Question

How does your cultural background affect how you handle conflict? How might the Christian Worldview as a “cultural background” influence the way someone might handle conflict?

Answer 1

• Culture is an essential part of conflict and conflict resolution. Cultures are like underground rivers that run through our lives and relationships, giving us messages that shape our perceptions, attributions, judgments, and ideas of self and other. Though cultures are powerful, they are often unconscious, influencing conflict and attempts to resolve conflict in imperceptible ways.
• Cultural influences and identities become important depending on context. When an aspect of cultural identity is threatened or misunderstood, it may become relatively more important than other cultural identities and this fixed, narrow identity may become the focus of stereotyping, negative projection, and conflict. This is a very common situation in intractable conflicts.
• Therefore, it is useful for people in conflict to have interactive experiences that help them see each other as broadly as possible, experiences that foster the recognition of shared identities as well as those that are different.
• Cultures affect the ways we name, frame, blame, and attempt to tame conflicts.Having an Asian cultural background myself,being an Indian,I have face less conflicts and moreover have always been the one who resolved conflicts.This may partly depend upon the fact that since Asian cultures are more collectivist cultures which focus on togetherness and harmony and that is something which is embedded in all of us through our upbringing in a big family setting wherein every family member stands for each other,it does have an influence on our conflict resolution ways.
• So,even at work place,its all about working together as a team in harmony and whenever a conflict arises,working together to resolve it and reach a consensus is done more often in a collectivistic culture.
• There is no one-size-fits-all approach to conflict resolution, since culture is always a factor. Cultural fluency is therefore a core competency for those who intervene in conflicts or simply want to function more effectively in their own lives and situations.
• Cultural fluency involves recognizing and acting respectfully from the knowledge that communication, ways of naming, framing, and taming conflict, approaches to meaning-making, and identities and roles vary across cultures.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,it will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation