Crossing The Culture Gap

Posted on November 22, 2006
Filed Under Books |

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I read Foreign to Familiar for one of my missions classes on cultural anthropology. This book is a helpful resource with for anyone traveling abroad to another culture or for even crossing the street in our diverse country today. The author makes helpful generalizations and divides the world into Hot-and Cold-climate cultures. Cultures around the world and even here in the U.S. are different and conflict does happen. A productive starting point is to realize that people do things differently and then understand why we do what we do and how this has been conditioned by our own culture. Categories that are covered in this book include cultures that are relationship verses task oriented, direct verses indirect communicators, individual verses group identity, and those that have different concepts of hospitality and time. This book is very practical and a short read at only 128 pages. Check it out.

C.Harv

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