DOC Country Profile

Instructions

Please choose any country (not Iran) and complete a Determinants of Culture (DOC) profile of about 8 paragraphs (~500 words total) to describe your chosen country just as you described Iran. Follow APA format (double-spaced, cover page, reference page). A rigorous rubric for this assignment is not absolutely necessary because the goal is not to assess or qualify opinions of subject matter experts or present your own. Instead this is a report, an exercise designed to demonstrate the robust nature of the DOC model of national culture which shapes our identities by about the age of ten. This said, here are a few general tips on using the DOC model: 1. Education – primary, secondary, tertiary in some form are usually present, ie, grade school, high school and college/university 2. Religion – most societies have a religious orientation based on spiritual bodies such as Judeo-Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Buddhist or other, e.g., folk religions 3. Political philosophy – in the Western tradition, we generally find liberal democracies with bicameral (2 house) legislatures; authoritarian democracies also exist (e.g., Ukraine, Hungary) as do centrally controlled socialist societies, e.g. North Korea, Cuba 4. Economic philosophy – economies often embrace some form of capitalism, but these can be centrally controlled by a political party or a religion differently 5. Social-structure – family orientation is common, but authority is often vested in some type of authoritarian patriarchy (may be hidden but robust) 6. Language – most nations and societies have local languages but teach English to upwardly mobile socio-economic groups; there are ~7000 languages!