While I was walking home, I was wondering about what to write in English for a blog. Nothing came up to my mind until I looked around and I saw where I was, how people were, how our behaviour was, so I decided to write about the culture of Lima. Why not Peruvian's culture? The answer would be this: Peru is so diverse that it would be very difficult for me to describe accurately its cultures since I'm not part of all of them; Lima is the place where I live and I feel I can talk about it's culture. Perhaps I could miss some parts describing it, but, as it is in the title of this blog, it is from my point of view. However, this blog can be the opportunity to share ideas about this topic, so feel free to comment.
I considered that it is very important to clarify what culture is for us. Last year at the university I took a course of Culture and I was explained that culture was defined as the result of the highest level of education; which meant that only people with access to education had culture, but, as we all know, the majority of people so many years ago couldn't afford to the educational system. Did it mean that culture was just for a selected group? I supposed that it was the question which make anthropologists change the perspective of what culture really was, and, after anthropological studies, it was very clear that culture was inherent to every human being, to every human society. So, what is society? Many agree that culture is a complex system of behavioural and thinking patterns which are shared in a society. It is necessary to say that culture involves language, values, customs, moral, art, life style, beliefs, etc, and that's why we say that it is very complex.
So, having known what we understand by culture, you can have an idea of what you are going to find here. However, I think it is necessary to clarify that in a culture there can be good or bad things from different perspectives, so I will just try to be very objective. I am not here to sell my city as the best one in the world, but to show it as it is, with its positive characteristics and its not so positive ones.
I hope you can enjoy this blog and find it useful.
Fabiola Rivera
