Who on Earth are we 7（在线收听）

Callum: Hello and welcome to the eighth programme in our series ‘Who on Earth are we.’ In the last programme Marc Beeby began an investigation into the differences between cultures where the individual is seen as central – individualist cultures – and those where the group is the most important unit – collectivist cultures. Today he looks at more of these differences but to begin, here’s Rebecca Fong a teacher of inter-cultural communication at the University of the West of England, with a summary of some of the main points we heard last time.

Rebecca Fong

What does it mean to be individualist or collectivist? We've seen that within individualist societies there's a social pattern of people being linked very loosely - people are independent in these kinds of societies, whereas in collectivist societies they tend to be a lot more interdependent - dependent on one another. In general individuals in individualistic cultures value autonomy（自治） and their personal goals, as we’ve said, take precedence over group goals, and their personal emotions, their personal happiness are very important. In the collectivist societies the group goals are more important - the norms（规范）, the duties, the obligations of the group are very, very important and these are the things which people are expected to behave in accordance with.

Marc: Rebecca Fong, summarizing some of the main points from our last programme on individualist and collectivist cultures. Last time, we also heard that it’s very important to remember that cultures are not simply ‘individualist’ or ‘collectivist’. Rather, cultures tend to have either more individualist – or more collectivist – characteristics. So, where does your culture fit on the scale between extreme individualism and extreme collectivism? To help you decide, Rebecca Fong guides us through some more of the main differences between

the two, with help and comments from a group of people from around the world. Rebecca begins with the things people value…

Rebecca Fong

Some of the values that are upheld （支持）by individualist societies are individual freedom and choice, self-sufficiency, equality. And these tend to be associated with things like education and affluence （富裕）and social and geographic mobility. (可动性，变动性)

Devon Krohn

I was brought up just outside London, and when I was 18 I went to university and I moved away from home and part of the reason why I chose Exeter University which is where I went was because it was a good distance away from home and that in our society that is part of the point of going to university. So I left home at 18 and I was out of university and qualified by the age of 22 and when I went to teach in Germany there were lots of surprised faces that I was a teacher at the age of 22.

Rebecca Fong

Individualist societies tend to be more modern - people as a function of education have become more socially mobile and more geographically mobile as well and the emphasis is perhaps a bit more on personal achievement, the affluence that comes with that, much more than on family values or group spirituality（精神性）.

James Keegan

In a society where you don’t have the hierarchies（分层） of royalty and structures of that kind, you actually do seem to produce another substitute. And that substitute is wealth and possessions. In the United States, a great deal of value is placed on how you present yourself, what you have achieved.

Rebecca Fong

Collectivist cultures on the other hand uphold tradition to a much greater extent. Security is very important, and good social relationships are very important. And often religion and a belief in the cycles of nature is important.

Rajni Badlani

Religion is extremely important in India even today, even among the very well educated. People go to temples, keep fasts and do it with a lot of faith. When we read that Christianity is now coming back to the West we feel quite happy and smug about the fact look, you know, we never gave up our religion. We do ape the West – that’s one thing that has come about again due to the media, TV etc - but where religion is concerned we stuck to our own traditions. We just said 'Well in the West if they don't practise religion well then they are a materialistic lot -I mean that's our stereotype of the West - only interested in making money, not spiritual - so we are now surprised that they are going back to religion - which we always had in out country.

Rebecca Fong

Hierarchy comes with this - the importance of seniority the importance of respect for elders in a society or in a system.

George Zhang

In Chinese situation, the importance is about order -that means actually the hierarchy （等级制度）- age plays a great importance so the older people or the older generation are supposed to look after the young to be responsible for bringing them up and also in an appropriate manner and when the younger generation grows up obviously they are supposed to look after the old. So in this culture age always carries a sort of respect. The Confucius idea is that we need this hierarchy structure but it doesn't just go one way - the older ones have obligations to meet as well. So in Chinese culture you find that the older people stay or live together with their children. Obviously, with the rise of this kind of nuclear family this is disappearing however you probably still find that there are far more older people living with their children in China than probably compared in the West.

Annabel Port

I think there's a huge problem with loneliness（孤独，寂寞） for old people in Britain. As soon as they reach a certain age where they can't work anymore they often get shoved off into old people's homes and we're generally quite selfish and don't want to have to worry ourselves looking after an elderly person in the home. I think that's very sad really.

Rebecca Fong

Individualists value privacy. They can have it whenever they want more or less, they can choose it and so it's a very important thing. Personal space is talked about a lot. But personal space doesn't really exist so much in the collectivist society. People learn to live within their groups and they actually find privacy quite frightening. If you are a business person and you go to China on business for example, you might find that from the moment you arrive at the airport until the end of your visit, every half hour is written down and scheduled, you are never left alone. This can be quite claustrophobic（恐怖的） for people from individualist cultures. But collectivists believe that it's polite to be hospitable（好客的） to take you into the group and to look after you for the duration of your stay and therefore you will find yourself with very little privacy during your time there.

Mounia el Kouche

I go to Morocco practically every year. I go there, I see my family and straightaway I get this overwhelming feeling of relatives who are fussing（大惊小怪） over you, cooking dinner, visiting you, giving you presents and asking you so many questions about your life about what’s been happening in the past year, did you succeed in your studies? What’s been going on? Almost the whole holiday you're entertained, so to speak. One day you’re going here to visit these relatives, the next day you’re driving 50km to another town to see more relatives and cousins and aunties and uncles. Every single year there’s something going on. One cousin had a baby, another’s getting married so there’s parties, there’s weddings. It’s an absolutely crazy atmosphere.

Rebecca Fong

In individualist societies people believe themselves to be in charge of their own fate in charge of their own lives and they want also to be in charge of their own love matches and love relationships - so it's up to them who they fall in love with and who they marry. And they can choose to end relationships. Collectivists, on the other hand, often, but not always, have some social obligations as to getting married in the first place - usually they are expected to get married whereas the individualist has more of a choice about whether to marry or not.

Kyung-ja Yoo

Ideal marriage in Japan - for our generation anyway had been you quit your job as soon as you get married and then once you get married you are supposed to have children. In Japan you really don't have individual privacy. My situation was I got married quite young, as soon as I finished university. Otherwise you are not allowed to go out with boys! So you had to get engaged and once you're engaged people start asking when is the wedding, when is the wedding - so you are rushed into the wedding and then after the wedding you are supposed to have children and the people start asking you 'when you get pregnant -you are not pregnant yet?' So somehow you are pressurised you have to prove you can get pregnant!

Rebecca Fong

Not only is a collectivist often expected to get married, but sometimes other people in the in-group - the family or the extended family - will have a hand in who they marry and they may find that they are marrying someone who they don't know very well and who they'll fall in love with later perhaps or - if not -who they will establish a good working relationship with, let's say, and build a family and continue the line and so on. This can seem very strange indeed to people from individualist cultures.

Marc: Rebecca Fong, ending our survey of some of the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures. You also heard from Devon Krohn and Annabel Port from Britain, Dr Rajni Badlani from India, Dr George Zhang from China, Mounia el Kouche from Morocco, Kyung-ja Yoo from Japan and Professor James Keegan in North America.

A final thought before we leave this topic. Many of the people we’ve heard from over the last two programmes have said that ‘things are changing’. In particular we’ve heard people say they believe that ‘the modern world’, or ‘the West’ is influencing collective cultures. A possible reason for this - and a vision of a possible future comes from the United States of America. Professor James Keegan:

The USA is the provider of most of our media output in terms of films, television shows and so on. So the rest of the world is much more aware of American customs, American styles, American norms, values, ways of doing things than America is aware of the rest of the world. As we move towards a much more globalised society then we’re going to have much more of an approach to what is seen as the dominant type（支配型） of behaviour in order to achieve as an individual. And as a consequence, the model which is very well exported and seen all over the world, is the American way of life.

Marc: Professor James Keegan. Well, what do you think? Are collective societies really following a North American model and becoming more individualist? Perhaps it’s just that, as the world gets smaller, we adopt some of the things we like from the cultures that we come into contact with and adapt them to our own cultural situation On the other hand, is it possible that some cultures are beginning to react against what Professor Keegan describes as what is seen as ‘the dominant style of behaviour, the American way of life’? Difficult questions, but something to think about until our next programme. When I hope you’ll join me. (本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)