by What is culture? A culture is a group of people that forms socially. Generally speaking, when we talk about life as a whole we look at the world and take people from different countries and say that they are part of a different culture. For me,
I take the people and the experiences I have had and call that my culture.
I believe I belong to two cultures. One is my family and the second being my friends. The way I like to think about it is the inside world and the outside world. For example, when I am with my parents I know I act one way, whereas with my friends I find that I act differently. With my parents, I might do family things like go to the movies with them, have dinner with them, generally wherever my family is I feel as if I am part of my family culture. When I am with my friends we may go to the movies and have dinner together, but the difference is that these are people who I am not related to. In my eyes, the relationships I have with my friends are ones that can never match the familial bond I have with my family.
Although within these two cultures I have formed for myself, there are many subcultures within these groups.
As I look at my family I have subcultures within my family. I have a different culture with my brother than I do with my parents. I have a different culture with my cousins than I would with my aunts or uncles. I also have another subculture with my grandparents. I would say that these subcultures are small branches off of my family culture.
When I look at my friends’ culture I think this culture has a lot of subcultures that keep splitting up. I am starting out by saying that I have my Newton, MA friends (where I lived), my Colby friends, my camp friends, and my “other” friends (which consists of people in different countries, etc.). With my Newton friends, I can split it up by the number of years I have known these people, where I spent the majority of my time with them, and what I do with them. So I would say my subcultures are all the extracurriculars that I have done throughout my life which include: track, school, music, karate, spending time with neighbors, and my Indian friends. At Colby, I have a few other subcultures that consist of my track friends, school friends, and dorm friends. Although with my camp friends and “other friends” I have only ever been to one main camp in my life and made friends there, and I really only have a few friends who live in another country, so I would not split these cultures into different subcultures.
So if I were to look at my life in a broad context I would say I am in two cultures and 13 different subcultures. I look at my life as a tree when I talk about different cultures. I have two main branches (family and friends) and off of that, branch off the many subcultures that I am a part of. As life moves, I am sure I will join many other subcultures but the important thing to remember is that I will never stop being part of a culture or a subculture. As I grow as a person the number of subcultures will grow and only time will tell how many cultures and subcultures I will be a part of.