inquiry_from_an_anti_library's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
2.0
Overview:
Different cultures think differently about how each individual fits in their society. Cultures influence how much control each individual thinks they have to shape events. Whether the individual chooses every decision, to decisions being a product of the situation and influenced by the community. Cultures that are individualistic prioritize oneself and contrast themselves to others. Cultures that are interdependent flexi-self do not have clear personal boundaries, for the boundary is fluid within their group, but do have a boundary for an outgroup. Individualistic cultures prioritize individual achievement and effort. Flexi-self cultures prioritize the context and community that facilitated the achievement.
Different ways of understanding can create misunderstanding when interpreting the decisions of people from other cultures. A cultural clash. Each type of culture has its advantages and disadvantages. The dichotomy between individualistic and flexi-self has deviations for individuals within the cultures can think differently. People and organizations can also become ambidependent, by making decisions and interpreting them using both types of understandings.
Caveats?
The book is composed of mostly examples. Lacking a systematic analysis of the ideas. The focus is primarily to explain flexi-self cultures such as China, while often contrasting it with individualistic cultures such as America. These examples themselves are diverse ways to understand the concept of a flexi-self, they do not necessarily add value to the concept of flexi-self.
donzhivago's review against another edition
Sadly failed to answer why people in Sydney's Chinatown stand 8 wide on the sidewalk.
innae's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting look at how culture shapes us, but still there is hope on controlling your own self.
alliesher's review against another edition
3.0
Great research and information on education and cultural differences. I chose to listen to this via audio book and the narrator was terrible. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had just read the book. But the content was good.
omnibozo22's review against another edition
4.0
Important book, among others, for any westerner (called "weird" in the book) planning on visiting, doing business or living in Asia or even Africa (though her examples are all from Asia). Jen has a repetitive style and wanders pretty far abroad in her set-ups for comparisons and contrasts. Her term for self-centered westerners, Big Pit (as in avocado pit), grates some, especially since her term for Asians is "flexi-self," hardly as gnarly an image.
Most useful are discussions of the meanings of Yes and No in the different cultures and the differing processes and meanings of collaboration.
Most useful are discussions of the meanings of Yes and No in the different cultures and the differing processes and meanings of collaboration.
sbaldwin16's review against another edition
2.5
This is really a 2.5 star book.
It is quite interesting and perhaps a bit strange that even though Jen is essentially talking about the difference between the more individualistic, independent, "big pit self" West and the more collectivistic, interdependent, "flexi-self" East, [a:Geert Hofstede|107228|Geert Hofstede|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1359520871p2/107228.jpg]'s name doesn't really seem to come up, even though he was a pioneer (some would say the pioneer) in research dealing with that dichotomy across cultures.
Going into this book, I thought it would be more of a memoir, recounting Jen's experiences as an Asian American, where the "Asian part" of her life--for example, as the daughter of immigrants, with presumably Asian relatives--would contrast with the "American part" of her life--growing up in America with American friends--peppered with a bit of research to support what she had figured out through personal experience. This book is...not quite that (and considering what Jen says later in the book about why "big pit" Americans prefer memoirs, it's probably quite interesting that I assumed it would be so. However, I, for numerous reasons, don't quite fit into the "typical American" that Jen is referring to in the book--I mention reasons for this assumption later in this review--so it's hard to say just what and where my assumption is coming from). A better example of what I was expecting would be something along the lines of [a:Alex Tizon|7182564|Alex Tizon|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s [b:Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self|18222673|Big Little Man In Search of My Asian Self|Alex Tizon|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1384158364s/18222673.jpg|25656338]. There are some mentions in this book of Jen's personal experiences but they serve more as side examples in support of the research than vice versa. Rather this book relies quite a bit on (others') research and yet--maybe because of the above mentioned omission of Hofstede--it still feels a bit lacking somehow. This may also be because Jen's explanations and examples at times seem a bit contradictory; Jen will state something, but then give an example or a quote that can be read in a totally different manner or that, indeed, is actually talking about something different than what Jen is, for example when she talks about Calvinists (i.e. independents) who are better able to tell the meaning of a word apart from its tone or to keep themselves from unconciously copying an interviewer when in "work" mode but then immediately talks about how this has "implications for, say, flexi-selves in job interviews". Wait, what? We were totally just talking about independents and how American individualism was influenced by the Calvinism of its early founders such as the Pilgrims, what does that have to do with flexi-selves in job interviews? A connection does actually exist, as Jen will go on to explain, she just tends to jump there without fully showing the connecting steps and isn't the best at explaining the connections after the fact. Or maybe, since she's Asian American she's a bit better at seeing the interconnectedness between things, like the researcher she brings up relatively early in the book who saw the connection between lizard saliva and a way to help people with diabetes, however Jen doesn't seem to fully realize that her audience may not be as good at seeing such abstract connections and thus, is not the best at helping said audience to follow along to reach the same conclusions.
Part of this disconnect may also be due to the structure of the book -- Jen is, after all, simplifying things quite a bit, stating that the East-West culture gap can be boiled down to this ultimate difference of independent/interdependent ways of going about life. Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory started with four dimensions before eventually expanding to six but while most of those--uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity-femininity, and indulgence-restraint--can also be connected to the independent/interdependent dichotomy, it just may be taking too broad/simple a view of things. Likewise the independent/interdependent dichotomy isn't just East vs. West (or really, West vs. East), rather research has shown it's a bit more West vs. Everybody Else. And even within the "West", countries can vary as Jen herself mentions when she brings up how Catholics and therefore heavily Catholic countries tend to be more interdependent, even if they're "Western". But still the people of South America and Africa, who are often considered neither East nor West tend to be more interdependent compared to the "typical American" and this continues even when people who hail or descend from those that hail from those countries find themselves in that bastion of all "Westerness", America. Therefore both racial minorities in America and those who are closer to the immigration process (i.e. first generation Americans vs. second generation Americans, whatever their race) may often be more interdependent than that defining characteristic of "American" would necessarily suggest -- or at least the way Jen would have you think of "Americans", even though she herself seems to be using a somewhat narrow definition of "American". (Although, to give Jen the benefit of the doubt, it is only relatively recently that social science researchers have made a concerted effort to spread their research, and hence, to stop drawing conclusions about all people, from the West and particularly, white Western males. Jen even points out how in 2010 a paper, talking about how most social science research had drawn its conclusions from the West, including, to be fair, Hofstede, states that "96 percent of test subjects came from Western industrialized nations, which contain only 12 percent of the world's population...an American undergraduate was four thousand times more likely to be a subject in a psychology experiment than a random person outside the West".)
I was quite excited for this book and really wanted to like it but overall found it just a bit too lacking and unclear to really do the trick. However, it does look to have a decent bibliography, even if it questionably excludes Hofstede.
It is quite interesting and perhaps a bit strange that even though Jen is essentially talking about the difference between the more individualistic, independent, "big pit self" West and the more collectivistic, interdependent, "flexi-self" East, [a:Geert Hofstede|107228|Geert Hofstede|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1359520871p2/107228.jpg]'s name doesn't really seem to come up, even though he was a pioneer (some would say the pioneer) in research dealing with that dichotomy across cultures.
Going into this book, I thought it would be more of a memoir, recounting Jen's experiences as an Asian American, where the "Asian part" of her life--for example, as the daughter of immigrants, with presumably Asian relatives--would contrast with the "American part" of her life--growing up in America with American friends--peppered with a bit of research to support what she had figured out through personal experience. This book is...not quite that (and considering what Jen says later in the book about why "big pit" Americans prefer memoirs, it's probably quite interesting that I assumed it would be so. However, I, for numerous reasons, don't quite fit into the "typical American" that Jen is referring to in the book--I mention reasons for this assumption later in this review--so it's hard to say just what and where my assumption is coming from). A better example of what I was expecting would be something along the lines of [a:Alex Tizon|7182564|Alex Tizon|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s [b:Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self|18222673|Big Little Man In Search of My Asian Self|Alex Tizon|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1384158364s/18222673.jpg|25656338]. There are some mentions in this book of Jen's personal experiences but they serve more as side examples in support of the research than vice versa. Rather this book relies quite a bit on (others') research and yet--maybe because of the above mentioned omission of Hofstede--it still feels a bit lacking somehow. This may also be because Jen's explanations and examples at times seem a bit contradictory; Jen will state something, but then give an example or a quote that can be read in a totally different manner or that, indeed, is actually talking about something different than what Jen is, for example when she talks about Calvinists (i.e. independents) who are better able to tell the meaning of a word apart from its tone or to keep themselves from unconciously copying an interviewer when in "work" mode but then immediately talks about how this has "implications for, say, flexi-selves in job interviews". Wait, what? We were totally just talking about independents and how American individualism was influenced by the Calvinism of its early founders such as the Pilgrims, what does that have to do with flexi-selves in job interviews? A connection does actually exist, as Jen will go on to explain, she just tends to jump there without fully showing the connecting steps and isn't the best at explaining the connections after the fact. Or maybe, since she's Asian American she's a bit better at seeing the interconnectedness between things, like the researcher she brings up relatively early in the book who saw the connection between lizard saliva and a way to help people with diabetes, however Jen doesn't seem to fully realize that her audience may not be as good at seeing such abstract connections and thus, is not the best at helping said audience to follow along to reach the same conclusions.
Part of this disconnect may also be due to the structure of the book -- Jen is, after all, simplifying things quite a bit, stating that the East-West culture gap can be boiled down to this ultimate difference of independent/interdependent ways of going about life. Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory started with four dimensions before eventually expanding to six but while most of those--uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity-femininity, and indulgence-restraint--can also be connected to the independent/interdependent dichotomy, it just may be taking too broad/simple a view of things. Likewise the independent/interdependent dichotomy isn't just East vs. West (or really, West vs. East), rather research has shown it's a bit more West vs. Everybody Else. And even within the "West", countries can vary as Jen herself mentions when she brings up how Catholics and therefore heavily Catholic countries tend to be more interdependent, even if they're "Western". But still the people of South America and Africa, who are often considered neither East nor West tend to be more interdependent compared to the "typical American" and this continues even when people who hail or descend from those that hail from those countries find themselves in that bastion of all "Westerness", America. Therefore both racial minorities in America and those who are closer to the immigration process (i.e. first generation Americans vs. second generation Americans, whatever their race) may often be more interdependent than that defining characteristic of "American" would necessarily suggest -- or at least the way Jen would have you think of "Americans", even though she herself seems to be using a somewhat narrow definition of "American". (Although, to give Jen the benefit of the doubt, it is only relatively recently that social science researchers have made a concerted effort to spread their research, and hence, to stop drawing conclusions about all people, from the West and particularly, white Western males. Jen even points out how in 2010 a paper, talking about how most social science research had drawn its conclusions from the West, including, to be fair, Hofstede, states that "96 percent of test subjects came from Western industrialized nations, which contain only 12 percent of the world's population...an American undergraduate was four thousand times more likely to be a subject in a psychology experiment than a random person outside the West".)
I was quite excited for this book and really wanted to like it but overall found it just a bit too lacking and unclear to really do the trick. However, it does look to have a decent bibliography, even if it questionably excludes Hofstede.
mynameiskate's review
3.0
A lot more cultural psychology theory than I expected - I was hoping for more practical examples and anecdotes. Would be a good university textbook. Interesting, but not what I was expecting.
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