@merpius well still, it seems rather a blurry business... For example latino culture should have a lot in common with spain or portugal, so should you include spain in the latino culture group or in the western culture group ?
And each country has its own ties with a lot of countries, for example a lot of african countries have big ties with either France or England (because they once were a part of their colonial empire and for better or worse that left huge marks on their own culture, in return France and England had lot of immigrants from those countries that also left their mark on their own culture). I'm not sure it is so easy to put cultural identity in boxes because all the boundaries are quite blurry and always evolving with people interracting with each other.
Also I feel this kind of generalization is widely used to refer to the "others", "the people that are not from here". For example "latino" is used in the USA to refer to the people that are coming from the american continent but are neither americans or canadians. What do they really have in common, except they speak a romane language and are mostly catholic christians ? I'm not sure...
I bet it's even worse for the "asian culture group", the "european culture group" or the "african culture group", what do an indonesian, a chinese, a japanese, a korean and an indian really have in common, except the fact that they are all a minority in european countries and it is more convenient to bag them into one big group of "people coming from the asian continent that have a very different culture from us" ?
My point is, sure, this kind of generalization exists and it is convenient to bag people into boxes, but I'm not so sure they mean anything but "those guys come from that part of the world".
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@merpius well still, it seems rather a blurry business... For example latino culture should have a lot in common with spain or portugal, so should you include spain in the latino culture group or in the western culture group ?
And each country has its own ties with a lot of countries, for example a lot of african countries have big ties with either France or England (because they once were a part of their colonial empire and for better or worse that left huge marks on their own culture, in return France and England had lot of immigrants from those countries that also left their mark on their own culture). I'm not sure it is so easy to put cultural identity in boxes because all the boundaries are quite blurry and always evolving with people interracting with each other.
Also I feel this kind of generalization is widely used to refer to the "others", "the people that are not from here". For example "latino" is used in the USA to refer to the people that are coming from the american continent but are neither americans or canadians. What do they really have in common, except they speak a romane language and are mostly catholic christians ? I'm not sure...
I bet it's even worse for the "asian culture group", the "european culture group" or the "african culture group", what do an indonesian, a chinese, a japanese, a korean and an indian really have in common, except the fact that they are all a minority in european countries and it is more convenient to bag them into one big group of "people coming from the asian continent that have a very different culture from us" ?
My point is, sure, this kind of generalization exists and it is convenient to bag people into boxes, but I'm not so sure they mean anything but "those guys come from that part of the world".