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This essay offers an attempt at a cross-cultural inquiry into cross-cultural inquiry by examining how one influential Chinese reformer, Tan Sitong (1865-1898), thought creatively about the possibilities of learning from [...]

Research on persuasive evidence types has been limited to Western cultures. Because Western systems of thought are claimed to be fundamentally different from Eastern systems of thought, the persuasiveness of evidence types was explored in one Eastern culture. Indians (N = 183) judged claims supported by different evidence types. Statistical, expert, and causal evidence were found to be equally persuasive as support for claims. Indians also appeared sensitive to evidence quality that was manipulated according to Western norms for reasonable argumentation: normatively strong evidence was more persuasive than normatively weak evidence. Findings are compared to results from studies conducted in Western cultures. Key Words: culture, evidence, experiment, India, persuasiveness, For more than fifty years, researchers have been interested in the kinds of data that are most effective in supporting a claim (Reinard, 1988). When data are used as proof [...]

Within the popular music scene of Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, a handful of restaurants feature live bluegrass bands, with musicians often dressed in U.S. western-style cowboy attire. By intermingling English-language songs with Lanna (Northern Thai) popular songs performed in the style of Appalachian bluegrass music, they use their illusion of the cowboy myth to point to notions of an authentic Lanna past. However, in their borrowing of this international code, they affirm established (Central) Thai boundaries of ethnonational gatekeeping. [Lanna, Thailand, cowboys, music, nostalgia, bluegrass, identity] DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01252.x

The five projects of the program for psychoanalysis and social interface of the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of Rio de Janeiro are discussed. The projects contribute in improvising mental health and social links in contemporary society.

The article deals with how the rest of the world sees the West in the face of globalization blaming it on the technology that has made tremendous advances but has failed to improve its quality, thus portraying the worst side of the West. It shows how the instruments of public diplomacy or soft power have the ability to increase knowledge about a nation and foster respect and admiration in the target population.

As both a social institution and a personal experience, marriage has changed more in the past 30 years than the preceding 3,000 years. The changes in marriage have rolled across [...]

How much variation is there in immigrant incorporation policies and practices across the Western democracies? Concluding that the effort to capture variation in typologies of incorporation schemes is likely to [...]

THIS paper discusses the hypothesis that the symptoms of functional psychoses can be caused by culturally structured spontaneous trances that may be reactions to environmental stress and psychological trauma. Findings are reviewed of anthropological studies of meditative trance experiences in Indian yogis characterized by divided consciousness (dissociation), religious auditory and visual hallucinations, and beliefs in their own spiritual powers. An explanation of the psychological mechanisms of meditative trance is also provided, highlighting trance-related alteration of consciousness within an Indian cultural context. It is suggested that the psychological mechanisms of meditative trance are similar in structure to spontaneous trances underlying the symptoms of some functional psychoses. Findings from cross-cultural studies are also reviewed, highlighting the effects of culture on the symptoms, indigenous diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes of functional psychoses. In non-Western cultures, transient functional psychoses with complete recovery are 10 times more common than in Western cultures. It is suggested that egocentrism and a loss of spiritual explanations for psychosis in Western cultures constructs a clinical situation in which persons with functional psychoses are treated for a biogenetic (incurable) brain disease rather than a curable spiritual illness. This difference in cultural belief systems leads to poorer outcomes for Western patients compared to non-Western patients. Recognizing cultural differences in symptoms, indigenous diagnoses, and treatment for functional psychoses can help explain the dramatic cross-cultural differences in outcome.

This article discusses the misconceptions and stereotypes Americans have of the Middle East, of Muslim culture and of Islamic fundamentalism which is largely informed by the US's own brand of Christian fundamentalism, and how these negative portrayals of Islam have political ramifications after the September 11, 2001 attacks and the subsequent 'war on terrorism'. The author traces these attitudes toward Islamic fundamentalism back to the 1978-79 Iranian revolution and the negative image given it by the US media, arguing that the revolution was a popular democratic effort to remove an authoritarian state with a notorious secret police supported by the CIA and Israel's Mossad, and at the same time was a critique of capitalist development and state repression of opposition; however, Islam became a target of the West's dislike of political activism and protest in the Third World, and the author illustrates that the same rhetoric used to condemn them is employed by the US in its 'war on terrorism'.

European fiction of the post-Enlightenment 19th- and 20th-centuries has portrayed romantic love as impossible and tragic, although romantic love has become an accepted part of the normative discourse of modern Western culture. The works of Jane Austen, for example, present a powerful criticism of romantic love and a preference for rational discourse about relationships. Romantic love has not been liberating for women, but instead ensnares women with false expectations and oppressive demands.

The West has viewed the Muslim Orient as a hostile region and such perception has led to prejudice in blind cultural aversion. Because of the image of the Muslim Orient to westerners, the Arabic language which represents the Islamic thought has also been prejudiced in the western setting. Orientalists, on the other hand, have viewed the people in the West as ignorant of Arabic language because they cannot sense the spirit of the language through its rules.

Edward Said has provided a valuable analysis of the relation between humanist culture and imperialism, one that can be supplemented by an understanding of the ontological basis of humanism. Heidegger and Nietzsche have pointed out that humanism is not derived directly from classical Greek thought, but rather comes from the Roman appropriation of the Greeks, a transformation that is the source of the rootlessness of European thought. The humanist emphasis on abstraction as a mode of thought that is alienated from being is related to the imperial will to power.

IN HIS ARTICLE in the summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled 'The Clash of Civilizations?' Samuel Huntington contends that the historic conflicts between nations, and later between ideologies, have [...]

The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States revealed depressing facts: that American citizens had fallen victim to the foreign policy of their own country and that the main problem is America's fight for freedom throughout the world, American-style elections, and a new world order. Democratic and technologically advanced societies like the United States do not have the right to force all of civilization to adopt its liberal ideas.

The article discusses how Westerners International came into being and discusses the activities undertaken by it. The members share and discuss the Western history.

What is the cultural and social significance of the Internet in the Western world? I shall argue that the Internet is a flower of the Western mind--not a fleur du [...]

An analysis of occidentalism, or the study of Western culture, in the Arab and Asian worlds and how occidental studies are perceived by many thinkers in the West. It is argued that those who criticise occidentalists for not really understanding the West are missing the point, that it is outside of the West that Western influence and power is really felt most strongly, rather than in the West itself.

The western concept of family needs to be redefined due to social and structural changes in western societies. The conventional definition of family is no longer satisfactory because many families have become dysfunctional, and because of radical changes in authority structures of the family and society's changing perceptions of gender. Thus, the four criteria for redefining western families are self-perception, public perception, law and history and tradition.