The article explores the work of two social scientists, Walter Ong and Harry Triandis. Ong has postulated stark differences in thinking processes and behavior between people who are of literate cultures and people who are of more orally based cultures. Triandis has described a continuum of cultural difference between collectivist and individualist orientations of social groups. The particular assumptions of the Western cultural tradition (which generally assume literacy and individualism as normative) are critiqued as these come into play in relation to transcultural mission among rural Aymara people in southern Peru.
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