4.3 THE ICEBERG MODEL OF CULTURE

Let’s imagine that you have traveled to a small island in the middle of the ocean. You do not know anything about the people living there and their culture. You are invited to meet a local family, and entering the house, you see the situation displayed in this picture:

What do you feel when you see this picture? Which of the key-words below would you choose to define the situation? (you can choose up to 5 words)

Probably you might have chosen key-words like “oppression” or “patriarchy” to define it, basing your judgment on immediate perception and on the values of your cultural background. You tend to think that, on that island, women are mistreated, oppressed, deprived of their human rights. However, things in the island are completely different:

• in that culture the ground is considered holy;
• In the social hierarchy the women rank above men, therefore only women are allowed to touch the holy ground with their hands;
• for this reason, the women are considered holy, too;
• men cannot touch the ground with their hands, as they are not worthy. They can have only an “indirect” relation with the ground, by touching a woman lying on the ground;
• this is why the man in the picture places his hand on the woman’s back: to have contact with the ground, not to humiliate her or to oppress her (by touching the women, the men can come closer to the holy ground!);
• the men must not touch what comes from the ground, therefore the women feed the men, whereas the women may touch the food and the water.

When we engage in cross-cultural volunteering, we might meet new cultures, peoples, environments, which we are not familiar with. As we saw in Module 3, we tend to see the new reality through the “glasses” of our own culture. However, we should be aware that understanding cultural characteristics requires knowledge of the cultural context (e.g. history, values, religion etc.). Without this knowledge, we might have a wrong perception of the culture which we meet for the first time.