Event assignment

Event Assignment: Please prepare a 500 word “executive summary” of the "cultural competency" workshop that covers the following topics: • Include all relevant details (name of event, sponsoring organization, key players) • Describe what you learned • Assess critically (which does not necessarily mean 'negatively') the organization and delivery of content for this workshop • Make two connections to readings/concepts from our seminar Cite your sources The USF Center for Asia Pacific Studies led by Dr. Melissa Dale sponsored an intercultural competency workshop with main speaker being Keiko Sakurai, the Director of Consulting, Japan, at Aperian Global. The interactive stylized workshop for MAPS and MAIS graduate students was aimed at increasing cross-cultural sympathy and meant to enhance understanding of how culture essentially shapes communication strategies and overall interaction in Japan whether it be in a business exchange or a simple casual one. One of the main things learned, which Ms. Keiko Sakurai pinpointed, was the obvious hierarchy in East Asian Cultures and how Japan still abides by certain traditions where respecting elders is key in how you speak and behave. Ms. Keiko Sakurai gave a lengthy interactive presentation citing examples and comparisons through the main countries in East Asia using a Japanese centered comparison with China, Korea, and the United States of America to showcase key differences in cultural values and how that ultimately shapes and informs appropriate communication strategies and acceptable behavior. Affirming these realities was necessary and Ms. Keiko Sakurai excelled in creating an informal workshop where she asked participants to list down their interests with her responding to the best of her ability on the various indirect communication strategies used in a Japanese professional setting. Ms. Keiko Sakurai provided a triple threat of lecture, role-play, and participant Q&A interaction. A striking feature of Japanese values as explained in her lecture was the will of collective conscience where decision making in Japan is based on group consensus and not personal discretion. One example in which Ms. Keiko Sakurai pointed out this reality is the workaholic life style of Japanese workers who often at times refuse to take vacation hours due to guilt of burdening the whole group. This is a common feature in Japan and even in Korea as Tudor points out perfectly elaborating that “Cooperation and Mutual assistance were practical necessities sometimes a matter of survival,” an implying reasoning as to why a group orientation exists in the first place.1 The group orientation mentality is a striking feature in Japan and it is no different in Korea where the concept of we or ‘woori’ is used as a collective I where the usage of “my” become “ours” signifying collective ownership as stated by Tudor. 2 1 See Tudor, Chs. 7-10, page 98.

2 See Tudor, Chs. 7-10, page 92.

Although crunch for time, Ms. Keiko Sakurai demonstrated expertise in relaying through her professional experience and cultural experience that she was capable of showcasing distinct characteristics of Japan and East Asia where the Korean concept of Jeong, as explained by Tudor best explains how collective conscience depicts roles and acceptable social behaviors.3 With Koreans, the believe in the invisible hug is as relevant to Ms. Keiko Sakurai’s emphasis of East Asian cultures utilizing a collective conscience in emphasizing roles and responsibility.4 Overall, the workshop proved useful in affirming educational content through added experience from case studies introduced by Ms. Keiko Sakurai.

Text Review Assignment: Please prepare a 500 word “executive summary” of the readings that covers the following topics: • Begin with Tudor • Use both Appadurai and the Gillogy and Adams texts for insight about and critique for Tudor’s chapters • Analyze and evaluate how each author supported, or did not support, his/her argument Cite your sources Tudor, in his assessment of describing aspects of modern Korean life explains how certain Koreans often fall into group orientation through a concept of belonging called jeong, the invisible hug that weaves and joins. Jeong refers to “feelings of fondness, caring, bonding, and attachment that develop within interpersonal relationships” to which at times can have national overtones with the usage of woori, meaning “we,” according to Tudor. However, Tudor further explains that there is more to it that meets he eye. Modern life in Korea has been shaped by certain dynamics given Koreas powerful history leading to a survival type mentality for the sake of the group leading to what he essentially claims why Koreans have been driven to be the best they can be out of duty to these cultural values. According to Tudor, Confucianism values harmony, and this meant all members of society must play their proper role and fulfill the duties that came with that role. These concepts of symbolic resistances to construct imagined selves and imagined communities have retained despite being globalized. This is why certain communities offer different international personalities. Appidurai reminds this to us with his quote stating “Thus, the curiosity that recently drove Pico Iyer to Asia 1988 is in some ways the produce of a confusion between some ineffable McDonaldization of the world and the much subtler play of indigenous trajectories of desire and fear with global flows of people and things. Indeed, Iyer’s own impressions are testimony to the fact that, if a global cultural system is emerging, it is filled with ironies and 3 See Tudor, Ch. 7.

4 See Tudor, Ch. 7

resistances, sometimes comoflauged as passivity and a bottomless appetite in the Asian world for things Western.”5 Perhaps this is why Tudor explains that Koreans usage of Woori and the concept of Jeong can have nationalistic overtones.6 Is this not the same concept of Benedict Andersons Imagined selves and communities simply woven together told through different lenses based on situation and ones desire to be imagined through joint effort? Are these not examples of communities not attempting to stand out? Gillogy and Adams state, when explaining in the context of Southeast Asia that “People often define their ethnic identity and membership in a cultural group in relation to neighboring peoples and polities, so these self-definitions shift with social context.”7 However this concept is fluid, they add, for Ethnicity was impermanent for various ethnic groups used labels for other groups differently, and members of groups did not always use the same term for themselves because how one labeled oneself was situational.8 These various factors reminds us that in assessing modernity and the people that come with those definitions, we need to really look into the cultural values in relation to economic output stressed on roles that have weaved communities together for they shape existence. It is their sense of belonging to a community whether one be on the privileged sight of the coin or the poor. Situations differ in Korea due to several stressing factors whether it be surviving on Confucian values that stress family role play and community orientation of the group mentality, or the many indigenous forms of resistances that have transpired throughout the globe, the situation differs. Dynamics that bind certain people together might not always be the same so it is important to contextualize and at times indigenize to humanize so as to get a fuller glimpse as to why certain people in Korea, Southeast Asia, or to a larger context, Asia and the Asia Pacific in all its various complexities behave for situations differ.

Although these various authors offer a glimpse of these complexities, it seems they remind us that in many ways circumstances differ.

Bibliography 5 See Appadurai, pp. 29.

6 See Tudor, 96.

7 See Gillogy and Adams, “Fluid Personhood,” pp.11.

8 Ibid.

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996) Tudor, Daniel. Korea: the Impossible Country. (Clarendon, VT: Tuttle, 2012) Gillogy and Adams, “Fluid Personhood,�