In the fully updated Sixth Edition of Understanding Global Cultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 34 Nations, Clusters of Nations, Continents, and Diversity, authors Martin J. Gannon and Rajnandini Pillai present the cultural metaphor as a method for understanding the cultural mindsets of individual nations, clusters of nations, continents, and diversity in each nation. A cultural metaphor is any activity, phenomenon, or institution that members of a given culture consider important and with which they identify emotionally and/or cognitively, such as the Japanese garden and American football. This cultural metaphoric approach identifies three to eight unique or distinctive features of each cultural metaphor and then discusses 34 national cultures in terms of these features. The book demonstrates how metaphors are guidelines to help outsiders quickly understand what members of a culture consider important.
Understanding Global Cultures, Third Edition presents the cultural metaphor as a method for understanding the cultural mindsets of a nation, a cluster of nations, and even of a continent. This method involves identifying some phenomenon, activity or institution of a culture that all or most of its members consider important and with which they identify closely. Metaphors are not stereotypes; rather, they rely upon the features of one critical phenomenon of a culture to describe the entire culture. The characteristics of the metaphor then become the basis for describing and understanding the essential features of the culture. For example, the Italians invented the opera and love it passionately. Five key characteristics of the opera are the overture, spectacle and pageantry, voice, externalization, and the interaction between the lead singers and the chorus. These features are used to describe Italy and its cultural mindset. Thus the metaphor is a guide or map that helps such outsiders as students, travelers, and managers on short-term and long-term assignments understand quickly what members of a culture consider important.
A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition, Culture and Imperialism reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.
"This is a significant book... for a multitude of audiences, including scholars, practitioners, students, expatriates, travelers, and those who are simply interested in culture... This book is also an ideal reference tool, since the metaphors are easy to remember yet rich in contextual value and are presented in a logical structure for quick consultation. Overall, this book is enormously appealing, genuinely useful, and a worthy addition to any collection." -Thunderbird International Business Review (2002) In Understanding Global Cultures, Fourth Edition, authors Martin J. Gannon and Rajnandini Pillai present the cultural metaphor as a method for understanding the cultural mindsets of individual nations, clusters of nations, and even continents. The fully updated Fourth Edition continues to emphasize that metaphors are guidelines to help outsiders quickly understand what members of a culture consider important. This new edition includes a new part structure, three completely new chapters, and major revisions to chapters on American football, Russian ballet, and the Israeli kibbutz. New and Continuing Features: Emphasizes clusters of national cultures and variations within each cluster, as well as both topic-oriented (authority-ranking cultures, market-pricing cultures, etc.) and cluster-focused descriptions Includes three new parts: India, Shiva, and Diversity; Scandinavian Egalitarian Cultures (Sweden, Denmark, and Finland); and Other Egalitarian Cultures (including Canada and Germany) Provides three completely new chapters: Finnish Sauna, Kaleidoscopic India and Diversity, and a final integrative summary chapter Integrates chapters through the frameworks of the GLOBE study, the Hofstede study, Hall, and Kluckholn and Strodbeck Highlights religious and ethnic diversity throughout Ancillaries Instructor Resources are available on a password-protected website at www.sagepub.com/gannon4instr. These include applications, discussion questions, model examinations,100 exercises, and suggested syllabi. Qualified instructors may contact Customer Care to receive access to the site. Understanding Global Cultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 29 Nations, Clusters of Nations, Continents, and Diversity is appropriate for courses in International Business and Management, Strategic Management and Planning, and Cultural Studies.
Books on intercultural communication are rarely written with an intercultural readership in mind. In contrast, this multinational team of authors has put together an introduction to communicating across cultures that uses examples and case studies from around the world. The book further covers essential new topics, including international conflict, social networking, migration, and the effects technology and mass media play in the globalization of communication. Written to be accessible for international students too, this text situates communication theory in a truly global perspective. Each chapter brings to life the links between theory and practice and between the global and the local, introducing key theories and their practical applications. Along the way, you will be supported with first-rate learning resources, including: • theory corners with concise, boxed-out digests of key theoretical concepts • case illustrations putting the main points of each chapter into context • learning objectives, discussion questions, key terms and further reading framing each chapter and stimulating further discussion • a companion website containing resources for instructors, including multiple choice questions, presentation slides, exercises and activities, and teaching notes. This book will not merely guide you to success in your studies, but will teach you to become a more critical consumer of information and understand the influence of your own culture on how you view yourself and others.
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
In the fully updated Sixth Edition of Understanding Global Cultures: Metaphorical Journeys Through 34 Nations, Clusters of Nations, Continents, and Diversity, authors Martin J. Gannon and Rajnandini Pillai present the cultural metaphor as a method for understanding the cultural mindsets of individual nations, clusters of nations, continents, and diversity in each nation. A cultural metaphor is any activity, phenomenon, or institution that members of a given culture consider important and with which they identify emotionally and/or cognitively, such as the Japanese garden and American football. This cultural metaphoric approach identifies three to eight unique or distinctive features of each cultural metaphor and then discusses 34 national cultures in terms of these features. The book demonstrates how metaphors are guidelines to help outsiders quickly understand what members of a culture consider important.
And who is my neighbor? Christians confess the Bible as the Good Book, the perfect guide for becoming loving and holy, just like Jesus. And yet, that same book describes God commanding the Israelites to kill every Canaanite living in the Promised Land. How are we to understand the Bible as the Good Book when it depicts God commanding actions like genocide? How are we to reconcile this narrative with the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the God who taught us to love our enemies?In this bold new book, Randal Rauser defends a novel approach to the Canaanite genocide, one that remains faithful to our deepest moral intuitions even as it is guided by the conviction that Jesus calls us to love all our neighbors. And the Canaanite is our neighbor.
The book is written for active learners – those keen on cutting their own path through the complex and at times hardly comprehensible world of THEORY in International Relations. To aid this process as much as possible, this book employs the didactical and methodical concept of integrating teaching and self-study. The criteria for structured learning about IR theory will be derived from an extensive discussion of the questions and problems of philosophy of science (Part 1). Theory of IR refers to the scientific study of IR and covers all of the following subtopics: the role and status of theory in the academic discipline of IR; the understanding of IR as a science and what a ""scientific"" theory is; the different assumptions upon which theory building in IR is based; the different types of theoretical constructions and models of explanations found at the heart of particular theories; and the different approaches taken on how theory and the practice of international relations are linked to each other. The criteria for the structured learning process will be applied in Part 2 of the book during the presentation of five selected theories of International Relations. The concept is based on ""learning through example"" – that is, the five theories have been chosen because, when applying the criteria developed in Part 1 of the book, each single theory serves as an example for something deeply important to learn about THEORY of IR more generally.
