‘Are you Married to a Maasai?’ Gendered Cultural Encounters Between Tanzanians and Danes in ‘Global Citizenship’ Training

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the dynamics of ‘cultural difference’. It is based on the fieldwork among a group of Danish seniors at a three-week adult education course entitled ‘Global Citizenship’ in Tanzania with the Danish NGO Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke. The article analyses encounters between the Danes and their Tanzanian teachers. The article explores the training centre Danish, which hosted the course, as a chronotope in which ‘being Danish’ holds special meaning, and analyses how gender became a lens for depicting culture. The article concludes that normative hierarchical positionalities of gender equality vs. inequality were created in the interplay between students and teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural encounter
• intercultural contact
• gender
• global citizenship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Dr Lene Bull Christiansen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University, Denmark. She is a senior researcher in the collaborative Organised Cultural Encounters project. She holds a PhD in International Development Studies. Her research has explored the diverse fields of gender and nationalism in Zimbabwe; Danish celebrity involvement in development aid campaigning and organised cultural encounters in volunteer tourism and music festivals.

Notes

1 Three weeks of participant observation during the course, observation during an introduction meeting in Copenhagen, a follow-up meeting organised by the author and 14 interviews.

2 In 2010, Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke joined ActionAid, and today collaborates with TCDC under its umbrella. The original name is used throughout this article, because this was primarily used by informants.

3 Original quote: Fællesskab på tværs af kulturer: Tanzania er stadig et fattigt land, og befolkningen lever under barske vilkår. Alligevel er de fleste fulde af kreativitet, optimisme og en hjertevarme, der giver dig en skøn velkomst i Østafrika. Gennem samtaler med forskellige samfundsgrupper vil du lære mere om verden og dig selv. Samtidig vil du garanteret skabe stærke bånd til de andre deltagere, som du deler denne fantastiske oplevelse med. Mange tidligere deltagere på højskolen ses stadig privat hjemme i Danmark.

4 I am using this term because this is what was used in the class.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Danish Council for Independent Research [grant number DFF-1319-00093].