Pseudo cultural experience does not build cultural intelligence

Pseudo-cultural experiences do not build cultural intelligence, and may give a false sense of assurance.

As I meet people in Chicago I’m amazed how many have foreign travel experience. Europe, South America, Asia and more - I used to think world traveler was a unique title of mine. With international travel comes cultural experience, or so I thought. I was wrong.

A trip to Cancun offers a poignant example. I had hopes of interacting with Yucatan people, eating local street food, and maybe even getting lost for a bit. I harbored secret desire to see my grandparents, who have been cut off from other cultures for decades, expand their perspective of Mexican peoples. Instead, the resort appeared to shield us from any local culture. With customers from all over the world, every part of the trip was ‘internationalized’ as Angel and Gregory describe ({cabrera-global}, loc. 784).

Any business person who aspires to develop a multicultural company must beware of pseudo-culture. Countries visited is not a sign of cultural intelligence in itself. Exposure to, but not immersion in, a culture can provide a false sense of assurance. “I understand what these people need,” one may think after a short visit to a third-world country. This was the case of Nicholas Negroponte, who concluded South American children were deprived of technology access and sought to transplant a North American model into their culture ({cabrera-global}, loc 488).

As I begin to perform interviews, this insight strikes me as an important factor when approaching potential interviewees. I’m inclined to interview those I understand, whose culture and values do not clash much with my own. In this way I’m still on the Cancun resort, nursing my new Spanish vocabulary and oblivious to the common needs of local people. Instead I want to make the most of the twenty-seven interviews by selecting a diverse crowd of people. I want to hear, not only from those I might understand-Christians, Westerners, etc.-but also those who differ in significant ways. While I’m currently tired of travel and out of payed-time-off (PTO), there are many opportunities in Chicago to interview people that are not like me much at all.

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