Cultural chip in

[Tabouli]

>Dinah: I'm just really touchy about the subject because my parent's are from
>Czech heritage (my Dad was one of those that had to leave their home after
>WWII was over) and while a certain amount of clichées surely apply I don't
>like the fact that it seems to be reduced to that.<

Australia's image overseas is an interesting case in point.  I mean, the fact of the matter is that over 80% of Australians are suburbanites.  They live in three bedroom houses or flats and drive cars to the supermarket and watch TV.  Their diet and clothing and lifestyle isn't really very different from people in the US and UK.  But hey, who's interested in that?  How boring!  Far more interesting to concoct this romantic image of sheep farms and crocodile hunters and surfers in this semi-rural desert wasteland teeming with kangaroos and snakes and spiders.  Truly, though, we're much more "Neighbours" than "Crocodile Dundee".  Sad, but true.

Amanda:
> "Culture" as Penny and I are using
the term (I think; Penny, correct me if I'm wrong) is the totality of a
people--up to and including their ethnic foods, dress, dances, and the jokes
they tell on themselves. It is not just literature or music.<

In the cross-cultural area, literature, art, music etc. are often referred to as big C culture or "high" culture.  In terms of the more general definition, I spent a whole chapter of my thesis defining "culture".  I like Trompenaars' diagram, where he draws three concentric circles, with things like foods, dress, music, etc. in the outer circle (concrete, observable manifestations of culture), values, beliefs, morals etc. in the second circle, and core assumptions in the inner circle.   When running cross-cultural programs I often use this sort of diagram to illustrate that the most obvious aspects of "culture" (different food, language, etc.) are not, in the end, the most important.  People adapt readily enough to a change in physical environment, unless really extreme.  It's the inner circle stuff that ends up stressing people most, the way people just "don't know how to behave!", unlike people back home.

Some nice simple quotable definitions (mostly from anthropology, IIRC):

- Culture is that which is learned.

- Culture is the man-made part of the environment (original version, presumably "man-made" would now be replaced with "artificial" or "created by people" or some such)

I rather like the first one of these, and apply it implicitly in my training sessions.  Very handy when people declare of something someone from another culture has done "But people should just *know* that..." or "But that's just common sense/courtesy/knowledge!" and so on.  If you really think about it, there are very very few things people "just know"... all but the most basic behaviour has to be learned from somewhere, and people from different parts of the world learn different behaviours.

Tabouli.


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