What is a border, really? When I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City, I could see State Line Road out our kitchen window, a street that straddled the border between Kansas and Missouri. I never bothered to wonder how the two states coordinated the street paving, but we were impressed with the idea that we could stand in the middle of the street with a foot in each state, traffic permitting.

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While cleaning out some files the other day, I came across an old article by Michael Paige in that strange blue-violet type made by a ditto machine. I realized that part of the educational value of the piece, in addition to whatever Michael had written, was its iconic value as a representation of the culture of education in the baby boomer years....

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Geography sometimes suffers from image problems in the USA. When I tell people that I have a doctorate in geography, they assume I must know the names of every national, state, or provincial capitol in the world. Or that I can name the 10 longest rivers, the 20 highest peaks. Several years ago I was called for jury duty -- that institution of the US court system that places ordinary citizens as members of a jury to determine the outcome of a trial or civil case. As part of the voir dire process of jury selection, when my turn came I was publicly asked about my education level by the judge. I responded that I held a doctorate. "In what field?" the judge wanted to know. When I answered, "geography," the entire court room burst out laughing. Geography, it seems, was seen as knowledge for trivia contests, and not as a serious academic field.

But yesterday in the New York Times, the field made headlines on the first page of the "Arts" section: under the headline, "Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool is That?" In their social science way, Elisabeth Currid and Sarah Williams are looking at the spatial distribution of cultural phenomena. Their data: thousands of professional photographs of "flashy parties and smaller affairs on both coasts" for sale by Getty Images. Because these stock images are commercially available (and a bit expensive), they have been given a certain market value and significance. Getty Images photographers seek out events that they believe will allow them to sell their images, and the presences of photographers also draws a certain crowd. In short, Currid and Williams take this as the "cultural buzz" -- what people in the USA are talking about.

And they mapped it with an attractive mapping program, showing the color-coded epicenters of art, music, theater, and television events.

I have been trying to decide if this is in the "Arts" sections because the maps are visually attractive, or because they are maps about events relating to the arts. But for me, the importance is the map itself, and the association that it makes between culture and place. For even if this is only about the "buzz" of celebrity, it speaks of the patterns left on the ground: the "where" questions we ask about anything that happens or simply exists. Where is it?

Earlier this year I talked with an AFS student heading to a host family in the Bronx. There is an entirely different "buzz" around the Bronx than shown by the "Arts" maps of Currid and Williams. A quick search of photos posted for the Bronx on Google Maps revealed that numerous people have pegged their 25-year-old photographs of abandoned buildings and urban graffitti to various locations in the Bronx. The images are powerful and potentially frightening. Getty Images, on the other hand, now shows image of the Yankee Baseball Stadium, the Bronx Zoo, the Bronx Botanic Gardens, a few interesting and stylized portraits of young African-American men, and some occasional images of grafitti. This, I guess, is what sells now. Some places become landmarks, others go unnoticed. Still others are hopelessly stereotyped. Neither the photos mapped on Google or the Getty search of Bronx photos give a true impression of the Bronx. You need to know what else is going on, and how to interpret it.

Google Maps are useful if you start to save them to "my maps" and mark them up. Map the bars, the dry cleaners, the churches, the schools, the shoe stores, the courts, the banks, the grocery stores, the auto repair shops. Find the shared maps where people have located crimes or auto accidents, or their favorite restaurants. Nothing is evenly spread across the landscape. A map helps you see what's plentiful and what's scarce in a place, and this tells you a lot about power and about culture. With the technology today, we can map at the level of the street address rather than country, state, province or nation. We can see the amazing variations and understand how complex is the fabric of culture. But we still need a few local informants to help us interpret what we are finding.

Where you are and where you go is important, and quite often you need to go someplace else to change your perspective. Most people would be able to learn a great deal about other cultures simply by taking more of an interest in the diversity that exists within their own city or town, but the familiarity of the place where we live may keep us from crossing the borders that are set up within it. Instead we stick to the paths we always use, and encounter the people we usually encounter along those paths: even in a big city like New York. 

In the coming months I would like to do more with cultural mapping -- not the buzz, perhaps, but maybe more the variation in the mundane in the places I live and visit. I also am planning a move of this blog to a new host: one that makes it easier to comment and will allow me to add pages. It will still be found at www.interculturaleyes.org but with a new look.

Colors and Cultures

I'm just back from a short vacation in a small cabin in El Yunque tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico and I'm filled with memories of wet green leaves, clouds, emerald-colored humming birds and very tiny, very loud, coquí frogs. Though we had really just a few days to enjoy ourselves, my strongest impressions are those of deep vivid colors and the white clouds that obscured the mountain top, and the contrast of sound and silence that we found as we listed to the birds and frogs, the leaves in the wind, the car horns coming up the road, and then the sound that is silence.

Back in New York yesterday, I missed the green, and I missed the silence, but today I wear the customary green for St. Patrick's Day. My email left untended for a few days brought the announcement of the winning videos in the US Government-sponsored "ExchangesConnect" video contest. I especially enjoyed this winning video from José Vinícius Reis Gouveia, a 16-year old Brazilian high school student from Recife, a city close to my heart because of dear friends who live there.

This next prize-winning video, from 23-year old Bijoy Thangaraj of Bangalore featuring his own original music, was simply pure fun.

José, Bijoy, and two others have won a two-week exchange experience. Perhaps, as I did after my short time in Puerto Rico, they will return home with mostly sensory impressions: colors, tastes, smells, sounds. This is how they express themselves now in these videos. But even a short experience may be enough to raise their curiosity to the next level, to make them attached to the place and to people they meet, to make them want to return and to want to welcome people from elsewhere into their homes.

And it's inspiring to see all these beautifully crafted videos from people as young as 14 years old.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Heroes and Villains

I noticed yesterday that two of my New York City Facebook friends have become "Fans" of Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the airline pilot who successfully landed his disabled jet on the Hudson River, allowing all 155 passengers to survive.

Though I'm not sure what the point is of joining the fan club, it's hard not to be caught up in the media splash surrounding this pilot's excellent handling of a crisis situation. The story is a compelling one, of course, and the pilot's behavior and skill are everything one would hope for in a person with such responsibility. I always hope the pilot of my plane is this capable and responsible. Flying several times every year and always arriving safely at my various destinations can also seem like a miracle, and I want to thank all these pilots who didn't have to make a crash landing while I was on board. Many factors, including timing and location as well as the skill of the pilot, contributed to the successful outcome of a bad situation.

It was about a dozen years ago that I first went to Turkey, attending the World Congress of AFS. Faced with a heavy number of meetings and responsibilities during the Congress itself, I had little hope of seeing much of Istanbul. Somewhat wistfully I watched the slide presentation by our hosts in Turkey, intended to highlight the wonderful cultural sites and the natural beauty of their country, which I had little hope of seeing beyond the walls of our hotel. And then a slide depicting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Turkey, came up on the screen and the dozens of young Turkish volunteers, guests, and staff spontaneously and enthusiastically applauded their hero. I was startled to see this tribute to a man already dead some 60 years. Washington? Lincoln? Kennedy? Would any past president in the USA elicit such a genuinely felt applause? Wouldn't the founder of Turkey by now be just a figure in history? Wouldn't his image be seen so often that such a reaction would be difficult to sustain?

I pondered this question of national heroes for a long time. In my high school and university years in the USA, there was a sense that we were constantly bringing down villains, but that we had no heroes. Was it not the time for heroes? Or was it simply that no heroes emerged? Or did the media at that time tend to foster cynics instead of heroes? This was a classroom discussion I remember from that time. We thought of heroes and villains as mostly stereotyped characters from the comics or from traditional melodramas and Westerns. In the 60s and 70s, movies that wanted to be taken seriously did not have heroes; nor traditional happy endings. Heroes and villains only re-emerged with the Star Wars films.

I don’t know how cynical we were in fact, but I do know that I am becoming less cynical in recent years. Perhaps my culture is moving away from cynicism as a cultural outlook, and more to a place where it makes perfect sense to create a hero's fan page on Facebook for a skilled airline pilot who had the misfortune to hit a flock of geese (it seems), the good fortune to have the Hudson River handy when this happened, and to have the skill and training to keep everyone safe in a frightening situation.

Is hope the opposite of cynicism? Maybe it's possible to have both together. This is probably nowhere more visible than when youthful idealism meets intellectual cynicism. From the perspective of New York City, the USA seems ready to embrace hope and heroism, and this is found not just in the excitement of Captain Sullenberger's achievement but also, particularly in neighborhoods like mine, with the inauguration of Barack Obama on the day after the celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King. Huge Obama posters that still hang in the stores down the street, along with images and references to Dr. King, whose birthday we celebrate today, although technically it was last week. And perhaps now I can imagine a group of young people from the USA who would spontaneously applaud an image of Martin Luther King, now more than 40 years after his death, or the soon to be president, Barack Obama.

There is always a rich and dynamic cultural story surrounding the heroes of a culture, whether their status lasts a few weeks or for more than 60 years; whether their ascent to heroism came about by chance or through long years of planning and organization. The story of a hero is one that connects in some profound way to a particular culture and its shared values, assumptions and beliefs. The story itself may evolve as the hero’s reputation lives. As in the case of mythic heroes, it isn’t even necessary that the story be objectively or factually true, but it must be emotionally true in a very real way to the culture that creates and honors the hero. I’m hopeful enough to want this story to last.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research, AFS International

Sometimes the most relevant information to guide our understanding of the world is found not in the main news sections of a newspaper or news program, but in what is often considered the "softer" area of the "Home" section. Following up on the last issue concerning on the cultural context that has led to the fact that I live far away from my 92-year-old mother, and how I attempt to care for her across this distance, I wanted to point out that an entirely different trend is being found in the USA, among slightly younger families than mine. 

Living Together:  Your Mother Is Moving In? That's Great! in today's New York Times is a report on an apparent trend in the US for grandmothers to live with their daughter's families and to help with the care of their grandchildren while the the parents are at work.

I think this article helps highlight some of the factors that contribute to cultural change, and the interplay of economic and demographic factors in creating these cultural changes. This is just another opportunity to emphasize the dynamic nature of cultures. We cannot learn even our own culture just once: it's a lifetime of new experiences with other people in a group we belong to. Learning about other cultures (of groups we don't actually belong to) is also a lifetime journey through both time and place.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Giving meaning to place
A few days ago I read about the Tokyo Tower in the New York Times as the Japanese celebrated its 50th anniversary. It is still "world’s tallest self-supported steel structure" but that's not what gives the tower its meaning. As a post World War II monument, the tower’s
symbolic growth and decline are contained within the lifetime of many Japanese citizens, so it's easy for the Times article to tap the memories of a few people and show how it is that a culture gives meaning and significance to a place.

Like the Eiffel tower that it resembles, the Tokyo Tower was quickly made into a symbol of progress and the technological ambitions of the nation. What's interesting about the article, though, is that it documents a change in the symbolism for Japan. Now, it seems that the 50-year-old tower (younger than I am) has become a nostalgic symbol of the recent past.

From the Times article:

“For my father’s generation, Tokyo Tower was the symbol of the new Tokyo that they wanted to build,” said Midori Tajima, 60, who owns a camera shop near the tower. “But for my generation, it has watched over us during 50 years when everything else seemed to be changing.”

Happy New Year!
Even though I live in New York, I have never been to Times Square on New Year's Eve, but on many a December 31, I have watched the ball drop on television. I am not keen on big, noisy crowds or standing around on frigid nights. Last year, the ball drop passed its 100th anniversary: twice as old as the Tokyo Tower.

Recently I passed through a newly renovated subway tunnel connecting the various subway lines that meet at the Times Square subway station. Following the tradition of subway mosaics that represent something related to the place above ground, a new set of mosaics shows a variety of New Year's revelers wearing New Year's hats and blowing horns and noisemakers. Some are carrying children on their shoulders, some are in couples or small groups, some alone.

This perhaps has become the meaning we give to the place, Times Square. It is the place where the nation marks the beginning of each new year. This has a lot to do with the way New Year's Eve is celebrated in the USA. It is the highlight of the party calendar, the
date for which you must have a date. It's not particularly a time to spend with your family, especially when you are young and nearly adult. Times Square means nightlife, writ large, and as the meaning of nightlife has changed over time, so has Times Square. The history of what used to be known as Longacre Square involved the brothels and sex shops of a red light district, which still marked the Times Square area long into the 1980s. But the district also was home to the Broadway theaters and "Restaurant Row" making it the city's most famous nightlife spot for tourists. Advertisers took advantage of the crowds with huge billboards.

In recent years the lights are so bright on Broadway that it looks like daytime even at midnight. The city has managed to remove much of the "red light" from the area and substituted the bright lights of consumerism. In spite of the $100 and more per ticket, and in part
thanks to Disney productions, Broadway theater patrons include many children, including always the precious 11- and 12-year-old girls who dress up for the occasion of their big night out more than anyone else in the theater.

And what is Times Square as a landmark? It hasn't been the home of the New York Times in decades. The buildings have changed over the years. Times Square is essentially a messy intersection caused by the diagonal street Broadway which crosses over 7th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets. But that's more where you stand to look at the building on 42nd between 7th Avenue and Broadway, which is "One Times Square" -- the building that used to be owned by the New York Times and where the crystal ball drops down the 77-foot (about 25 meter) flagpole to the roof of the building.

Why do so many flock to this "bowtie" intersection, passing through checkpoints, unable to bring any bags or backpacks, dressed for arctic temperatures? Only because they've given this place a meaning that approaches magic. It's become a destination on a journey, a place to mark the passage of time. And this is how we give meaning to a place.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education & Research

AFS International

link to previous post with video from Times Square

Times Square photo credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Times_Square_Evening.jpg

Social Networks

An odd piece of research has received publicity recently in the US. It's a study that looks at "happiness" and found that happiness seems to be a phenomenon shared via social connections. Happy people tend to be found in the middle of a social network of happy people, but the finding that prompted all the media attention was that people who became happier seemed to increase the happiness not just of their own friends, but also of the neighbors and their friends of their friends -- people they did not even know. But these people had to be close geographically to have an effect, according to the research. Body language, and the sensory experience of seeing and hearing the other person were thought to be important factors in spreading happiness. Curiously, this effect did not happen among work colleagues, which tends to contradict the researchers comparison of this effect to a contagious disease. So it's really social networks that operate here.

Other studies have shown how obesity and smoking patterns follow social networks. Similarly, no doubt, patterns in preferences for music will move along these paths. Perceptions about what is funny, what constitutes success, what is healthy, and what is bad for you are also shared among your social group, even when extended to include the friends of your friends.

What we may be viewing here -- assuming that this study can be replicated elsewhere -- are the paths of culture shifting. "Happiness" is not really an objective state of being, even if statistically valid questionnaire scales can be created to measure it. How people respond to the scales is certainly a cultural product created within the social network subcultures to which they belong and will reflect among other things how they have learned (perhaps recently learned) to perceive themselves and others. Perceiving yourself as "happy" is part of how your group sees itself. And maybe culture shifts also happen with the same needed geographic proximity, though we still don't know the impact of online social network communications like Facebook.

For more on this study, you can read the AARP Bulletin or The New York Times reports.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Newly Dependent

Coming here to Berlin for the first time has reminded me how easily one can suddenly feel very dependent on others in a new place when you don't speak the language. Even the simplest everyday activities can be challenging when you don't know how these things are done here. I remember several years ago in Germany when I took the train from Luxembourg to Frankfurt with a change at Cologne. Not difficult to do, but when I handed my ticket to the conductor, I learned that I was on the local train to Cologne, not the express, and therefore I would miss my connection to Frankfurt. Knowing my friend would be waiting for me in Frankfurt, and without a cell phone, I had to try to telephone him in Cologne. This was not so simple to do. First was the matter that I needed to purchase a card for the telephone system. Then, as I held the newly purchased phone card in one hand and the telephone receiver in the other, I realized that I could not figure out how to operate the telephone and could not understand the instructions written in German. So I stood on the platform and said loudly to anyone who might listen, "Is there anyone here who speaks English and could help me use the telephone?" The person who responded did not speak English very much, in fact, but was able to demonstrate the use of the phone card so that I was able to make my phone call.

I felt like this again yesterday, when told that I could just take the tram three stops to find a shopping center, and was handed a tram map. This was not the kind of map I expected, with streets and the hotel clearly marked but rather a schematic representation of the tram lines. Jet lagged and feeling cramped from long hours in a tight airplane seat, at that point, I didn't even know which direction to turn when I left the hotel. I wasn't sure I had the energy to scout on my own for the aspirin to soothe my aching muscles, to approach people to ask directions with my phrase-book, mispronounced German, or to deal with remembering landmarks on my path to find my way back again.

Typically when I travel to new places, I need a day or two to settle in. I like to walk around the area of the hotel on the first day or two to know where I am and register it as familiar territory. After this initial phase, I am ready to travel further and further from my base, creating an increasingly large area of familiar space. I like to look for my own brand of landmarks: places that leave an impression on me, that I will easily remember. But until I feel familiar with the immediately surrounding base territory, I am often surprised to find how timid and tentative I feel. I need to take my time and know where I am. It always surprises me since eventually I always enjoy discovering new places and have little fear of getting lost.

I expect that this is also a common experience for some of our exchange students, who might need or want to stay closer to their new home in the first days of their experience before they have the comfort and curiosity to move out further. Even with personal relationships, it may be easier for some to talk mostly to the host brothers and sisters and the host parents, while meeting other students in the school might proceed more slowly as they build up some confidence in their "base territory" of relationships.

At this point, I am ready to explore Berlin in full, but must postpone at least some of that while I attend conference meetings. In truth, traveling for work usually doesn't allow one the kind of time needed to get much beyond the base territory. The exchange students, on the other hand, will still have lots of time to take the slow start they may need.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

The Comfort Zone

I'm in a different time zone today, on the West Coast of the USA, in Portland, Oregon at the Intercultural Communication Institute's "Summer Institute" which has just begun its annual round of training workshops. Flying in quite late on Monday night, I stayed at a convenient and comfortable airport hotel. Now I am staying in the dorms of Reed College, reminded only slightly of my life on campus so many decades ago. The narrow bed is exactly as I remembered it, but not much else. But it isn't my physical comfort zone I'm here to test. I want to stretch my perceptual comfort zone. I will be attending a workshop by Kichiro Hayashi on perceptual flexibility. I have been warned by ICI Executive Director, Janet Bennett, that this workshop does not use the learning style I am most comfortable using, and maybe exactly for that reason I decided it was time to do this.

Even coming to Portland from New York is a major shift in culture. Teenagers on the subway -- oops, the Maxi -- look strangely vulnerable and innocent to these New York-trained eyes, but I needn't worry that they are not quite tough enough to be out on their own. They will easily find their destination, I know. Our teenagers on the New York City subway may look a little threatening from this perspective. An entirely different set of assumptions apply here, even though the general USA culture provides a familiar space. I tried to make analogies and asked a colleague from New York who now lives in Portland to explain what neighborhood here might be "the Park Slope" of Portland so I could describe to another colleague where one of our AFS students was going to be living in New York next year. From what he could conclude, there really isn't a comparable neighborhood. Nor, when I walked around his neighborhood of Kenton, could I think of anything comparable in New York City.

Many of the mental categories I use regularly are not applicable in other contexts, and so the conclusions I draw may also not be accurate as my context changes. And the context does change from place to place, and it will change as I continue on my journey through time (see "Generational cultures"). So I don't expect to be comfortable all the time, but it should always be interesting.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Leo Hitchcock, a frequent guest blogger here on Intercultural Eyes, has recently traveled  halfway around the world. Back in New Zealand now, he sent in this report in which he ties his own visceral experience of two different "worlds" to some of the concepts of Edward Hall.

Worlds apart: Saigon cf. Scandinavia

Recently I visited Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), followed by Copenhagen (Denmark), and Kristianstad, a small town in southern Sweden – in the same week. It was such a contrast it was almost double-culture shock! First that Ho Chi Minh City was so different to Auckland, New Zealand, then Scandinavia being so different again – two ends of a spectrum, with Auckland somewhere in the middle.

What immediately struck me is the difference in territoriality and exploitation. These are two (of ten) cultural Primary Message Systems (PMS) that control cultural norms and values (Hall, [1959] 1981). Territoriality establishes personal, community, and societal territory, or the use of space, including the rules associated with personal space of, or between, individuals. Exploitation controls the rules and practices associated with the use of tools and the environment as extensions of societal and individual needs. In a way these two PMS have some parallels.

Territoriality

Ho Chi Minh City: Much commerce in Ho Chi Minh City is carried out on the roadside. Stores have ‘touts’ with the objective of luring people inside or to the store. Many hundreds of stalls are set up on the sidewalk itself, even right on the kerbside to lure the riders of the seemingly thousands upon thousands of motor cycles and scooters tearing about. Even motor cycles and scooters claim territory not rightly theirs, for example they will ride the opposite side of the road or the sidewalk to avoid heavy traffic and/or red lights. And unless they are stopped at a red light (but one still needs to watch for vehicles coming through), traffic does not yield at pedestrian crossings at all – one must ‘run the gauntlet’ and dodge the vehicles (mainly motor cycles and scooters) tearing past. One can buy anything (anything!) off the street – including little dogs (please don’t ask!), other animals such as little piglets, all kinds of birds including crows, and many, many things – some things I just did now know what they were. Getting into one’s personal space is not an issue to the determined tout. If one gets too close to a store, especially in the markets, one is physically grabbed by the arm and quite forcefully dragged into their space and ‘worked over’ for a buy.

Copenhagen & Kristianstad: There are market stalls, but not on the roadside as such but in designated market areas such as a town square, with goods for sale limited to curios, souvenirs, crafts, food, and the like. There are no touts trying to lure you to these market stalls, nor into the stores. Traffic - and pedestrians! - are almost completely law-abiding, observing all the traffic and crossing signals. In the cobbled shopping precinct areas, vehicles even yield to pedestrians – unheard of in Ho Chi Minh City! When one enters a store space, one is cheerfully greeted but not ‘set upon’, and then politely attended to once one indicates a purchase is a possibility.

Exploitation

One can glean from the above that exploitation of the shopper’s dollar is a primary objective in the markets of Ho Chi Minh City, and exploitation of the available land for stalls and extensions to stores is also prevalent. In one street I walked along the store front had been extended out so far that there was no sidewalk left to walk on, and stepping onto the road in such traffic is not to be taken lightly! However, everything is neat, clean and tidy, and ‘in its place’ in Scandinavia. It is also much, much quieter! I believe ‘bargaining’ falls within this PMS, as bargaining is exploitation of the shopper’s available dollars on the one hand, and exploitation of the seller’s margins on the other. No bargaining in Scandinavia, well, not generally anyway. In Ho Chi Minh City however, bargaining is the norm in many stores, especially in the markets, and even some taxis and other forms of transport. It is interesting haggling over a low cost item. The exchange rate is 16,000:1 $US. This means that one can spend several minutes haggling over the difference between 50,000 and 35,000 for an item, if successful thereby getting a reduction in the buy price of 15,000 – less than $US1 !

Oh, where’s the sidewalk gone?	Mmm, how do I get across here?
Oh, where’s the traffic?	Everything clean, tidy, and in its place.

Primary Message Systems

Territoriality and Exploitation are just two of 10 cultural Primary Message Systems identified by the anthropologist Edward T. Hall ([1959] 1981). It is within these 10 PMS that study abroad sojourners will experience cultural difference, and, probably, some culture shock. The others are:

· Interaction: Interaction lies at the hub of culture and everything grows from it. This represents all forms of communication including linguistic interaction.

· Association: Association establishes social networks within communities. Levels of status are established within this PMS. Hall, ([1959] 1981: 38-40) refers to this as the ‘pecking order’.

· Subsistence: This PMS controls nutritional requirements along with the rituals and rules associated with food and eating. This PMS also establishes the norms and ‘rules’ around status and manual labor.

· Bisexuality: Like food, a basic necessity of life is the reproduction of the species. This PMS establishes the rituals and rules associated with the differentiation of both form and function (bisexuality) of reproduction, and the genders, that is the rules associated with what men can and cannot do, and with what women can and cannot do.

· Temporality: Temporality establishes the rules associated with cycles and rhythms. For example; the division of society by age, mealtimes, and tempos of speech, all of which vary by culture.

· Learning and Acquisition: A basic activity of life, this PMS includes the acquisition of one’s own cultural PMS (enculturation), shared behaviours and ways of living, and the required knowledge and skills. It also includes acculturation - the acquiring of a new culture’s ways of living. This PMS includes formal, informal, and technical learning.

· Play: Establishes the rules around the use of humor, competition through games, and degrees of enjoyment.

· Defence: This relates to the need for defence against hostile forces of external societies, within society, within the environment, within nature, and within the individual. The bases for the organization and content of religion and of medicines and cures arise from the latter two.

Ref: Hall, Edward T.; [1959] 1981, The Silent Language. Random House: U.S.A & Canada.

Riding the Information Subway

I recently took a blogger's "What generation are you?" on-line test and discovered that my "real" generation should be GEN-X based on my internet use. I am reminded of those many times when I have gone to some well-advertised new restaurant, looked around and discovered that I was the oldest person there.

That's not so different from finding yourself to be the only foreigner waiting on the platform for the subway in an outlying part of Tokyo, for example. I remember some twenty years ago when I was visiting Tokyo and staying with an AFS family who kindly offered me a brief home stay. The daughter in the family asked me if I felt uncomfortable being the only foreigner in the sea of Japanese commuters. I thought about it for a bit, and realized that I hadn't even paid attention to my solitary status, being so focused on figuring out my route on the map and the fact that I fully expected everyone else to be Japanese. So, yes, I felt comfortable, and being comfortable is a good thing. But riding the subway in Tokyo comfortably isn't necessary a cultural immersion experience, even if my outward behavior looked very much the same as any other commuter there. I wasn't carrying with me the thoughts and preoccupations of other subway riders. I was still an American riding a train in Tokyo, heading back and forth to the AFS office for a few days.

On the other hand, the time spent with my hosts was key, even, or perhaps especially, when the language barrier prevented conversations. Non-verbal behavior became the key element of communication as when my host "mother" (really only a few years older than I was) demonstrated how to prepare and store the futon, how to use the Japanese style toilet, how to bathe. These were experienced hosts, who anticipated my needs and my potential misunderstandings. There is much to learn through observation in the midst of a family, and I was keen to understand as much as possible. It was exciting because so much was visibly different from my usual surroundings. It was comfortable because the family was always thinking of my comfort. I am not sure how well I was able to think of theirs.

I recently started reading a book by T.R. Reid about his experience in Japan and other parts of Asia: Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West. Written in the last years of the 20th Century, the book now seems a bit out-of-date, especially when Reid talks about the economic situation. Nevertheless, I still wanted to read this book because I remembered his humorous and insightful reports on the radio: of his experiences in Japan, of his homecoming to Colorado in the USA, and his subsequent posting in London as a correspondent for the Washington Post. I particularly liked the subtitle. He wrote this book very much for a US audience, and you can read a lengthy review of it by Dean H. Ruetzler on Hackwriters, which is also in itself an interesting account of one American's experience in Japan. Ruetzler winds up his review saying:

What is needed in reaction to all this is a philosophy where differences between East and West are not the focal point, but the similarities are. East and West need to drop smug self-righteousness in the correctness of "their way", and look how much they have already been influenced by, and are becoming "each other" on a daily basis.

This "philosophy" is very much typical of the AFS program alumni we have studied in our recent Long Term Impact Study, more so that the defensive posture of "smug self-righteousness" that Ruetzler describes. In the next Issue, I'll go into more detail about the research findings.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research, AFS International