| Review | Class/Internet Activities | Summary | Homework | All People Smile... |
In a Belgrade hotel elevator:
"To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should
enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is
then going alphabetically by national order."
In Paris hotel elevator:
"Please leave your values at the front desk."
In a hotel in Athens:
"Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours 9 and 11
AM. daily."
crosscultural.com
During Part One we placed particular emphasis on understanding the meaning of the word culture. We did this because our first course objective was to "Understand the concept of culture."
| First Course Objective | "Understand the concept of culture." |
During Part Two we placed particular emphasis on the 2nd and the 3rd course objectives. These were:
| Second Course Objective | "Recognize variability in human behavior." |
| Third Course Objective | "Foster understanding among culturally diverse peoples." |
In the remainder of the class we will place special emphasis on the fourth and fifth course objectives. The fifth objective is accomplished by writing your final exam which consists of a book report on Margaret Meade's And Keep Your Powder Dry.
| Fourth Course Objective | "Contrast cultures inherited (within one's family) ... with other societal views of behavior." |
| Fifth Course Objective | "Gain an awareness of the process of bringing about socio-cultural change." |
During today's class, we conclude Part Two of the course by collecting notebooks with your homework entries and your country report.
During this tenth week, we keep the theme of what's worth fighting for in America in focus. We experience some of those colonial influences we rebelled against.
We are reminded that patterns of aggression are an important aspect of any culture, and that patterns of aggression differ according to the society into which we are born. The Japanese emphasize the importance of hierarchy within society. Even their language does not permit them the means of talking with one another, unless the societal levels between the two conversing people is known in advance. They went to war feeling called to share or impose that cultural value of hierarchy on that portion of global society which they felt should be subject to their influence.
The German people were lead by Adolph Hitler to believe in the idea of a genetically superior race. The American and French peoples believed in a kind of Jeffersonian equality of all, and the British believed in the rule of law. The American immigrants also believed in the importance of their own religious freedom, but not necessarily in tolerance for others.
We move toward considering an evolving cultural concept from Asia, first practiced on the African continent, in South Africa by an Asian Indian educated by English barristers in law. His name is Mahatmas Ghandi. His idea - the pursuit of nonviolence, forms the basis of the civil rights movement in the United States, and throughout the world.
During Part Three of the course, we will work towards our
fourth and final course objectives:
Fourth - by creating and sharing our family trees we will "Contast
cultures inherited within your own family...";
Fifth - from our understanding of Ghandi we will be helped to: "Gain an
awareness of the process of socio-cultural change."
| 1. | Share your answers to the homework from Module 9 with your classmates. |
| 2. | Watch excerpts from A Passage to India. |
| 3. | Optional Activity: Watch excerpts from the novels by Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim and/or Kim. |
1. The course syllabus includes the idea under its evaluation section that students should assist others in strengthening the organizational aspect of their notebooks. Since we are at a juncture at which we begin the final notebook, use this opportunity to review the work of your peers. This may help improve the product which you prepare during the third and final portion of this class.
2. Watch selections from A Passage to India. This video enables us to direct our attention to the theme of English colonialism - first its positive and then its negative impact on colonial populations. The theme that colonialism was ultimately harmful rather than helpful to subserviant peoples would be the same if we were tracing French colonialism. If we were to dwell on the French experience in Algeria, we would find that even though French soldiers were for a time able to put down revolt among Algerian natives, the effect upon France was to trade-in an older French Republic for one subsequently championed by Charles DeGalle. If we trace the American experience in Southeast Asia, we also find an America changed in the process.
A Passage to India characterizes British-Indian
relations in the 1920s. Watch the video with two intentions:
1st. List the kinds and frequency of inter-cultural
incidents which might anger the Indian doctor.
2nd. Note the reverence and behaviors ( appropriate and
inappropriate) for visiting a mosque.
1. John Donne has written "no man is an island." He might have written "No country is isolated from its neighbors." In the 1860s the King of Siam wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln offering elephants for the prosecution of Lincoln's civil war because the king felt the responsibility of keeping a nation united. The king recognized the importance of retaining domestic culture while incorporating the best from other cultures. Repudiating those elements in his own behavior, like the beating of slaves, however, undermined the King's own health to the extent that his young son assumed had to assume his father's omnipotent powers. What we learn from others, can in fact, influence our own health, sense of self, and well-being - positively and negatively.
2. A Passage to India occurs over a century after the American Revolutionary experience. By studying Asia's Indian people, this literary work might suggest today that Americans have forgotten what it meant to be a nation of farmers, and peoples having to work continually with other immigrants. Certainly Americans did not learn what it meant to be native-American. But Americans may even have forgotten what it was like to be ruled by a colonial power.
3. We examine colonial legacies in Asia, recognizing that colonial impacts were equally disturbing on North and South American continents and on Africa. India offers Mahatmas Ghandi to the 20th century as an important inter-cultural example of what was to evolve into an explosion of civil rights which continues today.
4. Next period, we begin a focus on two cultures in which there were no civil rights. We examine the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. Then we examine modern North American experiments (and cultural adaptivity) in taking Western business products to Russia and in Japan.
5. Europe had its predominant historical influence on American culture through our understanding of British rights and laws, originally secured at sword point from King John and signed into law as the Magna Charta. Like Asian and African continents in the 20th century, American society emerged under a colonial policy created by a European political system.
6. This commonality with our Asian and African neighbors suggest two important approaches to understanding who we are as a culture. The first approach is to study the video Thomas Jefferson, Part I, in the company of his associates - George Washington, Sam Adams, and Patrick Henry. The second approach is to use British film, such as A Passage to India, to study the effect the colonization has on indigenous peoples, especially in Asia and Africa.
1. Read Chapter Twenty-Six "Depression and Culture " pages 137-142 in Cross-Cultural Perspectives in America. Answer the following questions in your notebook:
| 1. | What socialization processes and social behaviors do the Kalui of Papua New Guinea engage in which make them less susceptible to the Western notion of Depression? |
| 2. | Obeyesekere suggests that a culture's ideology may determine whether or not depression is diagnosable. How does the Sri Lankan Buddhist example illustrate this point? |
2. Read Chapter VII "Brothers and Sisters and Success " pages 63-72 in And Keep Your Powder Dry. Answer the following questions in your notebook:
| 3. | Explain what happens to children in America, according to Margaret Meade, when children are raised according to relative standards, rather than absolute standards. (pages 64-65) |
| 4. | When American teachers are "marking on the curve," are they using absolute standards, or relative standards? (pages 66-67) |
| 5. | Explain what Meade means when she says that in America we extend conditional love to our children, and how this conditional love is related to their achievement. |
| 6. | What would Europeans think of the barometers of money and fame as they are used to measure success in America? |
All people smile in the same language.
The Taj Mahal
The "Hollywood Stars" in India
