Cultural Shock
Dicky, Huang Yu Shu
Cultures differ from country to country, and thus the people in the country take different action at different time. I have two news reports, which are introduction of a non-governmental organization[1] and a case happened in United States[2], and I would like to compare this two reports.
First, Taiwanese and American have different points of view on labor safety and health. In Taiwan, most of Taiwanese do not have sense that employee have the right to work in a safe environment, and that is why such a organization “Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries” organized to help and educate the people who is unawake. People in Taiwan tend to contribute the problem to them individually. On the contrary, American sees worker protection as a social problem. In order to solve this problem, people should establish law of integrity. However, these reports released in different times, and the authors are special in different fields, so the context and present situation might change.
Secondly, owing to their different points of view, they choose different way to change the society. Victims, no matter the labor or their families, in Taiwan are trained to help the general public. It is a concept of “empowerment”, people can own abilities to solve their individual or social problem. They might go to court to accuse by themselves, or they might organize a demonstration to protest the unequal law. In USA, the efficient way is to lobby the law makers. Here we can see that Taiwanese verse American is just like bottom-up verse top-down.
It is interesting to comparing two different countries from different view. I am expert in health education, so I would like to take these through a pair of more cultural glasses.