People culture In Thailand
Details of the project:
Choose a culture of a SPECIFIC geographical location (Thailand is selected)
Discuss the Stereotyping.
Example of Stereotyping:
Stereotyping is a held belief or a generalization about a group of people (Breslin,199).
Stereotypes can be positive or negative. For example, one study of stereotypes revealed
that Americans are generally considered to be friendly, generous, and tolerant, but also
arrogant, impatient, and domineering. Asians, on the other hand, are expected to be
shrewd and alert, but reserved (Breslin, 1991).
Project Criteria:
Paraphrase using your own words and make it simple language.
Words limit: 1300 words
Font & Size: Times New Roman, Size 12
Spacing: 1.5 lines
Sources (3 required): 1 Academic Journal + 1 book + 1 professional website
Referencing Style:
o APA style
o Use in-text citation
o Provide a bibliography
Use of examples are highly encouraged for all explanations.
Solution
Introduction
Stereotyping refers to the notion that people have formed in their minds pertaining to a
certain group of people and mostly, stereotypes are formed based on ethnic grounds. This is also
common for countries and many other bases. Cultures of different countries differs making
people jump into conclusion about other people culture this is according to Pimpa, (2012).
Stereotyping can either be positive or negative and it can also be true or false. In this paper,
stereotyping on Thailand will be discussed.
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the act of evaluating other cultures in the basis of one ones culture. All
cultures are not the same and this type of stereotyping is very common. Ethnocentrism in
Thailand goes to the way the people there talk. Their language is quite different from any other
culture and this to some people sounds weird. The way the Thai people dress is also unique and
not many cultures in the world would appreciate how they dress. There is also another aspect of
ethnocentrism which is a negative view on the democracy status of Thailand. Thailand is
believed to be ruled in dictatorship and people have almost accepted this as the way to go when it
comes to ruling (Kongsompong, Powtong,&Sen, 2010).
Thailand thrives economically from bad businesses
The economic status of the country is not very stable but this does not automatically
mean that every Thai citizen is poor.Thailand’s economy just like that of any other developing
country is improving with time and it is composed of different economic activities including
trade. Yes it is true there was a time that the country’s economy was at a pathetic state but this is
no longer the case in the present days. People believe this due to how there were no means of
transport in the past and people used to ride on elephants; this is not the case anymore taxis have
been bought and the economy is doing fairly well. There are other means of raising the economy
of Thailand as stated by Kanjanatarakul, &Suriya, (2012), which include agricultural activities.
Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to a way in which members of a community are classified or
rather organized. Aspects of the level of education that one has attained can be used to place
community members in a given social class. Other elements used to place community members
in a given social class include wealth and family or kinship status. In Thailand, social
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stratification exists and it is followed for religious significance. To an outsider, this stratification
seem to be a division among the people and considering that the class that a person belongs to
defines the way that they should behave, it is seen as discrimination to people who do not belong
to that community. Thai people practice Buddhism and this religion spells out different strata
that each of the community members is expected to identify themselves with. The priests and
rulers lead in the stratification occupying the highest class and the contributors of one to occupy
a certain class depends on their level of education and money. This division of people into
various classes is not common in many cultures or rather religion which is part of the culture of
Thailand. This stratification makes people view the culture as weird and very hard to learn as
skills are required to deal with people from each of these social classes (Liamputtong, 2014).
Violence
In Thailand, crime rates are extremely high and people have formed beliefs that violence
is the nature of the people there. This can maybe be proved by the films that are produced in
Thailand which are full of crime scenes and criminal activities and most of them are against
women (Ruangnapakul, Yusof, & Hamid, 2015). Violence materials are also easily available in
Bangkok for instance and this makes the safety of the place questionable. This paints a picture of
violent and non friendly people in Thailand in general which is not actually true. According to
Laeheem, (2013), violence is manifested even in schools in form of bullying;Thai people are
believed to treat people especially of a foreign culture with the cruelest attitude. This however is
not true and majority of the Thai people are very welcoming, they would appreciate the presence
of a foreigner and accept them as one of their own even when the foreigner’s culture is viewed as
better than the Thai one. Thai people are however not [patient with unpleasant behavior of
people whether foreigners or local and they would easily beat up people who offend them in
debates for example. This however is the character of men not women in Thailand.
Resistance to Change
Thai people have developed loyalty to their culture. This therefore shows that they have a
bad attitude when it comes to embracing new practices into their culture. For example no female
member of the society would dare go contrary to what the males around her tell her to do. This to
other cultures is seen as suppression to women especially those cultures which have embraced
change. This is stereotypic in that the essence of men controlling women is not meant to make
women feel inferior but to maintain respect and order in the community.Another aspect of their
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culture that has fostered loyalty is the sayings in their culture. There are sayings such as this is
not us. This is a guiding factor on how Thai people behave and once they find themselves doing
something that they shouldn’t be doing, there they remember what they are entitled to do and
what they should not do. It is therefore hard for a foreigner to convince a Thai man to change
their ways or how they view things (Broad, 2003).
People are Bad Mannered
Thai people are known as polite and easy to live with; this is however not true for the
whole of the population. Most of the Thai people are less mannered and an example is when
lining up for services, politeness is not their thing and one wouldn’t mind cutting off the line and
getting served without saying a word to anybody. This behavior top people from another country
are obscene but in Thailand, it is not a big deal. In Thailand, organization culture somewhat does
not define how people should relate to others( Engelen, Flatten, Thalmann, &Brettel, 2014).The
larger population of Thailand is employed and this at first may seem that it is a hardworking
nation. The truth of the matter is that Thai people are lazy! They are the kind of people who
would rather not work at all than work and get so tired. They are the people who would opt to
take a day off from work for no good reason thus employers cannot count on few employees,
they therefore end up hiring substitutes for reliability purposes (Phongpaichit, & Baker, 2016).
Thai People Are Don’t Cares
Being a don’t care indicates that you wouldn’t sacrifice something for someone else to
gain or simply being selfish. Thai people are not into other people’s business even when it is
necessary that they show concern. They are the kind of people who will stick on the roads and
not give way for ambulances to pass knowing very well that a person who needs urgent medical
attention lies in the ambulance. They simply don’t care of whether the person survives or not,
what matters is that they are not delayed on the roads top their destinations. This behavior in
other cultures is obscene and people would wonder if such happens. Even though people in
Thailand have gone through education, Yeung,(2013), indicates that this aspect is mostly used in
placing one in a given class.
Ghost Relations are common
In most communities, communicating to ghosts is something unheard of but in
Thailand, this is a routine. It is expected that when you visit a Thai home, you should thank the
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ghosts before you leave. This practice though its long gone in some areas, it is still practiced
today and even though foreigners are not asked to thank ghosts, the locals or rather people who
still hold on to this practice will do so in foreigners presence. They even do the same even when
the room is not theirs including in hotels which is quite weird to other cultures. This makes their
relations with the spirits very uncommon and feared. However this is just a generalization as this
only happens in rural areas mostly ( McDaniel, 2011).
Thai People are Humble
This is somewhat true but only for an observer who does not know what the humility is
all about. Thai people would prefer to keep their tempers down for the sake of their relationships
with others. Jerryson, (2011), shows that the humility of Thai people is based on religious
grounds which discourage violence. If one therefore happens to get involved in a debate with the
people it is recommended that they keep calm and communicate their thoughts wisely to avoid
offending Thai people as this marks the end of humility and the beginning of violence. If
involved in a debate for example, it is highly encouraged that someone communicates their
thoughts in a low tone and convinces Thai people in a low tone to keep the conversation going
and to maintain peace with people in (ThailandBrown, 2013).
Conclusion
Stereotyping is done to fix parts of facts that people outside a given group cannot comprehend.
Every community or country is prone to stereotyping and Thailand is just but a victim. As seen
in this work, stereotyping can either be positive or negative and mostly it is not composed of
facts. For example in the case of Thailand, positive stereotypes are few such as women there
are generally beautiful. On the other hand negative stereotypes include that the country is the
center of sex tourism, violence and discrimination of women and people from different classes of
life.
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References
Books.
Brown, L. (2013). 15 Travel for Education: Peace and Cross-cultural Understanding?.
Transformational tourism: Tourist perspectives, 199.
Jerryson, M. K. (2011). Buddhist fury: Religion and violence in southern Thailand. Oxford
University Press on Demand.
Kongsompong, K., Powtong, R., &Sen, S. (2010, August). Ethnocentrism, materialism, social
influence, and collectivism: an inter-and intra-national analysis of the Thais, Chinese, and
Indians. In Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Intercultural
collaboration (pp. 247-250). ACM
Liamputtong, P. (2014). Contemporary socio-cultural and political perspectives in Thailand.
Dordrecht: Springer.Pp 107-109
McDaniel, J. T. (2011). The lovelorn ghost and the magical monk: practicing Buddhism in
modern Thailand. Columbia University Press.
Journals
Broad, S. (2003). Living the Thai life—a case study of volunteer tourism at the Gibbon
Rehabilitation Project, Thailand. Tourism Recreation Research, 28(3), 63-72.
Engelen, A., Flatten, T. C., Thalmann, J., &Brettel, M. (2014). The effect of organizational
culture on entrepreneurial orientation: A comparison between Germany and Thailand.
Journal of Small Business Management, 52(4), 732-752.
Kanjanatarakul, O., &Suriya, K. (2012). Economic impact of agro-industrial sector on
nationwide economy of Thailand: A general equilibrium approach. The Empirical
Econometrics and Quantitative Economics Letters, 1(4), 61-66.
Laeheem, K. (2013). Family and upbringing background of students with bullying behavior in
Islamic private schools, Pattani province, Southern Thailand. Asian Social Science, 9(7),
162.
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Liang, L., Nontasak, N., &Pongsabutr, Y. (2015). Cross-cultural Competences Required for
Department Managers of Selected Chinese Transnational Companies in the Amata City
Industrial Estate of Thailand. HRD JOURNAL, 6(1), 106-119.
Phongpaichit, P., & Baker, C. (2016).Benedict Anderson's" Strange Hierarchies" in Thailand.
Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 64(1), 166-178.
Pimpa, N. (2012). Amazing Thailand: Organizational culture in the Thai public sector.
International Business Research, 5(11), 35
Ruangnapakul, N., Yusof, N., & Hamid, N. A. (2015). Violence against woman in selected Thai
films: a perspective. History, 5(16), 120-127.
Yeung, W. J. J. (2013). Higher education expansion and social stratification in China.Chinese
Sociological Review, 45(4), 54-80
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