[excerpted from, Developing a ‘Global Mind’ ©2023]

Our Big Question: How does culture help to shape individual identity?

Let’s take the premise of our previous chapter a step further, before we return to our quest for a global perspective. It’s not genuine to say “I don’t see culture” as an attempt to erase those barriers between us, any more than it is to say “I don’t see race” or similar. We can’t simply put blinders on, state that we’re a human being and a member of the human family, and act as if cultural differences don’t exist. Yes, becoming a global citizen and developing global mindedness relies on our sense of the interconnectedness of all humanity and our commonalities and shared goals. However, we don’t want to be naïve about our differences – precisely in order that we may better collaborate toward those goals.

Remember when I said, most individuals don’t actually know their own culture intimately – that the fish doesn’t know about water precisely because it’s the only environment the fish knows? Or rather, we know it deeply as our lived experience, but our cultural values and customs have been embedded in us throughout childhood; so, by the time we reach adulthood, we don’t think about it and simply live it instead. Knowing our own culture, then, helps us to recognize our ethnocentrism when it arises; knowing how culture affects our personal identity, even more so.

Identity is made up of two broad layers. In the innermost circle, we have factors such as age (which of course changes continually), biological sex, gender identity or expression, race and ethnicity, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, and national origin. The outer ring, secondary features but still vitally influential, includes such elements as our family, appearance, language and communication skills, education, religion, political belief, community, socioeconomic class, profession and work experience.

In one of the more well known models of identity formation, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (remember that pyramid shape?), our core identity is formed based on having essential needs met, such as food and shelter, safety and stability, belonging and love, and esteem or respect. Only once these are relatively established as a foundation can we then continue to more nuanced development: cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization or personal development – such as the quest to develop one’s global consciousness.

Naturally, this isn’t always a straight or strict progression. Many levels develop simultaneously. It is generally true, however, that if you’re worried about food, shelter, or safety, you aren’t going to be focused on self-development.

Identity is formed in context, then, socially and historically constructed – and thus, heavily influenced by one’s culture. We learn and develop personal identity through interaction with others – our family, peers, community, organizations, institutions. Our social and cultural identity are based on belief and value systems and are linked to power. Media, in all its forms, uses images, words, and characters to transfer – and often, to cultivate – specific ideas and values of a culture and society. (Media literacy, then, to be later addressed, becomes vitally important.)

So, what is ‘cultural identity’?

Of course, this begins as a form of both self-identity and a sense of belonging to a group, which is defined by its values, meanings, customs, and beliefs. While our social identity teaches us how to relate to other members of our own culture, it’s our cultural identity that teaches us how to relate to the world. The group shares historical experiences and cultural codes – a kind of short-hand language that stems from shared experiences and influences, such as media – and can be further molded by our ancestral origin or heritage, our group’s physical or ethnic appearance, and/or common behavioral patterns. Our cultural identity covers our entire lifespan, no matter our global experiences, yet it can be nuanced or even confusing if we grow up in a blend of two or more cultures; think of those whose parents are from different cultures, with the family living in a third country or cultural setting, for example – common among expats from different countries who meet, marry, and raise their children while abroad, and a phenomenon known as TCK – Third-Culture Kids. Cultural identity is also dynamic, constantly evolving as is our culture itself, changing every moment based on the social context – and as such, is also an ever-changing understanding of one’s own identity in relation to others.

Elements of cultural identity are many. This includes both how members of a culture view themselves and how outsiders view them, with enduring as well as changing features. There are affective, cognitive, and behavioral aspects – how we feel, think, and act – as well as modes of expression. One’s cultural identity encompasses individual, relational, and communal identities in one, with both content and context aspects of communication. And, cultural identity can be understood along a continuum in terms of others’ perception: how obvious to those of other cultures is your cultural identity? Can you be easily identified, or is your cultural background more subtle and less apparent to others?

There are two ways of understanding our cultural identity. The first is external, and includes social and cultural behaviors. While every culture has a range, and you may even be a nonconformist in your own, we nevertheless can easily recognize these external cues – the proverbial tip of the iceberg. What’s underneath the surface, however, is more challenging to understand and put into words. This ‘hidden’ aspect of cultural identity falls into 3 broad categories: cognitive, or how you perceive yourself, your associated group(s), and your traditions; moral, including your sense of obligation to your heritage and its values; and, emotional, which includes your attachment to your culture and desire to be with people who have similar beliefs, values, and cultural patterns.

First, in our familiar social and cultural environment, our ‘comfort zone’, we develop our sense of self and our understanding of others. Thereafter, we can expand ever-increasingly into a more global identity, moving step-by-step beyond our comfort zone as we place ourselves in unfamiliar situations – and, we grow. Above all, this is the process of developing oneself as a ‘global citizen’ – we don’t lose or erase our original culture, but enhance it.

In our quest for a global identity, then, we go through 6 stages. The first is one of ‘psychological captivity’: for most of us, we grow up in a monocultural experience that comes with some inherent stereotypes. We then develop to an ethnic or cultural ‘encapsulation’ in which we identify with our culture exclusively in a voluntary separatism from other cultures. From here we get to an identity clarification, in which we gain knowledge and perhaps pride in our heritage, and self-awareness that we have a cultural identity – that is, that not everyone has the same culture that we do.

At the fourth level, and by reading a book such as this I imagine you’re at least at this point already, we begin to develop a metaphoric ‘bi-ethnicity’; we have a strong sense of our own ethnic and cultural identity, and also a general respect for other ethnic and cultural groups. To move from this to the 5th stage of development, our own multiculturalism, we first need to gain knowledge of multiple cultural groups. And in the final stage, our goal of globalism and global competency, we’ve developed our ethnic, national, and global aspects of identity, and have also achieved the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to identify and engage with both our own and other cultures – simultaneously.

This is the global citizen.

In my original cultural context of the US, I never particularly identified with the dominant ‘American’ culture. As I’d spent the majority of my life in New York City, one of the world’s most diverse, I adopted characteristics of multiple groups: Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Puerto Rican, German, Irish, Caribbean, Korean, Indian, and more. My actual heritage is English and Swiss; when I traveled to each of these countries for the first time, already in adulthood, I instantly recognized many of the cultural habits of my family, despite our having been in the US for multiple generations already. In these past 20 years, I’ve lived in a succession of Asian countries and traveled the world; my mannerisms, customs, speech pattern, and other features are now such a blend that I couldn’t easily describe my cultural self – even as I can, in fact, list certain characteristics (directness, independence, positivity, individualism, and self-efficacy, for example) that I know to be rooted in my US upbringing.

So, how does our interaction with other cultures, in our quest for open-mindedness and a global identification, affect our own identity?

Identity, in fact, can be a challenging question for the long-term nomad or expat, while an immigrant is likely to become, after some time, a blend of two cultures – the original and new; living in other cultures and/or engaging with the world in any significant way will always impact our identity in some way, often initially in some form of destabilization.

As we meet others whose worldviews, norms, values, capabilities, practices, and aspirations are markedly different from our own, we must ask ourselves – as a stabilizing factor – who am I? Who am I in this context? And, what can I do in this circumstance – do I make any changes to my own identity, or do I remain essentially the same while respecting the other? We can indeed maintain our own cultural identity and characteristics while developing relationships with those of other cultures; or, we can allow the experience to influence and change us, to the degree of our personal comfort.

Remember: our own personal as well as social and cultural aspects of identity were all forged in relation to others, not in a vacuum – so, our identity will continue to be affected by context. Think of the person who only becomes religious late in life; they will experience a rather profound shift in identity when they may have thought themselves fully formed, their identity rather fixed. The same is very true as we embrace a lifelong quest to become a citizen of the world.

In fact, self-identification through others, or in context – allowing ourselves to be affected, and changed, by our encounters with those of ethnicities, cultures, societies, and nations other than our own – is essential to one’s identification as a global citizen.

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Exercises:

Discussion or Contemplation: What are some elements of my identity – personal, ethnic, social, cultural?

Writing or Recording: What is my cultural identity? Describe in some detail.

Further Reading: Ourselves in the World: Identity Development http://communicationtheory.org/cultural-identity-theory/