Combining current theories and research with practical illustrations, this book examines communication within organizations between people of different cultural backgrounds. Highlighting ways in which misunderstandings arise, contributors show how to foster better relations. Part One provides theoretical and research foundations for the investigation of intercultural organizational communication. Part Two probes the cultural bases for communication in multinational organizations by contrasting Latin American, Asian, Western European and North American styles of communicating. The final part details issues regarding cultural diversity, intercultural training and adjustment in the workforce.
The ways in which critical interpersonal bonds are forged and maintained are the focus of this interdisciplinary volume. Parent-teenager relations, the impact of cultural diversity on social development, cliques and both same-sex and opposite-sex friendships are among the topics explored. Examining the nature and impact of various adolescent personal relationships, the contributors also explore heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual romantic involvements, and young people's relationships with non-kin adults.
Many adolescents in the United States are at risk from substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, academic underachievement, crime and violence. What can be done to tackle these growing problems? The author of this thought-provoking book suggests the need to focus on young people's development in relation to specific features of the individual's environmental 'context' such as family, neighbourhood and culture. By effecting changes in these contexts, in the form of community programmes, researchers can test for differences in children's behaviour and development.
The recent Los Angeles race riots exposed the depth and persistence of the race problem in the United States and symbolized the despair and hopelessness felt in North America's cities. The key question remains: Are African-Americans making any progress towards integration into mainstream society? The Black Progress Question examines the popular responses to this issue and finds them insufficient. For too long, the analysis of black progress has been met with an unwarrented optimism. Stephen Burman presents an alternative approach, sobering in its realism, which will dispel beliefs that a solution to this problem is close at hand.
`This book... will be particularly valuable for clinicians interested in child and adolescent depressive disorders, since it includes a lot of material from work with adults that is often hard for such clinicians to assess. A very useful addition to the library' - European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Leading practitioners and researchers contribute to this volume, which focuses on recent advances in the understanding and treatment of the common psychological difficulties of anxiety and depression. Chapters cover such topics as: self-management theory; unipolar depression; and the assessment and treatment of sexually abused children. With case examples and exercises highlighting important clinical concepts, the volume integrates empirical research with clinical applications.
Do all children learn language in the same way? Is the apparent `fast' versus `slow' learning rate among children a reflection of the individual child's approach to language acquisition? This volume explores the importance that individual differences have in language acquisition and challenges some widely held theories of linguistic development. Focusing on one- to three-year-old children, Cecilia Shore describes characteristic differences in terms of vocabulary, grammatical and phonological development. She considers whether distinctive 'styles' of language development can be defined and also examines social and cognitive influences that may explain individual differences. In conclusion, she discusses new language theories - such as the ecological, chaos and connectionist approaches - and considers what individual differences in development can tell us about the mechanisms of language development.
Race Relations in South Africa and the United States
Despite its legal abolition, racial inequality persists in many democratic societies. Entering a new era of democracy, South Africa is endeavouring to dismantle its legally structured system of inequality. In practice, however, the structures of consciousness which gave rise to and nurtured a system of white privilege and predominance are tenacious and enduring. In What Racists Believe, Gerhard Schutte examines evidence which illustrates how the consciousness of whites in South Africa has been reproduced and maintained, revealing a range of social constructions and typifications of blacks. He concludes with a chapter comparing contemporary racial attitudes in South Africa and the United States.
This broad-ranging text offers a comprehensive analysis of the possibilities and limitations of the idea of citizenship, and its relevance to social problems and social policies in advanced industrial societies. Fred Twine demonstrates that two concepts are essential to an understanding of the issue of citizenship: the socially embedded nature of human agents, and their interdependence with each other and with the natural and social worlds they inhabit. In contrast to the glorification of a presumed free-floating consumer, Twine emphasises the social nature of individual needs and individual rights. He also shows that interdependence is not limited to the mutual linkages within advanced industrial societies, but extends both to the relations between developed and developing nations, and to the environmental contexts of human existence. Showing how a truly social vision of citizenship offers ways in which human worlds are socially created, and can be re-created, Citizenship and Social Rights will be of interest to scholars and students in sociology, social policy, politics and philosophy.
Communication plays a central part in the increasing global interconnectedness of contemporary societies, nations and economies. Whether in entertainment and cultural exchange, or in business traffic and transborder data flows, communication on a world scale affects the fate of nation states and of individual lives. In "The Politics of World Communication", Cees J. Hamelink examines the political processes and decisions that determine the global communication environment. Because it is central to the arena of world politics, governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations seek to influence the basis of communicative exchange. Mass communication, telecommunication, data traffic, intellectual property and communication technology have all been regulated by agreements within the intemational community. Examining negotiation processes and their outcomes, the author offers a comprehensive analysis of the global politics of communication and its implications for specific nations, areas and communities. Underlying the analysis is a fundamental concern with communication as an issue of human rights. Do the standards agreed on world communication address the interests of ordinary people in their everyday lives? With its unique insight into world communication politics, combined with a broad humanitarian perspective, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students of international communication, world politics, international law and human rights.
