Cultural Valence as a Cross-cultural Phenomenon in Australia

This paper reports a humanistic sociological study of the phenomenon described as cultural valence in the ethnically diverse context of Australia. The investigation sought to identify mainstream Anglo-Celtic-Australian individuals who had crossed cultural borders to participate in the life of another ethnic community and to understand factors which shaped the respondents’ cross-cultural experiences and their attitudes to cultural pluralism. The memoirs of 43 graduate education students, who had been asked to write their experiences of cultural interaction and their views on cultural pluralism, were analysed in terms of their valence (univalent, bivalent or ambivalent) and their positive or negative attitudes to cultural pluralism. Six examples representing the different types of classifications identified among the respondents are discussed in detail. Although there is evidence of only a few bivalent individuals with positive attitudes to cultural pluralism among the memoirs analysed, the possibility of their emergence among those of Anglo-Celtic-Australian background was demonstrated.