Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Architecture and furniture design
A good book about an architect/designer little has been written about. If one wants to read about the beginnings of mid-century modern this is one of the books to read. ... Read more

Product Description
While the process of childbirth is, in some sense, everywhere the same, it is also everywhere different in that each culture has produced a birthing system that is strikingly dissimilar from the others. Based on her fieldwork in the United States, Sweden, Holland, and Yucatan, Jordan develops a framework for the discussion and investigation of different birthing systems. Illustrated with useful examples and lively anecdotes from Jordan's own fieldwork, the Fourth Edition of this innovative comparative ethnography brings the reader to a deeper understanding of childbirth as a culturally grounded, biosocially mediated, and interactionally achieved event. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Birth in Four Cultures
The book is in very good shape, it was an excellent read and it was very useful for my Anthropology class. Thank you!

Excellent cross-cultural study
This is a formal cross-cultural study on birthing practices across the globe. The author writes in an academic style, but the information is fascinating and vital in understanding how cultural/social frameworks surrounding birth, play a huge part in the practice and experiences of women giving life. Though written several decades ago, the medicalization of labor in America has continued along it's dehumanizing path. Still relevant and worth the read!

Birth in Four Cultures
This book by Brigitte Jordan compares the way we look at and carry out the birth process in the US compared the way the Mayans in Yucatan do. Birth in Holland and Sweden is also examined, somewhat secondarily.The author is an anthropologist and was clearly committed to using social science methodology to carry out her studies.The result is not a countercultural advocacy piece but rather a thorough treatise that acknowledges what is good in the American, technological births, and what may be less than optimal in the Mayan culture. She also does a good job articulating how the US approach creates more problems and solves them in the same way that the problem was created, and how the Mayan culture avoids many of these problems. She discusses what seems to work and what seems not to in the way that technological innovation is introduced to indigenous people.Dr. Jordan does all of this with a sensitivity to those in the birth process, a recognition that when birth does not go right for whatever reason, the result can be traumatic for the mother and the child.

birth in four cultures
Birth in Four Cultures : A Crosscultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States
This is a good book, but not and easy one to read.I expected more about birth in the cultures that the book mentions. About rites and beliefs and I did not found that in this book.

not what I thought...
I am not sure what I was expecting...but this wasn't it. I don't know. Too clinical maybe, I just didn't really enjoy it. I am sure it will speak to many people.

Heather mama of 5 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A book you should look into....
Culture builders was one of the first anthropology books I read, and now some 6 years later, I still count it among the best ones I have read.Its importance to me was in the fact that it introduced me to the anthropology of lot of really interesting concepts: dirt, love, time, sex.Immediately after reading this book I ran out and got Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger.What Mary Douglas does for Leviticus, and in general, Culture Builders does for the 18th century Swedish middle-class.If you are interested in Douglas, then I would recommend this book for another application of her views. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is an enlightening and bias-breaking study. It looks at the cultures of capitalism in Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands, and reveals how each has unique cultural habits and traditions of economic excellence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Why this book is out of print...
I borrowed this book from the local public library after a recommendation by an international business expert who has dealt significantly with Japan.I personally am an American ex-management consultant, Kellogg MBA, and now work in an international business capacity for a foreign government, one of the seven cultures studied by the authors.First off, I will say that this book does offer value;the study findings and cultural insights are extremely useful, even ten years later.However, I found the book absolutely frustrating in its arrogance and leaps of logic, taking the micro-level findings of the research to try to explain macroeconomics of the time.Since I found no dissenting voices on the Internet regarding this book, I felt compelled to offer a different perspective.

If you read this book, you would not expect US GDP to outgrow Japanese GDP in real terms EVERY SINGLE YEAR OF THE TEN YEARS SINCE THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED in 1993, which was exactly what happened.The authors seem to have taken advantage of the alarmist environment of Western management circles at the time to take pot shots at Adam Smith, Michael Porter, business schools, economics, financial analysis, management consultants, lawyers, etc.You would think that the American way of doing business logically, factually, and rationally is inherently flawed.The authors do not take their own prescription to "bring seemingly opposed values into balance", but rather extoll the virtues of the opposing value while dismissing the "Anglo-American" value to obsolescence.

Indeed, it is the convenient neglect of American-style fact-based analysis that may be the fundamental flaw of this book.The authors take very little data to make broad, sweeping conclusions.One laughable passage on page 37 asserted that one reason the Japanese may prefer to locate many of their plants in the South is that Americans there tend to take more time to converse informally before proceeding to business discussions.Never mind right-to-work laws, state economic development incentives, and the opportunity to build on a clean slate in the South -- Japanese motivations can be monolithically explained by culture, if you ask Turner and Trompenaars.(I am certain the Japanese do their fair share of fact-based analysis.)

READ THIS BOOK, but take it with a grain of salt.The study facts and cultural insights are essential, but the authors' larger extrapolations are dangerous and could be discredited by what has transpired since the book was published.Americans can and must benefit by learning from other cultures, adapt their strengths to new environments, and assimilate ideas that might at first be uncomfortable.But do not throw away all Anglo-American values so readily.The irony that this book is out-of-print while "Wealth of Nations" remains after 227 years suggests that Smith's invisible hand exists to strangle those who make feeble arguments against it.

An absolutely fascinating book
Though this book was first published in 1993, it is still every bit as relevant and interesting today. In this book, the authors examine the values and cultural habits of seven major capitalist countries (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands), and examines how their cultural differences has given to each an entirely different capitalist system. After first explaining how the differences were quantified, the authors then examine these cultures, giving the reader an in-depth understanding of how each country's culture (and as such, capitalist system) works, and how it produces wealth.

I found this to be an absolutely fascinating book. I was always aware of the cultural differences between various countries, but this book did an excellent job of defining those differences, and showing how they affect the way that the country does business. If you are interested in any of these seven countries, or interested in international business, then I highly recommend this book to you.

Excellent Resource
The authors used questionnaire-based research to study twelve countries through the lens of seven oppositional pairs (the cultures from the title).

These pairs are:
Universalism vs. Particularism
Analyzing vs. Integrating
Individualism vs. Communitarianism
Inner-Directed vs. Outer-directed Orientation
Time as Sequence vs. Time as Synchronization
Achieved Status vs. Ascribed Status
Equality vs. Hierarchy

They make the point that capitalism is not a choice for or against but a range of behaviours made up of a multiplicity of choices. Using their grid and research data, they position various countries on this range.

As someone who works and lives in a country where I was not born, I found the book a very useful frame for looking at my adopted work environment.

I really call this 4.5 stars, the -.5 is because sections of it are much more dated than others and there are places where I think the tone of the book is lessened by the authors' temptation to give in and make value judgements.

I wish this weren't out of print!
This book examines a number of different countries and the priorities that shape them.While different cultures may all share the same values - be honest, treat your friends well, etc - what istelling is how differentcultures *prioritize*.

For example, if you are in a situation where yousee your friendat fault in a car accident, and you are called upon totestify, what do you do?While Americans tend to value truth-telling overloyalty to friends,Asians tend to value loyalty to friends over truth-telling.Both choices are shocking to the opposite:"How canyou lie like that?"vs. "How can you let your friend down likethat?"

This book looks at a number of cultures and how they differ. It's a fascinating read, and has changed how I look at the world.

If you work for a multinational then you MUST read this book
Helped me understand why the US focus on COST while Europe focuses on VALUE and why I was finding it tough in Sweden!Great Book! ... Read more

Product Description
In the long debate about the failure of German democracy in the early twentieth century, most comparisons have been made, implicitly or explicitly, with Great Britain. Madeleine Hurd's Public Spheres, Public Mores, and Democracy proposes a useful alternative--the comparison of prewar Germany with Sweden, which, like Germany, was characterized by a conservative monarchy, late industrialization, and a weak, fractured bourgeoisie.
Hurd's book offers the reader a close analysis of the political impact of nineteenth-century cultural and educational crusades, linking the process of democratization to left-wing parties' use of cultural, educational, and freethinking appeals. Both socialist and left-liberal leaders emphasized the politics of taste, sobriety, and self-respect, challenging realities and perceptions of who was acceptable in the public political sphere and who was to be excluded as immature, uncultured, and uncouth.
The two-city comparison suggests interesting conclusions. Moral and educational crusades could bring liberals and socialists together in common attacks on a drunken and irresponsible plutocracy. Cultural issues could also drive them apart, as the bourgeoisie and workers established rival claims to public respectability and autonomy. Public Spheres, Public Mores, and Democracy provides a compelling account of how the moral content of citizenship claims affected each city's and each country's long-term democratic stability. In the process, it indicates new ways of understanding the historical realities, and values, of the bourgeois public sphere.
Madeleine Hurd is Assistant Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh.
... Read more

Product Description
Identity document. Czech national identity card, Estonian ID card, National identity card (France), Identity Card (Poland), Multipurpose National Identity Card, Romanian identity card, Identity documents in Sweden, Teudat Zehut, Montenegrin identity card, Identity documents in the United States, National identity card (United Kingdom), Brazilian Identity Card, Resident Identity Card, Croatian identity card, MyKad, Serbian identity card, National Registration Identity Card, National Identification Card (Republic of China) ... Read more

Product Description
How do young people today construct their sexual identities? Are young people sexually liberated, or is human sexuality increasingly controlled and manipulated by commercial forces? Thomas Johansson explores the construction of sexual identities by young people as part of a wider process of identity construction, combining the work of key authors such as Elias and Foucault with original and revealing empirical material drawn from an extensive extensive survey of the views of 1300 sixteen to nineteen year olds. The topics covered include; fidelity and infidelity, love, homosexuality, pornography and beauty ideals. Designed to look behind media images and popular prejudices the book adds insight to the literature on how young people of both genders, of different nationalities and of different group allegiances view and relate to their own sexuality. ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines differences in the achievements of men and women. Based on data from interviews with men and women in five large companies, it looks at the historical, structural and psychological factors which affect women's approaches and attitudes to careers and advancement. The results of the study show that although women continue to be concentrated in certain sectors and industries, and relatively few manage to advance up the corporate ladder, the future does look more promising: more educated women are moving into middle management and are applying pressure to gain executive positions. ... Read more

Product Description
Family Law and Political Culture researches the influence of political and institutional factors on the evolution and structure of laws relating to the family, providing a rarely explored perspective on comparative family law. ... Read more