What’s the CWG?

–     cwg@aegee.org or join us on facebook –

Look for the culture in theatre, literature, art performances, in our habits and our beliefs, in our daily life. It might seem that is a “phenomenon” not matching at all with your age, your interests.

We challenge you to discover the meaning of this word, “culture”.

We would like to show you that culture is closer to you than it appears. You can find it in the way you behave, the way you think, the way you dress. You experience it in your every day life, in different ways.

CWG is a platform which allows all of us to SEE the fact that we are surrounded by culture. Allows us to learn about each other, about common and different cultural values. Let’s create together a space where we can give “culture” our own interpretation, meaning. A space where we can exchange our knowledge, build up our projects, learn in the AEGEE way about culture.

We dare you to explore it and to make it richer in content.

Let’s share our ideas, thoughts, opinions and experiences concerning culture, cultural projects, cultural events.

– Culture, what does that mean? Or better, what is culture? –

There is not one answer to these questions. Culture can be about heritage, literature, arts and media but culture is also about behaviour as culture can be defined as ‘those abilities, notions and forms of behaviour persons have acquired as members of society’ (Eriksen 2001: 3). However, this implies that there is a similarity between humans. Of course there is a similarity as culture exists in every society. But people acquire different notions, abilities and forms of behaviour and that makes them different due to culture (Eriksen, 2001: 3).

As AEGEE strives for a unified Europe without prejudices and fosters tolerance and cross border cooperation, the Culture Working Group is a necessary working group as every society has a different way of acting, thinking, thus behaviour. We strive to raise awareness of cultural differences within Europe, achieve an intercultural dialogue among (AEGEE) members with a different cultural background and increase the mutual understanding of the difficulties and, especially, the benefits of working and communicating with(in) intercultural teams. But that is not all: we also encourage our members to look  for culture in our daily life as culture is all around us: it is your roommate, a play at a theatre, literature, art performance, the way you dress, your university…

Back in 1996 a group of AEGEE members realized that our life is soaked by culture, especially if this is a life of AEGEE members that usually live and act in the intercultural environment. Already in 1997 the CWG was created. Since then this working group has been contributing to AEGEE by cultural education and raising awareness of cultural differences among the whole Network.

So, let’s share our ideas, thoughts, opinions and experiences about culture!

Source:

Erikson, Thomas Hylland. 2001. Small places, Large issues: an introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. 2nd edition. London: Pluto Press.