Edward T. Hall was een pionier op het gebied van interculturele communicatie, die onderzocht hoe mensen ruimte en tijd waarnemen en gebruiken. Zijn werk verdiepte zich in de cultureel specifieke ruimtelijke dimensies die individuen omringen, en introduceerde concepten als proxemics en het onderscheid tussen polychrone en monochrone culturen. Hall ontwikkelde ook de ideeën van 'high-context' en 'low-context' culturen, die verduidelijken hoe informatie wordt overgebracht in verschillende culturele omgevingen. Zijn onderzoek, geïnspireerd door het leven en werken met Native American stammen en zijn dienstverband in de Verenigde Staten, legde de basis voor de academische studie van interculturele betrekkingen, waarbij de diepgaande impact van cultuur op menselijk gedrag werd benadrukt.
Beyond Culture is a proud celebration of human capacities. For too long, people have taken their own ways of life for granted, ignoring the vast, international cultural community that surrounds them. Humankind must now embark on the difficult journey beyond culture, to the discovery of a lost self and a sense of perspective. By holding up a mirror, Hall permits us to see the awesome grip of unconscious culture. With concrete examples ranging from James Joyceʼs Finnegans Wake to the mating habits of the bowerbird of New Guinea, Hall shows us ourselves. Beyond Culture is a book about self-discovery; it is a voyage we all must embark on if mankind is to survive
From 1933 to 1937, the great American anthropologist Edward T. Hall lived and worked on reservations in the Southwest, a frontier where four cultures--Navajo, Hopi, Hispanic, and Anglo--clashed. Re-creating that stark and haunting landscape, Hall pieces together a firsthand account of two proud worlds--the frugal, Pueblo-dwelling Hopi with their isolated villages high on the mesa tops and their deeply felt religious faith and the Navajos, whose rhythm and ceremonious forms of respect Hall learned as he worked with them. In these early experiences, as Hall discovered the deeply human logic of these tribes, he began to recognize how culture itself, not only theirs but his own, was at work in each person's behavior. The respect he felt and diplayed won 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 a place of unforgettable beauty, West Of The Thirties is about the Navajos and Hopis as one receptive young white man perceived them, but it is also about the core of being human, which Hall would later develop into 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 lost world, the West of the thirties.
Contribution à une meilleure compréhension entre les peuples, cet essai sur les systèmes de communication non-verbaux, sur le langage silencieux des comportements, a été mis au point en 1959
