Brazilian Culture, Family, and its Ethnic-Cultural Variety

Research on cultural differences and their relationship with family structure has been producing many significant findings in the social sciences, particularly in social and organizational psychology. Apparently, the family structure and its relationship with variables, such as marital and parental relationships, child-rearing practices, and even people's jobs or positions, are related to cultural aspects, which in turn, result in a different impact on people's lives. For instance, in highly individualistic countries such as the United States, "work and family are often viewed as separable" (Earley and Erez 3) and, yet, in conflict. Differently, in countries such as Brazil, where people tend to perceive their self as part of a group (Hofstede, Culture's), work may be seen as an extension of their families, and consequently, we are able to find strong family-work bonds, which are a direct reflection on the mode of production of that society. In this paper, we attempt to understand the structure of the Brazilian family, how it is impacted by, and impacts the country's culture. It is our belief that this understanding can provide the basis to propose how the previously cited relationship, and many others, can be investigated. Literature that integrates the Brazilian cultural and family aspects appears to be missing, particularly those related to poor families. Our aim with this article is to take some steps in this direction.

This article is divided into three parts. First, we will briefly discuss the cultural variable itself, and clarify what we mean by culture. Then, we will discuss Brazilian culture in specific terms, bridging with sociological and psychological literature. Finally, we will present some information on the Brazilian family, and discuss how this information can serve for the purposes of this paper.

Culture

The concept of culture has been widely discussed by several authors (e.g., Ashmos and McDaniel; Campbell, Bommer, and Yeo; Hofstede, Culture's; Smith and Bond; Torres; Triandis, "Cross-Cultural"), who often define it slightly different, and in most of the cases, complimentary manners. Culture has been defined as a group of utilitarian, intellectual and affective activities (Saraiva), as the integrated sum of learned behaviors (Shapiro), and also as a system of shared meaning (Earley and Erez). Other scholars (e.g., Malinowski) described specific elements of culture and the relationships between them. For instance, Kluckohn observed two distinct cultural elements, their objective—that is, craft work produced by social groups—and subjective (i.e., values, beliefs, social norms) elements. Among the research projects devoted to the understanding and description of culture that developed by Hofstede (Culture's) deserves special attention.

For Hofstede (Culture's, "Organizational Practices," "Quality of Life," Software), we could make an analogy between culture and a computer program, the former being equivalent to the software that controls human behavior. Perhaps, the most important aspect found by Hofstede is that culture can be used as a predictive variable (Smith and Bond). To achieve this finding, he developed an ecological analysis of 53 countries and regions of the world based on responses about people's preferred values. With the notable exception of African countries among his data, Hofstede was able to identify four dimensions of cultural variation. The dimensions identified by him were named masculinity-femininity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism. Exceptional reviews of Hofstede's work, with implications for the work of psychologists in different cultures, were done by Smith and Bond, Smith et al., and Triandis ("Cross-Cultural"). In this article, we will limit ourselves to briefly discuss his fourth dimension, individualism-collectivism, which has received considerable attention from many researchers (e.g., Earley and Erez; Smith and Bond).

This dimension refers to the extent to which social groups emphasize personal or group goals. Individualist societies tend to include people who perceive their self as independent, who are more rational-oriented, and who are attitude-driven. People in collectivist cultures, on the average, are more relational-oriented, have a perception of the self as interdependent with their ingroups, and have a need to know their group norms, that is, the accepted...