Last week, Passport mentioned a cartographic error on Newsweek’s map “The State of Islam Around the Globe”: Rather than marking the Palestinian Territories (the West Bank and Gaza) it labeled Israel as such.
While this is a sure fumble, it is easily changed. More problematic is that the map only includes 15 “Muslim” countries, concentrated in the Middle East and Central Asia. Only Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines break the mold. But even still here, the Philippines cannot be called a “Muslim country” with a straight face. It’s population is barely 5% Muslim. The struggle in the southern part of the country raises the community’s profile, but this still does not make it a Muslim country and it is disappointing that the Philippines is included in the tally but countries such as, say, Malaysia, Sudan, Mali, Senegal, Tunisia, Gambia or Bangladesh are not. This paucity of valuable information is the most troubling part of the map, not that a small country, with a small number of people is mislabeled on a map that is easily corrected.
An international book festival in Dubai is facing the possibility of a mass walkout in its inaugural year with authors queuing up to protest against the censorship of a book that discusses homosexuality.
The Canadian novelist and former Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood sparked the controversy by pulling out of the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature after a fellow writer was blacklisted for offending “cultural sensitivities”.
The book at the centre of the latest storm is The Gulf Between Us, a romantic comedy by the English writer Geraldine Bedell which is set in a fictional Gulf emirate. It was due to be formally launched at the festival but has been withdrawn by the festival at the last minute because it features a gay relationship. Bedell commented: “Can you have a literary festival and ban books because they feature gay characters? Is that what being part of the contemporary literary scene means? The organisers claim to be looking for an exchange of ideas – but not, apparently, about sex or faith. That doesn’t leave literature an awful lot of scope.”
The festival director, Isobel Abulhoul, issued a statement in which she said: “I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities. I did not believe that it was in the festival’s long term interests to acquiesce to her publisher’s request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East.”
The news story is one that has been brewing for a long time and is not the last of its kind we will read about. Dubai, and anyone who understands the region, knew that by trying to become a centre of world trade, commerce, art and sport that it has to bring in people from all over the world. This has resulted in a flood of expat labour as well as huge numbers of visitors/tourists. Naturally with foreign visitors come foreign ideas, beliefs, notions of acceptability and world views.
This row is a fine example of what happens when you invite the western literati to an event in a conservative Muslim Gulf state. Both sides have an issue here. Writers, in this case spearheaded by Atwood, see this as censorship against their freedom of ideas, freedom to pen whatever they like about whoever they like and basic freedom of expression. Muslims see this as an an unwanted element that can not be encouraged. It is however unfortunate for the event organisers that by banning the book they have drawn more attention to it.
In short, both sides have something to learn. The writers need to appreciate Dubai is a Muslim country with strict ideas, some of which have absolutely no flexibility. There must be some senstivity towards this in that a respect needs to be show for another’s way of life, beliefs and faith. Emiratis can not be expected to roll over and accept whatever is thrown at them in the name of modernity and freedom of speech. On the other hand, Dubai needs to assess how it will handle similar issues that arise in the future and think of alternative means to overcoming such bad publicity.
It has been 22 hours since the team has had any sleep, and the commander of the small four-man squad is just as tired as the rest of his men. In that time, his team has marched about 12.5 miles and encountered civilians several times. Every such encounter is fraught with potential danger. Now the team has finally reached its destination village. The commander breathes a sigh of relief when the local police chief courteously welcomes the team into his office.
His sense of relief goes away, though, when the chief asks him and his team to stack their weapons off to the side, where they would be out of quick reach if needed. Just as the commander is trying to figure out a polite way to decline, he hears a groan from somewhere in the back of the building. Is a prisoner being tortured?
The marching, the sleeplessness and the fatigue are all real, but the “village” is located in North Carolina, and all the “villagers” are soldiers in the U.S. Army, dressed up to play their roles. It’s all part of an elaborate 12-day “culmination exercise”—or CULEX, in Army terminology. The exercise is designed to test the skills of adaptive thinking and leadership of Special Operations Forces civil affairs and psychological operations personnel in the Army’s Reserve Command.
“Adaptive thinking is about cross-cultural communications,” says Maj. Eric Le Gloahec, a special projects officer at the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “It’s not just problem-solving. It’s thinking outside the box.”
These out-of-the-box cross-cultural communications skills are crucial to civil affairs and psychological operations personnel, who will encounter Iraqi and Afghan civilians in real situations like the scenario described here. The civil affairs function deals with civilian populations wherever the Army is.
A thought provoking talk hosted by the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung fur die Frieheit entitled ‘The Shift of Power from West to East’ attempted to address and challenge how emerging powers and global trends are influencing the Western world’s ability to consolidate its values.
“Who runs or owns the world today?” began guest speaker Mr. Rolf Timans, Directorate-General of External Relations for the European Commission and head of unit for Human rights and democratisation. A most poignant question as all present were provoked to thinking about those phenomenons which are influencing the distribution of power, and more importantly for the talk, the faltering power of the European Union (EU).
Mr. Timans practised caution when reflecting on the topic, believing the title to have been inaccurate since the shift for him is more from South to North. Furthermore, “Western values” can be better encapsulated as “universal values”; universal standards of human rights formed the platform of Mr. Timans’ speech as he outlined cultural relativism, religion, individual and social actions as key arguments which the West would need to confront if hoping to encourage universal human rights.
Cultural relativism was acknowledged by Mr. Timans as influencing the way nations perceive and prioritise human rights. Religion was also considered a hindrance to the application of human rights, specifically when looking at the laws of Saudi Arabia as a poignant example. The distinction between the individual versus the prerogative of societies and attitudes which guide them is a division that needs to be addressed, should universal human rights hope to be maintained.
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human’s beliefs and activities should be understood in terms of his or her own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by students. Boas himself did not use the term as such, but the term became common among anthropologists after Boas’ death in 1942. The first use of the term was in the journal American Anthropologist in 1948; the term itself represents how Boas’ students summarized their own synthesis of many of the principles Boas taught.
Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not these claims necessitate a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be confused with moral relativism.
Returning from an extended stay in Brazil, I started to read Tracy Novinger’s Communicating with Brazilians: When „Yes“ means „No“ (University of Texas Press, Austin, 2003) with great interest. Already after the first few pages I decided to like this book. Because of sentences like these:
„Beyond focusing attention on a nation’s characteristics that seem exotic and foreign to outsiders, to communicate successfully across cultures it is sometimes important to just rely on common sense. Small towns in both the United States and Brazil, for example, are more conservative than are large cities, as is generally true throughout the world.“
„Most of us think that we act through our own free will. But think again. For the most part, we do not.“
„Culture is the logic by which we give order to the world … Put simply, culture is the way we do things around here.“
Given that, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of “culture” (in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions) this is a refreshingly succinct and useful statement.
Now let’s have a look at the Brazilians who Darcy Ribeiro characterises as „better than others because bathed in black and Indian blood, a people whose role from here on will be less a matter of absorbing European things than of teaching the world how to live with more joy and more happiness.“ I think Darcy Ribeiro is right, I do indeed believe that Brazilians live with more joy and happiness than others. All others? No idea, really, but definitely with more joy and happiness than the Swiss. Needless to say I can already hear some protests so let me hasten to add: save for one or two exceptions.
As global workforces become the norm, HR must manage an increasingly diverse range of cultures. What difficulties do they face and how can they overcome them?
The advent of satellite TV and the internet has whittled away at national cultures to the extent that we may have begun to assume that everyone lives, acts and even works in a similar way. But that’s not always the case. Global workplace furniture manufacturer Steelcase recently surveyed its European clients’ ways of working, and the results, if not entirely unexpected, certainly provide food for thought.
The British are individualistic, self-controlled, class conscious and natural team workers, according to Steelcase. The Germans, however, are more conservative, place a greater emphasis on privacy and prefer a formal, hierarchical workplace. The Italians are hierarchical and bureaucratic, insisting on face-to-face meetings and preferring manager-led processes, whereas the French are more egalitarian and participative. At French meetings, it isn’t uncommon for everyone to talk at the same time – yet decisions are still generally made by senior people. Italian meetings, which rarely start or end on time, involve lots of emotion and noise, but no-one expects decisions to be reached until much later.
Companies setting up shop are forced to change their livery. Traffic lights are smashed in defiance. It seems astonishing that a town could detest something so much, but Larkhall does.
For it is green that provokes so much ire in this Lanarkshire town just outside Glasgow. Yes, the colour.
So far, the contempt with which the emerald tint is held in the town has prompted the sandwich chain Subway to change its traditional signage to black and the local pharmacies to switch their frontage to blue.
The reason is simple, if slightly strange, and stems from sectarianism and football rivalry. In Larkhall, green is immediately associated with Catholicism, Irish republicanism and the football team Glasgow Celtic. And in Larkhall, the vast majority of people proclaim themselves to be Protestant, unionist, and supporters of another Glasgow football team, Rangers.Read more >> Larkhall
When it comes to communicating across different cultures, understanding the language may be just the beginning.
A leading intercultural communications expert said that the ability to “read between the lines” and understanding non-spoken expressions in various cultural contexts is also an important part of communication, one that’s often overlooked when studying foreign languages.
According to Park Myung-seok, professor emeritus at Dankook University, the English-education curriculum in Korean schools does not reflect this fact nearly enough. Park has written several books on the topic of intercultural communications. Most recently he co-edited a book, titled “Communicating Nonverbally: An Introduction to Nonverbal Communication.”
The Open University and British Council, together with Lion Television and the BBC have produced a special free DVD resource pack for schools.
The packs aim to encourage inter-cultural dialogue and draws on three Open University/BBC FOUR TV series – African School, Indian School and Chinese School.
The packs, which are distributed free to interested schools in the UK and overseas, feature short video clips from the three series along with background information and a series of discussion points to raise questions and stimulate debate.
For Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of auto components maker Robert Bosch GmbH, getting its employees from different cultures to work together proved more difficult than cracking a bug that infected a Japanese client’s information technology system.
Its customer relationship, sales and marketing teams were from Germany, while the technical team was from India. Misunderstandings reached a point where they could not do their job.
The company solved the problem by starting a team-building exercise that focused on creating a common ground, increasing interaction beyond “mails reporting bugs” and sensitizing employees about different working styles.
Globalization has brought with it a need for multinational companies to manage diversity to function well in an inter-cultural environment. Which is why “we took a hard look at our value chain”, says T.K. Sathyanarayana, head of human resources at Robert Bosch’s India arm.
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