Richard F. answered • 09/22/21
Published historian and Ph.D.
Hi Jenny,
This won't seem like a very satisfactory answer, but there's a big problem: it's completely unclear what the last phrase (and therefore the whole question) even means.
For example, is this about how people from one culture interact with people from other cultures? Or is it about how individual people within one culture are formed by (and in turn form) that culture? Those are completely different questions.
(Also: the usage "peoples" vaguely suggests "groups / nations / ethnicities" etc., whereas "people" vaguely suggests "various individuals" - but it's not really clear which the prompt is about.)
But there's another problem. Both of the above are absurdly general: they're like the prompt "Write something about life and nature." What is the prompt getting at? It cries out for some context or further explanation. A really interesting prompt would be, say: "Is there a general pattern to what happens when people from radically different cultures first meet? Discuss with reference to at least two different examples." But is this prompt about that? Your guess is as good as mine.
There is a useful lesson here: when someone asks a question, don't assume it's clear to you (or even to them!) what the question is.
All the best
Richard
