Organzations & Cultures

The Uro Ethnic group.
This ethnic is located in the floating island of Lake Titicaca. The traditional name of the group is Kotsuña which means “lake’s people”. This group has three subdivisions that are: Uru-Chipayas, Uru-Muratos and the Uru-Iruitos.
There are some theories about this group. Some people say that they come from Polynesia and that they first inhabited the coast and then went to the highest places. Some other people say that they are descended from the first inhabitants of the Americas. But the reality is that this group comes from the “Amazonía” and is descended from the Arawac group.
The Arawak is a group of indigenous could be found in Bahamas, the Antilles, in central and south America until the south of Brazil.
Nowadays, there are Arawak groups in Colombia, and the majority of the population of Aruba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and part of Haitian population are descended from Arawaks. Latin America has its roots in Arawacs and we still have some alive groups like this Uro group, or the “Aruhacos” from Colombia. Moreover there are some isoleted communities in Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana.
The Uro group is one of the most famous Arawak group because of the lake. This place is one of the main attractions when visiting Peru. (or Bolivia) There are about 20 floating islands on the lake and the number of inhabitants varies depending on the families. Sometimes it goes from three to ten. The Uros are in constant contact with foreign cultures that visit the lake; however they still conserve their customs and their culture. This is a good example of preserving a historic culture. This group receives tourists all the time and they still preserve their culture, or a Latin American culture, since this group is not original from Peru.

First, I’m going to define what the “stolen generations”. This is a term to describe those children that were taken away from their aboriginal families by the Australian federal state, church missions and some government agencies; this occurred in the period between 1869 and 1969.In the following chart we can find out why were Aboriginal girls taken, and we can find that the main reason was to send them to service.

Some of the effects of this removal were (or even ARE)
· Loneliness.
· Low self esteem and feelings of worthlessness.
· Loss of identity:
· Mistrusting everyone.
· Difficulties to find their religious beliefs,
· Internal guilt because Stolen Generation members often blame their mothers and fathers for not loving and caring for them, based on incorrect or sparse information supplied by foster parents and government institutions
· Anguish of searching for their identity.
· Depression and other mental illnesses.
· Difficulties parenting or filling any communal role.
· Unable to manage relationships because they have never had a role model to learn from.
· Transgenerational traumas: Parents pass their traumas on to their children.
· Loss of cultural affiliation
Loss of language
Now that we know a little bit more about the “stolen generations”, let’s see what the “national sorry day” is…
This is an event held each 26 may since 1998 to express the regret of the mistreatment of aboriginal people, and it is the day when the country Sais “I’m sorry” because of what happened with the stolen generations.
Is this enough?
I personally think it is very important that the government accepted its responsibility and that it is aware of the mistreats and the negative consequences, However, we already saw the impact this had was severe as well as the consequences for those children that were taken away, or for those aboriginal groups. I think that the government should create institutions in order to treat these people and to help them heal some of those consequences, such as the loss of identity, depression, the loss of cultural affiliation, and the low self esteem. The sorry day is important to recognize publicly that this was a wrong behavior however, this event doesn’t help those who are suffering to recover those things they lost or those feelings they have. This event doesn’t help them heal the injuries or recover the tenets or the customs they lost.
It is needed to create institutions for this aim, and to develop programs with the community to help them accept those who have no identity and integrate them into the social life. I think that it is needed to work with the aboriginals groups in Australia in order to help them preserv their customs and avoid what happened with other groups. The government should develop preventive campaigns with the aboriginals as well as make even more efforts to protect them, since the past governments didn’t.

The honest and truthful businessmen will be in paradise
amongst the prophets, the truthful, and the mytyrs’’.


As we know, Muslims base their life and their behavior in the Quran, but would you think that Muslims base their business on the Quran as well?
The Quran has faced another issue in nowadays world; it has to deal with electronic commerce and the world of IT. The total isolation of countries is not possible in a globalized world, and Muslim countries have to deal with this situation.
E-commerce is not a new concept, Islamic religious are not totally familiarized with this concept or the way business are carried out through this mean, however, the Quran seems to be familiar with it. Muslims also found a justification in the Quran for this issue… if the transaction fulfills two basic prerequisites it is a legal transaction and Muslims can undertake this concept of commerce. These prerequisites are:
Permissibility: Which means that the good or service must be permissible by the Islamic Law (Syariah)
Harmlessness: this means that the good or service can’t be harmful for the parties or for the public in general.
And taking into account that transactions used to be carried out face-to-face, there are certain norms that have to be carefully fallowed in order to ensure the legality of the transactions; these norms are first of all, clear definitions , enough information about not only the product but the payments and post sales services, transparency between the parties.
According with the aforementioned, and the principles of the Islamic religion (Truthfulness, sincerity and honesty) we could expect a totally transparent transaction when doing business, nonetheless, based on personal experience I can say that this is not always true, and that we can find those who cheat and try as much as they can to gain a profit, even if it means lie about a product.

Human beings need to believe in a creator, and need to be told what to do. This is the human nature. Muslims are recognized around the world because they are adoring fans of their religion and their sacred book, we generalize saying that “Muslims obey and act based on their religious precepts’ BUT we can find exceptions, and (no offense) we can’t expect to have the most transparent and honest transaction just because the counterparty is a Muslim.

Nevertheless, there are certain some advices given by Islam to ensure the legality of the e-commerce, and if we know these rules, it would be easier to identify if we are doing business with a Honest Muslim or a Muslim that has not fear when it comes to cheating. These rules are:
The initiation of the contract the bid and acceptance of the transaction, being as clear and specific as possible
Confirming the validity: In this stage gambling is avoided, no pressures, the clear demonstration of interest and avoid the uncertainty.
Implementation: this is a proof stage, where we prove that the owner of the product is one selling it and that the product has any liability.
Binding: Both parties sign a contract, but before doing so, both parties have to confirm the information they have about each other.
Delivery: in this stage the delivery and the payment take place, however there is a very important issue to consider; Muslims try to avoid as much as they can credit cards because it involves an interest rate, and it is forbidding in the Islamism.
In conclusion we could say that, first Not every Muslim will avoid cheating when doing business, there is always an exception of the rule, however if we take into account how the right way of doing business is, we could avoid an non successful transaction. Knowledge is the base of success.

Check out this link:

In this link, we can find a very complete definition of what culture is, as well as some specific issues related with culture such as some "theories" and the "layers of culture". I think it is very usefull if we want to understand and differentiate culture from other different terms and expand our knowledge in terms of culture, so we can have more arguments and more intelligent words when we want to talk about it or even define it

I hope you like it!