Bangladeshi’s View Towards Space

This week I enjoyed a lot reading articles on anthropology. It was interesting learning how time and space is defined in different culture. It was also interesting to learn how food symbolizes space of a culture. In my blog I am going to discuss how definition of space in Bangladesh is different from other countries’ one.

After reading the article “Symbolic Systems and Meanings,” I have learnt that in New Guinea societies, men take their meal separately from their wives and children in a men’s house. Women prepare the food and take the husband’s portion to the men’s house. Additionally, women take their meal in their house with their children. Isn’t it interesting to imagine the space between husbands and wives of that society? It’s somehow reminds me the old tradition of my country, Bangladesh. Although now most of the Bangladeshi people don’t follow the traditional rules, still there are some families who are quite traditional as the families of New Guinea. In Bangladeshi traditional families, generally at first, men and children take their meal together and later, women have their food. Through this process of taking food, we can see the higher authority of men in these families. Besides, children of western countries treat their father as friend; however, there is a huge gap between Bangladeshi fathers and their children. Bangladeshi children can’t consider their father as their friends. Their father is treated as a respectable person in the family.

In addition, we can see the example of using space between men and women in public place. No men and women even if they are husband and wife can walk together in the park holding each other’s hand unlike western countries like America.

Besides, men and women never express their love to their spouse in front of their parents or elder people whereas western people do so. Moreover, in western culture guests are not allowed to enter in the host’s bedroom, whereas in Bangladeshi culture, few guests especially women can easily enter into the bedrooms of a family.

Furthermore, in western culture, men can’t hold men’s hand in the public place because it means that they have special relationship. In contrast, in Bengali culture, men can hold men’s hand; they can hug each other. People don’t find anything wrong with these manners.

Thus, we see that attitudes toward space vary from culture to culture and country to country. What is considered to be an appropriate manner in one culture can be considered absolutely inappropriate in another culture.



One Response to Bangladeshi’s View Towards Space

  1. Hello friend. Actually, the personal space and the way of communication in societies is something that sometimes makes me angry. Sometimes, in a movie, you see it is a very sad and dramatic time, the family are faced a tragic situation, the father is dead, someone is badly sick, so you think now the mother and the daughter will hug each other and cry together, you might expect a mother and a son to seat beside each other and talk about the past good memories, but nothing happens. They just keep their personal space! I wonder sometimes. How can they interact with each other? Sometimes I feel I am so lucky that I was born in a family that I can hug my mother, kiss my father, and take my brothers’ hands. On the other hand, the relationship between the opposite sexes, I mean friends, obviously different from my society. I found that in some societies it is ok if you and your boyfriend or girlfriend take each other’s hands and walk together, while if you and your friend from the same sex walk so, others’ might think you as a homo. Well, personal space is something that made and measured by humans, they might differ from one place to other, and one person to another, what we have to know is to consider where what we should expect. Any difference in others communication in other societies cannot mean that they do not know how to communicate, but it means that they do know but in a different way.

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