problem solving and cognitive dissonance

Sorry for the late post I’ve been doing lots of research for my final paper (as I’m sure we all have) I picked the problem solving info-graphic. I have to say I was very confused by some of the infographics. So I will be trying to figure out the problem solving graphics as I explain a cultural difference.

As Chametria said, some cultures are more direct then others, and some are more individualistic. To add to Chametria’s excellent observations, I will add that as this graphic shows, that it might well be a fundamental attribution error to assume that it is some ones personality or behavior rather than giving some blame to cultural influences particularly when solving a problem.

Another thing Arasaratnam  (2011) points out selective exposure, selective attention and selective interpretation as a part of combatting cognitive dissonance, as part of communication. Cognitive dissonance is the idea that we desire balance in our thoughts and where there is inconsistency or conflict, or a problem, we do what we can to get back to balance or baseline (“normal”). Selective exposure is where as Arasaratnam (2011) writes that we try to gather the data that will support our perspectives, for example subscribing to only the liberal or only the conservative media, with out seeking a balanced news medium.  These types of behaviors reinforce and can protect us while further immerging ourselves our own biases. Any one approach to problem solving is a type of selective exposure.

Selective attention is when we are presented with information that counters our norms, or our biases, we tend to only give attention to things that confirm our beleifs, and we “tune out any information that might cause dissonance.” (Arasarantham, 2011) For example not accepting alternative solutions to solving the problem while ignoring other perspectives on the problem itself.

Selective interpretation

Interpreting ambiguous information in a way that serves our biases is called selective interpretation. For example if there is a fact or condition in the problem that needs to be solved, that could alter the approach to problem solving.

All in all, we as westerners need to not sweat the small problems so much, as we tend to exaggerate our problems and we need to see the wisdom in not addressing every problem immediately and head on, directly.

I wish there was some middle way that was taught by some wise man thousands of years ago that could show us the way.

Thanks for a great class y’all!

third book talk

enjoy!!

http://quietube6.com/v.php/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS4VNWv6b6A&feature=youtu.be

top 10 (all #1) concepts for cultural exchange

Drew Durham’s top ten intercultural concepts for cultural integration and immersion.

  

1. Awareness and open mindedness!

Open your mind! educate yourself on the cultures of people you interact with.

1. Open your heart!

 Avoid using or believing in stereotypes of all kinds, and welcome all opportunities to interact with any culture.

1. Openness!

Be open to new experiences and communications with people who are unfamiliar with and maybe even talk to people you might be hesitant or uncomfortable to interact with.

1. Listen and be sensitive!

Ask active questions when listening, be aware of non-verbal communication cues, cultural communication norms and physical gestures.

1. Carefully Respond!

   React to communication styles effectively, talk and listen in rations that respect the commination styles of the culture you are interacting with! Like proximity! Understand context of the communication and the context of what is being discussed.

1. Celebrate commonalities!

Find commonalities with all people you meet, there is common ground between any two people, our common humanity and inter dependence if nothing else.

1. Culture shock!

Cultures can make an instant impact on you. Small Culture shock or at least some shockwaves are possible even after just a few interactions with a different culture. I have been moved greatly by talking to migrant farm workers after just two hours my perspective shifted.

1. Exchange

Do what is needed to ensure balance and respect between people in each intercultural communication!

1. Progress not perfection

Adapt new knowledge and implement new strategies to increase effectiveness of communication and getting your messages across the cultural divide.

10. Together we can build cultural bridges!

Work together with different organizations in your chose field to increase effectiveness and diversity of communication in intercultural communications!

increasing the cultural dynamic in SLIS programs

I profoundly agree with what Brian said about internships. There is no better teacher than the learner teaching after his or her experiences. Especially in terms of travel and intercultural learning. I would say that perhaps the best two organizations to work with in terms of internships for international literacy that I have come across are Book Bus and Room to Read, there are plenty more that focus just on the United States literacy problem like Reading Partners and many others.    

LIS programs need to structure themselves to be more proactive about intercultural issues. How about requiring books on other cultures to be read in the materials classes or cultural sensitivity issues to be brought up in the required classes. How about not requiring leadership as a required course, since some cultures have different values for leaders than we do in the United States.  How about requiring this class instead of one of the others or in addition to the other required courses?

But most of all we need to allow and promote internships with Literacy organizations around the world!!! Or else we might keep our LIS bubbles intact for years to come!  

lack of Diversity in YA LIT

This article discusses a little about the studies of the unjust and nearly complete lack of adequate diversity in youth and children’s literature. Given the demographics of the United States in which according to the article that describes how today more than 1/5 children in in the United States are immigrants or children of immigrants. A recent study showed that 8.8 percent of the 3,400 plus books that the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin were multicultural (contained non-white protagonists).  The article goes on to describe ways in which to resolve this and reasons for the importance of further research as well as how Counter-storytelling (counter stereotype/ anti-single storytelling) works. This article will help me with my research for my final paper!!

Reference: 

Hughes-Hassell, S. (2013). Multicultural Young Adult Literature as a Form of Counter-Storytelling. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 83(3), 212-228.

bringing it all back home!

I used this CNN article about reverse culture shock to remind me of the reverse culture shocks I have felt in my life of which I am still living with the aftershocks. 
on my travels I remember it was not so much the shock of going to the developing world that was a shock, (with years of prep I think intercultural travel and paradigm shifts are somewhat easier) it was returning to our affluenza, the degree of materialism in the United States, and the (by comparison to most central and south American cultures) rude and brash individualism.
This CNN article explains the difficulties of returning home after living aboard for long periods of time. Not just in terms of what the cross culture traveler has missed with current events, but also integrating to the pervading changes and differences all around. When the travel to the other culture has been long enough the travel, and living in the other cultures area will usually change the traveler which again increases the challenge of adapting to living life as it is lived in the home culture.
The idea of the language barrier can be a tricky one also going both ways. The article I chose also describes some tools and techniques to integrate with the home country and deal with reverse culture shock after long trips abroad. The conclusion bares repeating, long term travel changes you. Cultures change each other, and people adapt sometimes it just takes longer for healthy changes to process themselves out for each cultural traveler.

According to Chen and Starosta, the W pattern curve is too U shaped curves together usually represents the process of reentry or reverse culture shock, as Chen and Starcosta explain that: this double u pattern is the “pattern (that shows) sojourners readjustment to their own culture. The W- curve pattern suggests that when we return home, we must proceed through the four stages of the U Curve pattern once again. (honeymoon, crisis, adjustment, biculturalism)  ” Although we may experience less trauma and adopt faster when we readjust to our own culture, culture shock is again inevitable.” (p. 174) Chen and Starcosta go on to explain Kohls steps oh how to help “sojourners” reenter or reintegrate with their home cultures.
Arasaratnan in his text: Perceptions and communication in Intercultural spaces (2011) writes that the sojourner returning from a host country “discovers that time has elapsed in his (or her) absence his (or her) friends have had new shared experiences that did not include him (or her), and possibly they are neither interested in nor capable of understanding the new insights he (or she) has had from being exposed to a different cultural environment.”  (p. 69)
It is important that we don’t forget to prepare ourselves for what awaits us when we travel no matter where from or to in our diverse and uniquely cultural world! Even if what we are doing is just coming home.

References:

Arasaratnam, L. (2011). Perceptions and communication in intercultural spaces. Lantham, Maryland: University Press of America.


Anjarwalla, T. (2010, August 26). Dealing with reverse culture shock. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/08/24/cultural.reentry/index.html

Chen, G., & Starosta, W. (2005). Foundations of intercultural communication. Lantham, Maryland: University Press of America.

just deal with it!!! or not.... the importance of Simpatia

Mexican Americans, according to my research especially according to Sotomayor-Peterson et all in their 2012 article “Couples' cultural values, shared parenting, and family emotional climate within Mexican American families” Mexican Americans strongly believe in the ideal of Simpatia. This means to be selflessly kind and extra sensitive to being other oriented to the point of avoiding conflict at nearly any cost. There are many reasons for this that I discuss in my paper. The traditional belief that they are victims, and weaker, and of lower status than the person they are talking to. Then there is the face saving, self preservation part as well as the sustaining of the relationship between people in the conversation/interaction.

It is interesting to note that even with Machismo, masculinity, strength and independence (at least for the men) as a traditional cultural value that Simpatia still thrives and even precludes Machismo, according to my research.  

I think that cultural sensitivity training and especially a workshop on understanding cultural perception would be most helpful. Especially in terms of how to respect a cultural norm that you have trouble accepting. I am far too United States of American for my own good.   I can’t understand unnecessary shyness or submissive timidity, much less conflict avoidance. I am far too competitive and perhaps brashly confident. I really need to incorporate the harmonizing quality of active listening (like the video says) and not insisting on my own worldview, my own opinions. 

 references:

Sotomayor-Peterson, M. , Figueredo, A. , Christensen, D. , & Taylor, A. (2012). Couples' cultural values, shared parenting, and family emotional climate within mexican american families. Family Process,51(2), 218-233.

doi:10.1111/j.1545-5300.2012.01396.x

East Palo Alto and Palo Alto and cultural bridge work

I agree with a number of my classmates in thinking that collaboration and promotion are, when added together, the keys for the sustainability of libraries in general and especially for their outreach to minorities and other communities.  Love (2007) wrote that even “… a limited partnership, while still remaining strong, will set the foundation for a lasting relationship for new collaborative opportunities.” (p. 17) I agree that reaching out and forming organizational bonds is the only way to successfully a lasting impact on local communities, and that even the most limited partnerships can have lasting impacts on both the library and the other local cultural organizations.

Any outreach to other community and organizations is bound for potential difficulties especially with limited staff and limited budget, but reaching out is a necessity to foster goodwill in other local organizations and to solidify the library as a fully inclusive community center!! 

 As to an idea of my own for forming a bond between a library I might eventually work at and a community organization, I would like to see East Palo Alto and Palo Alto have a better relationship in general, and specifically in terms of their libraries. I think Palo Alto would make serious gains if it interacted more regularly with the East Palo Alto libraries. I think that just a stronger communication and promotion of the diversity of literature that is abundant in East Palo Alto libraries and sharing information about events happening in both libraries would be helpful for all of the cultures and identity groups living in Palo Alto.    

 I think it could start as simple as promoting each others events through websites and social media. The cultural diversity and social acceptance climate of Palo Alto would only benefit from its Eastern Neighbor. I mean we already have kids who are bussed in from EPA to Palo Alto for all elementary, middle and high school, why not share Palo Altos library "wealth" with East Palo Alto? I think there is no legitimate answer to that question.  

Reference:

Love, E. (2007). Building Bridges: Cultivating Partnerships between Libraries and Minority Student Services. Education Libraries, 30(1), 13-19.

Real People Really Have Their own Identities! Real Women Have Curves Film Critique

Real People Really Have Their own Identities!

Real Women Have Curves Film Critique

Drew Durham

The film Real Women Have Curves is a 2002 directed by Patricia Cardoso is a film adaptation of a stage play by Josefina Lopez.  The movie is focused on its protagonist a first generation (her parents were immigrants) Mexican American teenager named Ana Garcia (played brilliantly by America Ferrera). Ana Garcia is an overweight Latina rebel with a cause. She is out to prove herself, define herself by her own choices, and most of all to be the first in her family go to college. Her mother Carmen (played by Lupe Ontiveros) is strictly conservative in her ideals, her teachings and her perspective. Carmen constantly insults her daughter Ana about being overweight, and is strongly against Ana going to college, saying Ana must work and settle down, get married and have kids already, since Carmen’s other daughter Estella (Ana’s sister) owns the dress factor and seems uninterested in more than just her business, as it is struggling. Carmen works in her sister’s sweat factory making a sub minimum wage while working on fancy department store dresses. After asking her father for a loan to save the factory, Ana says that she never knew Estella worked so hard.

After discussing her future with her father and after much encouragement form her high school English teacher, Ana receives a grant to Columbia University in New York. Her mother Carmen refuses to give her blessing, but her father supports her no matter what. This final statement, Ana leaving her families home and starting her own new future, is a clear declaration of independence and a strong refusal of her mother’s conservative model of women as submissive and with less worth than men.  Estella, the dress factory owner, and Ana’s sister agrees with Ana’s decision.

The communication groups within the film are all Hispanic or Latino/a, but the purpose of the film is to have the audience relate to the characters and learn or be reminded of the value of individuality in any culture and how this individuality can cause rifts in any family and across all culture/identity lines. I liked the message of brave self-expression and self-definition and how these two together show the beauty of each and every person. I think the cultural communication was plain to see in Carmen’s strict limits and rules and Ana’s acceptance of all nuances, and differences. It seems to me that education changes a person a lot, I think especially in certain cultures it can be more difficult to hold strong on to traditional values if members of that identity group become more and more educated, this movie is a great example of that for first generation Mexican Americans. The culture difference in this movie is a generation gap, a paradigm shift.

The communication groups in the film are mostly generational groups and the people in groups who have been given authority. There is a brief interaction between Estela, Ana and a Hispanic executive Mrs. Glass who sternly refuses to give the loan so that the factory can have the time and power to fill the dress orders for the department store (thankfully Ana’s father loans the money just in time!).

The intercultural dynamic was mainly between Ana’s immigrant parents Carmen and Ana’s father and their first generation Mexican American child Ana. There was plenty of conflict and none of it was really ever resolved. Sometimes that how life is, not every story has a happy resolution for all relationships, in any given family this can be true. As for managing and resolving intercultural differences, I noticed mainly how it was left unresolved, how there was still this gap seemingly unbridgeable between Carmen and Ana at the end of the film. Neither Ana nor Carmen showed to be giving any ground or looking for any commonalities at all in their communications with each other. The feel good part of the movie was Ana’s father and her sister Estella who both realized Ana’s individuality to be just as important as her ancestry, or ethnicity.    

I learned or was reminded that someone’s culture can be comforting, but it can also be insulating, and used a protection from the rest of the world. We can live in ancestral predefined cultural or traditional bubbles or we can, each one of us, define the way we want to be identified as individual human beings. But this might mean assimilating or integrating and thus identifying with more ambiguous identity labels such as Mexican American as opposed to Mexican. Perhaps it is because of the narrowly restrictive limit of options for Ana’s future that she decides to leave the traditional role of a Mexican Woman for chance at a better life.

I like the distinction Arasartnam writes about in his 2011 text between assimilation and integration. The difference, he writes is in attitude toward the culture of origin. If the individual in question has a negative attitude toward the culture of origin and a positive of the host culture then that is assimilation. Whereas if the attitudes toward culture of origin and the host culture are both positive then that is integration. (Arasarnam, 2011, p. 70) In my eyes Ana is assimilating as she has a negative opinion of her mother’s values.

I really like the way that Ana is unafraid, perhaps brash, and rude at times, but honest with herself and staying true to what she wants. We can all learn that all people can really make their own identities, and are free to express who they, who we really are.     

References

Arasaratnnam, L. A. (2011). Perception and communication in intercultural spaces. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.

IMDB. (2012, 08). Synopsis for real women have curves (2002). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296166/synopsis

LaVoo, G., Brown, E. T., López, J., Cardoso, P., Ferrera, A., Ontiveros, L., Oliu, I., ... HBO Video (Firm). (2003). Real women have curves. United States: HBO Video.