My Cultural Identity

delimit my own ethnic identity by Stefanie Attl Culture is unmatched of the nigh difficult concepts in the hu mankind social sciences and at that place ar many distinguishable personal manners of delimit it. It is often argued that finis is a learned deportment pattern shared by a government agencyicularized group of people. Culture is sanitary-nigh shared meanings, and phraseology is the privileged modal(a) in which meaning is produced and exchanged. People sharing one culture provide the world in roughly the same way. Defining my own pagan identity seems to me instead difficult. I actu wholey have to admit that I am non quite genuine which culture I fail to.I was born in Austria save my father comes from South Tyrol, the northern part of Italy, where Italian and German are spoken. therefore I have Italian nationality tho I have altogether just about basic subsistledge concerning the language. Although I live in Austria, there are still some traditions and pagan aspects in my family that are non Austrian. Not barely is there some Italian influence, save as well as Canadian due to the circumstance that my motheras stepmother is British but emigrated to Canada. I havenat got Canadian nationality, but I was brought up bilingually (German/English).Further more(prenominal) than I spent half a course of study living in Chile and therefore I was influenced by the Chilean way of emotional state. Under rearably I some propagation get quite confused about which culture I rightfully belong to. There are several parameters for defining oneas culture, such as nationality, language, the estate you live in, gender, social class, occupation, interests, educational levela. hardly the question is, which of these parameters is to be considered the most important. I have Italian nationality, but due to the fact that I donat truly know the language I donat truly feel Italian or a? Southern Tyroliana.And although I am non Canadian by citi zenship I sometimes feel more at theater there because of the language. Still, concerning some traditional aspects, I am more familiar with the a? South Tyroliana ones but I donat really feel that I belong there because I donat know Italian nor do I really speak German with a a? South Tyroliana accent. I bank that not intimate the language could be seen as a barrier keeping me from really experiencing Italian culture. I strongly believe that one can someways adopt a culture by learning specific behaviour patterns, values, moralities or more precisely, a certain way of life.I experienced this term living in Chile and I can say for sure that it was far more difficult to adjust to a new way of living and learn how to react in certain situations than learning the international language. Despite all these influences of unlike cultures, I still feel real Austrian due to the fact of actually living in this country. The parameters which I believe to be rattling important in dictate to posit your culture are first of all the is the country you live in because your culture depends really much on what is happening around you.The help important aspect is language through which thoughts, ideas and whole tones of a certain culture are represented. The least important thing in my opinion is the nationality because I believe this to be a very official way of defining your culture. But, as I already mentioned, I sometimes donat really know which culture I really belong to. I believe I am a mixture of all of them. Understanding family by Michael Pelitz the night is your friend, your only friend the center stage, a moonscape as you walk. alk your head is a weave your heads a thread the eye of the needle releases indistinct were just a sadder metrical composition away(predicate) were just a sadder song away the mountaintops, the rainbow drops the fires from the temples and palaises. hurray the pecking order that swallows me the pavement emptied out by night were just a sadder song away were just a sadder song away were off to intellect home were off to brain home were off to understanding home were just a sadder song awayJust as I reached Radetzkyplatz, qualifying by the Hotel Garni Lind, a? Understanding Homea? ept rotating in my disc p arrangeer. a? aThe center stage, a moonscape as you walka?. The display warns a? BATTERY LOWa? , but Alexa apartment is right across the square, so I decided not to worry about it. I suddenly remembered a letter I read on the internet, written by an Austrian social histrion after his return from his social service year at the final solution Memorial Center in Detroit a? When macrocosm abroada? , he wrote, a? you die a true patriota? He stayed in the U. S. during the international travail against the Austrian government in 2001.I cabbageed to remember all these artists who cancelled their concerts in Austria, and every single e-mail I had to send to my American friends, explaining a? the situationa? . And I had to think about all these desperate and aggressive anti-Moslem e-mails my mamma received from a friend of hers who lives in Virginia, fearing that her son might not return from Iraq safely. I glanced over my shoulder to check on the duty lights. Red. Suddenly I was confused, heretofore a bit aggressive. I snarl terribly blank despite the music, or maybe, because of the music. The whole world (including me) seems to be talking about send, I thoughtSending e-mails, sending troops, sending messages, sending money, sending support, sending social workers. Mobility is the key news program of our times. Nobody seems to be talking about the sense of belonging. a? You become a true patriota? , returns to my mind. I thought of how much I detest the concept of patriotism. To me, patriotism leads to jingoism, flag-waving gives beautiful pictures, beautiful picture are very likely to be shown in the news, satellites enable worldwide broadcasts within milliseconds, and the media have an incredible manipulating impact.I know the concept underlying the word a? patriotisma? is not that easy, but I am sure that patriotism is a great source of misunderstandings. The succeeding(prenominal) moment I pictured myself at the soccer stadium relation the national anthem. Again, it leaves me confused. I felt exhausted. It has been a long day. An estimated 750 metres, the way from the U4-metrostation LandstraAYer HauptstraAYe to here, lay behind me. Another two and a half miles to the 23 rd district, where Iave set my car, 102 kilometres to MA? zzuschlag, my hometown, an additional 87 kilometres to Graz, the city where I live, and yet other 8944 km to Portland/Oregon, the place where I spent the most wonderful year imaginable, describe my route. I think about my travels, the times I was sent, the times I mobilized. The batteries ran out on the final lines of the song.I would have loved to find out to the outro and the repetition of the chorus. I pushed the doorbell and heard the buzzing of reality. Maybe all of this is not as contradictory as I thought. Maybe the understanding of our pagan identity needs to a? travel lighta? in order to find its way back home. And in its backpack it carries all the concepts we fear, detest or treasures so much. a? Weare off to understanding homea? , I repeated, as suddenly the front door opened and I entered the building. pagan Identity by Ana Flac A couple of years ago I found myself wandering between cultures, customs and different traditions. At the solution of this cultural voyage I was torn between contradictions which forced me to shoot myself Who am I? What makes me a Croatian? Six years ago a specific incident happened in Osijek which triggered off these thoughts .Morete mi reci da ide vlak za Cakovec? (Could you tell me when the following(a) train goes to Cakovec? ), I asked a railway man as I was on my way home, after I had taken my entrance exam at Osijek University in 1998. The friendly man smiled and begged my pardon. He did not quite understand me. At this point I complete that I was no longer in my home town in Medjimurje and that all the competence I had in speaking my dialect which Im so steep of could constitute a burden rather than a merit. This was the first time I perceived myself as being different from other people in Croatia.Some of my fellow students in Osijek spurned their dialect but I was rarified of it and it made me in some manner stand out from the crowd so I could be easily set by it. I realized that my Medjimurian dialect was a part of my cultural identity. As time passed by I got to know many different people from the Slavonic region, their customs and their way of living. Since this region was greatly stirred by the war, a very critical attitude towards Serbs had developed there. close to of the inhabitants often expressed their fury mostly against Serbs and emphasized Pan-Croatian nationalism.I noticed I wasnt prepared to emphasize a Pa n-Croatian position and I didnt want to perceive the whole Serbian nation so destructively. I just couldnt differentiate myself with all this Pan-Croatian nationalism and I primarily disagreed with people who had this kind of attitude. I unploughed my distance and withdrew into my regional cultural frames. After having spent two years in Osijek, I proceed my studies in a completely different country, in Austria. I was very much excited about the new faces and new culture I was about to meet. And then one day I encountered a young woman on the campus and we started talking.I found the conversation quite neat. Apart from other things, she treasured to know where I come from so I t grey-haired her I was from Croatia. Ah, aus Kroatien.. those were the next words she said. They sounded strange, as if she got the whole picture of me when she found out about my origin. At this moment I realized there was not only no place left field for my Medjimurian identity, which I am extremely pr oud of, but there was also hardly even any left for my Croatian identity. I was differentiated from other students by labels such as another ex-Yugoslavian or inhabitant of the Balkans.For the first time in my life I felt ashamed of my nationality. And from that moment on I was somehow torn between my Medjimurian pride and the feeling of shame for who I was in Austria. I was trapped in some generalized prejudices about myself that I did not want to have anything to do with. My identity was on the verge of being formed by some stereotypic views which I could not accept. But inspite of all these confrontations and contradictions I had to face and which s occupyd me and disoriented me at first, they were also the one that gave me strength and motivated me to figure out who I really am.My Cultural Identity by Camilla Leimisch If someone asked me if I was proud to be Austrian or Finnish, I would not answer a? Yesa right away. Iave always felt that proud was not the appropriate word to de scribe my feelings towards the country where I was born or the country where I grew up, because I find it hard to be proud of something that I did not decide or that I did not achieve on my own. But I do not want to be misunderstood I am proud of my parents to whom I owe my bilingualism and who introduced me to both cultures right from the start (Finnish from my mother and Austrian from my father).I am also happy to have kept this bilingualism and I consider myself lucky to have two native countries. Although I was born in Finland and I was only two years old when my family moved to Austria, I have never considered Finland to be my second home country, in the sense of second best. This is because I have a family there, too, and I spend every summer in Finland. This is also because my mother took care that I did not forget my Finnish roots in Austria, so I could develop feelings of the same value for both of the countries, as well as an understanding of cultural awareness that is clo sely connected to the feeling of home.As I see it, not only my nationality is an important part of my cultural identity, but also what I have done and what I am doing in my country and in its society. Austria is the country where I live and study. As my main subject is music, and Austria is a country of great musicians, music has become a big part not only of my personal but also of my cultural identity. I also appreciate Austrian kinsfolk music which I consider a very relevant and alone(p) cultural tradition in the country. With Finland, itas different. Iad rather identify myself with Finnish people than with Austrian people.It is not easy to explain why. every I can say is that Finnish people are very attached to nature, and that I often share their moments of melancholy which are even more intense when they are far away from their own country. Iave already said that I am happy about my bilingualism. In fact, language is an important parameter for defining my cultural identity, because other people also define or identify you by the way you speak. Certainly you become most aware of your language when you find yourself in a contrary country where no-one speaks your language.What Iave noticed is that if you are among people who do not only speak differently, but also behave differently and look different from you, you suddenly distinguish yourself culturally from the others, and your cultural identity becomes much more evident. The frequently asked question about whether I feel more Austrian or more Finnish is not easy to answer. I am not 100% Austrian and not 100% Finnish. But I think that this diversity which has shaped my personality is also the key to my cultural identity.