American Cultural Patterns

American Cultural Patterns PDF Author: Edward C. Stewart
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 0983955832
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
A fully revised edition of the seminal classic This classic study was originally written by Edward Stewart in 1972 and has become a seminal work in the field of intercultural relations. In this edition, Stewart and Milton J. Bennett have greatly expanded the analysis of American cultural patterns by introducing new cross-cultural comparisons and drawing on recent reseach on value systems, perception psychology, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Beginning with a discussion of the issues relative to contact between people of different cultures, the authors examine the nature of cultural assumptions and values as a framework for cross-cultural analysis. They then analyze the human perceptual process, consider the influence of language on culture, and discuss nonverbal behavior. Central to the book is an analysis of American culture constructed along four dimentions: form of activity, form of social relations, perceptions of the world, and perception of the self. American cultural traits are isolated out, analyzed, and compared with parallel characteristics of other cultures. Finally, the cultural dimentions of communication and their implications for cross-cultural interaction are examined.

American Cultural Patterns

American Cultural Patterns PDF Author: Edward C. Stewart
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 0983955832
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fully revised edition of the seminal classic This classic study was originally written by Edward Stewart in 1972 and has become a seminal work in the field of intercultural relations. In this edition, Stewart and Milton J. Bennett have greatly expanded the analysis of American cultural patterns by introducing new cross-cultural comparisons and drawing on recent reseach on value systems, perception psychology, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Beginning with a discussion of the issues relative to contact between people of different cultures, the authors examine the nature of cultural assumptions and values as a framework for cross-cultural analysis. They then analyze the human perceptual process, consider the influence of language on culture, and discuss nonverbal behavior. Central to the book is an analysis of American culture constructed along four dimentions: form of activity, form of social relations, perceptions of the world, and perception of the self. American cultural traits are isolated out, analyzed, and compared with parallel characteristics of other cultures. Finally, the cultural dimentions of communication and their implications for cross-cultural interaction are examined.

Patterns for America

Patterns for America PDF Author: Susan Hegeman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823226
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
In recent decades, historians and social theorists have given much thought to the concept of "culture," its origins in Western thought, and its usefulness for social analysis. In this book, Susan Hegeman focuses on the term's history in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. She shows how, during this period, the term "culture" changed from being a technical term associated primarily with anthropology into a term of popular usage. She shows the connections between this movement of "culture" into the mainstream and the emergence of a distinctive "American culture," with its own patterns, values, and beliefs. Hegeman points to the significant similarities between the conceptions of culture produced by anthropologists Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, and a diversity of other intellectuals, including Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Dwight Macdonald. Hegeman reveals how relativist anthropological ideas of human culture--which stressed the distance between modern centers and "primitive" peripheries--came into alliance with the evaluating judgments of artists and critics. This anthropological conception provided a spatial awareness that helped develop the notion of a specifically American "culture." She also shows the connections between this new view of "culture" and the artistic work of the period by, among others, Sherwood Anderson, Jean Toomer, Thomas Hart Benton, Nathanael West, and James Agee and depicts in a new way the richness and complexity of the modernist milieu in the United States.

Women and Equality : Changing Patterns in American Culture

Women and Equality : Changing Patterns in American Culture PDF Author: William H. Chafe Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Duke University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019972878X
Category : Equality
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Chafe's analysis of changing social patterns is both solid and imaginative in the best sense ... His book will certainly increase our understanding of where we are going--and why."--Elizabeth Janeway "Adopted as required reading - tremendously popular with students - provokes lively debates."--John Rhinehart, Riverside Community College "A trenchant analysis of the underlying social and economic changes of the past century ... Particularly insightful in analyzing the ways in which racial and sexual inequality are both similar and fundamentally different."--Alice S. Rossi, University of Massachus.

Patterns of Culture

Patterns of Culture PDF Author: Ruth Benedict
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
A study of the civilization of the Zuni Indians, the native of Dubu, and the Kawakiutl Indians.

American Nations

American Nations PDF Author: Colin Woodard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143122029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.

Made in America

Made in America PDF Author: Claude S. Fischer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226251454
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
Our nation began with the simple phrase, “We the People.” But who were and are “We”? Who were we in 1776, in 1865, or 1968, and is there any continuity in character between the we of those years and the nearly 300 million people living in the radically different America of today? With Made in America, Claude S. Fischer draws on decades of historical, psychological, and social research to answer that question by tracking the evolution of American character and culture over three centuries. He explodes myths—such as that contemporary Americans are more mobile and less religious than their ancestors, or that they are more focused on money and consumption—and reveals instead how greater security and wealth have only reinforced the independence, egalitarianism, and commitment to community that characterized our people from the earliest years. Skillfully drawing on personal stories of representative Americans, Fischer shows that affluence and social progress have allowed more people to participate fully in cultural and political life, thus broadening the category of “American” —yet at the same time what it means to be an American has retained surprising continuity with much earlier notions of American character. Firmly in the vein of such classics as The Lonely Crowd and Habits of the Heart—yet challenging many of their conclusions—Made in America takes readers beyond the simplicity of headlines and the actions of elites to show us the lives, aspirations, and emotions of ordinary Americans, from the settling of the colonies to the settling of the suburbs.

Dinner Talk

Dinner Talk PDF Author: Shoshana Blum-Kulka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136486941
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Dinner Talk draws upon the recorded dinner conversations of, and extensive interviews with, native Israeli, American Israeli, and Jewish American middle-class families to explore the cultural styles of sociability and socialization in family discourse. The thesis developed is that family dinners in Western middle-class homes fulfill important functions of sociability for all participants and, at the same time, serve as crucial sites of socialization for children through language and for language use. The book demonstrates the way talk at dinner constructs, reflects, and invokes familial, social, and cultural identities and provides social support for easing the passage of children into adult discourse worlds. Family discourse at dinner emerges as a particularly rich site for discursive socialization and a highly meaningful enactment of sociable behavior in culturally patterned ways. Although all the families studied have a commom Eastern European background, Israeli and Jewish American families are shown to differ extensively in their interactional styles, in ways that enact historically different, community-related interpretations of the dialectics of continuity and change. Native Israeli, American Israeli, and Jewish American families differ culturally in the ways they negotiate issues of power, independence, and involvement through various speech activities such as the choice and initiation of topics, conversational story-telling, naming practices, metapragmatic discourse, politeness strategies, and in immigrant, bilingual families, language choice and code switching. Dinner Talk demonstrates the unique interactional style of each of the groups, linking the observed communication patterns to the ideological, sociocultural, and historical contexts of their respective communities. This innovative study of family discourse from a cross-cultural perspective will appeal to students and specialists in sociolinguistics, communication, anthropology, child language, and family and Jewish studies, as well as to all interested in patterns of communication within families.

Asian Americans

Asian Americans PDF Author: Laura Uba
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9781572309128
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This widely adopted text synthesizes an extensive body of research on Asian American personality development, identity, and mental health. Uba focuses on how ethnocultural factors interact with minority group status to shape the experiences of members of diverse Asian American groups. Cultural values and norms shared by many Asian Americans are examined and common sources of stress described, including racial discrimination and immigrant and refugee experiences. Rates of mental health problems in Asian American communities are reviewed, as are predictors and manifestations of specific disorders. The volume also explores patterns in usage of available mental health services and considers ways that service delivery models might be adapted to better meet the needs of Asian American clients.

Four Overarching Patterns of Culture

Four Overarching Patterns of Culture PDF Author: Robert Strauss
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532693184
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Justice has been the dominant cultural framework of people in the West for two centuries, ever since the rise of constitutional democracies. Consciously or not, most people in the West have a strong awareness of right and wrong. Their sense of morality is generally rooted in an obligation to the rule of law. In democratic societies, the rule of law ultimately relies on constitutional documents ratified by a widely-accepted process of development and implementation. For millennia, honor has been the dominant cultural framework of most people in the East and Middle East. Here, people know that speech and behavior display respect or disrespect. While pervasive in all relationships, honor and shame are most important in the family, extended family, and local community. In the East, honor is not necessarily an internal feeling, as it is in a justice culture. Honor is more often an external attribution bestowed by others rather than claimed by oneself. Harmony is prevalent globally in indigenous cultures. Many indigenous peoples do not distinguish between the supernatural and natural worlds. All aspects of life are connected. Interactions with spirit beings are the key to maintaining harmony in order to be secure. Reciprocity is a common cultural framework in the Global South. Here, one learns to develop connections with the right people in given circumstances for needed resources. These connections may or may not be characterized as “friendships” and provide not so much close friendships as reciprocal exchange. In some places, reciprocity is the means whereby one survives.

Anthropology: Culture Patterns & Processes

Anthropology: Culture Patterns & Processes PDF Author: Alfred Louis Kroeber
Publisher: Harvest Books
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
A selection of those chapters of ... [the author's Anthropology [rev. ed., 1948] that deal specifically with matters of culture patterns and processes.