Culture

Culture is a broad and dynamic abstraction that encompasses a wide range of behaviors, ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that tend to be regionally inherited—unique to the groups of people in an area who share these traits, and varied between geographically disparate societies. The nature of culture, as a single entity, is difficult to describe, but there are elements in each culture, both relative and absolute, that can be understood and assessed for their influence and potential impact on one’s goals within that region or in interacting with the people of that particular culture. Much of the foundational research in this field is driven by a desire to more effectively perform business functions in foreign nations; nothing drives international interactions quite as strongly as the desire to make money, and so people seek to develop a keen understanding of the people who can help them achieve this goal. Increasingly, it’s being accepted that militaries can improve their own operational effectiveness by utilizing in-depth cultural assessments, as well. In January of 2013, US General and Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno, stated, “The biggest takeaway from Iraq and Afghanistan is the importance of understanding the prevailing culture and values.” During the same month and year, former National Security Council Director Nick Dowling, commented that, “[…] we have to be much more expeditionary. We have to be more intelligence-minded, more people-minded.