Greetings everyone - sounds like a great idea and I would love to be part of the discussions and participate (via email as I am in Adelaide) re these competencies.  Thanks for the opportunity to be part of the conference - really enjoyed my time!  Helen I

HI Everyone!

I am interesting to continue to work on issues relating to culture and sexual diversity. I beilieve to do so, it is neccesary to work on issues in relation to culture. I have been working with CLd communities in Adelaide for a couple of years, to understand cultural values and beliefs it is ncessary to interact with those cultural communities. It wil be great to start something at a national level.....so I am quite happy to be in the show....

cheers,

Miguel

Hi everyone,

Shanton's idea sounds great. Count me in.

A question I have is 'who are we try to aim at?': us who live with, know and affect by or wider service provides, groups, 'communities' etc... who need to know how to work with diverse needs.

I really think that we NEED to look at system and try to challenge, and change the system that serves us. I like to point out that we are not the ‘problem’. On the contrary, the system needs to look at themselves and increase their competency to work with diverse range of people including cultural diversity, self identify sexual diversity etc…  

Asvin

Shanton

Happy to be part of this. Also, well done on a great conference

Cheers Margherita

Hi all,

Some excellent points have been made here. Firstly in response to Daniel's excellent post, the aim of looking at cultural competencies is certainly to look at dealing with all cultures. Of course there has to be a recognition of the dominant culture. Therefore the only sane, reasonable and MOST sustainable and academically rigorous approach to looking at cultural competencies is to look at them from a culture-generic point of view. This means that we should be interested in equiping the audience (which includes ourselves) with frameworks of reference to interpret attitudes, reasoning etc. across cultures.

In no way should the competencies be culture-specific. Cultural-specific competencies usually ends up with a list of do's and don'ts in specific cultures. Most unproductive and ridiculously unsustainable. Certainly not the aim of what we are trying to achieve here, in my opinion. We are not training expatriates to go to one particular country where there is one particular culture. This would be a very outmoded and simplistic approach.

Therefore, the competencies have to be put together in the spirit of engagement across cultures. Not a propagation of "us and them" and "How do we deal with the 'other'?". I hope that makes sense.

Secondly, I am warmed by the response from everyone and will start looking at putting together a series of questions we can start to work on. Examples of these questions include the following:

Who is our audience? (Thanks Daniel), What is the purpose of the exercise?, What will be the result of the discussions? etc. So, I'll start compiling these questions and then we can all try to answer them together.

Cheerios
Shanton 

Thanks for the post Daniel.

Make sense to me. Infact I think your questions are the necessary refinements to Shanton's excellent initiative - which is undeniably laudable but, like you, left me wondering about the many forms this embryo of an idea could grow up to be.

Like you I am Caucasian - Specifically British born but that is a minority in a broader extended family that includes, Chinese (from at least four ethnicities - Hakka, Hokien, Mandarin and Cantonese not counting the Baba, Paranakan members ) as well as Japanese, and Jewish members.

The younger generation, the offspring of the above, are mainly Eurasian teenagers of a variety of combinations (Jewish/Chinese)(Japanese/Caucasian)(Chinese/Caucasian)(Australian Aboriginal/Caucasian) a number of whom identfy as gay or lesbian. This extended family lives in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore and hold a variety of religious beliefs and speak a variety of languages. Most are polyglots except me (unless you count Sanskrit).

I suppose my point is that I lose track of the all the contemporary or historical pidgeon holes these various geneologies have been stuffed into by various colonial powers. The children are sick of being seen as 'mixtures' which is only made possible by the erection of categories for various reasons by various people at various historical moments. Too many categories la!

But Daniel I think you have brought to consciousness a number of issues and expressed them better than me.

I do hope people respond to the points you raised. Unfortunately I have an incurable affinity with Heidegger's suspicion as to the distinction between epsitemology and ontology, hence an allergic reaction to essentialism. And now Jacques has passed away (RIP viva la differance) a further suspicion that 'presence' itself is indeed The White Mythology hence its dual desires - the constant need for categories and the constant upheavals to change them.

But it is difficult to know what level to pitch one's views as the forum is such a heterogeneous mixture of sensibilities, experiences,ages and discursive styles.

FYI I believe work on similar problematics is one of the reasons for the founding of the Institute of Post Colonial Studies in Melbourne. There may be resources and people there who might be of value to Shanton's initiative, which I support and which I follow with great interest.

best wishes,

Mimi