In a recent news article about the aftermath of the US pullout from Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesperson was addressing the issue of women’s rights. He made the following statements:
“[T]here will be
no issue about women’s rights.”
He opposes
Western views that “women should have an education without [a] hijab.”
“That is a
change of culture. Our culture … they can receive education with hijab. They
can work with hijab.”
“There will be
no issue about the women’s right. No problem about their education, their work.
But we should not be after changing each other’s culture as we are not
intending to change your culture, you should not be changing our culture.”
I recognize that there are many
who have reason to doubt these statements, given the history of the often
brutal way in which the Taliban has dealt with its citizens. But I’d like to
focus on the last sentence regarding culture. So let me give a little of my own
cross-cultural experience and then I’ll come back to Afghanistan at the end.
Some of My Cultural
Experiences
I have had the opportunity not
only to travel to other countries on work-related activities, but to get
involved in investigating the culture of other countries and writing about it.
You can read about some of that here.
Over the years we produced a series of host
family handbooks for these countries.
Culture can be illustrated as being
like an iceberg in that most of it is “below the water line” and is not
observable.
[Cultural Iceberg]
When two cultures clash, the
clash most often is between the various components that are unseen. So, while
we can easily see things like dress, food, etc. we are not aware of things like
personal space, the importance of time (or lack thereof), etc. But these unseen
aspects can be even more important than the ones that are unseen.
[Culture clash]
One can also think of culture as
being the color of our glasses. When a person is wearing yellow-tinted glasses
and sees something that is blue, it appears to them as green. But another person
who might be wearing red-tinted glasses would see that same object as violet.
Taking off your own glasses and putting on someone else’s (i.e., looking at the
world through their lenses) is not easy.
[Culture lens]
Aspects of Culture
Here are some of the aspects of
culture that we explored in these various handbooks. Not every topic is
important in every culture, but this gives you an idea of the range of things
we need to consider.
- · Greetings
- · Direct/indirect communication style
- · Showing negative emotions
- · Volume and tone of voice
- · Eye contact
- · Disagreements
- · Conflict resolution
- · Independence/dependence
- · Religion and beliefs
- · Life cycle customs (birthdays, weddings, deaths, etc.)
- · Friendships
- · Social values
- · Personal hygiene
- · Modesty/nudity/sexuality
- · Diversity/prejudice/disability
- · Personal space
Thailand Example: Greetings
During my first
full day on my first trip, Noon [a former exchange student who had lived with
us for a year] had told me that I should expect to be visited by a number of
her relatives. After all, it’s not every day that one’s “American father” comes
to visit. I was seated with her in their living room and could hear voices
outside. She told me, that’s my uncle. He came in the room and walked toward
me. I stood and was preparing to greet him with the traditional Thai wai (bow)
– hands together, etc. Instead, I was surprised that he stuck out his hand to
shake mine, to which I thought, “he’s going to greet me in the US tradition
instead,” so I shook his hand. But the next words out of his mouth were, “How
old are you?” I was a bit taken aback, as this is not the typical first
question that anyone in the US asks, but I also quickly went through the reading
on culture that I had done and realized why he was asking. Relative age is very
important in Thailand and the younger person must honor the older person,
including by bowing more deeply so that your head is below the other person’s.
Since we were both older gentlemen with balding, white/grey hair, he did not
know if I was older or younger and needed to know so that he knew how to
address me. All this thinking went through my head in a fraction of a second,
so I then answered him, to which he replied, “Ah, young man, young man.” (He
was about a year older than I was.)
I’ve used this
story many times to illustrate how culture plays a part in our lives. On the
visit with the AFS-USA team a few years later I had told this story to the team
at the beginning of our time there. The following day, we were visiting a
school and the teacher asked the class if they had any questions for us. One of
them finally got up the nerve to talk and asked, “How old are you?” which
turned into a great teaching moment.
But I’d like to
relate one other “greeting” incident where I did NOT do the right thing. Most
of the Thai members of our AFS-USA-Thailand group were female, since most AFS
volunteers in Thailand are teachers. They would address me with the Thai
greeting, “Suwadee Kha”. So, I decided that I would greet them back by saying
“Suwadee Kha” to them. But this only generated a lot of giggling on their part.
It turns out that “Suwadee” mean not simply “Hello,” but something more like
“Hello from,” and the “Kha” part is feminine. So “Suwadee Bangkok” on a t-shirt
means “Hello from Bangkok” and “Suwadee Kha” means “hello from a female!” Thus,
when I say hello, I need to use the male ending and say, “Suwadee Khrap.” They
quickly corrected me and I added to my knowledge of cultural mistakes!
Germany Example: Nudity
In 2007, I was part of a group who travelled to Germany to confer with
our German counterparts in writing the first of a series of handbooks that
addressed culture specific issues for host families of students from that
country. One of the volunteers had acquired two magazines designed for young
teens. One was in German and was for a German audience, the other was published
by a US subsidiary of the same company and was designed for a US audience. They
were both for the same month in the summer of that year.
The US version had its lead article devoted to Selena Gomez, a young
actress who was about 15 and who had recently begun working on shows on the Disney
Channel. Like most such magazines, there was a picture of her on the cover.
The article inside had several more pictures with captions, but not a lot of
text to go with it. All were in keeping with the wholesome image that one would
expect of Disney.
The German version also had a picture of Selena on the cover, but there
was more text in the article as well as additional pictures. However, the
pictures were designed for a German audience which has different cultural norms
– so there were pictures in various phases of undress and one where she was nude
from the waist up.
I was startled enough by that, but turning over a few pages my cultural
norms received a further shock.
There was an article, which apparently was a regular feature, with the
title being something like “All About Me” (but in German of course). Taking a
full page was a full-frontal nude picture of a teenage girl, about 15 or so.
Around the edge were facts about her – age, hobbies and interests, etc. She was
evidently a reader of the magazine and had submitted it for publication. In the
US that kind of thing would be labeled as child porn, but since nudity in
Germany is fairly common (coed saunas, changing on the beach in full view of
others, etc.) it was not out of the ordinary. Flipping over the page, one encountered
another such picture, but this time a full-frontal nude male about the same age
and similarly marked.
Applicability to Afghanistan
Now, let’s look back at the last sentence in the quote from the Afghani
spokesperson:
“But we should not be after changing each other’s culture as we are not intending to change your culture, you should not be changing our culture.”
Afghanistan has a long and storied history. There is evidence of human
activity dating back 52,000 years and of urbanization dating back 4000-5000
years ago. Although landlocked, its position at the crossroads of central and
south Asia made it the target of conquest by many different empires over the
centuries. Thus, at various times, the dominant religion (Hindu, Buddhist,
Islam) was a product of whomever controlled the area at the time. But these times
of occupation each lasted hundreds of years, the time required for introducing
a change of culture.
Those of us in the West make a great number of mistakes in our
relationships with places like Afghanistan. These include at least the
following:
o
Our view of the world is overly influenced by
the modern-day boundaries of countries. But in the case of Afghanistan, those
boundaries were only established in the late 1800s by agreement between the
British and Russians. Thus, the current country includes areas which have had
different tribes over the centuries and these differences in historic control
mean that there is still much internal conflict.
o
Afghanistan has been a Muslim country for a millennium
and a half. Change takes a long time.
o
The Afghani people rightfully have a negative
view of outsiders. Much of their history has been one of being overrun by
others – whether those from Iran to the west, India to the east, Russia to the
north, or the British during their empire-building time.
o
All past changes in culture were imposed by
conquering armies who then occupied the land (or at least part of it) for centuries
afterwards.
Against this background, we see the recently-ended US
occupation – a scant 20 years. And we see the typical US philosophy – not of
wanting to conquer and control, but to enter in order to find and root out
those who dared to attack us on 9/11/2001 and then leave once we had
accomplished our purpose.
And then we have the expectation that simply because we were
there for 20 years that they will change their culture in areas such as women’s
rights, religion, etc. and simply ignore the prior centuries! No! Their culture
includes warring tribes within an externally imposed border, reliance on Islam,
disdain for “outsiders” and only changing if those changes are imposed upon
them for several centuries. And we have the audacity to think that our being
there for 20 years will cause change! It doesn’t work that way.
I’ve written many times in the past that when we ignore the
events of the past and are not students of history, that we are setting
ourselves up for failure. In this case, as much as I may disagree with some
things that the Afghani spokesperson represents, his statement on culture
change is correct. The influence of the 20 years of US occupation will be but an
insignificant footnote in the history of this part of the world.
