cultural differences

Here's a list of cultural difference from a handout at the anthropology
seminar I attended at SIL yesterday. (Scroll down to see it, for some reason Blogger is having a hard time displaying tables.)

African culture	Western culture
strong community values (group participation, decisions)	strong individualistic values (individual initiative, decisions)
community identity	individual identity
community living style	private living style
extended family emphasis	immediate family emphasis
holistic approach to life	categorical approach to life
importance of the event	importance of schedules and clock time
people-oriented priorities	task- and goal-oriented priorities
real-life (situational) thinking	abstract and academic thinking
preference for real-life learning	preference for academic learning
spiritual worldview	scientific worldview
emphasis on spoken communication	emphasis on written communication
emphasis on spoken agreements based on relationships	emphasis on written agreements based on policies
respect for the elderly	respect for the educated
traditional inherited leadership	elected (democratic) leadership
death is passing into the spirit world, survivors must perform rituals	death is a practical problem, survivors need couseling and support
resolve conflicts through a mediator	resolve conflicts face-to-face
practical, ritual response to spirit realities	intellectual response to spirit realities
practical, ritual approach to religion	intellectual approach to religion
vulnerability seen as weakness	vulnerability seen as strength
much interest in the spirit world	little interest in the spirit world

Why "Western", I wonder? Maybe "Northern" instead? The Cameroonians I've discussed some of these differences with, if they're not university-educated, just say "white" for this category.

I wonder which "Western" people this list applies to as well? Where on this scale would a rural American, for instance, without a lot of educational opportunities lie? Sure, the list is a generalization, and it certainly does seem to express pretty clearly, judging from what people said about their own experience, a set of different expectations between the foreign missionary community where this discussion took place yesterday and the Africans they encounter, employ, and seek to serve with their Bible translation work. But the missionary community here is an elite group of people, with a high level of education and the resources and motivation to come all the way here to do complicated and often difficult work. Would you find a lot of these differences within the US depending on which groups you compared? Maybe as class differences within the US? Or between the evangelical community Ann and I grew up in back in Michigan, and the Mennonite religious community several people in our San Francisco church grew up in back east, with its focus on community and group decisions and spiritual harmony? And where would, for instance, our San Francisco yoga instructor Kristie lie on this chart? I'm guessing somewhere in the middle.

This handout was actually an adjunct to the main discussion, which was based on a book called African Friends and Money Matters, by David Maranz, although the discussion did cover a lot of the differences on this list. Here are a few items from Maranz's book, which is actually published by SIL:

"Africans find security in ambiguous arrangements, plans and speech."

"Westerners find security in clearly defined relationships, arrangements, plans and speech."

And this:

For many Africans it seems that they believe there is such a danger of offending others that they prefer silence, indirectness, the solution of time making opinions clear, and extreme tact. An African friend told me this is one reason that Westerners are often misled, interpreting silence to mean that all is well. And of course to many Africans the Westerner comes across as insensitive, callous, indifferent to how others think and feel, and as having a great lack of human sensitivity and tact.

The thrust of the discussion yesterday was on this point, the difficulty in communicating based on very different expectations of social and economic relationships. Everything here, from employment arrangements to the prices in the markets to the traffic in the streets, is endlessly, constantly in a state of negotiation. It's exhausting until (or perhaps unless) you get used to it.

Maranz's book not only explores these differences, but explains how they make sense for people in Africa, which has a very different history from the West and where people's material conditions are usually very different today. He has a list in the book that summarizes these differences; here it is (somewhat abbreviated and annotated), and as he takes pains to note, this chart concerns the fewer than 50% of Africans who are employed, and thus doing better than lots of other people here (again, scroll down to see the table, due to strange Blogger layout trouble):

Concern of Life	Westerner [in Africa]	[Employed] African
Residence	big house, upscale neighborhood	small house crowded full of extended family members
food	varied, balanced, eats in restaurants, invites friends over	local affordable foods, feeds many friends and relatives, food budget always under stress
clothing	buys as needed, well-dressed per chosen lifestyle	tries to dress well but struggles to afford, buys used clothing from West, has one/few very good outfits
transportation	has efficient private vehicles to go to work, church, club, for shopping, outings	uses inefficient public transportation, walks [I question whether it's really "inefficient", based on our experience]
social life	varied; entertains at home, hangs with friends, big budget	largely centered on visiting and receiving kin and friends with food and drink; possible sporting events
vacations	takes vacations in home country	may have mandated vacations, does not leave country
educational background	university-level	limited opportunities in ill-equipped schools
educational resources	books, magazines, tv, videos, [internet!], keeps up with the world	radio, possibly tv, possibly newspaper, owns few books or magazines
children	few	many
children's education	good, well-equipped schools, well-trained teachers, relatively small classes, up-to-date curriculum, headed for university	difficult to ensure minimal schooling for all, large classes with almost no equipment, univerity possible only for the bright and lucky
telephone	home, work	public phone, possibly at work too
computer	up-to-date machine, email and net access	possibly available in office, hard to afford [this may be changing somewhat; we know at least one family with few resources but with a computer that was donated]
family responsibilities	to nuclear family	to large extended family including parents, grandparents, cousins and others
medical situation	access to well-trained doctors, dentists, specialists, hospital care, prescription drugs [and an insurance policy that promises medical evacuation if services are needed that are only available abroad]	can barely afford marginal care in a very limited local clinic, well-trained doctors beyond reach, may consult traditional healers and use traditional medicines [the interurban buses we've ridden often have someone on them selling herbal medicines, who gives a one-hour lecture and then does a lot of business]
discretionary income	lots of money for nonessentials	hard-pressed to make ends meet for food, housing, power, water and clothes
retirement expectations	preparing with investments, house ownership in home country, government-provided security	paying into government-run social security fund with marginal prospects of ever receiving its limited benefits [this sounds a bit familiar, actually...]
economic security	little-concerned with long-term unemployment or destitution, possibly concerned about maintaining a well-paying job	very much concerned with obtaining or maintaining long-term employment, loss means hard times and possibly destitution along with many dependents
physical security	solid construction, iron bars, guards [and secure location, dog, a yard with high walls topped with glass shards and barbed wire, and ex-pat and local friends to call in case of trouble]	questionable construction, neighborhood insecurities

The other thing that all this leaves me wondering, both these great, thought-provoking lists and the discussion yesterday, is how best to leverage all these differences to communicate effectively across our cultures? To partner with Africans to do the kind of linguistic and translation work that SIL does? To do the kind of development partnership with African organizations that we're helping with at RELUFA? How do you partner in a way that lets you collaborate not just on your methods, but on your goals? (Joining Hands seems to be doing this very thing with RELUFA, based on the meetings we attend). What does a development project based on African cultural values look like, and how does it differ from a development project under Western management? How about a church? And what does it take for an institution that may have its origins in a culture of domination, like colonialism, to reclaim its identity in a way that frees people instead of dominating them, to leave or reformulate alien values that don't work well here into something local that does? There's such a long history of foreign domination in much of Africa, culturally and religiously and in the rawest and most practical physical terms (slavery, resource exploitation, colonization) that it seems to be part of people's worldview, foreign and local people alike, seems to have molded everyone's expectations.

I wrote more about this and then deleted it. Back in college, I took a trip to Africa for a month, an overseas anthropology class during the interim between semesters. We went to Kenya for three weeks and then spent a week in Liberia. I came back and wrote up an article for the Calvin College Chimes about it. I didn't use the right language to express what I had to say, and got an outraged letter from an Ethiopian student at Calvin shortly thereafter, asking me if I had ever taken the time to actually talk to an African while I was there, and informing me how ignorant I was. I kept that letter -- it's in a box at home -- and I have never forgotten it. It made clear to me that, whatever my intentions were, I had offended someone through my ignorance of cultural differences and poor choice of language.

So all this is really interesting, but complicated. And dangerous.