"What are you doing?" I've been asked so often recently. What everyone means is; what is Intercultural Relations anyway? As I embark on this journey- here at Pondi's Subterranea as well as in graduate school- it seems a fitting cliff's edge to try to define it for you all.
Let me start by naming what it's not. It's not Anthropology, nor is it Cross-Cultural Psychology. It's not International Relations per se, and it certainly isn't Foreign Affairs. Although all these fields inform the Interculturalist, the questions Intercultural Relations pose reach deeper into our core selves, into the very essence of our experience as relational beings...
In loving the questions themselves, here are a few Intercultural jumping off points: What are our presumed identities and cultures? How much do we affiliate with them, and how much are they ascribed to us? What happens- specifically- when one culture faces another, or when one person contains many cultures within them? Perhaps most importantly of all:
Who creates reality? If another's value system, language and beliefs are so vastly different from one's own such that the sky is not blue for them but green, how can we ever be sure what is 'real' and what is imaginary, or at least highly subjective? How often do we underestimate the assumptions we make about others- despite even the best intentions? How much of the human experience really is universal, and whose devices are we using to measure such a thing?
On the practical level, I'd love to aid myself and others in the world in becoming more aware of difference, more celebratory of it, more agile within its borders. I offer myself up as peaceful warrior, web mender, hard thinker, ambassador of the arts- as I'm sure many of us do. In the 'real' world (haha), there is work to be done. Daily. Nightly. In small towns, in great cities. In the office, in the forest, in the pub. But in the abstract nowhere lands of thought, in the vast emptiness of hearts in question, one must also consider what one Argentinian colleague of mine brought up recently:
On a visit many years ago to the States, her friends here questioned, "Do you have really bad jet-lag?" She asked what it was. She had never heard of "jet-lag" before. Her friends and family back home agreed: they had never experienced this during travel. There isn't (or wasn't then) a specific word (that she knew of) in Argentinian Spanish for jet-lag. Since learning the word here in the U.S., there is no longer a trip she takes wherein she doesn't experience jet-lag.
Milton and Janet Bennett, two of the founding parents of Intercultural Relations, offer a simple but profound idea that may be a cornerstone "sound bite" for this field: The Platinum Rule. In contrast to The Golden Rule- which we have likely revered as high law in our lives- "Treat others as you wish to be treated", the Platinum Law asks us instead to "Treat others as THEY would like to be treated." Intercultural Communication contemplates, studies and helps to facilitate the "symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities negotiate shared meaning in an interactive situation" (Stella Ting-Toomey).
Consider it for a moment. Consider what might go in to sorting through how another's reality may differ vastly from one's own. How another's idea of good treatment may differ vastly from one's own. And in conscious celebration, not fear, of that difference, how we can co-create a more aware, efficient, peaceful, connected, prolific and imaginative world. This is the work of Intercultural Relations.
pondi.
Let me start by naming what it's not. It's not Anthropology, nor is it Cross-Cultural Psychology. It's not International Relations per se, and it certainly isn't Foreign Affairs. Although all these fields inform the Interculturalist, the questions Intercultural Relations pose reach deeper into our core selves, into the very essence of our experience as relational beings...
In loving the questions themselves, here are a few Intercultural jumping off points: What are our presumed identities and cultures? How much do we affiliate with them, and how much are they ascribed to us? What happens- specifically- when one culture faces another, or when one person contains many cultures within them? Perhaps most importantly of all:
Who creates reality? If another's value system, language and beliefs are so vastly different from one's own such that the sky is not blue for them but green, how can we ever be sure what is 'real' and what is imaginary, or at least highly subjective? How often do we underestimate the assumptions we make about others- despite even the best intentions? How much of the human experience really is universal, and whose devices are we using to measure such a thing?
On the practical level, I'd love to aid myself and others in the world in becoming more aware of difference, more celebratory of it, more agile within its borders. I offer myself up as peaceful warrior, web mender, hard thinker, ambassador of the arts- as I'm sure many of us do. In the 'real' world (haha), there is work to be done. Daily. Nightly. In small towns, in great cities. In the office, in the forest, in the pub. But in the abstract nowhere lands of thought, in the vast emptiness of hearts in question, one must also consider what one Argentinian colleague of mine brought up recently:
On a visit many years ago to the States, her friends here questioned, "Do you have really bad jet-lag?" She asked what it was. She had never heard of "jet-lag" before. Her friends and family back home agreed: they had never experienced this during travel. There isn't (or wasn't then) a specific word (that she knew of) in Argentinian Spanish for jet-lag. Since learning the word here in the U.S., there is no longer a trip she takes wherein she doesn't experience jet-lag.
Milton and Janet Bennett, two of the founding parents of Intercultural Relations, offer a simple but profound idea that may be a cornerstone "sound bite" for this field: The Platinum Rule. In contrast to The Golden Rule- which we have likely revered as high law in our lives- "Treat others as you wish to be treated", the Platinum Law asks us instead to "Treat others as THEY would like to be treated." Intercultural Communication contemplates, studies and helps to facilitate the "symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities negotiate shared meaning in an interactive situation" (Stella Ting-Toomey).
Consider it for a moment. Consider what might go in to sorting through how another's reality may differ vastly from one's own. How another's idea of good treatment may differ vastly from one's own. And in conscious celebration, not fear, of that difference, how we can co-create a more aware, efficient, peaceful, connected, prolific and imaginative world. This is the work of Intercultural Relations.
pondi.
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