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Gert Jan Hofstede: The cultural biology of organization

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This shelf is not so much about theory as it is about the thrill of reading.

Before the dawn: recovering the lost ancestry of our ancestors - and Descent of Man.

Nicholas Wade, a science journalist, took the time to piece together the recent genetic evidence about the human past, starting when our Homo sapiens forefathers left Africa - in one band, according to genetic evidence. He makes use of all kinds of genetic data, among others the information about paternal descent that can be found in Y genes and that of maternal lines of descent that can be learned from mitochondrial DNA. He combines it with all other data on our past that he could find and created a book that I read evening by evening and wished I had written myself. Wade begins each chapter with a passage from Charles Darwin's 'Descent of Man', which I happened to have read last Christmas. Indeed, Wade's book read to me like an extension of Darwin's book updated with genetic and linguistic knowledge, and written in an easy-flowing contemporary style. If you read the new 3rd edition of Cultures and Organizations (spring 2010) and like my chapter 12, follow it up with these two books: Darwin's Descent of Man (1874; also Penguin classics 2004), and Wade's Before the dawn (Penguin 2006).

 

l'élégance du hérisson (The elegance of the hedgehog)

In France, society is still very much divided into classes. French author Muriel Barbery, born in Casablanca in Morocco, wrote this pearl of a story about a widow who is the concierge of a rich people's apartment building in a chic quarter of Paris. She is highly smart and cultured but tries to hide it so that she will not be shown to live beyond her class. A (very French) preoccupation with correct grammar, and with philosophizing, gives her secret pride. This is how hierarchy looks from below. But a Japanese stranger, and a razor-sharp twelve-year old girl, bring changes...

The book brought its shy author immense success, enabling her to move to Japan where she lives a life as secretive as that of her heroines. I personally liked the biological view on human life that the heroines take. But most of all it is just a very intense, wise, beautiful story.

Samarcande (Samarkand)

This wonderful little book is by Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese author who lives in Paris. He knows both the Muslim and the Christian world, and he is not only a good historian but also an accomplished novelist. This story is about Omar Khayyam, great poet and mathematician who lived in Persia in the eleventh century, when Islam had recently become a world religion. It is also about the late nineteenth century, when Khayyam's amazing poems were rediscovered. Through the eyes of an American citizen travelling through Persia and getting emmeshed in trouble, the double story depicts life in a part of the world where convictions and group membership are worth dying for. It is also about the Titanic, and about love. I was enthralled by the book and it taught me a great deal about Persian history too. Maalouf wrote it in 1988 but it is just as relevant today. I read it in the original: French, and if you master that language, go for the original. Or read his other story, Léon l'Africain (Leo Africanus), a historical narrative set in the Mediterranean in the times of the reconquista, about the extraordinary life of Granada-born Hassan, later to become pope Leo's adopted son.

 

The Floating Brothel

By Siân Rees. Anonymous, large cities are a recent phenomenon in human history. In London around 1790, the city overflowed with poor people who slept in cheap boarding houses and robbed one another for want of a better means of living. The solution: transportation to "Parts Beyond the Sea". With the USA independent, these parts were now Australia. But one cannot keep sending only men. This is the story of a ship full of women sent to Australia - pioneers of Australian culture. It's all true, and it's only a few generations ago.

 

Our Inner Ape

Frans de Waal is a biologist who has spent thirty years studying the behaviour of great apes, most of the time in the USA. Over the years he has written about politics, male and female bonding, empathy, violence and reconciliation in all great apes. In Our Inner Ape (2005) he compares humans to our closest evolutionary relatives: chimpanzees and bonobos. De Waal speaks to a U.S. audience, defending the idea that we are not intrinsically depraved, but that we have both the violent and the peaceful streaks of our relatives. I think he is entirely right in supposing that we are still apes inside. Our empathy and our strong sense of quid pro quo are apish. Every person who wishes to understand more about power, fights, and settling disputes should read this and take it very seriously. Says de Waal: "I think our societies probably work best if they mimic as closely as possible the small-scale communities of our ancestors".

 

 

The English

Jeremy Paxman, famous BBC anchorman, sets out to find out who the English are. He uses a lot of historical evidence and he also includes recent developments. Circumstances have changed vastly, but there is a constant cultural backdrop. Did you know that as late as 1884, English men still publicly sold wives? Very well written and Paxman is no fool. He compares between European cultures, e.g. (p. 251): "...while mass protests are an accepted, expected part of the political process in France, in England, street  insurrection is less often to do with politics and more to do with an innate readiness to trade punches." But I cannot keep quoting - read it if you wish to learn more about the English (Penguin, 1998). 

 

The Kite Runner

This is a wonderful story by Afghan-born Khaled Hosseini. He is a medical doctor in California, and this is his first novel. If you wonder about cultural differences, are from the Anglo world, and would like to live a collectivist, hierarchical, uncertainty avoiding, short-term oriented culture from within, this is a chance. But above all it is a heartbreakingly beautiful book about many things, among others guilt and redemption.

 

   

updated 06-02-2010 by Gert Jan Hofstede