People can accept, adapt or reject particular cultural influences while continuing practices they value.
A viewer enjoys an overseas drama's storytelling but disagrees with how it portrays family roles. Enjoying the programme does not require accepting every idea in it.
Individuals may welcome unfamiliar music, language, food or ways of thinking because these bring enjoyment, learning or new choices. They may adapt an influence to their own circumstances, or avoid particular content because it conflicts with their values or preferences.
Responses therefore vary in degree. Someone can support a local artist and a foreign artist, accept a technique while rejecting a message, or decline one product while welcoming others from the same country. A whole nationality does not have one fixed response.
People can also sustain culture by learning a language or skill, using it, supporting practitioners and teaching others. This need not require avoiding foreign culture. Time, cost, access to teachers and interest affect what someone can do; buying one local product does not preserve an entire tradition.
Worked example: Enjoying a film and questioning its message
Nadia likes the visual style of films made abroad and learns some editing techniques from them. She criticises a film's message that one gender should always make family decisions. She also joins a local language group and helps younger members practise conversation.
- Learning editing techniques shows acceptance of a specific influence from abroad.
- Criticising the message shows that acceptance is selective. It does not establish hostility towards the film's country of origin.
- Regular conversation practice helps pass on a language she values. This can happen alongside enjoying foreign films.
- Her choices illustrate one person's response. Other viewers may interpret the films differently or have different opportunities to learn.
Watch out for this
To preserve local culture, a person must reject all foreign culture.
Preservation depends on continuing knowledge, practice and transmission. People can do that while enjoying or adapting selected influences from elsewhere.
Check your understanding
A reader enjoys translated novels from another country but stops reading one series because of its repeated insults towards a community. She continues reading other authors from that country. What does this show?
- She rejects the entire culture of that country.
- Her enjoyment of some novels means she accepts every message in them.
- She accepts some cultural products while rejecting particular content that conflicts with her values.