A powerful knowledge which we have all learned effortlessly and in a very natural way in the environment of our childhood. Yet, it is this culture of our childhood which definitely influences the ways we feel, think and behave.
However,
only when moving to and settling down in a second country do we realize that the ways we learnt in our home-culture, may no longer be adequate to make us feel ‘safe’ in our new environment.
We thus need
- to go through this environment learning process again while no longer children nor innocent,
- to identify and understand the secret sides of our host-culture,
- to upgrade some of our default cultural knowledge although at the same time,
- to maintain whatever we learned in home-culture and makes us feel ‘right’
The road towards
being aware of different norms, values and beliefs, selectively adopt them or otherwise, acquiring a present-day ‘bicultural’ or ‘multicultural’ mind , is a process of critical and ongoing negotiations, which take their time, but ultimately empowers us and increases our self-confidence and well-being.
Why in2cultures
in2cultures was launched to help us with another cultural background realize how essential it is to become insider into the culture of a host society. in2cultures is an initiative by dr. Katerina Pouliasi