Kissing and the power of culture
I’ll get to the kissing in a minute….Â
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall, in the introduction to his study of time and culture called The Dance of Life, describes a Primary Level Culture (PLC) as a “hidden cultural grammar” that “defines the way in which people view the world, determines their values, and establishes the basic tempo and rhythms of life.” Then he makes this telling comment: “One of the principal characteristics of PL culture is that it is particularly resistant to manipulative attempts to change it from the outside.”
We discussed some implications of this in our cross-cultural training in Brussels, but rather than explore it abstractly, I’d like to illustrate it….
While we were in Brussels last month we were assigned to a French-speaking congregation. We were introduced to the church by a US missionary who works with them. He carefully explained to us that in this congregation the greeting is a kiss: place your right cheek against the right cheek of the person you are greeting, and make the kissing sound with your lips. He also explained how he was uncomfortable with it when he first arrived, and for a while extended his hand to shake, in order to avoid the kiss. (more…)