Enfermedad y muerte

Harper (2001) refers to culture as patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. According to Murdock (1971) every human society has its own element patterns due to its culture. Scafidi (2005) indicates that culture can also have an influence on people‟s attitudes, behaviour, values, ideals, and beliefs, in which they live in. As a result, people from different groups with different cultures tend to have different ways of living their lives through language use, customs, dress, ways of producing and cooking food, political, economic systems, codes of manners, rule of behaviour, religion, rituals, tradition, works of art, norms of behaviour such as rule, law and morality and systems of belief etc. which results in the conception of culture and has been passing on from one generation to the next, and it can change over times (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952; Harris 1968; Murdock 1971; Tylor 1971; Harris and Moran 1979).

Klanatorn (1990) highlights the characteristics of culture as follow:

 Culture occurs through knowledge not instinct or human biology

 Culture will be passed on from one generation to the next. Culture has been considered as an inherent of human kind

 Culture is a sharing of knowledge within society and it does not belong to any particular individual but own by a group

 Culture represents patterns of thinking and behaviours of people from the same group. However, culture is only an abstract in reality people behaviour in one society may not follow its own culture (Klanatorn 1990).

Tylor (1971) mentions that culture exits in every human society with its own characteristics and uniqueness. Culture distinguishes one human group from others (Tylor 1971). Socio-cultural in one group may overlaps to some extent with other groups (O‟Neil 2006). Potter (1989) and Wallerstein (1990) suggest that culture can be referred to as differences between groups of people who do things differently and perceive the world differently, and these differences indicate the existence of different cultures.

2.5.3 Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

Hofstede derived the conclusion after he undertook research on the subject of national cultural differences from people at all levels of a major multinational corporation over fifty countries. In

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1981, Hofstede came up with the conclusion that there are five main dimensions that can describe a national culture (Ten Have et al. 2002).

 Power distance is the way in which culture and value is distributed unequally among individuals.

 Uncertainty avoidance dimension is the degree to which people feel threatened by ambiguous or uncertain situations and try to prevent by living lives according to rules and regulations, believing in the truths, and avoiding arguments and conflicts.

 The individualism versus collectivism dimension refers to the level of how much people think they are supposed to either take care of or be cared for by themselves and their direct families as opposed to being part of a larger group with a strict social framework to which they belong.

 Masculinity versus femininity refers to the supremacy of boldness and achievement of things (masculine) versus concern and care for people, feelings and the quality of life (feminine). It is obvious that men and women tend to display these respective characteristics across nearly all cultures.

 Confucian dynamism, which refers to be the extent to which a society exhibits a realistic future-oriented point of view rather than a conventional historic or short-term prospect.

According to Hofstede (1980) people of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds often hold different cultures, thus they might act differently to the way they are expected. Hofstede has come up with different dimensions of culture to explain behaviour of people from different cultures. Hofstede‟s cultural dimensions can help any type of organisation to prevent cultural misunderstandings and failures while working together with people of a different culture. However, Ten Have et al. (2002) argue that, despite Hofstede‟s cultural dimensions, there is still conflict since no one can be exactly the same and people may or may not behave according to their nationality and culture for many reasons such as: changes in society as cultures develop and demographic changes, for example, as a result of relocation and immigration.

Having reviewed definitions of culture and culture related aspects, the following topics consider definitions of communities, their functions both in general and in relation to hill tribe societies.

2.6 Community

2.6.1 Definitions of community

According to Smith (2001) the term community has been used and has remained, since the late nineteenth century, to some extent associated with and between people. Many authors (e.g.,

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Harper and Dunham 1959; Pearce 1980; Prentice 1993; Snepeger et al. 1998) attempt to define the concept of community, however, despite the range of the existing literatures on the concept of community, researchers have not yet agreed on one definitive definition. People often interpret meaning to suit with their own purposes. Huang and Stewart (1996) referring to a review study conducted by Hillery (1995) of 94 definitions of the term community reached the conclusion that “all of the definitions deal with people, beyond this common basis, there is no agreement” (p.117).

Traditionally, the term community is commonly defined as a group of interacting people living in a particular local area and usually interacting or depending on each other for existence (Princeton 2008). However, Madrigal (1995) disagrees with the notion that a group of people living together in the same location can necessarily be concluded that they belong to the same community. Lee and Newby (1983) support the idea by pointing out that when people live close to one another in a particular area does not always mean that they are in the same community and share a certain beliefs or have anything to do with each other. In addition to that, one particular location may hold more than one community, such as the homosexual community, the elderly community, or communities defined by ethnic group (Smith 2001). Cohen (1985) offers a similar idea that community involves two related suggestions that the members of a group have something in common with each other; and the thing held in common distinguishes them in a significant way from the members of other possible groups. In this regard Williams and Lawson (2001) affirm that the most appropriate definition of community is simply defined as a group of people who share the same culture, value of beliefs and norms or common goals.

With regard to community level studies, Smith (2001) outlines community in two different ways:

Place: Territorial or place community can be seen as where people have something in common,

and this shared element is understood geographically. Another way of naming this is as „locality‟.

Interest: In interest or „elective‟ communities people share a common characteristic other than

place. They are linked together by factors such as religious belief, sexual orientation, occupation or ethnic origin. In this way it can be referred to as the „Catholic community‟ or the „Chinese community‟. In other words, a community holds people with a similar background who share a same culture and lifestyle.

Chavis et al. (1986) suggest that there is a strong possibility that by defining both place and interest the resulting communities overlap. Smith (2001) also asserts that place and interest

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communities may well happen together, for example in the case of places where many of those who live there work in the same industry – such as the case of Pa-Daung Karen tribal people in Mae Hong Son where the whole village agreed to be involved in tourism industry resulting in a „human zoo‟. Willmott (1989) argues that it is legitimate to add a third understanding of community – that of attachment – as communities of place or interest may not have a sense of shared identity.

2.6.2 The function of a community

The primary function of a community is to satisfy its members‟ needs (McMillan and Chavis 1986). Huang and Stewart (1996) propose that the role of a community is to reinforce people within the community to help each other achieve their common goals. Moreover, Spreight (1968) and McMillan and Chavis (1986) affirm that community plays an important role in connecting its members together and provides them with a sense of belonging. People often use their community membership to protect themselves from intimidation and threat which includes: language, dialect, dress, ritual etc. to separate “we” from “they” (McMillan and Chavis 1986). In addition the community acts as to influence members‟ behaviour by developing social norms to control its members (Wilkinson 1986). Surprisingly, community does not only influence the members by supporting them individually and collectively, but the individual can also influence its community (Sanders and Lewis 1976). Therefore, if members of the community have different needs and culture, it can debilitate the culture of the community and weaken a community as a whole (Cohen 1985; Reisinger 2009).

2.6.3 Hill tribe communities

Hill tribe communities are normally located in upland rural areas which are areas outside towns and cities and which include non urban areas such as countryside and mountain areas (Ryan 1991; Combs 2001). However, this study does not attempt to deal with the rural area as a whole but only to focus on hill tribe destinations which may also be considered as rural destinations. Therefore, a brief review of rural characteristics follows.

These areas have experienced limited growth due to several inherent disadvantages. The most obvious drawback is many of these destinations have limited resources and often face the problem of declining populations, they regularly experience the feeling of isolation, and suffer from being disconnected from major sources of investment and have poor economies of scale, all features which can be concluded as a characteristic of rural areas in general (Butler 1993; Pearce 1995; Cross and Nutley 1999).

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Sharpley (1997) believes that it is also difficult to define what is meant by rural areas because different people have different perspectives, may result in differing criteria by which areas are judged to be rural or urban. However, Lane (1994) disagrees by offering a different point of view namely that rurality is unique and easily identified as being:

1. Located in rural areas

2. Functionally rural –built upon the rural world‟s special features of small-scale enterprise, open space, contact with nature and the nature world, heritage, traditional societies and traditional practices.

3. Rural in scale – both in terms of buildings and settlements- and, therefore usually small- scale

4. Traditional in character, growing slowly and organically and connected with local families. It will often be very largely controlled locally and developed for the long-term food of the area.

5. Of many different kinds, representing the complex pattern of rural environment, economy, history and location

Lane (1994, p.14)

The definition of rural areas defined by Lane is consistent with the concept of hill tribe communities in this study as the communities are located in rural mountain area with close contact with nature. People in the communities more or less employ traditional practices. Houses and infrastructures are rather small and non-urban. People in the hill tribe communities often have tight relationship, they know each other and rather treat their neighbours as their family members rather than strangers.

Having identified community‟s aspects, the following section will address characteristics of society and review its definitions and type of change.

2.7 Social changes

2.7.1 Characteristics of society

A society is a group of interacting people living in a particular country, region or specific location who share a common culture, customs, laws (Oxford Dictionaries 2010). Over a period of time, a society will develop its own tradition, attitudes and a style of life which may be more or less distinctive (Supaap 2006). It is this way of life which is usually incorporated in the word „culture‟ (Lickorish and Jenkins 1997).

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