Why Just Culture is a flawed concept

Sometime ago, I interviewed a forklift driver in Dubai who fell off from the forklift and fractured his leg.

I remember Khalid lying in the bed when I interviewed him. He was more worried about the investigation than the pain in his leg. His immediate thoughts. Is it time for me to pack up and leave Dubai? Will I even receive my final salary for the month?

We chatted for a few minutes, and he told me everything about the accident to write a report.

Once we were done, I asked, ‘Khalid what have you learned from this accident?’

‘What is there to learn sir, it’s God’s will.’

That response took me by a shock. I took Khalid’s ‘root cause’ and reported it back to the company.

I was told, ‘Is that what you have found? We could’ve done better with our Just Culture process.’

I didn’t raise the invoice. I didn’t even think the company understood the depth of the problem at hand.

A few days later, I landed in Vancouver for an assignment. As an anthropologist, you don’t just travel the world, you navigate between worldviews.

The following day, I met with my good friend Rosa Antonia Carrillo. Rosa and I had some deep conversations about her forthcoming title, ‘The myth of individualism’.

Primed by our conversations, I started to become more aware of the symbols of individualism around me. On the breakfast table, I noticed a family of four each with their own little packs of spreads, jams and butter. Individualism thrives on autonomy and the freedom to choose. Even as a 4 years old, you want to eat as you wish, not as you are told.

For background, I come from a land where we share a bowl of freshly skimmed butter every morning for breakfast. So, the next morning during the workshop, I shared my own image of butter with those tiny packs to see how the participants would respond.

One my them said, ‘Isn’t it more hygienic to serve butter in small packs?’

And then, there was this awkward silence in the room. Why was I wasting their time?

Notice how one myth builds on another. Not only those small cubes are about free choices. It is also good hygiene. You can see how the same thing that is edible in one world becomes unhygienic in another.

The notion of pure and impure, right and wrong, sacred and profane, and compliant and non-compliant is rarely fixed. What is acceptable in one culture is considered intolerant in another.

Now think of Khalid. How is it fair and just to dismiss another person’s faith in divinity and replace it with our root cause?

To quote the famous cultural psychologist, Richard Shweder, many of our constructs such as justice, fairness and equity come from ‘laboratory research with Western-educated population who do not travel very well to subject populations in other cultures.’

Just culture is a flawed concept because it automatically assumes that what is just and fair in one culture is universal to all.

That’s not just culture. That’s Cultural Imperialism.