Understanding Global Cultures

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UnderstandingGlobal Cultures

• Cultural Metaphors

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http//www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1095/i
ndex.htmltext
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Cultural Metaphors

• Unit of analysis
• the nation or national culture
• national character studies
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Ruth Benedict

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Cultural Metaphors

• Other units of analysis may include
• one person (e.g., Paul Buffalo)
• life histories

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Paul Buffalo Meditating Medicine
http//www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/Buffalo/In
tro-Temp2.html
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Sharon Gmelch Nan The Life of an Irish Traveling
Woman, Revised Edition. Long Grove IL Waveland
Press, 1991. (ISBN 0881336025)
http//www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth3635/c
etexts.htmlNan
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Cultural Metaphors

• Other units of analysis may include
• one person (e.g., Paul Buffalo)
• the family (e.g., Strodtbeck, see later)
• the community
• a region (culture area)
• Mesoamerica
• The Northwest Coast (of North America)
• The Upper Midwest
• The Mideast
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Aran Islands

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John C. Messenger Inis Beag Isle of
Ireland. Long Grove IL Waveland Press,
1983. (ISBN 0881330515)
http//www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth3635/c
etexts.htmlInisBeag
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Cultural Metaphors

• Other units of analysis may include
• one person (e.g., Paul Buffalo)
• the family (e.g., Strodtbeck, see later)
• the community
• a region (culture area)
• a culture
• Irish
• Chinese
• Mexicans
• Bedouins

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Cultural Metaphors

• but cultural metaphors can be derived for ethnic
  groups within and across nations
• e.g., Anishinabe (Chippewa Ojibwa)
• e.g., Rom (Gypsies)
• e.g., Irish Travellers
• sometimes incorrectly called Gypsies
• e.g., Kurds
• e.g., Basques

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Mark Kurlansky The Basque History of the
World. NY Penguin Books, 1999. (ISBN 0140298517)
http//www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth3635/c
etexts.htmlBasqueHistory
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Cultural Metaphors

• Unit of analysis the nation or national culture
• applies to a group, but not to every individual
  within it

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Cultural Metaphors

• Unit of analysis the nation or national culture
• because a good amount of evidence suggests that
  there are commonalities across regional, racial,
  and ethnic groups within each of them that can be
  captured effectively by cultural metaphors

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Cultural Metaphors

• Unit of analysis the nation or national culture
• Understanding Global Cultures contains 28
  metaphors
• there are approximately 200 nations in the world
• 193 according to The Times World Atlas (2004)

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Communication

• Ken Livingston, mayor of London England,
  indicated that there were over 300 languages
  spoken in London.
• (Following the terrorist attack of July 2005)

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Communication

• How many languages
• are spoken in
• St. Paul Minnesota ?

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• Culture Counts
• and it counts quit a bit

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck
• Edward T. Hall
• Geert Hofstede
• Cultural Metaphors include, in addition, the
  items on p. 11 . . .

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• religion
• early socialization and family structure
• small group behavior
• public behavior
• leisure pursuits and interests

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• total Lifestyle
• work / leisure / home and time allocations to
  each of them
• aural space
• the degree to which members of a society react
  negatively to high noise levels
• roles and status of different members of a society

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• holidays and ceremonies
• greeting behavior
• humor

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• language
• oral and written communication

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• nonoral communication
• body language
• kinesics (motion)
• proxemics (space)

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• sports
• as a reflection of cultural values
• political structure of a society
• the educational system of a society

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• traditions and the degree to which the
  established order is emphasized
• history of a society
• but only as it reflects cultural mind-sets, or
  the manner in which its members think, feel, and
  act
• not a detailed history

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• food and eating behavior

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Cultural Metaphors include . . .

• social class structure
• rate of technological and cultural change
• organization of and perspective on work
• such as a societys commitment to the work ethic,
  superior-subordinate relationships, and so on
• any other categories that are appropriate

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A Four-Stage Model of Cross-Cultural Understanding

• four-cell typology of process / goal orientation
• more specificity
• inclusion of other etic of culture-general
  dimensions along which specific cultures have
  been shown to vary
• cultural metaphors are employed for understanding
  a culture
• they build on the etic understanding provided
  by the approaches used in the first three stages

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Emics / Etics

• emics
• from phonemics
• viewing a culture from the inside
• etics
• from phonetics
• viewing a culture from the outside
• More on the emics and etics later

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Four-Stage Model

• One variable of the
• Four-Stage Model is the degree to which process
  such as effective communication and getting to
  know one another in depth should precede
  discussion of specific goals

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Four-Stage Model

• Another variable of the
• Four-Stage Model is the degree to which a
  culture fosters and encourages open emotional
  expression

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Fig. 1.1. Process, Goals, and Expression of
Emotions (p. 12)
Open Expression of Emotions and Feelings Open Expression of Emotions and Feelings Open Expression of Emotions and Feelings Open Expression of Emotions and Feelings
Degree to Which Process Must Be Emphasized Before Goals Can Be discussed Lower Higher
Degree to Which Process Must Be Emphasized Before Goals Can Be discussed Lower England, Ireland, and Scotland United States and Germany
Degree to Which Process Must Be Emphasized Before Goals Can Be discussed Higher China, Japan, and India Mexico, Spain, and Italy
More on the Four-Stage Model later
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Cultural Metaphors

• Metaphors
• are not stereotypes
• Martin J. Gannon
• Why?

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• Geert Hofstede (1991)
• IBM study demonstrated that national culture
  explained 50 of the differences in attitudes in
  IBMs 53 countries

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• Given such studies, it seems that culture
  influences between 25 and 50 of our attitudes,
  whereas other aspects of workforce diversity,
  such as social class, ethnicity, race, sex, and
  age, account for the remainder of these
  attitudinal differences.

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• Frequently, when a foreigner violates a key
  cultural value, he or she is not even aware of
  the violation, and no one brings the matter to
  his or her attention.
• once a visitor makes a major mistake it is
  frequently impossible to rectify it
• and it may well take several months to realize
  that polite rejections really signify isolation
  and banishment

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• Even genuinely small cultural mistakes can have
  enormous consequences.

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• . . . Knowing a countrys language, although
  clearly helpful, is no guarantee of understanding
  its cultural mindset, and some of the most
  difficult problems have been created by
  individuals who have a high level of fluency but
  a low level of cultural understanding.

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• Moreover, members of a culture tend to assume
  that highly fluent visitors know the customs and
  rules of behavior, and these visitors are judged
  severely when violations occur.

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Cultural Metaphors

• Understanding Global Cultures describes a method
  for understanding easily and quickly the cultural
  mind-set of a nation and comparing it to other
  nations

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Cultural Metaphors

• In essence the cultural metaphor involves
  identifying some phenomenon, activity, or
  institution of a nations culture that all or
  most of its members consider to be very important
  and with which they identify closely
• the characteristics of the metaphor then become
  the basis for describing and understanding the
  essential features of the society

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Cultural Metaphors

• each metaphor is a guide or map that helps the
  foreigner understand quickly what members of a
  society consider very important
• but it is only a starting point against which we
  can compare our own experiences and through which
  we can start to understand the seeming
  contradictions pervasive in most, if not all,
  societies

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Cultural Metaphors

• book describes a dominant, and perhaps the
  dominant, metaphor for each society
• but other metaphors may also be suitable

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck
• Edward T. Hall
• Geert Hofstede
• Plus items on p. 11 . . .

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck
• note that each society has a dominant cultural
  orientation that can be described in terms of six
  dimensions

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Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck

• What do members of a society assume about the
  nature of people, that is, are people good, bad,
  or a mixture?
• These kinds of beliefs are sometimes called
  existential postulates

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Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck

• What do members of a society assume about the
  relationship between a person and nature, that
  is, should we live in harmony with it or
  subjugate it?
• These kinds of beliefs are sometimes called
  normative postulates

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Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck

• What do members of a society assume about the
  relationship between people, that is, should a
  person act in an individual manner or consider
  the group before taking action?
• individualism vs. collectivism (groupism) in
  terms of such issues as making decisions,
  conformity, and so forth

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Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck

• What is the primary mode of activity in a given
  society, that is, being, or accepting the status
  quo, enjoying the current situation, and going
  with the flow of things
• or doing, that is, changing things to make them
  better, setting specific goals and accomplishing
  them within specific schedules, and so forth?

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Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck

• What is the conception of space in a given
  society,
• that is, is it considered private, in that
  meetings are held in private, people do not get
  too close to one another physically, and so on
• or public, that is, having everyone participate
  in meetings and decision making, allowing
  emotions to be expressed publicly, and having
  people stand in close proximity to one another?

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Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck

• What is the societys dominant temporal
  orientation
• past
• present
• and / or future?

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Kluckholn and Strodtbeck note that each society
  has a dominant cultural orientation that can be
  described in terms of these six dimensions
• but that other, weaker orientations may also
  exist simultaneously in its different
  geographical regions and racial and ethnic groups

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck
• Edward T. Hall
• made many discoveries in how people learn
  language
• analyzed the levels of learning

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Edward T. Hall

• Context,
• or the amount of information that must be
  explicitly stated if a message or communication
  is to be successful

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Edward T. Hall

• Space,
• or the ways of communicating through specific
  handling of personal space
• e.g., North Americans tend to keep more space
  between them while communicating than do South
  Americans

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Edward T. Hall

• Time, which is either
• monochronic
• (scheduling and completing one activity at a
  time)
• or polychronic
• (not distinguishing between activities and
  completing them simultaneously multitasking)

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Edward T. Hall

• Information flow,
• which is the structure and speed of messages
  between individuals and / or organizations

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck
• Edward T. Hall
• Geert Hofstede

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Geert Hofstede

• prominent organizational psychologist
• research is based on a large questionnaire survey
  of IBM employees and managers working in 53
  different countries
• especially significant because the type of
  organization is held constant

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Geert Hofstede

• Power distance
• or the degree to which members of a society
  automatically accept a hierarchical or unequal
  distribution of power in organizations and the
  society

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Geert Hofstede

• Uncertainty avoidance
• or the degree to which members of a given
  society deal with the uncertainty and risk of
  everyday life and prefer to work with long-term
  acquaintances and friends rather than with
  strangers

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Geert Hofstede

• Individualism
• or the degree to which an individual perceives
  him- or her-self to be separate from a group and
  free from group pressure to conform

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Geert Hofstede

• Masculinity
• or the degree to which a society looks favorably
  on aggressive and materialistic behavior

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Geert Hofstede

• Time horizon
• (short term to long term)
• or the degree to which members of a culture are
  willing to defer present gratification in order
  to achieve long-term goals

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• The three-dimensional approaches developed by
  Kluckholn and Strodtbeck, Hall, and Hofstende
• leave out many features of the cultural mind-sets
  that are activated in daily cultural activities
• neglect the institutions molding these mind-sets
• are instructive, but are somewhat lifeless and
  narrow
• leave out many facets of behavior

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Constructing Cultural Metaphors

• Florence Kluckholn and Fred Strodtbeck
• Edward T. Hall
• Geert Hofstede
• Cultural Metaphors include, in addition, the
  items on p. 11 . . .

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