»edward t. hall«

I finally finished the book + reviewing it. Yippieh!

About the author:
Edward T. Hall is an American anthropologist born in 1914. His cross-cultural theories offspring his own experiences: on the one hand he lived and worked with Navajo and Hopi in American reservation. On the other hand he trained foreign service officers preparing them mostly for Asia and Europe where he had done research as well.
He defined ideas as high- and low-context-cultures and discovered the culturally-bound concept of personal space.
(for quick reference check: wikipedia)

His book "Beyond Culture" is made up of an overview over different characteristics of cultures, the problem to overcome your own cultural heritage, and the call to engage in cross-cultural encounters.

Following up the review of the different chapters:

1. The Paradox of Culture
2. Man as Extension
3. Consistency and Life
4. Hidden Culture
5. Rhythm and Body Movement
6. Context and Meaning
7. Context, High and Low
8. Why Context?
9. Situation - Culture's Building Block
10. Action Chains + chapter 11: Covert Culture and Action Chains
11. jumping chapters 12 and 13
12. and concluding with chapters 14 and 15: Culture as an Irational Force and Culture as Identification

While these summaries are meant for me to understand what I actually read, I'll add some own thoughts later.

While I needed the summaries to understand what Hall was actually talking about, I summarize my own little reflections on it here:

Hall bases most of his findings on his experiences with the Navajo and Hopi. This sometimes makes it difficult to transfer his theories on expatriates encountering a new cultural environment. Nevertheless he provoked quite some thoughts.

1. language.
I had always thought of language to reflect the life of the respective culture. I had thought of the Inuit for example whose language offers them ten words for white while we have only one. Thus: since they experience a lot of different "whites" they need more words to articulate this experience. Vice-versa: since white is not important in our all-day life, we did not invent any words for it. Hall says that man's explanation of nature tells much more about man than about nature. It shows how he sees the world.
At the same time language, according to Hall, is limiting: while it reveals how man perceives the world, it also limits him in his perception. This becomes obvious when you learn a new language and there are simply no equivalent words to express yourself in just the same way as you would in your mother tongue. English for example is regarded as action-orientated and expressing thoughts in another language can provoke completely different images.
I actually get a little stuck in this concept because experience does not equal language. Language is just a model to structure and share experiences and thoughts.
This leads to another of Hall's ideas: we mistake the model, the symbolization of something as the thing itself. This means that we take poor expression for little intelligence. Thus poor English skills is often interpreted as incompetence. This becomes especially awkward regarding the fact that in most cross-cultural encounters English is not the mother tongue for either party. Culturally-learned concepts are transferred into the foreign language which already does not make sense and are then further translated/interpretated by yet another understanding of language. On official meetings this means that it might make sense to rely on professional translators.
This relates to another of Hall's concept: situational frames. People always approve to be addressed in their situational dialect (e.g. ordering something in a restaurant asks for a special style of talking, acting, ... just like any other situation consists of an appropriate catalogue of language, actions, behaviors). Using the situational dialect tags the speaker as insider and earns him recognition. But using the dialect wrong ultimately declares him as outsider.

2. situational frames and action chains
Hall defines all human interactions as situation which are culturally bound by situational frames and follow patterned action chains. While action chains are not explicitly expressed, they define which behavior is culturally appropriate. Not following the expected action chains is ultimately disrupting.
This shows in all aspects of life. While the question "How are you?" seems to be universal, the answers can be very different. Germans, I generalize at this point, like to hold a monologue on how bad everything is. North-Americans on the other hand regard this question only as an opener and are always fine. North-Americans are regarded to be superficial while Germans are just big whiners. Good start for a talk.
On a higher business level all organizational aspects are defined by action chains: who takes part in a meeting? Where does the meeting take place? Who is seated where? Who gets to talk? Who gets involved in conflict resolution?
On a political level this is worked out in the diplomatic etiquette (sag ich mal so!): which country is visited first? Which at all? Which officials are honored with a meeting?...

Hall differentiate into high- and low-context-cultures. He gives several examples which point to the idea that in high-context cultures, things in general are more implied than made explicit. A group of friends, for example, could be defined as a high-context culture in itself: due to shared experience they understand each other mutually and thus do not need to express everything explicitly. Consequently, the cultures belonging to the high-context category are usually rather group- than individual-orientated. The individuals in those cultures see themselves to be interrelated with each other and each make a piece of the network.

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further to chapter eight

Well, this was not exactly a successful day. Proof to be seen right underneath.
Maybe I shouldn't have started with the most cheesiest quote, I could find:
"We can grow, swell with pride, and breathe better for having so many remarkable talents. To do so, however, we must stop ranking both people and talents and accept the fact that there are many roads to truth and no culture has a corner on the path or is better equipped than others to search for it. Furthermore, no man can tell another how to conduct that search." (Hall, E., Beyond Culture, p.7)





Didn't want to jump so obviously at the metaphor with the road/path. Well, I guess, that worked out. Welcome to kitsch!

But I just needed to start somewhere....

Hall states that every organism controls and changes nature by means of extension. Extensions can either be materialistic (for example a knife extends the teeth in their function of cutting things) or .... (like language for example). "Extensions often permit man to solve problems in satisfactory ways, to evolve and adapt at great speed without changing the basic structure of his body. However, the extension does something else: it permits man to examine and perfect what is inside the head. Once something is externalized, it is possible to look at it, study it, change it, perfect it, and at the same time learn important things about oneself." (p.29)
To summarize it in a broad sense, Hall sees extensions to improve human talents: take the example of eating or speaking as introduced, or the idea of bridging distances faster by taking the car, seeing things better by taking a microscope, taking photos to extend the visual memory, ...
As in the chapter before he takes the example of language which to him is the "symbolization of something that happened, could have happened, or is in the processes of happening" (p.28) but language is never the event itself and it is not even the thought itself (mistaking the symbol and its reference is what Hall calls "extension transference"). Language is just an extension, just like mathematics is an extension as well. Einstein, for example, could have visualized his ideas in words as well but decided mathematics to be more suitable. His insights were externalized into a constructed system so that they could be put to use.
Words and numbers are different descriptive system and as extensions they have their disadvantages or limitations. Just like a knife is good for cutting but not for chewing or a car extends certain functions of the legs but not all (it can't climb for example, or dance).

So, summarizing this: models as introduced in chapter 1 are extensions, right?!

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further to chapter three

Hall describes culture to be a screen between man and the outside world. A screen is needed to give structure and prevent "information overload" by organizing what we pay attention to and what we ignore (cp. p.85). While information is simplyfied it loses its characteristics which can only be regained by contextualizing.
Hall compares this to the system of language: one word might mean different things but contexts gives it a specific meaning. This is why translating machines still fail to substitute man: "the problem lies not in the linguistic code but in the context, which carries varrying proportions of the meaning. Without context, the code is incomplete since it encompasses only part of the message." (p.86)
He especially picks out the Chinese language in which - in order to look up a word - you have to know the significance of 214 radicals (a grammatical phenomena not even known in our languages): to find the word "star" you would have to look it up on the sun-radical. (cp. p.90ff)
Another simplified example would be the laws of perception in which it was proven that colors are perceived differently depending on their background. (cp. p.95)
Contexting works the other way round when people are well acquainted to each other and develop their "own" language in which words and sentences are shortened or new words are invented. (cp.p.92)

His example of contexting in a cultural sense goes back on the idea of body movement. "[I]ntrusion distance (the distance one has to maintain from two people who are already talking in order to get attention but not intrude). How great this distance is and how long one must wait before moving in depends on: what is going on (activity), your status, your relationship in a social system (husband and wife or boss and subordinate), the emotional state of the parties, the urgency of needs of the individual who must intrude, etc." (p.98ff) This explains quite clearly why body movement cannot be split into units independent from the context.

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further to chapter seven

Situational frames are the smallest unit which can be observed in culture. They are common settings and situations such as greeting, working, eating, bargaining, fighting, governing, making love, going to school, cooking, hanging out, ... (cp. p.129). They are made up of different components: linguistic, kinetic, temporal, social, material, .... Some of these components can be learned, especially what Hall calls the situational dialect. A situational dialect would be how to order or behave in a restaurant: "a few properly placed words will do" (p.132)

• to facilitate and simplify things and
• to identify the speaker as someone who knows how to work the system and thus as someone who belongs.

Being given the proper expressions, like a condensed code puts the respective individual in high-context.

Hall applies the concept of situational frames not only to cross-cultural encounters. Basically all situations in life are surrounded by a frame of appropriate language and following consequences as well. Hall gives the example of Rosenhan and his group. For the purpose of research they submitted themselves to mental hospitals saying that they heard voices. Once they entered the hospital all their actions were regarded to prove or go in accordance with their insanity.

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further to chapter ten and eleven

While he already explained the necessity of context, Hall in this chapter gives several examples. Context enables to recognize patterns.
Comparing the printed alphabet with handwriting, it is only context which allows us to read.
Dialects or words written wrong or syllables missing don't effect our way of understanding as long as the context is clear.

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further to chapter nine

Hall gets around to define what culture is stating that definitions are just models. Models are actually to be understood in the broad sense: parents are models for the young, mechanical models might explain the construction of a machine, grammar and the system of writing are models of language, ...
"The purpose of the model is to enable the user to do a better job in handling the enormous complexity of life. By using models, we see and test how things work and can even predict how things will go in the future." (p. 13)
Models are based on drawbacks: man's explanation of nature actually tells much more about man than about nature, the model or explanation just expresses how he sees the world. Accordingly, it is impossible for an anthropologist to define the things that make up culture. Every model about culture would just reflect the specific culture from which it originates.
Therefore, instead of developing generalized models he introduced two specific cultural models: language and time.

He quotes Saphir who says that "[L]anguage is much like a mathematical system which previsages all possible experience in accordance with certain accepted formal limitations.... [C]ategories such as number, gender, case, tense, mode, voice, 'aspect' and a host of others... are not so much discovered in experience as imposed upon it." (p.15) He gives an example of Navajo kids who in school had to learn how to express themselves in English and failed because the language didn't offer them the words they needed for articulating their experiences.
At this point I was thinking of the Inuit whose language offers them 10 or more words for the color white while we have only one. I always saw the language to reflect the daily experience while Hall introduces the idea of a language-model vice-versa: it sure reflects experience but it limits experience as well. (While at the same time it has to be questioned if language equals experience...)
While it sounds as if this as nothing to do with expatriates encountering different cultures it has to be remembered that language is one of the most obvious parts of communication and that it is the very use of words that shape how the other person is perceived. (I'll work on this later: perceived level of language treated as indicator for intelligence, English -> action-orientated, not only the right words but the right use, better have a professional translator, ...)

Another big concern of Hall lies in the modelling of time. He differentiates into monochromic- and polychromic time. Monochromic refers to time as linear, "segmented like a road or a ribbon extending forward into the future and backward to the past. It is also tangible; they speak of it as being saved, spent, wasted, lost, made up, accelerated, slowed down, crawling, and running out. [...] M-time scheduling is used as a classification system that orders life." (p.19) M-time people do one thing at a time, acknowledging the most time to the most important things, ... This means that life gets divided into units. This way time is shaping perception just as much as language is: I only perceive those things I put my attention, too.
Hall puts up a nice connection to space. Only upon the time arriving in the office, I am perceived as to be working. The fact that I might have been sitting at home or might have discussed the problem with friends at night, is not acknowledged as work. This becomes obvious in P-time-cultures. In those cultures, following Hall, everybody is always involved with everybody else. Time and space reveal many more layers which interrelate with each other. Work might not only be about sitting in the office but about being outside and making things happen.

Hall ends this chapter emphazing that models are learned. Language and its used are learned. Time is learned. Our perception of space is learned. Models are not existential in nature but cultural agreements. The problem is that they are felt to be natural.

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Further to chapter two

In the last two chapters of his book "Beyond Culture" Edward T. Hall summarizes his thoughts in picture-perfect quotes. Thus: I'll keep them like this for now and will work on them later.

"The reason man does not experience his true cultural self is that until he experiences another self as valid, he has little basis for validating his own self. A way to experience another group is to understand and accept the way their minds work. This is not easy. In fact, it is extraordinarily difficult, but it is of the essence of cultural understanding. A by-product of such acceptance is a glimpse of the strengths and weaknesses of one's own system." (p.213/214)

"[C]ulture equips each of us with built-in blinders, hidden and unstated assumptions that control our thoughts and block the unraveling of cultural process. Yet, man without culture is not man. One cannot interpret any aspect of culture apart from, and without the cooperation of, the members of a given culture." (p.220)

"A given culture cannot be understood simply in terms of content or parts. One has to know how the whole systems is put together, how the major system and dynamisms function, and how they are interrelated. This brings us to a remarkable position; namely, that it is not possible to adequately describe a culture from the inside or from the outside without reference to the other." (p.222)

"Theoretically, there should be no problem when people of different cultures meet. Things begin, most frequently, not only with friendship and goodwill on both sides, but there is an intellectual understanding that each party has a different set of beliefs, customs, mores, values, or what-have-you. The trouble begins when people have to start working together, even on a superficial basis. Frequently, even after years of close association, neither can make the other's system work!" (p.239)

"Man must now embark on the difficult journey beyond culture, because the greatest separation feat of all is when one manages to gradually free oneself from the grip of unconscious culture." (p.240)

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