Therefore, I’ve been busy, very busy, scrambling to put a class in order that was left in a shambles by the previous professor who didn’t seem to care much for showing up to class or covering the required material!

The class is called “Culture and Society of English Speaking Countries”.  It’s a mouthful to say, and the range of material that needs to be covered is huge.  I’m teaching the class in English, as all of my students are English Majors.  So far it’s been fun, despite all the work!

The class is actually taught over two semesters (I’ve already been asked to teach the second part in the spring) with this semester covering primarily the UK and Australia and next semester covering Canada and the USA.  I’m sure next semester will be much easier and will probably feel less like ‘work’ in the preparation of my lectures.

I’ll keep you updated!

“If people are literally looking at the world differently, we think it would be natural for them to explain the world in different ways,” said Richard Nisbett, a psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Over the past decade reasearch by Nisbett and his colleagues has surprised the social sciences with numerous studies showing that Westerners and East Asians think differently. 

Westerners tend to be analytical and pay more attention to the key, or focal, objects in a scene—for example, concentrating on the woman in the “Mona Lisa,” as opposed to the rocks and sky behind her.

East Asians, by contrast, tend to look at the whole picture and rely on contextual information when making decisions and judgments about what they see, Nisbett said.

The new study was designed to determine if the difference in the thought processes of East Asians and Westerners affects how Westerners and East Asians physically look at the world.

To find out, the researchers measured eye movements of 45 U.S. and Chinese students as they looked at photographs that featured single focal objects against complex backgrounds.

For example, one image showed a tiger by a stream in a forest. Another image showed a fighter jet flying over a mountainous landscape. 

When test subjects looked at the pictures, differences emerged between the U.S. and Chinese students within the first second of an average viewing, Nisbett said.

“Americans are looking at the focal object more quickly and spend more time looking at it,” he said. “The Chinese have more saccades [jerky eye movements]. They move their eyes more, especially back and forth between the object and the [background] field.”

The finding suggests that East Asians literally spend more time putting objects into context than Americans do. The differences are not just reflected in how individuals recall and report their memories but in how they physically see an image in the first place.

The study, which was led by Nisbett’s graduate student Hannah-Faye Chua, is reported tomorrow in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cultural Differences

Nisbett says that any explanation for the cultural differences is, at this point, speculation. However, he and his colleagues suggest that the differences may be rooted in social practices that stretch back thousands of years.

“Westerners are taught to pay attention to objects that are important to them, to have goals that they can follow,” he said. “East Asians are more likely to pay attention to the social field. …”

Nisbett traces the origins of the variation to at least 2,500 years ago. At that time collaborative, large-scale agriculture was the primary driver of the East Asian economy. For most workers, economic survival required paying attention to the person in charge as well as co-workers in the fields. Context was important.

By contrast, ancient Greek society—the prototypical Western society—was characterized by individualistic activities, such as hunting, fishing, and small-scale farming.

The difference, Nisbett said, still holds today. East Asian societies tend to be more socially complex than Western societies. Understanding context, therefore, has more value in East Asia than in the West.

Characterizing Differences

Anthropologist Alan Fiske said the researchers’ data is “very sound.” But he questions the complex social reasons that the study authors use to explain the differences. 

“Social scientists have not been successful in characterizing in absolute general terms what the difference is between East Asian and European-American societies,” said Fiske, the director of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We all agree there are huge differences, but [they're] difficult to characterize.”

Nevertheless, Fiske said, the study shows “a statistically significant and scientifically interesting” difference in how Chinese and Americans view a scene. This difference, he added, strengthens the argument for multicultural teamwork in business and academe.

Fiske said the differences revealed by the study are not so great that people from Western and East Asian cultures can’t understand each other when speaking the same language, he said. “But it suggests people have different strengths in remembering and noticing things, and that would be valuable.”

Nisbett, the lead study author, said that the research also has implications for international relations. “Understanding there are differences and why these differences exist can be very helpful,” he said.

Source:  John Roach; National Geographic News

Global Attitudes Survey in China- July 22, 2008

As they eagerly await the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese people express extraordinary levels of satisfaction with the way things are going in their country and with their nation’s economy. With more than eight-in-ten having a positive view of both, China ranks number one among 24 countries on both measures in the 2008 survey by the Pew Research

Center’s Pew Global Attitudes Project. These findings represent a dramatic improvement in national contentment from earlier in the decade when the Chinese people were not nearly as positive about the course of their nation and its economy.

The report has six chapters;

Chapter 1: Chinese Views of Their Lives

Chapter 2: National Issues

Chapter 3: China and the World

Chapter 4: The Olympics

Chapter 5: Modern Life and Values

Chapter 6: Technology Use

It’s a rough task, I know. Maybe I’ll need to research a few Starbucks, an Outback Steakhouse, or a TGI Fridays. Hmmm, I think I’m going to be busy!

China-Entry-Exit-Laws.pdf

China recently released this list of laws pertaining to foreigners coming to China, certainly due to the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing and the half million, or so, tourists who are expected!

A sender’s meaning is so connected to the context in which communication is happening that it must be taken seriously. Some examples of context items are as follows:

• Sentences which surround a phrase;
• Occasion when a specific type of speech is delivered;
• Place and time a conversation is held

Illustration:
“The pitcher was hit very hard; two men died on base; murder the umpire; we were robbed; and the scalpers had a field day today.”

Each of these statements, taken out of the context of a baseball game would be frightening and likely not be a place people would want to go.

• Rites of intensification — religious practices that increase group solidarity and commitment
• Rites of passage — religious practices that mark an individual’s passage from one life stage into another
• Role — the behavior, attitudes, and values associated with a particular status
• Role conflict — conflict between the demands of a single role or between roles
• Role set — an array of roles that accrue to a particular status
• Rules of descent — a set of ordered relations limiting recruitment into various kinship groups
• Secondary groups — utilitarian, formal, and impersonal groups
• Selector — a tool used to discriminate among several inputs
• Skill — the acquired ability to apply a given technique effectively and readil
• Social class — those people on a social scale who see themselves as equal and are seen as equal by others on the scale
• Social organization — the regularization of interpersonal relations
• Society — a social organization made up of a group of people who share a geogrpahical area and a culture
• Sororal polygyny — a marriage arangement by which a man marries a woman and er sisters
• Sororate marriage — an arrangement by which if a woman dies childless, her sister marries the widower
• State — a governmentall unit based territoriality, cultural organization, and formal government
• Status — a position or place in a social system with its attendant rights and duties
• Stratification — a hierarchy of statuses
• Subculture — a cluster of behavior patterns related to the general culture and yet distinguishable from it
• Survey — a research technique involving collecting data by systematic questioning of individuals
• Switch — a valve with a finite number of positions
• Technique — a set of categores and plans used to acheive a given end
• Technological systems — those parts of culture that enable man to produce objective changes in his physical and biological environment
• Technology — the sum total of all the social customs by which a people manipulate entities and substances of all kinds
• Terms of address — terms used to address persons
• Terms of reference — terms used to talk about persons
• Tools — devices for transmitting, transforming, or storing energy
• Totem — a nonhuman “progenitor” of a clan
• Trap — a tool that is a selector combined with a container
• Tribe — a group of people who share a language, culture, and territory and see themselves as an autonomous unit
• Unilateral descent — descent traced through only one parent
• Urban anthropology — the crosscultural study of urbanization
• Valve — a device that passes different kinds or quantities of input at different times
• Vehicle — a tool used to transmit stored objects, energy, or information through space
• Vertical status — the hierarchical ordering of statuses

Seven Areas Involved in Successful Cross-Cultural Communication

1. Ways of Perceiving the World: The World View
2. Ways of Thinking: The Cognitive Process
3. Ways of Expressing Ideas: The Linguistic Form
4. Ways of Acting: The Behavioral Patterns
5. Ways of Channeling Communication: The Media
6. Ways of Interacting: The Social Structures
7. Ways of Deciding: The Motivational Dimension

I have attempted (in previous blog posts) to describe these seven factors or areas involved in any attempt at Successful Cross-Cultural Communication.  Feel free to go back into the archives and read / comment on any of the areas that interest you.

• Language — verbal, systematic, and symbolic communication
• Laws — rules and regulations that are enforced by the state
• Levirate marriage — an arrangement by which if a man dies childless, his brother marries the widow
• Mana — supernatural nonpersonalized forces in animistic religions
• Marriage — a pattern of norms and customs that define and control the relationship between a man and a woman, designating them as legitimate sex partners
• Matrilineal descent — descent traced through the mother’s line
• Matrilocal residence — a living arrangement in which a couple live with the wife’s family
• Mechanism — arrangements of media designed to transmit or modify the application of power, force, or motion
• Media — tools used to transmit matter or energy through space while preserving their essential qualities
• Medical anthropology — the application of cultural criteria to the practice of medicine and response to medical, clinical, and educational practices
• Moiety — the division of a tribe into two groups, based on birth
• Monogamy — a marriage arrangement in which each individual has only one mate
• Mores — social norms of a moral nature
• Mutually exclusive — groups in which membership in one group precludes membership in the other group
• Neolocal residence — an arrangement by which a couple lives apart from both partners’ families and sets up a new household
• Noninclusive groups — groups in which joint membership is neither precluded nor requisite
• Nonverbal communication — the process by which a message is sent and received through any one or more of the sense channels, without the use of spoken language
• Norms — regular and accepted patterns of behavior
• Nuclear family — a husband and wife and their immature children
• Overlapping groups — groups in which membership in one group does not preclude membership in the other group or groups
• Parallel cousin — the child of one’s parent’s same-sex sibling
• Participant observation — systematic observation while participating in a society
• Patrilineal descent — descent traced through the father’s line
• Patrilocal residence — a living arrangement in which a couple live with the husband’s family
• Peasant economies — subsocieties of a larger stratified society that is either preindustrial or semiindustrial
• Phratry — a group of two or more clans held together either by kinship or mutual interest
• Polyandry — a marriage arrangement in which a female has more than one husband
• Polygamy — a marriage arrangement in which a person has multiple mates
• Polygyny — a marriage arrangement in which a male has more than one wife
• Primary group — a small, intimate, and informal group
• Primogeniture — a system of inheritance in which the family’s wealth and position is passed on to the first-born son
• Proximic communication — transmission of messages that utilizes space
• Quasi-experimental design — a methodology similar to that of using an experimental design but in which the researcher cannot control all the factors
• Rationalization — a psychological defense process by which an individual recasts a difficult situation into one that is acceptable
• Religion — the shared beliefs and belief practices of a people. These may or may not be supernatural in character

Every message is “encoded” and “decoded” around seven main areas of human experience. Let’s look at “The motivational dimension” which involves peoples decision making and what fuels it.

Decision making processes affect the actions which result from cross-cultural messages.

Asian peoples (primarily those influenced by Confucianism) will decide one day on a course of action or business focus and just as easily reverse himself the next day. Confucius said men should not live with single preconceived course of action. What seemed wise today may seem foolish tomorrow.

Feel free to comment on this post with any points / counter-points, questions, or illustrations.