What is culture?

Culture is that part of our behavior and beliefs that we generally share with our peers, but which often remains invisible to us. Our own culture becomes visible only when we encounter a person with somewhat different cultural values, or when we try to understand the product of these values such as art or media made by people from cultures different than ourselves. In this case we may either not understand what we are seeing, or we may misinterpret it through the filter of our own culture. But, as we begin to understand the way others think and behave, our self-awareness grows through comparison, and we can reflect more deeply about our own culture and about ourselves. Acquiring such knowledge is the central purpose of this project.

There are many ways to gain knowledge of other cultures. To some degree we can learn through books and films that describe and depict different cultures' values and behaviors. Anthropologists write highly descriptive studies of different cultures called ethnographies, and reading such texts is one way to learn about the world. Visual anthropologists take photographs, and make movies and videotapes of the people and places that they study, and these audio/visual materials can help us to see what such contexts look and sound like, and to understand the ways in which we are different from (and sometimes the same as) other peoples.

Traveling is another way to experience the world in a very direct way. However, many people travel within such limited, touristic routes that they may not encounter much cultural difference at all! Nevertheless, putting oneself into an environment away from home can always open one's eyes to other possibilities. The key is to be open to the differences one finds by engaging them on their own terms - not at arm's length from the windows of a tour bus - but up close, where there can be real interaction.

It is not always possible to travel or to meet people from other parts of the world, and the travel books, ethnographies and ethnographic films that we can view have no interactive element, limiting their ability to place us into the worlds they attempt to describe. For this reason, in this project, we are undertaking an experiment where we will make contact with another group of students, living in another country and culture, in a way that we hope will be interactive enough, that both groups will truly be able to experience the world of their partners far away, and thereby learn more about the world and themselves.