How Phenomenology Influences People’S Views
Phenomenology sets to explain how enculturation occurs. It explains enculturation by stating that everyone is born in a common-sense world and that everyone as knowledge at hand. Being born in a common-sense world meaning that you take world you are born in for granted; knowledge at hand is that the world you are born in is pre-selected for you. These views help explain how culture influences people's ideas on gender, race, and ethnicities. Culture changes people's perspective of gender roles and identities by showcasing what's acceptable. What's deemed acceptable gets encouraged and promoted, while the unacceptable stay hidden.
The people that do the unacceptable are ostracized from the community because being different is feared. Each culture has a way that males and females are supposed to act. Some cultures are extreme and separate men and women. In many Middle Eastern places, men and women have their own spaces. Women a lot of times are strongly discouraged to walk through these male spaces for a fear of what might happen to them. In other cultures, men are the breadwinners and are supposed to act "manly. " They are discouraged from acting feminine in any way by a young age; on the other hand, women are supposed to be the exact opposite of what a man is. However, these differences are created by how people observe each other because culture isn't taught but learned. If people are born in a culture where these stereotypes occur, then those stereotypes have become those peoples "common-sense world. " It feels normal to them. For example, in indigenous North American societies being gender fluid was accepted. They were called "two-spirit" people and were able to change their clothes and activities to fit their preferred gender. Since they are being accepted by others in the communities, children and other people in that society don't ask questions about it.
Another example is my little nephew. He likes wearing dresses. Something that is not socially acceptable for boys to do. My sister, his mom, actively encourages this behavior and in turn, he continues to wear dresses. As he grows up, he will view that as normal. This is a good example of how is consociates (ingroup), his mom, in this case, is influencing his views. Race is not biologically real because race is defining people for their physical characteristics. Which everyone knows your phenotype is influenced by your genotype. However, race is real within societies because it's an idea that people a long time ago implemented in society. It's this idea of ethnocentrism, the act of judging another culture based are preconceptions, that makes it so easy for people to view themselves as superior to others. For example, when Europeans traveled to the Americas and saw people that looked and acted completely different; they assumed that those people were not humans. Therefore, making it easier for the Europeans to kill them.
The Europeans failed to realize that the native people's culture emphasized other values. Humans have a need to classify each other, because, as I said earlier, being different from everyone is fearful to the rest. America has a huge problem with race because it's a very diverse country. People naturally judge others based on their physical appearance: their race. It makes finding your "group" harder, therefore, making it harder for people to feel socially accepted. Ethnicity is different from race because it refers to people's cultural factors like their nationality, ancestry, etc. However, they go hand-to-hand because if someone looks like a particular race, then people assumed them to be a part of a particular ethnic group. Ethnicity is ever changing because the process of ethnogenesis creates new ethnic groups, and the process of assimilation gets rid of ethnic groups. When people immigrate to new areas, their ethnicity, their culture, causes issues. This is because of ethnocentrism. Everyone feels like his or her ethnicities are superior to other ethnicities. If you are born in a particular culture, then that culture exposes you to their norm.
So, when you immigrate it's harder for you to adopt other culture's norms or a new common-sense world. Changing your knowledge at hand is hard as well because your consociates are from a different culture than the one you're currently living in. Overall, it makes it challenging to fit in. Culture influences everyone in different ways because at the end of the day everyone sees the world differently. However, culture can always change, as long as, people are willing to change it. Phenomenology is a way to explain enculturation, not a formula for it.
