With all due respect to theoreticians who continue to use the iceberg metaphor to describe culture, I think it’s time to retire the image altogether. Here’s why.

Most people with any background in intercultural communication theory agree that culture is not a “thing”; it is the process whereby groups of people coordinate meaning and action, yielding both institutional artifacts and patterns of behavior. We feel it is unfair when anthropologists and critical theorists accuse us of essentializing culture. But many interculturalists actually do essentialize culture by using the objective metaphor of an iceberg.

Comparing culture to an iceberg floating in the sea implies that culture is an actual thing. The 10% above the water is really visible to everyone who looks in that direction, and the 90% below the water is both real and dangerous, since it can sink the unwary sojourner.

The metaphor does not in any way imply that culture is a process of coordinating meaning and action – rather, it implies that culture is an entity with mysterious unknown qualities. So, while we ourselves may not romanticize or exotify foreign cultures, we inadvertently support those who do by teaching this metaphor.

This situation is a great example of paradigmatic confusion. We want our students or clients to engage culture in a dynamic way, enabling them to understand complex cultural identity formation and generate mindful intercultural communication.

These are laudable goals drawn from a constructivist paradigm. But then we introduce the topic with a distinctly positivist metaphor – the iceberg. The client is left with a simplistic understanding of culture that cannot support the complex operations vis a vis culture that we subsequently advocate.

In other words, we are shooting ourselves in the foot with this metaphor. Let’s find a more appropriate one.

For many years I described culture metaphorically as a river that both carved and was constrained by its banks. While this gets at the “co-ontological” construction of boundary conditions, it doesn’t really capture the coordination of meaning idea.

The seemingly related idea of a river (e.g. the Amazon) with tributaries flowing into it strikes me as being another paradigmatically confused metaphor, since it implies that cultural diversity (relativism) disappears into a transcendent unity (positivism). Other ideas?

AFS USA, one of AFS Intercultural Programs’ member organizations which runs all of AFS’s exchange programs to and from the US, has recently launched a brand new section on their website that aims to provide inspiration and answers to some of the questions above. Their Educators website offers a variety of resources and tools that are not only relevant for US based Educators, but that can also be used by other teachers around the world.

Browse the Teachers Toolbox that includes suggested lesson plans and curricular resources or learn about the AFS Educational Goals. The portal also presents the various offerings AFS USA has for schools: group educational programs, scholarship opportunities for individual students or AFS school clubs are some of the examples.

Do you want to receive Education and Intercultural Learning news from AFS USA? Subscribe to the Global Classroom Newsletter that will bring new inspiration directly to your inbox every three months!

AFS Intercultural Programs is pleased to announce the January/February/March/April 2013 issue of AFS Intercultural Link Newsletter volume 4, issue 1 – Global Edition, which can be shared with everyone interested in learning more about intercultural education.

The AFS Intercultural Link News Magazine is the quarterly magazine on intercultural learning in the AFS Network. The magazine features content shared by the Intercultural Learning Work Group as well as other AFS Partners and guest writers, including information on trends in intercultural education, interviews with experts in the field and overviews of upcoming and previous conferences.

Intercultural

The study found that “employers are under strong pressure to find employees who are not only technically proficient, but also culturally astute and able to thrive in a global work environment.” 

Menzel's book, Material World: A Global Family Portrait

Photojournalist Peter Menzel has taken numerous trips around the world and invites us to join him in visiting people’s homes through the photographs that he had taken. Besides being respected for his coverage of international feature stories on science and the environment, Menzel is also known for producing a number of books that capture the realities of people living in different parts of the world.

His book Material World: A Global Family Portrait (1994) focuses on the material possessions and daily lives of average families around the world. It depicts 30 families from 24 different countries with all their possessions in front of their homes. Pictures are accompanied by essays and background stories of the photographed families. Women in the Material World (1996) is another documentary book, based on his previous work, but focusing specifically on lives of women across the globe.

Another fascinating journey, this time through people’s diets was captured by Menzel in Hungry Planet: What The World Eats (2005) and also in his latest release What I eat: Around the World in 80 Diets (2010). In the first book mentioned, families share what they week diet looks like; in the latter, 80 people are captured with the food and beverages they consume on an average day.

Images from Menzel's book, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets

To learn more about Menzel’s work and browse through a gallery with a sample of pictures, you can visit Peter Menzel Photography website. Are you and educator and do you wonder how to use this for educational purposes? Then explore the link to educational materials that were developed in addition to the books and that represent an inspiring example of how to bring global perspectives into the classroom.

From wikipedia.org

Today we wanted to share a blog entry by Rev. Eleanor Harrison Bregman from the Huffington Post in which she talks about living with cultural differences within the family, at home – and with something as important as religion. Although she is a Christian Protestant Minister, Bregman is raising her children in an interfaith relationship as Jewish children and they attend a Jewish school. In her entry, she describes how she tries to participate in her children’s prayers and practices, in order to be a part of this aspect of their culture.

Looking for opinion texts on interfaith relationships or bicultural/bireligious households, one can very soon find many different authors with different opinions. This is such a thought-provoking topic that it is important to learn what interfaith parenthood, interfaith relationships and living with two religions means for different people and in different geographic contexts. Here are some links to articles that encourage you to reflect on this topic:

• Ten Reasons to Teach Interfaith Children Both Religions: blog entry by Susan Katz Miller on her blog “On Being Both”.
• How to Successfully Raise Interfaith Children: an interview with Psychologist Dr. Tara Boadu in which she reflects on how to raise children in a household where there are race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, socioeconomic status and religious differences.
• Interfaith Children’s Movement: an online platform where you can find information about programs, activities and advocacy on interfaith children’s programs.
• Bi-religious: a blog entry by an Israeli expatriate in the United States on the cultural adjustment of her daughter to religious holidays.

Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section!

Are you looking for the latest publications on multicultural, intercultural, and/or cross-cultural issues IN FRENCH? Well, here’s a link for you! L’Harmattan publishers, based in Paris, France, offers wonderful intercultural books and journals for our francophone readers. Their books can be found in several French bookstores, as well as online. There is even a space for video media to be accessed, including movies, documentaries and author interviews.

L’Harmattan emphasizes diversity, education and the importance of multicultural awareness and competence, which makes this resource an incredibly valuable tool for interculturally-focused French speakers.

Do you consider yourself a global citizen? Would you like to become more involved in global issues? The organization New Global Citizen (GNC) provides globally conscious youth with opportunities to make their reach go farther and their impact stronger in relation to some of the world’s greatest challenges. It’s an organization for youth– and by youth!

One youth team focused on the right to education for all children around the world.

GNC offers a wide range of global projects, such as providing sanitation and clean water, shelter, education and doing many more important works to improve vulnerable populations around the world. Their main focus is sustainable development that is not the “cookie-cutter” approach. Instead, they hope to find solutions while keeping the population and culture in mind.

For those of you in education, they also have initiatives for you to use in your classroom, including team building exercises and curriculum to develop intercultural competency.

If you are a youth interested in global causes, this is an organization you might want to explore! Learn more on their website: http://www.newglobalcitizens.org/ or their blog:  http://newglobalcitizens.wordpress.com/

Aditi Rao

Everyone who has facilitated an online learning activity knows that the biggest challenge of online cooperation and learning is to develop feeling for the interest, preferences, and habits of those “on the other side of the computer”. It is difficult when you can neither see them nor sense any of the (verbal and) non-verbal cues that most of us rely on when building a relationship. So if you can’t rely on these cues, what can you do to make the online interaction successful and satisfying for all involved?

Aditi Rao, who has recently published an article about 21st Century Icebreakers gives a number of very practical and easy-to-use tips for “breaking the ice” in an online interaction. Her suggestions are simpler than you might imagine.

• For creative ways of getting to know each other: you can use Pinterest (ask everyone to take 10 pins to represent themselves) or ask the group to prepare a very short podcast about themselves. Another possibility is for everyone to introduce her or himself through a blog post. For younger or especially creative groups it may also be effective to ask everybody to create comic strips about themselves.
• For tools to collect feedback: Polleverywhere, Google Forms, Survey Monkey, and many other tools are available – for free!
• For interactive tools that keep everyone engaged, and to get dynamic feedback use Word Clouds, QR Codes, and Voki (a tool for creating speaking avatars). During the last months, participants of the Intercultural Link Learning Program have also had the chance to experience Voice Thread and Blackboard - two interactive programs that are helpful for conducting successful online learning activities.

Word Cloud for this article

On her website SmallPlanetStudio, Cate Brubaker offers other material, free teleclasses, and ideas for how to successfully facilitate intercultural learning – online and offline. In the past few years, AFSers all over the world have been using these tools and materials to better support the interpersonal and intercultural learning connected to the life-changing experience of going abroad and hosting a young person from another culture. AFS Volunteers and Staff involved in the Intercultural Link Learning Program have participated in anumber of these online learning activities and have used many of the above mentioned tools.

When our work is rooted in interpersonal communication and in effectively and appropriately engaging with cultural differences, we have a lot to learn from online learning and can make the most of it by exploring the myriad tools and options becoming available each day. Tell us what online tools you’ve used to facilitate intercultural online learning!