Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
-
Unit 15
Intercultural Understanding
In this unit (to accompany the SAPIENS podcast S6E8), students will learn how crucial intercultural understanding is to the globalized world. Knowing that culture impacts people’s speech, actions, and thoughts, students will evaluate how understanding these differences is the initial step to gaining intercultural competence. The class will explore challenges to intercultural understanding and learn how empathy, active listening, and dialogue play a role in effective intercultural communication.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the challenges to intercultural understanding, 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
![A pair of hands arrange two placards covered with images of two different people’s faces on a table covered with a black tablecloth.]()
![Several pink stemless flowers surrounded by white dust and yellow particles float in mid-air against a black background.]()
![A person wearing a brown floral shirt, red beaded necklace, and feather in their hair closes their eyes. In a blurred background, other people—one holding a red-and-white STOP sign—gather on a lawn in front of a white building.]()
![Dark gray clouds hang in a pale blue sky. With orange light shining from behind them, these clouds seem to touch dark rolling hills scattered with trees and buildings.]()
![From an aerial view, several people in long-sleeved shirts, khaki pants, and boots are shown standing inside a rocky cave. One person in the center carrying a camera points at two sites, one with each hand.]()
![In a sepia-and-white color palette, two hands cup a pile of sand, much of which is falling between the fingers.]()
Restoring Faces and Dignity to Skeletal Remains
An anthropologist explains how a South African university used community-driven research to honor human remains acquired unethically.
To Wear the Wind
A tribal scholar from the state of Nagaland in India engages with the loss of traditional cultural practices and locates the creation of a new world order where the “natural” is increasingly isolated from the “human.”
Archaeological Tropes That Perpetuate Colonialism
Two Indigenous archaeologists from the U.S. Southwest shed light on how “abandonment” and other common archaeological terms continue to cause harm. They offer insights into how to rewrite narratives of the past.
Speaking in Tongues
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community.
Dating the Arrival of Modern Humans in Asia
A team of researchers explains how the discovery of a human skull and jawbone helps push back the timing of modern humans’ migration into Southeast Asia.
Cold Hubris and Fundo
A poet-historian reflects on the legacy of colonial-era collecting practices in Tanzania that tore Black Indigenous ancestors from their communities and history.
View All in Ritual
![In front of many people seated around the perimeter of a town square, a person in a brown hat stands in its center over a pile of green leaves on a colorful patterned cloth. They are holding up a bag by a string.]()
![In the photo’s foreground, a cross made of sticks surrounded by palm leaves rises next to a table that holds a large pile of small figures cut from white paper. People organize the paper in the background.]()
![A crowd of people wearing head coverings and long dresses or robes outfits decorated with colorful accessories walk in line through public streets past a white steepled building.]()
![A photograph features a landscape lush with green grass with a body of water in the center and a large mountain range in the background. The mountain range is cut in half by a valley and topped with a sky full of white clouds.]()
![A close-up image of a thin branch covered with pink flowering plants is in focus in front of a blurrier background of larger tree branches covered with similar pink flowers.]()
![A photograph features a landscape with a large body of blue water in the foreground encircled by trees, small homes, and a few roads. The hills on which the latter sit ascend into mountains in the distance against blue skies.]()
Fair and Balanced—Weighing Coca With a Wipi in Peru
An Andean community’s use of weighing scales shows how meanings of fairness and justice differ across cultures.
Why Nahua Pilgrims Carry Thousands of Papers Up Sacred Peaks
Along mountain pilgrimages, two anthropologists learn how an Indigenous Mesoamerican religion helps people practice a reciprocal relationship with the Earth.
Giving Winter a Funeral in Transylvania
In a village in Romania, residents maintain a centuries-old carnival tradition called farsang to mark winter’s death.
A Love Letter to the Munay-Ki
A poet exuberantly gives thanks for the Munay-Ki rites enlivened across the ages and shared by the Q’ero people in the Peruvian Andes.
The Human Roots of Japan’s Cherry Blossoms
Most cherry blossom trees planted in Japan today are the iconic pale-pink somei-yoshino variety—but its reign may be coming to an end.
a love letter to my qáqnaʔ
A sqilxʷ poet and artist who currently lives in Mohkínstsis, Treaty 7 in Canada speaks to their grandmother of longing and connection, wanting to wake up the medicine she planted within.
View All in Communication
![Two black-haired chimpanzees lie on the dirt ground in front of a blurred background of brown rocks and green, leafy trees.]()
![Four people, one wearing a red baseball cap and another a blue shirt, ride a boat on a khaki-colored river surrounded by dense forest.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A colorful mosaic shows several people wearing helmets and holding metal shields in front of a pillared building.]()
![A young adult with short, platinum-blonde hair wearing a blue-and-white plaid flannel shirt sits on a long wooden bench in front of an open silver laptop. They look at the screen puzzlingly while holding up a yellow cellphone.]()
![A man with black hair and a beard sits on a sofa in the dark and looks at the illuminated screen of a cellphone he holds in his left hand.]()
Spend a Day Tracking Chimpanzees
A series of short videos captures a rare view into the lives of wild chimps through the eyes of a researcher.
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
The Rebellion Recorded on the Rosetta Stone
An archaeologist explains how recent archaeological finds in Egypt expand our knowledge of a violent revolt discussed on the now-famous Rosetta Stone.
Twitter’s Blue Tick Is a Fake Signal
Evolutionary theory can help us better understand the recent debacle about social media platforms' popular symbol as a signaling problem.
Dating Apps Can Gauge Attraction but Not Chemistry
Why do attraction and chemistry feel different in the digital age? The answer lies in how digitally mediated information is changing the way we come to know potential partners.
Glossary
Intercultural
-
That which occurs in or amongst two or more cultural groups.
Prejudice
-
A preconceived negative attitude held toward a group.
Stereotype
-
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 and have long histories and can vary based on context. Discuss how stereotypes form.
- When we have encounters with people from another culture, we may experience the anxiety that comes with uncertainty and newness. This type of anxiety is called intercultural communication apprehension. It 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 might be superior to another and confuse “different” with “right.” Ethnocentricism is one barrier to intercultural understanding. Discuss this and other barriers to intercultural understanding.
- While barriers can exist to intercultural understanding, some tools can help facilitate intercultural understanding and bridge the gap between people from different cultures. Active listening is a communication skill that helps facilitate mutual understanding. When employed between two parties from different cultures, active listening can help to expel fears and negate misunderstandings. Active listening can also help to create empathy between different cultures. Discuss tools that aid in intercultural understanding and communication.
Academic Articles
-
Conklin, Alice and Mireille Rosello. “Declining the Stereotype: Ethnicity and Representation in French Cultures.” The Journal of Modern History 72, no. 2 (2000): 543-545.
-
Tentori, Tullio. “Brainstorming on Intercultural Communication.” Current Anthropology 37, no. 5 (1996): 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 bias can exist when interacting with someone from another culture? How can tools like active listening and empathy help to overcome biases?
Activities
- Many people in the United States use and prefer a direct communication style; verbal communication is emphasized over nonverbal. This is not the case in all cultures. In fact, directness can be considered rude or aggressive in some cultures. Create a scripted scenario in which a person interacts with someone from a culture that does not use and prefer direct communication. Include the clash and also 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 communication and understanding.
Additional Resources
-
Article: Stephen M. Croucher’s “Intercultural Communication: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going, Issues We Face”
-
Book: Stephen Bochner’s “Cultures in Contact: Studies in Cross-Cultural Interaction”
-
Video: Pellegrino Riccardi’s TedxTalks “Cross Cultural Communication“
Unit By
Aimee L. Richards, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
Biological Anthropology
-
Unit 2
Nonhuman Primate Diversity
