Cultures: what makes them work?

This is the first step in acquiring the skill to understand any culture. The other steps are culture-specific: read and learn all you can about the 'target' culture, visit the area concerned (a culture is not confined by definition to a 'nation'), learn the language, 'live' the culture.

The shortest and one of the best definitions of culture was coined by Edward Hall, the American anthropologist: 'culture is a system for creating, sending, storing and processing information'. Another eminent cultural researcher, the Dutchman Geert Hofstede, speaks of 'software of the mind'. Both use computer language to describe culture: it is a form of mental programming that starts at birth - or arguably before - and continues through life.

Fairly early on in the process, the individual acquires programmed concepts from his or her environment about people from other cultures. These stereotypes deserve to be challenged - they only tell part of the truth and, quite often, can be injurious - but should not be dismissed out of hand. Some of these stereotypes are politically or artistically inspired. But most of them are the product of folk wisdom, the result of many generations of mutual observation. In fact stereotypes help people cope with the complexities of life.

Researchers look for reliable ways of measuring cultures, but these do not lend themselves to scientific measurement. The only means available is observation - ours and that of other people. Attitude research can collect and collate the perceptions of hundreds of thousands of people about culture - their own and those of others - but they are still only perceptions.

Multiplication may reduce the margin of error and minimise the individual subjectivity, but the truth is that the more people you ask, the more silly answers you are likely to get. Researchers bear a grave responsibility for not explaining the irrational responses they get and for not stressing that they are still, after all, only dealing with perceptions and not with reality...

Culture is not based on logic. As the American author Kurt Vonnegut points out, "A first-grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society." Amen!

In the process of studying cultures, I have stumbled across three points of principle:

1.    There are no national cultures. Nations - the artificial by-products of power struggles, dynastic marriages and pure happenstance - are comprised of various regional cultures. Many cultures transcend frontiers.

2.    Genetics has nothing to do with culture. You can take an African or Asian child and turn him or her into a culturally perfect American or European.

5.    Cultural issues are rarely simple and unidimensional. Serb-Croat-Bosniac enmity in ex-Yugoslavia is not a matter of race (they are the same people), nor of language. The issue is one of history - or more exactly myth - plus religion plus class.

My examination of cultures has led me to conclude that they are all delicately crafted timepieces. They are driven by intricate mechanisms that incorporate checks and balances designed to reconcile inner contradictions (these are evident in every culture) and to ensure their self-perpetuation. This is not to say that cultures do not evolve with time. Yet they do have a tendency to return, over time, to their former state.

What creates culture? Just about everything. It starts with environment: natural resources, geology, diet, weather. Climate plays a part even in evolved cultures: compare the temperament of people living in an area exposed to low-pressure fronts like Sweden with those from high-pressure zones like Spain's Castile or Africa's Namibia.

Progressively over history, the development of social organisation - and with it educational, political, legal and health care systems - shapes and reinforces these emerging cultures. For me, there are only two question marks. First, the mutual roles of culture and language: culture obviously creates language, but then language shapes and reinforces culture. Second, the roles of culture and religion: it is my belief that, as is so evident in Western Europe in the schism between the Catholic and Protestant religions, it is the culture that has determined the religion and not the other way round.

Of course politics comes into it too, as it did in creating the conditions that led to the earlier great schism between the Western (Roman) and Eastern (Orthodox) churches. In this case, in contrast to Western Europe, there is plenty of evidence that the religion bequeathed to the Orthodox countries has considerably reinforced the nature of their cultures.

The Roman/Orthodox schism is perhaps the greatest of the European divides, but there are others: the frontiers of the old Roman Empire, the 'Ottoman Line', the extent of 19th-century industrialisation, the akvavit/beer/wine/arak and the animal fat/vegetable oil divides and, until recently, the Iron Curtain.

What are culture's consequences? Again, just about everything. We are confronted with the inevitable iceberg. We are conscious only of the tip: the habits, customs, protocol of every culture that are above the waterline. The things that really matter in intercultural relationships are out of sight: the different perceptions of the same things, the different preferences and even prejudices that result, the different ways of reasoning and, way down below the waterline, the different value systems.

Even Western Europe boasts at least three schools of reasoning. These are the cartesian approach favoured by the French (and also evident in varying degrees with the Italians, the Spanish, the Dutch and the Swedes), the legalistic approach of the German-speaking communities and Central/Eastern Europe, and the pragmatic reasoning of the people of the British Isles.

These reflect underlying differences in value systems. German organisation of society is legalistic in inspiration, thinking tends to be linear or sequential. The French put pure logic before everything else. Entrepreneurialism is a positive quality with the Anglo-Saxons, but sometimes shocks the Spanish. Flexibility is a positive feature with the Italians and the Belgians, but a negative one with the Germans. Shyness is a character fault with the Greeks, but a positive trait with the Swedish.

The Finns believe in saying things the way they are - and their English and Latin listeners are mildly shocked. Then there are at least three different interpretations of politeness: negative politeness in Britain, positive politeness in Spain and Italy, and passive politeness in Finland.

It is possible to chart individual cultures on a number of scales. Geert Hofstede talks of 'dimensions' and identifies five: long-termism (eg Asian cultures) versus short-termism (Anglo-Saxon cultures), collectivism (most of the world) versus individualism, masculinity versus femininity, high power distance versus low power distance and, most significant of all, strong uncertainty avoidance versus weak uncertainty avoidance.

Edward Hall identifies two scales: high context (eg Italy) versus low context (Germany), and polychronism/monochronism which is a parallel trait (monochronism is associated with linear, or sequential, thought processes). Fons Trompenaars, the Dutch cultural consultant, adds others, in particular achievement versus ascription. In the course of my work, I have discerned at least four other factors: competitivity, conflict avoidance, fear of failure, and loss of face.

Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance, which can also be described as tolerance of ambiguity, is highly significant because its roots go very deep - as far back as the codification of Roman Law in the 6th century. Over time, society became organised and regulated to the extent that people felt insecure if they couldn't find the answer to a situation 'in the book'. This applied in varying degrees to all those communities subject to Roman Law in its different forms - which ultimately means all of Continental Europe, the people of the British Isles (the Scots excepted) being the odd ones out.

The unintentional consequence of this process, in its most extreme form as in Italy, is the understandable human need to circumvent the law entirely because it is so cumbersome (it is said that Italians need to be aware of some 800,000 rules and regulations if they want to stay on the right side of the law!). The result is a parallel society and economy, which is the only way of coping with life. Northern Europeans think Italians are hypocrites, whereas they are only doing what comes naturally...

This sense of realism, allied with the inclination to explore for alternative solutions, gives the Italians some trump cards in international business. When defeated by a seemingly intractable problem, one US corporate executive habitually takes a plane to Milan, gets as many as possible of his Italian employees into a room for a brainstorming - and always emerges with an answer that nobody else had thought of! The Italians have a fairly strong uncertainty avoidance, yet entrepreneurial Italians have little fear of failure: they wipe their hands, walk away and do something else. This is starkly different from Germany, where guilt - sense of guilt and suspicion of guilt - is a powerful factor in business life.

Similar differences are evident in other aspects of European business life. In negotiations for example, where the Italians are freewheeling and relationship-oriented, Germans tend to be excessively tough and insensitive to interpersonal attraction.

There are as many different negotiation styles as there are European nationalities. The same applies to management styles. In German-speaking cultures, a 'good manager' is someone who knows his chosen subject better than his or her subordinates. In high power distance cultures, like France, a 'good manager' is the person who takes all the decisions. Whereas in Britain, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, a 'good manager' is the one who consults with his team.

All of which contributes to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a 'typical European'. For those who are committed to the level-playing-field concept, I offer these words of hope: Europe is unity in diversity. As a fallback, I suggest the words of Jean-Baptiste Duroselle: "No region in Europe can be fully understood in isolation from the rest."

So We Europeans do have something in common after all...

Richard Hill