cross cultural sensitivity (long)

[Artur F. Silva]

Dear Birgitt, Dear colleagues,

At 04:55 06-11-2000 -0500, Birgitt Williams wrote:
>Dear friends and colleagues in Open Space,
>I have been thinking about the implications of this list and Open Space on
>Open Space as vehicles through which there is communication across cultures.

I thank Birgitt for opening this discussion, that helped me, and probably
others, to better acknowledge some cultural differences between all of us.

As Open Space has, within its cultural origins, not only the Western
tradition,
but also, al least, African, Asian and Native American traditions (and also
some Greek ones, I think), it is "naturally" a cross cultural method.
If OS (I mean, us) fails to solve the question of cross cultural communication,
I wonder if we wouldn't also be failing the spirit of OS...

For myself, I have some experience with cultural differences, mainly in
Europe and in Africa (but also from a long project in Macao), that I
would like to share with you.


>Cross cultural communication and cross cultural conflict resolution have
>been among my work passions for a few decades. In both contexts we have
>chosen to use English as our common language. Did we choose it? Or did
>some people comply with the norm somehow?


I think we have chosen English for the same reason that in medieval times
people have "chosen" Latin. We have used it because it is the language
of the first praticioner(s), and it is of common use in international affairs.

In the Electricity Company in Macao about 100 people
speak Portuguese and the vast majority speaks Chinese:
The majority of the Portuguese and some Chinese speak English
that is then the official language...

I am a subscriber to R. Karash, lo-list, for some years, and 2 years ago
I have contributed some posts. In that list, the majority of participants
are from US and Canada, some from Australia, a few from UK, and 2 or
3 from Germany and the Nordic countries. There are almost no
participants from Southern Europe, South America, Africa or Asia.
This is similar to what happens in this list and to what happened
in Berlin.


>Anyway, we have English and we find ourselves in difficult spots sometimes
>and I think some of this is because we are not sensitive enough to each
>other's interpretations of similar words in English. I think there are
>many different interpretations of Spirit. Based on country of origin. Yet
>we handle it as though there is a similar interpretation. Likewise, I
>think there are many different interpretations of other words.

I agree that natives from different languages use specific English terms
with different meanings (even when the English is correct, which is not
my case...)

But that is not the major problem in my opinion. This is only
one symptom of much stronger cultural and linguistic differences
between US/Canada/Australia and Europe, and between the European
Countries themselves (not to speak about Africa or Asia), that one
needs to be aware. I prefer to talk about differences, even
contradictions, than to talk about conflict - conflict can happen,
or not, when we are not aware of this differences. And in some
cases it can happen even within only one culture - and, as any family
knows, there are bad (devastating) conflicts and some times "productive
conflicts" (or seen like "productive" in Southern Europe cultures
(the speakers of Latin languages", including the French-speaking
people from Belgian, and the Greeks).

And, being from Southern Europe you will excuse me, if I think that "conflict
resolution" methods, that are many times "conflict avoidance" methods,
or, more exactly, "conflict covering" methods, will not solve all of
our problems - but can solve, or minimise, some of them - which is not
bad idea.


>I think this was a culprit at OSONOS and we did our best with it (and
>thank you to our hosts for having the conference in English). Do any of
>you have any thoughts on this? Any suggestions for how we can do well with
>our international conversations?

I agree with you, but would like to add that other cultural differences
were at work.

Let me try to explain how I see the cultural situation in Europe with
some stories from my professional experience. I have worked almost
  20 years for IBM in Portugal, and that has been an amazing cultural
experience, not only the comparison of Europe with USA, Canada,
or, in a different way, with Brasil, but mainly the comparison of European
countries among themselves.
.
Being IBM a company in perpetual reorganisation, and being
Portugal a very small country, we have always been depended from a
"major" country: in succession we depended from France, UK, Italy
and later Spain.

I have been in training and "orientation" sessions and management
discussions in all this countries. If you think that, being IBM an
American company, all this discussions where in English, you are wrong.
Would you believe that, except in the UK, the discussions were normally
  in French, Italian or Spanish, depending on the country where the
discussions took place? (until very recently in Portugal and, I think,
that also in Italy, the French was the first foreign language studied
at school). And I have been at least in an IBM internal course in Barcelona
where the participants refused to speak...Spanish ("Castellano")
and insisted in speaking Catalan...

I can't imagine someone from France or Spain to accept an invitation
for a meeting like OSonOS, if the invitation (not the discussions) is
not written in their own language, except if they work for an
American or German company (please check the participants list
and see where the European participants came from, and the
nationalities of the companies they work for).

In the IBM European education centre, in la Hulpe, where each
European System Engineer from IBM went at least twice a year,
all the classes where cross European and in English. In the technical
courses all went ok; but in the management ones, differences in the
use of words, but mainly in the use of concepts an "cultural constructs"
made them almost useless.

[All the major official papers and some discussions in the EU have
to be translated in all the national languages (so the economic
performance of the Euro is not exactly a surprise...). Only the
"working papers" and progressively many discussions are only
in English. So, even in the EU (not to speak of the east), Europe
is something that is "under construction" and you know how useful
is a site that is "under construction".]

When talking about Europe we have to talk about North and South,
about West, Centre and East, not to speak about UK, and about
language differences, even within each country, as Spain, Belgium
and Switzerland can evidence (as also Canada, by the way...).

But in Africa all that is even more complex...

Having presented myself as being "Portuguese", so "European",
I must perhaps clarify that I have lived part of my youth in Africa (in
Mozambique, in Cape Vert, and later in Angola (where I have been,
during some years before the independence, a member of the African
anticolonialist movement - not many whites were in that movement,
as you can imagine...). During those years, I have travelled
to other African places, and have compared the different native
livings and colonial regimes. The war in Angola forced me to came
back to Portugal. So I am not a typical "European", and I know
something about the African complexity of languages and cultures.
Again, one can't think of Africa, but of South and North, of West
and East, and about the different native cultures and language origins,
and official languages, and with "countries" that have been artificially
separated or combined by the West (that now sells the arms to
both sides of the many armed conflicts that this artificial division
have created). And, by the way, even today, South Africa is NOT
(yet) considered an "African Country" by the other African Countries...

Sorry if these comments seam to be politics. I have no intention
to discuss politics. As I see it, this is the "reality" that Open Space
has to take in consideration, when expanding worldwide. And I think
that we can avoid many pitfalls that Western countries have not even been
conscious of, less try to avoid.

 > Do any of you have any thoughts on this? Any suggestions for how we can
do well
 > with our international conversations?

I have some, but you must be tired of trying to understand my English
as I am of trying to write it...

To summarise: I think that Open Space has more conditions to take all
this situation into consideration then any other management or
facilitating method I have ever known about. If we let ourselves be guided
by the spirit of Open Space, with truly respect and understanding
for all the cultures and all human beings, considered as REALLY equal
in rights and enlightenment, I can't imagine how we can fail.  This is my
major
point; what follow are small further reflections.

We can continue to use English as our main working language, and
try to understand each other in this language, that is a foreign language
for every one of us (no one of us was born with an inbuilt chip with it, I
believe), and acknowledge and respect the other languages.

Provide for other languages in the OS Web page (as long as someone
offers to translate all or part of the contents). Write and disseminate
(short) invitations for OSonOS in as many languages as we can.

Accept (as many of the OS practitioners that live abroad are already doing),
and as it has been done in Berlin, that at least the language of the majority
of the participants in each event must be used (directly or as a translation)
for the main points and in break up sessions. And that continental based or
language based  OSonOS meetings can be organised, preferably, in my
opinion, before the annual worldwide gathering.

[A final comment on this issue; being in this list after 2 years, mainly
reading, what has impressed me more was the share of information
and advises between all of you, with no covert intentions, as fare as I
could understand. And some comments from Harrison, also stated in
all of his books, that OS was not a proprietary method of himself or
of any other(s), but something that any human being could also
consider has belonging to him/herself. I think that this is the crucial
point we must take into account at every moment to help us in
having a "cross cultural sensitivity". And, of course, I am not trying
to "speak for Harrison" in this post. I have been told that he is grown
up and able to speak for himself ;-)  ]

Warm regards to all of you

Artur

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