feel that cultures are beginning to blend into new aggregations. The phenomenon of globalization has had an important effect on cultural differences. Whether these effects have been as significant as those that globalization has brought to economics can be debated, but they can hardly be denied. It is now common to believe that although cultures may still be somewhat different one from another, regional cultures—and regional economies—are becoming more important. Some observers believe that national cultures have begun to yield in importance to regional cultures. These have labels that denote aggregations or clusters of related cultures rather than the view that each nation harbors one culture. Some examples include “Islamic Culture,” “Western Culture,” or “Asian Culture.” Interestingly, these broader configurations tend to follow the general boundaries of regional economies or economic spheres of influence—for example, the Pacific Basin, the Latin American economic sphere, the “OPEC Sphere,” or the European Union.

...