Intercultural Encounters - Essay Example

In the Angolan culture, for instance, a smile is used as a friendly gesture of welcoming another person. A smile in Asian cultures may often be used to signify discomfort, confusion, or even embarrassment. In some cultures, a smile is only for family and friends for instance in Germany. A smile in the Middle East has a significant difference from other parts of the world especially a smile from a woman to a man. Such a smile may mean sexual attraction (Deardorff, 2009).Different cultures have different interpretations of a particular aspect of life.

Smiling for instance is a communication gesture that may be applicable across the world. Nonetheless, different cultures apply and interpret a smile differently. It is therefore important for a person to understand cultural interpretation and meaning of different aspects otherwise a risk of misinterpretation is very likely. It is obvious that different cultures conflict in a number of ways for instance a smile from a woman to a man in the Garman culture may signify friendship while in the Middle East it signifies a completely different thing and that is a sexual attraction (Gert et al.,2002). The conflict and culture are indeed applicable in the day-to-day encounters of an individual particularly with the aspect of globalization and the world becoming a global village.

One of my life experience regarding conflict and cultural differences was in Japan. Japanese interpret a smile as a sign of discomfort or confusion while people from Europe and America use a smile as a sign of friendship. A taxi driver in Japan might have interpreted my smile as a sign of discomfort and I could observe the anxiety in his look. Unfortunately, I was not aware of the significance of a smile in their culture and neither was he aware of the significance of a smile in our culture (Deardorff, 2009).

The reading indeed made clarifications of what is happening in the society in the sense that a person assumes that his beliefs, habits, or even values are the universal norms until one encounters other people with beliefs, habits, and values that are completely different. One of the most surprising moments while reading about culture is the realization that a simple smile from a woman to a man in the Middle East means sexual attraction. The reading material can be very instrumental in understanding the different cultural aspects of different people in the world and as such, it can help in individuals understand that some aspects that may seem to differ in different cultures are not conflicts per se but should be appreciated as cultural diversity (Gert et al., 2002).Some of the global challenges that call for intercultural cooperation include international terrorism and racism.

International terrorism has increased in the past few decades. In an effort to reduce terrorism in the world, the need for intercultural cooperation cannot be overemphasized. Terrorists from different regions will be easily apprehended through intercultural cooperation in the sense that it will be easy to understand why most terrorists originate from a particular region and not another. Some individuals from particular races have the opinion that they are superior to others which results in segregation and discrimination.

With intercultural cooperation, different races in the world can come together as citizens of the world and respect the diversity of skin color (Houman & Madelyn, 2011).