frontpage - cultural biasesTags:posted 2007/04/29 22:59 @adia, I absolutely agree that we need a specification, a niche we serve. However, Claudia summarized it well that excluding the United States and Europe is merely possible as the means and motivation for volunteer work are very strong in those geographic areas. In fact I would not focus on geographical specialization at all because not only cultures cross borders but also it is the American and European traveller who explores all parts of this world and ideally they will report about their experiences when coming back to their home countries. It is the industrialized countries who have the power in this world and they are the ones which need to change the perception and attitude. @Claudia, yes, the ideas of addressing specific social groups should be followed and we should develop our "service" so it gains credibility and people like expatriates (managers working abroad) or tourism destination offices can use it. Once we reached that our idea will spread all across the world without loosing the focus on practical service for our members. @pierre-charles, working together with the EU and supra-national institution is in a way a logical step BV has to do sooner or later as those institutions excercise the necessary power we need to promote the idea on a larger scale.
I'm not an ideologist or dreamer, I believe in a hands-on approach which includes accepting and understanding of the world as it is today i.e. power distribution and diversity in personal and corpoarte motivations. posted 2007/06/01 18:12 I would have liked to come to the Brussel May 5th Meeting, but I have been in Berlin on the McPlanet.com congress. Quite some time went pass since then. My apologizes for replying so late to your posting which I read thankfully.
I am happy that Pietshah and Jeanyves consider this this topic already fully in their thinking and action. Jeanyves gives in my opinion a very good answer to Claudiaab's point about not wanting to neglect western target groups. "I am not sure that other networks especially traget Western countries", no they don't do that, but they do – and always will – (nearly) exclusively attract those (for different reasons, some are really good addressed in this posting here: http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=3570&post=141273 ).
I do think that this can be changed. It might need a radical approach, maybe not. To keep cultural differences ( http://www.hospitalityguide.net/hg/wiki/index.php?title=Cultural_Differences ) in mind and being conscious about owns own identity/culture while developing the page is a first step. To motivate members in non-western countries further and develop with them together some ideas (e.g. Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey) like Jeanyves suggested another one. And definitely work together and exchange ideas and experiences with other organisations like Servas.
Yes visa/human traffic network is not a legend. In relation with visa: Did you know that a Finn can enter 130 countries without having to request a visa, an Afghan only 12 countries?
There is not much what we can do about this.
It is the mostly the wealthier people who travel. 'Just' traveling for the sake of it (e.g. personal growth) is nearly exclusively a western phenomena. People from other cultures travel for religious reasons or to visit families only. But with wealth this might change (or it is certainly changing?). I assume more and more people from e.g. the Chinese middle-class will start traveling in the coming years.
This is point which we could address.
There is already a lot of research done about Eastern versus Western cognition and differences which we can use as a basis and consider while developing the page further - a point to start with. On the HospEx Ne>>t Wiki I started a article about holistic versus analytic cognition, 'western' versus 'eastern' society ( http://www.hospitalityguide.net/hg/wiki/index.php?title=Holistic_versus_analytic_cognition ). It is not a big thing, just a start to get it more into peoples consciousness with concrete examples. I hope more cultures will follow and also people from different cultures will work on this issue. Hopefully more people will get some expertise in this field - to think about it and exchange ideas with (and actively consider) people from *other* cultures. I think some interesting new ideas and ways will evolve.
I think it is more then just spreading the idea (and webpage) on a large scale. But this is just my humble opinion.
Best, posted 2007/06/23 18:20 blob. posted 2007/07/02 12:58 Adia, thanks for the input and the loooong message :-) In general I think that cultures are just too diverse to make it possible to address all of them correctly and in best manner. For the main page we are now introducing changing slogans, citations of philosophers, thinkers, scientists, writers (...) related to travelling, culture and peace. What we have so far: "I love to travel, but I hate to arrive." Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) "Paths are made by walking." Frank Kafka (1883 - 1924) "The world is a book, those who do not travel read only the first page." Saint Augustin (354 - 430) "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you travelled." Muhammad (570 - 632) "When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." Clifton Fadiman (1904 - 1999) "Don't listen to what they say. Go see." Chinese proverb "Traveling is like flirting with life." Advertisement --- Do you know another nice citation which you would like to appear at the top of the index page? If so, write it here (citing the source and the life dates as done above) or follow the discussion here: http://www.bevolunteer.org/forum/index.php?topic=485 --- We are also looking for people who can help us to translate the site into Chinese, Japonese, Arabic (...) Do you know any? Get in touch with me or Irinka, the translation team coordinator :-)
posted 2008/02/11 00:30 nice quotes... still, travelling is quite a western thing, finding yourself and so on... people from the east would not travel just for fun, but to visit familie or for religious reasons... a huge gap... how do we build bridges? posted 2008/02/11 10:52 mmmh, I don't think that sentence is right: "people from the east would not travel just for fun, but to visit familie or for religious reasons" I met a lot of people from countries from the east that travelled just for fun. I'm not sure if this perspective that makes "travelling" a geniously western thing is not totally western itself. We didn't talk about the reasons for people to travel at all so far and we don't stress one aspect of it on the mainpage I think. We just try to get in touch with people that are travelling (for whatever reasons they have).
What we could think of though is supporting (religious, ethical) communities or special events like "pilgrimages". It would be nice to host muslims on their way to Mekka while you're a christ or an atheist (if they would like that). We could even build a network that feels dedicated to a special event in a specific location (like the St. James pilgrimage in Spain). posted 2008/02/11 13:26 Yeah, I'd second Micha on that: I've met (hosted even) people from the east who travelled for fun. Also, you blatantly disregard the huge number of Japanese, Korean and Chinese people who have other the time gone out to see the world. Regards Peter - Fake51 posted 2008/02/11 14:54 Quoting Alex : "people from the east would not travel just for fun, but to visit familie or for religious reasons"
may be for religious travel an aswer can be to have a "pilgrims" group, as far as I remember in history, pilgrims -have been and still are- motivated travellers. They are some organizations which already provide hosting for pilgrims, so IMHO, it make sense to consider them. They can be problems if when we will start to deal with religious groups, but anyway, something useful to do for mankind, is to try to offer a place for a "better intercultural understanding" and to show to pilgrims that they have, despite the fact they are not all going to the same place, some sharable concerns. posted 2008/02/11 14:54 Nice, some more discussion.I definitely agree on that there are non western people that travel 'for fun', but this is definitely not the majority as it is in the western countries (or for ‘). Check the non western members on HospitalityClub/Couchsurfing in 'third world' countries and the East. When you find more than 10% of the members that are not foreigner or in any other way westernized, apart of the half active (from us labelled) visas spammers, than I own you a beer!What have been the travel reasons of the people you met? Maybe it would be nice to collect some points and reasons here. Additionally, it might be interesting to consider kind of work, study and other issues that might be relevant (e.g. army service in Israel and the big finding journey after that).I like the approach about dedicated networks to different issues that micha mentions. Everything that puts travelling into context with other reasons, why people might move around, sounds good for me. Right now, there is (in my opinion) an overbalance to/of travellers for the sake of travelling. Maybe it might be good to go also one step back further. The ideological message is that exchange is good, or? In what is this assumption actually grounded...? :) posted 2008/02/11 16:50 Ok, first things first.
What we are trying to do here is encourage hospitality, open people to the opportunity of discovering new people and places. We do not get this message across with carrier pigeons. In order to hit the largest demographic of people, not the most influential, we need to use icons of their everyday life. Things they can relate to. I am sure if you found this site you are familiar at least with the concept of television. I am sure the natives of the Amazon basin have better things to do with their day than try to forget they were left out of the demographic because someone mentioned technology they don’t have access to. I would like to believe those are the very people I would like to see if I could get close enough to their area. As far as cultural bias is concerned of course it exists. I find it hard to believe this could be so insensitive as to create an international event. What I would like to think is that we can all expect to feel some discomfort as we explore each others worlds and discover who we are as humans. We as group of explorers in this “new world” leave behind what this “real world” looks for namely conflict and move forward with hope, acceptance forgiveness and love. We leave behind the known to discover the unknown and along the way discover each other and ourselves. posted 2008/02/27 21:28 So how can we reach the 5 billion people that have no computer? posted 2008/02/27 22:20 @adia. For members of our network, I am afraid, we will never get rid of that preselection you talk about. What can a member contribute, if he/she can't respond to messages? Why would anyone become a member who is not "open, understanding and less prejudiced" ? The trick, as I see it, is that first of all we help like-minded members to get in contact. But once you are someone's guest, you can get to know his friends, and you get the chance to explore the city on your own, and talk to other people, who would never join any of the networks. I think this becomes easier when staying or meeting with a local, than when staying in a hostel or even in a hotel or with a large group of fellow tourists. We as the people running the network can of course try to encourage this behaviour, that goes beyond the network. And we can try to reduce the technical thresholds, by introducing different ways to use it - for instance, by phone. But in the end it's up to the members how they want to participate, and how open they want to be. And about people who are only looking for like-minded others: I think that's the most natural behaviour. We can try to get rid of ever more of our prejudices, but we'll never eliminate all of them. And, you don't have to become friends with everyone. posted 2008/02/27 23:25 How can we as BeWelcome / BeVolunteer have an impact on the 5 billion people on the world without Internet Acess? They do not need necesarily their own computer. If there is a public library, Internet Access in Schools/Universities or reasonable priced Internet Cafes/cybers they can participate without owning their own Computer. This said I would like to refer to the Community Profile we are discussing in the Volunteerforum. The details are still in discussion and the implementation not in sight because so far nobody took over the coordination of this project. I would like to introduce a scenario of the community profile in chiapas mexico. It is a special case and I don t know if this kind of application is possible in other parts of the world. The autonomouse communities of the zapatista movement in Chiapas are organized in 5 Caracoles. Each of these Caracoles got Internet access (as far as I know). THe Caracoles are the adminsitration centre of the area and the Good Government is working here. The members of the Good Government change every week and they good back into work every three to four weeks. Additionally the Caracoles are places for meetings of the zapatistas with other people. People in the Caracol are often on the move and stay in the caracol just for some days. There is a dormitory, a public kithcen, a cantine, a little store and restrooms with showers in the caracol. That would mean with 5 Community Profiles you potentially reach between thousands and thousands of people who would not have any chance to participate in the project. A key point for this special case would be a language problem. I see it very difficult for non english speaking individuals to participate in the process of BeWelcome. We are excluding a lot of people from our wonderfull project. A first step would be the Integration on more languages for the forum. posted 2008/02/28 01:02 Thanks. This is in my eyes a very concrete goal and suggestion. Look that there are more languages! I personal would take it even further, I would extend this and look that there are more official working languages in BeWelcome. Amnesty International (any many other worldwide institutions/organizations) has as far as I know four official languages. This takes a huge effort and it is not easy, but it is required in order to get more viewpoints. The same could apply to e.g. a fixed quota of people from different continents/countries in the BoD.
More ideas and thoughts? posted 2008/03/03 00:35 I'm so happy to see this topic here. Lots to tell. And so interesting!
I'm totally in the line of Fabian. We can't change the world now, but there's a lot we can do. Indeed, we're limiting BeWelcome access to Internet users, kind-of western travelers, english speakers... but we have lots of barreers we can break - and are already starting to break. I will refer to my experience and work here in Venezuela; working with poor families of the third-world like it's called. * Languages. It's definitely a HUGE problem to have english as "default" language. If we want to open doors we have to get rid of the obligation of knowing "some" english to use the network. Most of the citizens of the world (at least in south america) would hardly recognize english from polish, so one single english word is a huge barreer. Solutions: * Usability. * Computer/Internet access: * Community Profile: * Who travels? - stereotype: people who can afford it.(to simplify) And these persons don't meet! * Other forms of exchange, learning, "cultural exchange"
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