Download or read book American Culture American Tastes written by Michael Kammen and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have a long history of public arguments about taste, the uses of leisure, and what is culturally appropriate in a democracy that has a strong work ethic. Michael Kammen surveys these debates as well as our changing taste preferences, especially in the past century, and the shifting perceptions that have accompanied them. Professor Kammen shows how the post-traditional popular culture that flourished after the 1880s became full-blown mass culture after World War II, in an era of unprecedented affluence and travel. He charts the influence of advertising and opinion polling; the development of standardized products, shopping centers, and mass-marketing; the separation of youth and adult culture; the gradual repudiation of the genteel tradition; and the commercialization of organized entertainment. He stresses the significance of television in the shaping of mass culture, and of consumerism in its reconfiguration over the past two decades. Focusing on our own time, Kammen discusses the use of the fluid nature of cultural taste to enlarge audiences and increase revenues, and reveals how the public role of intellectuals and cultural critics has declined as the power of corporate sponsors and promoters has risen. As a result of this diminution of cultural authority, he says, definitive pronouncements have been replaced by divergent points of view, and there is, as well, a tendency to blur fact and fiction, reality and illusion. An important commentary on the often conflicting ways Americans have understood, defined, and talked about their changing culture in the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Culture Map written by Erin Meyer and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international business expert helps you understand and navigate cultural differences in this insightful and practical guide, perfect for both your work and personal life. Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.
Download or read book American Cultural Patterns written by Edward C. Stewart and published by Nicholas Brealey. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Companion to American Cultural History written by Karen Halttunen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to American Cultural History offers a historiographic overview of the scholarship, with special attention to the major studies and debates that have shaped the field, and an assessment of where it is currently headed. 30 essays explore the history of American culture at all analytic levels Written by scholarly experts well-versed in the questions and controversies that have activated interest in this burgeoning field Part of the authoritative Blackwell Companions to American History series Provides both a chronological and thematic approach: topics range from British America in the Eighteenth Century to the modern day globalization of American Culture; thematic approaches include gender and sexuality and popular culture
Download or read book Highbrow Lowbrow written by Lawrence W. LEVINE and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unusually wide-ranging study, spanning more than a century and covering such diverse forms of expressive culture as Shakespeare, Central Park, symphonies, jazz, art museums, the Marx Brothers, opera, and vaudeville, a leading cultural historian demonstrates how variable and dynamic cultural boundaries have been and how fragile and recent the cultural categories we have learned to accept as natural and eternal are. For most of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of expressive forms—Shakespearean drama, opera, orchestral music, painting and sculpture, as well as the writings of such authors as Dickens and Longfellow—enjoyed both high cultural status and mass popularity. In the nineteenth century Americans (in addition to whatever specific ethnic, class, and regional cultures they were part of) shared a public culture less hierarchically organized, less fragmented into relatively rigid adjectival groupings than their descendants were to experience. By the twentieth century this cultural eclecticism and openness became increasingly rare. Cultural space was more sharply defined and less flexible than it had been. The theater, once a microcosm of America—housing both the entire spectrum of the population and the complete range of entertainment from tragedy to farce, juggling to ballet, opera to minstrelsy—now fragmented into discrete spaces catering to distinct audiences and separate genres of expressive culture. The same transition occurred in concert halls, opera houses, and museums. A growing chasm between “serious” and “popular,” between “high” and “low” culture came to dominate America’s expressive arts. “If there is a tragedy in this development,” Lawrence Levine comments, “it is not only that millions of Americans were now separated from exposure to such creators as Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Verdi, whom they had enjoyed in various formats for much of the nineteenth century, but also that the rigid cultural categories, once they were in place, made it so difficult for so long for so many to understand the value and importance of the popular art forms that were all around them. Too many of those who considered themselves educated and cultured lost for a significant period—and many have still not regained—their ability to discriminate independently, to sort things out for themselves and understand that simply because a form of expressive culture was widely accessible and highly popular it was not therefore necessarily devoid of any redeeming value or artistic merit.” In this innovative historical exploration, Levine not only traces the emergence of such familiar categories as highbrow and lowbrow at the turn of the century, but helps us to understand more clearly both the process of cultural change and the nature of culture in American society.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture written by Robert Gregg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 1379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a meeting point for world cultures, the USA is characterized by its breadth and diversity. Acknowledging that diversity is the fundamental feature of American culture, this volume is organized around a keen awareness of race, gender, class and space and with over 1,200 alphabetically-arranged entries - spanning 'the American century' from the end of World War II to the present day - the Encyclopedia provides a one-stop source for insightful and stimulating coverage of all aspects of that culture. Entries range from short definitions to longer overview essays and with full cross-referencing, extensive indexing, and a thematic contents list, this volume provides an essential cultural context for both teachers and students of American studies, as well as providing fascinating insights into American culture for the general reader. The suggestions for further reading, which follows most entries, are also invaluable guides to more specialized sources.
Download or read book A Christian Critique of American Culture written by Julian Hartt and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bad conscience is rampant in the church, asserts Julian Hartt. There is the feeling that the church has mislead the contemporary world by its own commitment to archaic symbols and outworn attitudes. It has continued to endorse and defend a system of values that has eroded almost past recognition. Dr. Hartt shows how this acute anxiety over bad conscience prompts the radical reorientation of Christian thinking identified as theology of culture. The heralds of the New Morality have not been reluctant to point this out, and to demand from the church a fairly severe penance: a readiness to give up the ghost if it cannot secularize its Gospel without reservation or residue. But, the author says, the church cannot do this faithfully if it simply looks piously to the past, hopeful to heaven, and with good old American optimism to the future. In this timely and fresh theology of culture for the American situation, the author shows that a deep concern for contemporary culture is an elementary and indispensable part of authentic Christian theological reflection. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ, he contends, gives us both a foundation and a critical posture for the assessment of the world in which we live. Dr. Hartt points out that the initial foothold for Christian theological work is a certain criticism of contemporary life. This will demonstrate what the Christian believes God is and what God demands of him and of all men, whether or not they are Christian or are even religious in any ordinary sense. He then goes on to delineate sketches of what he feels are the chief claims of the Christian faith, and what are key realms of culture.
Download or read book The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History written by Joan Shelley Rubin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 1551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History brings together in one two-volume set the record of the nation's values, aspirations, anxieties, and beliefs as expressed in both everyday life and formal bodies of thought. Over the past twenty years, the field of cultural history has moved to the center of American historical studies, and has come to encompass the experiences of ordinary citizens in such arenas as reading and religious practice as well as the accomplishments of prominent artists and writers. Some of the most imaginative scholarship in recent years has emerged from this burgeoning field. The scope of the volume reflects that development: the encyclopedia incorporates popular entertainment ranging from minstrel shows to video games, middlebrow ventures like Chautauqua lectures and book clubs, and preoccupations such as "Perfectionism" and "Wellness" that have shaped Americans' behavior at various points in their past and that continue to influence attitudes in the present. The volumes also make available recent scholarly insights into the writings of political scientists, philosophers, feminist theorists, social reformers, and other thinkers whose works have furnished the underpinnings of Americans' civic activities and personal concerns. Anyone wishing to understand the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of the United States from the early days of settlement to the twenty-first century will find the encyclopedia invaluable.
Download or read book The Influence of High low Context Culture and Power Distance on Choice of Communication Media written by Rieko Maruta Richardson and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Jazz Cadence of American Culture written by Robert G. O'Meally and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking to heart Ralph Ellison's remark that much in American life is "jazz-shaped," The Jazz Cadence of American Culture offers a wide range of eloquent statements about the influence of this art form. Robert G. O'Meally has gathered a comprehensive collection of important essays, speeches, and interviews on the impact of jazz on other arts, on politics, and on the rhythm of everyday life. Focusing mainly on American artistic expression from 1920 to 1970, O'Meally confronts a long era of political and artistic turbulence and change in which American art forms influenced one another in unexpected ways. Organized thematically, these provocative pieces include an essay considering poet and novelist James Weldon Johnson as a cultural critic, an interview with Wynton Marsalis, a speech on the heroic image in jazz, and a newspaper review of a recent melding of jazz music and dance, Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. From Stanley Crouch to August Wilson to Jacqui Malone, the plurality of voices gathered here reflects the variety of expression within jazz. The book's opening section sketches the overall place of jazz in America. Alan P. Merriam and Fradley H. Garner unpack the word jazz and its register, Albert Murray considers improvisation in music and life, Amiri Baraka argues that white critics misunderstand jazz, and Stanley Crouch cogently dissects the intersections of jazz and mainstream American democratic institutions. After this, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring jazz and the visual arts, dance, sports, history, memory, and literature. Ann Douglas writes on jazz's influence on the design and construction of skyscrapers in the 1920s and '30s, Zora Neale Hurston considers the significance of African-American dance, Michael Eric Dyson looks at the jazz of Michael Jordan's basketball game, and Hazel Carby takes on the sexual politics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith's blues. The Jazz Cadence offers a wealth of insight and information for scholars, students, jazz aficionados, and any reader wishing to know more about this music form that has put its stamp on American culture more profoundly than any other in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Global Perspectives on Well Being in Immigrant Families written by Radosveta Dimitrova and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Perspectives on Well-Being in Immigrant Families addresses how immigrant families and their children cope with the demands of a new country in relation to psychological well-being, adjustment, and cultural maintenance. The book identifies cultural and contextual factors that contribute to well-being during a family’s migratory transition to ensure successful outcomes for children and youth. In addition, the findings presented in this book outline issues for future policy and practice including preventive practices that might allow for early intervention and increased cultural sensitivity among practitioners, school staff, and researchers.
Download or read book Contact Spaces of American Culture written by Petra Eckhard and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2012 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do tent cities, basketball courts, slave ships, and Facebook have in common? They are spaces of American culture where an idea of 'Americanness' emerges through a concrete form of contact on the one hand and through its mediated representation on the other. This collection of essays examines these contact spaces - and their myriad and complex configurations of culture - along a spatial axis, highlighting the interconnectedness of the local and the global in concrete spaces of American culture, both inside and outside the US, and from the world wide web. One line of inquiry studies metaphors of contact, the other one reads media texts as contact spaces and investigates the role of mediation. (Series: American Studies in Austria - Vol. 12)
Download or read book Asian Women in Corporate America Emerging Research and Opportunities written by Lakshminarayanan, Sambhavi and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2021-02-19 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By necessity, understanding of leadership has been based on who used to be business leaders, namely men. In the last few years, Asian women have been making their mark in corporate America. Although Asian women have become part of the American workforce, and some have achieved spectacular success, there is little discussion about them. Many of these women could be first general immigrants, still balancing the strong pull of two cultures. Even for second or third generation immigrants, Asian cultures can often exert immense pressures. Thus, the achievement of these women deserves far more attention than it has received, and comprehensive research on these advances should be presented. Asian Women in Corporate America: Emerging Research and Opportunities traces the history of Asian women’s presence as executives of major American corporations, presents biographical sketches of a select few, draws upon factors (individual, corporate, and societal) that influenced their journeys, and links to past theories on business leadership. The chapters serve to bring attention to a minority group in leadership and extricates factors that helped in the success of Asian American women in these prominent roles. While highlighting topics such as existing leadership theories, gender and ethnicity in leadership, models of theories regarding Asian women, and their involvement in major corporations, this book is a valuable reference tool for managers, executives, researchers, practitioners, academicians, and students working in fields that include women’s studies/gender studies, business and management, human resources management, management science, and leadership.
Download or read book Relocating Identities in Latin American Cultures written by Elizabeth Montes Garcés and published by University of Calgary Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores the perpetually changing notion of Latin American identity, particularly as illustrated in literature and other forms of cultural expression. Editor Elizabeth Montes Garcés has gathered contributions from specialists who examine the effects of such major phenomena as migration, globalization, and gender on the construct of Latin American identities, and, as such, are reshaping the traditional understanding of Latin America's cultural history. The contributors to this volume are experts in Latin American literature and culture. Covering a diverse range of genres from poetry to film, their essays explore themes such as feminism, deconstruction, and postcolonial theory as they are reflected in the Latin American cultural milieu.
Download or read book International HRM written by Terence Jackson and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2002-07-24 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International HRM provides an account and critique of human resource management from a cross-cultural perspective, and explains theories relevant to the decision-making of real managers.
Download or read book The Culture and Psychology Reader written by Nancy Rule Goldberger and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1995-07 with total page 843 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of readings relevant to the development of an intercultural psychology which takes into account the different circumstances, needs, values, constructions of reality, and worldviews and belief systems that significantly shape the experience and behavior of cultural groups. The 34 papers and introductory essay are arranged in four parts: the politics of difference; development, adaption, and the acquisition of culture; self and other in cultural context; and diagnostic assessment, treatment, and cultural bias. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Readings in Ethnic Psychology written by Pamela Balls Organista and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering reader is a collection of fundamental writings on the influence of culture and ethnicity on human social behavior. An overview of current psychological knowledge about African Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States, Readings in Ethnic Psychology addresses basic concepts in the field--race, ethnic identity, acculturation and biculturalism. In addition, psychosocial conditions such as risk behaviors, adaptive health behaviors, psychological distress, and culturally appropriate interventions are also explored.
