CROSS-CULTURAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution



Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution

Introduction

"I would like today to begin by making a historical claim, request that Haiti, the first free and independent country in Latin America, today the poorest country in the region and the hemisphere, are admitted as full member of the American Community of Nations. " Dr. Leonel Fernandez Reyna, President of the Dominican Republic (Madrid, Casa de America, May 2009)

Aims and Objectives

The aim and objectively of this paper is to analyze the phenomena of race and ethnicity as well as some of the patterns of discrimination based on them. In doing this, it is important to suspend our own biases as much as possible and to take a cultural relative approach. That is to say, we must not let our own cultural biases get in the way of understanding the lives of other people. This is a very difficult task given the emotionally charged feelings and deep beliefs that most people have concerning race and ethnicity. The ways in which we personally acquire our own group identities are often complex.

Discussion

Culture

The word culture has many different meanings. For some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music, art, and food. However, for anthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The concept of culture has become the central focus of anthropology.

Kevin Avruch defines culture as “in fact, everyone has potentially several cultures; this is yet another reason why the concept is complicated. Very generally, culture may be defined as socially inherited, shared, and learned ways of living possessed by persons by virtue of their membership in social groups. To this broad definition must be added the observation that culture is always manifested in two ways, sometimes called generic and local. Generic culture is an attribute of all humankind and adaptive feature of our species on this planet for at least a million years or so. Generic culture directs attention to universal attributes of human behavior, to human nature. In contrast, local culture refers to those complex systems of meanings encoded in symbols, schemas and other sorts of cognitive representations created, shared, and transmitted by individual's in particular social groups, at particular points in time. Local culture directs attention to diversity and differences.” (Kevin Avruch, 1997)

However, Averuh's local and generic culture theory fits my understanding and catches my attention. Cross-cultural conflict can be defined as conflict generated, and perhaps exacerbated or perpetuated, by cultural differences among the groups involved in the conflict. A person's culture informs his or her worldview, moral code, judgments, and ideas or perceptions about others. Of course, these aspects of a culture can be incorrect or misinformed, leading to conflict with other cultures or groups of people.

Layers of Culture

Traditionally the province of either anthropology or the humanities, culture has become increasingly central to sociology, ...