CULTURE - Creating my own study model.

Going back to the study paper ‘What is culture?’ A Compilation of Quotations Compiled by Helen Spencer-Oatey (see references), I wanted to try and understand what defined culture. I came across this diagram based on the study by Edgard Shein, 1994: 3-4. I took this model and did a comparison then superimposed my food culture research to form a ‘Food Culture Model’ (see below).

https://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_schein_three_levels_culture.html

https://thehypertextual.com/2013/01/17/edgar-schein-organizational-culture-and-leadership/

So what is culture?

I felt I needed to know about culture because food is a part of everyday life for everyone no matter where you live. The way we prepare and eat meals varies within cultures. That means that dining has been shaped to conform within cultural values within regions.

Cultures basically spring from three sources:
1/ beliefs, values and assumptions of founders
2/learning experience of group members and
3/new beliefs brought in by new members/leaders.

Food culture is clearly a sub-culture of a nations culture. I think that Sheins culture structure seems scalable and can be applied to food sub culture.

Shein’s study provides for me a platform for investigating the food culture element of my enquiry into ‘Food, Culture and Storytelling’. On reading the ‘Deciphering and assessing cultures"‘ section below, I immediately saw similarities in the way that I have structured my interventions and research questions to ask participants. It gave me reassurance that the way that I was going about my research was correct.

Deciphering and assessing cultures
Before acting on a culture it is strongly recommended to decipher it to define the change strategy and/or to understand what is wrong. Deciphering a culture can be carried out using the following pattern :
1. Visit and observe
2. identify artifacts and processes that puzzle you
3. Ask insiders why are things done that way
4. identify espoused values that appeal to you and ask how they are implemented
5. Look for inconsistencies and ask about them
6. Figure out from the above the deeper assumptions that determine the observed behavior.

References

‘What is culture?’ A Compilation of Quotations Compiled by Helen Spencer-Oatey (Reference for this compilation Spencer-Oatey, H. (2012) What is culture? A compilation of quotations. GlobalPAD Core Concepts. Available at GlobalPAD Open House http://www.warwick.ac.uk/globalpadintercultural )

Deciphering and assessing cultures. Published by Cecil Lean Coach, digital & services http://thehypertextual.com
https://thehypertextual.com/2013/01/17/edgar-schein-organizational-culture-and-leadership/