What Other Influences Besides Art Has the Western Cultures Brought to the East?

Cultural psychologists Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner studied different ways of being, or what they term the independent and interdependent selves. Markus and Conner looked at a range of environments, from classroom participation to ways of parenting, betwixt students from Eastern and Western cultures. While there are important variations and singled-out differences within these regions and cultures, Markus and Conner shared some general observations:

For many East Asians, and their children growing up in the West, listening, following the "right" way, fitting in, and keeping calm are not odd classroom behaviors; they are the very route to beingness a good person—a good interdependent self, Eastern style. But for their Western classmates and teachers, speaking up, choosing your own way, continuing out, and getting excited are likewise ways of being a proficient person—merely in this case, a expert independent self, Western style. . . .

Contained European-American parents and teachers say that a student should first choose what she wants to do, and and so do it her ain way. In the West, choice is mayhap the most important deed considering it lets people realize all five facets of independence. Choice allows people to express their individuality and unique preferences, influence their environments, practice their gratis will, and assert their equality.

Simply interdependent parents lay out a different agenda: I show my child the right affair to practice, and and so assistance her d o information technology the correct way . In the Due east, post-obit the correct manner is a key human activity because it lets people realize all five facets of interdependence: relating to others, discovering your similarities, adjusting yourself to expectations and the environment, rooting yourself into networks and traditions, and understanding your place in the larger globe.^one

A portrait of the author Gish Jen, whose book Tiger Writing: Art, Civilisation, and the Interdependent Self, explores Eastern and Western differences in self-narration. To hear more reflections from Gish Jen, click on her portrait and listen to an interview conducted by Harvard University Press.

Author Gish Jen feels the tension betwixt cultures in very personal ways. in an interview conducted for Harvard University Press, Jen reflects on her individualistic, or contained, self that dominates in the West, especially America, and her collectivist, or interdependent, self that dominates in the due east, including China. Jen kickoff came to understanding this continuum in herself after reading her own father'due south autobiography:

I was not a narrative native. We didn't do this in my family. I was not asked what do you desire, as if what I wanted was a very important matter or what do I like. I was not encouraged to think of myself as a unique individual whose uniqueness was really a very important thing. Quite the contrary. Then therefore information technology wasn't until I started reading that I realized that in the Due west . . .  this was a foundational idea. That information technology started with pictures of you lot  every bit a baby. I don't have any pictures of myself one minute after I was born. In fact, I have very few pictures of myself and there are few stories likewise nearly me equally a child. As I started to become interested in this whole question of narrative departure, which is tied to a departure of self and difference in perception, I happened to start to work on my father's autobiography that he had written when he was 85.

When I first looked at it, it but fabricated no sense at all to me. Here was this affair that was supposed to be an autobiography about his growing upwards in People's republic of china, and yet he, himself, did not appear until folio 8. This autobiography did not first with "I was born in such and such a year." No, no, no. It started manner, way before that, thousands of years before that, and went through the generations. Past the time my begetter gets to his birth, he mentions his altogether in parentheses, in conjunction with some other issue. I remember reading that and thinking, "How very interesting." I could both see that it was "weird" from a Western narrative point of view and all the same of course in that location was something near it that was incredibly familiar to me. I understood this. I understood this diminishment of the self. Ane thing was something I knew with my left hand and another was something I knew with my correct. ²

In her book Tiger Writing: Art, Civilisation, and the Interdependent Self, Jen expands on the differences between the independent and interdependent cocky even further:

[T]he "contained," individualistic self stresses uniqueness, defines itself via inherent attributes such equally its traits, abilities, values, and preferences, and tends to meet things in isolation. The second—the "interdependent," collectivist self—stresses commonality, defines itself via its place, roles, loyalties, and duties, and tends to see things in context. Naturally, betwixt these two very different self construals [self-definitions] lies a continuum forth which nigh people are located, and along which they may motility, too, over the course of a moment. Civilization is not fate; information technology only offers templates, which individuals can finally accept, reject, or alter, and do.³

Citations

1. What differences exercise Markus and Conner suggest in the manner that East Asians and European Americans remember about the human relationship between the club and the individual? How do those unlike cultural ideas well-nigh independence and interdependence shape the fashion that the people they studied heighten their children?

2. In Clash, Markus and Conner'southward piece of work, they spoke to many of their graduate students of both Eastern and Western backgrounds. Students and teachers from Western backgrounds shared frustration with what they perceived as a lack of participation in class from students who had been schooled in or come from East-Asian cultures. At the same fourth dimension East-Asian students shared their frustration with the American supposition that "talking is thinking." In their book Akiko, a graduate pupil from Japan, shared a scattering of proverbs from Japan that he felt expressed these differences.^ane

   The mouth is the source of misfortune. Baby-sit your mouth as though it were a vase. You have two ears and one oral fissure, to exist used in that proportion. The duck that quacks the loudest gets shot How do you interpret these proverbs? What larger ideas are these proverbs expressing?

3. Some other graduate pupil of Hazel Markus was Heejung Kim from South Korea. After being confronted with not speaking in her grade, Heejung wrote an email to Hazel and added the post-obit equally a new signature to the note: "The empty carriage rattles the loudest." Heejung afterwards shared the saying of the great Confucian sage Lao Tzu: "He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know."ⁱⁱ What larger ideas of civilization are all these proverbs communicating?

4. The extract from author Gish Jen begins with the judgement "I was not a narrative native." What does she mean? How does the judgement represent what she hopes to communicate nigh how culture influences the style people think about themselves?

5. Author Gish Jen describes the delicate residue people confront when talking about cultural differences:

   I'd like to say that with this, every bit with all discussions involving cultural difference, I am aware of the danger of stereotyping. "Simplistic and over exaggerated beliefs virtually a group, generally acquired second-hand and resistant to change," equally sociologist Martin Yard. Marger put it, are plainly to be roundly condemned and absolutely avoided. I am also enlightened, though, that fear of stereotyping has sometimes led to a discomfort with an assertion of cultural departure, no matter how thoroughly accepted past psychologists or how firmly grounded in inquiry.³

   How tin can nosotros talk and learn about the influence of culture without relying on stereotypes? What suggestions, warnings, or communication would be helpful to prevent discussions of civilization from reinforcing stereotypes?

Citations

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Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/nanjing-atrocities/identity/culture-and-identity-east-and-west

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