Bring Down the Wall!

Picking just one concept out of this chapter to discuss is very difficult due to the intimate interlacing of the subject of intercultural communication. Since the pitfalls and solutions are in almost all areas are similar, it’s hard to single out a single concept without it overlapping two or three other concepts. For me, the section regarding barriers and the section regarding adapting were probably the most interesting.

I found the area regarding maximum differences especially interesting. Having grown up in a predominantly Asian community, it was interesting to learn that Western and Asian cultures are the most far apart. Considering that in my experience, many Asian cultures are trying very hard to assimilate western ways into their culture, this was particularly surprising. While I am fully aware of the traditional conflicts and differences between American culture and say Chinese or Japanese cultures, in a modern sense, the gaps are not as large as one might think.

In the past decade, China has slowly been moving towards a more capitalistic society. While their strong communist attitudes have made this a very slow process, they have been allowing more individuals to earn as well as opening up to more foreign businesses. In Japan, there has been a movement over the past 30 or so years that have brought their social attitudes much closer to what we have in America today. While they are still very ethnocentric, they much more tolerant of foreigners than they used to be, and they have made a lot of progress in gender equality and civil rights.