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Understanding sociology means understanding the inner self and the world around us. The social issues and our place within those are highly important as we live in a multicultural society where communities interrelations are a greater part of social order. Therefore, this paper will be talking about the issues of cultural diversity and diet and their relation to functionalism, conflict theory, and interactionism. The ways different cultures behave and their beliefs are various and deserve special attention. As such, this essay will reveal one aspect of the cultural effect of communities the food aspect. Different countries have their traditional meals that leave other nations wondering if those are possible to consume at all. So, let us look at this issue from different perspectives.
Cultural diversity is an extremely interesting topic for discussion, especially when various foods are taken into consideration. For example, the French eat frog legs, in Sudan, they prefer young camels liver as a delicacy, cats and dogs are eaten in Asian countries, and Japan has a cod sperm dish as a delicacy (Henslin, 2010). So, while the cultures of the world find meals of other countries gross and nasty, functionalism considers the reasons why cultural diets differ from one another that much. If we approach this issue from the perspective of functionalism theory, the cultural diet is a result of cultural heritage, national traditions, and geographical position.
Looking at cultural diets differently will help the conflict theory. Although people live in different parts of the world and have different crops gathered, various religions, and totally opposite cultural heritages, there has to be some bottom line traced in what we eat because the social layers inequality will always be a stumbling block. Cultures have their socially developed conditions to adhere to that make food kinds affordable, whereas other cultures cannot afford the same. Political-wise, there are some endangered species eaten by some cultures of the world and this contradicts different peoples views. Therefore, as per conflict theory, cultural diet will be an issue as long as political, social, and material inequalities predominate (Johnson, 2009).
Interactionism, being a theory that claims that a person may stand in another persons shoes and regard the problem from his/her perspective are very sound as per cultural diets since many countries have already accepted different forms and kinds of food consumption. There are various countries restaurants in the US. Moreover, McDonalds is, the hugest network of fast-food restaurants all over the world which speaks for ethnocentrism, as well. The American dream has become a foremost desire for many people and McDonalds is being a small opportunity to come closer to the dream locally. Overall, people interact due to the studies and borrowings from each others cultures and this particular way of interacting is conciliating (Denzin, 2007).
Although there are so many cultures on the planet, they continue interacting and sharing their own values derived from heritage. Ethnocentrism plays a great role in making the cultures accept each other because it makes the roles of each culture clear within the world political and economic scene. There will always be different cultural diets because of different geographical positions of the countries which means people there need and eat different food due to climate conditions but all that is completely relative as per the way each culture views the problem.
References
Denzin, N.K. (2007). Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation. Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell.
Henslin, J.M. (2010). Essentials of Sociology, A Down-to-Earth Approach. New York: Prentice Hall.
Johnson, D.P. (2009). Contemporary Sociological Theory: An Integrated Multi-Level Approach. New York: Springer.
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