Photo Credit: wili_hybrid
Most of my American friends live in horror of being that American tourist when traveling abroad. We’ve all heard the horror stories of the rude American traveler who behaved in a completely culturally insensitive way while traveling, working, or living abroad. The person who tromps into a Japanese house wearing his shoes. Or complains loudly about the stupidity of grocery stores being closed in Germany on a Sunday. No one wants to be that person, right? In an effort to not be that person, friends have told me they try their darnedest to follow that age old maxim: when in Rome, do as the Romans do – i.e. follow the customs of the land and culture that you find yourself in, even if they aren’t your customs. Nothing wrong with trying to be respectful in all ways possible of other cultures, right?
Well, no – there are some things wrong with that old rule about following other culture’s customs as much as possible. My main complaint with the “when in Rome” adage is that it simplifies a topic that defies simplification. Tossing the rule out in a conversation as a simple, true fact (as happened recently in the comments section at another blog that inspired this post) strikes me as similar to slapping a bandage on what is, in fact, a thorny issue. Sometimes it’s a good idea to follow the customs and traditions of another society while you’re visiting (or living in) it. But sometimes it can be a really bad idea…
The Three Key Considerations of Cultural Customs
When you’re faced with a differing tradition, custom, or habit of a culture you’re interacting with or a country that you’re traveling through/living in, the main decision you have, of course, is whether you want to follow this different custom, stick to your own ways, or try to chart some sort of middle path. In making this decision, I think there are three main considerations to take into account:
- Manners - Is this a simple rule of behavior that the people of this country find polite? Will behaving in my normal manner seem rude? Is this just one of those intercultural quirks that I should just follow without bothering my head about it?
- Practical – What will happen to me if I don’t follow this custom? What about if I do? Will my life or the life of others around be easier? Better?
- Ethics – Is this custom ethical according to my beliefs? Would I be violating my ethics to follow the custom – or would it be wrong of me to not follow it, given the particular facts of the culture/country I find myself in?
Let’s tackle those one at a time, hmmm?
Etiquette Considerations – or, did you just accidentally insult someone?
Every country has those little rules that you just gotta learn before traveling there – at least if you don’t want to be unintentionally impolite. In Germany you’re suppose to keep both hands on the table -or otherwise in sight – to be polite. Why? Because that’s the rule. End of story. In the US pointing at something with your middle finger alone is likely to be taken as an insult – in other countries pointing at all is rude.
These little rules – while occasionally difficult to remember – are easy enough to follow. If a cultural custom falls simply into this category, there’s really not much to say: just try to remember the custom, and follow the traditions of the land while you’re there. Often times these customs are the intercultural quirks I’ve blogged about previously – things that really aren’t worth worrying about. In this case, I’m all for the “go with the flow” and “when in Rome” rules of thumb. If it’s a behavior that you need to perform, just do it and roll on with your life. If it’s a cultural custom you observe others doing, smile, remember that that’s half of the fun of seeing a new place, and roll on.
Unfortunately, often you’ll be told or read that a certain behavior is “polite”, but there’s more to the story than just that. Very few people want to see you chew your food – that’s why many cultures have a rule about politely shutting your mouth while you chew. It just doesn’t look attractive. However, many cultures also have rules about what is acceptable or “polite” dress – especially for women – and somehow, I don’t think “it just doesn’t look attractive” is the reasoning going into that rule.
Generally speaking, customs which require different behavior from different sorts of people – men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor, low caste vs. high caste – are not just your simple old rules of etiquette. There’s something deeper – often something related to status or power – going on there, and this will have practical and ethical considerations.
A good example of this is the cultural tradition throughout much of South Asia (not all, certainly!) where men and women are expected to socialize separately – women in the kitchen, typically, and men in living room or elsewhere. Often, this is presented just as the “typical” thing – and it’d just be weird or rude to behave otherwise. While I’ve never seen this behavior (and would not follow it, whether in India or elsewhere), a blogger friend of mine, Gori Wife, has two posts here and here about her experiences dealing with it. Another example which came up in the original blog post I read is the drinking of alcohol by women in mixed company, particularly when there are older generations around.
Practical Considerations – or what’s the fallout of your behavior?
In choosing whether to follow a particular custom, it’s always important to think about what the effects will be whichever way you choose. Those of us in intercultural relationships run across this by the simple fact of being in an intercultural relationship – if you don’t think your intercultural relationship affects others, you’re hiding your head in the sand.
The “fallout” can be big or small – depending on the custom you’re choosing to follow or flout and the expectations of those around you. Suppose you try to follow the South Asian custom of eating with your hands – the fallout might simply be a small grin of pleasure from your dining partners and a few drops of curry on your lap. Failing to follow the custom might only mean a short moment of embarrassment when you ask for a fork.
To return to our example of the sexes socializing separately, it’s clear that, if you’re a woman (or man) in this situation, either the choice to follow the custom or not will have significant practical impacts. Either way, your social experience – who you talk with, what you do, when you eat, even – will be different. If you choose to follow the custom, despite being from another country, you may gain social “credit” if your behavior is unexpected, but welcome. If you don’t follow the custom, you may make others uncomfortable with your rudeness, and generate gossip or ill-will. Harsh, perhaps, but it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Or it may be that, while it is expected that natives adhere to the custom, foreigners get a free pass to behave as they’re used to – it all depends on the particular group of people you’re socializing with.
How much you care about these other people think of you, of course, is also a variable to consider when thinking of the practical aspects of following a cultural custom. As I’ve said several times before, I truly believe that those who would judge you harshly for infractions of unfamiliar traditions are not worth your concern. Of course, plenty of people think differently on this matter – this is something you’ve got to decide for yourself and your particular lifestyle.
Another example of the practical considerations that foreign females (and men, to a lesser extent) in India must consider is how modestly to dress in public. You may not give two hoots about what a stranger on a street in a foreign country thinks of you – but your experience and the attention you get from those strangers will most certainly be different depending on what you wear.
Ethical Considerations – Or, is this universally wrong?
This should be straightforward, right? Don’t follow or otherwise support other countries’ customs if you find them ethically wrong. When in (ancient) Rome, don’t have slaves like the Romans did. Or, for a more modern example, don’t eat that delicacy of dog meat you were offered if you think it’s immoral to eat man’s best friend. Yes, refusing the delicacy might be rude, and it might have practical considerations when your hosts get upset at your impoliteness, but it’s better to behave ethically. After all, it’s not like any of us are cultural relativists here. (Right? Right?)
Unfortunately, most cases aren’t that clear cut. Most Americans would consider it extremely unethical for children to work in factories instead of staying in school – but what other choices do an absolutely poor family (pdf) have in a developing country with limited social services? Do you refuse to do business with a company that employees child labor on that basis while visiting a developing country, as you might in your home country? I wouldn’t think that the ethical choice in India, while I absolutely would consider it the correct choice for a U.S.-based factory.
Or, consider the socializing example again: are there moral implications for going along with a custom of gender separation in socializing that you wouldn’t follow in your own country? As a someone who strongly believes in parity between men and women, I do not believe that the people should, in any way, be required to separate on the basis of gender if they don’t want to. (If all the gals want to chit chat in the kitchen, that’s a different thing). Generally, I believe that it’s important to push for a culture in every country that tolerates human variation and individuality. In other words, I’m a cultural libertarian. Because of my personal ethical beliefs, I don’t believe it’s generally right to follow cultural customs that require separate behavior from men and women. So I socialize with everyone at parties, and I drink alcohol when it’s available and sounds like a good idea – in any country or culture. (And I’ll gladly argue with anyone on these issues at said parties.)
Of course, practical considerations – and even etiquette – still must be balanced with ethical concerns. For instance, I still dress modestly in public in India, even though I would occasionally prefer to dress more along the standards I’m accustomed to here in the U.S. Why? Because, frankly, it’s simply not worth the hassle for me, especially given the tiny possible marginal effect I might have in changing cultural mores that require women to dress more modestly than men. Sometimes, it just ain’t worth it to try to fight the “good fight” at all times, in all places – especially when you’re experiencing a new culture. Just as you need to balance cultures within an intercultural relationship, you need to balance the various considerations of cultural customs in a broader intercultural context.
Good Manners Across Cultures
“When in Rome, Do As the Romans Do” is a poor phrase to follow when operating in a foreign country or culture. It may help in smoothing over the simpler cultural rules of etiquette, but it fails on the bigger, deeper, and broader facets of cultural traditions or customs. So what is a good rule? I like Emily Page’s advice here:
Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use.
It’s inevitable that you’ll make a mistake when experiencing a new culture, and do something considered rude or impolite. Indeed, even many months or years after you first become familiar with a rule of etiquette, it’s likely that you’ll be making a mistake or two. (I still blush remembering the time I used an excessively formal version of “you” eight months into my stay in German.) And if you chose to flout a cultural custom because of ethical or practical concerns, you may end up looking incredibly rude. It’s okay.
As Emily Post reminds us, manners are, first and foremost, about consideration of others’ feelings. If you’re trying your best to be polite, to take into consideration the feelings of those around you, while also sticking to your ethical principles, then no one who has manners themselves should fault you. (And if they do, well, you’ve already heard my opinion on how much you should care.)
The biggest failing of that American tourist is not that he didn’t bother to read up on the customs of the country, nor that he doesn’t consider the practical effects of his actions, nor even that he goes around, demanding that the ethical realities of another country meet his simplistic, black & white view of right and wrong – it’s just an unwillingness to recognize the simple truth that Post points out.
27. October 2009 at 5:47 am
What a enlightening post! I’ve often wondered about the varying degrees of following custom when not in your own country and you said it all well!
I think that there is some unintentional ignorance of common customs and practices that can be falsely misconstrued as rudeness, where other situations are simply intentional.
I find the majority of my faux paus being that I forget. I simply forget and am not accustomed to it, but always *try* to be respectful and mind my manners.
I have to admit though that the one thing that irks me to no end is the lack of “queues” and “taking turns” !!!
27. October 2009 at 4:24 pm
Forgetting “proper” customs is a big one within my relationship with Aditya, nevermind in India itself. For instance, he forgets to say the automatic (to me, at least) please’s & thank you’s in day-to-day life – and I forget to remember that it’s not at all automatic for him. Taking turns with the chores is also a problem – but I think we’d have that issue in our relationship no matter what culture we each hailed from.
(P.S. How’s the day-to-day Hindi coming?)
27. October 2009 at 6:22 am
Fascinating! I like your approach in giving three considerations of following/not following.
It’s quite interesting on the ‘kitchen culture’ and segregating of sexes. I also wrote about this on my blog http://www.alaivani.com/Blog/tabid/56/EntryID/350/Default.aspx
When I did I got an interesting e-mail. It said that- try not to take this out of context, it happens in America too. And that person is right. When I think back to American Thanksgiving and Christmas’ women were in the kitchen, cooking, men watching games or other things on TV..but I did not ever think about it as segregating because I grew up seeing that, and it was normal. Of course in the situation of Gori Wife, that is a bit different, because women were indeed in a different room behind a closed door. I have found with India, the limited experience I have- though I have lived there two years and now married an Indian man (Hindu) is it depends on a lot of subtle factors. For instance, Muslims (I think Gori wife is married to a Muslim?) are most strict, then Hindus then Christians. Then it also depends on where a person is from in India, city rich, city poor, city middle class vs the same in small town and village- all respond differently. For instance I had a friend lower middle class Hindu in a small town-even at 28 couldn’t go to movies unchaperoned by her dad else she’d get a bad name. If she grew up in the city, this may not have been the case with the same status. My husband’s from Kerala, I notice among Kerala friends that the attitude is very relaxed (even more so than in Tamil Nadu, Chennai where I lived the next state over). Girls and guys may separate themselves for cooking food- but being together in groups while eating is OK. IN fact husbands will even go out of their way to talk to and include the girls in certain discussions and there is nothing wrong with it. In Chennai (of course I was there 10 years ago), a married man and married or unmarried man would not really talk to each other, the girl looking down from modesty and respect. The girl also, esp if the guy is older and married, not calling him by first name (this is even more true of married couples, even today, modern couples some women may not call husbands by name- but then in America we use nicknames.. so a different context).
27. October 2009 at 4:35 pm
Ah – it was you who wrote that blog post! I remember reading it – and trying to find it last night to link to – but it got lost somewhere in my bookmarks.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all when people choose where to hang out where they wish at an event, and end up naturally socializing by gender – with two caveats. The first caveat is that there be no strong social pressure to confirm to the gender segregation (how strong is too strong could be a whole ‘nother post), like in your example of the 28-year-old woman being escorted by her father – otherwise we’re not really seeing a free choice. And the second is that individuals have been brought up, educated, & exposed to the world in such a way that they are aware of other choices – i.e. it’s not a matter of, “well, this is the only way we’ve ever socialized.”
This is getting into a lot of what Sen discusses in much of his writing, like in Development as Freedom, so I’ll stop there, and tell everyone to check out Sen’s work if they want to read further on these ideas.
27. October 2009 at 11:32 am
Gender-segregated dinners happen at my FH’s parents’ house too. I don’t really like it, so I try to mess up the system whenever I can. I usually get around it by suggesting we serve the aunts, uncles, and parents first and have the younger generation eat all together. People still perceive that as “respectful,” I think, but it isn’t as uncomfortable for me. I think most of the cousins my age feel the same way.
27. October 2009 at 4:50 pm
I think there’s a legitimate difference in expecting certain respectful behaviors between generations vs. expecting differing behaviors between sexes. I didn’t want to bring up an additional complexity in the original post – but it seems to me that, depending on the societal/family “contract” between generations, it can be perfectly appropriate to behave in a somewhat deferential manner to those older than you.
This is one of those areas where I haven’t fully pinned my own thoughts down yet. But I believe it’s a legitimate place where “equally right” cultural differences can exist – for example, I think it’s okay in the West to have a more “once the child is an adult, he’s on an equal footing with his parents” relationship, while Asian cultures might have a differing model of a parent-child relationship. But, then, I also don’t think the extreme of filial obedience (“I must obey my parents in every way”) is acceptable either.
I suspect there’s an issue of respect on both the child’s side and parent’s side -and for both relationship models – that makes the relationship legitimate. To grossly generalize, in the West, parents respect adult children by saying “we’re equals now”. In a South Asian culture, on the other hand, parents respect adult children by beginning to accept the children’s support (monetary, living together, etc) while continuing to support them through advice, suggestions, etc.
(Clearly, I need to think about this some more.)
27. October 2009 at 11:58 am
GG, I appreciate your post, and I think it is very useful. As part of the discussion in the comment section of the other blog I’d also like to jump in…
I fully admit that perhaps I care too much about what other peoples impressions of me are, and this probably translates into how I act in intercultural situations. Usually, around younger people I don’t really mind, and most younger people equally don’t mind, how I act. However when around people from an older generation (parents, grandparents, older neighbors, friends of the family, etc) I sometimes struggle with this.
As I mentioned on the other blog, a lot of this has to do with communication and the perception of my usefulness. In a younger crowd I can usually carve out a bit of English conversation, or follow the Nepali and jump in with my own comment in English here or there, but this is harder with older people who might not understand what I am saying, or for whose vocabulary I might not understand.
So the situation I usually encounter is this… people gather and start talking. Social protocol dictates that tea and snacks are served. In my house, myself and P (but most likely me) would be expected to make tea and bring out snacks. P is not against helping, but P is able to jump into the conversation and fully partake… I cannot. Plus I think he also thinks it “looks good” to these older Nepalis that I am willing to help out, and that this might (through convoluted socializing) get back to his parents in Nepal (hey, its a small country). P’s parents are pretty cool, but no matter how you slice it, societal pressure there is still pretty huge, and marrying foreigners, or (still!) even other castes, can be seen as scandalous… I guess this makes positive examples important.
(Which brings me to a side note- maybe I also feel this pressure more because I’ve been told by a friend or two in Nepali-other intercultural relationships that P and my long term relationship is always the example they site when making the argument for their own relationship to their family… we have become this benchmark for “successful intercultural relationships”… talk about pressure to perform!)
Anyway, rather than look like a useless lump on a log I’d rather get up and help with the tea and snacks, and sometimes a female friend or two will join me in the kitchen. If the gathering isn’t at my place, the host is still expected to serve tea and snacks, and if I know the host well (for example a good friend’s house) and I feel “comfortable” in that person’s kitchen (meaning, its not my first time in there), then polite protocol is to jump up and offer to help, even if its a male friend’s mother who is doing the tea making. Same thing happens with the dishes at the end of the meal. There usually is a “fight” over who has to do the dishes… the host, or the guest who is trying to thank the host (or I guess the female guest representative?) And you can never take one “no, please, sit down” as an answer… you are suppose to be quite persistent until you succeed.
So yes… I could just sit on the couch, not say anything and wait to be served. But I can feel the social pressure (real or imagined) to partake in this protocol. Plus I can’t adequately communicate, so I can’t use the excuse that I’m part of the discussion for not jumping up to help (which could be a likely alternative if I was able do this). Likewise I know that I am fighting the stereotype of the “American woman” that I know a lot of older generation Nepali people have… that they are not helpful, they can’t properly take care of a household, or basically that we corrupt their sons, etc, etc. I also know that if I go out of my way to “fit in” to these cultural protocols, then when the friend’s family goes back to Kathmandu, and inevitably has tea with P’s family, I’ll have glowing reports.
For the time being, I don’t mind jumping in to help out, especially now, when I can’t fully partake in the conversation. That kind of fits into your first category about etiquette. But lately I’ve been worried that I am pigeon-holing myself with these adults as the “homemaker type” (which I definitely am not). P and I share household responsibilities, its just when these older people are around where there seems to be this unspoken social pressure to conform in a certain way or “disappoint” people, or worse yet– confirm their preconceived notions on what a (female) “westerner” is like. I don’t know… maybe I’m just blowing it out of proportion, but I really struggle with this.
Although lately I’ve been thinking about this… because there is one set of Nepali parents I feel totally comfortable around– my good friend S’s. I’ve met them on and off and stayed at S’s place while they have been in the US, many many times over the years, particularly before I started learning about some of these “unspoken social pressures.” I never really set the bar to be “house-wife-y” around them, so I usually feel like I can be myself. However now that S married my friend R, I see R acting like a “good Nepali buhari” when we visit, so I again kind of feel the need to jump up and help… and if they come to our house I definitely fall into my old habits… serving tea and snacks, continually asking if anyone was hungry, if they needed anything, etc.
So I don’t know. This is a bit of a ramble, but I just feel like the situation is really complicated. I fully admit that in many ways I probably bring this on myself, but I also don’t want to upset the social protocol, while not pigeon-holing myself for life.
27. October 2009 at 1:18 pm
I don’t think that GG is suggesting that you become unhelpful, simply that the roles within the household should not based solely on the sex of the individual.
My parents scold me if GG is doing something in the kitchen and I’m watching TV, so I guess we’re spoiled by our elders. But, I will say that I would not encourage GG to follow customs that I feel are hypocritical (e.g. drinking being ok for men but not women).
However, I think there are a lot of instances where the role of gender vs sex is much more nuanced. For example, while I may say that I don’t want to support traditional gender roles, at the same time much of our identity is closely tied to what we perceive is “right” for each sex.
This is especially relevant when it comes to dressing. We talk about “conservative” dressage for men and women, but don’t question the fact that men and women are expected to wear different things. Skirts on men, for example, are frowned upon even in the West.
27. October 2009 at 6:23 pm
Americanepali, I think others have responded with very interesting & insightful points of view – I’ll just throw in my own two cents, which are on a slightly different track than others (orthogonal, not contradictory).
Like Aditya, I think gender roles – and how we navigate them – are quite nuanced, even when dealing with only one culture’s beliefs and strictures. And I don’t think all of this comes easy for a modern monoculture couple committed to equality, either.
For example, when Aditya and I are operating in a our typical social scene here in the US – probably best described as a “white-collar, young, urban, diverse, vaguely-hipster milieu” – we both still need to make an effort to make sure neither one of us is carrying the lion’s share of the burden of hosting & food-making. For us, that means creating an open social space where it’s natural for socializing to happen in the kitchen – where we both work to get things going (Aditya mixes drinks, I grab snacks and beer for guests.) We’re not always perfect at this – at one BBQ this year, for instance, Aditya felt really left out of the social sphere because he was grilling on the patio by himself while I was socializing with the guests indoors. After that event, we talked it over, and I made efforts to make sure he didn’t feel put upon at future events. I don’t think this is something that comes naturally to most couples – and I do think planning a “socializing strategy” as it were can help defuse tensions. Even if it looks somewhat awkward to guests (like my maneuvers to get people to hang out on the deck with Grill Master Aditya), I think it’s important to simply acknowledge that, as a couple, you want to share equally in the hosting functions, since yours is an equal partnership. For me, it’s saying “let’s all go hang out on the deck so Aditya isn’t out there alone.” (I’m not subtle.) For you guys, it might be P standing up when tea & snack time comes, and saying, “let me go give Americanepali a hand with the tea – we’ll be right back.”
This is a long way of saying that one of the things I was struck with while reading your comment was how, to a large extent, your experience with Nepali social protocols could read identical to some subcultures within the US or other Western countries, (or things that we struggle with in any culture). Certainly, it seems quite similar to what I see when visiting the branch of my family which are of the fundamentalist Christian mindset.
When you said
I immediately thought of these family members. I’m sure that my actions & beliefs disappoint them – and confirm preconceived notions of what athiestic, feminist-ish women are like (they do love & welcome me, anyways).
I don’t think there’s a simple way out of that disappointment, when you run across fundamental disagreements about gender roles (or any other cultural beliefs). It’s just like, well, I’m sure my MIL is a little disappointed that she doesn’t have a Bengali DIL instead of me (Here’s a great post on that topic from a non-Korean DIL). The disappointment over these cultural value disagreements doesn’t imply, tho, that you must fall into the stereotype of “the American woman.” I think there are ways to show your caring – that you are helpful, that you can take care of a household, etc – while still firmly presenting your own values in a matter-of-fact, “this is the way we do it in this household” sort of way.
…and now I’m rambling, so I’ll just leave off there.
27. October 2009 at 12:28 pm
Some further comments are very interesting.
@Americanepali what you said sparks two thoughts in me.
When you say you jump to help out because of the language barrier- maybe you did not say this explicitly- but helping is another way to communicate without talking- it’s universal and this is how one can understand you…
You are right. I feel this too. My immediate inlaws all speak English- but that doesn’t always matter. Some of the jokes or situations they talk about I don’t really understand though it’s in English because of the cultural context. And if people do start talking in Malayalam or Hindi I don’t really (don’t at all most of the time) understand and get tired. I felt bad cause when we went to India the first time and I had to meet inlaws many times they did not know English and I actually fell asleep- not because I don’t like them but because I was trying so hard to understand and when you don’t really know a language and people talk so fast it’s tiring. I understand then what babies go through to learn language- and why they are tired all the time! Of course I felt bad. So to combat the tired feeling. I’d get up and go in the kitchen to do something- anything. Many a time me and who ever it was couldn’t talk to each other. Some ladies would try their best to talk in Baby Malayalam to me.. and I really appreciate that. I could pick up some things. Just by watching I can learn a lot too. But none the less you have made a good point.
The other important thing I thought of.. is this is that these issues are more pronounced if one is a ‘foreigner’ but really this happens even if people marry the way they are supposed to. The modern girls who have worked outside the home before marriage and have good educations often did not do housework, cook or have the habit of any of it before marriage. So even some of my Indian friends get stressed out when they go to India or their parents or inlaws come here. Especially if parents come here to US- the pressure is a lot to show how traditional they are… In places in India itself this is hard and people are shying away from it- but can you imagine the pressure in US where things you need (material stuff, food, vessels, clothes, decors and of course time) are not as easy to find as they may be in India. Also in INdia or where ever the SPIRIT is there- everyone else is doing it or trying their best to do it- and this isn’t so in America. That’s why there’s no place like India to celebrate Diwali, and no place like Kerala to celebrate Onam, etc. etc.
30. October 2009 at 4:17 pm
On the first point (people speaking in other languages around you)… I grew up in a very diverse area, and went to high school primarily with immigrants – however, they were from all over as well. It was very common for jokes/conversations to naturally start up between friends who shared a common tongue, leaving the rest of us out. So we all learned very early the value of a good, unselfconscious “Hey, what’s the joke?” or “Hey, whatcha guys talking about?” to bring the conversation back into English. This is (IMO) a pretty important skill to learn if your partner & his or her family are native speakers in a language you don’t know. Otherwise, yeah, you can zone out really quickly.
Jennifer, I don’t quite understand/see the connection in
“Also in India or where ever the SPIRIT is there- everyone else is doing it or trying their best to do it- and this isn’t so in America. That’s why there’s no place like India to celebrate Diwali, and no place like Kerala to celebrate Onam, etc. etc.”
What do you mean by this? I mean, likewise, there’s no place like the US to celebrate the Fourth of July, no place like Isreal to celebrate Yom Kipper, etc, etc.
27. October 2009 at 1:51 pm
I appreciate what you’re trying to say Aditya… And what your family does. It’s really great. More so because it’s a good example to the outside world to see such things. When families make such statements, it’s hard for others to accept, at times, though they may want to change, they are afraid to….for many reasons.
The one and only reason I advocate to go in the kitchen and help as an American is because beyond this being a method to communicate without words (which can be helpful when we don’t speak the same language), it shows an ability to want to relate to others. When we show that we can relate that means we adjust to the other person too, and that shows respect and love. I of course, don’t advocate for this in all situations, but helping in the kitchen (cooking, cleaning, setting table, etc) is quite harmless and anyone of almost any culture can relate to it.
I think often that especially elder generations of Indian ladies who can’t speak English (and those who can) want to relate to their American or foreign daughter in laws (sons, but that is a bit different) and there is a mind block from minute one- oh that girl must have grew up like this and that…very few mother-in-laws to be of foreign or intercaste daughter in laws would think otherwise. It is just a fact. And it is also a fact it is hard to relate to how Americans or foreigners grow up- we can listen to stories and even sympathize but not having lived some it, it’s hard to fully appreciate. I know this being an only American who studied my Master’s degree in chennai- there was so many cultural things I couldn’t relate to… so if we pick one thing the other feels comfortable with we can relate to- I say why not. And many mothers in law in India work- do a lot of work in the kitchen, it’s just a fact of life. And this is one aspect of life I think a foreigner can relate to in all the confusions and complexities of Indian culture, the kitchen can be the easiest (of course swimming in a sea of a million spices!
27. October 2009 at 3:50 pm
This post couldn’t come at a better time for me GG. We leave in 11 days for India. I’m anxious to see if my perceived thoughts on all this change once I’m there and thrown into the chaos. (We’ll have 20 people living at the house for 4-5 days for the wedding) Both my fiance and I have very strong views on gender equality and we both despise hearing the words, “Gender roles”, however, I have a funny feeling after reading many posts here and on other sites that I may “act differently” than my American self while over in India. Not sure how I feel about this (knowing that I’ll most likely act totally different than I do here)-will have to let you know after I get back. I could sit here and say that I will have a beer, kick back and chat with the “guys”, but I have a feeling I’m going to end up with the women in the kitchen…
30. October 2009 at 4:21 pm
Yeah… it’s always easy to talk the talk before trying to walk the walk.
I doubt they’ll let you into the kitchen, tho – you’re going to be the bride! Everything gets done for the bride! (And all the neighbors come to see her – the fact that you’re American will just be an added bonus.)
2. December 2009 at 1:36 pm
I just read your response and thought I should tell you what happened last month in India. We had about 20 family members in the house for four days up until the wedding and I spent most of my time with all the female cousins. I wouldn’t say everybody was necessarily segregated, but because the female cousins wanted to hang with me so much (which I loved-they are great!) I spent most time with them. I definately didn’t act like my American self a lot of the time because I was constantly trying to assimilate and mimic many of the behaviors of others. I’m sure the next time I go to India I’ll be more relaxed and feel more like myself. Being jetlagged, planning a wedding, meeting 20 new people all in a week is definately stressful. I’ve been home five days and still processing all that went down! Wow!! But we’re very happy-love the fact we’re married.
Oh, and my only time in the kitchen was during the last week when my mother-in-law taught me how to make my hubby’s favorite dish-chicken biriyani. So, I had my notepad and pen and watched, helped and wrote everything down. That was fun!
27. October 2009 at 3:53 pm
What a great post! This is a pet peeve of mine… Being culturally sensitive/ adapting yourself to a host culture shouldn’t mean losing yourself and your convictions. Not only is it unfair to yourself, and to the host culture, but it isn’t viable on the long run.
I learned it the hard way, whilst I was doing an intercultural exchange in Mexico, staying with a host family. I was barely 18 years old, had been briefed on the importance of taking a step back from my cultural criteria and thought of myself as very open-minded… a champion of adaptability of sorts. I therefore arrived believing firmly in that Roman maxime. I was ‘in love’ with my new life and host family from the start: everything was new, exotic, great; they were welcoming, going out of their way to make me confortable and help me discover their culture and region. Sure, things were different. But it was just part of the learning experience and the fun. And yes, some things, some attitudes bothered me… but I wanted to be more Roman than the Romans, and “who was I to judge?”
But by trying too hard to be open-minded I ignored my doubts and neglected to even talk about them or ask the reason behind some ‘cultural’ aspects which seemed weird. I’d used that strategy on other intercultural occasions and it had gone fine, but those were short term, 2 weeks at the most, whereas I was meant to stay 6 months with that family. 6 months is too long a period to just suppress your culture and pretend to be “roman”. Some of these things which bothered me were innocent intercultural quirks (the mother jumping ‘to my rescue’ whenever I commented on something I wasn’t sure how to get done, acting both as a mexican host would with a guest, and a protective mexican mother with her child, whereas I would have felt more supported if she had given me pointers and let me do it myself) and others might not have been so innocent (the 9 year old boy sleeping in his parents bed because they gave me the only other room in the house).
What happened? Well long story short, two months into my stay the facade crumbled. I witnessed an incident I couldn’t accept and which took that much more importance and significance in my eyes because it tipped the balance and made me rethink all the little things I’d accepted without question before. One day I was enthusiastically blogging that I was sooo lucky to have such an amazing and easy experience. And the next everything had gone very wrong and I was unable to communicate with my host family.
Of course this is a peculiar situation and maybe it shows more of my own naiveté or shyness than anything else. But I am convinced that things wouldn’t have turned out so bad if I’d been making conscious choices of when to or not to “act as the romans” from the start, if I hadn’t been convinced that I had no right to question the way the “romans” did things. And I’ve heard of many stories of similar experiences where a desire to blindly conform, even with minor things, only backfired later on.
Since then I’ve tried to pass along that message to all the young people I’ve met who wanted to participate in the same kind of program I did: Yes, we expect you to be open-minded and culturally sensitive, but we don’t expect you to pretend to be someone you’re not.
In that sense Americanpali, and for as much as my personal experience alone might be worth, I feel like you should listen to your doubts … Not necessarily to stop jumping up to help, but to deal with them properly and avoid your emotions ‘boiling over’ down the road. I fully agree with Aditya and Jennifer who see it as a way of communication, and if you see it as something you need to do socially and you are comfortable with it, then it’s fine. But if you feel that you are ‘pigeon-holing’ yourself in a role which you don’t believe in, the risk is that one day you won’t be able to do it anymore: you’ll decide that that “house-wife-y” person really isn’t you and that you don’t want to pretend to be her anymore. And it might end up being much more damaging than if you took a step back now and decided you don’t want to take up that role in the first place or discussed it and decided that even though it’s culturally foreign to you you are comfortable taking part in it for x and x reason.
I think time and choices born only of the “pressure to perform” only make things more difficult in the long run.
The book you link to, “Beyond bumper stickers”, also looks very intersting Gori. For some reason it never occured to me that there might be ‘theoretical’ books on just that topic. Would you recomend this one as a first approach?
30. October 2009 at 4:35 pm
Yes, it does seem like the same sort of lesson holds for exchange students and, really, anyone else living outside of their home culture (I tried to write the post to more general…). Thanks for sharing your experience! I went through the same sort of thing during my “gap year” working in Germany, altho, looking back, it doesn’t seem like I had quite as much trouble as you… Perhaps it’s because the culture was more similar to my own – or perhaps it’s just the fog of memory…
The book I linked to seems to be a pretty good introductory text to ethics, albeit with a Christian slant. I can’t recommend it specifically, as I’ve only read the one chapter I linked to (which I thought was very good for the audience it’s aimed at). A number of other introductory texts to ethics are recommended here. If there’s a specific topic you’re interested in, I might be able to help you further… I didn’t have a specific textbook for my ethical theory course, but I was a philosophy major with a specialty in applied ethics, so I have a decent background in the subject.
31. October 2009 at 4:34 am
Thanks, I ‘ll have a look at these. A good, introductory book will do for now.
27. October 2009 at 4:10 pm
@Chimera.
I have a lot to say!
You made me think of something else. Someone recently asked me what’s it like to be in a cross cultural relationship, how does your family accept it and how do you accept it? When do you find it easy/difficult?
Somehow hearing this question- everytime I hear it, I get a new perspective on it. This time my perspective is this- as we evolve as humans it changes. And you’re right you should not pretend to be someone you’re not- over long periods of time we forget who we are. But then how many of us really know who we are? I think this is why many of us get into cross cultural relationships to explore parts of ourselves that we want to know better and what better way to do this than to be in situations that take us out of comfort zone and really make us think about why and who we are?
These kinds of questions I think come more frequently to us who are in cross cultural relationships more frequently or we are more sensitive to them because of the nature of our lives (I think those in non cross cultural relationships have them too but it presents differently).
So when asked that I think- we change over time. Who we are in someways stays the same through out our lives but somethings definitely change. For instance I loved heavy metal in highschool, now I don’t want to because I understand the lyrics more. But I needed that experience to understand what I like and what I want now. I did not realize then that heavy metal lyrics were not part of my value system because I was not experienced enough to understand what they meant and meant to me. This is the same with tactile experiences. Once we step back, live a little have more experience we will learn how to integrate it into our lives and learn.
Hope it makes sense. This is really an interesting thread.
27. October 2009 at 5:27 pm
@Jennifer. It definitely makes sense. I’m not in a cross-cultural relationship myself but it’s definitely through my intercultural experiences, good or bad, that I’ve learnt the most about myself… Actually even as I was typing my comment I reflected that it made me understand better some things about myself which I’ve been trying to understand through other means… And stepping out of the comfort zone is a big part of it. If I’d come home after just 1 month and a half in Mexico, I’d have barely learnt anything. Because in a way I had refused to enter the stretch zone, I’d worked hard at suppressing it. As much as I’d prefer it hadn’t happened, what came next, and the questions it forced me to put to myself, partly shaped me as who I am today.
And it’s through my family’s growing ties to India that I’m really getting an understanding of who we are as a family, as I’m sure you all do in your cross-cultural relationships.
After all, one’s identity can only be defined by comparison with someone else’s, no? As Gori says above we can’t make a choice about the way we socialize, and by that learn what our socializing preferences are, if we know only of one for of socializing, the one we’ve always conformed to.
I agree, fascinating discussion! Though my head’s spinning with all the thoughts going round right now
27. October 2009 at 4:12 pm
EDIT: sorry for the rant! I didn’t realise it was that long… I must be chronically incapable of writing a short comment/ post *rolls eyes*
27. October 2009 at 4:19 pm
Hey – did you see the length of the original post? I completely understand the ability to go on and on…
27. October 2009 at 5:29 pm
Fair enough!
27. October 2009 at 8:49 pm
Chimera… don’t worry… I feel like my comments always seem to go on and on
By the way… thanks for the advice everyone, every new perspective really helps me look at the whole issue with a fresh pair of eyes!
27. October 2009 at 7:13 pm
GoriGirl, you win the award for the longest comments I’ve ever seen! I’m going to keep mine short and simple: I laughed when you wrote:
“For instance, he forgets to say the automatic (to me, at least) please’s & thank you’s in day-to-day life – and I forget to remember that it’s not at all automatic for him.”
I had to learn this too! MIM says if you are friends or family, you needn’t say please or thank you; it is silently understood. I try my best not to say it all of the time, but it was the way I was raised! And when he doesn’t say it, I will admit to getting a little bit offended. I’m ok with it now, and simply had to accept this difference and not expect it.
28. October 2009 at 2:52 am
There is a similar expression in Urdu/Hindi as “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” It is ‘jaisa des, vaisa bhes’. Des, I think you know, in this context it means land/country, and bhes means like clothes or appearance. In other words, one should change oneself appropriately to suit a different place.
3. November 2009 at 9:23 am
@Gori Girl.. You are right- I do akin my comments on celebrating Diwali to what you say- “there’s no place like the US to celebrate the Fourth of July, no place like Isreal to celebrate Yom Kipper, etc, etc.”
There’s just something about being in India for Diwali that is unexplainable.I celebrated in Chennai two years and it was AMAZING. One year I was in Kanchipuram. that is a totally different experience as celebrations are more focused in going to temples than my friends in Chennai. But, It’s something that I find hard to put into words. Honestly when I was there I did not appreciate it as much as I do now. It was loud and overwhelming when I was there- but that loud, overwhelming feeling is not felt for me in any holiday in US maybe except fourth of July.
Sorry I can’t explain it better! Maybe someday.
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