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UNDERSTANDING OTHERS CULTURES

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The notion that if people would just get to know one another they would be friends and everything would be all right is as dan- gerous as it is sentimental. Getting to know people is a necessary prelude to understanding and respect, but such knowledge alone will not resolve our differences or insure our liking people whose ways are alien to us. Persons may know one another very well and yet be bitter rivals and equally bitter enemies. Nor does a common race, religion, language, nationality, or culture insure friendliness or good will as numerous civil wars, rebellions, and intergroup con- flicts attest. The sober truth is that different peoples must learn to get along together whether they like one another or not.

No matter how different other peoples may seem, their ways are not peculiar, unnatural, or incomprehensible. The more we know of other cultures the more evident it becomes that no society could hold together unless its patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting were reasonably systematic and coherent. The first principle of anthropology is that cultures must be studied as wholes, and no custom or belief can be properly understood unless seen in the con- text within which it operates. To understand other peoples, then, we must have some idea of what culture is and how it functions and some knowledge of the variety of ways in which different hu- man groups have gone about solving universal problems.

There was a time when an understanding of other peoples was important mainly to diplomats, military personnel, missionaries, and businessmen with overseas interests. Today, the various cultures of the world are everybody's business, and the behavior of almost any individual may have important ramifications in world affairs. People now take vacations in distant and formerly inaccessible places, and enormous numbers of Americans go abroad to live and work. Thousands of persons from other cultures come to this coun- try each year, many of them students who return home to become leaders in their own countries. The day-to-day experience of these persons with ordinary Americans is likely to determine whether we part with feelings of warmth or of animosity for one another.

This book is written primarily for the general reader who has background in anthropology. It is not intended as a formal te but I hope it will be useful as a dimension to means of adding a broader cultura beginning college courses in the social sciences, education, and related fields. I hope it may be useful also to public school teachers and others who have responsibility of helping to prepare the oncoming generation for planetary, if not interplanetary living.

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301.2 BRO u

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Statement of Responsibility

Ina Corinne Brown

Call Number

301.2 BRO u

Publisher

UNITED STATES : Prentice Hall., 1963

Collation

viii, 184 p. : ill ; 20cm.

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978-0139361616

Classification

301.2

Content Type

-

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology
Culture
Culture Anthrophology
Cultural Studies

Specific Detail Info

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