Going into this week’s class, we all shared the context of having read and thought about the text regarding cultural differences and the categories factoring into that, but, as always, we all brought to the class a distinct conclusion from what we read, due to the differences in each of our personal histories.
During class, I observed in-depth conversations between students that did not always result in agreement. Much of an individual’s perspective and experience of culture is based on experiences and understandings that can be subjective in nature, and so in the process of analyzing and trying to understand how another’s culture has impacted their life there can be significant differences between individuals’ understanding of the circumstances. This manifested itself during the class activity, where interpretations of the described events and applicable cultural labels ranged from cultural differences in family organization to simply personality differences that could apply to anyone. I believe that in a classroom setting, this sort of disagreement can be beneficial, because it fosters a space where we can learn from one another and challenge what we think and why.
During our discussion, I personally tried to engage by commenting on my interpretations of the reading and the defined categories of cultures and also by contributing stories of my personal experiences. I had experienced something similar to the situation my group was discussing, in which the cultural communication between a student and a host family wasn’t completely clear. Due to my experience in a situation like this, I was able to draw upon that history and answer the questions based upon my observations from that period of my life. However, I also had to recognize that my experience and my perspective of the events that I experienced may not apply to other situations, and that I would likely need to look further than just anecdotes to truly analyze the situation we were presented with. Although our experiences can be very informative and give a useful basis of knowledge to build upon and relate to other things we have studied, in most instances of cross-cultural communication and interaction one won’t have a basis of similar experiences to draw upon, and so it is important to have an understanding of cultural interaction that goes past personal stories.
