Final Video for Cultural Reporter Project

Summary Blog-Cultural Reporter Project

Project Summary Blog-Cultural Reporter Project

         Welcome back once again to my cultural reporter project.  In my report I will tie my information about the culture of Jamaica in my introduction blog to my own culture in America in this summary blog.  I researched and found that there were some differences in the two cultures but there were many more similarities that they had in common.  I became very intrigued and interested in the culture of Jamaica ever since I traveled there on vacation when I was seventeen.  They have a familial identity that is unlike any other culture in the world and is unique to its own.

         As I stated in my second blog I want to describe the concept of familial identity and tie it to the culture of Jamaica.  Familial identity is defined as evidence in many collectivistic cultures that stress the importance of emotional connectedness and interdependence with others (Martin & Nakayama, 2009).  A great deal of my research came from one of my good friends who grew up on the island of Jamaica until he was twelve years old before he moved to the United States.  Familial identity was a great concept to choose because they have a type of culture that is centered mainly around the closeness of family members and the time that the family spends together.  As I stated in my second blog music is a big factor in family closeness because concerts, events, and music festivals are activities that are taken in at various family outings.  Activities like dinners where all members of the family all sit down and have a family meal together are huge in the culture as well.  Another component of familial identity that I pointed out was emotional stability and acceptance.  Jamaican family is of the upmost importance and nothing is considered to come before it but the sprit of God (Jamaica, 2012).

         Communication competence when dealing at the intercultural level is sometimes tricky when trying to communicate across cultures.  Intercultural competence is based on four components: motivation, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (Martin & Nakayama, 2009).  Our class text also points out that the context of the intercultural communication and the way it is interpreted play major factors as well.

         Intercultural differences have a great impact on future communication issues because people are more educated on these differences and it helps them communicate better in the future.  The advice that I would personally give would be to base intercultural communication components on education.  If people are educated on these communication issues they will potentially act in a different way to accommodate the cross culture communication barrier.  Practice with communicating between cultures is another thing that would help our intercultural skills.  Actually communicating between one another and studying the opposite culture will contribute major advantages in the future as well.  I hope I was able to do some good with this project and highlight some important factors involved with intercultural communication skills.

Reference Page

Martin, J.N. & Nakayama, T.K. (2009).  Intercultural Communication in Contexts:        

 (Fifth Edition). McGraw Hill Higher Education.

Jamaica. (2012).  Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Retrieved at    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/299716/Jamaica/214963/Daily-life 

• This video depicts an average family on the island of Jamaica taking part in a family reunion on a countryside in the hills complete with traditional food and music.

• Some various pictures that depict the culture on the island of Jamaica.  Music, Carribean-style food, and traditional-style of clothing have all been important parts of the culture for hundreds of years.

Concept Application Blog-Cultural Reporter Project

Concept Application Blog for Cultural Reporter Project

            Welcome back to my cultural reporter project. I have done some research and for this second blog I am going to tie my research of Jamaican culture to an intercultural concept from our class text.  The concept I am going to use for this is familial identity, which is defined as evidence in many collectivistic cultures that stress the importance of emotional connectedness and interdependence with others (Martin & Nakayama, 2009).  As I stated in my first blog I went on a vacation with my family to the island of Jamaica when I was younger and was very intrigued on how different, and in some ways similar, their family culture is compared to my own.

            Family life is very centralized on the island and close-knit family bonds and togetherness are very important factors surrounding a family.  Sometimes having a three-generation household is a normal occurrence at times and aunts, uncles, and other relatives always have a hand in helping raising a young child.  Grandmothers sometimes even take charge of raising a preschool age child as well because the mother is working during the day and daycares are very seldom within the culture (Jamaica, 2012).  It is also encouraging to have children form strong bonds with the family when they are young and progressively form a more independent relationship, as they get older.  Young Jamaican adults usually get married and form some kind of an interdependence relationship in their mid to late twenties, which is a little later in life than the average American young adult. It seems that emotional stability and acceptance is also another big part of the culture in the fact that they seem to put family first before anything else in life and having an emotional bond starts with the family before anything else (Jamaica, 2012).

            There are also some cultural activities that are used as family bonding times that are viewed as ways to bring the family closer together.  Music is a big part of the culture and they often have music festivals complete with reggae music, drums, and Jamaican style dances.  These are very fun ways for a family to enjoy the outdoors as well as continuing to form strong family bonds (Ja Ma, 2010).

After learning some of these specifics on how people within the culture function and interact it seems to me that they are very similar to some cultures, like my own, here in America.  Family ties, closeness, and togetherness all describe the familial identity of Jamaicans.  If any family member needs the help of another through a life event they can always count on them to be there to help.

My future intercultural reactions will influence me immensely after spending the time to research some of these examples of how the Jamaican culture handles family interactions.  Their culture is surprisingly similar to my own familial identity and what I was grown up to be familiar with.  My family always put love ahead of everything else when I was growing up and my parents, siblings, and I have had close-knit ties our whole lives.  This is definitely one of the top priorities within their culture as well. 

• This is a video of an actual Jamaican steel drum and bass band that was recorded on the island of Jamaica.  This is one of the most popular styles of music within the culture.

 Reference Page

Martin, J.N. & Nakayama, T.K. (2009).  Intercultural Communication in Contexts:        

 (Fifth Edition). McGraw Hill Higher Education.

Jamaica. (2012).  Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Retrieved at    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/299716/Jamaica/214963/Daily-life 

Ja Ma. (2010).  Countries and Their Cultures. Countries and Their Cultures: Retrieved at

            http://www.everyculture.com/Ja-Ma/Jamaica.html#b   

•  The picture painting on the bottom right is very interesting.  It depicts a gathering of a Jamaican family reunion and truly pictures the activities and the closeness that the family culture in Jamaica is based on. 

Ryan Behling's Introduction Blog for my Cultural Reporter Project

Introduction Blog for Cultural Identity Project

            Back when I was a senior in high school I traveled to the island of Jamaica with my family on one of the greatest vacations I have ever experienced.  After being there for about a week or so I found this culture to be very interesting in many ways.  I am going to choose to explore this national identity for my cultural reporter project this semester.  I focused a lot of my time with my cultural identity video on family and the importance of my own family to me.  I want to incorporate both of these together when I compare this cultural identity to my own identity.  My main goal of this project is going to be to inform everybody on the differences of specific Jamaican families to my own.  Some of my key points will include differences in family traditions, customs, and religion from my family identity to theirs.

            Culture is defined as learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people (Martin & Nakayama).  This definition states that people of a certain group who think alike and have shared reservations are an official culture.  In retrospect this is why I want to research and study this culture and compare and contrast it to my own. 

            Cultural history helps us determine how and why a specific culture came to prominence and what happened in the process of this.  More importantly they help us understand the identities of a specific group (Martin & Nakayama).  Some cultures go through years and years of ridicule by others before they can become a culture of prominence within the world.  The residents of Jamaica are often referred to as Rastafarians and they believe that they were sold into slavery and were apart of the lost tribe of Israel.  The country is made up of over 90% African citizens and the dominant religion of the culture is over 60% protestant (Kwintessential).  Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Jamaica in 1494 and originally had named it the island of Santiago.  The Rastafarian term, “Jamdung” meanings (Jamdown) along with the term “Yaahd” meaning (Yard) are mainly used by Jamaicans living in other countries to inform others of the deterritorialization of the National culture.

My plan of action is to immerse myself into this culture by researching and studying everything about Jamaica and its national identity.  As I stated previously I vacationed there for about a week and got a good vibe on certain things that are important to them and some of their traditions and certain things should help me out immensely.  I also have a really good friend who was born in Jamaica and moved to the United States when he was 12 years old so I will get a lot of my facts and research done with the help of interviews from him.

Reference Page

Martin, J.N. & Nakayama, T.K. (2009).  Intercultural Communication in Contexts:        

 (Fifth Edition). McGraw Hill Higher Education.

Kwintessential. Jamaica-Language, Culture, Customs, and Etiquette. Retrieved from:

            http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/jamaica.html

Countries and their Cultures. Jamaica. Retreived from: http://www.everyculture.com/Ja-

Ma/Jamaica.html

Here is a video of some of the main aspects of Jamaican Culture. Some of the facts in this video are very interesting and some things I did not know myself.

Here is a link that was very helpful to me to get some basic facts about the history and culture of Jamaica.  Later on within my Cultural Reporter Project I am going to contrast families of Jamaican culture to my own family culture here in the United States.

http://www.everyculture.com/Ja-Ma/Jamaica.htmlMa/Jamaica.html



This is who I am!