Speaking of Globalisation

Missionary mistakes in changing cultures

Among the Doni tribe, in Irian Jaya, men sleep in a long house and then each wife and little or unmarried children would have their own house. The men would plan their activities all together in the long house. Also men would not sleep with their wives during pregnancies or while the baby was breast-feeding. That's about 3 years of abstinence. Basically this was a form of community birth control.
Then some missionaries (not all) believed that the nuclear family was important, so they convinced the man to move in with their families. Then it all got awkward. There was not enough space, so there would be full grown daughters having to work out how to get changed while their father was in the house. The men did not get enough time to plan their activities so the communication in the village broke down. Women started having too many babies too closely together because the men couldn't help it when they had to be in the same house every night, and then the babies would die of starvation because there was not enough milk to go around... In the end, the men gave up and moved back into the long house.

10 traits that make cultures change

Taken from James Harrison's Culture Development Project - an analysis of cultures around the world and how they develop. He came up with 10 characteristics that were seen over and over again in cultures that developed faster.

• A culture that emphasizes the future and progress (time-oriented cultures) will progress faster than static cultures that focus on the present.
• Work ethic - cultures where work is central to living and rewards develop faster.
• Finances - cultures that save and invest for the future rather than spend and consume immediately (or try to distribute it to everybody immediately) will change faster.
• Education - when it is valued and viewed as a key to progress the culture will progress, if it is seen as of no value except to the elite, the culture will stagnate.
• Advancement - when people are advanced based on merit rather than connections.
• Community - where trust and identification extends beyond family (if you only trust in family and exploit everyone else you will not develop).
• Ethical code- progressive cultures have rigorous moral codes, static cultures have corruption as a way of life. 
• Justice and fair play- progressive cultures will have justice for all, static cultures only extend justice to intimate connections of friends and connections. Think of Paul under the Roman Empire claiming his citizenship after the beating from his jailor, giving immunity - what about all the other people who were beaten?
• Authority - in progressive cultures it is dispersed and horizontal vs static cultures have strong vertical authority and is hierarchical.
• Religion - Progressive cultures have less religious influence on civic life. (Personally I would debate that this depends on which religion since Christianity promotes all the other progressive traits).

Harrison concludes that culture is indeed either a hindrance or an asset for progress, but having shown that correlation he then proposes that responsible leadership by a country’s political representations must assume the duties of saving people from their own limitations.

Anxiety and Uncertainty Management Theory

Gudykunst' Anxiety and Uncertainty Management Theory (AUM). The greater the anxiety and unpredictability in meeting strangers, the worse your communication and cultural adaptation is. But too little anxiety (carelessness) or too much predictability (staying in your own bubble) also is bad. As missionaries in a foreign culture you need to find the happy middle between being overwhelmed and not risking enough.

An example of communication breaking down as anxiety rises.

Myths

Here's a Doni myth to explain why men and women have different jobs. This was an illustration for the point that cultures develop divisions of labour based on gender, physicality or necessity.

In the begin the 4 first people (two men, two women) saw the light of the sun from the inside of a hollow tree. They crawled out, saw the earth was good and so brought two dogs and two pigs up. Then they heard more people coming up the tree, but they decided they wanted to keep the earth to themselves so they plugged the hole with a rock.
At first, the men kept pigs and the women had the bows and arrows. Then the women met their first prey but when they went to pull back the bow, they were not strong enough,so their arrows did not fly far enough. So the men took the bow and arrows and they did hit their prey, so from then on, men hunted and women tended livestock.

Language fun

In looking at culture and language in missions, there have been some fun examples.
In the Doni language of Papua New Guinea, they greet people with scatological phrases.
Here's the literal translations and the meaning translations:

Literal: 'Let me eat your faeces'
Meaning: There is nothing bad about you, I will accept it all (isn't that sweet?)

Literal Male form: 'Let me grab you by the testicles' and Female form: 'Let me touch your vulva'
Meaning: You are safe with me even your most intimate parts.