Worship Weblog

'The Myth of Cross-Cultural Competence'

Posted by cicw

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

My wife was assigned this article for a social work class:

The Myth of Cross-Cultural Competence
Ruth G. Dean
Families in Society, 2001, v. 82, no. 6

The title caught my eye and led me to this provocative paragraph:

The purpose of this article is to show that the concept
of multicultural competence is flawed. I believe it to
be a myth that is typically American and located in the
metaphor of American “know-how.” It is consistent with
the belief that knowledge brings control and effectiveness,
and that this is an ideal to be achieved above all else.
I question the notion that one could become “competent”
at the culture of another (Goldberg, 2000). I would instead propose a model in which maintaining an awareness of one’s lack of competence is the goal rather than the establishment of competence. With “lack of competence” as the focus, a different view of practicing across cultures emerges. The client is the “expert” and the clinician is in a position of seeking knowledge and trying to understand what life is like for the client. There is no thought of competence—instead one thinks of gaining understanding (always partial) of a phenomenon that is evolving and changing.

(Here‘s a related bibliography.)

I started thinking: what implications would this have for how we think about questions of worship and culture, multicultural congregations, and worship worldwide?

Tags: congregations, culture, diversity, socialwork, sociology, worldwide