House and home in the world outlook of different cultures
Essay in Cross-cultural studies
Minsk 2008
Contents
Introduction
1. The choice of the place for the future house. 4
2. The choice of the time of the beginning of the construction works. 8
3. The process of house building. 9
4. A typical house, its orientation and structure. 11
5. The main zones of the house:
5.1. The zone of entrance. 13
5.2. The zone of cooking. 16
5.3. The zone of sleeping. 17
5.4. The zone of the sacred. 18
6. The difference in the attitude towards some objects:
6.1. A table. 19
6.2. A mirror. 20
Conclusion
References
House, as well as food, water and clothes is essential for man`s life. But a human being differs from animals; he wants to have not just a shelter but a place to satisfy all his necessities: to sleep, to eat, to hide himself from bad weather, to raise children, to worship God, etc. So he wants not just a house but a home. There are a lot of proverbs supporting the importance of home to a person: East or west, home is best; There is no place like home; My house is my fortress; and others. Such sayings exist in any language and in any culture. A house is a microlevel model of the Universe, so one can find a definite structure in it. Any house has zones with a special predestination, sacred objects, and there are always certain rules of living in a house. These zones, objects and rules differ from one culture to another, depending on the world outlook of a certain community, which in its turn has its roots in the religion of a nation, its traditions and historic heritage. That is why there are so many types of houses and ways of life in the world.
A person`s home as well as his spoken language and festive clothes can tell us what culture he belongs to, because consciously or unconsciously, one usually keeps to one`s native traditions, though it is rather difficult to do so in the modern world, especially in the city. Nevertheless, it is always very interesting to look deeper into the culture of other peoples` and of course into your own one and to try to compare them in any respect.
I am going to look at the Slavonic, Chinese and Madagascarian traditions concerning home. Slavonic – because Belarus is a Slavonic country; Chinese – because their traditions are very popular in our country as well as in the whole world; Madagascarian – to compare these two with something extremely exotic. I must mention that Slavonic traditions are close to those in other European countries as Europe has been Christian since the earliest times; Chinese traditions are also widespread in other Asian countries; and Madagascarian ones are stuck to in many African countries and on the isles of the Indian Ocean. Thus, comparing the three types of traditional culture I shall compare the outlook of three large regions of the world. It is rather difficult to find the roots of this difference; they probably lie in the mentality of nations worked up for thousands of years. Slavonic traditions are based on the Christian way of life, though one still can see there a strong influence of popular beliefs. The basis for the Chinese way of life is the understanding of the Universe as a mixture of different kinds of energy. As for Malagasies, they live in accordance with the belief that spirits rule the world. So any aspect of building a house has its own rules different from those in other cultures and sometimes even opposite to them.
I believe the best way to compare the traditions concerning home is to bring together the three points of view on one particular subject and to look for the difference. So it is necessary to single out the points on which the comparison will be based. In any culture the following points are taken into consideration when building a house: the choice of the time and the place of building, the process of building, the typical structure of a house, the main zones singled out in a house and on the territory around it, the main objects used in the house and the rules of people`s behaviour at home. So my task is to find the points of similarity and difference between three cultures in this respect by means of consequent comparison.
1. ............
