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Cultural Understanding: A Primer (or a Reminder)
By Sarah Wright
In the mid 1990s, I read Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa and the lessons shared within the book have remained clear to me for close to 30 years. The author, Katherine A. Dettwyler, a nutritional anthropologist, documents her field notes and experiences in Mali. I am not sure at the time or a few decades later that I realized the influence the book would have on me as an International Education professional.
One of the chapters is particularly poignant as research shows that the adults of a village have poor eyesight due to a vitamin deficiency. Volunteers with the World Health Organization plant crops of carrots for children to eat so in adulthood, they would not have the same vision issues. However, insert the need for cultural understanding–the vision of the villagers did not improve over time because it is customary for the elders to be given the best, and in this case, the most nutrient rich foods. While the plan seemed simple and easily executed, without taking and respecting the cultural differences of the villagers in Mali into consideration, it was nothing more than a plan that did not meet the cultural requirements of the villagers.
There are many ways to assess cultural competence, but I am a fan of the Bennett Scale (Bennett, 1996). On Bennett’s scale, individuals (or organizations) can determine their place on the scale of cultural competence. The premise is that most people begin in an ethnocentric position because we accept our own culture as THE norm. However, as we learn more, we learn that other ways of doing and believing are at a minimum, acceptable. As time passes and we increase our cultural competence, we move to ethnorelativism and we integrate cultural differences into our own toolbox of knowledge and resources.
The example in Mali is implementing a “fix” based on the culture of the “fixers” instead of the villagers. Let’s always try to remember that because something seems clear and logical to us, that it may not seem the same to others–we are not all coming from the same place–literally or metaphorically.
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