Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 15
Intercultural Understanding
In this unit (to accompany SAPIENS podcast S6E8), students will learn about the importance of intercultural understanding. Culture impacts people’s speech, actions, and thoughts, and students will evaluate how understanding this is the first step to gaining intercultural competence. Students will explore challenges to intercultural understanding and learn how empathy, active listening, and dialogue all play a role.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the challenges to intercultural communication, such as stereotypes, ethnocentrism, and cultural misunderstandings.
- Distinguish the role of empathy, active listening, and dialogue in bridging the gap between cultural insiders and outsiders.
Sapiens articles
Are Colors Universal?
How do language, biology, and culture shape an individual’s experience of color? A journalist investigates the anthropological debate about whether color is a human universal.
Why Navajos Love Their Country Music
An anthropologist who is also a singer-songwriter explores how Southwestern Native bands shake up the notion of “cowboys and Indians.”
Keywords
View All in Heritage
![As the setting sun reflects on wet sand, a silhouetted figure runs on a beach surrounded by palm trees.]()
![Situated on display in a spacious building is a large, illuminated sculpture of an ancient humanoid face with glowing neon lines highlighting its features.]()
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![A pane of glass blurs pink, red and white, and other colored tulips that appear behind it.]()
![A golden dome rises in the background atop a mosque. The image was taken through a doorway that includes a dark screen framing the sidewalk and moque.]()
![Children run in front of an ancient stone wall and columns adorned with green, red, white, and black flags. Cars are parked in an adjacent lot that looks out onto gently rolling green and brown hills.]()
A Poetics of Liberation: An Imagined Archive
A Tanzanian historian and poet conjures alternative engagements with Black African women who were marginalized by violent colonial histories and imprisoned in the archives. As the 2024 poet-in-resident at the magazine, she imaginatively reaches for new possibilities.
The Hopes and Hazards for AI in Reconstructing Ancient Worlds
An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical innovation and avoid misrepresentations.
Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya
On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history.
Emic/Etic
A poet-anthropologist offers an “anti-glossary” to contest ways of knowing in social science that objectify people(s) into categories.
Heaven on Earth and Jesus Is Palestinian
A poet calls readers to act in the face of interconnected violence, exploitation, and privilege.
The Battle to Protect Archaeological Sites in the West Bank
An archaeologist from Palestine is urgently working to assess archaeological sites in the West Bank devastated by destruction and looting amid Israel’s ongoing war in the region.
View All in Ritual
![A pane of glass blurs pink, red and white, and other colored tulips that appear behind it.]()
![A black painted hand covered in red paint holds a skull figure decorated with floral patterns in shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Painted white with black accents to resemble a skull, the face—and also gray hair and flower headband—of the person holding the skull are blurry in the background.Cindy Ord/Getty Images]()
![Massive vertical and horizontal stones stand in a field at night, with the sliver of a silver moon above.]()
![A person wearing a gray T-shirt and tan baseball cap pushes buttons on a camera that is attached to a tree in the forest.]()
![A child in a puffer coat squats in front of a memorial of flowers and various pictures of an owl, placing a piece of paper among the other objects.]()
![Taken from under the frond of a leafy overhang, waters near the shore of a beach gently ripple under the bright orange glow of the setting sun.]()
Emic/Etic
A poet-anthropologist offers an “anti-glossary” to contest ways of knowing in social science that objectify people(s) into categories.
Harvest Song
A poet-anthropologist celebrates relatedness across difference in a poem that honors the festivals of Navratri, Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Day of the Dead, and Halloween—all of which draw on otherworldly connections and mysteries.
The Distant Origins of a Stonehenge Stone
After two decades of research, scholars find that Stonehenge’s giant Altar Stone came from northeast Scotland.
Payangko, or Echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi)
After a 60-year haitus, an Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna was seen in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains. A poet-anthropologist reflects on the echidna’s message through the storied lens of the people of Yongsu Sapari.
What a Community’s Mourning of an Owl Can Tell Us
The outpouring of grief over New York’s Flaco the owl, who died recently, reveals how much attitudes toward these creatures have changed.
Bila Mwili
A poet-historian in Tanzania remembers those who have passed but who are still nearby.
View All in Communication
![In a bright white art gallery, plaques on the wall spell out interjections such as “Hmm,” “Pff,” and “Ach” in colorful block letters. To the side of the artwork, two people stand gazing into an adjoining room.]()
![Situated on display in a spacious building is a large, illuminated sculpture of an ancient humanoid face with glowing neon lines highlighting its features.]()
![The silhouette of a person shows against the deep magenta and red hues of a sunset, with the sky otherwise dark. An island rests in the distance.]()
![]()
![Against a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, a hand holds aloft a hollow cube filled with white, black, red, green, and yellow electronic components.]()
![White orchid flowers catch the light streaming in from the right-hand side of a photo, with the rest of the image in darkness.]()
Huh? The Valuable Role of Interjections
Utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t garbage, they keep conversations flowing.
The Hopes and Hazards for AI in Reconstructing Ancient Worlds
An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical innovation and avoid misrepresentations.
Broken Sonnets for the Anthropocene
The speaker in this broken sonnet form utters disobedience for structures that extract care in the Anthropocene.
Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya
On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history.
The First Space Launch for Mauritius
An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.
Passing Notes
The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation.
Glossary
Intercultural
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That which occurs in or among two or more cultural groups.
Prejudice
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A preconceived negative attitude held toward a group.
Stereotype
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A belief, often negative, held about a group of people based on a particular characteristic.
Professor Talking Points
- Stereotyping is a cognitive association organizational process that involves making generalizations about people or groups based on a personal attribute or characteristic. Many stereotypes are negative, have long histories, and can vary based on context. Discuss how stereotypes form.
- When we encounter people from a culture different from our own, we may experience the anxiety that comes with uncertainty and newness. This type of anxiety is called intercultural communication apprehension and comes from real or imagined cultural differences, such as language, customs, or norms. It is often a fear of not knowing what to do or what to expect from a situation. Discuss intercultural communication apprehension, including what it is and how to manage it.
- Ethnocentrism is the process of evaluating other cultures and peoples through the standards and practices of your own culture. This can lead to the assumption that one culture may be superior to another and confuse “different” with “right.” Discuss the barrier of ethnocentrism and other obstacles to intercultural understanding.
- Active listening is a tool that can facilitate communication between people from different cultures, as it can help expel fears, negate misinterpretation, and create empathy. Discuss other tools that can help intercultural understanding.
Academic Articles
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Conklin, Alice, and Mireille Rosello. 2000. “Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures.” Journal of Modern History 72 (2): 543–545.
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Tentori, Tullio. 1996. “Brainstorming on Intercultural Communication.” Current Anthropology 37 (5): 868.
Student Discussion Questions
- What are two ways we can become Other-oriented in terms of intercultural communication?
- What is a worldview? Give an example of your worldview.
- Describe two ways you can ethically adapt your communication style when immersed in a different one.
- What are two barriers to effective intercultural communication?
- What biases can exist when interacting with someone from a culture different from your own? How can tools like active listening, dialogue, and empathy help overcome these?
Activities
- Many people in the United States use and prefer a direct communication style, and verbal communication is emphasized over nonverbal. This is not the case in all cultures; in some, directness can be considered rude or aggressive. Create a scripted scenario in which a person interacts with someone from a culture that does not use or prefer direct communication. Discuss the disparity and how the situation may be worked out.
- Create a toolbox for an anthropologist to help with intercultural communication. For each tool, include a description and how the tool facilitates understanding.
Additional Resources
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Article: Stephen M. Croucher’s “Intercultural Communication: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going, Issues We Face”
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Book: Stephen Bochner’s Cultures in Contact: Studies in Cross-Cultural Interaction
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Video: Pellegrino Riccardi’s Tedx Talk “Cross Cultural Communication”
Unit By
Aimee L. Richards, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 16
Using Ethnographic Methods
