Beyond Culture – Edward T Hall

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Edward T Hall Edward T Hall

From 1933 to 1937, famed anthropologist Edward T. Hall lived and worked on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona. West of the Thirties is the story of Edward as a young man discovering his way in what might have been another century and another world, a frontier where four cultures – Navajo, Hopi, Hispanic and Anglo – clashed.

We play out our own paradigms until we learn another. But this was not something that I learned in class. When I was on the reservation, figuring out how to work with the Hopis and the Navajos, this is where I found out they were entirely different. And that imposing my paradigm on others would not work
Gifts of Wisdom: An Interview with Dr. Edward T. Hall | The Edge

Beyond Culture Beyond Culture Edward T Hall

More words of wisdom from Edward T Hall.

Now, you can’t tell me, we have the only God in the whole world. You can’t tell me that nobody else has God.

The future for us is the foreseeable future. The South Asian, however, feels that it is perfectly realistic to think of a ‘long time’ in terms of thousands of years.

The information is in the people, not in your head.

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.

Two points that are very important points to remember and ask: Is it real and does it work?

We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

We tend to do a lot of top down, micro-managing. In other words, we use the reptilian model.

You are the instrument of research.