As I continue some intentional rest with my family, I’m sharing another Throwback to a classic article that equips you to thrive and survive as an expat.
Today I’m excited to link back to Cultural Taxonomies: A Key to Decoding Cultures, Part 1 as well as note some additional things I’ve learned since writing that article.
One thing I’ve observed in expats is that many have what I’ll call a “tourist” understanding of their host culture. If you’ve lived in another culture for a month and are intentionally trying to honor another culture, you’re likely aware of cultural differences, some taboos, and ways that you can be respectful to locals. Yet, your knowledge of the culture is just not that deep. You may know more about your host culture than most people in the world, and you’ve made a great start, but you do not know that culture.
Unfortunately, I see a lot of expats whose knowledge of a culture rarely progresses beyond this “tourist level” of a culture. So many expats don’t understand a culture’s roots, the cultural values underpinning behaviors, and they definitely can’t “think like a local.” Many don’t even want to. They’re missing out on learning a different way of thinking.
Knowing how your host culture answers the questions a cultural taxonomy asks will go a long way to helping you gain this deeper knowledge of a culture. Shake off the surface-level “tourist” understanding of a culture and dive into the deeper “why’s” of a culture through a cultural taxonomy.
Read more: Cultural Taxonomies: A Key to Decoding Cultures, Part 1
By knowing your cultural “default settings”, you can predict where you’ll have conflict with locals and they with you. If you’re aware of these potential conflict areas, you can intentionally adapt your behavior to be more friendly to locals. “How would I meet my friends in more of a being-oriented way than an action-oriented way?”
The Prepared Exapt, Cultural Taxonomies: A Key to Decoding Cultures, Part 1
Something I’ve learned
One thing I’ve realized I missed in the article (which I’ll add) is that host people’s answers to the cultural taxonomy questions are not “truly” host culture explanations. Since the questions themselves come from Western fields of study and were written by Westerners, they reflect a Western view of culture even if host people answer the questions.
So while taxonomies are still a helpful way to help foreigners get a grasp on a culture, identify differences, and explore topics with locals, the best way to learn a culture isn’t having a predetermined set of questions and having locals answer them. The best way—and some would even say the only way—is to interact in such a way thatlocals decide both the questions and the answers of what makes up their culture.
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