What concerns me, is the lack of cross-cultural training (if any) that a lot of expatriates in PNG are given prior to them immersing themselves in business within PNG. This is where the door is opened for the implementation of an ethnocentric perspective on PNG, its people and culture – and you see it all over PNG.

I agree with Andrew, the white man does have culture but there a lot of issues surrounding that culture like Fijinut pointed out – individualism vs. collectivism.

There is one tool that I can think of that allows one to understand better certain cultures and that is a Hofstede Analysis.

I’ll try to address the issue in one of my posts when I can find the time

The White Man is not necessarily white in today’s global economy, individualism not a disgusting ego-trip of Westerners alone. White and brown are no valid categories in our world when we stop to think and act them. Many of us have crossed borders, culturally, emotionally, epistemologically. We may gain and suffer from these crossings but they help us to understand each other better.

History can help to see where we came from – female agency, for example, has led to many changes. Gabi is to applaud in her courage and vision of resistance. Speaking up is not easy – that unites us in this world as well.
SK

yours uncultivated
-R

For my self; My family have been here five generations now, and my ancestors hail from Scotland. So after this amount of time, I am starting to feel as one with my native land. I also know my family dates back several centuries in Scottish Kirk records. So I have a culture.

The other reason was the old (not so old) notion, that white culture was superior, and all other cultures should be subservient to ours. (The whiteman’s buden no?)

These notions are gradually passing. Men of my father’s generation were in favour of freedom for the “blacks”…. “But a black man should keep a black man’s place.” I never asked what a black man’s place was, even though I was somewhat curious. It is not pukka, to too closely examine your parent’s prejudices.

Regards……Ralph.

Quiet the contrary. It is not that the white man got to a stage where he has no culture. He has CULTURE all along and is fully cognisant of the fact that he has this thing culture which he uses to differentiate and create the distinction between Westerners and resterners. What is problematic is that his concept of culture probably blinded him to the ways in which the idea of culture might be constituted either similarly or differently. What I think can be gained from Gabi’s concept of culture is the way in which people create social and cultural differentiation. Now these are technical terms which philosophers and anthropologists think about in different ways.

An insight from Gabi’s view of culture is akin to what the anthropologist, Roy Wagner, has argued that all human relationships is similar in one way or another, irrespective of our creed, colour or geographical backgrounds. So self-similarity is already projected into the conceptual design of her moral and cognitive stance. We are already similar is different to saying we are already different. This therefore means that we have create difference out of similarity. Now this is getting into conceptual terrain so I will stop here for the time being.

Cheers,

Andrew