America as High Context Culture

You know that you are in a high context culture (HC) when it is evident that everyone is trying to collect information about you.  Living in HC situations means that counter parties have information about you-- your likes, dislikes, needs, desires, friends and family.   For many older Americans, who grew up in Low Context (LC) America, it all seems like a great invasion of one’s privacy.  For many of the younger generations, having their “whole life” posted on Facebook, YouTube or other social sites is just a way of living.  For HC and LC see here.

Employers are doing it too--see here:

“Facebook is warning employers not to demand the passwords of job applicants, saying that it's an invasion of privacy that opens companies to legal liabilities.

The social networking company is also threatening legal action.

An Associated Press story this week documented cases of job applicants who are being asked, at the interview table, to reveal their Facebook passwords so their prospective employers can check their backgrounds.

In a post on Friday, Facebook's chief privacy officer cautions that if an employer discovers that a job applicant is a member of a protected group, the employer may open itself up to claims of discrimination if it doesn't hire that person.

"If you are a Facebook user, you should never have to share your password," Erin Egan wrote.”

The government is doing it too, here.  They are building a mega data storage facility in Utah where they intend to store trillions of emails and phone calls, much of it gathered illegally.

“Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers [a quip about Mormons], this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks.  In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.”

Now, of course, some argue that this is all totalitarian police state stuff.  Is It?  It could be, however, I see it as more HC stuff.  Japan does this too and who says that they are a police state?  Gathering information about people is simple HC behavior.  Stealing someone’s identity is just a HC type of crime.

I, for one, don’t really like the idea that these folks can spy on me because I’m old enough to remember LC America.  At the same time, I don’t have anything to hide.  Yes, they likely could mess up my life if they were to target me by messing with information about me. They could just target me in other, more physical, ways and be more effective.

I also know that these folks really can’t use all that data to “control society”.  Thinking that they can is just another one of those silly “we are masters of the world” types of arrogant thoughts.

Information is power but it has to be useful information to leverage the power from it.  As a social scientist, I can assure you that trillions of terabits of idiosyncratic and anecdotal data will be misunderstood more often than not by any group of scientists to whom they give the task of analyzing it.  And, because of its vastness, they will survey it with sophisticated algorithms, generating more sophisticated but silly observations.  It will all sound scientific and, in the end, it will be skewed to the intents, overt and covert, of the researchers.

They won’t find truth in it; they will find what they want to find, just as social scientists have always done.  

Social scientists have never been able to master large amounts of social data.  So let them do multiple regressions on 15 variables and see what garbage they find.  There is an old name for it—PhD, piled higher and deeper.

On the other hand, I opt for the simpler observation that massive data collection is an expected HC behavior.

After all, police state totalitarianism is just as likely to be found in LC culture as it is in HC culture.  Also, I tend to think that the anxiety about police states is more a reflection of our secular crisis status than HC status.

Culture and the Divided Brain

One of the important themes on this blog is that the asymmetry and lateralization of the human brain influences broad patterns of culture; that while cultures always display characteristics of both hemispheres, at any given time a culture will lean left or right hemisphere; and, that major cultural change is often seen as a transition to one macro pattern to the other.  I discussed these issues here and here.  Following from Nietzsche, left hemisphere cultural patterns are called Apollonian and right hemisphere patterns are Dionysian.  Iain McGilchrist provides the best discussion of Nietzsche’s two patterns and the hemispheres, here.  Additionally, Apollonian is known as Low Context culture and Dionysian is High Context culture based on the work of Edward T Hall, here.  Cultural transitions from one emphasis to the other are called Awakenings, here & here.  In addition, don’t forget Levi Strauss and his two types, the Engineer and the bricoleur, here.

Human thought is mostly unconscious; and it is mostly metaphorical with a small amount of literalism.  Cultural patterns can also be thought of as complex metaphors.  Thus, to say that the brain influences culture it is through the creation of and perpetuation of metaphors.  One good example of broad complex metaphors is the contrast in American culture between the Strict Father metaphor and the Co-parenting metaphor that is also generally associated with republicans and democrats, here.  The strict father is an authoritarian orderly metaphor (left hemisphere) and the Co parenting metaphor is a right hemisphere one steeped in empathy.  Also, note the simple understanding of the bible; the Old Testament is left hemisphere and the New Testament is right hemisphere, authority versus empathy.

Every culture is a complex whole comprised of hundreds, maybe thousands, of complex metaphors that lean one way or the other, hemisphere wise.  One thing to remember is that complex metaphors can change over time, they can be made up of many sub complex metaphors that also change and maybe confound the issue by leaning the opposite way—the Strict Father pattern may have sub metaphors that lean right hemisphere because a touch of empathy is needed.

Awakenings are when a culture’s basic set of complex metaphors switch from one orientation to another, such as, in American history, from Romanticism to Modernism (from emphasizing the right hemisphere to the left one) during the Progressive Era, circa 1890-1920.  During the Awakening metaphors satisfying both hemispheres are stressed, thus the era is exceptionally energetic and cultural entropy increases, here.

This basically sums up one important idea that drives this blog.  The others are the Cultural seasons model, turnings, and the Generations model, both espoused by Strauss and Howe, here.

The Scoping Meeting as American High Context Culture

     Recently I had the pleasure of participating in scoping meetings for some planned projects at work.  The meetings were being held to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) as we are implementing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).  They were open house style events wherein the public could come and see our presentations, ask questions, and hopefully provide us with their concerns. My role was to staff the historic preservation display, or in the silly jargon of my profession—the “Cultural Resources” display.  What I observed in the whole process was that these meetings and the preparation for them was very much a high context communication process.

     NEPA and similar laws such as the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Clean Air Act of 1963, were enacted during the Fourth Awakening, an era of strongly blended Apollonian and Dionysian ethoses.  These laws have strong commitments to analytical research done by qualified professionals (Apollonian abstraction and meritocracy) and to public interaction (Dionysian social engagement).  In theory, the public is to have a say in the process and the outcome, and they can file suits against outcomes.  In practice, the proponents of projects usually get their way, although there are many cases where theory worked out well. These laws have all been amended numerous times with the general trend toward increasing public interaction and contact (increasing Dionysian values).  Apollonian modernists were happy and capable to provide clean water but it takes a Dionysian impulse to get the public informed via notices telling them that, yes, the water is safe and clean to drink.

     As part of the preparation for the meetings we published Public Notices in local and regional newspapers, and even discussed posting notices in local grocery stores (don’t know if that was actually done).  Additionally, we mailed invitations to all local, state, and federal elected officials in the area, to several state and federal regulatory agencies, to several Non Governmental Organizations (such as the Nature Conservancy, etc.), to several Native American tribal nations, to historical societies and museums, and to anyone else that may have an interest in the piece of ground planned for development.

     The day before the meetings we had an 8 hour training session called Risk Communication Training that was put on by Katz and Associates. Here, we obsessed over what we would say and do while in the meetings; and, we were coached on what possible questions we may get and how to handle them.  We learned that we had roles to play and that we were to “stay in our lane,” meaning, don’t try to answer something outside of our own area of expertise. And, that from the moment the first member of the public walks in, we are all on stage. In the terms I have been using on this blog—in the Context of the scoping meeting I needed to be aware of that big Context at all times and be competent in and stay in my own Text of historic preservation.

     Katz and Associates is a public relations firm and they are full bore high context communicators. I guess they are members of the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) as they gave us a copy of the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum, a matrix of Increasing Level of Public Impact, that states we are to Inform > Consult > Involve > Collaborate > Empower the public.

     I don’t have space to cover all their training material but I’ll offer a taste. We were given the usual Power Point presentation with a notebook of slides and other handouts.  Our Training Objectives were:

Understand why public involvement is important

-- Input from public leads to better decision making

-- Public involvement process leads to greater understanding

Gain understanding of environmental risk communication

-- Identify principles and “mind set”

-- Apply principles to the process to build trust and credibility

Develop better communication skills for dealing with public

-- Learn how to demonstrate empathy

-- Practice active listening skills

-- Learn how to answer easy and hard questions

-- Develop skills to handle hostile situations

We spent much time discussing empathy and active listening as they are the most effective tools in building trust and credibility.  I realized that the Apollonian gives information and assumes that intelligent people will make rational conclusions--a bad assumption.  The Dionysian is focused on empathic communication, genuinely hearing what others have to say and responding to them in honest fashion.

     From an anthropological perspective Scoping Meetings are public ceremonies, no different than weddings, funerals, graduations, parades, and trade shows.  While we had published our EIS notice in the Federal Register, as required, the Scoping Meetings allowed the public to put faces to faceless bureaucracy.  Several did come:  adjacent land owners expressed concerns; local politicians asked many questions; a reporter wrote up the event and the regional paper published it.  We were successful.

     And, maybe our 8 hour vigil was some kind of ritual separation prior to our coming out.  We were anointed with the words and motions of high context public communication.

     It is not a temporary thing.  There will be more meetings.  We’ll be off to the local tribes, on their turf, to get grilled, many times over.  Looking back at my modernism days, I know we used to just ignore all that.  Obviously, we can’t anymore. Dionysus is in control.  Now, if only the tribes would stop calling us linear thinkers…

Entropy and High Context Culture

     This one is nerdy, but it is necessary.  In previous essays (here & here) I discussed different aspects of High Context (HC) and Low Context (LC) Culture.  Here, I offer commentary as to why LC cultures are “cold” and HC cultures are “hot” but only from the perspective of cold Modernism. The discussion runs along the order/disorder spectrum.  To do that I’ll switch to the term Entropy, defined as, with my edits as the dictionary needs help:

1.: a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered to be a measure of the system's disorder, that is a property of the system's state, and that varies directly with any reversible change in heat in the system and inversely with the temperature of the system; broadly: the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a [closed] system

2 a: the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe [believed to be a closed system] to an ultimate state of inert uniformity b: a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder

3. Chaos, disorganization, randomness [in any system]

Culture and entropy are reflexively tied together.  Culture is "the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior" [1], and, HC and LC cultures have different perspectives on entropy.

     Modernist academia and governmental social science generally views culture as an open system that “continuously interacts with its environment. The interaction can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary.” For example, in Anthropology it has been common to hear people argue that non complex cultures adapt to their environment whereas complex cultures create their own environment. The basic idea here is that the environment (nature) and culture are separate variables.  Under this scenario, version 3 of entropy applies to culture but not 1 and 2.

     Much Western academic and governmental social science also uses zero sum game theory because it is a common problem in everyday life.  If a household is on a fixed income, if a manager in a government agency has a rigid budget, then both are likely to view their little system, their universe, as being closed.  Running out of money too soon before the next allotment increases entropy in their little systems.

     Human systems are fractal.  An open system will have within it contexts and situations that are perceived to be either open or closed. The same is true for closed systems.  It is important to recognize the meta level (for example: meta, macro, micro, mini) as being a dominant organizing force of the world view. The meta level is the cognitive framework that other metaphors fall into.

     In Apollonian LC cultures the meta perspective is:  order must be imposed on disorder.  In the Enlightenment/Modernist tradition it is variously called self discipline, domestication, working from the known to the unknown, or simply, being in control. Generally, you start small and build outward.

     In the Modernist LC tradition, additional meta level beliefs are that the pie can always be expanded, growth is valued, and progress is expected because the system is viewed to be generally open.  Nature, within itself, may have order; but, in relation to mankind, it is disorderly.  Thus, Nature and Culture are viewed as separate, and often as competitors. Mankind can defeat nature, forcing it to adapt to culture. The Fed can print money forever, defeating entropy.

     LC cultures entail a need for structure, organization, and predictability; they want to reduce entropy, tame it. The phrases “a place for everything and everything in its place” and “all things in moderation” and “think before you act” are examples of old fashioned American LC values.  

     LC cultures dislike entropy because they intuitively know they can’t really control it.  That doesn’t mean they can’t try.  Puebloan cultures do everything possible to make it rain.  Mid 20th century Modernists disliked anything that was non-normal; they hated “crazy” “irrational” and “emotional” people because of their “disorder” and spent decades trying to determine what “normal behavior” was so that they could lock all the crazy ones into psycho wards, insane asylums.  The desire to institutionalize “insane” people peaked in the mid twentieth century. And, well into the 1980s going to a shrink was to be avoided or kept secret due to the stigma of being called “crazy.”  (Today, in our new HC culture, these issues are generally diminished although the stigma of mental illness lingers). 

     In HC cultures the basic meta value is harmony between order and disorder.  HC cultures start from a much larger Context, and work to ensure that all the parts are either working well together, or at least, not conflicting with one another. Mankind is a part of nature and there needs to be harmony within the whole. HC cultures are sometimes described as zero sum cultures because they focus so much on larger universal issues. All versions of entropy are fully engaged.

     As American culture shifted from LC to HC during the tumultuous Fourth Awakening (circa 1960-1990) new HC sayings came about as well:

Just do it = act without thinking

No rules = the situation/context is unstructured

Think outside the box = be unique, break existing rules to do it

Push the envelope = get out of your comfort zone; be extreme

It’s a no brainer = the action is intuitively profitable, you don’t have to analyze it

To infinity and beyond = ironic humor about extremism

Nothing succeeds like excess = see here; from romanticist Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

All of these HC sayings have come about or been revived since the 1980s.  They reflect our move away from rigid structure, the use of formal logic, and moderation in general—away from being a narrow minded and Text oriented culture, towards a broad minded and Context oriented one.  It also means embracing all the disorder of life, its excesses, and the new fuzzy rules that must come with it.  And, eventually, there must be a quest for harmony, at least at the individual level.  It’s no wonder that the traditionalists are being decoupled from the new Romanticism, the growing part of society.

     Descartes separated mind and body, and then, the Enlightenment thinkers went on to separate culture and nature.  As a rejection of most of that, the romantic scientists of the early nineteenth century tried to describe man within nature but they blurred into the various forms of anti-modernism and existentialism of the late 19th century.  As positivism and progressivism merged into Modernism in the Third Awakening (ca. 1890-1920) Apollo again strode forth, this time as the Age of Scientism. 

   

     The concept of HC and LC cultures is, thus, a product of an LC culture under stress from an Awakening.  E. T. Hall [2] was, early on, a modernist who began shifting to a hybrid stance about culture as he worked on these concepts in the 1960s and 1970s, the Awakening years.  The main point of Beyond Culture was to encourage scientists and policy makers to be more HC.  As it was first described to me in a class room lecture, circa 1982, cold Apollo needed to be a little warmer (but don’t become excessively hot like those hot cultures).

     To consider culture generically as a closed system you have to think high context.  Today, we have post-modernism, anti-positivism and other eclectic ideas, all of which speak Dionysian.  Entropy is a becoming a full partner in the process of understanding culture. Here is one example:

“Culture can be viewed as the means by which a society can live in its surroundings by acquiring and consuming free energy. This naturalistic notion assumes that everything can be valued in terms of energy; hence also social changes can be described as natural processes that are influenced by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This universal law, when formulated as an equation of motion, reveals that societies emerge, evolve and eventually extinguish after tapping, exploiting and finally depleting their resources, which we can say are ultimately valued in energetic terms” [3].

     Not sure I’ll buy into all that energy stuff but I do appreciate the man-is-part-of-nature perspective, typical romantic science. 

     To sum up.  Modernism, a LC cultural pattern, views culture as an open system.  Thus, from that perspective, LC cultures are low entropy (cold) and HC cultures are high entropy (hot). 

     Post Modernism, a HC cultural pattern, views culture as a closed system in which variations in entropy ocure. For example, the HC Hindu perspective has not been overly damaged by LC science:

“The survival of mankind on the matrix of the cherished values of life…is dependent upon its adoption of sustainable low-entropy living patterns fortified by harmonious and symbiotic relationship with the environment” [4].

     And there you go.  Even a “hot” culture can aspire for low entropy (requiring a theoretical perspective that starts as HC). And, such a view is counter intuitive to LC modernists.

Notes

1.  James P. Spradley, Participant Observation, New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1980, pg. 6.

2.  E. T. Hall, Beyond Culture, New York: Doubleday, 1976.

3.  Arto Annila and Stanley Salthe, "Cultural Naturalism” Entropy 12, 2010, no. 6: 1325-1343.  Not to be confused with the Cultural Naturalism Report that supports Kantian rationalism.

4.  B. V. Subbarayappa, “Spirituality and low-entropy culture” in Cons-Ciências: actas do Fórum Internacional Ciência, Religião e Consciência. Porto. ISSN 1645-6564. 2 (2005) 103-116. Here.

Twenty-first Century Romanticism: The Basic Principles

     In previous essays I offered some simple contrasts between Apollonian and Dionysian ethos's, and between their subsets of rationalism and romanticism.  Now it is time to delve into the core principles and characteristics of contemporary twenty first century Romanticism. Obviously, in the future, this era will partly be defined by what precedes and follows it.  All I can do on this website is demonstrate how the era of Modernism was, and its remnants still are, different in kind from what is emerging as a new pattern of ideas and behaviors.

     The basic principles are:

     Dionysian cognitive framework:

• Spontaneity, passion, intuition, rebellion, and love of excess 
• Rawness, we want to see, smell, touch, and taste the real thing, not an abstraction.  But we will also settle for the virtual thing. 
• Holistic ideas; nature/culture is one system

     Romanticism is High Context (HC) culture: 

• Social issues, relationships, and gatherings are more important than intellectual pursuits; (Intellectuals and intelligence are not revered as they were during Modernism; “the life of the mind is a waste of time”).
• Wisdom is more important than theory; Science and the Humanities are secondary players that help embellish and celebrate life; the pure search for Truth is asocial but tolerated within certain bounds.
• Collecting and storing vast amounts of information about people and their relations, habits, and likes/dislikes is necessary.  This is done at all levels (small intimate groups maintain constant contact; corporations monitor their staff, competitors, and partners; governments track large numbers of people); individualism and privacy are being redefined
• It is personal.  In The Godfather series (1972) when someone was to be killed they would offer the consolation “its business, not personal.”  When I first heard that as a young teen I cringed but most adults didn’t even flinch.  In Sleepless in Seattle (1993) that line was used but the important reply was “It’s personal to me.”
• HC culture is also high contact culture; calling, texting, tweeting, and emailing your significant other, your friends, and your extended family many times a day is allowed in most situations, even at most workplaces.  The Text of these messages is often inane because what people are doing is sustaining the Context of their lives.  The guy who’s walking into a building and is on the phone saying “I’m walking into the building; be there in a minute” is sending the message I am close to you, socially and emotionally.  It is phatic language. Focus on the Context not the Text to understand the behavior.
• The matrix Organization; you are placed somewhere and have vertical, horizontal and nonlinear relations.  Example:  "Ms. Betty Fxoxox has been associated with the program from its very beginning. Recognizing that open systems and conformance to standard architectures are critical to a program like CIS, she has worked hard to ensure these requirements were identified early. She is matrixed to the IPT from CECOM's Software Management Directorate".  (AQ101:  fundamentals of systems Acquisition management, Lesson 5.) 
• Technology is being used to maintain, sustain, expedite, and proliferate the needs of HC culture, and for gathering and storing vast amounts of information; relational databases, mobile communication devices, and web sites keep it all going. Identity theft is an unfortunate outcome.  

     Romanticism and Pop Culture:

• Our movie and cable industries are dominated by fantasy:  witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, mummies, zombies, etc. (They replaced all the popular westerns and mysteries).  They are metaphors about human behavior.
• All you Need Is Love, The Beatles, 1967.  This song hit the square headed affection supressed Modernists square in the face.  And so, after decades of suppressing displays of affection in public, by the late 1970s, people were openly affectionate everywhere and at any time.  Today, few people remember that saying hello and good bye at the airport used to be a subdued quick awkward moment. Now, it can be that or a social circus and no one cares.

     Key Metaphors in contemporary American Culture

• Situational Awareness; it’s HC so be aware of everything around you and all the non verbal stuff; on the nonlinear battlefield, Total Situational Awareness is the playbook.   We are all situated in life (unless you are having a communication problem which means you are desituated--out of touch, lost, confused)
• Empathy; you must care about everyone
• Engaged; not in the sense of getting married, but being out there in high contact with people
• Integrated; my team’s policies and procedures are integrated with all the policies and procedures from other groups in this organization (whew)
• Relationships (your doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc., now wants a “relationship” with you
• Community; strongly defined us/them groups; you have to decide who’s in and who’s out
• The matrix organization (we are more than a top down society; it’s diagonal, zigzag, and sideways too)
• Sustainability; we have to sustain the environment; and now that the go-go years of greed is ending, we have to sustain our business for the long haul instead of maximizing short term shareholder return
• Embedded, everywhere. In culture, in nature, journalists in the Army, videos in your web posts, viruses in your emails.  People and things are parts of wholes, and parts can attach to other wholes.  Again focus on the fractal aspect of Context.

     The Embodied Cognition Movement [1]:

• 98 percent of human thought is unconscious
• Human thinking entails emotion (there is no separation)
• Most human thought is metaphorical with very little literalness
• The human body is the basis and grounding for thinking; the brain’s primary function is self regulation and self monitoring-awareness; the brain and the neurological system is a full body system; yes, wiggling your toes can affect thoughts
• Rational Man, as defined by Modernist social scientists, especially economists, is wrong.  People sometimes employ logic and formulas to make decisions but more often than not they employ other cognitive frames to make decisions, and these are often embedded in situational and impulsive frames.
• Enlightenment-Modernist Thought that disembodies the mind from brain and body, and thoughts from emotion, is wrong; there is no scientific basis for it. Descartes was wrong.
• American conservatives and neoliberals still hold to the Rationalism of a fading era.  They are traditionalists being pushed to the sidelines, to be called “Old Lights” because their ideas don’t shine as brightly as they once did. They won’t go quietly because they still claim the status of Status Quo.
• The en-cultured brain/body see here

     The Behavioral Economics Movement [2]

• Human psychology drives the economy
• People’s economic activity is influenced by confidence (or the lack of it), fairness, corruption and bad faith, money illusion, and stories told about people, businesses, and the economy
• Monetarists have been discredited by the current economic crisis (see here [irony intended], here, and here).  The Keynesians will be next (do we really have to watch this ship go down? An early look at this is here and here)

     Romantic Science and Humanities

• Nonlinear analysis is done by itself or jointly with linear analysis to seek both Text and Context
• Fractal analysis
• Situational Analysis
• Cyclical analysis

     These principles cover quite a bit of ground.  Where it all takes us I have no idea at this time.  But, since I am an experimental researcher, I guess I’ll have answers when I get there.  Everything in its own time.

Notes:

1.  The primary sources in this area are Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error:  Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Penguin Books, originally 1994 but reprinted in soft cover with new Preface 2005; and his Looking for Spinosa:  Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt, Inc, 2003; and, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh:  The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, 1999.  The rationalism of American conservatives and neoliberals is described in George Lakoff, The Political Mind, Penguin Books, paperback edition 2009.Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body,Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007

2.  Start with George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits:  How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, Princeton University Press, paperback edition, 2010, and read their references; and, read the references at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics.

High and Low Context: Cultures and Situations

     Anthropologist Edward T. Hall presented two general concepts, high context (HC) and low context (LC), which describe broad-brush communication differences between societies.

     HC refers to societies or groups where people have close connections over a long period of time. Many aspects of cultural behaviors are not made explicit because most members know what to do and what to think from years of interaction with each other. Your family is likely a high context environment.

     LC refers to societies where people tend to have many connections but of shorter duration or for some specific reason. In these societies, cultural behaviors and beliefs often need to be spelled out explicitly so that those coming into the cultural environment know how to behave.

     While these terms are useful in classifying cultures we need to recognize that all societies contain both modes within them, again in an asymmetrical relation.  HC and LC can also describe situations and established social environments.

     For example, in the US small religious congregations, a party with friends, family gatherings, neighborhood restaurants with regular clientele, undergraduate on-campus friendships, and hosting a friend in your home overnight can be understood as HC situations and environments.  Likewise, large US airports, a large supermarket, a cafeteria, a convenience store, and staying in a motel are all LC environments [1].  Table 1 provides a list of contrasts.

Table 1:  Basic characteristics of High and Low Context Cultures

	High Context	Low Context
Association	Relationships depend on trust, build up slowly, and are stable. One distinguishes between people inside and people outside one's circle. How things get done depends on relationships with people and attention to group process. One's identity is rooted in groups (family, work, culture Social structure and authority are centralized; responsibility is at the top. Person at top works for the good of the group	Relationships begin and end quickly. Many people can be inside one's circle; circle's boundary is not clear. Things get done by following procedures and paying attention to the goal. One's identity is rooted in oneself and one's accomplishments. Social structure is decentralized; responsibility goes further down (is not concentrated at the top).
Interaction	High use of nonverbal elements; voice tone, facial expression, gestures, and eye movement carry significant parts of conversation.          Verbal message is implicit; context (situation, people, nonverbal elements) is more important than words.                Verbal message is indirect; one talks around the point and embellishes it.                   Communication is seen as an art form—a way of engaging someone. Disagreement is personalized. One is sensitive to conflict expressed in another's nonverbal communication. Conflict either must be solved before work can progress or must be avoided because it is personally threatening.	Low use of nonverbal elements. Message is carried more by words than by nonverbal means. Verbal message is explicit. Context is less important than words. Verbal message is direct; one spells things out exactly. Communication is seen as a way of exchanging information, ideas, and opinions. Disagreement is depersonalized. One withdraws from conflict with another and gets on with the task. Focus is on rational solutions, not personal ones. One can be explicit about another's bothersome behavior.
Territoriality	Space is communal; people stand close to each other, share the same space.	Space is compartmentalized and privately owned; privacy is important, so people are farther apart.
Temporality	Polychronic Everything has its own time. Time is not easily scheduled; needs of people may interfere with keeping to a set time. What is important is that activity gets done. Change is slow. Things are rooted in the past; slow to change, and stable. Time is a process; it belongs to others and to nature.	Monochronic Things are scheduled to be done at particular times, one thing at a time. What is important is that activity is done efficiently. Change is fast. One can make change and see immediate results. Time is a commodity to be spent or saved. One’s time is one’s own.
Learning	Knowledge is embedded in the situation; things are connected, synthesized, and global. Multiple sources of information are used. Thinking is deductive, proceeds from general to specific.        Learning occurs by first observing others as they model or demonstrate and then practicing.  Groups are preferred for learning and problem solving. Accuracy is valued. How well something is learned is important.	Reality is fragmented and compartmentalized. One source of information is used to develop knowledge. Thinking is inductive, proceeds from specific to general. Focus is on detail. Learning occurs by following explicit directions and explanations of others. An individual orientation is preferred for learning and problem solving. Speed is valued. How efficiently something is learned is important.
Thought Patterns	Truth will manifest itself through non-linear discovery processes and without having to employ rationality.	Emphasis on logic and rationality, based on the belief that there is always an objective truth that can be reached through linear processes of discovery
Social perspective	Collectivism emphasized	Individualism emphasized

In Beyond Culture Hall made it clear that HC cultures were Dionysian and that LC cultures are Apollonian [2].

      

     The HC-LC concept is viewed as a spectrum and cultures have been placed along it such that their relative positions can be seen.  From HC to LC is the following list:  Brazilian, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arab cultures, Greek, Latin Americans, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Finnish, French, French Canadian, Australian, English Canadian, Irish, English, American, Scandinavian, and German [3].

     Japan usually represents HC cultures as it was the primary example that Hall used, and most business communication studies have also focused on Japan.  Likewise, the US has been the typical LC culture.  The list above actually divides HC and LC at the French Canadian and Australian transition. 

   The main point of this blog is to convince you that American culture has shifted along the spectrum to a “higher context” position.  We have not become like the Japanese or Native Americans; but in HC-LC terms, American culture in 2010 is more like the 1860s than the 1960s.  In fact, all the cultures on the list are in flux.  The Greeks of today may be HC but they are well known for their LC Apollonian past.  And never forget German Romanticism, a time when German order was less important.

This essay is now fairly popular.  Please also see:

The Scoping Meeting as American High Context Culture 

Entropy and High Context Culture 

Dionysus Apollo 

Why Its Not Rational

Notes:

1. I have paraphrased from http://www.culture-at-work.com/highlow.html.  The author of this web site is Jennifer Beer, a consulting Anthropologist.  Beer states that “one can never say a culture is ‘high’ or ‘low’ because societies all contain both modes,” which clearly marks her as being well into the postmodern romantic mind set (Modernists classify everything).  To her, it is best to focus on whether or not the situation is high or low context.  What she is missing is the fractal nature of contexts and the scale of analysis.  Something can be LC within HC within LC such as a men’s latrine (LC) within a small community church (HC) within a commuter based suburb (LC).  A thorough fractal discussion will come later.

2. The Table is compiled from:  E. T. Hall Beyond Culture, New York: Doubleday, 1976; see pp. 124-125 for the Dionysian-Apollonian discussion; E. T. Hall, “Context and meaning” in L. A. Samovar & R. E. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural Communication: A Reader, 9th ed., pp. 34-43, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2000; E. T. Hall & M. R. Hall, Understanding Cultural Differences, Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press Inc., 2000; and, Elizabeth Würtz, “A cross-cultural analysis of websites from high-context cultures and low-context cultures,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 13, 2005; essay found at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/wuertz.html.

3. The list is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_context_culture.