Anthropology as Necessary Unlearning. Examples from Camps, Courts, Schools and Businesses

This paper explores the problems which arise when people attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. I draw on my fieldwork experience in various settings in Eastern and Central Europe – camps, courts, schools and businesses – where I found that communication works best when trust is establis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Etnološka tribina 2017-01, Vol.47 (40), p.3-42
Main Authors: Tužinská, Helena, Baer, Roberta D, Holbrook, Emily, Hameršak, Marijana, Pleše, Iva, Podjed, Dan, Putniņa, Aivita, Sidiropulu Janků, Kateřina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropologists
Anthropology
Camps
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive science
Communication
Companies
Courts
Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Culture
Dominance
Evolutionary psychology
Fieldwork
Ideology
Intercultural communication
Laughter
Meaning
Memory
Psychology
Social Sciences
Stereotypes
Strathern, Marilyn
Translation
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:This paper explores the problems which arise when people attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. I draw on my fieldwork experience in various settings in Eastern and Central Europe – camps, courts, schools and businesses – where I found that communication works best when trust is established, and that the necessary step to fulfil this condition was to learn how to unlearn deeply rooted assumptions on both sides. The paper begins with a discussion of racial and ethnic stereotypes, drawing on a range of insights from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. I then turn to memory myths, suggesting how to apply recent findings from specialized memory research. In the second part of the paper, I challenge the concept of "intercultural", which can all too easily legitimate the "clash of civilisations" ideology. In order to establish real intercultural communication, I suggest that we must abandon models of verbatim translation and instead take advantage of recent anthropological insights into how language works, how meanings are socially constructed and how shared understandings are achieved. In all this, I build on the work of linguistic and legal anthropologists who are already contributing to this endeavour and conclude with some meditations on the related themes of counter-dominance and laughter.
ISSN:0351-1944
1848-9540
1333-0993
DOI:10.15378/1848-9540.2017.40.01