Culture in the Blender

This weekend, I was putting in some grad student time (which one might call overtime if one had a job) with a colleague and friend who is trying to have their thesis done in two weeks. Afterwards, we ended up going to fly a fish kite in an empty lot on a little hill surrounded by mostly [...]

China has been in the news a lot lately, and for some reason I’m missing 北京 (Běijīng) something fierce. I’m meeting a friend for drinks tonight, and I desperately want to go to 三里屯 (Sānlǐtúnr). I want to walk out into the 北京 (Běijīng) night into my safe, familiar third culture world. I want to [...]

Pollock and van Reken mention in their groundbreaking book that one of the unique properties of third culture kids is that we experience the world as three-dimensional, meaning that we can easily imagine that we are on the scene of a news report and understand the consequences, suffering or difficulty reported on.For me, the 四川 (Sìchuān) earthquake is [...]

A few days back, I found out in my cultural psychology class that it is true that those expats who believe in essentialism (with respect to either culture or race) have more problems integrating. A study was done at Bei Da of foreigners in Beijing (by sending out researchers to talk to foreigners at Sanlitun, [...]

I’m back in Hotelland. I’m at a conference and staying at the conference hotel, the San Fransisco Marriott. (In line with being a typical TCK, I am becoming highly educated by getting a PhD in materials science and engineering.) Last night, I sat in the bar on the top floor looking out at the San [...]

From time to time, I get little hints from whatever country I’m living in that the perspectives from other countries I occasionally mention or present are irrelevant or easily incorporated into the way of thinking prevalent in the country we’re in. (If you know physics, kind of like they dismiss arguments about needing to consider [...]

I attended a latin jazz concert last Friday. It was very comforting. Brazilian (and by association, other latin-inspired) music feels familiar and comfortable, even though I’ve never been to Brazil. When I was a baby, my father was working on a big project in Brazil and bought Brazilian music there. When I had trouble sleeping, [...]

My psychology of culture textbook tells me if you consider a culture to include all individual variations within the culture, cultural differences disappear. For example, the differences between Japanese and American culture disappear. Maybe that’s why it’s so easy as a TCK to take a part of a culture that you like and use that [...]

Today’s fun fact about culture and psychology: If you have a high need for closure, you are more likely to make culturally typical decisions. Conversely, if you have a low need for closure, you are more likely to make a culturally atypical decision, like attribute agency to a group if you’re North American or attribute [...]

A visualization popped into my head late last night of the culture networks I wrote about in my previous post, and it wants to get out. So here it is. Two culture networks within a bicultural person Blue circles are cultural ideas from the blue culture. They are connected to each other to make a [...]