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Essay / Mutual Constitution Process - 1456
In today's world, there are many cultures, each with their own practices and habits. Personal behaviors are the traits and patterns of cultural participation derived from a culture that define how a person should act in the world (Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997). Selfways are a key example of how people in the culture shape the integral features of the culture, while the culture itself shapes the actions of the people in the culture. This process is called Mutual Constitution: the symbiotic relationship between the psychological processes of a culture and the individuals who reside in the culture forming a collective reality between the culture and the participants in the culture (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998) . The Mutual Constitution process is composed of five different stages that interlock and together create this collective reality: cultural practices and ideas, cultural institutions that reflect integral ideas, daily experiences of the culture, psychological processes and finally, the action or behavior which is shaped by the other four stages. One culture that has not been studied in depth is Jewish culture. A major trend among members of the Jewish cultural community is the tendency to vote more liberally. Jewish law, the Talmud as well as the cultural idea of Tzedakah have cultivated this behavior. The institution of Jewish law, the notion of Tzedakah, and the general cultural idea of equality mutually constitute the Jewish behavioral practice of leaning more to the left on political issues. The process of mutual constitution begins with the overarching historical ideas of a fundamental cultural idea or the notion of a “good” or “moral” person in the cultural context. In the Jewish environment...... middle of paper ......spectacle. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Mackler, A.L. (1991). Judaism, justice and access to health care. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 1(2), 143-161.Maisel, LS, Forman, IN, Altschiller, D., & Bassett, CW (2001). Jews in American Politics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Markus, H.R., Mullally, P., & Kitayama, S. (1997). Selfways: diversity in modes of cultural participation. Contemporary Sociology, 27(5), 13-61. Rawls, J. (2011). Expanded edition of political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Section 4: Values about government and the social safety net. (June 4, 2012). Pew Research Center for the People and the Press RSS. Accessed May 7, 2014, from http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/section-4-values-about-government-and-the-social-safety-net/