here are a few pages of typed excerpts from that book.
i don't know, it was written almost 40 years ago and
it has a negative feeling to me in that a lot has
probably changed in practices, over that time, and
the .US could be a comparison, not too long ago it
was segregated... some cities are effectively still.
though i wrote those parts because they were to make
a point, yet it has the negative aspect that may be
the downside to an 'ethnography' where people may be
viewed as if animals and sometimes it can be crude
if generalizing. it is imagined some of these things
have changed with the transformation of cultures,
electronic media, modernity, etc. as always, the .us
would be equally bizarre in its practices and this
book basically equalizes cultures in such a way...
Dr. Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension
Anchor Books 1969, 1990; Originally published:
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966
(lower case to ease in typing all this out quickly)
The Arab World. p.154-164
in spite of two thousand years of contact, westerners
and arabs still do not understand each other. proxemic
research reveals some insights into this difficulty.
behavior in public...
my concept and my feelings about my own circle of
privacy in a "public" place immediately struck my
arab friend as strange and puzzling. he said, "after
all, it's a public place, isn't it?" pursuing this
line of inquiry, i found that in arab thought i had
no rights whatsoever by virtue of occupying a given
spot; neither my place nor my body was inviolate!
for the arab, there is no such thing as an intrusion
in public. public means public. with this insight,
a great range of arab behavior that had been puzzling,
annoying, and sometimes even frightening began to
make sense. i learned, for example, that if ~A is
standing on a street corner and ~B wants his spot,
he is within his rights if he does what he can to
make ~A uncomfortable enough to move.
concepts of privacy...
in the western world, the person is synonymous with
an individual inside a skin. and in northern europe
generally, the skin and even the clothes may be
inviolate. you need permission to touch either if
you are a stranger. this rule applies in some parts
of .fr, where the mere touching of another person
during an argument used to be legally defined as
assault. for the arab the location of the person
in relation to the body is quite different. the
person exists somewhere down inside the body. the
ego is not completely hidden, however, because it
can be reached very easily with an insult. it is
protected from touch but not from words. the dis-
association of the body and the ego may explain
why the public amputation of a thief's hand is
tolerated as standard punishment in saudi arabia.
it also sheds light on why an arab employer living
in a modern apartment can provide his servant with
a room that is a boxlike cubicle approximately
5 by 10 by 4 feet in size that is not only hung
from the ceiling to conserve floor space but has
an opening so that the servant can be spied on.
as one might suspect, deep orientations toward
the self such as the one just described are
reflected in the language...
different concepts of the placement of the ego
in relation to the body are not easily grasped...
tucking the ego down inside the body shell not
only would permit higher population densities
but would explain why it is that arab communi-
cations are stepped up as much as they are when
compared to northern european communication
patterns. not only is the sheer noise level
much higher, but the piercing look of the
eyes, the touch of the hands, and the mutual
bathing in the warm moist breath during
conversation represent stepped-up sensory
inputs to a level which many europeans find
unbearably intense.
the arab dream is for lots of space in the
home... they avoid partitions because arabs
~do not like to be alone. the form of the
home is such as to hold the family together
inside a single protective shell, because
arabs are deeply involved with each other.
their personalities are intermingled and
take nourishment from each other like the
roots and soil. if one is not with people
and actively involved in some way, one is
deprived of life. an old arab saying
reflects this value: "paradise without
people should not be entered because it
is hell." therefore, arabs in the .US
often feel socially and sensorially
deprived and long to be back where there
is human warmth and contact.
since there is no physical privacy as we
know it in the arab family, not even a word
for privacy, one could expect that the arabs
might use some other means to be alone. their
way to be alone is to stop talking.
arab personal distances...
arabs recognize that smell and disposition
may be linked.
in a word, the olfactory boundary performs
two roles in arab life. it enfolds those who
want to relate and separates those who don't.
... the olfactory boundary constitutes for
arabs an informal distance-setting mechanism
in contrast to the visual mechanisms of the
westerner.
facing and not facing...
arabs who interact with americans report
experiencing a certain flatness traceable in
part to a very differnt use of the eyes in
private and in public as well as between
friends and strangers. ... arabs look at
each other in ways which seem hostile or
challenging to the american.
... arabs look each other in the eye when
talking with an intensity that makes most
americans highly uncomfortable.
involvement...
as the reader must gather by now, arabs are
involved with each other on many different
levels simultaneously. privacy in a public
place is foreign to them. business transactions
in the bazaar, for example, are not just between
buyer and seller, but are participated in by
everyone. anyone who is standing around may
join in. if a grownup sees a boy breaking a
window, he must stop him even if he doesn't
know him. involvement and participation are
expressed in other ways as well. if two men
are fighting, the crowd must intervene. on
the political level, ~to fail to intervene~
when trouble is brewing is to take sides,
which is what our state department always
seems to be doing. given the fact that few
people in the world today are even remotely
aware of the cultural mold that forms their
thoughts, it is normal for arabs to view
~our behavior as though it stemmed from
~their own hidden set of assumptions.
feelings about enclosed spaces...
boundaries...
proxemic patterns tell us other things about
arab culture. for example, the whole concept
of the boundary as an abstraction is almost
impossible to pin down. in one sense, there
are no boundaries. "edges" of towns, yes,
but permanent boundaries out in the country
(hidden lines), no. in the course of my work
with arab subjects i had a difficult time
translating our concept of a boundary into
terms which could be equated with theirs. in
order to clarify the distinctions between the
two very different definitions, i thought it
might be helpful to pinpoint acts which
constituted trespass. to date, i have been
unable to discover anything even remotely
resembling our own legal concept of trespass.
arab behavior in regard to their own real
estate is apparently an extension of, and
therefore consistent with, their approach
to the body. my subjects simply failed to
respond whenever trespass was mentioned.
they didn't seem to under-stand what i
meant by this term. this may be explained
by the fact that they organize relationships
with each other according to closed social
systems rather than spatially. for thousands
of years moslems, marinites, druses, and jews
have lived in their own villages, each with
strong kin affiliations. their hierarchy of
loyalties is: first to one's self, then to
kinsmen, townsman, or tribesman, co-religionist
and/or countryman. anyone not in these categories
is a stranger. strangers and enemies are very
closely linked, if not synonymous, in arab
thought. trespass in this context is a matter
of who you are, rather than a piece of land
or a space with a boundary that can be denied
to anyone and everyone, friend and foe alike.*
in summary, proxemic patterns differ. by examining
them it is possible to reveal hidden cultural frames
that determine the structure of a given people's
perceptual world. perceiving the world differently
leads to different definitions of what constitutes
crowded living, differential interpersonal relations,
and a different approach to both local and inter-
national politics. there are in addition wide
discrepencies in the degree to which culture
structures involvement, which means that planners
should begin to think in terms of different kinds
of cities, cities which are consistent with the
proxemic patterns of the peoples who live in them.
therefore, it is to a consideration of urban life
that i wish to turn in the remaining chapters of
this book.
[... CITIES and CULTURE]
-- comment by myself:
* note: this pretty much explains the situation
in iraq as to why the .us should get out and let
those of arab affiliation take back control of
(their) situation and rebuilding by way of .Un
regional arab peacekeeping/stabilization forces.
i don't know, it was written almost 40 years ago and
it has a negative feeling to me in that a lot has
probably changed in practices, over that time, and
the .US could be a comparison, not too long ago it
was segregated... some cities are effectively still.
though i wrote those parts because they were to make
a point, yet it has the negative aspect that may be
the downside to an 'ethnography' where people may be
viewed as if animals and sometimes it can be crude
if generalizing. it is imagined some of these things
have changed with the transformation of cultures,
electronic media, modernity, etc. as always, the .us
would be equally bizarre in its practices and this
book basically equalizes cultures in such a way...
Dr. Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension
Anchor Books 1969, 1990; Originally published:
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966
(lower case to ease in typing all this out quickly)
The Arab World. p.154-164
in spite of two thousand years of contact, westerners
and arabs still do not understand each other. proxemic
research reveals some insights into this difficulty.
behavior in public...
my concept and my feelings about my own circle of
privacy in a "public" place immediately struck my
arab friend as strange and puzzling. he said, "after
all, it's a public place, isn't it?" pursuing this
line of inquiry, i found that in arab thought i had
no rights whatsoever by virtue of occupying a given
spot; neither my place nor my body was inviolate!
for the arab, there is no such thing as an intrusion
in public. public means public. with this insight,
a great range of arab behavior that had been puzzling,
annoying, and sometimes even frightening began to
make sense. i learned, for example, that if ~A is
standing on a street corner and ~B wants his spot,
he is within his rights if he does what he can to
make ~A uncomfortable enough to move.
concepts of privacy...
in the western world, the person is synonymous with
an individual inside a skin. and in northern europe
generally, the skin and even the clothes may be
inviolate. you need permission to touch either if
you are a stranger. this rule applies in some parts
of .fr, where the mere touching of another person
during an argument used to be legally defined as
assault. for the arab the location of the person
in relation to the body is quite different. the
person exists somewhere down inside the body. the
ego is not completely hidden, however, because it
can be reached very easily with an insult. it is
protected from touch but not from words. the dis-
association of the body and the ego may explain
why the public amputation of a thief's hand is
tolerated as standard punishment in saudi arabia.
it also sheds light on why an arab employer living
in a modern apartment can provide his servant with
a room that is a boxlike cubicle approximately
5 by 10 by 4 feet in size that is not only hung
from the ceiling to conserve floor space but has
an opening so that the servant can be spied on.
as one might suspect, deep orientations toward
the self such as the one just described are
reflected in the language...
different concepts of the placement of the ego
in relation to the body are not easily grasped...
tucking the ego down inside the body shell not
only would permit higher population densities
but would explain why it is that arab communi-
cations are stepped up as much as they are when
compared to northern european communication
patterns. not only is the sheer noise level
much higher, but the piercing look of the
eyes, the touch of the hands, and the mutual
bathing in the warm moist breath during
conversation represent stepped-up sensory
inputs to a level which many europeans find
unbearably intense.
the arab dream is for lots of space in the
home... they avoid partitions because arabs
~do not like to be alone. the form of the
home is such as to hold the family together
inside a single protective shell, because
arabs are deeply involved with each other.
their personalities are intermingled and
take nourishment from each other like the
roots and soil. if one is not with people
and actively involved in some way, one is
deprived of life. an old arab saying
reflects this value: "paradise without
people should not be entered because it
is hell." therefore, arabs in the .US
often feel socially and sensorially
deprived and long to be back where there
is human warmth and contact.
since there is no physical privacy as we
know it in the arab family, not even a word
for privacy, one could expect that the arabs
might use some other means to be alone. their
way to be alone is to stop talking.
arab personal distances...
arabs recognize that smell and disposition
may be linked.
in a word, the olfactory boundary performs
two roles in arab life. it enfolds those who
want to relate and separates those who don't.
... the olfactory boundary constitutes for
arabs an informal distance-setting mechanism
in contrast to the visual mechanisms of the
westerner.
facing and not facing...
arabs who interact with americans report
experiencing a certain flatness traceable in
part to a very differnt use of the eyes in
private and in public as well as between
friends and strangers. ... arabs look at
each other in ways which seem hostile or
challenging to the american.
... arabs look each other in the eye when
talking with an intensity that makes most
americans highly uncomfortable.
involvement...
as the reader must gather by now, arabs are
involved with each other on many different
levels simultaneously. privacy in a public
place is foreign to them. business transactions
in the bazaar, for example, are not just between
buyer and seller, but are participated in by
everyone. anyone who is standing around may
join in. if a grownup sees a boy breaking a
window, he must stop him even if he doesn't
know him. involvement and participation are
expressed in other ways as well. if two men
are fighting, the crowd must intervene. on
the political level, ~to fail to intervene~
when trouble is brewing is to take sides,
which is what our state department always
seems to be doing. given the fact that few
people in the world today are even remotely
aware of the cultural mold that forms their
thoughts, it is normal for arabs to view
~our behavior as though it stemmed from
~their own hidden set of assumptions.
feelings about enclosed spaces...
boundaries...
proxemic patterns tell us other things about
arab culture. for example, the whole concept
of the boundary as an abstraction is almost
impossible to pin down. in one sense, there
are no boundaries. "edges" of towns, yes,
but permanent boundaries out in the country
(hidden lines), no. in the course of my work
with arab subjects i had a difficult time
translating our concept of a boundary into
terms which could be equated with theirs. in
order to clarify the distinctions between the
two very different definitions, i thought it
might be helpful to pinpoint acts which
constituted trespass. to date, i have been
unable to discover anything even remotely
resembling our own legal concept of trespass.
arab behavior in regard to their own real
estate is apparently an extension of, and
therefore consistent with, their approach
to the body. my subjects simply failed to
respond whenever trespass was mentioned.
they didn't seem to under-stand what i
meant by this term. this may be explained
by the fact that they organize relationships
with each other according to closed social
systems rather than spatially. for thousands
of years moslems, marinites, druses, and jews
have lived in their own villages, each with
strong kin affiliations. their hierarchy of
loyalties is: first to one's self, then to
kinsmen, townsman, or tribesman, co-religionist
and/or countryman. anyone not in these categories
is a stranger. strangers and enemies are very
closely linked, if not synonymous, in arab
thought. trespass in this context is a matter
of who you are, rather than a piece of land
or a space with a boundary that can be denied
to anyone and everyone, friend and foe alike.*
in summary, proxemic patterns differ. by examining
them it is possible to reveal hidden cultural frames
that determine the structure of a given people's
perceptual world. perceiving the world differently
leads to different definitions of what constitutes
crowded living, differential interpersonal relations,
and a different approach to both local and inter-
national politics. there are in addition wide
discrepencies in the degree to which culture
structures involvement, which means that planners
should begin to think in terms of different kinds
of cities, cities which are consistent with the
proxemic patterns of the peoples who live in them.
therefore, it is to a consideration of urban life
that i wish to turn in the remaining chapters of
this book.
[... CITIES and CULTURE]
-- comment by myself:
* note: this pretty much explains the situation
in iraq as to why the .us should get out and let
those of arab affiliation take back control of
(their) situation and rebuilding by way of .Un
regional arab peacekeeping/stabilization forces.