Intercultural Capacity

    With the idea of a person being able to work cross-culturally, it is important to understand that the capacity to be able to do this is something that can be learned and improved upon. Thinking about the training that I have received in Intercultural Studies and Peacebuilding, I can't help but think about the learning process. I was taught about my own culture, Western/American, first to be able to understand how I viewed the world around me. Then the readings and teachings went to the understanding of other cultures and how they viewed the world. Reflecting upon these two examples, I would like to talk a little about why it might be set up the way that it was. It isn't easy to understand how another views the world without first being able to understand how we view the world ourselves. The process of introspectively understanding our world is a delicate one. The reason I say that it is delicate is because it is hard for us to allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to reflect upon our world in an objective manner. We don't like to feel vulnerable, ever, and when you begin to look at your life and the reasoning of why you do the things that you do it can be difficult to grapple with.

    I remember sitting in my first culture theory class, with one of the best professors I have ever had (Dr. McArthur). He assigned readings from Marx, DeSaussure (spelling?), Hall, Gramsci, Hegel and others. All of the readings addressed different parts of the culture in which we lived, whether it was the symbols and signs that we use to describe things (languages) or the hegemony and how it came to be in power, where the influence of it all comes from. You begin to realize that you have been influenced your entire life by others and that you are a product of society. Depending on what society you live in at any given point in time, you will be influenced by that society. For people that have been born, raised, and stay in one society and culture, the influence of those have more of an impact. Once, and only once in my opinion, we are able to understand why we are the way we are, we can then begin to look at other cultures and try to understand the influences that they have been introduced to or "had" by (the controlling influences are in power).