This interdependence includes a recognition that selves are not

unencumbered but embedded, selves-in-communities who are shaped by and

responsible to and for others. On SST, students likely do not push through the

postmodern deconstruction of the self, but their placement in a new context

allows them to recognize formative influences in various locales, and begin

the work of critical examination. Students also recognize the interdependence

of families in communities, and of communities with other villages, and of

countries with other nations. Students recognize the impact their use of

resources, and their political views, have on those who have been on the

underside of colonialism, and how the rhetoric in their homelands often

differs from the realities they experience abroad.

Through studying another language and immersing themselves in

another culture, many students also move closer toward becoming

multicultural. In orientation sessions prior to going on SST, through contact

with faculty leaders and peers, in texts and assignments and journals, students

forever are encouraged to be "culturally sensitive,"⁵⁴which includes

learning to appreciate "otherness."As part of their major "project," a

requirement of the SST experience, some students choose to record stories from

women in their culture, or take photos of children in their village, or collect

recipes of indigenous foods, or create illustrated notebooks of local plants and

their fruits. Several years ago, two students in Côte d'Ivoire, Josh Kaufman and

54_{On intercultural sensitivity, see especially Milton J. Bennett, "Towards}
Ethnorelativism:A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity," in R.
Michael Paige, Education for the Intercultural Experience(Yarmouth:
Intercultural Press, Inc., 1993):21-71. Bennett begins by saying,
"Intercultural sensitivity is not natural. It is not a part of our primate past,
nor has it characterized most of human history. Cross-cultural contact usually
has been accompanied by bloodshed, oppression, or genocide. The
continuation of this pattern in today's world of unimagined interdependence
is not just immoral or unprofitable -- it is self-destructive."

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