Miner’s description of the native culture

1. Given Miner’s description of the native culture he visits, how far back from us technologically would you say they are? Take a guess at a year. Also, what area of the world would you guess they’re from? Finally, what of the things Miner describes would you say is their oddest behavior? 2. Bailey describes a variety of service encounters between Korean store-owners and African American customers. He notes that each leave the encounter feeling disrespected by the other, though this does not appear to be anyone’s intention. From the African American perspective what communicative behaviors do the Korean’s exhibit that they find disrespectful? What about from the Korean perspective? Clearly the idea of “respect” is not communicated the same way everywhere. Can you think of another idea like this that might be communicated differently from culture to culture? Give an example. 3. If both groups feel disrespected and both groups know more or less how the other side would like them to behave in order to demonstrate respect, why don’t they just do it and resolve the problem? Why not just change the way they interact to stop disrespecting each other? Be sure to include your thoughts as well as anything you think Bailey suggests to account for this. Attached Files miner-body_ritual_nacirema.pdf (1.338 MB) bailey-african_american_and_korean_interaction.pdf (108.014 KB) Guiding Questions: 7B Fitch suggests that Columbians have a fundamentally different way of thinking about what it means to be a person. As it turns out, each culture has their own set of beliefs about this. We might call these different beliefs “cultural premises” and when we’re talking about beliefs about what it means to be a person, we might call these “cultural premises about personhood.” 1. Go back and look at the bios you submitted for this class. Your bios are basically your answer to the question “who are you?” What kinds of things did you say? Did you talk about your personal interests? Did you talk about kids? Did you talk about your career plans? What did you NOT talk about? What did you leave out of your self-definition that you might have included? 2. What do you think a Columbian would have included when responding to the question “who are you?” Thinking about Fitch’s article, what does this tell you about the different ways what it means to be a person can be conceptualized across cultures? 3. Carbaugh writes about an encounter in Finland where some intercultural misunderstanding occured. The misunderstanding seems to be the result of differing expectations about what certain communicative behavior means. Do you notice any similarities between Carbaugh’s interaction in Finald and the interactions Bailey describes between Korean store owners and African American customers (Hint: think about different assumptions about how we show respect.)