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Intercultural Spr2006 Sess09

Index Card assignment due Thursday

What "text" do you plan to examine for your first short paper? Describe three differences between the culture depicted in that text and our own.

Intercultural Ethics

• Ethics is about making good decisions
  • about right and wrong
  • for ourselves and for others
  • for the short term and, especially, the long term
• We have a responsibility to, as much as possible, avoid harming others
• Cultures structurate to minimize the possibility of doing such harm
  • The details of culture
    • Beliefs
    • Values
    • Traditions
    • Customs
    • Rituals
    • Behavioral Expectations
    • Roles
    • Rules
    • Norms
  • exist, at least in part, to keep us from hurting each other
    • But the details of these elements of culture can vary greatly
      • There can be many different ways to minimize particular harms
      • And every culture makes different decisions
      • At every level of social structuration
• This has major implications when cultures intersect
  • There are no meta-ethics
    • At least of the level of implementing cultural values in behavior
  • Cultures make very different decisions
  • and those decisions will sometimes collide with each other in important ways
• It is useful, here, to focus on values
  • which are, at least in theory, the basis for all of our other decisions.
  • Rokeach's value scales give us a way to look at it.
    • http://davis.foulger.info/oswego/Fall2002/CommunicationEthics/valuesScale.htm
    • http://davis.foulger.info/presentations/measuringFractalDecisionSpaces/index.htm
  • There are fundamental values that most of us agree are important
    • but there are no perfect decisions
  • We are frequently required, in our ethical decision making, to make forced choices between values that we might believe to be equally important.
  • Hence people with essentially the same values can make very different choices under the same circumstances.
  • The problems of ethics are usually at the boundaries of our values
    • And intercultural communication operates at those boundaries
  • Hence we will take a dialectical approach that assumes
    • that the extremes are usually wrong
    • And the boundaries are relative
  • Consider for instance, the importance of truth
    • All cultures value true
    • All cultures tolerate a certain amount of untruth
      • White lies
      • Face saving
    • But they sometimes tolerate very different kinds of untruth
• Several principles can help us negotiate these boundaries
  1. Respect for others based on accurate observation, tolerance, and empathy
     • A focus on the value of uniqueness
  2. A focus on relationships and the maintenance of face within relationships
     • Do unto others as they would do unto themselves
  3. Self-awareness and Self-reflexivity
     • A focus on dialogue

The exam