What is cultural iceberg?
Before I am going deep into this concept, I would like to mention why I bother writing and sharing this one. Four days ago, my housemate visited my room and brought some snacks from her hometown, variants of seafood paste and seafood crackers; absolutely my favorite. Shortly, we found ourselves talking about things we miss from our hometown and things we find different from where we at right now. We both have been here for about five years yet there are many things that we still find peculiar especially about the food and the custom. After that conversation, I realized we were talking beyond the "conscious culture" and into the " unconscious culture". Hence why, I wanted to share this concept through the topic my housemate and I were talking about : Food and Marriage. I am hoping we can have some discussion about these two in the comment section.
The concept of Cultural Iceberg was first developed by Edward T Hall in 1976. He argued that culture is like an iceberg. Hall meant to say that there are more than just visible aspect of culture that we know of but there are larger portion under the surface. When we examine a culture commonly we talk about the food, the language, dress, literature and arts. These are which according to Hall is categorized in the "conscious culture" and makes up only 10% of the culture whilst 90% remains on the unconscious realm.
10 % conscious vs 90% unconscious
The 10% conscious culture according to Hall is objective knowledge(something tangible), easily changed, conscious and explicitly learned e.g. (food, arts, dress, language, music, greetings).
Meanwhile.............
The 90% which is something called the " unconscious culture" is subjective knowledge (values and thoughts), difficult to change, implicitly learned e.g. (dating, child-rearing, concepts of time, justice, religion, authority, friendship, social status, communication, body language, work ethic, etc).
These two are the cultural component proposed by Hall which can help us navigate ourselves through the global market today. This leads us to another question, Why should you know this?
Why should you bother to care?
These days, higher chance is we are not only communicating with people from our hometown. We are now part of a global ecosystem which consist of people from different culture and society. Understanding some of the 90% aspects of the culture may help minimize misunderstanding during our interaction.
A good example is ways of communication. For instance, coming from East Java, I am accustomed to people talking directly and expresses themselves freely meanwhile living in Central Java there are much more indirect communication and I have to tone down my directness and refrain myself to express my emotions spontaneously.
Despite that I have been living in this place for 5 years, I am still doing some cultural slip ups; as in talking too loud (though it's normal for my standard and how I grew up). However, whenever I interact with people from here, I try my best to adjust to their ways of communicating.
Hence why, I think it's important for many of us to look into the cultural iceberg especially when we have diverse team, living globally and interacting at a global scale.
A comparison: The Concept of Food and Marriage
Why Food and Marriage?
There's two reason why I choose this to compare and constrast. First, because it was something I and my housemate talk about. Two, because both are interesting topic to compare and contrast.
Food
" Don't you miss savory food?" said Elia a fictional name
" Sort of, everything here is too sweet for my liking. I can't find a good chicken soup, meatball, not even a decent fried rice" Mac replied
" Yeah right!?"
We both comes from the same province, East java. However, Elia is from a tiny island which I don't even know it's existence until I talked to her a few months ago. She said most of the people there work as sailors or maid or nanny overseas. They even refer East java as "Java" as implicitly excluding themselves from the East Javanese group. She mentioned how easy it was to find seafood back home and "terasi", fermented shrimp condiments from mostly East Java.
While we live in Central Java, we can't hardly find " terasi". Nothing tastes quite the same as we have back home. My house is near to a terasi shop which sells all sorts of best terasi from across East Java. So, I know a good terasi when I taste one. Living here for 5 years, I barely taste any good terasi and even eat food with terasi paste, so does Elia. Other than that particular food, we find Central Java has little variant of food.
" You know back home, I can find pecel, bali, rawon and many things nearby. Here, I can only eat Chicken most of the time, 3 times a day"
" Right? since I live here I probably eat way too many chicken and less vegetables" I added.
Back home, I can find plenty dining options and they are always a balanced and hearty meal, carbs -vegs-protein. It was all easy to find and tastes good. Here at best, if I want a hearty meal, I'd have to order a Korean or Japanese food.
In terms of taste, the food in East-java is much more spicy and savory than Central Java cuisine which focuses on its sweetness. Everything is sweet in this place. And even after five years here, I still can't adjust to sweetness palate that almost everyone has around here.
Marriage
While we munched our crackers, our conversation got to be more personal. We started talking about dating and marriage. For this aspect, Elia contributed a lot in telling me the differences.
She is currently dating a local which made her aware of the differences in marriage ideals and views. Previously, she had no issue as she was dating someone from the same island. Now, she found some potential future problems.
Elia mentioned that where she lives, a marriage has to be grand. It is one of those " big fat wedding" type ceremony. Whilst according to Elia's colleagues and her current boyfriend, it should be humble and simple. Furthermore, in terms of gender roles there is quite a distinction. Where she lives, woman is supposed to stay home while the husband work. Meanwhile in Central Java, majority of the woman works, following more modern gender roles. This as per Elia's colleagues who are locals. I can see why this is the case as Central Java is the hub of education where majority of its people are university graduates which led to being career oriented male or female. However culturally, I don't really know if that is the actual case given the province is still following a monarchy system. So, this could be only within the younger generation.
Now, When it comes to the idea of nurturing and building the marriage, housing is very important in Elia's culture. A man needs to have a house before he even gets to marry a girl. Growing up in that kind of culture, Elia also sets the same standard for those who date her, a house before marriage. In contrast to her colleagues, this was considered as outrageous demands. Most of her colleague rent a place and didn't even bother to have a mortgage. So this caused a slight concern for her as she wished to have a boyfriend who own a house before marriage.
Why do they need to have a house?
There could be some reasons but from our collective observations, first it is because after married, the bride and groom has to live on their own not with their inlaws. Second,Houses in East-java represent its owner and the family; it is also part of the family's pride to have a great house. The house are normally big, with a small garden, high fenced, a modern architecture with plenty marble rocks as the decoration or variants of rocks. Meanwhile in Central Java houses are dominated by woods instead of stones. We also concluded that in East-Java culture, house is #1 priority and we have never met anyone without a house. People that we know of either have it through a mortgage or some sort of inheritance. Hence why, a house is a necessity especially after marriage.
Personally, this was all something interesting to learn. I understand that this was too short to unpack a culture, let alone discussing about food and marriage. I would say, I don't even touch a 10% of cultural ideas of both. However, I have tried in my best ability to summarize my conversation with my housemate in hope someone might share the idea of marriage or even food differences especially when you live in different culture than yours. If you have made it this far, thank you so much. I leave some resources where you can read more on this topic and reflect as to why is it really important to know the cultural iceberg.
Further reading
The Cultural Iceberg
Edward T. Hall’s Cultural Iceberg Model
The Cultural Iceberg Explained
~ Mac
Very interesting iceberg concept. East Java sounds like a traditional place like my country that likes throwing big wedding parties even when they're poor
Yeah ! they even go far by loaning money for the wedding. I saw nigerian wedding on 90 days Fiance, it looks grand and fun, just like how we did it here :D music, dances, caterings haha
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This is exactly what I want to try and encourage at this community, the exploration of subconscious and subtle differences which actually may have a bigger impact on us and our relationships than we think. And how personal culture can be, so she has that culture from growing up but she also has the level that she fits into her own culture and then everything will shift or expand or contract when she moves to a new place.
When I say culture some people think I’m talking about some holidays or customs but these discoveries are so much more interesting.
I hadn’t heard of the concept of the iceberg though. Very true!
I want to share this in the chat room too
I agree, when we say culture people think about the superficial things, something that can be seen.
The concept of cultural iceberg is floating around since we are not moving into a global ecosystem and it's something I've been reading quite a bit too. I asked myself a question "Do I still have my native culture in me or am I already a part of a global ecosystem where all culture is merged and creates a new one? ". When I mentioned about marriage for example, though there are different expectations because it was a custom, these days gender role in marriage almost everywhere required both, wife and husband to work.
Also, thanks for sharing it <3
The iceberg concept reminded me of Sigmund Freud's theory of the id, ego and superego. Very good and concise explanation in which you share the meaning of culture!
Thanks for reading. I thought it was too long haha
I find it incredible that there is such a big difference in culture between regions in just one country. It makes me realise how much culture has likely been lost in western countries over the years. The chances are we are so mixed now culturally, that many ways of doing things seem culturally normal or acceptable. There are no strong views on marriage, even between the UK and Australia. Some like them big, some prefer humble and quiet, but it's not really pushed either way.
The food is different, however. I know what you mean about struggling to find flavourful and savoury foods. That's the difference between the UK and South Australia that we found immediately apparent when we moved here.
I will say that the idea of the wife staying home while the husband works is probably not the norm in any fast paced countries now, although we do try to keep it acceptable as Australia is so culturally mixed. It's not easily done, however, because most families need two incomes to get by anyway. I guess being able to stay home while the spouse works is seen as something of a luxury now.
In most western countries this is definitely not the norm. From what I recall, this transformation started to change after WWI in western countries and today's norm is the result of those long transformation.
However, in most Asian countries it's still the norm, the husband is the breadwinner. Though it is slowly changing among younger generation as I think we've become much more hedonist and consumptive.This situation affects the relationship dynamic too.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend.
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That was interesting.
I thought Java was a computer language🤐
https://go.java/?intcmp=gojava-banner-java-com
hahaha no. But yes, I find many people mistaken it with Java programming language. Well, java is an island consisting of several provinces.