ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how one can so easily fall into the trap of prejudice when encountering people from other cultural backgrounds. In the naming of discourses that has been used so far, such naive discourses would be the essentialist discourse of culture and the West as steward discourse of culture. The several narratives demonstrate both the ease and the paradox surrounding cultural prejudice. The polarisation is brought about by cultural disbelief – that while 'other cultures' have the right to be themselves they present a 'problem' because they are incompatible with an imagined Western world view. The struggle, through ambivalence, is therefore crucial, but must be guided in the right direction. Cultural disbelief is a major feature of cultural prejudice, if not the defining feature. It also underpins the essentialist discourses of culture and is therefore very often denied by those who practise it.
