At the Australian Nonviolence Network Gathering I agreed to write for NvT in order to encourage and invite discussion about culture in the nv networks. These are just some of my thoughts about what culture is, what the current culture within the nv community might be, and why culture is crucial for social change.
Some people think it's about opera and art galleries.
To others it is about the ways we use words, music and our bodies to express ourselves. Still others think it's about ways of interacting connected to our heritages as people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. It isn't hard to think of examples. People from different cultural heritages have different ideas about how much personal space, touch and eye contact is appropriate in any given situation. Again, different cultural backgrounds prescribe what sorts of things are acceptable by way of conversation, and between whom.