Sensitivity to Cultural NormsDavid Huang

ltalianMan

What is it?Being aware and accepting of other cultures.

Really? Who Cares?

It is important because what seems acceptable in some countries can be derogatory in others.

Cultural sensitivity is essential in a world where people are becoming more and more closely interconnected.

How it started

It is more of a philosophical or psychological subject.

“Social stereotypes, defined as a widespread image of a particular group in society, have so far attracted little attention within the historical profession. In contrast, the concept of social stereotypes has been intensively researched and developed within the discipline of social psychology.”

– Humanities and Social Sciences Online

Early Civilization

In the early midst of civilization, people were already isolated by race, religion, and culture. There were not any problems way back, due to the isolation of each culture. This means that there was nothing to be culturally sensitive about, since there were no other cultures that played a factor in being considerate to another culture.

Later, HoweverPeople began to explore, and surely enough, cultures started clashing, wars started happening, and assimilation started occurring.

After Long FightsThings started to settle down, and most people welcomed each other over time, no matter their background. Humanity finally realized that to live with each other would mean definite peace, rather than trying to kill each other.

Simply Put• Cultural norms were created by each

civilization in the early development of our world.

• Sensitivity to cultural norms only occurs because of the way society is structured at certain time periods.

Specifically:

The history of cultural sensitivity is extremely vague, since no one has direct evidence as to how it started or how it came to be. This is because it has to do with the psychology of people, collectively forming a society.

Therefore,Unless one would be able to analyze a person’s reason for action, the human civilization does not really know why we tend to follow these moral rules of being polite in respect to other people’s culture in this day and age.

Development

Cultural sensitivity has developed in relation to the evolution of culture itself. Some cultures are lost, while others still retain their origin. Some even mutate or whither because they cannot withstand the test of time. Time plays a huge role because time dictates the amount of people that follow a culture. This number drops as the world starts globalizing, and people start forgetting their old roots.

Since the world is becoming more interconnected day by day, people start to learn more about everyone else around them.

Why Does this Matter?This causes people to naturally learn about their surrounding cultures, but how does this all relate to being culturally sensitive? And how would this help you specifically?

Your Life

All of this is important because no matter where you are in the world, if you would like to lead a healthy, safe, and broad life, with many friends, you will need to learn to respect everyone around you, no matter where they come from.

Business,

Businesses need to take trips to other countries to establish their goals for expanding or working. Business people need to know how to be polite to other cultures when doing business, or else they may not be able to establish their goals.

For example, in Japan, if you take a fellow businessman’s business card and stuff it into your wallet, it is considered derogatory.

Work,

Especially in Canada, a person who respects cultural norms and diversity, and is multilingual, is considered more financially attractive in a company’s eyes. This is because people who know cultural norms are able to work in a broader environment, whereas a worker who does not know about cultural norms may offend a customer.

Communication,

When a national advertising agency is launching a new slogan or logo for a company, they need to respect every culture’s normalities so that they do not offend anyone with their designs or words. They also need to translate everything perfectly, otherwise something in one language can have a totally different meaning in another.

Examples,Panasonic 2004-05-13

Matsushita Electric was promoting a Japanese PC for internet users. It came with a Japanese Web browser courtesy of Panasonic. Panasonic had licensed the cartoon character "Woody Woodpecker" as the "Internet guide."

The day before a huge marketing campaign was to begin, Panasonic stopped the product launch. The reason: the ads featured the slogan "Touch Woody - The Internet Pecker." An American at the internal product launch explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what "touch woody" and "pecker" meant in American slang.

Coca-Cola, Ke-ke-ken-la, Ko-kou-ko-leThe name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-ke-ken-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."

Latte Anyone? 2004-03-16Latte means milk in Italy. In English, Latte is a coffee-drink. In Germany, Latte is a well known word for an erection.

Well...

Would you walk into Starbucks in Germany and ask for a “latte” if you knew it meant “erection”? What if your business partner in Germany was with you at the time? Not a good situation to be in.

Would you launch an ad campaign if it featured something derogatory in another language?

Too bad ignorance is not an excuse.

WHICH IS WHY CULTURAL

SENSITIVITY IS IMPORTANT

You need to respect every single culture’s viewpoints, languages, and practices. Not doing so can lead to trouble, and willingly telling society that you hate a certain culture will cause many problems.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Issues Today:

Commonly referred to as discrimination.

Problems arise only during practical discrimination. If someone is secretly discriminatory and no one knows, society has no way of deeming that person discriminatory. If one practices it out in the open, then that is where problems start happening.

Legal Implications,

The punishments for discrimination are very harsh, but more often than not, not provable. This makes proving a discriminatory case in court much harder, since it is up to the plaintiff or prosecutor to prove the discriminatory act.This just goes to show how loose the law is on discrimination, since there is no real way of proving that someone is racist in court, which is unfortunate.

What Happens If Proven

However, there are definitive actions that take place if one is considered discriminatory. This includes fines, jail time, or compensation. It really depends on the situation. This is ultimately up to the judge to decide.

The racist person also gets the look from the rest of society.

How to Report Racism

Make sure you or someone you know that will vouch for you has definitive proof that someone was being discriminatory. After that, you are one phone call away from reporting someone for discrimination. Either report it to a lawyer or report it to a police officer.

What Will Happen?

A court date will be set and both parties must attend. If a party does not attend, the opposing party wins the case.

Sometimes, these cases can be as small as being handled from a small claims court, to being handled by the supreme court of Canada, if it is of international importance and is appealed many times.

Technological Impacts

Technology helps everyone make it through their day. Specifically in cultural sensitivity, it has allowed social platforms and online multimedia to be communicated on a global scale. This can be very fun at times, but also very hurtful; technology with regards to cultural sensitivity is a double edged sword.

Example:Going on Facebook or Video Games to

talk to people in a different country!!Counter-Example:

Going online to be racist to cultural groups!

Going on a video about a country and being racist!

Primate

Technology makes it easy to communicate to everyone in the world. However, there are a few individuals who abuse technology, by making racist remarks or making other people unhappy. These people cannot be found either, since no one has any way of tracking who wrote what, except in extreme cases.

Example:Being racist on forums. No one will track

it.Extreme Case:

Hacking into CIBC’s customer information database and stealing everyone’s money. Expect a whole police department and all of those arrested hackers to be on your case.

Future Predictions

Secularization will keep progressing as time moves forward. Cultural boundaries will be broken as globalization moves forward. However, roots to cultures and geographical norms may still exist, but this turns into a different type of sensitivity, one that does not involve culture as much as it does today.

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