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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions Short Essays and Responses

Who Are We? CH4-Expo.

The definition of nationalism can be found in the fourth chapter of Who Are We? By: Samuel Huntington.  He describes it as the “Cultural Core” and it derives from the nation’s religion, language, race, ethnicity and ideology.  Meaning that each one of these core aspects shapes and molds the people it is around.  Having similar traits to the people around you allows you to become more familiar and antiquated with them and accept them more.  Whether you are born into the culture or you are just passing through it, you have to take their culture appropriations into consideration while greeting, speaking and interacting with the nation’s people. 

              This is the main reason that we can detect an outsider from one of our own.  All we would have to do is watch them for about 5 minutes and see how they act.  A person’s body language and eye contact can tell a lot about where someone is from and how they were brought up. 

Samuel Huntington mentions that there is an over defining culture of a people and there are “subcultures” branching from it.  An example I thought of was as follows:      

Imagine you are on the subway headed early to a baseball game. Most people are in their work attire and looking down at their phones, across the train you see another fan headed to the game, wearing the same team’s jersey that you are.  You have just associated into the other fan’s subculture and you have something in common.  You go over and talk to the fan about how poorly the team has been doing the past few games, you are both upset about the team’s performance.

From this example we can infer that cultures and subcultures share emotions with each other, there is more to it besides just the color of your skin or your common language.  People from groups of passion that is shared among everyone and people feel upset and happy for other members of the group to console them and in order to help them become affiliated with the strength of the group again.

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