Layers of Cultures

In class, Dr. Goates taught about the layers of culture.  At the top of the pyramid are the cultural artifacts.  This is tangibly observable.  It includes observable symbols and signs like stories, myths, rituals, and language.  Under the artifacts in the pyramid is the category of shared values. These are shared perceptions of good and bad, or right and wrong.  What organizations say they value are their espoused values.  What the organizations actually value are enacted values.  The last bottom level of the pyramid is the shared beliefs.  These are unconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions of reality and of the way things are done and what they mean.  Both the shared values and shared beliefs are derived or declared versus being tangibly observable.  At first all of this didn't mean much to me until we put practical examples into it.  We talked about if someone were to find Shippensburg 50 years later after a volcano erupted and covered everything, what would they find and what would it mean?  We said they would find things like all our textbooks and materials.  These would be the tangible artifacts.  This shows that we valued education, and that we believed that education was important in life.  The other example we talked about was cell phones.  I found this one very interesting because I never thought about just how important and how much we value our cell phones and why.  We obviously value communication and connectivity very highly.  Relationships with our friends and family are very important to us.  I liked looking at this pyramid representing the layers of culture because we see this top layer all the time, but we don't always think to look below the surface at the meanings.