Two colleagues sit in the same meeting. They hear the same presentation, follow the same discussion and afterwards leave the same room. On the way to the coffee machine one says: “That was a clear decision.” The other looks surprised: “Interesting. I thought we were still collecting ideas.” Who is right? Probably both. This is exactly where the question begins that ethnology has been dealing with for over a hundred years: How does our understanding of the world come about? Why does a situation seem unambiguous to one person while remaining open to another? And what does all this have to do with culture?

When people hear the word culture, many first think of countries, languages, traditions or holidays. Of German punctuality, Italian food or Japanese politeness. Culture then appears like a collection of characteristics that can be attributed to certain nations or groups. Practical, clear, quickly explained. Unfortunately also rather inaccurate. From an ethnological perspective, culture is far more than origin, language or tradition. We encounter it not only when travelling or in situations we label as “intercultural”. Culture accompanies us every day: in meetings, feedback conversations, family routines, decision-making processes, conflicts, break rooms and email threads. It shows in what we consider polite, when we find disagreement appropriate, how directly we communicate, whom we trust, what we experience as professional and what kind of collaboration seems self-evident to us. Culture is therefore not only something that “others” have. Culture concerns us all. A well-known metaphor describes culture as an iceberg. Visible are language, food, clothing, symbols or rituals. They form the tip of the iceberg and often shape our idea of what culture is. The far larger part, however, remains hidden below the surface: ideas of respect, belonging, responsibility, authority, time, trust or good collaboration. It is precisely these less visible dimensions that often decide how people understand and evaluate situations. The crucial thing is: these things rarely feel cultural. They simply feel normal to us. And that is exactly where their power lies.

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz described culture as a “self-spun web of meaning” in which people are embedded. Culture is therefore not a possession and not a fixed characteristic of individuals. Rather, it is a web of meanings, interpretations and patterns of orientation through which people make their world intelligible. This perspective fundamentally changes the view. Culture is then no longer something people have, but something people do. It arises in relationships, conversations, routines, conflicts and negotiations. It shows in how people interpret situations and what meaning they attribute to their own actions and the actions of others. What we perceive as normal, polite, efficient or appropriate often seems self-evident to us because we have learned to understand situations in a certain way. Culture does not provide fixed instructions for action. It works more like a repertoire of interpretive offers. It influences what we pay attention to, what we expect and what meaning we attribute to other people’s behavior.

That is precisely why culture is not a characteristic of origin. People can rarely be reduced to a single belonging. A young apprentice from Saarbrücken may share more in common with a peer from Nairobi than with her own grandfather. A manager and an employee of the same company can evaluate the same situation completely differently. And two people from the same country can talk magnificently past each other in a meeting. From an ethnological perspective it is therefore less interesting where people come from than how they understand situations and what meanings they attribute to them. This question becomes especially exciting when we look at our own perception. Many people assume they judge situations largely objectively. Research, however, paints a different picture. Our brain processes an enormous amount of information every day. To remain able to act, we fall back on experiences, routines and simplifications. They help us find orientation, but at the same time they influence what we see, whom we believe and which interpretations seem plausible to us.

A well-researched mechanism is the so-called affinity bias. It describes the tendency to evaluate people more positively who seem similar to us. This can concern language, education, communication style, interests, life paths or professional experience. People who seem familiar to us often appear more competent, more likeable or more trustworthy. Not necessarily because they objectively are, but because they fit better into our expectations. This is not a moral failure. It is human. But precisely because it is human, it requires reflection. The hope of perceiving the world as objectively as possible is understandable. It cannot be fully realized. We do not look at the world from nowhere. We always look from somewhere. That is exactly why self-reflection is not a luxury for people with too much time, but a prerequisite for understanding. The difficult thing about culture is that we usually only notice it when something does not go as expected. As long as communication works, decisions seem comprehensible and other people behave as we expect, culture remains largely invisible. It forms the background of our actions. Only in moments of irritation does it come to the fore.

The anthropologist Michael Agar coined the term rich point for such situations. What is meant are moments in which our usual expectations do not work out. Perhaps a colleague leaves a meeting with a completely different understanding of the agreement discussed. Perhaps a feedback conversation is received differently than intended. Perhaps a reaction seems incomprehensible at first glance. Or someone says that wonderful sentence that has already triggered many an escalation in organizations: “But that was clear.” Maybe it was. For one person. Anyone who has ever thought: “How can you understand it that way?” or “Why does this person react like that?” has probably already encountered such a rich point. For Agar, these moments are not disruptions that should be eliminated as quickly as possible. On the contrary: they offer the chance to question our own assumptions and discover new perspectives. From an ethnological point of view, irritations are therefore especially valuable. They make visible that our understanding of the world is not without alternatives. What seems self-evident to us does not have to be self-evident to others. And what seems illogical to us at first can make perfect sense from another perspective.

But culture is not only a question of individual perception. It is also connected with power, belonging and social order. In every organization and in every society there are ideas about what counts as professional, competent or appropriate. These ideas often appear neutral. In fact they have grown historically, been socially rehearsed and institutionally stabilized. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu described such things we take for granted as part of our habitus: patterns of thinking, perceiving and acting that structure our behavior without our constantly reflecting on them consciously. The habitus is not a prison. People are not puppets of their origin, class or organization. But it makes it understandable why certain manners, tastes, ways of communicating or forms of appearance count as appropriate in some contexts and not in others. As a result, certain perspectives become more visible and more connectable than others. People whose ways of communicating, experiences or life paths correspond more strongly to established expectations often move more easily through organizations. Others have to perform additional translation, adaptation or explanation work in order to be heard, understood or taken seriously. This does not necessarily mean deliberate disadvantage. But it shows that not all people participate in social and organizational processes under the same conditions. What counts as “professional demeanor” for some can be a hard-to-access, unspoken rule of the game for others. And unspoken rules of the game are especially effective because they are rarely recognized as rules.

That is precisely why it is not enough to understand culture as knowledge about other people. Many classic intercultural trainings focus on questions such as: How do people communicate in country X? What should you pay attention to in business meetings in country Y? What particularities apply in region Z? Such knowledge can be helpful in certain situations. Of course it is not irrelevant where people work, live or which social conventions are relevant in certain contexts. The hope behind it is understandable: if we only know enough about “the others”, misunderstandings will eventually disappear on their own. The bad news is: unfortunately it is not that simple. Anyone who has ever tried to understand people on the basis of a list of cultural characteristics knows the problem. Reality surprisingly rarely sticks to our categories. People are usually far more complex than the boxes into which we would like to sort them. And boxes have the unpleasant property that it is hard to let people breathe in them. The decisive question is therefore not: “What are the others like?” But: “Why might this situation appear different to others than to me?” With this question the perspective changes fundamentally. The focus shifts from the search for characteristics of other people toward reflecting on our own assumptions. Cultural competence therefore does not begin with collecting answers about others. It begins with the ability to question your own point of view. What expectations do I bring into a situation? What do I take for granted? What kind of communication seems trustworthy to me? To whom do I attribute competence? When do I evaluate behavior as respectful, distant, insecure or unprofessional? And where do I forget that my perception, too, is a perspective? Such questions are not always comfortable. But they are productive.

The anthropologist Paul Bohannan captured this ethnological attitude in the title of his book “Fast nichts Menschliches ist mir fremd” (almost nothing human is foreign to me). Looking at other ways of life not only broadens our understanding of other people. It also changes the view of ourselves. This is exactly where the particular strength of ethnological thinking lies: it makes our own world in need of explanation. Perhaps this is also where the real meaning of cultural competence lies. Not in collecting as many answers about other people as possible. But in being enabled to ask better questions. How do others understand the world? Which assumptions do I take for granted? Which perspectives are easily heard in my environment – and which first have to make themselves heard with effort? What can I learn if I regard my own point of view not as a benchmark but as a starting point? Cultural competence begins where curiosity becomes stronger than certainty. Where we do not judge immediately, but first want to understand. And where we recognize that shifting perspective is not a nice additional qualification, but a central competence for collaboration, leadership and living together in society.

Culture is therefore not the answer to the question of where someone comes from. Culture is an invitation to look more closely: how people create meaning, how things we take for granted arise, how power and belonging work – and how understanding becomes possible without smoothing over differences. That is exactly where cultural competence begins. And that is exactly where GLUE begins.

Text: Dr. Lisa Johnson

Further reading

Banaji, M. R. & Greenwald, A. G. (2013): Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.

Bohannan, Paul (2002): Fast nichts Menschliches ist mir fremd: Wie wir von anderen Kulturen lernen können. Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1984): Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.

Geertz, Clifford (1973): The Interpretation of Cultures.

Agar, Michael (1994): Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation.