Cultural Knuckleheads in the Global World
August 24th, 2007
I was perusing the archives of the always helpful China Law Blog and came across the following lead from the Escape From Cubicle Nation blog titled, “How Not To Be A Knucklehead in a Globalized World.”
See also this related post from the Going Global blog, “A Cautionary Tale: No Matter How Familiar, We Are But Guests in a Foreign Country.”
Some excellent points in these posts about the perils of familiarity and comfortableness leading one to mistakenly begin to treat the foreign venue as a cultural extension of the US.
Prof. Carr December 14, 2007 addendum: See also this post I made a few days ago, The Three Types of Westerners in China, which highlight several short, very relevant and good China Business Network podcasts on this important topic.
Prof. Carr December 30, 2007 addendum: Re: the Cautionary Tale blog post noted above, several days ago the WSJ reported that the subject of that post, Eric Volz, was freed from jail in Nicaragua and he proceeded to immediately leave the country before the government changed its mind. He is one lucky young man. One can only hope that he learned from this and makes better decisions about the company he keeps in the future.
Prof. Carr May 18, 2008 addendum: See also this related post I just made, Chinese Ethnocentrism. Just As Hard To Accept As Western Ethnocentrism.
4 Comments Add your own
1. Craig Maginness | September 7th, 2007 at 10:50 am
I found your blog through the link in this post to our post on Going Global about the tension between cultural familiarity and sensitivity when living abroad. The posts stemming from your group’s trip to China are terrific and speak very well for the international focus of the MBA program at CalPoly. It would be wonderful to see you and your students’ international insights extended beyond China – not that that’s not a sufficiently large topic in itself.
I hope that our commentary on Going Global can continue to be a resource to your students focused on international trade and business. Keep up the great work. I look forward to checking in on your blog with more regularity.
Craig Maginness
ExIn Global Strategies / Going Global Blog
2. Chris Carr | September 7th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Hi Craig,
Thanks for checking in. Your blog is an excellent resource for our students.
Yes, I agree — in time, China and beyond (Russia, India, Brazil, etc.)!
It will take us some time to get our business study trip sea legs under us. We will get there!
3. Angie Q. Dip | December 14th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Is this a form of ethnocentrism? It sounds like many people are making the mistakes of thinking their beliefs are better than those of other countries and not showing respect to that country’s behavior, customs, religion, etc., whether it is consciously or subconsciously. We must be careful not to make the mistake of thinking our country’s culture is superior to others, and stop thinking that our culture is the same as everyone else’s. This is an arrogant move, and will only make people despise you if you are not careful with your actions. Whether visiting the country for business or pleasure, understand that every country has different beliefs, and we must figure out what that is so we would not embarrass ourselves or offend the people from the country we are visiting.
4. Chris Carr | December 14th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Angie,
The answer to your question is, yes, it is ethnocentrism, straight up.
Each of you needs to sit back on this trip and watch others on the trip. I mean to really watch and listen closely to what they say and how they say it. You will see this issue addressed in a number of ways, sometimes intentionally by people, sometimes subconsciously and innocently.
You will see some go to China with an open mind, humility and respect, and they will return home in the same way.
Others will fake it — say they are open to what they are seeing, but inside not like it and may even despise it.
Others will flat out be open about how superior they and their own culture is. When you hear these folks talk, it makes your stomach turn.
Others will go there not knowing how they feel on this, and also return home not knowing.
There are other possibilities as well. To each his own.
Again, sometimes such arrogance and superiority is overt.
Other times, though, it is not and we are not even aware we do it — e.g., listen for statements like, “The Chinese have crooked teeth” or “God, they are rude” or “Wow, this place is dirty” or “Man, I can’t take the food” (yet they made little effort to even really try it or get used to it) or “The CCP is a bunch of hypocrites out to screw the people” or “This place and these people or this government are a bunch of heathens because they reject God” or “Mandarin sounds so unpleasant. I am so glad I took French in high school,” and said statements are made with an ever so slight hint of “they way we do it is better”. Funny, as I can show said people these same parts of SLO and the rest of America in about two seconds.
I could go on. You get the picture.
This part of the trip will be what you learned in OB, but perhaps at a deeper personal level, with intensity and on steroids, and amidst trip and travel stress. We will really see who can travel and who has flexibility and who makes and plays nice; and who can’t. Many people say that want an authentic China experience. What I have found, though, is that what some of these folks really mean is: “Well, I didn’t really mean the hard part of China and international business; what I really meant was for you to give me China Lite”.
I will be honest — I get a sick pleasure out of watching the “China Lite” demographic squirm, and the only way they can work through it is to struggle (and I let them struggle) and get used to the fact that they are no longer in comfy SLO, that China is not and will likely never be the Ritz Carlton on Maui and that international business is flat out hard work and not to be romanticized. It’s a developing country, for goodness sake. But in terms of business, and if you want to see the future, look east, toward China and its neighbors. It may not be pretty, but it is the future.
See also this very relevant blog post I just made a few days ago, The Three Types of Westerners in China. Some great stuff in these short CBN podcasts.
Important PS – To be fair, I have also witnessed some Chinese be cultural knuckleheads and ethnocentric in their own right toward the West. It goes both ways. For example, when I hear or see signs of the “China is the Middle Kingdom and I am special because I am a citizen of the Middle Kingdom” mantra, my blood pressure goes up just as much and that sense of superiority is just as disturbing as what we sometimes see from the American superiority/redneck crowd. Ethnocentrism is ugly, no matter which continent, town, or country it happens to be coming from.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed