Author: Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas
Date: December 2011
Source: Athens News, Column ‘On the borderline’
CHRISTMAS EVE slips by unnoticed in most Greek homes, but it’s the one night in our house that’s Canadian.
This makes me wonder how many Canadian customs and cultural references elude me – and what the personal ramifications are.In a recent email, my sister JoAnn made a quick reference to a common practice at Canadian hockey games, writing, “And, you know how they put people on the big screen, and they have to kiss?”
Now, how in the world would I know that when couples see themselves on the jumbotron, they must smooch?
I haven’t been to a hockey game in decades, and JoAnn knows this. Yet, when dashing off a rushed message, she automatically made assumptions.
In the heat of the moment, her heart overrode her mind.
To each his own
It’s probably a trivial, yet significant, example of what anthropologists call “naive realism”. We all fall prey to it: we believe we see the world as it truly is and assume that everyone else sees it – and reacts to it – the same way we do.
This phenomenon is explored in the post called “Naive Realism, Local Conservation, & Political Ecology” at the DSP: Daily Science Professor blog. Naive realism, the blog author says, is a form of ethnocentrism, which happens because we are centred in our own culture.
The unnamed academic points out that it’s potentially dangerous if we start to believe that others should be just like us, and even suggests that the root of most of the world’s social, environmental and political problems may be buried in naive realism.
American Elizabeth Wahlert-Athanassiadis, who moved to Greece in 1975, points out that if opposing viewpoints become rigid dogmas, they can provoke civil and religious unrest on both national and international fronts.
She provides two microcosmic examples of how differing cultural norms can break the human spirit.
Once, while visiting her mother in a home for the elderly in her hometown of Chicago, Wahlert-Athanassiadis greeted every female resident in a typical Greek manner – with a handshake and peck on both cheeks. Her mother spat out a rebuke that still sears her heart.
“Why are you doing this?” her mother scolded. “No one says good morning here in the United States, nor do they kiss someone that they do not know personally.”
And Wahlert-Athanassiadis’s son is still haunted by the spectre of his aunt in America recoiling and taking two steps backwards when he moved forward to embrace and kiss her – after he hadn’t seen her in six years.
Bridges across cultures
Global heads can rule hearts if we raise transcultural awareness.
Retiree David Gibson came to Greece in 1979. When he was a teacher at a Greek international school, he had his students translate their native proverbs – and later, idioms – into English, illustrate them and then compare them to the other students’ contributions. Thus, they discovered different ways of saying the same thing.
He feels that while people from different cultures may see and experience things in the same way, they express their responses differently. “And that was the beauty of the project,” Gibson says. “It brought diverse groups of young people closer.”
Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas is an Athens-based, Canadian Greek (by marriage) writer and a transnational of some 30-odd years
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Culture Gap
Author: Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas
Date: December 2011
Source: Athens News, Column ‘On the borderline’
CHRISTMAS EVE slips by unnoticed in most Greek homes, but it’s the one night in our house that’s Canadian.
This makes me wonder how many Canadian customs and cultural references elude me – and what the personal ramifications are.In a recent email, my sister JoAnn made a quick reference to a common practice at Canadian hockey games, writing, “And, you know how they put people on the big screen, and they have to kiss?”
Now, how in the world would I know that when couples see themselves on the jumbotron, they must smooch?
I haven’t been to a hockey game in decades, and JoAnn knows this. Yet, when dashing off a rushed message, she automatically made assumptions.
In the heat of the moment, her heart overrode her mind.
To each his own
It’s probably a trivial, yet significant, example of what anthropologists call “naive realism”. We all fall prey to it: we believe we see the world as it truly is and assume that everyone else sees it – and reacts to it – the same way we do.
This phenomenon is explored in the post called “Naive Realism, Local Conservation, & Political Ecology” at the DSP: Daily Science Professor blog. Naive realism, the blog author says, is a form of ethnocentrism, which happens because we are centred in our own culture.
The unnamed academic points out that it’s potentially dangerous if we start to believe that others should be just like us, and even suggests that the root of most of the world’s social, environmental and political problems may be buried in naive realism.
American Elizabeth Wahlert-Athanassiadis, who moved to Greece in 1975, points out that if opposing viewpoints become rigid dogmas, they can provoke civil and religious unrest on both national and international fronts.
She provides two microcosmic examples of how differing cultural norms can break the human spirit.
Once, while visiting her mother in a home for the elderly in her hometown of Chicago, Wahlert-Athanassiadis greeted every female resident in a typical Greek manner – with a handshake and peck on both cheeks. Her mother spat out a rebuke that still sears her heart.
“Why are you doing this?” her mother scolded. “No one says good morning here in the United States, nor do they kiss someone that they do not know personally.”
And Wahlert-Athanassiadis’s son is still haunted by the spectre of his aunt in America recoiling and taking two steps backwards when he moved forward to embrace and kiss her – after he hadn’t seen her in six years.
Bridges across cultures
Global heads can rule hearts if we raise transcultural awareness.
Retiree David Gibson came to Greece in 1979. When he was a teacher at a Greek international school, he had his students translate their native proverbs – and later, idioms – into English, illustrate them and then compare them to the other students’ contributions. Thus, they discovered different ways of saying the same thing.
He feels that while people from different cultures may see and experience things in the same way, they express their responses differently. “And that was the beauty of the project,” Gibson says. “It brought diverse groups of young people closer.”
Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas is an Athens-based, Canadian Greek (by marriage) writer and a transnational of some 30-odd years