Question schedule and first answer
OK, so I've had two more questions from readers, which means I need to recalibrate my questions schedule. Let me see.
Today: slemslempike Is there anything you've learnt about others' views of Australian culture(s) from your work that you didn't know before?
Tues 10th December: sun__king Where would you take a 'Melbourne newbie' to show off your city (say, something to look at, something to climb up and somewhere to eat...)?
Sat 14th December: lnhammer Your thoughts on sheep, please?
Tues 17th December: splodgenoodles Question to be advised
Sat 21st December: glitzfrau Would you ever live somewhere that wasn't Australia?
Tues 24th December: Situation vacant
Sat 28th December: hnpcc Question to be advised (!)
New Year's Eve: Situation vacant
I find this quite hard to answer, to be honest! My understand of any culture (or indeed, any person) is a kind of clay sculpture, where the basic shape remains consistent, but every new impression refines the shape a little more. Occasionally something dramatic happens which drastically changes the shape, but not often, on either count, and the basic clay remains the same.
I did a lot of field research on Australian culture early on in my career, and during my PhD (in which I looked at ethnocentrism), and my main source of insight was others' views! The "others" being people who'd immigrated to Australia from somewhere else and been here long enough to know Australian culture from both inside and outside.
Lots of my early insights into Australian culture came from Kaiyu, the sanguine but abrasive Chinese fellow I co-trained with at Melbourne University when I started cross-cultural training in earnest. Not one for sugar-coating, Kaiyu. He regularly shared his observations about Australians with me, in a pointed, challenging way that was half-intended to inform and half-intended to provoke. He usually succeeded in doing both: once I'd got over my annoyance and reframed his insights in less abrasive terms, I usually found they were on the money.
It was Kaiyu who first pointed out to me that Australians invest a lot of importance in "being themselves" (genuine, sincere, down-to-earth, not "putting on an act"), unlike the more realistic Chinese, who embraced the fact that you have to play the part that fits your context. This ended up being one of the cornerstones of my Asian names workshop, because it does seem to underlie a fairly strong contrast between these cultures in terms of how they use names. Kaiyu also pointed out that Australians have a problem with being happy. Even though Australia is wealthy and politically stable and most of them have good lives, they seem to think that everything is terrible, and therefore anyone who's too happy is naive and annoying. By comparison, he said, lots of the Chinese are poor, and there are lots of problems with the government, yet the Chinese aren't scared to be happy and value happiness. Again, deliberately intended to stir, but fundamentally quite insightful.
Kaiyu's now something senior in a big marketing firm in Shanghai (where he moved with his Anglo-Australian wife and two kids). I saw him a couple of years ago when he came back to Melbourne to visit, and friended him on Facebook a few months ago. I told him how useful his insights had been, and he seemed surprised. After going off him completely towards the end of working with him (I was promoted over him and in his resentment he went from abrasive to quite nasty), I came back round to him. Despite his abrasive nature, or perhaps because of it, he's clever and invigorating company, and ultimately we do like and respect each other.
People from other English-speaking countries were particularly interesting interviewees. In my panicky quest to interview as many North American immigrants as I could before running training in the US n 2007 (utter minefield, that, because there are a lot of cultural differences between the US and Australia which are significant and politically dangerous if you're planning to run cross-cultural training designed for the latter in the former), one American guy talked at length about the Australian emotional flatness. "You guys just don't think it's OK to get excited about anything, except maybe football! You tell an American guy he's won a million bucks and he'll say Oh my God, this is just AMAZING! This is the Greatest Day Of My Life! Tell an Australian guy and he'll say Yeah, won't say no to that. Million bucks, y'know, it's better than a kick in the teeth. because to show he's excited just wouldn't be Down To Earth enough." To which I thought HA! He's definitely onto something there...
There's plenty more, but hopefully that's an acceptable answer, slemslempike, as I haven't eaten yet and have a teacher's handbook to write!
Today: slemslempike Is there anything you've learnt about others' views of Australian culture(s) from your work that you didn't know before?
Tues 10th December: sun__king Where would you take a 'Melbourne newbie' to show off your city (say, something to look at, something to climb up and somewhere to eat...)?
Sat 14th December: lnhammer Your thoughts on sheep, please?
Tues 17th December: splodgenoodles Question to be advised
Sat 21st December: glitzfrau Would you ever live somewhere that wasn't Australia?
Tues 24th December: Situation vacant
Sat 28th December: hnpcc Question to be advised (!)
New Year's Eve: Situation vacant
I find this quite hard to answer, to be honest! My understand of any culture (or indeed, any person) is a kind of clay sculpture, where the basic shape remains consistent, but every new impression refines the shape a little more. Occasionally something dramatic happens which drastically changes the shape, but not often, on either count, and the basic clay remains the same.
I did a lot of field research on Australian culture early on in my career, and during my PhD (in which I looked at ethnocentrism), and my main source of insight was others' views! The "others" being people who'd immigrated to Australia from somewhere else and been here long enough to know Australian culture from both inside and outside.
Lots of my early insights into Australian culture came from Kaiyu, the sanguine but abrasive Chinese fellow I co-trained with at Melbourne University when I started cross-cultural training in earnest. Not one for sugar-coating, Kaiyu. He regularly shared his observations about Australians with me, in a pointed, challenging way that was half-intended to inform and half-intended to provoke. He usually succeeded in doing both: once I'd got over my annoyance and reframed his insights in less abrasive terms, I usually found they were on the money.
It was Kaiyu who first pointed out to me that Australians invest a lot of importance in "being themselves" (genuine, sincere, down-to-earth, not "putting on an act"), unlike the more realistic Chinese, who embraced the fact that you have to play the part that fits your context. This ended up being one of the cornerstones of my Asian names workshop, because it does seem to underlie a fairly strong contrast between these cultures in terms of how they use names. Kaiyu also pointed out that Australians have a problem with being happy. Even though Australia is wealthy and politically stable and most of them have good lives, they seem to think that everything is terrible, and therefore anyone who's too happy is naive and annoying. By comparison, he said, lots of the Chinese are poor, and there are lots of problems with the government, yet the Chinese aren't scared to be happy and value happiness. Again, deliberately intended to stir, but fundamentally quite insightful.
Kaiyu's now something senior in a big marketing firm in Shanghai (where he moved with his Anglo-Australian wife and two kids). I saw him a couple of years ago when he came back to Melbourne to visit, and friended him on Facebook a few months ago. I told him how useful his insights had been, and he seemed surprised. After going off him completely towards the end of working with him (I was promoted over him and in his resentment he went from abrasive to quite nasty), I came back round to him. Despite his abrasive nature, or perhaps because of it, he's clever and invigorating company, and ultimately we do like and respect each other.
People from other English-speaking countries were particularly interesting interviewees. In my panicky quest to interview as many North American immigrants as I could before running training in the US n 2007 (utter minefield, that, because there are a lot of cultural differences between the US and Australia which are significant and politically dangerous if you're planning to run cross-cultural training designed for the latter in the former), one American guy talked at length about the Australian emotional flatness. "You guys just don't think it's OK to get excited about anything, except maybe football! You tell an American guy he's won a million bucks and he'll say Oh my God, this is just AMAZING! This is the Greatest Day Of My Life! Tell an Australian guy and he'll say Yeah, won't say no to that. Million bucks, y'know, it's better than a kick in the teeth. because to show he's excited just wouldn't be Down To Earth enough." To which I thought HA! He's definitely onto something there...
There's plenty more, but hopefully that's an acceptable answer, slemslempike, as I haven't eaten yet and have a teacher's handbook to write!