Specific Culture to Study

        The culture that I will be studying for in this project is the country of Finland. I chose this culture because I recently gained a new co-worker in my internship who is currently studying abroad. He is from Finland and it is very interesting hearing all of the details about his home country and the differences they have with the United States. After I take a deeper look into this country, I expect that my cultural knowledge will help me in all future interactions with people from Finnish descent. I will understand how they communicate and what to do to be respected and what not to do to disrespect someone. I plan on learning their hobbies and just really how they are as a person. 


        After doing some extra research on the country Finland, I found many other interesting aspects in their culture. According to CIA.gov, at age 18, all Finnish men must serve 5.5 to 12 months of service within a military branch. This is very different from the United States today where nobody is forced into the military and even years back there was a draft. Another interesting thing I learned related to their military is that their band is only associated with the military, there is none related to any of the sport teams or Universities. Some facts about their culture would include 90.9 percent of citizens there have a Finnish background meaning not too many people are coming from other places. The majority of the country only speaks Finnish, which is unlike the United States where we mostly speak English. When it comes to religion in Finland, two thirds of the population believes in Lutheranism, which is different from the United States who primarily believes in Protestantism. 

The quote “In studying other cultures, we do so very often from the perspective of our own culture.” is trying to tell us that we usually only see things in what is normal to us. To ensure that this does not happen, along with any bias at all we have to remember that this is only uncomfortable at times because you aren’t used to it. These are very normal practices that occur all around the world and if you were located in a different place on the globe you would actually be the “weird one”. I will also keep in mind that if you come into this with bias, it takes away the opportunity to learn about other cultures and really understand it all. 


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