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Gaby (USA) about Cultural Clashes

Cultural clash is a very polemic issue. Almost everybody that changes country or even changes schools suffers of these typical conflicts. The thing is that people get used to the way of living that his or her environment provided and the people of the new place don’t accept that. Therefore, these people think that what the other does is strange or even not ethical and wrong. Traditions; history and values are then, a reason to laugh and make dirty jokes. People suffer a lot and don’t know what to do when passing trough clashes. They don’t know whether they keep their cultures and let people make fun of them, or forget their values and, because of peer pressure, listen to the “peers” and lose their real ideals. What people many times forget is that culture and history don’t define an individual. Even though a person might do “strange” things he or she is still a person and deserves respect. Culture changes in each case and everybody must think that it also can be the other way around. Maybe that person is thinking you are strange and unethical. Food, clothing, languages and skin color are not enough to be excused. Behind someone’s culture there is always something else called character. The purpose of this project is to find out what people think about cultural clashes and if they have suffered that in any moment of their lives. Some questions that could help them would be: What do you think is strange in other societies? If you were to move there do you think they would think YOUR way of doing things is strange? Do you know anyone in your community that suffered or is suffering cultural clashes? How so? What kind of things do you think would be a clash? Why is peer pressure so demanding?

Group Friesen (Jever, Germany)

Hello Gaby, we think that the emancipation of the woman is different in all societies. What we mean is, that the sexual equality isn`t given everywhere. There are many things which are different between societies, like the food, relation to the family and the way of life. In every society the people have other perceptions of "perfect" life. To the question if we believe that people in other countries think that our way of life is strange we can only say: OF COURSE! Our life is different than their life and their life is different than our life. We think that there are many things cause clashes, like the political opinion or the religion. We live in a small town so here aren`t living so many foreigners, also here are not so many clashes between cultures and so we can`t say so many about it because we have no experiences with it. Our opinion of the peer pressure is that it`s so demanding because humans have always lived in groups and so they are thinking that the behaviour and the opinion of the others is right and important. Questions: How is the role of the woman in your society? What is your opinion of our country? Do you have experiences with cultural clashes or discrimination?

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