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Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach

Mar yam g. hamedani.

1 Center for Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions (SPARQ), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States

Hazel Rose Markus

2 Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States

U.S. Americans repeatedly invoke the role of “culture” today as they struggle to make sense of their increasingly diverse and divided worlds. Given the demographic changes, cultural interactions and hybridizations, and shifting power dynamics that many U.S. Americans confront every day, we ask how psychological scientists can leverage insights from cultural psychology to shed light on these issues. We propose that the culture cycle —a tool that represents culture as a multilayered, interacting, dynamic system of ideas, institutions, interactions, and individuals—can be useful to researchers and practitioners by: (1) revealing and explaining the psychological dynamics that underlie today’s significant culture clashes and (2) identifying ways to change or improve cultural practices and institutions to foster a more inclusive, equal, and effective multicultural society.

U.S. Americans are calling out the role of “culture” today as they struggle to make sense of their increasingly diverse and divided worlds. To say “It’s cultural,” or “It’s a culture clash,” or “We need a culture change” is becoming idiomatic. People invoke culture as they confront pressing issues in business, government, law enforcement, entertainment, education, and more, and as they grapple with power and inequality in the institutions and practices of these domains (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, imperialism). Headlines and social media feeds are populated daily with news of culture clashes or cultural divides that take place both within organizations and across society. From gender clashes between men and women in the workplace, to race clashes between the police and communities of color in American suburbs and cities, to political clashes between conservatives and liberals around the nation, cultural differences and cultural misunderstandings are consistently in the spotlight ( Armacost, 2016 ; Vance, 2016 ; Chang, 2018 ).

At the heart of these culture clashes are questions about the meaning and nature of social group differences, as well as the ways in which these differences are more often than not constructed as forms of inequality and marginalization ( Markus, 2008 ; Markus and Moya, 2010 ; Salter and Adams, 2013 ; Adams et al., 2015 ; Omi and Winant, 2015 ; Adler and Aycan, 2018 ). Given the demographic changes, cultural interactions and hybridizations, and shifting power dynamics that many U.S. Americans confront every day, we ask how psychological scientists can leverage insights from cultural psychology to shed light on these issues. We propose that the culture cycle —a schematic or tool that represents culture as a multilayered, interacting, dynamic system of ideas, institutions, interactions, and individuals—can be useful to researchers and practitioners by: (1) revealing and explaining the psychological dynamics that underlie today’s significant culture clashes and (2) identifying ways to change or improve cultural practices and institutions to foster a more inclusive, equal, and effective multicultural society.

The Culture Cycle

When psychological scientists theorize about the role of culture, the focus is often on how psychological processes are implicitly and explicitly shaped by features of the sociocultural contexts or worlds that people inhabit, as well as how these psychological processes in turn reflect and reproduce those sociocultural contexts or worlds ( Markus and Conner, 2014 ; Gelfand and Kashima, 2016 ; Cohen and Kitayama, 2019 ). Psychologists Morris et al. (2015) , for example, define culture as “a loosely integrated system of ideas, practices, and social institutions that enable coordination of behavior in a population” (p. 632). Other scholars (e.g., Shweder, 1991 , 2003 ; Adams and Markus, 2004 ), drawing on the insights of anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) , expand on this idea and also highlight the dynamic, ongoing processes by which “the cultural” and “the psychological” necessarily and mutually depend upon as well as co-construct one another:

Culture consists of explicit and implicit patterns of historically-derived and selected ideas and their embodiment in institutions, practices, and artifacts ; cultural patterns may, on one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action. (as summarized by Adams and Markus, 2004 , p. 341)

This definition conceptualizes culture as a system or a cycle. In this cycle, sociocultural patterns shape or guide people’s actions, while people’s actions, in turn, can either reinforce and reflect or contest and change these sociocultural patterns. To visually and conceptually represent the dynamic processes through which the cultural and the psychological interact and mutually constitute one another, we use a tool that we call the “culture cycle” ( Figure 1 ). This schematic depicts culture as a system of four, dynamically interacting and interdependent layers ( Fiske et al., 1998 ; Markus and Kitayama, 2010 ; Markus and Conner, 2014 ). Here, culture is made up of the ideas, institutions, and interactions that guide and reflect individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and actions ( Markus and Conner, 2014 ).

The culture cycle. Adapted from Fiske et al. (1998) , Markus and Conner (2014) , and Markus and Kitayama (2010) .

Analytically, the culture cycle starts from either the left-hand or the right-hand side. From the left, the ideas, institutions, and interactions of an individual’s mix of cultures shape the self, so that a person thinks, feels, and acts in ways that reflect and perpetuate these cultures. From the right, individuals participate in and create (i.e., reinforce, resist, and/or change) cultures to which other people, both in the present and throughout time, adapt. Psychologists typically focus on the individuals level , which includes identities, self-concepts, thoughts, feelings, mindsets, biases, and behaviors. These psychological processes can be culturally shaped as well as feed back into the cycle to shape culture (e.g., Markus and Kitayama, 2010 ; Varnum et al., 2010 ; Boiger and Mesquita, 2012 ).

The next layer of the culture cycle is the interactions level . As people interact with other people and with human-made products (i.e., cultural artifacts), their ways of life manifest in everyday situations that follow seldom-spoken norms about the right ways to behave at home, school, work, worship, and play. Guiding these practices are the everyday cultural products—the stories, songs, advertisements, social media, and tools (e.g., phones, laptops, tablets)—that make some ways to think, feel, and act easier, more fluid, or better supported by the particular worlds a person inhabits (e.g., Tsai et al., 2007 ; Morling and Lamoreaux, 2008 ; Lamoreaux and Morling, 2012 ).

The next layer of culture is made up of the institutions level , within which everyday interactions take place. Institutions spell out and formalize the rules for a society and include government, religious, legal, economic, educational, and scientific institutions. For the most part, people may be unaware of all the institutions, laws, and policies at play in their cultures. Yet they exert a formidable force by providing incentives that foster certain practices, interactions, and behaviors while inhibiting others (e.g., Hatzenbuehler et al., 2010 , 2014 ; Tankard and Paluck, 2017 ).

The last layer of the culture cycle is the ideas level , and it is made up of the pervasive, often invisible, historically derived and collectively held ideologies, beliefs, and values about what is good, right, moral, natural, powerful, real, and necessary that inform institutions, interactions, and ultimately, individuals (e.g., Hamedani et al., 2013 ; Leavitt et al., 2015 ; Master et al., 2016 ). Because of them, cultures can appear to have overarching themes or patterns that persist, to some extent, across time. To be sure, cultures have multiple exceptions to their own foundational rules and values. But they also contain general patterns that can be detected, studied, and changed.

A few clarifying notes on the culture cycle. First, all four interacting layers of the culture cycle are important and mutually depend upon one another; none is assumed to be more influential, theoretically prior to, or separable from the others. Second, cultures are always dynamic, never static, and can change or evolve over time. As such, all levels continually influence each other and a change at any one level can produce changes in other levels. Third, the culture cycle includes structures and structural dynamics and does not separate the concept of “culture” from “structure.” And finally, culture cycles are embedded within larger natural and ecological systems that can interact with and exert influence on a given culture.

Many different kinds of cultures can be mapped and analyzed using the culture cycle ( Cohen, 2014 ; Markus and Conner, 2014 ; Gelfand and Kashima, 2016 ; Cohen and Kitayama, 2019 ). Culture can be geographically based and focus on familiar distinctions—such as the East versus the West or the Global North versus the Global South—but it also encompasses other distinctions like social class or socioeconomic status; race, ethnicity, or tribe; gender and sexuality; region of the country, state, or city; religion; profession, workplace, or organization; generation; or immigration status. “Culture” or “cultural context” can serve as a label for any significant (i.e., socially meaningful) category associated with a set of shared ideas, practices, and products that structure and organize behavior. Since the cultural and the psychological make each other up, one way to change minds and behaviors is to change cultures, just as one way to change cultures is to change minds and behaviors. 1

Using the Culture Cycle to Understand Culture Clashes and Catalyze Change

We propose that addressing current culture clashes and divides through more inclusive, equal, and effective institutions and practices will require changing how people encounter and experience the meaning and nature of social group differences themselves ( Markus, 2008 ; Markus and Moya, 2010 ; Plaut, 2010 ). At the heart of today’s most timely culture clashes and divides is a pervasive process of devaluing the less powerful or non-dominant group in contrast with the more powerful or dominant group. In the process, differences are cast as the result of so-called negative and inherent shared behavioral characteristics or tendencies rather than as a matter of divergent life experiences or differential access to resources, power, and/or status—e.g., women = incompetent (versus men = competent), black = criminal (versus white = lawful), and liberals = weak (versus conservatives = strong; e.g., Prentice and Carranza, 2002 ; Eberhardt et al., 2004 ; Graham et al., 2012 ). To analyze how cultural differences are constructed and understood in a given setting, we recommend starting with the following set of orienting questions ( Figure 2 ). These questions are designed to help prospective culture changers map how social differences are constructed within a given culture cycle (e.g., as assets versus deficits, through colorblind versus multicultural ideologies), identify where inequalities exist (e.g., at the ideas, institutions, interactions, and/or individuals levels), and locate places within the culture cycle to intervene. To provide an example, we apply this method to unpack the cultural and psychological dynamics that underlie one culture clash prevalent on U.S. American college campuses today—the clash between underrepresented students (e.g., low-income students and/or students of color) and the mainstream (e.g., middle- to upper-class and White) culture of higher education ( Wong, 2015 ; Wong and Green, 2016 ).

Using the culture cycle to understand culture clashes and catalyze change: Mapping social group differences. Adapted from Markus and Hamedani (2019) .

The culture of American higher education, especially at elite colleges and universities, reflects and promotes assumptions about what it means to be “smart,” “educated,” and “successful.” These assumptions are not neutral, but are instead powerfully shaped by White, middle- to upper-class beliefs, norms, and values that privilege independence and innate intelligence ( Fryberg et al., 2013 ; Quaye and Harper, 2014 ; Canning et al., 2019 ). As a result, students of color and students from low-income or working-class backgrounds often feel excluded in these educational settings due to threats to their social identities (e.g., stereotypes about race and intelligence) or mismatches with their interdependent norms and values (e.g., achieving for one’s family or community instead of oneself; Ostrove and Long, 2007 ; Walton and Cohen, 2007 ; Stephens et al., 2012 ; Covarrubias and Fryberg, 2015 ). These experiences of exclusion can lead students to question whether they fit or belong in college. Students from low-income or working-class backgrounds can also be unfamiliar with the “rules of the game” needed to succeed in higher education, which can undermine their sense of empowerment and efficacy ( Housel and Harvey, 2010 ; Reay et al., 2009 ). These psychological challenges work alongside disparities in resources and pre-college preparation to fuel a persistent achievement gap between these students and their advantaged peers ( Astin and Oseguera, 2004 ; Bowen et al., 2005 ; Sirin, 2005 ; Goudeau and Croizet, 2017 ). As such, the culture clash that results from participating in mainstream college environments can systematically disadvantage underrepresented students ( Stephens et al., 2012 ; Brannon et al., 2015 ; Covarrubias et al., 2016 ).

What kinds of culture clashes do underrepresented students experience at each level of a college or university’s culture cycle? Where might practitioners intervene to make a college or university’s values, policies, and practices more inclusive and equitable? Using the orienting questions in Figure 2 , we can map this culture clash as well as corresponding interventions at each layer or level of the cycle. Starting with the individuals level ( Figure 2 : How are people experiencing their own or others’ social differences? ), research shows that underrepresented students often feel like they do not fit or belong on college and university campuses, which can be due to repeated everyday experiences like microaggressions that take place at the interactions level ( Figure 2 : How are people or groups interacting with one another with respect to social group differences? ) during intergroup encounters in classrooms or in the dorms ( Yosso et al., 2009 ; Sue, 2010 ). These factors can lead students to experience the college environment as threatening to their social identities and to view their social differences as deficits or as something that puts them at a disadvantage.

At the institutions level ( Figure 2 : How are social group differences formalized at the institutional level in terms of policies, organizational structures, or programs? ), these threats to fit or belonging can be reinforced in multiple ways, including a lack of representation in the college curriculum (e.g., not seeing people with your background reflected in lecture examples, readings, and research), and in positions of authority throughout the university (e.g., as faculty and administrators; Brannon et al., 2015 ; Quaye and Harper, 2014 ). Further, at the ideas level [ Figure 2 : How are social group differences ( e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, social class ) conceptualized or represented at the ideas level in terms of norms, values, and ideologies? ], while many college and universities today claim to value diversity, they rarely do so in ways that include and affirm underrepresented students’ backgrounds and experiences—that challenge prevailing assumptions about what it means to be a smart, educated, or successful student (i.e., an independent and innately intelligent student; Chang, 2002 ; Stephens et al., 2012 ). Underrepresented students’ backgrounds and ways of being, therefore, are frequently devalued or seen as deficits in mainstream colleges and universities rather than valued and seen as assets or resources, which undermines such commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion and reinforces color- or identity-blindness.

To change their cultures, colleges and universities need to do more to challenge how students’ social differences are experienced and constructed at each layer of the culture cycle. Research suggests several evidence-based strategies to catalyze culture change and make higher education more inclusive and equitable. To help underrepresented students feel more included and empowered at the individuals level , for instance, colleges and universities can do more to value and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion as crucial components of a high-quality education for a twenty-first century workforce in their missions and institutional strategies at the ideas level ( Hurtado, 2007 ; Gurin et al., 2013 ). Next, at the institutions level , colleges and universities can integrate intergroup dialogue classes and other learning experiences about diversity, equity, and inclusion into the college curriculum for all students and across all courses of study, as well as implement hiring and promotion policies that foster the diversification of faculty and administrators ( Hurtado, 2005 ; Gurin et al., 2013 ; Brannon, 2018 ; Stephens et al., 2019 ). At the interactions level , colleges and universities can better support students by providing opportunities for them to expand their networks and connect with mentors and alumni that share their backgrounds and have found pathways to success ( Girves et al., 2005 ; Harper, 2008 ). While some of these strategies focus on transforming the norms of higher education itself, others involve better supporting students on their journeys through institutions that still have much work to do. None of these changes alone are a panacea, and may fail to support long-term and sustainable change if they are not built into and fostered by the larger college culture as well as lived out and reinforced through the everyday actions of the people in that culture.

Ideally, culture change is most likely to progress and have the greatest impact when there is change at each level of the culture cycle and these changes work together to support one another. As noted previously, all four levels of the culture cycle are equally influential. When it comes to culture change, however, culture changers need to consider whether the levels are working together to reinforce or buttress one another, or whether they might be working against one another, causing spots of tension and misalignment in a culture ( Porras and Silvers, 1991 ; Morgan, 2006 ; Kotter, 2012 ; Gibbons, 2015 ; Coyle, 2018 ; see the Figure 2 “cross-level” questions). For example, if colleges and universities express a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion at the ideas level , but fail to take a hard look at how their current policies, programs, and practices are impacting underrepresented students at the institutions and interactions levels , diversity efforts are likely to be seen as disingenuous by student communities and culture change efforts are likely to have a limited influence on the institution as a whole.

Prospective culture changers also need to consider whether people within a given cultural context have consensus or a shared understanding of what is taking place and why in a given setting (see also the Figure 2 “cross-level” questions). For example, students from underrepresented groups and administrators at colleges and universities (many of whom are from majority groups) may have divergent perspectives on how to make change in their institutions with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Students may favor more bottom-up, transformative efforts that are instigated by their peers, while administrators might favor more top-down, incremental changes brought about from long-term institutional study. While both groups might have valid perspectives, they might buy into and trust different culture change strategies. Culture change efforts that ignore the ideas and strategies of the lower status or low power side of the clash, however, are likely to be less effective than those that incorporate them.

Concluding Comments

The phrase “It’s cultural” underscores the frustration that people feel when a problem is big, messy, and seems intractable. Sometimes people use it as a way to say that a problem is systemic, but they also often use it as a way to evade responsibility and say that a significant societal problem is not really their problem. We do not deny that culture change is difficult work and may have unintended consequences. Culture changers need to keep in mind how the interconnected, shifting dynamics that make up the culture cycle afford certain ways of being while constraining or downwardly constituting others, and that these dynamics can change or rebalance when intervening in the cycle. Culture changers also need to recognize that to foster more inclusive, equal, and effective institutions and practices, the deeper work will involve changing how cultures construct the meaning and nature of social group differences themselves.

Given that psychologists are typically trained to focus on the individual and sometimes the interactional levels, they tend to zero in on changing people’s mindsets or construals without fully considering how these micro- or meso-level changes might be blocked rather than supported by the larger institutional and social forces at play. On the other hand, practitioners and policymakers often focus on macro-level social and institutional factors and, in turn, do not pay close enough attention to whether the changes have resonance and carry over to the interactional and individual levels. Both psychologists and practitioners alike can also overlook the power individuals have to change their cultures in bottom-up ways through their actions, by instead focusing on how cultures shape people rather than how people also shape their cultures. With these considerations in mind, a culture cycle approach can be useful to scholars and practitioners alike to help them anticipate areas of misalignment and tension, forecast unanticipated consequences, and foster more holistic, dynamic, and multidirectional approaches to culture change.

Author Contributions

Both authors contributed to the theory, conceptualization, and writing of the paper. MH had primary responsibility for writing the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 The kind of intentional or strategic culture change that we discuss here differs from other significant work in the field on cultural evolution or long-term social change, which is primarily concerned with demonstrating and documenting how cultures or societies shift, change, or evolve across time (e.g., Twenge et al., 2012 ; Greenfield, 2013 ; Varnum and Grossmann, 2017 ).

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Culture Clash as a Great Conflict Research Paper

Culture is a people’s way of life. It can also be defined as a set of traditions adopted by certain groups of people. When we define culture, we have to talk about the cultural values, which are the principles, or qualities that a group of people will tend to view as good or right (Peterson 22). Different people from different parts of the world have different ways of life. Some carry on activities not carried out by other people elsewhere.

The culture of people includes the food they eat, dances, their race, their way of dressing, and religion just to mention but a few (Peterson 17). However, violent activities such as stoning, mutilation, killing and forceful abortions cannot be termed as part of people’s way of life.

That is, crime and criminal activities cannot be termed as part of people’s culture. The culture of people can remain the same or change with time, especially as people become more civilized. The change can also arise because of a prolonged exposure to a different culture. The exposure to these different cultures can result to positive or negative changes (Haggis and Susanne 18).

To some people, an activity carried out by others is not right before them. For example, different groups of people have different modes of dressing especially for woman. Some religions do not allow the exposure of some parts of the woman’s body like the hair and the legs, while according to others it is very much okay (Haggis and Susanne 104). This can be a great conflict if the two sets of people are to live in the same location.

Circumcision is a form of initiation passed over very many generations up to the present one. Still, there are some communities who to them, circumcision is a taboo. Therefore, when such people with different cultures come together, conflicts can arise. This happens especially when the two groups of people differ with respect to a certain activity carried out by either of them.

The integration of different cultures in one environment leads to disruption of traditions. Contacts between different cultures are also viewed as cultural clashes for they are bound to result in undesirable consequences or even destruction of one or all the cultures (Haggis and Susanne 7). Therefore, culture clash by definition is a conflict that occurs when people with different cultural values come together.

The way of life of people is a measure of their level of civilization. The evolution of man from an ape has seen him change from being primitive to being modern. Thus, culture refers to the acquisition of civilization, which is a process of social development (Haggis and Susanne 18).

The lack of change of people to the new cultures is normally referred to as under civilization. New inventions especially to do with technology normally increase the rate of civilization. Similarly, education makes people to be more civilized. So to say, education and the ever-changing technology can determine the way of life of people.

When people at different levels of civilization are integrated, conflicts will definitely arise because the people will differ in a variety of things. This is because traditions and habits of different people can come into a conflict. The fundamental divisions in humanity in terms of ethnicity, religion, or civilization can lead to new conflicts (Haggis and Susanne 39).

One example of a culture-clashing event is in the issue abortion. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy. Various circumstances force women to decide to have an abortion. Most of the times, cases of abortion are based on unwanted pregnancies. The only exception is when a woman is willing to have a child but due to health complications, the doctors advise on an abortion (Keown 99).

Others proceed with it because they cannot afford to have children mainly because they are not prepared in terms of finances. They do not want to fail in giving their children quality life or maybe they do not want to strain in the process of bringing up the child.

Getting a child out of wedlock is also a taboo to some people, and executing it can put one in a social dilemma. Therefore, many prefer to do away with the pregnancy. Most young girls will prefer to have an abortion in order to hide the pregnancies from their parents. In other cases, their parents order them to do it. Other reasons for abortion include the need to continue with education or being in a demanding career.

There has been a big conflict between pro-life and pro-choice supporters especially in the United States of America where abortion has been legalized. Pro-life supporters do not advocate for abortion while the pro-life supporters believe that it is a woman’s choice. Most of the pro-life supporters are mainly religious people.

Some countries have legalized abortion, which has led to a very big debate in the whole world, regarding its authorization. The issue has brought about a great conflict between these two groups of people. According to the religious people, abortion is a sin because it is termed as killing (Keown 20).

This is because they believe that life begins after conception and not birth. Once a woman becomes pregnant, she carries a life in her womb, which deserves due respect. According to them, it undermines human dignity because it deprives a living being the right to live. On the other hand, the pro-choice supporters believe that every female has the legal right to choose whether to continue with a pregnancy or terminate it (Legg 2). The issue has brought about a lot of conflict between the two classes of people.

The Supreme Court in the United States of America, gave women the right to have an abortion if they so wish in the year 1973 (Legge 120). The issue has brought about a big clash between the government and its supporters in the issue and the pro life supporters. Up to date it has faced much opposition especially from the Catholic Church.

There have been many forums held to press the government to do away with the law. The pro-life supporters do not see the reason as to why the government should pass a law that allows the killing of innocent unborn babies. On the other hand, the government and the pro-choice supporters do not recognize the fetus as a person. This has created a big debate as to when life begins.

Other countries have tried to pass the law in vain because, among them there are those who do not support the idea. For instance, in china, the law sometimes allows abortion. The presence of religions in such countries plays a very great role in rejecting the legalization of abortion. Apart from abortion, Pro-life groups do not agree with any activity, which leads to lose of life like the death penalty, assisted suicide, and war among others.

The pro-life supporters believe that the government has every right to preserve all human life. It is conservative where the pro-life ethnic conflicts with personal autonomy, conservative, and liberal where the pro-life ethnic conflicts with government policy. On the contrary, Pro-choice supporters believe that there is unlimited autonomy for individuals with regard to their reproductive systems given that they do not interfere with the autonomy of other people.

This is to mean that, a growing fetus is part of the reproductive system and not a person. The Supreme Court in the United States ruled that the fetus was not a person and therefore, did not require protection from the constitution until it reached a point of viability (Legge 120). This has increased the tension between the two groups of people.

The arguments between the pro-life and the pro-choice supporters on the issue of life differ a lot and that is what has brought about such a conflict. It has been the culture of religious people to preserve life at all cost because it is sacred. On the other hand, pro-choice supporters do not see the importance of protecting a person who has not yet been born.

The pro-life supporters argue that the fetus life is sacred just like any other human life and so the government must protect it (Keown 37). On the other hand, the pro-choice movement argues that there is no proven human personhood in pregnancies. Therefore, the government should not restrict a woman’s right to decide whether to continue with a pregnancy or not. With these different arguments, these two groups of people will never come to an agreement.

The pro-choice supporters in the United States of America argue that there is no scientific prove for the existence of souls but religion teaches that the soul exists and it is sacred because it is created by God and should not be interfered with (Van11). As said earlier, religious people believe that life begins after conception.

The difference between that life and the life in us is that, that life is inside another life but then, they are two different lives. Therefore, abortion deserves the treatment of a murder case. Women have no right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, for they will be taking away the life of another person.

There is a conflict between the people and the government of the United States because it does not acknowledge the existence of an immortal soul whose life begins at conception. According to the government, there is no personhood in such a fetus and thus it deserves no rights to be accorded to it as given to other human beings (Legge 120). Therefore, women have a right to decide whether to continue with a pregnancy or to terminate it if they so wish. The pro-life supporters do not agree with that.

There is a big conflict between various theological traditions in the United States of America about when life begins. That is the reason as to why there is a big disparity on the issue of abortion. There are theological traditions that teach that the soul does not begin at conception but rather long after the fetus starts to make some movements.

That may be at end of the second trimester or at the beginning of the third trimester. Others believe that the implantation of a soul takes place at birth while others teach that the soul implantation takes place after birth (Van 22). The funniest of all is that there are still others that believe that there is no an immortal soul.

These theological traditional differences make people to come into conflict on the issue of abortion. If the soul implantation takes place after the fetus begins to make some movements, then terminating the pregnancy before it reaches that stage is not bad. Similarly, if the soul implantation occurs at or after birth, then abortion deserves authorization. If there lacks an immortal soul, then abortion should be just something so normal like other daily activities, something that the pro-life supporters do not agree with.

The pro choice supporters argue that research indicates that all parts of the human body are alive apart from the hair and the nails. However, the removal of some parts of the body like the tonsils and the appendix is possible on medical grounds to save the life of a person.

As such, some pro-choice supporters argue that if these parts can be removed and they are part of a life, then a woman should be granted the choice of termination of pregnancy if she so wishes. This is because they do not term the fetus growing within the womb of the woman as a separate being but as a part of her own reproductive system (Van 10). The pro-life supporters do not agree with that and hence the never-ending debate.

To avoid culture clash, people should interact with other cultures and try to fit into each other’s traditions. This will definitely make the people get to understand other people’s way of life and hence appreciate them. This will bring about respect for the people’s backgrounds, races, and religions.

The diversity of cultures makes the world a beautiful place because if we were to behave in the same way, there would no need to travel to different parts of the world and see what other people do. Many tourists travel from different parts of the world to different destinations in order to experience them.

Works Cited

Haggis, Jane and Susanne Schaech. Culture and Development: A Critical Introduction . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. Print.

Keown, John. Abortion, Doctors and the Law: Some Aspects of the Legal Regulation of Abortion in England from 1803 to 1982 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.

Legge, Jerome S. Abortion Policy: An Evaluation of the Consequences for Maternal and Infant Health . Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985. Print.

Peterson, Brooks. Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures . Yarmouth, Me. [u.a.: Intercultural Press, 2004. Print.

Van, Coops M. R. Pro-life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Spirit! Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2007. Print.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Odyssey — Culture Clash

A Clash of Cultures in The Odyssey

• Categories: The Odyssey

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Words: 1621 |

Pages: 3.5 |

Published: Jun 29, 2018

Words: 1621 | Pages: 3.5 | 9 min read

Works Cited

• Fowler, R. (2002). The classical age of Greece. Cambridge University Press.
• Hamilton, E. (2000). The Greek way. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Homer. (1998). The Odyssey. Translated by R. Fagles. Penguin Classics.
• Kearsley, R. (Ed.). (2010). The ancient Greeks: An introduction. Routledge.
• Morris, I. (1999). The Greeks: History, culture, and society. Prentice Hall.
• Nagy, G. (1999). The best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the hero in Archaic Greek poetry. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Powell, B. (2001). Homer and the origin of the Greek alphabet. Cambridge University Press.
• Rutherford, I. (2004). Homer. Oxford University Press.
• Snodgrass, A. M. (2006). Archaeology and the emergence of Greece. Cornell University Press.
• Woodard, R. D. (2008). The ancient languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press.

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Culture clash reflection

A personal reflection on culture clash. Conflict brought on by disparities in people's values and beliefs that put them at odds with one another is known as a "culture clash." People come from various cultural origins and have various standards for one another (Seckinelgin, 2009). When I am in a scenario where there are cultural clashes, I might sometimes lose perspective and find it difficult to handle, especially when it comes to viewpoints that are related to my background. Conflict is ascribed to interactions between individuals with opposing opinions and values.

I discovered that cultural differences are not essence, trying to abolish cultures, but primarily to make every man and woman in the society live with autonomy and integrity that should not be subverted or violated. A healthy environment is when all human beings exist in interdependence with others, regardless of cultural background (Seckinelgin, 2009). This relationship cannot be promoted in an atmosphere of hostilities. There has to be a general understanding of fundamental principles of what it means to be a man or a woman as part of humanity.

There are a million cultures across the world, the conflict in cultures come in equal measure. The bottom line is the peaceful coexistence of all human races. The society should reflect on its learning and evaluate their different values and beliefs by the principles of fundamental human rights. Good cultures, strengthen relationships and coexistence while bad cultures do the contrary (Seckinelgin, 2009). Cultures, therefore, should not be used as tools for destruction or oppression, but a tool to make life worth living by every living soul, including the environment and animals in the whole universe.

Seckinelgin, H. (2009). Global Social Policy and International Organizations: Linking Social Exclusion to Durable Inequality.Global Social Policy, 9(2), pp.205-227.

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The Odyssey

Culture clash michael shen.

Generalizations and associations seem to permeate the culture of every human society. If this were not the case, there would be no need for the sociological study of ethnocentricity. The Odyssey of Homer strongly exhibits this quality of judging cultures and other peoples based on criteria defined by its own ancient Greek civilization. In this way, one can draw a parallel between Ancient China and Ancient Greece. The Chinese once viewed their country as the center of the universe; their values, beliefs, and customs were the standards against which they measured everything and everyone else. From The Odyssey, one can detect a similar methodology in the way in which the Greeks assessed the level of sophistication of other cultures by using their own familiar conventions as universal standards for defining humanity. Through The Odyssey, one can isolate three main methods the Greeks used in their cultural classifications: hospitality, story-telling, and diet. However, in order to appreciate fully the importance of such standards of comparison, one should examine the context in which each criterion was used. Since Homer does not directly list each criterion one by one, one might have to give a cursory examination of the attributes...

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Culture Clash

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Ms. White, a teacher in an isolated rural community, is teaching her 1st graders how to tell time. She points to a clock, telling her students that “It’s 10 o’clock because the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 10.”

“What time is it?” she asks the students. Many of the white children raise their hands, eager to answer. The black students sit silently. A few give her a puzzled look.

Ms. White concludes that many of her black students do not know the answer, and she silently makes a note to herself to revisit the concept with them later.

But researchers who study the role that culture plays in learning say that Ms. White may have the wrong take on what is going on with her students. What is really happening, they say, is that two distinct cultures are bumping up against one another, forming an invisible wall that stands in the way of learning and communication.

Like their teacher, the white children in this community grew up in families where adults routinely quizzed children the way their teacher does. “What color is this?” a parent might say, pointing to a red ball.

In the African-American children’s families, such questions were posed only when someone genuinely needed to know the answer. “What is she asking us for?” some of the black children might have wondered. “She just told us it was 10 o’clock.”

Cultural roadblocks such as this one are becoming increasingly common in schools across the country. It is estimated that by the turn of the century, up to 40 percent of the children in the nation’s classrooms will be nonwhite. Yet, the nation’s teaching force is overwhelmingly white and becoming more so. African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American teachers now make up just 10 percent of the teaching force, according to one estimate.

These kinds of demographics have lent a new urgency to studies on the role of culture in the classroom. At times controversial, the research has been carried out since the late 1960s by sociolinguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and, more recently, by education scholars as well. Their work paints complex portraits of the subtle interplay between a school’s ways of knowing, talking, thinking, and behaving and those of students from a wide variety of non-mainstream, ethnic backgrounds.

However complicated the findings are, one point is clear: Culture is a phenomenon that goes both ways.

“We take the position that school was never a culturally neutral enterprise,” says A. Wade Boykin, the co-director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk at Johns Hopkins and Howard universities. From at least the start of the 20th century, one job of schools was to help assimilate the large numbers of immigrants flocking to the nation’s shores. And, to a lesser degree, they are still striving to do just that.

But the nation’s predominantly white educators have been slow to recognize that their own backgrounds--and the culture of the school--have a bearing on learning. And, rather than think of minority students as having a culture that is valid and distinct from theirs, they sometimes think of the youngsters as deficient. Even now, studies on minority students are lumped in the field’s literature under such headings as “culturally deprived” or “culturally disadvantaged.”

“It has been our previously homogeneous cultural condition that prevented us from understanding that we were not perceiving culture because it was invisible to us,” says Roland G. Tharp, the director of the federally funded Center on Meeting the Educational Needs of Diverse Student Populations, based at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “It’s like fish don’t know there’s water.”

Once teachers realize they are part of the cultural equation in their classrooms, these researchers say, they must find ways to recognize the culture of their students, to acknowledge it in their teaching, and to make clear to students from different backgrounds the previously unstated expectations that the mainstream culture--and the school--has for them.

Although the above account of Ms. White’s class is fictional, the tendencies it describes in the students and teachers are not. They come from a study by Shirley Brice Heath, an anthropologist and sociolinguist who spent several years in the 1970s living in two unnamed poor communities in a rural mountain area near Southern mill towns. The largely white community she called Roadville, the predominantly black community, Trackton.

In addition to noticing that there were differences in the way the two communities used questions, Heath also found that they had distinct ways of telling stories, rearing children, and using toys and reading material. And the children of Trackton and Roadville reflected their communities in the way they behaved in their classrooms.

Heath’s work was chronicled in the 1983 book Ways with Words. But studies with other groups of children have found similar distinctions. More important, they suggest that accommodating these distinctions can make a difference in children’s learning.

Kathryn Au, a University of Hawaii researcher, noticed that the stories that Native Hawaiian children told in their classrooms mirrored the “talk stories” told by adults in their communities. In these stories, two people, speaking in rhythmic alternation, relate events together.

In a traditional classroom, children who spoke in that manner would be penalized for talking out of turn. But Au found that successful Native Hawaiian teachers could use the “talk story” patterns to help children better understand what they were reading in school. And non-native teachers could learn to do the same.

“Teachers who want to learn different cultural styles can certainly do that,” Au says. “We have a lot of evidence that shows that good teaching is only good teaching with respect to a particular cultural context.”

But culture also manifests itself in ways that are less visible than a child’s manner of speaking or behaving.

“It’s just as important to realize that the cultural value systems in which children grow up also influence their development,” Patricia Marks Greenfield, a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles, said in a presentation made last spring to the Urban Education National Network. Like the Native Hawaiians Au has studied, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans all have strong traditions emphasizing collectivist values, according to Greenfield.

And sometimes, those values clash with the traditional emphasis in schools on individual learning and competition. For example, Greenfield says, when groups of white teachers and Hispanic parents are asked to respond to hypothetical child-rearing scenarios, they answer in markedly different ways.

In one such scenario, taken from a pilot experiment Greenfield and her colleagues conducted, participants were told: “Erica tells her mother that she got the highest grade in the class on her math test. She says she is really proud of herself for doing so well, and for doing the best in the class. She says she guesses she is really smart.”

Asked how Erica’s mother should respond, a white, middle-class teacher said the mother should agree emphatically that, yes, Erica certainly is smart and her grade shows that she can achieve anything she puts her mind to. In contrast, a Hispanic immigrant mother answered, “She should congratulate her but tell her not to praise herself too much ... she should not think so much of herself.”

Overall, Greenfield says, 80 percent of the teachers responded to the scenarios they were given in ways that could be considered individualistic. Hispanic immigrant mothers gave answers deemed collectivistic 90 percent of the time.

Some experts also believe history plays a role in a child’s cultural development. John U. Ogbu, a well-known anthropologist from the University of California at Berkeley, believes that minority cultural groups can be classified in two ways--voluntary and involuntary immigrants. The voluntary immigrants, such as the Irish, the Italians, and other European immigrants of the early 20th century and Punjabi Indians of today, came to the United States looking for political freedom or better economic circumstances. They were happy to occupy the lowest rungs on the occupational ladder and considered their menial positions better than the jobs they had left behind.

Involuntary minorities, on the other hand, are people who came to be part of the United States “permanently against their will through slavery, conquest, colonization, or forced labor,” according to Ogbu. In this category, he places African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Native Hawaiians.

This second group is more likely to actively oppose the conventions of the dominant middle-class culture--even if adopting them would mean raising one’s position on the social ladder. In one high school in the District of Columbia, for example, Ogbu and his colleague, Signithia Fordham, found that African-American students avoided 17 different behaviors and attitudes that they considered “white.” These ranged from speaking standard English to being on time. They also resented their high-achieving peers, accusing them of “acting white.”

But Ogbu’s theory has its detractors. For example, Howard’s Boykin says that what those black students may really resent is not good grades. Rather, they may be criticizing behaviors displayed by the high-achieving students that reflect a more competitively oriented value system over one that places the welfare of the group above the individual.

To succeed in school and in the job market, African-Americans--and other minority groups as well--sometimes have to learn to mediate between their home and school cultures. And research suggests that educators can help them bridge those gaps by pointing out clearly what the rest of society expects from them, while at the same time affirming their own culture.

Ms. White, for example, might have simply explained to the children that, even though she obviously knew what time it was, she wanted to see if they knew, too. And she might have asked the same question in different ways or put the question in another context, say, a problem to be solved. It would not mean giving different lessons to her black students than she gives to their white classmates.

“All children should learn to work in a variety of cultural contexts,” Boykin says.

In her book Other People’s Children, Lisa D. Delpit of Georgia State University describes how one Native Alaskan teacher helps her students learn to switch from standard English to “village English,” the dialect they use at home. The teacher draws two columns on the blackboard, one for “Our Heritage Language” and one for “Formal English,” and then writes equivalent statements in each column. The class spends a lot of time on the “heritage” section, exploring all the phrases’ nuances.

“That’s the way we say things. Doesn’t it feel good? Isn’t it the absolute best way of getting that idea across?” the teacher asks. Then, she informs her students, who live in a remote part of the state, that there are people who judge others by the way they talk or write.

“Unlike us, they have a hard time hearing what people say if they don’t talk exactly like them. ... We’re going to learn two ways to say things,” she adds. “Then, when we go to get jobs, we’ll be able to talk like those people who only know and can only really listen to one way. Maybe after we get the jobs we can help them to learn how it feels to have another language, like ours, that feels so good.”

Brenda Townsend, an assistant professor of education at the University of South Florida in Tampa, takes a similar approach with African-American students. She recalls in particular one group of boys attending a predominantly white school who were always getting suspended for getting in trouble on the bus. She taught them how to talk with one another in a way that didn’t look to white teachers like arguing.

“They were like, ‘Wow, nobody ever told us that,’” she says. After those lessons, the suspensions ended.

The problem with studies that focus on one ethnic group or another, however, is that they can lead to stereotyping. “We need to be very careful when we speak about cultural groups,” says Walter Secada, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Yes, there is a core there. But to talk to anyone who belongs to any group and expect certain things about them would be a mistake.”

It is a danger that proponents of cross-cultural studies readily recognize. “When you read a lot of stuff written even 10 years ago, it’s sort of like a recipe,” says Sandra H. Fradd, a University of Miami researcher who is studying cross-cultural learning in science with her colleague, Okhee Lee. “It was like, ‘If you’re working with Hispanics, this is what you should be doing.’”

“But there’s a difference between a stereotype and a pattern,” she says. “We’re trying to say these are predictable ways these students perform.”

“I think you do more harm by ignorance,” adds Greenfield of UCLA. “We need to respect differences and try to understand them but that doesn’t mean that we have to make assumptions.”

The other drawback to this line of research, however, is a practical one. Teachers cannot possibly learn the traditions and discourse patterns of every cultural group they will one day encounter in their classrooms. Moreover, characteristics and beliefs that are common among Mexican-Americans may be different from those of Puerto Ricans or Cuban immigrants, even though all three groups speak the same language.

“There’s always heterogeneity, the more closely you look,” says Ken Zeichner, a professor of teacher education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What we emphasize is to teach teachers how to learn about their students.”

Some school districts, Zeichner notes, even pay their teachers to spend the week before school starts visiting with the families of their students.

Other researchers, such as Luis Moll at the University of Arizona, also suggest that teachers make use of the hidden resources they find in the families they meet. A Mexican-American mother may come in and talk about candy-making; a father might discuss mining or construction work.

But Sharon Nelson-Barber, a researcher who has studied Native American students and teachers, suggests that teachers also exercise caution with these kinds of approaches.

“In one of the communities where I lived, you never would visit someone if you were not part of that person’s world,” says Nelson-Barber, a senior research associate for WestEd, formerly the Far West Laboratory. “What you could do is drive up very close to the house and stop. If people were interested, they would come out and talk to you. How would anyone know this?”

She says she has studied teachers who work on Native-American reservations but live some distance away. They keep in touch with their students’ worlds by keeping a post office box on the reservation, shopping at the local trading post, and taking part in other community activities.

The University of California’s Tharp proposes a slightly different tack. He and his colleagues have sifted through thousands of what they call “monocultural” studies--in other words, research that focuses on a single ethnic or racial group.

“In my view, there’s been a very big shift in the past 10 years from the specific compatibility of schools and specific cultures to how to more generally respond--in what ways do schools need to act to be more responsive?” Tharp says. “Because, as it turns out, all kids need to be comfortable with the classroom culture.”

Virtually all the studies, Tharp says, point to the need for schools to place learning in the context of the values and experiences of the students they serve. In the Native American communities with which Nelson-Barber works, that might mean teaching science, for example, through discussions of local fishing practices and tide patterns.

“We’re not talking fantasy land,” Tharp says, “many schools have been able to do this and it increases the involvement and achievement of communities to do so. You can’t run a school like it’s a spaceship from another planet that just landed in town.”

He says the research also shows that schools need to put a higher priority on explicitly teaching, all day long, whatever the language of instruction is--be it standard English, another language, or the specific vocabulary of the subject matter being taught.

“Every subject matter has its own language, its own rules for how you make sentences,” he says.

Tharp also suggests that engaging students in joint, productive activity, such as putting out a newspaper, will allow them to work in the discourse patterns and cultural styles that feel most comfortable for them.

“It’s not the same thing as cooperative learning,” he says. “Everybody may not organize joint activities in the same way.”

He says studies also suggest that dialogue between teachers and students has to take place more often than has been the case in the past.

The bottom line, researchers agree, is that cultural considerations need to play a bigger role in the classroom and in teacher education programs than they do now. It is a viewpoint that is not universally accepted in the education field. Critics assert that some teaching methodologies are so powerful they can overcome the mismatch between a student’s culture and that of the school.

But cultural researchers note that, whether it’s recognized or not, culture is the lens through which everyone sees the world.

“This is not a sideshow,” Tharp says. “This is the big tent.”

Roland G. Tharp, the director of the Center on Meeting the Educational Needs of Diverse Student Populations, a federally funded research center at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has pored over thousands of studies on cross-cultural learning. All of the studies, he says, point to four basic ways educators can enhance learning for students of diverse cultural groups.

• Education has to be put in the context of the experiences and values of the students’ communities.
• Schools need to be relentless and explicit in teaching students the language of instruction--be it standard English, another language, or the specific vocabulary and rules that are unique to the subject matter being taught.
• Students need to be engaged in joint productive activities, such as putting out a newspaper, that allow them to work in ways that are culturally familiar.
• Teachers need to engage in more purposeful, two-way conversations with students.

Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom . New York: The New Press.

Greenfield, P.M., & Cocking, R.R. (1996). Cross-cultural roots of minority child development . Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Heath, S.B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms . New York: Cambridge University.

Hollins, E., King, J., & Wayman, W. (Eds.). (1994). Teaching diverse populations . Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York.

Moll, L. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms . Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132-41.

Tharp, R., & Gallimore, R. (1988). Rousing minds to life; Teaching, learning and schooling in social contest . New York: Cambridge University.

A version of this article appeared in the April 10, 1996 edition of Education Week as Culture Clash

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On Politics

How i learned to love the rerun election.

Have you got the Biden-Trump blues?

By Jess Bidgood

When our pollsters recently asked voters how they felt about the coming election, they heard words that could also describe rancid garbage, personal regret or a meteor headed for Earth.

Stinks. Ashamed. DOOMED.

“Lousy,” offered Joe Ruddach, 61, the owner of auto and coffee businesses who lives in Spokane, Wash., when I called him last week. He added words like “anxious” and “stressed” for good measure.

“I wish they could get younger people,” he said with a sigh, “or someone that could bring people together.”

I’m the new host of this newsletter, and I get it. The rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump feels inherently tired, or perhaps inescapably depressing. The primaries ended quickly; the campaign trail is quiet. Both men are broadly unpopular. More Americans see the contest as bad for the country than good , and a full 30 percent of registered voters in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll said they felt scared or apprehensive.

Election dread is real and bipartisan, although Republicans seem to view things a bit more brightly than Democrats. Whatever your politics, you might be tempted to tune out this presidential election completely.

But today — notwithstanding the fact that it is April 1 — I am here to make the case for the 2024 election, which I think will be as captivating, revealing and far-reaching as any in recent history, one that might turn less on the candidates we know than the voters who will choose them.

This is no Nick at Nite rerun. This is a prime-time sequel, with real-life consequences.

The case for 2024

I will acknowledge that it was not easy to find people who are eager to encourage optimism about 2024.

Some laughed at me. Others rolled their eyes. Even Marianne Williamson, the positive-thinking guru and long-shot presidential candidate who actually returned to the 2024 field after briefly dropping out, described the race in dark terms.

“It’s positive that people are disgusted,” she told me.

But Amy Walter, the editor-in-chief and publisher of the smart and nonpartisan Cook Political Report , said there was much more to the election than meets the eye.

“This election feels like a frozen pond, where it looks kind of boring, but underneath there’s a lot going on,” Walter said. “What’s happening underneath it is really the story.”

Sure, Biden and Trump are both aging, white, former or current presidents. But they are astonishingly different candidates, and this race won’t be a personality contest or a beauty pageant.

Both men have been clear about who they are, what they want to do and how deeply their second terms would diverge.

An indicted former president who wants to consolidate his power, punish his enemies and transform American life is challenging an old-guard incumbent who says he is democracy’s last line of defense. It’s a clash playing out amid extraordinary circumstances.

Biden is an internationalist and institutionalist, who would spend a second term aiming to complete unfinished agenda items from his first. Trump is an iconoclast who delights in violating boundaries, sought to overturn his 2020 election loss, and would use a second term to seek retribution and reimagine the government.

Whatever issue you care most about — be it abortion rights, democracy, taxes, immigration or the economy — will be shaped by the result.

What’s more, Trump is the only person to ever run for president while facing four criminal indictments. Aside from the innate drama of a campaign, his trials add extraordinary suspense, turning his quest for a second term into a race against the clock.

Our familiarity with Biden and Trump means this election is less likely to turn on any new revelation about the candidates, and more likely to be driven by the feelings and attitudes of the electorate. That means voters and the issues they care about have never been more important, and I’m dying to get out on the road and hear all about it.

Strategists in both major parties are obsessing over how to reach voters they have either taken for granted or written off.

Democrats are worrying about young voters, who are the least likely of any age group to express feelings of hope or excitement about the election, according to our poll. Trump and the G.O.P. are working to make inroads with Black and Latino voters, especially men, well aware that even a slight shift in swing states could decide the election.

Even in a field that might feel calcified, voters have already made their voices heard by laying bare the weaknesses of each candidate.

Nikki Haley’s performance in the primaries showed a significant swath of the Republican Party is uncomfortable with Trump. And many Democratic primary voters chose “uncommitted” over Biden to register their displeasure with his support for Israel in its war in Gaza, forcing his administration to dispatch officials to speak with Arab American voters and to acknowledge their concerns more directly — even if they have yet to satisfy them.

Both parties are also nervously watching third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and working hard to mobilize their core supporters.

And having big, bad feelings about an election doesn’t mean voters will stay home. Political scientists know that loathing motivates voters just as much as loyalty . The first season of Biden vs. Trump, in 2020, drew the highest voter turnout of any presidential election in more than 100 years, and high turnouts during the midterm and special elections since then give no indication that the pattern won’t continue this year.

Last week, in a bawdy interview with Maureen Dowd , the Democratic strategist James Carville, 79, declared the 2024 election to be the only one “in my lifetime where it’s about yesterday, not tomorrow.”

This is a transitional election, the likely last stand for a pair of presidents who have run seven times for the job between them.

Both candidates keep fairly light campaign schedules, compared with previous presidential elections, which owes partly to their competing commitments — Biden has to president and Trump has frequent court dates — and may also reflect the reality of their advanced age.

That dynamic has created ample room for surrogates to test their skills and their messages, making this race an excellent way to see which way both parties — and the country — are going. It will also introduce new supporting characters who could one day play a starring role.

Democrats will spotlight rising-star governors like Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Wes Moore of Maryland, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. There are also ascendant progressives like Representative Ro Khanna of California and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

Among the Republicans, we have Trump’s long list of potential vice-presidential contenders as well as other party stars. They include Republicans who have made themselves in his image, like Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio or Representative Elise Stefanik of New York against those, like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who are trying to walk a slightly finer line.

Down-ballot races sometimes get eclipsed by the fight at the top of the ticket, but I don’t think that’s going to happen this year. We’ll be able to pay close attention to the fights for the Senate and the House, plus governors’ races and beyond, watching how candidates define themselves and their parties, and handle the thorny issues voters care most about.

And at the end of the day, this race has elimination-round energy. Each candidate, old as he may be, is hoping to vanquish the other for good.

Even the double-haters can take some solace in knowing that one of the candidates they don’t like will lose — and that this exact matchup can’t possibly happen a third time.

What excites you about this election?

If you’re like me, and you’re enthused by this year’s election, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m asking readers: What about this year’s election cycle excites you? Perhaps it is a candidate, a local initiative, or a personal connection to one of the issues. If you’d like to share your thoughts, you can fill out this form .

I may use your response in an upcoming newsletter. We will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of Donald Trump’s terms in office. If he wins the presidential election it will be his second term, not his third.

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