Navigating Another Culture

Some things you need to know about social roles and relationships to help you navigate other cultures

Contents

Importance of understanding social roles and relationships Male and female: gender roles Race and ethnicity Social class, status and other forms of social hierarchy Strangers and foreigners Sexuality Age Definitions of friendship vary by culture Family Business and working relationships Concept of face

Importance of understanding social roles and relationships

The second subtopic in this module is about understanding some of the things that shape a person’s social statuses (status = socially defined positions, like male/female, friend, rich/poor, employee/boss, older person, teacher/student, etc.) in a given society, and the roles and relationships that are related to those roles. These categories play a very powerful role in shaping how you behave and how you relate to and see others. An extensive body of research shows that some of these categories (e.g. race, gender) are learned very early when we are children. These categories impact our socialization— the process in which how we learn and apply these concepts. For example, if a female child wears pink clothes, plays with dolls and kitchen play-sets, and observes how their female relatives act and dress, the child will grow up with certain expectations of what it means to be female within their family context. They can extend these concepts to broader society and make comparisons and judgments based on previous experience and memories.

To successfully navigate other cultures, you need to understand how the expectations for people in these roles, which you learned as a child and may seem as totally “natural” to you, will differ cross-culturally and how any intercultural encounter will vary depending on what roles you and the other people have. Different roles will affect intercultural interactions in different ways. For example, a male U.S. American will relate to male Saudi Arabian differently than to a female Saudi Arabian, and certainly it will be different than relating to males or females from the U.S. Perhaps less obvious, a wealthy Chinese international student will have a very different experience navigating U.S. culture compared to a poor Chinese farmer who immigrates to the United States to work in a restaurant. Equally important, we also want you to understand how common types of relationships (friendship, boss/subordinate, teacher-student, family, etc.) can vary cross-culturally.

While we cannot cover every type of role and relationship here, we will cover some key types of roles and relationships below.

How you navigate a culture depends on your specific social roles and relationships

Navigating another culture is not just about learning basic beliefs and behaviors that are generally considered appropriate for that “culture” as a whole. It is also about knowing the variations in how these beliefs and behaviors among people with different social roles in that cultural setting. What is “culturally appropriate” behavior in any one place or setting can vary depending on the roles and relationships of the people involved.

Many people can identify with a “higher level” culture(s), such as nationality, but this is a simplification of culture— just because two individuals from different places in Bolivia may claim themselves as Bolivians and share similarities that can be counted as a part of a "Bolivian culture" doesn't mean there are not cultural differences between people of the same nationality. These differences are not only tied to location but to the social positions and roles we are born and achieve over the course of our lives. People also usually have social roles in that culture—male, female, close family, friend, neighbor, old, young, rich, poor. Therefore, one important area to consider when navigating another culture has to do with understanding the various social roles and relationships in that society, and what are the expectations for these. You probably know this is the case with people you consider culturally similar. The key point here is that you should also be aware of how your “native” ideas about your social roles may be different from local ideas.

To give you one example, if we view “stranger in the street” as a social role, how we relate to strangers varies cross-culturally. In many societies, there is a stronger distinction between “in-group” and “out-group” status, so expectations about smiling to, making small talk with, or helping strangers may be less than they would be in the United States.

Here is another simple example to illustrate the importance of understanding how there can be different social roles in any one society, and how these roles will affect how you interact with people in that society. Let’s say you learn that to greet someone in Vietnam, it is common to say “Xin Chao”. That’s great! But as you will learn in this subtopic, you need to learn to look for the various social roles and relationships that might exist in a given society. In the case of Vietnam, this will affect exactly how you greet them; you do not say “Xin Chao” in the same way to everybody, as you can see in this video clip below. Notice the differences between the gestures and duration between each group.