Polytheistic religions allow people to choose the God or gods and abide by a general set of rules to all believers. Religions without gods help the individuals seek spiritual enlightenment on their own. All religions have a set of practices, rules and rituals for veneration followers need to abide by. There are many religions in the world. People are often born into a certain religion but they can also switch from one set of spiritual beliefs to another or to none at all.
It is possible for a person to live outside any type of religion as an atheist. Culture defines the way in which a large group of people acts. It defines the evolution of the group and its identity in relation to the place they live. Religion defines the spiritual beliefs of the same people and is a part of the local culture. There are more cultures than there are religions in the world; therefore, some cultures will share a religion.
Although the core set of religious beliefs will be the same, practices vary as they are dictated by the local culture. A person can live without a religion, but it is less possible to live outside of a culture as it shapes individuals from the very beginning of their life.
Cultural traits are passed down from parents to children in the simplest of gestures. Even if a person could leave his country and start a new life among people used to different sets of cultural values, that person will eventually have to adopt the cultural values of his hosts. A person who believes in religion is called religionists. Three religions that are followed by most of the people are Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. Some people follow different religions at one time. A culture does not have a universal definition.
It refers to the collective knowledge of the people who live in society. If one fully understands the concept of culture, then they can tell why people in a particular area behave in a certain way that they always do. Culture can answer why the person in a particular society is dressing up that way or speaks up this way, believes, or practices. Whenever it comes to the material aspect of culture, the things will reflect what their culture is in a society.
The things mentioned above are only the physical part of the culture. What matters is the cultural view of the humanity of how people become aware of themselves. It is the knowledge that is not acquired through genetics. It means a person born in the society builds up the familiarity with the happening around him and develops it into the tradition.
It is known as constitutes cultures that include religion as one of its many subsets. As the primary difference between religion and culture is pointed out, we can easily distinguish between them. As culture is considered a bigger picture than religion and religion is only the subset of the culture.
Both religion and culture play an important role in in-person life. These signs are more than a tourist attraction, they are symbols that inform members about who they are as a group and that help the group live together cohesively.
Consider, for example, the individual and international significance of national flags as cultural symbols. The Star-Spangled Banner as the anthem of the United States of America describes the power of a national flag to inspire individual and national devotion. The answer for Key was yes, the flag symbolising defiance and the promise of victory. Equally, persecuted communities within a country might see a national or regional flag as a symbol of oppression rather than freedom, symbolising a dominant way of life that excludes them.
In all regions of the world nationalist groups fight for autonomy or independence from a country or countries that surround them, and do so under alternative flags that represent their own cultural identity. The flag of the Canadian province of Quebec, for example, employs religious and cultural symbols reflecting its origins as a French colony in the new world.
Quebec nationalists campaigning for independence from Canada have employed the flag in the promotion of French language, cultural preservation and Quebecois identity. National separatist groups worldwide are similarly inspired by symbols of culture they are trying to preserve. The third element of culture is the power of story. Like the cultural use of symbols, societies need to tell stories. These may be about individuals and groups, of events in the distant and recent past, of tales of victory and defeat involving enemies and friends — and so on.
Such stories are told to reaffirm, or even recreate, ideas of where that society belongs in relation to the wider world. As such, stories are performances designed to influence what we understand to be real Walter , 72— Sometimes cultural difference can be most starkly understood by the different stories societies tell about themselves. In such places, national holidays can be mourned as commemorating invasion and dispossession.
New Zealand offers somewhat of a contrast, with the story of the nation including the drawing up of the Treaty of Waitangi signed in between the British colonisers and the indigenous Maori tribes.
Such ownership, as an attempt to uphold the sovereignty of the Maori nation s , was central to the preservation of their cultural story. Sadly, this is not the history recounted by Australian indigenous nations or most Native American tribes in the United States and Canada.
Taken together, these depictions of preservation and loss illustrate the importance of language, ritual, place and tradition in the cultural story at the individual and international level. Like living organs, societies experience growth and decline, health and decay, fitness and injury. Extending the analogy, we could say that culture is a way to measure the psychological and emotional health of society.
These descriptors reflect what individuals and international societies believe is a healthy culture. As such, culture involves agreement on the kind of things that are good for society and can make it flourish. One of the leading frontiers of culture clash worldwide involves the campaign for gender equality in areas such as education, employment, reproductive and marital rights. The story of Malala Yousafzai from northwest Pakistan reminds us of the power of one individual to inspire an international response on the vital issue of education for girls.
When Malala was 12, and inspired by her teacher father, she began to speak out for the right to education, something that was becoming increasingly restricted due to the influence of the Taliban in Pakistan.
In , although critically wounded, Malala survived an assassination attempt at the hands of the Taliban and, on her recovery, became a brave advocate for the many millions who were being denied education due to certain cultural perceptions about girls and their place in society. In she was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and dedicated her prize money to the building of a secondary school for girls in Pakistan. We have explored elements of religion and culture and offered various brief examples from an individual, national and international perspective.
While it has been important to consider each concept separately, highlighting the particular ways that religion and culture influence international relations, there are clear interlinkages between them.
Theorists have long drawn such links and these are useful for our consideration here. Consider the similarities between the elements of religion and culture described in this chapter such as the role of symbols and stories in both accounts, and the pursuit of life according to what either faith or culture determine to be the higher standards of living.
Such a view makes sense because no one religion encompasses an entire society in the world today, and no society lives entirely according to one set of sacred rules and practices. On the other hand, in some contexts religious authority and identity can be more significant than any other cultural element. For example, when American soldiers moved into the Iraqi city of Najaf in to negotiate security arrangements, it was not the town mayor or the police chief that had most influence.
Rather, it was the reclusive religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose authority influenced not only the city but much of the fracturing nation itself. Taking another example, when Communist authorities confronted striking dock workers in Poland in the s, it was not only unions that opposed them but also the Catholic Church, whose priests performed sacred rituals and stood in solidarity with strikers in open defiance of the government.
In both these examples, the elements of religion are equally — if not more — prominent than the elements of culture. Perhaps the most useful approach, therefore, is to see the elements of religion and the elements of culture in constant interaction with one another.
We have explored just four elements for each category. What might some other elements be and what are the impacts of these elements on individual and international life? There are some excellent resources to assist us in exploring such questions. One of the most pressing questions related to our study is whether religious and cultural actors and agendas have more of a positive or negative effect on global affairs.
As we have seen above, these elements relate to some of the deepest levels of human experience, both individually and internationally. The study of international relations shows that the answer may be to draw on both strategies, since religio-cultural identity inhabits a space somewhere between the problems of conflict and the possibilities of cooperation.
The influential scholar Martin E. Marty would add that such an approach helps us to deepen our understanding of world politics as it really is. The number of alternative examples in IR is potentially unlimited — so as you read on, keep in mind other instances where the elements of religion and culture contribute to violence and peacemaking.
In many ways this was an accurate description because the conflict between the Soviet Union and the West had shaped the dynamics of global affairs for half a century. But, what would this new order look like? One answer was offered by Samuel P. Huntington , who suggested that world politics would no longer be shaped by a clash of ideologies e.
With this hypothesis, Huntington still assumed that global politics would be shaped by conflict as much as the Cold War before it had been. The significant shift in thinking was the prominence that religious and cultural identity would play in shaping the conflict. This creates fault lines between individuals and peoples who will inevitably fall into serious conflict over these deep and abiding differences.
Although it is worth noting that the administration of George W. Religion and culture are central to this framing. At the end of the Cold War, rather than assuming the continuation of a conflict-driven world as Huntington did, some saw the new world order as an opportunity to redesign the way international affairs was conducted. What would such a politics look like? Some policymakers imagined a world where multiple actors — not just powerful states — could contribute to a collective process of stability and accountability.
Religio-cultural voices were increasingly considered an important part of this conversation. Accordingly, an alternative approach to that of Huntington came from a United Nations consultative group known as the World Public Forum, which began an initiative in called the Dialogue of Civilizations.
Thus, in stark contrast to the clash of civilisations assumption that religion and culture are causes of conflict, the Dialogue of Civilizations deploys the same broad elements as resources for building bridges between individuals and peoples in the development of sustainable peace and cooperation.
What is the value of such a change? The Dialogue of Civilizations potentially offers a more equalising approach, whereby religion and culture become an extension of politics based on shared interests. Which framework makes more sense to you?
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