AFS Intercultural Eyes: Five Frameworks of Culture

Issue 34. August 9, 2008

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:29:52 GMT

Private Lives

In the early hours of the morning when I was somewhere between awake and asleep and with my eyes still closed, my attention was drawn to a slightly smoky, slightly spicy and faintly familiar odor. I hesitated a minute before I recognized what it was. It was a smell I remembered from India. Opening my eyes I realized where it was coming from. I had put an Indian bed sheet on my bed for the summer when I don't need the additional warmth of a blanket. And it's a beautiful sheet which I brought back from India ... in 1992. It's been through numerous washes over the years but still has not lost its color, nor has it completely lost its odor, at least in my dreams.

It reminded me of the lingering traces of the cultural assumptions and patterns of behavior we learn in childhood that still cling to us long after our context changes and we intend to take on a new pattern. Like the storks who no longer bother to fly after living under nets as fledglings, we sometimes find it hard to escape those ingrained patterns and beliefs even when we have every reason to escape them. One of these ingrained patterns for me is my reluctance to ask people about their relationships, their feelings, their opinions. It's somewhat of a joke that I am always the last person to know the office gossip.

And I know where it comes from:

"Mind your own business!"

Somehow the pattern emerged when I was still a child that some questions I asked were perceived as prying into affairs that were private to the individuals involved and therefore should be none of my concern. Not wanting to be a "busybody" or gossip, I learned to refrain from asking people questions about their personal lives. If they wanted me to know, they would tell me. I learned I shouldn't ask. Now this seems to me to be an extreme form of the concern for privacy that was characteristic of the US culture during the time I was growing up.

"Don't ask. Don't tell."

A familiar restriction on asking about other people's private lives was made a policy in the US military during the Clinton administration. While intended to find a way to allow homosexuals to serve in the military rather than automatically being discharged, the essence of the policy was this: Your private behavior may be contrary to military regulations, but at long as I don't ask you about it and you don't tell me about it, then we agree that it doesn't exist. But of course, this does mean that I can't know you very well or really be a close friend, and I may have to pretend not to recognize some essential aspects of your identity because they are different than what is allowed.

Today, one the one hand there are myriad privacy policies that we acknowledge reading even when we don't, while on the other people seem very willing to tell all sorts of things about themselves to almost anyone. And they are being judged on what they put out there, with stars, comments, and sharing on Facebook.

"I don't mean to pry, but . . . "

I still worry about invading someone's privacy. Am I someone you trust enough to share these details of you life with me? This timid restraint that prevents me from getting to know you is not so useful to me these days. I now believe that it doesn't so much protect your privacy as it locks out our opportunities for meaningful exchanges. And for relationships across cultures, or even across genders, it is absolutely necessary to ask questions and show my curiosity and my interest in your life because I cannot assume that my own experience gives me the basis to understand yours. If I am to understand who you are, will need you to tell me, and if you don't think to do so, I'll have to ask.

"Curiosity killed the cat."

How many times did I hear this growing up? Don't be curious? Curiosity is dangerous? Why was this value promoted? But it's not so easy to lose the old habits. I still hesitate.

Bettina Hansel
Director of Intercultural Education and Research
AFS International

Issue 33. August 4, 2008.

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:16:14 GMT

Language Use And Perception

The Sunday Magazine of the New York Times has a regular feature called "On Language" that usually focuses on emerging uses of the English language in the United States. But this week a guest columnist, Caroline Winter, speculated on the connections between the capitalization of the languages first person pronoun, "I" and its potential connection to the cultural assumptions. See: Me, Myself and I (New York Times Magazine, August 3, 2008). The obvious rush to connect this to the individualistic nature of US culture and the "Anglosphere" (a term apparently coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson) is mentioned cautiously. Cultural norms, behaviors, and realities create language use, and then language use may reinforce those very norms, behaviors and realities. This is not to say that language use determines behaviors, or vice versa, but rather that they are interrelated.

Caroline Winter's idea that thinking of ourselves "as a small 'i' with a sweet little dot" might shift our thinking away from individualism and toward community may be just a bit of wishful thinking. Yet something I read when I began my career at AFS in 1980 prompted me to notice in my letters (and later, faxes, and later still, emails) how often I began a sentence with the word "I" and how difficult it is to avoid that while still sticking to the dominant business language rules that insist that we use the Active voice as more direct and clear and avoid the Passive voice. Any one can see what happens if you use US English grammar and spelling selections in Microsoft Word. Microsoft tends to demand a clear sentence subject (such as "I") that acts (hence, Active voice) than the more passive construction that can often be found in Spanish. So we say, "I forgot my purse," making the forgetting some action that we made, instead of "Se me olvidó la bolsa" where "forgot" is much more something that happened to us than anything we can be blamed for doing.

A comet

Speaking of language and the Anglosphere and the passive voice, I was recently introduced to the blog "Cultures On Line" by one of its authors, Guy Trolliet, who sent an announcement via the SIETAR 2008 Google group. Only a few months old, the blog is published both in French and English, and seems to have a strong interest in the complexities of organizational cultures. I was immediately drawn to an image developed by Guy and his associate, Peter Isackson who made the illustration of a comet to describe the complex cultural elements forming the colorful "tail" of the organizational comet. You may also enjoy their image to think about where your organization is headed and the composition of its tail.

Bettina Hansel, Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Issue 32. July 25, 2008.

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:25:47 GMT

Changing my mind

I have been reading Richard Nisbett's book, The Geography of Thought which makes a nice added reading to Hayashi's workshop on Perceptual Flexibility that has been the focus of my last two blogs. Back home in New York, deeply immersed in a range of work and daily routines, I find it difficult to use my imagination in quite the same way as I was able to while in Portland. Yet it seems so important to try. I think what impressed me most both in Hayashi's workshop and in the Nisbett book were the creative possibilities unleashed when you can change the the way you think.

When I think of digital and analog, I think of my own preference for the analog watch. Somehow seeing the position of the hands on the face of a clock or watch gives me a "feeling" for what time it is, while reading the numeric output of a digital clock is a mental exercise. With a digital clock, I don't see how near or far away from 10 o'clock it is, for instance, at 9:38, which teases me numerically into thinking it's really only half-past nine (or "half nine," as the Irish would say) in the same way that the $19.95 price tag on something doesn't sound nearly as expensive as the $20 it nearly costs you. The fact that I'm talking about the feeling of $20, or the feeling of 20 minutes (or 1/3 of an hour) shows an analog tendency.

Swinging between analog and digital

Perceptual flexibility means using more than just one way of thinking. Hayashi taught us to pay attention to our movement along three curved dimensions or arcs that are defined by something like polar opposing mindsets, and he gave us some exercises for us to "swing" back and forth between the poles of these arcs. Thinking of this as a swing is useful because the flexibility demands that move back and forth in our conversations and negotiations with people from other cultures, and one never rests at the polar ends of the swing. These exercises take practice, but I felt most successful in swinging along the digital and analog arc, even when I wasn't always so sure what might be considered digital and what would be analog.

What do I perceive digitally? Anything I describe by putting it in a category. It's a car, a box, a calendar. It's things that have properties, and the Nisbett book is helpful in explaining how common it is for people in the USA to teach their children nouns and explain their properties. Whether you put the adjective before the noun (as in English) or after the noun (as is typical for French and Spanish) the noun tends to be the focus of much of "Western" thinking and the adjectives highlight the properties. So we analyze things and take them apart, and take them out of their context. A German Shepherd dog in a city apartment is not seen as a different kind of dog than the German Shepherd dog on the farm. We group them together in a broad category of "dogs" with a sub category which is German Shepherd.

But what if I swing the other way, and instead of paying attention to the dog, I pay attention to the activity going on. I first notice that this photo is taken in a field. It is in a rural area, near the mountains and two dogs are looking up expectantly, seemingly waiting for something to happen. They look wet, and the caption says that the dogs are playing at the lake. Well, the caption is some digital information but otherwise I'm thinking about my subject more holistically, in a more analog fashion, with the greatest attention paid to the context and what the dogs might be doing. I don't just say, "It's a photo of two German Shepherd dogs." According to Nisbitt's book, this way of thinking about the photo would be more "Eastern" than "Western" and he has many studies that confirm this kind of broad difference across cultures.

I'm sure that my notes from my three-day workshop with Hayashi and the Nisbett book will find their way again as my thinking evolves.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Issue 31. July 18, 2008

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:43:34 GMT

Pearls

When we are in a dialogue with someone from another culture, what do we do with the cultural differences that emerge? Milton Bennett has often talked about the situation where each person adapts in some way to the other culture and in the process a "virtual third culture" is created that is used by both people during the time that they are in contact with each other.

In an abstract, theoretical way, this makes perfect sense and I am sure that examples abound, but I don't actually have a good one in my head, in part because I always feel the back and forth of the two cultures. On the other hand, last week at Kichiro Hayashi's workshop on Perceptual Flexibility, I found an evocative image that works less on a theoretical or digital level and more on an emotional and analog level. More about digital and analog in a future post.

What is it, then, that happens when two people with very different ways of thinking find themselves wanting to or needing to work together? I found myself in this position not so long ago, in conjunction with a project here at AFS. My colleague from Malaysia was approaching the task at hand with a strong need for a particular framework to unify the concepts. Ten years ago, I would have probably said, "What is he talking about?"

As Hayashi explained in the seminar, we often react to the foreign concept like we do to a foreign body in our system: we either say, "Get this out of me" or perhaps we run away from it. But instead, he told us, we should let the foreign particle stay there and live with it in us. Don't try to immediately merge your idea with the other person's. Just let it be there for now. Stay with your own cultural way of looking at the issue in front of you, but now include this foreign element in your work and in your consciousness, even if it seems to contradict your own conclusions. Let it be equally a part of your work. Let the contradictory parts stand next to each other, equally valid and important. Take the time that is needed and continue to edit or refine your work while keeping the foreign element in it.

For those that ask "Well, where is this going? When are you able to reconcile the differences?" Hayashi assures us that the process of working with both cultural elements leads to a more creative approach that ultimately is more than either the sum or the average of the two parts.

As I thought of this idea in our workshop, the image that came to me was that of a small piece of grit that gets into an oyster's shell. The oyster lives constantly with this foreign element working with it in an oyster's way to create a pearl. It can't be particularly comfortable, but something amazingly beautiful is created and the foreign element, that piece of grit that is no longer visible, is absolutely essential to the process of creating the pearl.

I realized how this worked because of my recent experience with my Malaysian colleague and the framework he was proposing that didn't seem to fit with my mentality. Rather than "rejecting it from my system" as I might have done in the past, I decided to assume first that my colleague had a useful and promising approach. Though I did not have a clear sense of where this would take me, I studied the new framework, tried to comprehend what was intended to do, and tried to connect it to the project we were working on together. We discussed terms and language quite a bit, back and forth in my early morning and his late night. I involved another colleague in this approach and we all compared our results from looking at the project through the framework.

In the end, I shifted my approach and came up with another way of working that does NOT in fact look very much like the framework of my Malaysian colleague. But it's at least 10 times better than what I was using before, and we've been using it within the working team in the past couple of months as a way to check to make sure everything is included.

SIIC Workshop #13 Photo Album

I wanted to show some photos taken on those reflective times of listening. Notice Regina Rowland's graphic art. When we ate meals or walked with others on the Reed College campus, people would ask, "Are you in the workshop that has those beautiful pages we see on the wall?"

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Issue 30. July 12, 2008.

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:13:51 GMT

Perceptual Flexibility

I want to thank Kichom Hiyashi and Regina Rowland for the workshop I have been attending this week. My notebook is full of ideas that will come through this bog in the coming weeks. There is too much for just one report.

Much of the work we did is in the form of images, and Regina Rowland facilitated the workshop by providing incredibly beautiful images and words that communicated the content on another level as Hiyashi-sensei spoke to us persuasively and gently and with good humor. The three days were enormously challenging and intense, but in a way that builds excitement from the confusing possibilities that we have ahead of us. I do not feel any stress; rather I feel thoughtful and calm. I don't yet know what will become of these ideas, but I know I will return to this blog space in a short time to talk about swinging back and forth between different mental approaches.

But on this sleepy Saturday, I'm much more able to talk about the images. As Hayashi described his ideas and metaphors and Regina interpreted these on huge sheets of white paper, the atmosphere was rich with a visuals. Several people also used VisualsSpeak photo packets as part of the work, and I conjured up my own images as we went along, both from memory and from imagination.

I will share now just one of my images that came from this three-day workshop. It concerns the storks I saw in Alsace last April. I have a nice photo here that I took at a stork sanctuary in Alsace. As you can see, I walked right up to the birds in their nest where they sit more or less in the middle of a picnic area. The stork is a symbol of Alsace, and so the people in that region established this sanctuary when they became concerned about the bird whose lengthy and treacherous migrations coupled with shifts in the local habitat seemed to decrease its numbers each year. The photo I'm showing here is not my image however. I didn't photograph the extensive nets that float about 5-8 meters above the ground as a soft roof over the fenced-in fields of the fledglings. Local wildlife managers move the young birds here after they hatch and keep them under the nets for the first few months as they are learning to fly. Then after some period of time, the nets are removed and the birds are free to roam and fly at will. The great majority never leave, though a few take up fairly high perches on chimneys in the surrounding village. But most have broken from the stork's migratory pattern and stay within the sanctuary borders. The analogy to the cultural patterns we learn early in life is such that we also often stick to particular behaviors and habits that may not be the only ones available to us. In particular, our own cultural patterns of thinking are used almost exclusively in spite of the fact that our brains are very good at learning and growing. Hiyashi called this pre-mature cognitive commitment and helped us find ways to change our thinking to allow us to make these shifts.

It's a fairly comfortable life for the storks at the sanctuary. They look very healthy. I don't project on them any wistfulness or longing to rediscover their Southern Hemisphere nesting grounds or to travel to far away places. But I do have that sort of longing and I hope to stretch my capacities. The cultural nets that formed the way I think were also useful to me, like the child's training wheels on a bicycle, but they have been gone for some time now, and I can decide where to go and how to get there.

Bettina Hansel, Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International.

Issue 19. April 10, 2008

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:24:16 GMT

Cultural Change

Recently I have been challenging some of my colleagues with a quote from Dharm P.S. Bhawuk in a paper he presented in connection with the IAIR conference last July, which AFS published as as part of the symposium papers. In talking about intercultural sensitivity as a life pursuit, Dharm Bhawuk notes:

"Instead of simply accepting the existence of a cultural difference, a tolerant person agrees to allow a difference to impact his or her life."

I found this to be a very meaningful way to think about intercultural learning and to understand how difficult it can be. It means that my openness to another culture is only as great as my willingness to change my life. So I think again about the five frameworks. As the frameworks suggest, it is much easier for me to change my language use -- how I greet people, what language I use -- than it is to change my beliefs, values and assumptions or the way I think.

I can't believe what I don't believe. This is what I used to say when contemplating certain religious beliefs, for example, or even scientific beliefs. I remember vividly from my high school physics class my disbelief that the moon had anything to do with controlling the tides. "That makes no sense," I thought. Now, when faced with something I don't believe, I am more inclined to ask, "Can I imagine believing this?" and "What would it mean if I believed this?" and "Why do I believe what I do?"

I have watched the changes over decades in what I have believed to be true, and found it less and less easy to judge. Sometimes I appear to hold completely contradictory beliefs simultaneously. Being able to do that makes it easier for me to contemplate letting someone else's belief impact my life. It's not easy, still. I am still very much bound by the logic I've been taught, by perceiving mostly what I've been taught to perceive and not noticing that which has never been called to my attention as something important.

This is still what fascinates me about learning another culture.

I'm heading to Rome on Saturday ... so you can imagine my interest in this New York Times article that appeared on Monday: Is Cuisine Still Italian Even if the Chef Isn't? It seems that there is some concern that Italian cooking will lose its flavor if immigrant chefs are increasingly getting creative in the kitchen.

So often we see people worrying about the loss of a culture, and the threat of the influence of another culture, whether from immigration, as described here, or from global dominance as......well, as in the USA's global reach.

I have to accept that this is a real concern for those affected, while at the same time realizing that culture is not a thing to be lost but rather a creation of a group of people. The fear is not really the addition of, say, cinnamon in the panna cotta, (as proposed here by a Danish sugar company -- you can try it if you want), but rather the fear of the loss of control over the process of change. Italian culture and Italian cooking have evolved over hundreds of years. To stop that process and preserve the way it exists today would be to create a museum exhibit. You cannot preserve a culture if no one is creating it. The issues of one cultural group's power and control over other groups are quite worthy of concern, as is the openness of a cultural group to newcomers. But change is inevitable.

Over the next few weeks I will be reporting from Rome, Strasbourg, and Paris. Watch for my "eyes abroad" reports.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Update: Cultural Perceptions of Nature

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:03:32 GMT

On Monday (Listening) I posted the site of 6 Billion Others. One of the intriguing topics on that site was on nature, and what it means to these different individuals from various parts of the world. Then yesterday in the New York Times, I was struck by an article on Koreans who write Japanese poetry, in spite of the disapproval of their compatriots because of the political history between the two countries. It should not be forgotten that conflicts between cultures are often about power difference rather than cultural difference.

Nevertheless some of these Korean poets and their Japanese colleagues who write with them uncovered interesting and meaningful cultural differences between Korean and Japanese perceptions about nature, about beauty, and about emotion.

An excerpt from Japanese Poetry Persists in Korea, Despite Disapproval

Reiko Yamaguchi, a Japanese hotel manager and another club member, said writing haiku with Koreans had enhanced cultural understanding.
“Japanese and Koreans have different ways of perceiving nature,” she said. “Japanese tend to find maximum beauty when they see cherry flowers falling. Koreans’ hearts exult when the flowers are in full blossom.”
Mr. Rhee agreed: “It’s the same moon. But in haiku, Koreans sing the moon with our heart. To Japanese, our haiku may sound too subjective and hard to understand. Japanese sing the moon with their eye. They prefer realism. Koreans may find their haiku bare and superficial.”

Perhaps poets are especially equipped to appreciate such cultural differences in perception.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research
AFS International

Issue 16. March 24, 2008.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:15:56 GMT

Listening

A colleague recently led me to this beautiful site called 6 Billion Others. Yann Arthus-Bertrand created this project of hundreds of testimonials from individuals all over the world on topics like fear, tears, joy, family, nature, and more. In his own testimonial about the project, he tells of being stranded for 24 hours in a small village where, through his conversations with one man from the villagers, he came away realizing that he had something profound to learn from the experience and outlook of every other person on earth. You can select a photo or a topic and see several people from different parts of the world present their views on this topic. While you hear the person speak, his or her words are also provided as English text.

While each of these testimonies presents an individual's experience and point of view, each also has a cultural context that is often identifiable, and that influences how that person thinks, what each values, and how each presents himself or herself. If you think again of the Five Frameworks of Culture, you can look for the differences in language use, non-verbal behavior, communication style, patterns of thinking (cognitive style), values and assumptions.

AFS Research News

This is a busy time for AFS research. We are finalizing our first report on our 15-country, Long-Term Impact Study. We expect to post this report on our web site sometime in April. If you would like to receive an email notice when it becomes available, please join the AFS research community for our Research Network newsletters.

In the meantime, much of my own time this week will be spent working on a fundraising proposal for research we hope to begin in 2009, and preparing for the Educational Colloquium next month in Paris: See our announcement in the Event Calendar.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Update: Spending some time

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:40:56 GMT

Welcome back to Leo Hitchcock, Guest Blogger from New Zealand.

M-time vs. P-time

Something very odd seems to be happening to me! Every time think to myself ‘it’s about time I contributed to Intercultural Eyes again’, I look in here to find Betsy has recently written something (Saving Time, March 10 – I am a bit slow!) that coincides with something I’ve just been reading about! Do we have some ESP going on Betsy?

I’m currently reading Edward T. Hall’s (1981), Beyond Culture. Other writers claim that Hall was the first person to use the term ‘intercultural communication’ (in The Silent Language, 1959). However I think our founder, Stephen Galatti probably beat him to that!, so let’s just say that Hall was the first to introduce the term into scholarly literature. But, I’m getting off the point…

Hall discusses cultural differences relating to the perception of time. When I read Betsy’s comments about her brief meetings with special friends while travelling on the train, however train schedules prevented their spending quality time together, Hall’s discussion immediately came back into my mind. Reverse incidents regarding cultural perceptions of time came to my mind too as I was reading Hall!

Halls calls this monochronic time ('M-time' - everything according to a fixed, linear time schedule) and polychronic time ('P-time' - do things as they naturally occur, or ‘when it feels right’, even though you may be doing many things at once!). (I don’t like 'monochronic/polychronic', I prefer 'monochronological' time and 'polychronological' time. Bigger words and not ‘chronic’ J.)

Hall explains it like this: M-time is characterised by scheduling, by doing one task at a time. Everything is time-dominated, with time so thoroughly woven into the fabric of existence that we are hardly aware of the degree to which it does dominate. It affects relationships (as Betsy found out), and denies us context. It permits only a limited number of events in a given time span with important things done first and ‘unimportant’ things done last - or not at all if time runs out! P-time, on the other hand, is characterised by several things happening at once. It stresses the involvement of people and complete completion of tasks rather then strict adherence to schedules. In P-time markets and stores, one is surrounded by other customers demanding attention, with no order to who is served next. The same pattern occurs in governmental agencies, even hospital emergency rooms.

I think this is a very important concept for exchange students about to live and study in a new culture to understand, as it can be a source of frustration, and resistance to cultural adaptation. When my partner and I travelled in Latin America several years ago, it was probably our first introduction to having to adapt to P-time. We were not so much ‘frustrated’ or felt ‘resistance’ but we very soon understood that things will happen as they naturally occur, not according to some pre-fixed time on the clock face, so we just decided to ‘go with the flow’. New Zealand’s indigenous culture, as well as the Pasifika (Pacific Islands) cultures (plural!) are also polychronological, so while it was new to us to experience it first hand, we were not totally unaware of what was happening. My partner has recently returned from Spain where she attended the wedding of an AFS student we had with us a number of years ago (I couldn’t go - am I jealous or what!). She commented about some of the TV programs there showing all the ad’s (like 30-odd!) at the end of the program rather than interspersed through the program. This is an example of P-time. Hall also mentions this example in his book.

Betsy highlights one of the problems with M-time. I have a problem with my P-time-oriented Uni students – getting to class at the scheduled time! (Mind you, this problem is not restricted just to P-timers!)

Issue 14. March 10, 2008

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:34:54 GMT

Saving Time

This weekend I lost an hour. At least this is how I think of it. In the United States, most of us shifted the time on our clocks one hour forward for daylight savings time. So it seemed appropriate to address this issue to cultural concepts of time, including daylight savings time. What time are we trying to save? and for what?

Recently while riding the subway home from work, I happened to see a friend of mine, a person I have known for years, a person I truly care about. And yet, because he was getting off the train and I was getting on, we barely had time to greet each other, to smile and say "good to see you." Neither of us seemed to think that this unexpected meeting should cause us to miss our next train, to be late getting home to our partners, or to change what we had planned.

Some years ago, I also happened to meet a friend on the train, traveling in my direction to work -- again, someone I hadn't seen for a while. We spoke briefly for a few minutes, then she apologized, "You'll have to excuse me. I always read the paper on the train, and I need this time alone with my newspaper." I also had a newspaper in my briefcase, so after this, we continued to ride together, separately reading the same newspaper, only to say "good bye" to each other when one of us left the train.

These scenes on the train would be quite different had I run into my Iranian friend. Suddenly the priorities shift, practically automatically. What good luck that we would have, to run into each other just by chance! Best to take advantage of it, to catch up on our news, to understand how each of us is, to wish each other well. And because of this unexpected opportunity, I'd quickly let the train go on without me, knowing that there will be another in 10 minutes or less. And I would certainly leave my newspaper in my briefcase. But I still would not shift my schedule enough to, say leave the station to stop for a coffee. I have my other plans and commitments that I must keep, and being "on time" is part of that. On the other hand, my Iranian friend, who is easily "on time" for a morning run in the park on Saturday morning, places his priority more on these chance encounters and events which mean that the day's planned schedule is less and less close to reality as the day wears on. When I've invited him to dinner parties, he has seldom arrived within the first two hours. But he always comes.

Where do we learn to be prompt?

Lessons from childhood can be quite powerful. My very prompt husband remembers that his father kicked his bed every morning to make sure he got up in time and ready for school. Such a message could not be ignored. My daughter may remember the games we played to get her up and ready and "on time" for school.

My own father was not always so prompt. He frequently got involved deeply in his work and would call home to say that he'd "lost track of time" and though he would be leaving now, he was going to be late for dinner. I would be sitting at the window, watching with my mother for my father's car to come home. Dinner was supposed to be ready when he got home, and usually it was keeping warm, or "getting ruined" because he was late.

The idea that "people are waiting for you" is strong and is part of the social commitment that many of us in the USA grew up with. This, of course, is the kind of commitment that pulls me to be prompt now. Like my father, I sometimes do get involved in my work. A project I begin at 4:30 almost never ends at 5:00 when it is time to go home. I like to get the project finished before I leave. So I am not always prompt either. My husband is almost always home from work first, and starts the dinner. Like I remember with my mother, I have seen him watching for me from the window sometimes as I come home. The salads may be already made, waiting for me. He is waiting for me. The evening is short, always and it is this "expected" opportunity that calls me much more strongly than the unplanned opportunity of a chance encounter.

I'm not sure that the "future" orientation I've described will continue to be characteristic of U.S. culture, at least at the social and personal level. The near universal use of cell phones, text messages and "twitters" may be changing how and whether "people are waiting for you" in our society, especially among the young and single. My suspicion is that the USA is, with the advent of instant communication, becoming less tied to our planned schedules and more open to last minute invitations and chance encounters in our social lives, though perhaps while still demanding rapid service in business and consumer areas. I'd like to hear more about how technology may be changing other cultures as well.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Issue 13. March 3, 2008

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:54:04 GMT

East is West

When I lived briefly in India and watched the nightly Doordarshan news broadcasts on television, I was baffled for a while about the West Asian peace conferences that were going on at the time. What was going on in West Asia? I wondered. I don't remember when it dawned on me that what I had always known as the "Middle East" was, in fact, West Asia. How perfectly sensible that in India, where Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon are most closely to the West, the region is given a more geographically accurate description! And since I supposed that the world had agreed somehow that the line separating Europe and Asia that runs through the Red Sea and the Bosphorous and then runs up somewhere along the ridges of the Urals mountains, I thought I should start a campaign to rename the "Middle East" -- a vestige, I supposed, of the British Empire's renaming of the world -- to the more technically correct "West Asia."

But now I see two problems with this:

#1 Other than the substantially large number of Indians who would already understand, within my own cultural context in the USA, most people would not immediately connect the familiar problems and debates about the Middle East with any discussion about West Asia. (See What is an Entrée? below.)

#2 I'm no longer sure that there is any worldwide agreement on the definition of continents.

How Many Continents does Earth Have?

When AFS Switzerland hosted our World Congress in 1996, our organization there created a lovely logo for the Congress, to be used on the folders, T-shirts, banners and so on. The logo included a circular shape encompassing five colors: one for each continent.

Five continents? I was taught there are seven! It seems that the Swiss put North and South America together as "America" while in North America, we separate them into two continents, and we count Antarctica as a continent as well, though we don't expect to start exchange programs there any time soon.

What is Western?

Lately I have been twice surprised by Belgians who were preparing research projects that included the view that South America is "non-Western." Even though I have been taught that it is a separate continent, I have also been taught that it is in the Western Hemisphere, and with the history of the Americas colonized largely by England, Spain, Portugal, France, and even the Netherlands, there is certainly a strong European influence all over our one or two continents.

These same Belgians were also surprised by my remarks that, as I felt my own US culture might lie in between Europe and South America on some dimensions. They had been certain that the US culture was clearly closer to Europe than it was to the "non-Western" cultures of South America.

I remember a discussion I had with a Mexican woman living in Belgium, who found her European surroundings very unfamiliar. However, stopping over in the USA on her way home, she told me she felt "halfway home" culturally in the USA. I understood her completely. The adjustments I make in my trips to Europe are quite different from those I make in Latin America. Or, I might say, I am misunderstood very differently in Europe than I am in South America.

What is an Entrée?

I give this example just to show how impossible it is to change established language use, even to "correct" it.

Anyone who knows French will recognize that "entrée" would be an entrance, a beginning, or what the British would call a "starter" on a menu at a restaurant. Why is this not true in the United States?

I have often wondered who was that very influential restaurant owner in the USA who wanted to give his restaurant more elegance, or to connect his cuisine (also a French word, of course) a French flavor? Whoever he was who first labeled the main course "Entrée" has forever changed the meaning of the word in the United States. Today, even a truly French restaurant in the USA would have to think twice about labeling the appetizer as "Entrée" because virtually all the customers will be expecting it to be the main course.

As we say in the United States: Some food for thought.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Issue 12. February 25, 2008

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:34:06 GMT

Getting comfortable with differences

In thinking about the results of the research conducted with AFS by Mitchell Hammer a few years ago, I was struck by two different outcomes.

When they return home from their experience, AFS students show a much lower level of social discomfort, anxiety, and embarrassment around other cultures than they had before they went abroad.
The returned students generally focused more on cultural similarities and some worried that paying attention to cultural differences would lead to conflict. In the words of one student:

"Ya que en el mundo en que vivimos, las diferencias culturales son inmensas, y es por eso que existe tanta violencia -- las personas no ven las similitudes, y el hecho de que todos somos iguales." ("In the world we live in, the cultural differences are huge and that is why there is so much violence -- people don’t see the similarities and the fact that we are all the same.")

This leads me to ask:

Are these returning students more comfortable around other cultures because they focus on the similarities instead of the differences?

and

Is this always a good thing?

and

Why should differences cause conflict?

Maybe this is the most interesting question. If we believe that differences inevitably cause conflict, how would we behave? In the USA we have an expression: "like walking on egg shells" -- the idea being that you need to tread very carefully for fear of breaking the delicate shell.

With this philosophy, any mention of differences can be dangerous, reminding the other person of the conflict we have, because... you know, because we're different. So maybe if we focus only on the ways we are similar, nothing bad will happen.

Another expression we use in the US: "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet."

When we introduced the Five Frameworks of Culture we followed Bennett's order; building trust by talking first about less threatening differences such as language use or non-verbal behavior, and then moving to on to talk about differences that might feel more threatening to consider, like values and assumptions.

Assumptions about love and marriage and family

What could be MORE threatening that looking at cultural differences in love, marriage and family. This is interesting because, first of all, we often tend to assume that these are universals. Everyone has the experience of falling in love, every society has marriage, all societies include families. True or False?

Let's look at some different reactions to these topics in different places, both of which surprised me.

India. Back in the early 1990s, while I was doing research in India, almost a young woman told me: "I'm happy to have my parents help in finding a husband. It's such an important decision." She mentioned how much her parents has always looked out for her best interests, and how well they understood her nature and would be able to select the right boy. Another woman told me, "I always wanted a love-match, but it didn't happen, so I was grateful that my brother was able to help me find my husband." I also carry with me still the image of the young Punjabi fiancés, meeting for the third time at a party normally designed as a celebration to tease the bride before her wedding. In this more modern couple, the groom-to-be was allowed to attend, and in fact sang a song for the bride while she danced. Was it only me who felt the chemistry between them beginning to build with their smiles and blushes?

Contrast this with a situation familiar to me in the USA. It was about 5 years ago that I decided to marry again, and I brought my future husband to meet my mother. Thinking perhaps an "old fashioned" approach might be appropriate, he asked my mother for her approval of our decision. "Why are you asking me?" she replied. "I think it should be up to Betsy."

Where was anything in my background ready to expect the reactions of these Indian women who found comfort and even great pleasure in their arranged marriages? I suppose when I went to India, I imagined that the arranged marriage was "still" common, thinking perhaps that this was something that would eventually change to a more "western" pattern with time. And yet I related the "arranged" marriage with tragic stories from my own traditions, such as Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. For anyone who does not know, Juliet's family was arranging a marriage for her with the County Paris, someone they felt suitable, but she, of course, had fallen in love with Romeo, her family's enemy, and in the end the two lovers killed themselves.

Peru. Love is not always kind and marriage does not always mean living happily ever after. I don't intend to imply that marriage is any less successful in Peru than any place else, but the way this may play out was what surprised me. Walking down the street in Lima one evening, I observe two women fighting in front of me. They are yelling and striking each other. One justifies herself: "She was with my husband." Another woman I knew, suspecting her husband was with another woman, went directly to that woman's home, found him there and dragged him home so she could then kick him out of the house. "I would kill to keep my husband," she told me. Then there was the case of a jealous ex-novia who telephoned the new girlfriend, repeatedly, to talk endlessly about the situation and what the relationship had meant to her.

Again, I had stories from my own traditions that got in the way of my interpretations and made these situations quite uncomfortable. Wasn't it supposed to the two men fighting each other over a woman, like Popeye and his nemesis Bluto (sometimes Brutus) from television cartoons, fighting over Olive Oyl? And more than anything else, I felt embarrassed for the women and wondered --

"Where is her pride?"

and

"Why does she put up with him?"

and

"What can she hope to achieve by this?"

-- all questions that are clearly irrelevant in the cultural sub-context in which these women live.

What was more helpful was again to reinterpret the behavior without the cartoon and to recognize that I was seeing was a way to use a large dramatic gesture to assert their rights in their relationships. The fact that others witness this gesture can make it more powerful: Love overcomes pride.

Whether the stories from your own tradition are as revered as Shakespeare or as modest as a Popeye cartoon, the ones that you hear repeatedly, perhaps particularly when you are young, can be enormously powerful and will influence your reactions to anything you experience that remotely resembles the story line. By identifying these influential stories that led to my reactions, I can then try to remove the story context and look again at the behavior I observe.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Intercultural Education and Research

AFS International

Issue 8. January 28, 2008

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:52:47 GMT

Why do you communicate with someone?

Which of these purposes is most important?

Convey information
Show how you feel about your relationship
Create a good impression
Convey respect for the other person
Reach agreement
Maintain harmony
Make the other person feel happy
Maintain the other person’s interest
Make sure the other person is comfortable and not embarrassed by the conversation.

The style you use to communicate with another person depends a great deal on how you answered this question, but it’s always about the nature of the relationship with the other person and the cultural conventions that shape that relationship. Is there a difference in status or rank in your relationship? Are relationships compartmentalized so that you have different relationships for different activities or areas of interest? Are you from the same or different cultural background?

It is not surprising that the intercultural field includes many whose training is in the area of communications. The way people communicate with each other does quite frequently vary with culture, and communicating across cultures is also different than within a culture. Some of this was touched on in the January 8 issue on humor.

One of the most frequently noted differences in communication style is the contrast between direct and indirect communication. The U.S. culture is often seen as tending to be more direct in its communication, but many cultures will use a direct approach for giving information. Malaysian and Japanese cultures may typically place a higher value on an indirect approach to save “face” and avoid expressing something that could cause the other person to feel embarrassed or uncomfortable, but even in the U.S., people often try an indirect approach when they are worried about how their communication will be received. Another communication style difference frequently noted is the contrast between those who express emotion while communicating and those who are restrained in expressions of emotion. Here the Italians might be seen as more emotive in the communication and the British as restrained.

Mitch Hammer has developed a intercultural conflict styles inventory that looks at these two dimensions of difference and helps people identify their preferred style of communication when dealing with conflict. It’s a very interesting instrument, as it touches on areas of difference that can cause misunderstanding.

Receiving communication that is too direct feels like criticism.
Communication that is too indirect may not be received at all, or may seem deceptive.
Emotionally restrained communication can sound as if you do not care.
Emotionally expressive communication can sound as if you are out of control.

It’s useful to see how your communication might be misinterpreted, and to see how you may be misinterpreting others as well. I have taken the inventory several times, and each time I learn something, and each time result is different. Each time I’m focused on a different type of conflict, involving a different relationship and a different issue. Sometimes I think about the communication I would want to receive; sometimes I think about the communication I’m comfortable giving.

I can’t say that this shows an enormous ability on my part to code switch between cultural styles of communication; it’s probably rather huge ambivalence about conflict in general. But there are also many times when I feel it is so important to save face and times when I want to be able to show how important I feel the relationship is, or how much the issue is tied up with my own sense of self. Sometimes I really want to work through an intermediary who can plead my case and make my explanations for me. I’m not sure I ever do this well.

Sheila Heen, the author of the communications self-assessment tool embed below has created a communication style template based on their research of successful communication about difficult issues within the context of U.S. cultural norms. When I took the quiz, my results revealed that I should try to be more direct and that I should prepare more for having difficult conversations, and included some detailed advice on how I might do this.

The existence of this tool proposes that communication style is something that can be taught and deliberately used in a particular context. So, it may well be that even if I am less than perfect in the communication style seen as typical of the USA, those coming from other cultures might use this quiz to learn how to adjust their communication style to deal with a difficult issue they have with a colleague from the USA. Just don’t expect your U.S. counterpart to conform perfectly to the “Have the talk America” style.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Research, AFS International

Update: Cognitive Style

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:01:55 GMT

On December 10, 2007 I reported on an article in Intercultures, an online Canadian magazine, that focused on cultural differences in cognitive style, or patterns of thinking.

My husband recently led me to this item. Cultural differences alter brain's hard-wiring: New research finds that social perspective influences how we see the world

I'm not a fan at all of the title "hard-wiring" since it implies something immutable and not learned patterns. Contrary to the title, the research that is reported shows different "training" of the brain in different cultures and documents different ways of thinking about an experience through the intensity of activity in different parts of the brain in individuals from different cultures.

Most interesting for AFS is the suggestion of the researchers that perhaps brain patterns change with an exposure to another culture. "There's a hint that six months in a culture already changes you," he said, referring to psychological, rather than neurological, research. "It suggests that there's a lot of flexibility."

Bettina Hansel

Director of Research, AFS Intercultural Programs

Issue 7. January 18, 2008.

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:05:24 GMT

Cultural Assumptions on Health

Thinking about the video clips of Jacques Tati and Rowan Atkinson from the last issue of this blog reminded me of how much of an intercultural experience involves physical reactions. The research we have done with Mitch Hammer using the Intercultural Development Inventory has brought home the fact that we often tend to minimize cultural differences by focusing largely on how, deep down, all human beings are the same. Yes, we are all physically similar, but how differently do we care for our bodies? I was struck recently at how, in spite of globalization, a pharmacy in another culture, for instance, feels foreign and familiar at the same time. Shelves of products to heal and soothe, to care for our bodies, a pharmacist who knows the drugs and will listen as you describe your symptoms, and yet the packaging is different from place to place. A minor difference or one with more importance?

I seem to always find myself in a pharmacy when traveling, though I don't always find what I am looking for. A hair brush, in Groningen, for instance. Or nail clippers, in Andalucia. Or perhaps it was deodorant, someplace else. Essential components of U.S. personal hygiene are not always found in pharmacies, though my first instinct is to start there. And should I have a cough or a sore throat or an allergic rash, I will always go the pharmacy and ask to speak with the pharmacist, and typically I come away with an unfamiliar-looking medicine.

Cultural differences in how we care for our bodies and deal with illness are often larger than we might assume, and our attachments to our particular cultural patterns are frequently very strong. My experiences of illness as a child were not extreme, but the special tray by my bedside and the Jello, toast, tea, cola or ginger ale I was served when my stomach was upset have become equated with a quiet, comfortable convalescence. Once while in Brazil I became very ill and unable to keep any food in my system. The friends I was staying with lovingly cared for me, but with a very different set of ingredients, all quite unexpected and some, like the boldo tea, were quite horrible, I thought. What I craved so much was a cola or a ginger ale, and only this, it seemed, would cure me. I had to explain my strange medical beliefs to my friends, who chided themselves for not having thought of my customs, and quickly provided the needed beverage. Within a day, I was again able to eat, to take a walk, to go to the beach.

I have been lucky with my health generally, but I have seen enough illness to realize that no culture is entirely successful in its remedies. I have my own faith, somewhat shaky at times, in "western" medicine, but this doesn't explain the documented power of the placebo against which all new medicine is tested, or my belief that I needed a cola to relieve my stomach distress.

According to the schema of the 5 Frameworks that we've been using, encountering cultural differences in values and assumptions can be dramatically more difficult emotionally or more threatening to individuals, and can lead to defensiveness. I was recently talking with a colleague from Hong Kong who has lived in the United States for several years. She was fighting a cold and we were discussing the Chinese medicine she uses. She told me that it typically works for her, but never works for her American friends. But this time, the Chinese medicine wasn't working for her, either. We wondered if there was a relation to the diet and the effectiveness of the medicine. Maybe Chinese medicine needs to work with a Chinese diet. But maybe it's also the cultural assumptions we carry about what is effective, and what we believe will work.

In the meantime, my colleague gave me some of her Chinese cough drops to deal with my cold and sore throat. They worked very well for me.

Issue 6. January 8, 2008

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 23:15:17 GMT

Understanding (or Not) Humor Across Cultures

How often have you sat smiling while a friend from another culture explains the humor of the joke he has just told, which you did not understand? Or, more likely, you understood what was told, but didn't find it funny. Perhaps you even found it offensive.

And yet humor can frequently be disarming, which is just the hope of Sayed Kashua, an Israeli-born Arab who has created a television show that hopes to ease tension between Jews and Palestinians through its humor. As reported in the New York Times, the show may be appealing to the Jewish audience, but Straddling Cultures, Irreverently, in Life and Art also underscores the difficult and sometimes dangerous path that Sayed Kashua has taken. As Mira Anwar Awad, an actress in the TV show, states in the clip from the show on the Times web site and on You-Tube, "When you want to criticize something, bring it in a joke and it stings the most." Jokes about other cultures and cultural differences are told in many countries, most often attributing some foolish behavior or absurd belief or assumption to the other culture.

Appreciating humor is highly dependent on your understanding of the cultural context where the humor originated. Understanding the language is usually required, but even a good understanding of the language is generally not enough to make you laugh. Many jokes fall into one of several standard patterns established by the culture in which they emerged, and much depends on the listener's familiarity with the formula. In the USA, children's humor is often in the form of riddles, and a well-used formula is the "Knock-Knock" joke. (To which the listener must reply, "Who's there?") An adult joke in the USA could easily begin with "A man walks into a bar..." A series of Russian jokes depends on knowledge about some characters from famous movies: Chapaev (based on a real national hero from the times of the October Revolution and the Civil War in the 1920s), or Schtirlitz (a fictional character from a very popular movie in the 1970s) and other characters from these movies are found in jokes called anecdotes. This is difference in language use between cultures: the formulas for telling a joke.

Non-verbal behavior is used extensively in comedy. Some more memorable examples can be found in this restaurant clip from Jacques Tati's film Les Vacances de M Hurlot. Watch this clip and pay special attention to the non-verbal behaviors shown. The humor typically depends on understanding the expected behavior and how much the behavior shown by some of the characters deviates from this expectation. Keep in mind that non-verbal behavior includes such things as dress or tone and volume of voice. While the French humor in this film may seem understandable to many, it's interesting to note that several French films in recent years have been reproduced as US movies, shifting not only the language but the cultural context and, to some extent, changing the humor to suit US audience expectations. Similarly, although the USA and the UK share a language, British comedian Rowan Atkinson's portrayal's of Mr Bean and other characters have never been particularly successful in the United States yet have been wildly popular in many countries where English is not spoken, as pointed out in the New York Times article, Mr. Bean Bumbles on Voyage Across Pond. Rowan Atkinson relies on a similar type of physical humor and similar subject matter as Jacques Tati, but both depend on their own cultural traditions and contexts.

I've often remarked about how PowerPoint is a culturally specific way of thinking, and the structures provided such as . . .

Click to add title

Click to add text

. . . demonstrate a particular way of organizing information. Even more so are the structured content assistants that suggest how to use PowerPoint to deliver bad news, to make a sale, to explain something, etc. So I was very grateful to Cathy Moore's "Making Change" blog for pointing out this humorous Clemens Kogler video that takes an absurd chain of relationships and PowerPoint charts to explain the meaning of everything. While the humor will not translate to every culture, this is probably a very good example of US humor based on the context of "how we think" - a spoof on the cognitive style embedded in the structures of PowerPoint.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Research, AFS Intercultural Programs

Issue 5. December 21, 2007

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 23:16:18 GMT

Generational Cultures: Some personal reflections

I am taking off work this week for a different kind of intercultural experience. I am spending significant time with my mother. The last time I visited her we helped her put together a scrap book with a collection of various things she had considered important and had saved for so many years. There was an advertisement from the automobile dealership where her father worked, featuring poetry in tribute to the founder of a make of car that no longer exists. There were announcements about the weddings of friends and birth announcements for their children. There was an old love letter from someone she no longer remembers, and an associate membership card to her father's athletic club. There were newspaper articles featuring her for the leading role she had in a locally produced film in the 1920s. There was a letter of recommendation from her employer. What struck me about all of these items is that they each displayed a use of language, a depiction of some behavior, a style of communication, a way of thinking, and/or a set of values and assumptions that are not common today in the United States.

She is 91 years old. Her parents came from opposite sides of the U.S. Civil War. This put her in an interesting place, culturally, in the early 20th Century. She had been part of the U.S. cultures of the "Roaring 20s," the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the post-war suburbs when I joined her. In each of these layers of culture, she was shaped and she participated. And though she has traveled through the 1960s and all the subsequent years that I have known as well, she still loves the songs she heard in the 1920s, sets her hair (and understands economics) in the way she did in the 1930s, wears a shade of red lipstick that she wore in the 1940s, and makes the more or less the same assumptions about the role of men and women that she did in the 1950s. And so the "5 Frameworks" also help me look for differences in my own and my mother's culture. I change the way I talk and behave around my mother, quite instinctively recognizing the differences and adapting my behavior a bit to fit her expectations and needs. Sometimes I do minimize the differences between us, particularly as I see her expression on my own face and wonder if I, too, am destined to wear my current hairstyle into my 90s. But I do know that I have developed a much keener empathy with her now than what I had as a teenager or as a younger woman. I now very clearly remember her when she was the age I am now, and I see the differences and similarities between us and understand more clearly why they are so.

From my own perspective of more than 50 years, I also remember living in past cultures. It is with quite some amusement that I remember how upset we felt in 1968 in Kansas City when one of the girls from my class decided to wear a pants suit to a dance at another school. We were concerned about the reputation of our school. This doesn't sound very much like the US today. I also remember with some astonishment that the teacher in my class in 1964 would often use a hard stick to strike boys who misbehaved, and we all felt this was expected and normal.

I have adapted to new cultural generations as I have lived through them, but I am still very much marked by my participation in the 1960s era, which affects such things as my reaction to tattoos, my feelings about the military, and my reluctance to write in anything but complete sentences and paragraphs. Understanding how my attitudes and reactions have been shaped in the context of my generational layers of culture may also help me recognize and respect the completely different layers that affect people from other cultures.

Bettina Hansel

Issue 4. December 10, 2007

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:14:33 GMT

The job of AFS is enormous. One only needs to read the newspaper to see that intercultural education is sorely needed.

It is not enough to simply go to another country and culture and "just be yourself." Recently you may have read a story of a British teacher arrested and imprisoned in the Sudan for a class project she created for the children that involved a teddy bear that she allowed the children to name Muhammad, to take him home and write stories about him.

See: Sudan Accuses Teacher of Islam Insult By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Looking at this situation with British or US "glasses," this seems like a creative and perfectly normal thing to do, since in a vote, the children themselves selected the name. Yet the parents of some of the children did not think that this was appropriate at all and expected that a teacher would certainly know that. They were clearly looking at the situation with a different set of "glasses" -- with different values and assumptions about what is sacred, about what distinguishes people from animals.

Earlier this year, a different cross-cultural faux pas made its way to the press: actor Richard Gere's public kissing of actress Shilpa Shetty in India.

See: When a Kiss Is More Than a Kiss By PAUL VITELLO

While we have no idea what the U.S. actor, Richard Gere had in mind, it is likely that he was just "being himself," behaving in a way that, in Hollywood, might seem appropriate and amusing. And in spite of his several visits to India in the past, he apparently did not know that this non-verbal behavior was shockingly inappropriate in India.

These are highly publicized and dramatic examples of the difficulties that can arise from an outlook that minimizes cultural differences. AFS volunteers who work with our exchange participants can usually find their own examples of host families who over-react to what the AFS participant assumes is perfectly normal behavior for everyone, or exchange participants who become upset or worried by the family's ordinary, appropriate actions or what they consider "common sense."

Yet in spite of our familiarity with these types of examples, it is still common among both staff and volunteers that we are not always expecting cultural differences when we meet with people from other cultures. While we recognize some differences between cultures, we tend to believe they are somehow less important that the similarities, and that the similarities we share will ensure that we can relate to each other. And where there are some similarities, we may assume that there are many others.

I was struck recently by an article that appeared in the October/December 2007 issue of "Intercultures," an online Canadian journal published by the Centre for Intercultural Learning, Canadian Foreign Service Institute, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. (Cliquez içi pour l'édition française.) The article that caught my attention was the interview with Richard Nesbitt, author of Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... And Why (Free Press; 2003). The article with the interview is called "Culture and Cognition." This can be helpful to readers who want to explore what is meant by differences in cognitive style.

Non-verbal Behavior, Cognitive Style (or how we think), and Values and Assumptions are three of the five frameworks of culture that AFS has been using as a way to actively look for and expect differences when we come in contact with other cultures. Understanding how and why cultures may differ in these ways can help us to recognize and accept such differences when we encounter them and to learn how to adapt our behavior in appropriate and respectful ways.

Bettina Hansel

Director of Research, AFS International