Foreign Cultures: An Introduction to Ethnology for Development Aid Workers and Church Workers Abroad

In recent decades foreign cultures have not just loomed large for Europeans seeking holiday destinations. Since the 1960s increasing numbers of professionals such as teachers, doctors, agronomists, and other professional workers and missionaries from Europe and America have been partnering local churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America whose fellowships are often very differently organised. When preparing these specialists, development agencies and missions often overlook the knowledge and insights that ethnology and cultural anthropology have to offer, help that makes it easier for professionals to take their bearings, to be well integrated, and to go about their work more effectively. This book deals with such issues.

For future theorists dealing with foreign cultures (ethnologists, anthropologists, etc.) there is now a whole range of brilliantly written textbooks. However, for development aid practitioners, whether secular workers or church workers, these introductory works are overloaded with theory and are thus difficult to digest. What has been missing until now is a simple introduction to the basic concepts which could enable a European working in foreign surroundings to come to terms with the ethnological literature relevant for his activities overseas, to recognise these essential concepts woven into the daily cultural reality of life and work, and to work with them and to bring to bear his or her own analysis. This book is a simplified introduction along these lines, not just written for the target readers just mentioned, but also for students of ethnology/cultural anthropology and for those who frequent ethnological museums.

The author is professor of anthropology with relevant experience of the issues. He spent five years working in the South Pacific, and has visited Africa, Asia and South America on many occasions for research.