Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE
Guiding the Crisis of Faith
Author: Cassandra Farrin
Journal Title: Discourse
ISSN: 1741-4164
ISSN-L: 1741-4164
Volume: 9
Number: 2
Start page: 165
End page: 182
Return to vol. 9 no. 2 index page
I truly enjoy participating fully in both of my cultures. (Integration Stage of the DMIS: Bennett, 1993: 11)
We believe there are many sincere and wonderful people in every religious denomination. But I must tell you with all due respect that only the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches the fullness of the gospel. (M. Russell Ballard 1993: 25).
The Quality Assurance Assessment states, parenthetically, that 'a degree of 'culture shock' may be involved in study of the past, as well as the encounter with the beliefs, doctrines, and practices of contemporary others.' In this brief article, I would like to utilize my intercultural1 training and theoretical interests in religious studies to think creatively about this notion of 'culture shock' and offer up some preliminary questions about the opportunities and pitfalls of one popular model for intercultural sensitivity, Milton Bennett's Developmental Model for Intercultural Sensitivity, for us as educators in the field of religious studies. It is hoped that further pursuit of these questions might not only aid us pedagogically speaking but also contribute to ongoing conversations about the way(s) we conceptualize religion.
According to the majority of interculturalists, 'culture shock' is a good thing, even though it may not feel like it at the time. Dean Barnlund (in Bennett, 1998) defines it rather unnervingly as feeling 'trapped in an absurd and indecipherable nightmare' (47). He says, 'It is as if some hostile leprechaun has gotten into the works and as a comic caper has rewired the connections that hold society together' (47). When it comes to religion, we tend to call this a 'crisis of faith' and the terror is often existential in nature. While we may not willingly invite such an experience, the truth of the matter is that we are often faced with it whether we like it or not, and it is entirely possible that our own lectures, discussions, readings, and assignments may bring it about for our students. In terms of ethics, the question here is not whether we as teachers ethically have the right to destabilize2 our students' most fundamental beliefs about the world—that will happen in relatively unpredictable and inevitable ways, both in the classroom and outside it. Rather, I want to bring up a different issue—that of how we manage that process. I am assuming that, as suggested in various aspects of the QAA about the nature of religious studies as a discipline, most of us here agree that what makes 'culture shock' or a 'crisis of faith' a good thing is the learning that can come out of it, particularly the force it may exert on us to complexify rather than simplify the people and world around us. In this sense, intercultural approaches to developing a capacity to work through experiences of difference in a sensitive manner (however defined) are certainly valuable in religious studies.
Most, if not all, of us are already using intercultural tools. Particularly in this field, most of us have studied, worked, lived, and/or taught abroad or in communities that were very different from the one(s) in which we grew up and feel comfortable. So in one way or another we are all personally familiar with the inherent difficulty of defining religion and culture in any way that entirely separates them from each other. If we were successful in our experiences in the new communities, it means that we found ways to adapt. If we struggled, we may empathize with our students' struggles when they first encounter the new ideas brought to their attention through our courses. We may generally know how to adapt to foreign ideas and practices from our experiences in diverse religious, cultural, and other settings. Perhaps we use those experiences to understand our students, to help them learn, and to encourage them to pose questions and experiment with practices that help them to adapt and learn from new experiences, too. In this era of student-centered learning, we often speak of 'tools' and 'resources' for students. We are 'equipping' them to think critically. To echo Paolo Freire, we are emphasizing the process of becoming human over against a banking style approach of depositing information into student minds—a difference of treating our students as subjects versus objects of education (1970). We promise our students that when they graduate from a religious studies program they should be able to think and communicate about sensitive issues, and we aim to give them a framework for that rather than emphasizing (teacher-selected) content alone. Relatively speaking, this is a recent transformation of approach to education, and as a result we've had to rely on our own experiences as researchers and educators rather than on a clear pedagogical precedent. We might try relatively 'safe' activities like reading about and discussing people, religious and cultural practices, historical events, and so on that are different from the students' own, or more experimental, 'higher risk' activities such as service-learning, creative writing, or other forms of experiential education, but I would suggest that neither end of the spectrum is, in fact, 'safer' than the other. Consider, for instance, this tongue-in-cheek limerick which I found waiting for me on my orientation materials for the Lancaster Religious Studies department, attributed to Ninian Smart:
Our approaches are Christian, Buddhistic,
And even, indeed, rationalistic;
But we cannot give degrees
To whomever we please –
E.g. to a practising mystic.
I think the humour in this limerick is not so much that we cannot imagine a mystic joining our courses but rather that, as much as we may desire for our students to understand its premise at the outset of their degree programs, the practicing mystic may very well walk through our door on the first day of class and take a seat beside a student who is not particularly religious, who in turn may be seated beside a Quaker. I will always remember my first experience of a religious studies class: my evangelical Christian classmate opened a Bible and prayed aloud while the teacher tried to deliver a seemingly harmless lecture on the New Testament. That classmate experienced even a lecture as a threat to his sense of being in the world and took action to defend himself. No matter who we expect in our classes, or how we hope to make it a comfortable environment that encourages learning, it seems that there will always be somebody who feels s/he has taken a great leap simply by showing up and finds it not in the least bit 'safe.'
To be a bit bold, I would like to re-assert that it is not our responsibility to preserve our students' perhaps fragile faiths. Again, the 'crisis of faith' can be a good thing. However, I would suggest that it is our responsibility to create a space in which our students learn how to stretch beyond their own fears, particularly to learn how to listen more effectively. By listening, I do not mean it in the common-sense way of sitting back and hearing what somebody says; rather, I'm speaking of it in terms of radical openness, the sort that allows for the possibility to be changed by what we hear (Farrin 2008). In my experiences of both religious studies classrooms and interfaith activities, I have found that most people would rather say what is acceptable in polite company than what is truly transformative for a given relationship, positive or negative; while a period of comfort-building is important and necessary, it does little good, in my opinion, to remain forever 'politically correct' in the religious studies classroom, yet our students may not know how to strike a balance between respecting the other and still asking the tough questions about the subject matter. In a keynote address at Willamette University for incoming freshmen in 2007, Salman Rushdie said, 'Be brutal with ideas but courteous to those who speak them.' How does one go about doing that? How does one teach that skill?
I believe intercultural strategies for pushing students to move beyond defensiveness may be extremely valuable to religious studies educators when handled with care for the subject matter. I will here briefly introduce Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS),3 helpful to review because of its widespread use in both business and academic settings as a tested model for intercultural communication, and follow that with the research of Mohammed Abu-Nimer, who utilized the DMIS in an interreligious peace-building course that raised questions and concerns that are helpful for the religious studies educator to consider, though with different aims in mind.
Bennett's DMIS is a powerful, practical tool with which I was mentored as an undergraduate while working as a peer coach for Japanese exchange students and several years later used to coach student workers as a university administrator. It proved to be an effective reference point in helping students to develop greater sensitivity and awareness of difference in a way that led to direct, positive changes in their relationships with others, and for that reason, along with the frequency and effectiveness of its use in research projects related to cultural issues (e.g. Carter 2006; Bray 2006), I have since wondered whether we might also find it useful in the religious studies classroom to help students process their experiences of religious difference, as well, and learn to better communicate about sensitive issues related to religion.4 The model was developed by Milton Bennett 'as a framework to explain the reactions of people to cultural difference' (Bennett & Hammer, 1998: 1). A key assumption of the model is that 'as one's experience of difference becomes more complex and sophisticated, one's competence in intercultural relations increases' (1). The emphasis of the model is on experience over against knowledge—'street smarts' over against 'book smarts,' we might say5—but nevertheless has a strong theoretical and pedagogical basis. It is divided into two areas, ethnocentric and ethnorelative, each with three stages. The ethnocentric stages are Denial, Defense and Minimization. The ethnorelative stages are Acceptance, Adaptation, and Integration. The terms 'ethnocentric' and 'ethnorelative' may already elicit questions from a religious studies audience; it is helpful to put forward Bennett's definition here and return to questions about them after discussing Abu-Nimer's findings. Bennett defines ethnocentric as 'meaning that one's own culture is experienced as central to reality in some way,' and ethnorelative as 'meaning that one's own culture is experience in the context of other cultures' (1). While there is no inherent value assigned to one or the other, Bennett's model is based on the goal of increasing intercultural competence and as a result aims to encourage students toward the ethnorelative stages, based on the premise that as long as one is 'self'- centered, it is difficult to negotiate meaning with others, particularly in contexts in which one's own values are not primary.6
Although I would encourage readers of this article to review one of the brief online guides available of the DMIS model (Bennett 1993a, Bennett & Hammer 1998), as these guides also provide examples of the developmental goals and tasks an educator might utilize to encourage students toward each progressive stage, the summarization of the stages here will enable us to focus on the key questions that arise from transferring the model to issues of inter-religious sensitivity, so with that purpose in mind the stages of the DMIS model are summarized here as follows.
Ethnocentric stages
Denial
Students are unable 'to construe cultural difference' (Bennett 1993a: 1). Students in this stage either believe there are no differences or that differences can be unproblematically categorized (e.g. 'immigrants,' 'Indians').
Defense
Students may recognize differences in this stage but evaluate it negatively in comparison to their own culture,7 often encouraging polarization (e.g. 'These people don't value life the way we do;' 'What a sexist society!').
Minimization
Students recognize 'superficial cultural differences...while holding that all human beings are essentially the same' (e.g. 'We are all children of God, whether we know it or not' [5]). They tend to universalize their own cultural values.
Ethnorelative stages
Acceptance
Students '[recognize] and [appreciate]...cultural differences in behavior and values' but may feel paralyzed in making decisions on how to act (7). Students may express 'cultural relativity' but do not know how to distinguish this from issues of 'moral or ethical relativity' (8).
Adaptation
Students are effective in using 'empathy, or frame of reference shifting, to understand and be understood across cultural boundaries' (9). They are learning to either empathize or even internalize multiple world views and shift based on given settings or circumstances.
Integration
Students are able to '[maintain] a definition of identity that is 'marginal' to any particular culture' and see themselves as 'in process' (11). They may either be able to draw on multiple frames of reference in order to interpret phenomena or accept 'an identity that is not primarily based in any one culture' (11). They may struggle with a sense of authenticity and in finding a place for themselves.
Hopefully the above summary has already provoked some questions with regard to the religious studies classroom for readers, while at the same time we may also recognize in it some of the vacillations of attitudes found among our students (at least, we might concede, on a cultural level). Before moving on to Abu-Nimer's study, I will add finally that a person may shift back and forth along this model based on their experiences, that this is natural and expected in its use, and that a person may be further along in one cultural setting than another. This flexibility in the model avoids some of the pitfalls of some more universalistic models, such as Fowler's model of religious development.
If we were to consider using this model as a conceptual and/or practical tool in religious studies classrooms, what issues must we resolve? The quotes at the opening of this essay illustrate one of the main difficulties of such a transfer. A person may say 'I enjoy both of my cultures' fairly easily, while saying the same about religion is more likely to be met with suspicion. Many religions, even respectfully, assert exclusive truth claims. We need to keep this in mind as we think about using intercultural strategies in our classrooms. Bennett points out explicitly,
Most approaches to intercultural communication (and communication in general) treat it as a purely human phenomenon, not, for instance, as an expression of a divine plan.Any assumption of transcendental guidance immediately runs afoul of cultural differences in religious beliefs...Interculturalists generally leave questions of supernatural order to contexts where improving communication is not the goal' (Bennett, 1998: 10).
This certainly held true in a 2001 study by Mohammed Abu-Nimer who utilized Bennett's model in peace-building seminars to see if it could be useful in resolving conflicts in which religion played a significant role. In general, the model was considered helpful in improving intercultural communication, and the early stages of the model were met with very little resistance. However, students in the study overwhelmingly problematized the final ethnorelative stages, particularly Adaptation and Integration. Only two of the seventy participants thought the Adaptation Stage was transferrable to inter-religious contexts, and no participants accepted the final Integration Stage. These two stages were critiqued primarily in the following ways: (1) Regarding adaptation, 'most [participants] felt they could not shift into a different religious system even temporarily without threatening their own religious identity...Many agreed that it is easier to achieve empathy in an intercultural setting than in an interreligious setting because it does not so strongly challenge their moral values, ethics, and faith' (Abu-Nimer 700). (2) Regarding integration, participants had two particularly valuable critiques: first, 'It is impossible to have multiple religions and multiple truths' (701) and second, 'Why is internalizing more than one religion superior to having one religion and respecting the others?' (701)
Approaching Abu-Nimer's study with a great deal of respect for its longevity and well-organized approach, I would suggest first that he has pin-pointed some significant concerns for us to consider but second that these concerns should not lead us to a full rejection of Bennett's model. Consider, for example, the complaints offered by the students about adaptation above. Although internalization is not a requirement but a possibility of the adaptation stage of the DMIS, the students interpreted 'frame of reference shifting' as something that could only be done with a certain level of internalization. Keeping in mind Bennett's definitions of 'ethnocentric' and 'ethnorelative,' I think Abu-Nimer could very well have found that most of his students were operating under an ethnocentric mindset, which he also suggests could have been a possibility (699). There is nothing inherently wrong with that mindset; it is a mindset which we all have on some level, Bennett would argue, with people whose lives are unfamiliar to our own. Abu- Nimer says his students perceived the model 'as a threat—an attempt at aggressive conversion' and concludes 'further research and experimental applications are needed to fully adapt the model to an interreligious setting' (701). Abu-Nimer's experience is not at odds with my own in using the model; the training methods for students at different stages along the DMIS are significantly different and even students situated in different ethnocentric stages would indeed feel threatened by some of the training methods that are appropriate for their peers at different stages.8 I think the more fundamental, underlying question here is one of ethics, values, and goals of the model. If these cannot be aligned with the goals of a religious studies program or course, it would not be helpful to us.
There is, in the end, a higher valuation of the abilities of people who reach the far end of the ethnorelative stages in the DMIS, and Abu- Nimer's students were justly concerned about that value. Is there or isn't there a difference between the Mormon who says he respectfully believes his religion is the only true path and the person in the denial stage who, if pushed, could become 'potentially genocidal when pressed into cross-cultural contact' (Bennett 1993a: 1). Is this not the very question at the heart of the frequent utilization of religious discourse both to incite and lend resonant meaning to acts of 'terror' and violence in our modern world? Why, indeed, would internalizing multiple religious views be superior to embracing one view as long as one respects the views of others? Or, as one member of our audience at the conference said, 'I don't expect my students to fully embrace the religions they study in order to understand them,' so is there really a need for students to move to the ethnorelative stages of the DMIS? These are very important questions, and I don't intend to answer them all here, but I will suggest a few avenues of thought which we might pursue.
To begin with, I think Abu-Nimer's study was troubled from the start by using the model in precisely the way Bennett warned against: the central aim of the study was that of improving communication in a way that was reflective of many interfaith activities (i.e., emphasizing a comfortable and welcoming space over challenging and questioning a particular religious stance in order to build understanding and positive community relationship for the sake of other goals, such as settling a dispute or fixing a problem in the local community). In contrast to such settings, very often in the classroom we are entirely focused on the question of religion itself, interrogating the phenomena of various religions and forms of spirituality and putting them into conversation with political, social, gendered, and other conceptual categories. We're often asking our students to consider the questions 'Why?' and 'How?' about varied religious and so-called 'secular' truths. We delve into the contested histories of books or practices that our students might have considered sacred, taboo, or even irrelevant prior to arriving in our classroom for the sake of our subject, which is religion itself.
I will only bring up one of many questions related to this difference: while the peace-builders experienced adaptation and integration from Bennett's model as threatening, do we and may we hold our students to a different expectation, and is that ethically acceptable? In other words, while we may not expect a local community member to be able to shift among multiple perspectives, perhaps we do expect that of the future world expert on the comparative ethics of the Abrahamic religions. Perhaps that person does need to be able to shift more or less fully between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish views to the best of his/her ability. Perhaps we do expect experts in religious studies to be able to become 'a part of and apart from a given cultural [or, in this case, religious] context' (Abu-Nimer 701), which is the definition of the integration stage of the DMIS, whether or not we like the vocabulary of relativity he uses, however cautiously, to categorize it. None of us are entirely strangers to what I am suggesting, I think, and we may find it easier to see its value for our graduate students, but how do firstyear undergraduates fit between the two extremes of a community member who is just trying to be a better neighbour and the world expert? This is not necessarily an issue for all students, as some of them see no inherent problem with shifting frames of reference, but in my experience most students are coming into university without have developed that ability just yet, even on a cultural and not religious level. I worry about how we handle that question of ability; at the same time, I do not intend to promote a therapeutic approach to religious studies. I do not wish to suggest we should coddle our students on the off chance they can't handle the pressure of our questions. As I said at the outset, I think we're probably in agreement that a degree of culture shock is a good thing for students. So, without settling the question, I suppose here I am asking all of us to consider whether the goal of the DMIS is appropriate, after all, for the religious studies student, and if its applicability is worth pursuing further.
When I have brought up this subject in the past, people have often suggested to me that it's a question of education research, not a question of religious studies. However, in this article I do want to trouble the relationship between our goals for processing intercultural and inter-religious experiences and suggest that this is not a question that needs to be relegated to education research alone but rather has everything to do with our subject matter. What happens if I introduce a radical question about the divine or sacred into my teaching method, in contrast to Bennett's limitation, for example? The nature of our subject demands respect for a notion of mystery (whether we personally embrace it or not) and opens up a whole geography of places such a question could lead. I think this openness very well could be described in terms of the 'constructive marginality' of the integration stage of the DMIS despite its critiques by Abu-Nimer's peace-builders. Perhaps we are, after all, the best people to trouble Bennett's distinction between cultural relativity and ethical/moral relativity on a theoretical and practical level. We, more than anyone else perhaps, have sought to grasp the varied ways in which the sacred interacts with humanity's day-to-day existence, sometimes in conflicting ways (as Durkheim's suggested distinction between socio-historical and inner experiences of faith, for example, makes plain), and ask what difference it makes whether those differences are understood as absolute, relative, or something more elusive.
As to the final stages of Bennett's model, I think there remains room for debate, but one thing I will assert in conclusion is that this kind of discussion is relevant to our approach to religious studies as a discipline and so much more than 'just' a teaching strategy. While at the conference at York St. John, I noticed in the materials we received in our packets a quote on the front of a magazine published there which stated the following:
The neutral doesn't refer to neutrality or indifference; it is an ardent, burning activity.
I think this statement captures the essence of the DMIS integration stage in a way that we may find helpful in religious studies; that is, we as instructors may not want or expect our students to learn to live with the 'constructive margin' as a way to stay permanently 'on the fence' about issues and avoid having to say anything definitive about them. Rather, to teach as we do, we have for the most part had to take significant risks of both a conceptual and practical nature. Can we structure this ideal in a productive way for our students, in a way that does not make them feel we have chosen a path that is unfair to expect of them (if, indeed, we believe it isn't)? This is something that I have considered and want to encourage all of us to continue to consider in how we structure our religious studies classrooms and programmes.
Bibliography/Resources
Abu-Nimer, Mohammed, 'Conflict Resolution, Culture, and Religion: Toward a Training Model of Interreligious Peacebuilding.' Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 38, No. 6, (Nov, 2001) pp 685-704.
Adler, Mortimer J., How to Speak; How to Listen. (New York: MacMillan, 1983).
Astin, Helen A. and Lindholm, Jennifer, 'Spirituality and Higher Education: A National Study of Students' Search For Meaning', http://www.spirituality.ucla.edu/findings/
Barker, Eileen, 'The Scientific Study of Religion? You Must Be Joking!' Presidential Address. Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Raleigh, North Carolina. November 1993.
Bennett, Milton J., (1993a), 'A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity.' http://www.intercultural.org/ Based on 'Towards a Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity' in Paige, R. Michael, ed. Education for the Intercultural Experience, (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1993).
Bennett, Milton J (1993b), 'Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity', in Paige, R. Michael, ed. Education for the Intercultural Experience, (Maine: Intercultural Press, 1993).
Bennett, Milton J. and Hammer, M., 'The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity', Intercultural Communication Institute, 1998. http://www.intercultural.org/pdf/dmis.pdf (accessed October 21, 2007).
Bounds, Elizabeth M., Patterson, Barbara A.B. and Pippen, Tina , 'On En/Countering the Other' in Devine, Richard, Favazza, Joseph A. and McLain, F. Michael,eds., From Cloister To Commons: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Religious Studies, Aane's Series on Service-Learning in the Disciplines, (American Association for Higher Education: Washington, D.C., 2002).
Bray, Laura V., 'Predicting Intercultural Sensitivity in Graduate Students', Masters Thesis, University of Houston. August, 2006.
Carter, Kelly A., 'Did We Make a Difference?: Contributors to Intercultural Sensitivity Development in Undergraduate Students.' PhD Thesis. Loyala University Chicago. December 2006.
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Dronan, Tomas Sundnes, 'Scientific Revolution and Religious Conversion: A Closer Look At Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Paradigm Shift', Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Vol 18, 2006, pp 232-253.
'Face-to-Face and Side-by-Side': A Framework for Inter Faith Dialogue and Social Action. Department for Communities and Local Government. (Crown: London, 2007).
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Flood, Gavin, Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion, (Cassell: New York, 1999).
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Jayadev, Raj, Keynote Speech. 'Continuums of Service', Campus Compact Conference. Portland, Oregon. April 18, 2008.
Joy, Morny, 'Postcolonial and Gendered Reflections: Challenges for Religious Studies', in King, Ursula and Beattie, Tina, eds, Gender, Religions, and Diversity: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, (Continuum: 2005).
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Endnotes
- The term 'intercultural' is used here in distinction from other terms such as 'crosscultural': 'Inter- means between or among, therefore the term intercultural means between or among cultures. Intercultural describes interactions between people from different cultures—an answer to the question, 'Who is communicating?' The focus is on the interaction and the people doing the interacting' (Carter 2006: 6-7).
- See O'Loughlin (2008): 'According to Philip L. Tite, a pervasive, yet under-discussed, problem in religious studies classrooms is the presence of faith crisis. He claims that many students face a type of cognitive dissonance when confronted with the critical-analytical approach in the academic study of religion. Kate Crosby, Stephen Pattison and Andrew Skilton have noted that in no other subject than TRS does the academic agenda confront so fundamental an aspect of the individual's identity. When experienced as such, this confrontation can lead students to suspend critical judgement and withdraw from the academic process to protect their faith, or to focus on 'safe subjects'. On the other hand, it may lead to their alienation from their own faith background, even to the transferring of their faith on to the academic process as a substitute worldview' (online version).
- A more detailed summary of this model is available online, provided by Bennett himself. See Bennett & Hammer (1998) p. 317-332 (pp. 321-322).
- By no means a simplistic concern, I am assuming here that this model does have a practical applicability in the religious studies classroom. Some questions I have considered in this regard include: How might the DMIS model help us in the classroom or our religious studies programmes? Would it be only a conceptual tool we use behind the scenes, in order to better support our students, or would we use to help our students think about their experiences of difference, as Abu-Nimer attempted? Is it only useful in courses teaching ethnographic and interfaith skills, or can it provide a broader base of support? Based on my experience and reading around issues of pedagogy, I am more inclined to suggest using it as a conceptual tool for shaping courses, particularly those with experiential components, and with upper-level courses (undergraduates in their final year, Masters, and PhD-level students), as well as and when thinking of larger-scale programme structure.
- One may already question its value in the classroom on this assumption, but I would reiterate my earlier point that our students are, in fact, gaining experience of difference in and out of the classroom, beyond their readings (which some might argue are, in and of themselves, an opportunity to vicariously experience the lives of others). When our students discuss subjects with one another, they are often hearing new opinions and ideas from their classmates and tutors. For many of them, attending university is also the occasion of their first time living away from home, and outside of class they are joining activities and living with flatmates who may come from very different cultural and religious backgrounds. Mature students may have already developed a system for dealing with difference through their nonacademic experiences, bringing along a rich source of ideas and sometimes unique challenges for the tutor. In short, even if our students don't already have interesting experiences of difference to aid them in their development, they would be hardpressed to avoid such experiences on the university campus. Our interest may rightly be in what lessons for communication and understanding they take from those experiences (see also O'Loughlin 2008, particularly regarding the possibilities of utilizing 'phenomenography' and 'exposure learning' in a religious studies pedagogy).
- If I, as an American, were to visit Japan, I would not always be able to make decisions based on American values and receive the same outcomes I would expect in the United States. As one relatively simplistic example, if I were to lean forward and attempt to make direct eye contact with a Japanese person during a conversation, with the expectation that by doing so I am conveying that I am very interested in the conversation, I may be caught by surprise when she avoids looking back at me and/or angles her body away from me. Based on my American values, I might wonder, 'Is she not interested in what I have to say? Is she uncomfortable? Does she want to end the conversation?' I may not realize that according to Japanese values, she may simply be trying to convey respect or avoid appearing aggressive.
- Students also often experience this stage in reverse, seeing other culture(s) as superior to their own.
- For example, instructors working with students in the denial stage create opportunities for students to experience contrasting cultural practices (but 'embed differences in non-threatening contexts'), while in the defense stage instructors are advised to 'avoid cultural contrasts' and 'promote cooperative activities' (Bennett 1993a: 2, 4).
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This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
