Most of us can`t aspire to be bridgefigures – we`re just not rooted in multiple cultures. But we can aspire to be xenophiles. I submit that is what we need to do. The world we live in is so complicated and interconnected that many issues, big and small, require openness, understanding, and the ability to communicate with people from different cultures. Imagine trying to solve climate change without talking to Indian and Chinese citizens. Or live a fulfilling life in an urban neighborhood without connecting with your neighbors who speak different languages. It was a challenge for me to define xenophiles as a category without being a victim of trivial or superficial definitions. It`s easy to dismiss the idea by suggesting that anyone who eats sushi and listens to world music is a xenophile – or considers themselves as such. An overly vague and “xenophile” definition ends up sounding synonymous with “liberal”, “multicultural or even politically correct”, which is not what I intend to do. While it is easy to define xenophobia in a way that trivializes it, there is also a risk that a definition will become too cumbersome. I suspect that many xenophiles have lived in or near another culture long enough to lose certainty that their culture of origin is the “right way” to think about the world. (My time in Ghana gradually undermined my certainty that people in other countries secretly wanted to be Americans, or that the American approach to social organization, especially the role of the extended family, was the right way to do things. It was a deeply unpleasant and troubling process.) But I do not want to limit the definition of xenophobia to those of us who are fortunate enough to have the chance to live and work outside of our indigenous cultures.
I am not a bridge. While I love sub-Saharan Africa in general and Ghana in particular, I don`t have the nuanced cultural and linguistic understanding to explain contemporary African news, politics, and life except as an informed foreigner. On the other hand, I am more or less obsessed with African politics and development and I spend a lot of time and energy learning more and sharing what I learn. My initial fascination with Ghana has turned into a more general fascination with people and places I know little about. During the discovery of Accra, I became a xenophile. In “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” Appiah uses his own experiences as the child of a Ghanaian mother and an English mother educated in Ghana and the United Kingdom and living in the United States to explain the complexities of cultural encounter and identity in an interconnected world. But using Appiah as a cosmopolitan model risks making the definition too narrow. I would characterize Appiah as a classical bridge figure who grew up with his feet in two cultures and has a career focused on combining Ghanaian and European approaches to philosophy. But his definition of cosmopolitanism also leaves room for xenophiles, individuals who engage in an open, curious, receptive approach to the world and actively seek to understand the complexity and diversity of the world in which we live.
Xenophobia is about connecting with people, not with cultural artifacts or other things. Loving Japanese cuisine or Senegalese hip-hop doesn`t make you a xenophile—xenophobia is about making connections across language and cultural barriers, motivated by your interest in making better sushi or translating Daara J. Xenophobia is broader than love for a particular culture or aspect of that culture – it is a broader fascination with the complexity and diversity of the world. Xenophobia changes your behavior, especially your behavior when seeking information, causing you to pay attention not only to the parts of the world that have caught your attention, but also to others you know little about. The Internet age should be a golden age for bridgefigures and for xenophiles. The same tools that allow me to be obsessed with sumo or discuss Ghanaian elections in Pittsfield, MA allow Erik to travel through Nairobi without leaving your home. A major challenge is that these tools allow for all sorts of other behaviors, including the ability to wrap ourselves in non-threatening, unsurprising information. The challenge facing bridgefigures is finding people who are willing to listen. The challenge for the xenophile is to find and hear these different voices without being overwhelmed by the roar of the Internet.
Bridge figures build bridges between cultures, and xenophiles walk on them. When Mahmood Al-Youssif, Ahmed Al-Omran or Amira Al Hussaini write online in English to explain life in the Arabian Peninsula, they are not writing for a local audience – they would write in Arabic if they were. They invite people who don`t know or understand the area to learn more, and those who know a little about the area to stay connected and connected. The bridge is a frustrating process when no one crosses the bridge – it`s much easier to talk to people who already speak your language and understand your culture. Blogs die without readers; Bridge blogs die without xenophilic readers. Ethan-I love your blog and I have always been an avid follower, I consider myself a xenophile and I appreciate your figure of the term; also have a great interest in Africa, although much less experience than you or Erik, but live in a small town in the Midwest of the United States, where it is a little easier to be a xenophile because people live with a persistent feeling of being hidden out of sight and actually need contact with the new and the different; And we even get a steady supply of travelers and experienced and worldly people. I teach English as a second language at a university and regularly host African students as well as people from the Gulf, Asia and Latin America, but I fear the movement towards administration or authority that would cut me off from teaching, or rather, actually learning a language that I perceive as a cultural transition process in itself. But the reason I`m writing is to introduce you to the Webheads, an international group of ESL/ed-tech IT people with a true love for cultural exchange and using technology to promote it. The name may sound a bit hippie, but ESL is full of ex-Peace Corps and people for whom the desire to travel and love of the horizon is breathtaking. But, going back to this post and the one related to it, keep up the good work; We need to hear what you write, and who can say it better? The mainstream media (in this region, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) published an article about the Ghanaian elections that I devoured, but the Tribune declared bankruptcy, so we used the Internet for all the other words. And yes, maybe because the World Cup came here to the center of the country, at least we heard about Ghana – it was, after all, the team that beat the United States.
The film Watermelon Man revolves in part around a white man trying to have sex with a white woman he works with. Her efforts fail until he is magically transformed into an African-American, after which she is more than willing to sleep with him. Only the next day does the protagonist realize with horror that the woman is a xenophile and has had sex with him only because of her race; She had no interest in him as a person. “Xenophiles.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/xenophile. Retrieved 13 December 2022. My work over the past decade has focused on the cultivation of xenophiles. In the end, Geekcorps has been more successful in building a group of competent, dedicated, and dedicated geeks who care about the developing world than in training geeks in developing countries. Global Voices is a space filled with bridgefigures desperately trying to reach xenophiles through every medium we can access. Geekcorps taught me that it`s not hard to build xenophiles if you can afford to buy a lot of plane tickets – working in another country is a surefire way to make sure you have to learn to communicate with people from another culture and will likely result in the change of perspective that leads to xenophobia. Global Voices is (partly) an experiment to see if xenophobia can be cultivated without plane tickets, and offers the opportunity to connect with people in other parts of the world through their stories, videos and images. Understanding what is happening in another part of the world often requires a guide. The best guides have a deep understanding of both the culture you encounter and the culture you are rooted in.
Erik is able to do things that most Americans can`t. He can walk around Gikomba, Nairobi, and talk to local metalworkers in Swahili and figure out how to turn the drive shaft of a Land Rover into a cold chisel. Because he is Kenyan. And it can tell the story in an interesting way for an audience of American geeks. Because he`s an American geek. Many people have one of these abilities – bridgefigures are lucky enough to have both. Third Culture Kids is well positioned to serve as bridges because they have strong roots in two or more cultures, but that doesn`t guarantee that everyone will take on the task of bridging.
