Understanding Culture by Llyod Kwest from Here's Life Inner City Staff Manual

Here is an excerpt from the document entitled "Understanding Culture" by Lloyd E. Kwest from the Here's Life Inner City new staff manuel section from the cross-cultural ministy unit.

"Here’s Life Inner City New Staff Training Manual

1page

by Lloyd E. Kwast

What is a culture, anyway? For the student just beginning the study of missionary anthropology, this question is often a first response to a confusing array of descriptions, definitions, comparisons, models, paradigms, etc. There is probably no more comprehensive word in the English language than the word "culture," or no more complex a field of study than cultural anthropology. Yet, a thorough understanding of the meaning of culture is prerequisite to any effective communication of God's good news to a different people group.

The most basic procedure in a study of culture is to become a master of one's own. Everyone has a culture. No one can ever divorce himself from his own culture. While it is true that anyone can grow to appreciate various different cultures, and even to communicate effectively in more than one, one can never rise above his own, or other cultures, to gain a truly supra-cultural perspective. For this reason, even the study of one's own culture is a difficult task. And to look objectively at something that is part of oneself so completely is nearly impossible.

One helpful method is to view a culture, visualizing several successive "layers," or levels of understanding, as one moves into the real heart of the culture. In doing so, the "man from Mars" technique is useful. In this exercise one simply imagines that a man from Mars has recently landed (via spaceship), and looks at things through the eyes of an alien space visitor.

The first thing that the newly arrived visitor would notice is the people's behavior. This is the outer, and most superficial, layer of what would be observed by an alien. What activities would he observe? What is being done? When walking into a classroom, our visitor may observe several interesting things. People are seen entering an enclosure through one or more openings. They distribute themselves throughout the room seemingly arbitrarily. Another person enters dressed quite differently than the rest, and moves quickly to an obviously prearranged position facing the others, and begins to speak. As all this is observed, the question might be asked, "Why are they in an enclosure? Why does the speaker dress differently?

Why are many people seated while one stands?" These are questions of meaning. might be interesting to ask some of the participants in the situation why they are doing things in a certain way. Some might offer one explanation; others might offer another. But some would probably shrug and say, "It's the way we do things here." This last response shows an important function of culture, to provide "the patterned way of doing things," as one group of missionary anthropologists defines it. You could call culture the "super-glue" which binds people together and gives them a sense of identity and continuity which is almost impenetrable. This identity is seen most obviously in the way things are done-behavior.

In observing the inhabitants, our alien begins to realize that many of the behaviors observed are apparently dictated by similar choices that people in the society have made. These choices inevitably reflect the issue of cultural culture. These issues always concern choices about what is "good," what is "beneficial,"or what is "best."" (this whole excrept is quoted from the Here's Life Inner City New Staff Manual)