Survival kit for overseas living, 4th ed for americans planning to live and work abroad

In this fourth edition,it was Nick Brealey who suggested I write an additionalchapter to prepare the businessperson who is beingsent abroad to manage the people in the host country.. Ins

Survival Kit

for

Overseas

Living

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

303.4'8273—dc20 95-23752

CIP

Intercultural Press, Inc Nicholas Brealey Publishing

PO Box 700 3–5 Spafield Street Yarmouth, Maine 04096 USA London, EC1R 4QB, UK Tel: 207-846-5168 Tel: +44-207-239-0360 Fax: 207-846-5181 Fax: +44-207-239-0370 www.interculturalpress.com www.nbrealey-books.com First published by Intercultural Press in 1979

© 1979, 1984, 1996, 2001 by L Robert Kohls

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced

in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Book design and production by Patty J Topel

Cover design by Ken Leeder

To Norma, my lifelong partner in the exploration and

mastery of strange lands and alien ways

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction xv

1 So You’re Going Overseas 1

2 Others Have Gone Before 5

3 The Stereotyped American 9

4 The Ugly American 13

5 Primitivism Reconsidered 17

6 Culture Defined 25

7 Comparing and Contrasting Cultures 31

8 What Makes an American? 39

9 To See Ourselves 45

10 Traveling by Objectives 51

11 On Becoming a Foreigner 55

12 A Strategy for Strangers 59

13 Know Thy Host Country 63

14 Let’s Play Q and A 69

15 Speaking of Learning the Language 75

16 Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty 79

17 A Handy Guide to Intercultural Communication 83

18 Culture Shock: Occupational Hazard of Overseas Living 91

19 Responding to Culture Shock 101

20 Skills that Make a Difference 109

21 Husbands, Wives, and Children 113

22 Minding Other People’s Business 119

23 The Challenge 131

Postscript 1: So You’re Coming Back Home? 133

Postscript 2: Jaunts and Junkets 141

Appendices A The Kluckhohn Model 150

B Information-Gathering Checklist about Your Host Country 153

C A Human Profile 157

D Logistics Checklists 159

E Additional Resources 167

F Template for Gathering Information about Doing Business in Your Country of Assignment 181

About the Author 187

it might even stand up to the high praise which some

in the intercultural field have given it by calling it a

“classic.” I have also been encouraged by the fact that,

to my knowledge at least, none of my professional leagues have criticized the fundamental premises onwhich the book is based It is often easy to criticizewhen someone tries to simplify any body of profes-sional knowledge so that the layperson can understandits basic concepts and apply them in practice, as inthis case to living in another country

col-These facts, plus the additional fact that Survival Kit

remains the best-seller in the Intercultural Press’ stable

of publications, have encouraged me to bring the bookup-to-date again I am most appreciative of the manypeople who have told me over the past two decadeshow useful this small book was in helping them per-sonally adjust to another country and its unfamiliar

value system That, after all, rather than the ments of one’s professional peers, is the real test of

compli-Survival Kit for Overseas Living.

Although the target readership of this book was andremains the neophyte American about to experience afirst extended period living abroad, it has also been a

pleasant surprise to me to discover that Survival Kit

has become one of the indispensable reference books

of professional interculturalists and that it is evenadopted as a textbook in university courses in inter-cultural communication

Since this is true, I would like to address a word ortwo in this preface to my professional colleagues.Although as Buckminster Fuller pointed out, Space-ship Earth came with no operator’s manual, the initialplan, when the world was sparsely populated, seems

to have been that the various human groups still hadenough room to allow each group to live in “its own”territory, securely separated from the others Theycould live out their lives in comfortable isolation, re-lating only to members of family and their own clan.They had no need to communicate with neighboringstrangers, much less with people from halfway aroundthe globe

Then the Ages of Exploration and of Colonizationbegan to change all of that, as the Western nation-statesset out to find resource-rich countries they could takeand “own”—by right of their superior firepower.Today, the impetus for contact is somewhat differ-ent, as are the means by which it occurs We are able totravel rapidly to and communicate immediately withthe far corners of the earth The many advances incommunication and transportation have meant that

even the remotest parts of the world have been broughtinto virtually instantaneous contact with one another.Jules Verne’s 80 days have become 80 hours, 80 min-utes, or even the 80 seconds or less that it takes for e-mail to span the continents.

We all tend to see these changes as advancements(if not as evolution), but at the same time, they haveproduced greater complexity in our lives, and they haveshifted the world into a new paradigm The changesthey have brought about are at least as significant asthose which moved human beings from the Old StoneAge into the New Stone Age, when previously nomadicbands of hunters stopped pursuing large game andbegan to settle down, plant and raise grains, domesti-cate animals, make pottery, weave cloth, and developtheir settled communities

The current shift is, if anything, even more dynamic,for it means that instead of each group living in safeand intentional isolation (with their major contactscoming through trade for essential items or throughwarfare), suddenly, and without much preparation, theplan has changed We are supposed to know how tolive together in harmony and with respect for everyother group in the world

The old habits which were developed over centuriesand which provided protection and security have sud-denly become dysfunctional Yet they are not easy toshake, for fundamentally, this paradigm shift meansthat while it was natural in the past to develop a pref-erence for similarity as we related to people who were

so like ourselves, it has now become more natural toexperience variety and difference in our daily lives.And those who do have a preference for variety, differ-

Preface

ence, and a large range of choice in their lives seem tohave a huge advantage in adapting to the constantlychanging world It is obvious that we need to developnew skills, different ones from those which our cul-ture provided us while we were growing up The skillsthat served our parents and our grandparents so well

no longer serve us in the same way

The world can no longer afford the luxury of a rate space for every distinct ethnic group In the UnitedStates, just within our own lifetimes, we have witnessed

sepa-a striking evolution towsepa-ard sepa-a multiethnic or tural society We have watched as the possibilities ofcontact and interaction with the great variety of peopleswho inhabit the world have expanded in exciting ways

multicul-We have even come to realize that our homeland is aneven more special place, because it provides the worldwith one of the largest experiments ever witnessed inbringing together in one place and on such a grandscale peoples from all over the world It is an exciting,hopeful experiment, made all the more difficult be-cause there are no models to emulate We have had towrite our own operator’s manual

It is not easy for people to make this kind of matic mind-change—especially as we become more andmore aware that the groups inhabiting the earth are inincreasingly fierce competition for the earth’s limitedresources

dra-As an interculturalist, it is my sincere hope that wewill accept this latest challenge with a spirit of good-will toward all peoples We will need all the compas-sion we can muster and a large dose of humility tomeet this, the most important challenge in our his-tory Those who have found effective ways to express

concern for others and to work across cultural ers must lead others in this essential task We haveembarked on a revolution of sorts, where building com-munity at every level of human existence must becomeour overriding goal This will require new ways of per-ceiving the human condition and the development ofinstitutions which will allow humanity to thrive.Every book is written by many people, and this one

barri-is no exception While they do not share the title page,their imprint appears stamped clearly everywhere inthe book Without them it would never have been pro-duced

Revisiting one’s creation of over two decades agostirs up fond memories of human contacts that spanthree revisions of this book It is obvious to me thatthe loving contributions from coworkers in the fieldhave left their indelible mark on the work David S.Hoopes’ suggestions were responsible for the inclu-sion of whole chapters in the original version When Idecided, in the second edition, to add a chapter onreturning home and encountering reverse culture shock(Postscript 1), I asked Fanchon Silberstein to draft thatchapter for me, and she did such a fine job of imitat-

ing my “Time magazine style” that there was little

re-writing for me to do Similarly, in the third edition Iasked my colleague at Global Vision Group, ClaudeSchnier, to conceptualize the contents of “Jaunts andJunkets” (Postscript 2), so most of the ideas in thatportion of the book are his rather than mine

Conversations with Danielle Rome Walker in 1979were responsible for inspiring me to sit down and writethe book in the first place Serge Ogranovitch, ThomasWalker, and Jack Cook supported those early efforts

Preface

David Hoopes, Peggy Pusch, George Renwick, and AlexPatico critiqued the first edition, and all of them madevaluable suggestions which greatly improved the con-tent of the book David and Kay Hoopes, Peggy Pusch,and Toby Frank went over the third edition with a fine-toothed comb and were an inspiration through the la-borious process of rewriting it In this fourth edition,

it was Nick Brealey who suggested I write an additionalchapter to prepare the businessperson who is beingsent abroad to manage the people in the host country

In that effort, it was Judy Carl-Hendrick who carefullywent over every word of the new draft, smoothing outall of the rough spots Most authors I know argue agreat deal with their editors and often look upon them

as enemies, but I have always been grateful to minefor making the behind-the-scenes improvements forwhich I will ultimately receive all the credit They arethe true unsung heroes of any publication

L Robert KohlsSan Francisco, 1995 and 2001

I am very pleased to have been associated with theproduction of this book For years, specialists in thecross-cultural field bemoaned the fact that a book likethis did not exist Yet none did anything about it Ioften wondered why, until I got hold of Bob Kohls’manuscript It then became clear that none of us hadbeen able to overcome the jargon of our profession orbreak out of the prison of our academic training Noone was able to write a book that was substantive incontent, yet couched in the language of the layperson.Bob Kohls has done it Kohls has been in interna-tional and intercultural training for a long time He’shad experience in business, education, and govern-ment As Director of Training and Development for theUnited States Information Agency, his daily job was toconvince his colleagues that there was more to beknown about functioning abroad than they thought.Later, at the Washington International Center, he hadthe chance to apply his ideas to orientation programsfor foreign students and visitors in the United States.Since then he has had many opportunities to apply his

ideas in academia where, in addition to teaching ginning and advanced courses in intercultural com-munication, he also teaches international relations andinternational business courses at several universities.His workshops in intercultural awareness have beenpresented to mid- and upper-level managers in morethan seventy of America’s Fortune 500 companies.There’s an air of the author’s knowing what he’s about

be-in this book He has a flair for capturbe-ing the right idea

in the right language, for making the critical pointsstand out, for taking you step-by-step into the intrigu-ing heart of a sometimes baffling, sometimes frustrat-ing, but almost always immensely rewarding experi-ence

But he doesn’t do it ploddingly, exhausting the readerand the subject in the process Instead, he moves youthrough the book at high speed, stopping to ask youquestions and get you to probe your own thoughtsand feelings, then taking you on at a lively pace toexamine each successive stage of the overseas experi-ence Especially effective and valuable is Kohls’ ability

to keep the reader focused on the practical He doesn’tdwell on the ideas—though he makes clear the cross-cultural conceptual framework he is using Instead, heconcentrates on the practical knowledge and skills theoverseas sojourner needs to “survive” in a strange land.Given its pace and substance, this is a book you willget through quickly, but one you will think about andreturn to for a long, long time

David S Hoopes

So You’re Going Overseas

It’s been decided You’re going to accept the nity to spend some time working and living in anothercountry You’re beginning to get ready, doing the thou-sand and one things necessary to get yourself, andperhaps your family, launched Or maybe you’re al-ready on the plane, seat back, legs stretched out, fi-nally able to relax for a moment and let your mindwander

opportu-You’ve probably had little time to think seriouslyabout what’s ahead, what it’s going to be like living in

a “foreign” country There are relatively few sources ofgood information about overseas living, and the per-spective of those who’ve gone before you is skewed

by their own particular experiences and how they’veperceived them

Yet, unless you’ve spent a long time in a foreign try before, there are unanticipated surprises in store.The success rate of overseas adjustment among Ameri-cans is not nearly so high as it might be If left to luck,your chances of having a really satisfying experienceliving abroad would be about one in seven

coun-But it doesn’t have to be left to luck There are thingsyou can do Specifically, you and your family can give

some organized thought to planning and preparing

for the experience Many people devote most of theirenergy to the logistics of getting launched and, in fact,

do leave the rest to luck The wise person looks

fur-ther ahead There may be many unknowns or tainties, but it’s possible to lay the groundwork for aproductive time overseas The purpose of this book is

uncer-to show how it can be done

Curiously, what people need most when they go seas is to understand themselves better, because whenthey go they carry with them all the “cultural baggage”they have accumulated during their lifetime One pur-

over-pose of this book is to help you become aware of your

cultural baggage and suggest ways in which to avoidtripping over it too often To do so we need to askwhat it is in the American environment that has made

you what you are and how an awareness of your

Ameri-canness can provide the basis for understanding and

coping effectively with your experiences in a foreigncountry

Over there, the environment and the culture havebeen busy shaping people into Germans, Japanese,Arabs, Chinese, Colombians, or whatever The ques-tion is: How can you as an American direct your ef-forts toward learning, in the quickest, most cost-effec-tive manner, how to function at your optimum capac-ity in the non-American environment into which youare soon to be, quite literally, dropped?

The material presented in these pages is designed

to provide answers to those questions The ideas arestated as succinctly as possible and yet attempt to get

at some of the deeper issues which are central to tioning effectively overseas.

func-The book doesn’t preach More often than not youwill be asked to think through the issues on your own

in brief, structured exercises The book should be seen

as a resource for getting you into and through an perience which, like whitewater rafting, is exciting andrewarding, but which has its shoals and rapids It’s abook you can come back to when the going gets rough

ex-It’s a Survival Kit for Overseas Living.

So You’re Going Overseas

Others Have Gone Before

You’re not the first American to leave our shores to tryyour hand at living in another country Thousands havegone before and set the stage for your arrival

Yes, your way has been paved—with bad impressions!All over the world people think they know all aboutAmericans They’ve watched American tourists, Ameri-can films, and American TV programs Their radiosand newspapers have blared forth sensational newsabout the United States They’ve heard incredible sto-ries from friends and relatives who have visited theUnited States

The result has been, at best, an incomplete view ofwhat Americans are like; at worst, a distorted one Out

of this incomplete or distorted information haveemerged stereotypes—fixed, simplified impressions ofwhat Americans are Stereotypes are natural; they areone way people everywhere deal with things which aretoo complex to handle or about which they have inad-equate information

Nancy Adler has said that due to the multiplicity ofimpulses that our brain is receiving as our sensory

receptors are being flooded with stimuli, we have nochoice but to ignore most of them in order to pay at-tention only to those few that we have learned to con-sider as most vital to our own survival In this per-petual overload situation, stereotyping may even prove

to be a useful necessity, so long as we consider ourmomentary stereotyping to be only “our best firstguess” as to the meaning and are ready and willing toabandon it the moment the evidence indicates ourguess is wrong After all, stereotypes are not necessar-ily wrong Some of them contain too much truth forcomfort The problem with stereotypes, really, is thatthey prevent us from getting to the richer reality whichlies beyond them Also, unfortunately, another truismabout stereotypes is that once formed in people’sminds, they outlive the partial truth that created them

in the first place

They are also destructive in personal encountersbecause they are unfair and because they interfere withgetting to know individuals as they really are

You will be confronted often with stereotypes Peoplewill judge you not on the basis of who you are and thesignals you transmit, but on the stereotypes theyformed long before they knew you existed

How will you respond? What kinds of stereotypes

do you think you will encounter? Take a moment fore turning the page to jot down in the space pro-vided on the following page some of the stereotypes

be-of Americans you think are most commonly heldabroad Then go on and see how they compare withour list in chapter 3

Others Have Gone Before

STEREOTYPES:

The Stereotyped American

Here are some of the most commonly held stereotypes

of Americans encountered in other countries

• Confident they have all the answers

• Politically naive and/or uninformed

• Ignorant of other countries

• Disrespectful of authority

• Wealthy

• Generous

• Impatient, always in a hurry

It is also widely believed that all American women arepromiscuous

How many of the listed items are positive and howmany are negative? Go through and put a check besidethe positive ones and underline the negative ones.Most of us would probably consider six or seven ofthe points to be positive To Americans, being outgo-ing, friendly, and informal (to mention only a few) isconsidered good Yet, the reserved Britisher who findshis or her seatmate on a transatlantic flight an outgo-ing, backslapping American may have a quite differ-ent opinion Someone from a country with a very struc-tured, hierarchical social system, such as India, mayconsider our informality an affront and disrespectful.The point is that what we think are positive values

or admirable characteristics may not be considered so

by others What we believe to be a positive stereotypemay, in fact, be a negative one in the eyes of a personfrom another country

Which brings us to a fundamental point: throughoutthe world there are many different ways of doingthings, most of which are intrinsically neither betternor worse than our own They are simply different.One thing is certain: at some point when you areoverseas, you will encounter many negative stereo-types about Americans, and there will be those who

will hold you personally responsible for them It’s very

likely you will be called upon to answer some verypointed questions based on them

When we asked you about how you would respond

to being stereotyped, what were your thoughts? What

will you say in reply if someone asks you, “Why areAmericans such racists? Such imperialists? So rude?

So rushed all the time?”

There are no pat answers, of course Each personmust form his or her own unique responses Experi-ence has shown, however, that the following threeguidelines are useful:

1 Resist becoming angry or defensive

2 Avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes

3 Persist in being your (sweet old) self

If your sweet old self fits one of the stereotypes,then you’ve got a problem Better in the beginning toavoid the stereotype and to let your real personalityemerge as you become more comfortable in the envi-ronment

Indeed, anything you can do to help break the tive stereotypes people have of Americans will con-tribute to (1) your own pleasure in the overseas expe-rience, (2) the pleasure of those who follow you, (3)the improvement of the American image abroad, and(4) world understanding perhaps a smidgen Quite acollection of accomplishments for so small an effort.The Duane Hanson sculpture on page 8 reminds us

nega-of several negative stereotypes that many foreignershave had of Americans We would hope that those ste-reotypes are less true today than they were whenHanson created this sculpture But even in 1970, the

sculpture did not portray all Americans.

Now let’s look at the other side of the stereotypingcoin All over the world there are friendly, hospitablepeople ready and eager to welcome Americans intotheir societies

The Stereotyped American

What kinds of attitudes do we as a group have aboutthem and their cultures? Are we ever guilty of a littlecounterproductive stereotyping of our own?

The Ugly American

The novel The Ugly American1 struck the Americans ofthe late 1950s like a thunderbolt It came at a timewhen the nation was moving internationally into highgear Americans were swarming about the world asnever before Tourists, diplomats, students, scholars,technical experts, business executives, and militaryadvisers were spreading an image of Americans whichcame to be embodied in many of the negative stereo-

types discussed in the previous chapter The Ugly

American held a mirror up before us, and it was with a

distinct shock that we recognized the reflection wesaw We were embarrassed by the behaviors and atti-tudes Americans displayed as guests in other coun-tries

1 By William J Lederer and Eugene Burdick (New York: Norton, Reissue, 1999) Ironically, the “Ugly American” in the book was

in reality the good guy, who was sensitive to other cultures The term was soon turned around, however, to refer to the loud,

To a significant extent because of The Ugly

Ameri-can we are much more conscious today of our

behav-ior overseas, particularly in our words and deeds Westill carry with us, however, a number of deeply em-bedded attitudes which tap into our darker nature andemerge from time to time in our international contacts.Following is a list of some of those attitudes A num-ber are quite commonly held and may not, at firstglance, seem offensive Others are to be found only inthe extremely narrow-minded or, indeed, in the bigot.Look the list over and check those which reflect whatyou feel is a defensible position

1 The fact that the United States was the first tion to be able to place a man on the moon provesAmericans’ long-held technological superiority

na-2 Foreigners coming to live in the United Statesshould give up their foreign ways and adapt tothe United States as quickly as possible

3 Asians do many things backwards

4 Much of the world’s population remains developed because they don’t take the initiative

con-9 If everyone learned to do things the way we dothem, the world would be better off and peopleeverywhere would understand each other bet-ter.

10 Primitive people have not yet reached the higherstages of civilization

Can you convert these into objective statements?For instance, you might change item 1 to “By being thefirst nation to place a man on the moon, the UnitedStates demonstrated the great emphasis which it as asociety places on technological development.” Considerthe others

More important—as they stand, what central themeruns through all of these statements?

Look them over again carefully before reading on.State the central theme briefly in the space below

The theme as we see it: the implicit assumption ofthe superiority of one group over another, humankind’sancient ethnocentric2 impulse We all believe in ourheart of hearts that our race, our culture, our group isthe most important, worthy, civilized, and so forth inthe world It’s a primordial instinct which from the be-ginning of the species has served a basic survival func-

2 Webster’s definition of ethnocentrism is “Regarding one’s own

The Ugly American

tion by linking us to and strengthening the group fromwhich we derive our security, thus assuring the group’scontinuance.

Unfortunately it is also a destructive impulse fromwhich war, hate, oppression, and prejudice flow There

is little hope of ever being wholly freed from it cause it is a largely subconscious impulse and influ-ences our attitudes and behaviors without our beingaware of it

be-But there are things we can do to control our centrism, and we will examine them one by one in thechapters that follow

ethno-First, however, let’s take a closer look at one of theattitudes which crops up all too often as a stumblingblock to effectiveness overseas

Primitivism Reconsidered

“Primitive people have not yet reached the higher stages

of civilization.”

For anyone involved in international activities, this

is an especially insidious belief

All of us, by virtue of our enculturation1 in Westernsociety in general, and in American society in particu-lar, have deeply embedded within us certain ideas re-garding what it means to be civilized and what it means

to be primitive

Think, for a moment, of the dictionary definition of

the words civilization and primitive.

We have been taught that civilization represents anadvanced state of human development, with an ex-tremely high level of achievement and sophistication

in the arts and sciences, technology, government, andsocial institutions (To us, even our religion has longsince moved out of the morass of superstition andmagic.)

1 Enculturation is an anthropological term which refers to the

process of being trained in the values and behaviors of one’s

Primitive, on the other hand, denotes a state of plicity bordering on ignorance, or at least on the sim-plicity of the untutored child That which is primitive

sim-is rudimentary, unsophsim-isticated, and superstitious.Primitive peoples, according to the common definition,are closer to the state of our primordial ancestors whowandered the forests on all fours looking for food andshelter

The picture we carry in our minds looks somethinglike this:

Of course, we’re the ones who are civilized.

This idea flowered in nineteenth-century Europewhen, under the influence of Darwin, theorists at-tempted to apply the concept of evolution to the de-velopment of society as a whole One of the resultswas that Europeans at that time saw themselves as theend product and at the apex of human civilization.This kind of thinking was graphically epitomized byLewis Morgan, a well-known anthropologist of the pe-riod, in his Pyramid of Human Development

To accompany the pyramid, Morgan developed clearand precise definitions for each stage, from “lower sav-agery” to “higher civilization,” and then classified ev-ery known group of people within one of the stages.This once-respected work now seems ludicrous Itwould no longer be accepted by anthropologists any-

佦

Civilized

Primitive

where (that in itself is a sign we’ve made some vances in cultural awareness!).

ad-We know now that most societies once called tive are in fact highly developed civilizations with com-plex and sophisticated social structures and culturalpatterns, each with its own peak achievements Theyhave been judged too often, however, on their failure

primi-to encompass the technological and scientific plishments of the West

accom-But Morgan’s basic ideas linger in our present tudes toward non-Western peoples, even though many

atti-of us have long since learned that it is not acceptable

to refer to a specific country or its people as primitive,

at least not to their faces Yet the persistent problem

of how we should refer politely to the people who are

so different from ourselves remains

Ethnocentrism being what it is, throughout historypeople have tended to conceptualize the outsider as

Lewis Morgan’s “Pyramid of Human Development”

Higher Civilization Civilization Lower Civilization Higher Barbarism Barbarism Lower Barbarism Higher Savagery Savagery Lower Savagery

Primitivism Reconsidered

some sort of lesser being than their own kin The nese, historically and traditionally, conceived of ev-eryone outside their borders as “barbarians.” So didthe ancient Greeks The Europeans, who thought it wasthey who discovered America, considered the peoplethey found there to be savages A hundred years agothese words were used straightforwardly, descriptively,and without shame.

Chi-More recently, these outsiders were called lized and primitive Then, as we began to realize theinsults which were inherent in those terms, it becamepopular to speak of them as natives or aborigines.Just as we began to become conscious about how

uncivi-we referred to peoples of other cultures (and, cially, the concepts behind the words), we becameequally uneasy about how we designated the countries

espe-in which they lived We called them, espe-in turn, oped countries, underdeveloped countries, less devel-oped countries, or LDCs (without saying what the let-ters actually stood for), and then, developing coun-tries

In the end all these terms—even “developing”—were

considered disparaging and demeaning, implying theinherent superiority of developed countries and car-rying the seed of the idea that, of course, they would

eventually aspire to becoming developed just like us.

In 1952 the French first coined the term Third World

to indicate not two but three forms of political ment The industrialized Western democracies were

align-the First World The communist countries were align-the

Sec-ond World And those countries that chose not to align

themselves with either the First or Second Worlds were

called Third World Gradually the term Third World

began to take on an economic meaning instead of its

original political meaning In 1979 Time magazine was

the first to point out that, economically speaking, there

are actually five worlds.2

In the 1990s, our concern to be politically correctcaused many people in the intercultural field and else-

where to abandon the term Third World, mistakenly

taking it to imply “third best.” This created the dency to substitute the politically correct but often

ten-inaccurate term newly industrializing economies to all

of the Third-World countries, only a relative handful

2 By this expanded classification, the First and Second Worlds remained the same, while the Third World came to include coun- tries like South Korea and Taiwan which, economically, had al- most made it into the First World The “Fourth World” became countries like Brazil and India, which were still far from “devel- oped,” but which had sufficient natural resources to eventually become fully “developed,” or First World The “Fifth World” was made up of countries like Bangladesh and Chad, which are so poor that there is little hope that they will become First World

Primitivism Reconsidered

of which (perhaps 20 or 25 of the 130 such countries)are actually on that road to industrialization and eco-nomic development, and it is false even to imply theirintention or desire to develop along the Western model.Other recent attempts to devise acceptable alterna-tives to designate peoples and nations so different fromourselves include preliterate societies, preindustrialsocieties, NICs (newly industrialized countries) or NIEs(newly industrialized economies), nonaligned coun-tries, indigenous peoples, non-Western countries, non-Western peoples, host country nationals (or just na-tionals), or traditional societies.

Third-World countries or Third-World peoples areprobably the least derogatory designations currently

in use, if only because they imply that their ways

rep-resent a conscious alternative to our own and a

legiti-mate choice.

All of these alternatives represent honest attempts

to deal with a problem that will not quietly go away:

What do we call people who are so different from

our-selves? They also point out the embarrassing fact thatthe ethnocentrism that lies behind Lewis Morgan’s pyra-mid still lurks deep within us all We have an uncon-scious inclination to see the path our culture has taken

as the normal one for all to take

Another thing we can do to neutralize the effect ofMorgan’s ideas is to compare cultures on a coequalbasis, as in the diagram below If we call the two cul-

tures X culture (instead of “civilized”) and Z culture(instead of “primitive”), we can show them withoutmaking assumptions of superiority:

Any areas of commonly held values which exist, andthere are usually many, may be diagrammed in thisway with the common features in the central diamond

This takes us back now to our earlier question: How

do you go about bringing your ethnocentrism undercontrol? The answer: you bring it to the surface, look

at it, and shift the emphasis from cultural inferiorityand superiority to cultural similarities and differ-ences—as we have done with our X and Z cultures.Another useful undertaking is to become acquaintedwith the nature of culture itself

Primitivism Reconsidered