Homogeneous people/culture?

[Chessie]

Hi everyone, I'm concerned that having a homogeneous culture is boring or demonstrative of my novice skills with world building. The people living in my world are modeled after Slavs (leaning towards Russian). Although there are various clans in this land, they all share similar (language) and culture. Is this enough to provide a realistic view of a society? Should I have a very different type of people presented via maybe an outsider type character? Suggestions would be lovely.

 

[CupofJoe]

Almost anything can become a bone of contention, religion, politics, sports teams, TV shows... if the states are right
If you have a Slavic society [and if I remember my anthropology right] then there were strong Jew communities around from at least the middle ages and I think long before. That has lead to a lot of conflict over the centuries for lots of reasons... could that give you traction/contention?
That said, having a homogeneous culture isn't good or bad [or indicative of your skills] if you make it work. Personally I can find it useful to have every-one-the-same and then use smaller differences to highlight character than try to come up with "new" and "different" cultures for each character and then try to find a way to stitch them together...
I have found it odd that some fantasy stories we have 1 elf, 1 dwarf, 1 human, 1 half something etc. working as a team for no particular reason except for "adventure".
A notable exception is LOTR where the different races are explicitly included for a purpose [as the "4 free races" or whatever it was] by Elrond.

 

[Somniphil]

By "homogenous culture" with regards to "world building", I gather you're referring to a single race, ie every character of your world is fundamentally Slavic leaning toward Russian (forgive the oversimplification). If so, there is more than enough variety to be derived from a single race. A single race would include many cultures, a dominant and many sub cultures. These cultures could differ by any number of sociological reasons: gender, economic class, religion, education, age, location, politics, morality, etc. The only thing "novice" I would find in a single race is if it were underdeveloped with regards to your story. I would not be so quick to say a fantasy story about a single race is inferior in any way to a fantasy story about a myriad of races. As far as being "a realistic view of a society," it's fantasy, and it's your world. It doesn't need to be epic to be representative, it could be a microcosm. I think it would be a mistake to create another people simply as a device to serve some unwarranted need for variety and potentially error on the side of under-developing two peoples instead of fully fleshing out a single set of people. If not, and all those factors are the same for all the people, for example something of a cookie-cutter neighborhood if you will; still, variety could be exercised through your characters. They could differ from one another even at the level of personality, and again symbolize some microcosm for some society at large. Again, the world is as intricate as you make it and the only thing novice or boring about it is to under-develop the one culture it has. Less can be more, and you can make a lot out of a little.

Thank you for your post! It's an interesting question. Being a fan of fantasy I wouldn't deny I love all the different peoples and cultures, but it isn't prerequisite to be profound and eloquent. I hope that was the least bit helpful. Good Luck!

 

[wordwalker]

I think there's a difference between using a widespread culture and not playing up the differences within it. A story or world where everyone's from a Slavic society is an appealing background-- you might add some touches about whether there are different cultures beyond its influence or why not, but it's not something readers will argue with if you do it well.

More important is that whatever the story's framed around, it play up the differences between them. If it's human/elf/dwarf, it ought to compare all three of them (not human/elf stories where the dwarves are ignored); if it's all Slavic, that focuses things on how many groups and differences form inside that. Your "Jews" or other underclass people, your nobles/peasants, your regions and clans and houses, all the rest.

The way I see it, to say a story is one thing is to say it's about what subtypes are within that. A more "similar" definition just means putting more of a spotlight on the differences within that.

 

[Chessie]

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for these awesome responses! After I hit send I was like, wait a minute, there is SO much diversity within a same society anyway. So I did some research on Victorian Russia (this is the time era most likely to be the frame of my story, or early 1800s still a toss up). There were serfs in Russia until 1861, and even afterwards they were just in debt. So much going on and there were class gaps, etc. I can definitely highlight variety in that society. Though it won't be exactly like it...a lot of this stuff I'm just making up because it sounds good.

 

[Snowpoint]

I have 4 made up cultures in my WiP. The Tengu specifically were hard to design. Their culture was based on the idea of the Japanese Tengu, they are very disciplined martial artists. They were all the same. How did I fix this?

Martial Arts is all about movement. But so is dance. I decided that Tengu are not very good at writing fiction or poetry, but had many dancers, contortionists, acrobats. The is also a style of Japanese theater called "Noh", sometimes called "The art of Walking" "Noh" theater is all about how "perfectly" you can preform the work. It was a perfect fit for the culture I was putting together.

This way, every Tengu can be raised in the same place but go into many different directions all supporting the same core element - The human body.

 

[Nameback]

I need a little clarification: is your slavic world literally the entire world, or just the area your story takes place in?

If it's the latter, then I don't think you need to worry at all. Like others have said, when you stay within a single culture, you need to find the conflicts and differences within that culture to create drama, just as you would find the conflicts and differences between cultures if you had several.

If it's the former, then things get a little stickier. A world with a single cultural and ethnic background is very implausible. Of course, it's fantasy, so implausibility is no barrier, but you must have a reason that explains this. It can be a fantastical reason that wouldn't exist in the real world, but I would argue that it's not enough to just say "the world is all Slavs" and leave it at that. Why is the world homogenous? How did that come to pass? What are the consequences of the event/process that made the world this way? Hidden costs? Secret history?

 

[Chessie]

I haven't gone so far as to create an entire world, just a land with a name whose culture and people are based off Slavs. Its the only setting the story takes place in so I haven't developed anything outside of that. There are different social classes and a lot going on with that already, which should add some flavor. Thank you for your comments, they help!