Cultural Anthropology blog: Introduction

My name is John Sides, and I’m twenty years old. When people ask me where I’m from I usually don’t know exactly what to say. I’ve moved around a lot, which complicates things. My concept of home is very different from someone who has grown up in the same city, or even the same state, their entire life. My “home” is invested in people and places spread all over the world. In a initial conversation with someone, when I’m trying to explain where I’m from, I usually try to give a brief answer because most people aren’t looking for much more, but I feel like for the purposes of explaining my “cultural perspective” I have to go a bit more in depth, because my lifestyle has been one of the most significant factors that has shaped who I am.


I grew up in northeast Alabama in a really small town, until I was nine. My Dad was a doctor and owned his own practice, originally thinking that he and my mom would raise my older sister, my younger brother, and I, live a pretty normal life, and eventually retire. However, my Dad (let me add in that my family members are all Christian which is probably and hopefully the most significant part of my “cultural perspective”) felt God calling our family to live overseas as missionaries. So when I was nine we moved to a city in southeast China called Macau. We lived in Macau for two and a half years, moved back to the states for two years, went back to China as career missionaries for a year, and then I moved to a Christian and American boarding school in Taiwan for all of high school. For the record, I speak only a little Mandarin, although I’m taking classes here at UAB to hopefully improve! After finishing high school in ’08, I moved to Australia for six months to be a part of a school run by YWAM, a Christian missions organization. Then the second semester of last year I spent travelling back and forth between Macau, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, staying with friends and family. I think that listing out all the places you’ve been and things you’ve done in your life sometimes comes across as bragging, and I hope I don’t come across that way. This has just been my life so far, and it helps explain why I am who I am.


So my “culture” is a blend of many different things. I’ve lived in Asia for eight years out of my twenty, which throws things off. When I’m in Asia, I feel American, and when I’m in America I feel more Asian. (Actually, my girlfriend who is American but grew up her whole life in Taiwan and is currently in Australia, hates being in large public places like shopping malls in the States because even though she’s white, she feels like everyone is staring at her). It’s hard for me to feel like I fit in, unless I’m around people who have had similar lifestyles, which I guess would be true for most of us. So I’m white on the outside, but I’m a weird and hard to define mix of cultures on the inside. I don’t feel like any one label fits my life, and I hate it when people try to label my life in a word or two.


I think that moving around a lot, especially moving away from your home country, makes it a lot easier to see people as people, rather than "American," "Chinese," “Taiwanese,” etc. We’re all so complicated on the inside, and yet so very similar. As much as we stereotype people in an attempt to rationalize differences, no one particular label will fully describe anyone. We all have so much to learn from each other from the differences we do have, and we have so much potential to relate and work together from our many similarities. Our world is so fascinating.