Culture (I tell participants) is like an iceberg. You see the part that sticks up about the water, but below the surface is the real bulk. The thing you are most likely to crash into is that unseen, unsuspected mass.
The aquatic metaphor is also apt. We swim in our culture, so like fish we do not notice it. It is the water that surrounds us, and we cease to analyze it. It is simply the environment in which we live.
The other common image of culture is the onion. Our daily lives are framed by layers upon layers of unseen assumptions and mind-sets. Because we have no other way of conceptualizing our world, we see it through our ‘normal’ perspective, seldom imagining different interpretations, until some rather dramatic event gives us new eyes. Or until we choose to study a subject like Anthropology, to help us see that many things are hiding, in plain sight, right in front of us.
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