Posted by
Michael Babbitt on Monday, August 27, 2007 12:39:45 PM
I studied the Intercultural Sensitivity model of Milton J. Bennett, MD in graduate school. You can read about it
here. In short Bennett provides a 6 stage developmental model of intercultural sensitivity that ranges from Denial of Differences up to the Integration stage. Read the article carefully and see if it strikes you as it did me and some of my fellow classmates: as self-contradictory. Bennett attempts to define how intercultural sensitivity is supposed to look like, yet if you do find your culture superior to others -- and I do believe American culture in its tradition of valuing individual freedom over authoritarian rule is superior to many others -- you are deemed at a lower level on Bennett's scale. To my thinking, Bennett's scale has a basic and distinct cultural bias (multiculturalism) that is a judgement against those who judge. It has a definite superiority slant. It is one thing to accept another culture as it is; it is another thing to not be able to pass judgement on others. Read what Learners at each stage say and how their remarks are framed. It's just plain silly to feel completely comfortable in a culture that is at its core at odds with your own; it is a form of Denial. You might have to fully adapt to another culture to work within it but to give up judgment takes it to another and self-destructive plane. As usual in academia today, it paints too broadly with a single brush stroke.