In my last chapter, I gave an overview of the course. In this introductory chapter, we will discuss the question, how do societies form opinions about other societies. People from one culture or nation develop perceptions about people in other nations or cultures in five main ways. Socio-political events, such as past and present wars, scandals, diplomatic scuffles, trade battles. Often these are experienced directly or communicated through media, books, documentaries, newspaper courses. Cultural sources. Films, novels, art, music, television, Individual Opinion-makers, writers and commentators. Hearsay which trickles down from opinion makers, is repeated and repackaged in mass media and told in anecdote by acquaintances. Last but not least, direct experience through travel or immigration or acquaintanceship. In these five ways, societies form opinions about other societies. Our course will focus on the first three sources of opinion formation. The last two however vital, are too personal for our course. In order to make sense of this great variety of inputs, humans tend to form general or generalized opinions about other groups around the world. We tend to reduce the variety of characteristics of foreign cultures into more easily digestible summaries or soundbites. Here is a sample of common generalizations made about the five places we study. French people have a lot of extramarital affairs. Chinese parents prefer sons over daughters. Mexicans have brown skin. Africans live in villages. Russians love vodka. Americans eat a lot of fast food. These are called generalizations. They always stem from some concrete truth or fact, but these statements veer away from facts because they ignore all the specific cases of contrary evidence. Let's analyze some of them. The generalization that Chinese parents prefer sons over daughters, stems indeed from an actual government policy of one child per family begun in 1979. It has been estimated that this policy cost 50 million female non births or deaths, due to a traditional Chinese family structure that relies on sons to care for their elders, and because sons carry on the family name. But does this mean that no Chinese parent would like a daughter? Of course not. So we cannot say Chinese parents prefer sons over daughters. Do all Africans live in villages? Of course not. Look at these images of Khartoum capital of Sudan, or Lagos capital of Nigeria. But why do Americans think this? Because television images during times of famine, or health crises, or war, have historically focused on the poorest places of Africa. We want to avoid generalizations because they simplify complex realities. We need to catch ourselves each time we say, "Mexican's are this way" or "Ghanaians think such." We need to pay attention to diversity in each country. We can't say all Americans are one particular way because Americans do not agree amongst themselves, something we need more free market principles, whereas some believe we need a wider social safety net. Some are in favor of globalization, whereas some think we should exert our sovereign national interests more strongly. Some Americans don't care about genetically modified organisms in their food, whereas some eat only organic. Some think the government should spend more on public schools, whereas others think the government needs to fund the military more. You get my point, we can't say very much at all, when we start a sentence with, "Americans are." To learn to avoid such generalizations from the outset of this course, let's work with France. What is France or the French? What is France? Is it the government, the state, the nation, French society? Who are the French? Of course French people, but there's an enormous variety among French people. We have left and right-leaning French people, upper and lower class, young and old, women and men, Parisians and villagers. We must remember these distinctions in our studies and not gloss over them to lump all French in one basket. When someone makes multiple generalizations about another culture, it becomes a phobia or an ism as in Francophobia or Anti-Americanism. It's a disposition that colors everything one sees or believes about a certain country. If someone is plagued by Anti-Americanism, then every incident, experience, anecdote that that person encounters about America, will be viewed with disdain hatred, fear or jealousy. Ism can also be positive. Pro-Americanism is marked by Utopian visions or imaginative yearnings for an America that represents the promised land. Both Pro-Americanism and Anti-Americanism are subjective. When you essentialize something you reduce it to a supposed essence that ignores the variety of contradictory characteristics that make up complex organisms. Essentialism is the view that categories of people such as women, or men, or blacks, or whites, or Chinese, or Mexicans, that they have intrinsically characteristic natures or dispositions. Essentializing a culture or group also relies on an image of that population group as eternal, and unchanging, and it ignores individual differences. In this class, we want to distinguish legitimate observations and critiques. Even criticisms from essentialism that are reductive and subjective. This is not always easy to do especially when one is on the receiving end. That's why two of our course goals are to weigh critiques of one's culture with detachment and objectivity, and to recognize and learn to challenge our own sociocultural preconceptions. We want to evaluate observations for their clarity and truth, and hopefully gain a better understanding of what role and symbolism America has for the rest of the world. So now we know about generalizations, and we know about essentialism comes. What about stereotypes? A stereotype is defined as a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea about a particular person, thing or group. Here is a sample of only negative stereotypes. French people are rude, Chinese people don't follow rules, Mexicans are undocumented migrants, African people need help, Russians or Communist spies, Americans are fat. Are Mexicans in the United States all undocumented migrants? None of them are legal immigrants or legal tourists or students. If you watched certain television news channels you might come to believe this stereotype. But millions of Mexicans in the US are legal, and hundreds of thousands of Mexicans become US citizens every year. Are all Americans fat? It is true that the United States has the highest rate of obesity in the world, but are there no thin people in America? Whether the facts are measurable, such as immigration, statistics, and obesity rates, or not measurable such as rudeness, and rule-breaking, stereotypes do not fall from the sky, they usually begin with some factual nugget, that is then transformed into a stereotype meant to represent an entire population. Stereotyping is a form of essentializing. Throughout this course we need to do three things with stereotypes. First, we need to recognize them when we see them. Second when we encounter them we need to break them down, analyze them and understand where they come from. Finally we will do our best to avoid relying on stereotypes ourselves.
