Ben_IC_CP_2

For this workshop, I was grouped with students from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Ecuador. The topic was "The Cultural Iceberg."

After an explanation of the exercise, we split into groups and ranked cultural aspects by observability versus intimacy. For example, clothing and personal distance are very observable. Modesty and politeness values we ranked as very intimate cultural aspects and not readily perceived by an outsider.

Next, we examined the relationships between observable and intimate aspects of culture. Clothing is an observable facet of the more intimate modesty value. Greetings, eye contact, and personal distance are observable aspects of more subtle cultural rules of politeness.

Overall, this workshop was informative and spending the entire activity with one group allowed more complete explorations of ideas and explanations of cultural aspects.