Cultural Differences
See also: Geert HofstedeCultural characteristics can be measured along several dimensions. The ability to perceive them and to cope with them is fundamental for intercultural competence. These characteristics include:
- Collectivism and individualism
- Masculine and feminine cultures
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Power distance
- Chronemics: monochrone (time-fixed, "one after the other") and polychrone (many things at the same time, "multitasking"). This is also called "long-term orientation."
- Structural characteristics: basic personality, values, the experience of time and space, selective perception, nonverbal communication, and patterns of behavior
- Christianity and Confucianism
Read more about this topic: Intercultural Competence
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or differences:
“If we can learn ... to look at the ways in which various groups appropriate and use the mass-produced art of our culture ... we may well begin to understand that although the ideological power of contemporary cultural forms is enormous, indeed sometimes even frightening, that power is not yet all-pervasive, totally vigilant, or complete.”
—Janice A. Radway (b. 1949)
“Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.”
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