"That's not me" - learning to cope with sensitive cultural issues

Our inability to know what we don't know can overshadow intercultural realities. We all carry 'cultural baggage' that is often invisible, can easily become weighty and must be dealt with, regardless of where we are in our globalizing environment. The more we realize how we talk about ourselves when talking about others, the more we begin to better understand ourselves and others. This insight helps us move beyond negative stereotyping of ourselves and others towards discovery of ourselves and others. Unmasking cultural self and others to move from uncomfortable 'that's not me' to confortable 'this is me' and 'that is you' is an intercultural challenge throughout the world. This book introduces an intercultural learning approach; drawing on examples from Austrian intercultural trauma, as well as from Finnish 'comfort with quietude' full of active silence often invisible to others' 'discomfort with silence'. Each case offers frames of reference for modified intercultural implementation. The approach described in this book is the result of more than a decade of intercultural collaboration found that they had much to learn and teach about their cultural backgrounds, and the observing-participant teachers discovered how to make use of students as rich cultural resources.