Beyond Ethnocentrism (3) – Pursuing Peace Through Growth in Intercultural Sensitivity: Integration

“A new type of person whose orientation and view of the world profoundly transcends his indigenous culture is developing from the complex of social, political, economic, and educational interactions of our time.”

Peter Adler, quoted in Bennett, “Towards Ethnorelativism”

(I wonder why he didn’t also say “religious” interactions? But that’s another subject…)

According to Adler, the “multicultural person” is one whose “essential identity is inclusive of life patterns different from his own and who has psychologically and socially come to grips with a multiplicity of realities” (quoted in Bennett).

Bennett refers to such as person as having developed to the ethnorelative stage of Integration.

At the stage of Integration, a person has come to be culturally marginal, existing on the periphery of two or more cultures. One is no longer straightforwardly at home in his or her original culture, neither has s/he assimilated to a different culture. The “integrated person” is not particularly affiliated with any one culture, but “can function in relationship to cultures while staying outside the constraints of any particular one” (all subsequent quotes, unless noted, are from Bennett).

People at the stage of Integration are living in the realm of what Bennett calls “contextual evaluation” – i.e., behavior is determined to be appropriate or not depending on the context (he asks the questions, “Is it good to take off my clothes?” and “is it good to refer directly to a mistake made by yourself or someone else?” and answers both by, “It depends on the circumstances” or context), and have the ability to choose from a range of different cultural responses, to given situations.

“These people see their identities as including many cultural options, any of which can be exercised in any context, by choice. They are not so much bound by what is right for a given culture (although they are aware of that) as they are committed to using good judgment in choosing the best treatment of a particular situation. … They are conscious of themselves as choosers of alternatives…”

Bennett points out that marginality “describes exactly the subjective experience of people who are struggling with the total integration of ethnorelativism.”

“They are outside all cultural frames of reference by virtue of their ability to consciously raise any assumptions to a metalevel (level of self-reference). In other words, there is no natural cultural identity for a marginal person. There are no unquestioned assumptions, no intrinsically absolute right behaviors, nor any necessary reference group.”

For a personal example of what Bennett means, I enjoyed listening to the interactions of my daughter (a TCK who grew up in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon, and has also spent significant time in Jordan, besides attending University in the U.S.) with my brothers, all of them pastors or theologians. I would hear one of them make a statement about something (anything), including a phrase like, “the Bible says…” I would listen for my daughter’s response, and inevitably I would hear something like, “that’s one way of reading the Bible; but there are Christians who interpret that statement differently…” That, in a nutshell, is the perspective of a person who is living in the ethnorelative, marginal realm of Integration – they are always able to see things from different perspectives, and from outside of any one framework or cultural setting.

There are two possible phases of marginality, within Integration. At first, one might experience what he calls “encapsulated marginality,” “where the separation from culture is experienced as alienation,” and “constructive marginality,” “in which movements in and out of cultures are a necessary and positive part of one’s identity.” I have seen these two kinds of marginality with TCKs (third culture kids, i.e., people who grow up in a cultural setting that is different than their passport culture). For TCKs at the point of encapsulated marginality, the question, “where are you from?” may trigger an identity crisis – “I don’t know where I’m from; I don’t know who I am; I don’t know where I belong…” But for those who have developed to the point of constructive marginality, they may have come to have a positive sense of identity as a TCK – “I can go anywhere; I can adapt; I can fit in – I’m a TCK!”

Can we integrate difference?

Bennett concludes that “constructive marginality can be the most powerful position from which to exercise intercultural sensitivity,” and points out that “Cultural mediation could be accomplished best by someone who was not enmeshed in any reference group, yet who could construct each appropriate worldview as needed.”

Given the ever-“shrinking” world, with peoples traveling and migrating from and to just about everywhere, and given the levels of hostility and conflict (ethnic, national, religious, etc.) between different groups in the world today, there is a desperate need for people who have learned not only to adapt to cultural difference, but to internalize different cultural frames of reference and to live on the cultural margins. Such people can function as “bridge” people between different groups who are different, not just for mediating conflict (for which there is ample need), but also for mediating understanding and interaction.

The world needs more ethnorelative, interculturally sensitive peacemakers.

For more detail, see

Bennett, Milton J., “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity.” In Paige, R.M. (Ed). (1993) Education for the Intercultural Experience (2^nd ed., p. 21-71). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Bennett, Milton J., “Becoming Interculturally Competent.”  In Wurzel, Jaime S., ed., Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education (2nd ed., pp. 62-77). Newton, MA: Intercultural Resource Corporation, 2004.

Beyond Ethnocentrism (2) – Pursuing Peace Through Growth in Intercultural Sensitivity: Adaptation

“One of the ways people inevitably increase their awareness when learning about other cultures is to move from thinking ‘My way is the only way’ toward thinking ‘There are many valid ways’ of interpreting and participating in life. And the process involves more than changing your thinking; it also involves adjusting your behaviors.”

Brooks Peterson, Cultural Intelligence (emphasis mine)

“The essence of ethnorelativism is respect for the integrity of cultures, including one’s own. In acceptance, the framework for appreciating cultural difference was established. At this stage, adaptation, skills for relating to and communicating with people of other cultures are enhanced.”

Milton Bennett, Towards Ethnorelativism (emphasis mine)

As we spend more time living and interacting with people in another cultural context, we may experience growth from Acceptance into Bennett’s next phase of intercultural sensitivity, Adaptation.

Acceptance (the previous phase) may have to do mainly with a change in perspective and attitude toward cultural difference (seeing it more positively, realizing it is there, being curious about and respectful toward difference), with an initial behavioral dimension of taking action to discover, understand, and learn about difference. It is possible to grow in accepting cultural difference, without living deeply or constantly in the midst of difference.

To grow into the phase of Adaptation, though, we need to be living in the context of cultural difference, and developing the skills for effective adjustment. This adjustment is comprehensive, involving cognitive, affective, and behavioral change over time. Cognitively, one begins to understand and see the world from the perspective of the people in the other culture. Behaviorally, one learns to adapt to do things in a way that is appropriate in the other setting. Affectively, one’s emotions are impacted over time, as feelings associated with the new worldview and cultural practices, and the value judgments associated with them, are internalized.

For example, through our years in Tunisia, we learned how Tunisians do hospitality. When someone you know shows up at your door, you don’t stand and talk with them at the door (unless you are male and the visitor is female, or vice versa, and no one of the other gender is at home with you), but welcome the visitor in (to stand and talk in the doorway implies you don’t want the visitor in your home). You must serve something, at least something to drink, and probably at least some kind of snack, if not a meal. You do not ask, “would you like…?” because such a request will be politely refused. Rather, you simply bring out the drink(s) and food, and serve them up. If you are eating a meal, you insist your visitor join you. If it is near a meal time, you plan on the visitor staying and eating with you (and insist that they do). In the Tunisian setting, rather than “a man’s home is his castle,” the guiding motto is, “my home is your home.” Rather than the honored one being the guest being received, in Tunisia, it is the host who is honored by the visit (hosts will say to visitors, “we have been visited by blessing”). A different way of viewing the world, people, social interactions, hospitality…

After living for years in Tunisia, and adapting to the Tunisian way of doing hospitality, we were often (emotionally) uncomfortable in hospitality situations in the U.S. For example, we were at my family’s eating one evening, and a couple of visitors dropped by unexpectedly. They were invited in (they were a sister-in-law and her friend; if they had been less close, perhaps they would not have been invited in), but we sat and continued eating, while talking with them. No one even offered for them to join us. (The expectation, in the U.S. setting, was that they had “interrupted” us in our plan or schedule, and would not have expected plans to be adjusted for them.) The fact that we felt uncomfortable shows that we experience adaptation even at the affective level, over time.

Note that adaptation, in Bennett’s model, is not assimilation. You don’t give up your culture, but experience an extension of your cultural repertoire.

“In adaptation, new skills appropriate to a different worldview are acquired in an additive process. Maintenance of one’s original worldview is encouraged, so the adaptations necessary for effective communication in other cultures extend, rather than replace, one’s native skills. The key to this additive principle is the assumption that culture is a process, not a thing. One does not have culture; one engages in it.”

One of the key skills in Adaptation is the ability to “look through the others’ eyes,” to construct reality that is nearer to their reality. Bennett contrasts this “empathy,” with the “sympathy” of ethnocentrism.

Can we adapt to the different other?

“…I have contrasted empathy to ‘sympathy,’ where one attempts to understand another by imagining how one would feel in another’s position. Sympathy is ethnocentric in that its practice demands only a shift in assumed circumstance (position), not a shift in the frame of reference one brings to that circumstance; it is based on an assumption of similarity, implying other people will feel similar to one in similar circumstances. Empathy, by contrast, describes an attempt to understand by imagining or comprehending the other’s perspective. Empathy is ethnorelative in that it demands a shift in frame of reference; it is based on an assumption of difference, and implies respect for that difference and a readiness to give up temporarily one’s own worldview in order to imaginatively participate in the other’s.”

Adaptation takes time. And it changes us. As we live in another cultural setting, and adapt to the behavior, worldview, and even the value judgments and emotions accompanying sociocultural experience, we change. Even though this is not a process of assimilation, of exchanging our culture for the other, we become different people through the process. One author has called such people, “150% people.” And Bennett talks of becoming “marginal,” in the sense of becoming a person who is not straightforwardly “at home” in any cultural setting. When I returned to Minnesota after years in Tunisia (which used to be “home” but now no longer seems to be – for us know, “home” is wherever we are living), I could recognize my native culture, but I felt as if I was seeing it through different eyes. And indeed, I was. I had not become Tunisian, but I was no longer Minnesotan in the way I had been.

Would the cause of peace in the world be furthered, if more people entered into the world of different others, learning to deeply empathize, learning to see as they see, learning to understand how their behavior makes sense in its context, experiencing the fullness and richness of their life in all its dimensions? It seems that it would at least be a step in the right direction…  

For more detail, see

Bennett, Milton J., “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity.” In Paige, R.M. (Ed). (1993) Education for the Intercultural Experience (2^nd ed., p. 21-71). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Bennett, Milton J., “Becoming Interculturally Competent.”  In Wurzel, Jaime S., ed., Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education (2nd ed., pp. 62-77). Newton, MA: Intercultural Resource Corporation, 2004.

Beyond Ethnocentrism – Pursuing Peace Through Growth in Intercultural Sensitivity (1): Acceptance

“One of the ways people inevitably increase their awareness when learning about other cultures is to move from thinking ‘My way is the only way’ toward thinking ‘There are many valid ways’ of interpreting and participating in life.”

Brooks Peterson, Cultural Intelligence

In Bennett’s DMIS (Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity), growth toward a richer, fuller, more positive experience of cultural difference, i.e., growth in intercultural sensitivity, is marked by a transition from ethnocentrism (with stages of Denial – Defense – Minimization) to what he calls ethnorelativism (with stages of Acceptance – Adaptation – Integration).

This growth is characterized by a shift from the experience of one’s own beliefs and behaviors (culture, worldview) as “just the way things are,” to the experience of one’s own beliefs and behaviors as one organization of reality among many viable possibilities (i.e., one’s own culture is experienced in the context of other cultures) – as in the Brooks Peterson quote above. From being unknown, alien, absurd, threatening, insignificant, etc., the cultural difference of others becomes (or begins to become) known, real, comprehensible, respected, etc. This change involves a worldview shift – the world is seen and experienced differently, by a person who is becoming interculturally sensitive.

How do we respond to the "different other"?

The movement from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism is characterized by the development of cultural self-awareness, accompanied by a growing awareness of different others (i.e., of what makes others different, how they are different). (Note that in a different context, Stephen Covey points out that self-awareness is the key human gift, unlocking all other unique human potential, and that without self-awareness we cannot know others, because we treat them as if they were the same as us.)

Part of the growing awareness of others, and of cultural difference, involves beginning to see both the behavior and the values of people from other cultures, within a cultural context (i.e., as understandable within their cultural context).

“people begin to see alien behavior as indicative of profound cultural differences, not just as permutations of universal (and probably ethnocentric) laws”

“Alternative beliefs about both what exists in reality and the value which may be attached to those phenomena are respected as viable, at least as they are expressed in a cultural context.”

Milton Bennett, Towards Ethnorelativism (emphasis mine)

Movement out of ethnocentrism also involves questioning the universality of our experience, our models, our ways of doing things (be it in education, economics, politics, development, leadership, the way we do church life, or whatever realm). One way in which I experienced movement from the “minimization” stage of ethnocentrism, into a more ethnorelative approach, was in realizing that the apparent fact that Egyptians I knew did not seem to live according to Covey’s 7 Habits might not mean that Egyptians are not effective, but that the “7 Habits of Highly Effective Egyptians” are different than Covey’s 7 Habits (i.e., that Covey’s 7 Habits might not be universal). This seems obvious in hindsight, but the idea that a model which works for us is universally applicable, has a powerful force which is hard to escape.  Once we become more aware of the reality of cultural difference, anyone’s claim to have a “universal” model, approach, or solution, should cause us to see red flags and hear alarm bells.

Moving into Ethnorelativism: Acceptance

The first stage in the ethnorelative experience of cultural difference, in Bennett’s model, is Acceptance. Acceptance is characterized by curiosity about cultural difference, and a growing respect for difference. As one moves into Acceptance, s/he does not necessarily have a deep understanding of the difference which exists, but there is at least a realization that there is difference to be discovered, accompanied by a positive attitude toward exploring and discovering the difference.

Acceptance (in my words) involves…

• letting go of the idea that reality is simply the way we “know” it to be
• relating to people as they are, rather than as we would like them to be (or according to our image of them)
• wanting to know people (i.e., in the reality and fullness of who they are)
• not trying to change others, to be different or to be like us (which is the tendency of an ethnocentric experience of others)
• accepting others as being as fully human (and as fully complex) as we ourselves are
• being open to difference, and open to change (for we cannot grow in accepting others, without ourselves changing)
• being open to the fact that “what works for us” might not work for others, i.e., that “what works for us” might not be “universal”

If conflict in the world can be seen as being caused to some extent by the various manifestations of ethnocentrism (see my previous posts, on how ethnocentrism hinders peace), would growth into what Bennett calls ethnorelativism, have a positive impact for peace? Or to put it another way, would people who are accepting of others who are different, more likely to live in peace with those different others, than those who are denying, defensive toward, or minimizing difference (Bennett's three ethnocentric stages)? If we are serious about pursuing peace, should we be motivated to grow beyond ethnocentrism, into Bennett's stage of Acceptance, and beyond?

I’ll let you answer that one yourself…

Coming soon… Beyond Ethnocentrism (2): Adaptation

*For full treatment of Bennett’s model, see

Bennett, Milton J., “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity.” In Paige, R.M. (Ed). (1993) Education for the Intercultural Experience (2^nd ed., p. 21-71). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Bennett, Milton J., “Becoming Interculturally Competent.”  In Wurzel, Jaime S., ed., Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education (2nd ed., pp. 62-77). Newton, MA: Intercultural Resource Corporation, 2004.

Might penitance help with peace?

On a couple of occasions in Minnesota, I’ve had the privilege of hearing Pastor Jin Kim of The Church of All Nations (www.cando.org).  One of his phrases especially caught my attention.

He was decrying denominationalism, and the process of splitting off from other Christian groups because of thinking they are wrong or we are better, thinking and acting as if we have the “best” and sure-to-succeed brand of Christianity. As opposed to this triumphalism, he presented the idea of being what he called “penitently Presbyterian.” Being “penitently Presbyterian,” to him, means recognizing that that is his identity (his people), and that it wouldn’t help the unity of Christians to break off in protest against whatever is wrong in Presbyterianism, to start another “better” or more “pure” church. It means admitting that there are plenty of things wrong with the Presbyterian church (and with Presbyterians), to be repentant, and to seek change for the better. And it means relating well to other Christian denominations.

It strikes me that this attitude can be powerfully applied to just about any group or category that I am part of. Can I, for example, be “penitently Christian” in relation to those of other religions? Recognizing that I am “Christian,” but not relating to others in a way that puts them down, minimizes their humanity, acts as if I (we) have a corner on the truth? (This raises an issue that is a core religious issue, that of truth claims, which I will leave for another time; but in being “penitently Christian,” I mean, for example, that we should not persecute and mistreat others for not being Christian - something which happens far too often when Christians are triumphalist.)

Can I, likewise, be “penitently American” in relation to people of other nationalities? My experience would indicate that people of other nationalities like individual Americans well enough, but very much dislike when we act as if everything American is the best, as if we own the world, as if we can fix (or even understand) everyone’s problems, etc. (i.e., when we are triumphally American). Is it possible to be a different kind of American, aware that I don’t have all the answers (or even know what the problems are), that my country has both good and bad, and that I have a lot to learn from everyone else I encounter?

Those two categories (Christian and American) resonate the most with me, due to my experiences of the past 25-plus years living in the Middle East. But one can easily find other applications (for example, being “penitently male,” in relation to women). And I see a definite connection to the movement from ethnocentrism (seeing my people, my group, as the center and pinnacle, and everyone else as a lesser kind of human being) to ethnorelativism (or ethnosensitivity), experiencing myself / ourselves as one among many, and others as every bit as real and significant as myself / ourselves, and in fact, people (those others) that I can learn and benefit from, if only I will be open.

Nationalism, by the way, is clearly rooted in triumphalism. And if one considers the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (or any other intransigent conflict between different peoples), one always finds a stronghold of national, ethnic, and/or religious triumphalism (again, this reflects the “defense” or “polarization” stage of Bennett’s DMIS). For peacemaking (which requires healthy coexistence and interconnection based on mutual respect as human beings), being “penitent” is essential for all parties.