ATA4

Assignment 4 gave me the opportunity to analyze media and advertisements in American culture.  Through the process of searching through American advertisements, I realized how dominated they were by gender norms.  This realization became even more relevant when contrasting the American advertisements to Swedish advertisements.  The Swedish ads were overall much more inclusive and promoted diverse expressions of gender.  This assignment made me realize how rigid America can be in its expression of gender.  This realization reminded me of an assignment from earlier in this course.  The assignment was a part of the Module 4 “Items to Archive” task in which we compared our own country and another country’s scores on Hofstede’s Values Dimensions.  This assignment revealed how America scored very high on Hofstede’s dimension of “Masculinity”, which means we value traditional masculine traits such as competitiveness and assertiveness.  This value may explain why our advertisements like to portray the typical “masculine” image for men.  On the other hand, Sweden scores very low on masculinity at only a 5 on the scale.  This explains how Sweden appreciates more feminine values such as emotional expression.  These values could be directly observed in the Swedish ads depicting men.

I enjoyed this assignment because it brought to light how media and marketing can impact a countries expression and conformities to gender norms.  I have personally always seen very rigid examples of female gender norms in American advertisement, and I found it very liberating to see a woman portrayed in such a strong role in the Swedish ad.  While I can see certain instances of American advertisements branching into more diverse expressions of gender norms, it seems we still have a long way to go before we reach Sweden’s level.  I chose the picture above to accompany this reflection as I feel that it is relevant to my hopes for American culture: to break the traditional and rigid gender norms we currently abide by.

ATA3

Assignment 3 was focused on identifying a specific component of a culture through the blog posts of an American study abroad student.  The student I chose was participating in a full-immersion study abroad opportunity in Nantes, France.  I chose this student because French culture has been of interest to me since taking French classes in college.  My French professor was born and raised in France and she shared many interesting anecdotes about the French culture and her hometown.

This assignment relates to something I learned when I took Spanish in high school.  My Spanish teacher explained how in Spain, using certain hand symbols that we use in America can be considered offensive.  The example she used was the common “horns” symbol that a few students often used for photos.  This gesture is made by making a fist and putting up the pinky and pointer fingers, and occasionally the thumb.  My teacher informed us that, in Spain, this hand gesture meant that you were referring to someone as an adulterer.  This knowledge was one of the first instances of learning about culture shock that I experienced.

This assignment was an awesome opportunity to experience a new culture through the lens of another college aged American.  I felt that I could relate to the student’s feelings as she navigated the culture shock of living in a new country and adapted to the new norms of the culture.  This assignment reminded me of my own exploration into a new culture when I had planned to travel to Scandinavia.  Unfortunately, my trip ended up being cancelled due to Covid.  Before the cancellation, my sisters and I spent a lot of time studying the different cultures of Scandinavia and interacting with our Swedish and Norwegian pen pals in an attempt to prepare for the culture shock of staying in a new country.  I chose the image above which depicts how some cultural differences may affect interactions with others from other cultures.

ATA2

After reading Kohl’s article and completing assignment 2, I feel I gained a lot of insight into the different values within my own culture.  The article was eye-opening in the way it described American values that I personally hold and wasn’t even aware that I did.  It made me realize that, while I may consider some values to be more important to me, there are many values that I hold and enforce subconsciously that I am unaware of.  The value I chose to write about in assignment 2 was informality.  This one stuck out to me the most because I would have never thought to consider the extent of informality that Americans have as a cultural value.  After reading the article, it made me realize that we do expect informality at a much higher rate than other cultures.  It allowed me to recall instances where informality was questioned by friends/family/peers from other cultures.

This assignment made me think of Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind.  Freud believed that a good majority of human behavior was associated with motives from the unconscious mind.  Similarly, this assignment made me realize that I could exhibit a value which I did not consciously know I was contributing to.  This assignment was personally relevant to me because the concept of informality has come up at several different occasions in my life.  I was able to use my real-life examples with addressing informality with people from other cultures, as well as use the insight I gained in this assignment towards my future career in counseling.

I chose the picture of the iceberg to represent Freud’s unconscious mind theory to accompany this assignment takeaway.  I chose this picture because I feel like it helps me to visualize and conceptualize how much of human behavior may be influenced by unconscious motives.  In the same way that informality existed as a value for me that I was unaware of, I believe there are many concepts/beliefs/values that every person may have and enforce that they are not consciously aware of.

ATA1

For the first assignment in this class, the objective was to read through Dr. Bennet’s article “A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”.  The article outlined different stages of intercultural sensitivity and included the reasoning behind why a person may be in this stage as well as a course of action for improving the persons level of intercultural sensitivity.  The stages included Denial, Defense, Minimization, Acceptance, Adaption, and Integration.   Our task with this assignment was to think critically and assess our own level of intercultural sensitivity in order to place ourselves within one of the six stages.

This assignment forced me to look inward and critically evaluate my own thoughts and feelings towards culture.  It helped me to identify things to work on, but it also helped me to recognize how far I have come in terms of developing my intercultural sensitivity.  This assignment was personally relevant to me as it helped me identify the evolution of my intercultural sensitivity.  It allowed me to understand why I used to be in the Minimization stage and how education and awareness have helped bring me closer to the Acceptance stage.  This assignment also helped me understand content in another class, Diversity Issues, that I am currently taking.  The way the article broke down the stages, specifically the Denial and Defense stages, helped me to understand how privilege and those in standard groups can justify harsh treatment of other diverse groups.  I chose the picture above to accompany this Assignment Takeaway because the main message I felt I learned from this assignment is to appreciate how culture is unique and the variations and diversity in culture are what makes the world dynamic and beautiful.