Edward Twitchell Hall

From 1933 to 1937, famed anthropologist Edward T. Hall, author of the classic The Silent Language, lived and worked on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona. West of the Thirties is the story of Hall 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. Looking back at the history of white men among Indians in this stark and haunting landscape, Hall weaves a firsthand account of two proud worlds - the frugal, pueblo-dwelling Hopis, with their isolated villages high on the mesa tops and their deeply felt religious faith; and the proud Navajos, whose rhythm and ceremonious forms of respect Hall learned as he worked with them. As he discovered the deeply different human logic of the Navajos and the Hopis, Hall began to recognize how culture itself was at work in each person's behavior. The respect he felt and displayed earned him a friendly Navajo nickname - Chiz Chili, meaning Slim Curly Hair - and a mentor, the great Indian trader Lorenzo Hubbell . Set under the vast arch of sky in place of unforgettable beauty, West of the Thirties is first of all about the Navajos and the Hopis as one receptive young white man perceived them. But it is also about the core of being human, which Hall, who understood this truth there for the first time, would later develop as a theory of implicit culture. In these pages, we see theory in the flesh, taking a hundred different human forms and engaging us in a rough-and-tumble bygone world, the West of the thirties.

In 1959, a groundbreaking study of nonverbal communication, The Silent Language, was published to international acclaim. Written by Edward T. Hall, a cultural anthropologist, it was one of the first books to examine the complex ways people communicate with one another without speaking. More than thirty years later, The Silent Language has never been out of print, has been translated into several languages, has sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S., and remains the definitive book in its field. Today, Ned Hall is a world-renowned expert in intercultural communication, sought after by government agencies, businesses and universities throughout the world for his expertise in interpreting the hidden meanings behind what people are saying to one another. Now, in a remarkably candid and personal book, he tells the story of the first fifty years of his fascinating life. Although it began inauspiciously when he was virtually abandoned by his parents to the care of others, his early exposure to diverse cultures started him on his path toward decoding the deeper, hidden layers of human behavior. By the time he was in his early twenties, he had lived in Missouri, New Mexico, France, Germany and on Indian reservations in the Southwest. Building dams with the Hopi and Navajo, he began to realize the very deep differences in these two dissimilar cultures and our own as to how each viewed time, space, bargains and other aspects of daily communication. While serving in the army during World War II, he perceived how the formal army culture differed from the informal one, adding further weight to the new theories he was developing. Working for the State Department under President Truman, he trained foreign service officers who were being sent to underdeveloped countries. Hall's message to them--that there were profound disparities in the attitudes of different cultures toward time, space and relationships--was considered almost heretical at the time. Today, Hall's books are required reading for the Peace Corps. With charm, warmth, and wit, Ned Hall tells of years filled with adventure, glory, pain and disappointment, discovery and achievement. Throughout his life and in the pages of his autobiography, he incorporates his belief that decoding hidden meanings will help people to discover "the anthropology of everyday life."

Based on interviews with German, French and American executives and on extensive research into intercultural relations, this book provides insights and practical advice on day-to-day transactions in international business. It is designed to help Americans, Germans and the French better understand one another's psychology and behaviour. The authors emphasize the behaviour one can expect in the business culture of each and offer advice for avoiding the misunderstandings and miscommunications that can occur. -- Provided by publisher.

In the everyday but unspoken give-and-take of human relationships, the silent language plays a vitally important role. Here, a leading American anthropologist has analyzed the many ways in which people talk to one another without the use of works. The pecking order in a chicken yard, the fierce competition in a school playground, every unwitting gesture and action-this is the vocabulary of the silent language. According to Dr. Hall, the concepts of space and time are tools with which all human beings may transmit messages. Space, for example, is the outgrowth of an animalʼs instinctive defense of his lair and is reflected in human society by the office workerʼs jealous defense of his desk, or the guarded, walled patio of a Latin-American home. Similarly, the concept of time, varying from Western precision to Eastern vagueness, Is revealed by the businessman who pointedly keeps a client waiting, or the South Pacific islander who murders his neighbor for an injustice suffered twenty years ago. Includes information on American culture, Americans overseas, Arabs, formal cultural systems, informal cultural systems, Middle East, Navajo, patterns, Pueblo Indians, sets, space, Spanish culture, time, etc.