culture

I've been thinking about how I don't post about Zambian/Tonga culture like I did about Indian culture.  I think there are two primary reasons for that.  One is that, although it's new in my remembered experience, much of Zambian culture is not surprising to me since I grew up hearing about it from my parents.  So the fact that I curtsy when shaking hands, that one shows respect for the person greeted in shaking hands by placing the other hand below your own outstretched arm slightly distal to the elbow, that women carry the heavy loads and the children, that we eat nsima and relish with our hands, etc. simply don't strike me as novel.

The second reason is the more difficult for me to acknowledge and process.  There are parts of Zambian culture that are difficult for me personally, particularly as a woman.  In many small ways, I am treated differently because I am a woman.  Different things are expected of me.  I think women and men also have similarly different roles and expectations of behavior in parts of India, but those roles/expectations didn't apply to me as a foreigner.  Because of this, they didn't bother me personally so much.  I feel half ashamed of this; should I care more about these different expectations only if they impact on me?  Then again, their impact on me may be greater at least as far as my adjustments to them than on the people who grew up in this culture and so have their own expectations more shaped by it.  But maybe I'd just like to think that so that it makes me feel better that I don't mind the cultural differences as much when they don't affect me.

It comes back to bigger questions about culture, too.  For the most part, I enjoy cultural differences and learning about other cultures.  But I don't think other cultures or my own are above moral judgment.  Just as there are things in my own culture that I wish were different (e.g. materialism, time-focus over people-focus, prizing status and influence over character and inner worth), there are things about other cultures I wish were different.

What is hard is making judgments about another culture from the outside rather than my own from the inside.  Am I simply more sensitive to things that are right and wrong here because they are different?  How can I learn to be more sensitive to what is right and wrong (and not above judgment) in my own culture from being within another?  How can I balance suspending judgment here while learning more about why things are the way they are and trusting that some things are value-neutral and simply different with acknowledging that some things simply should be different here as well as in my own culture?  I don't have any easy answer, certainly not for how I live it here and now or in the future, but I suppose it's good to be asking the questions.