Movie Clip

You just viewed a scene from the movie “Anna & the King” starring Jody Foster. Anna (played by Jody Foster) has just arrived in Thailand from her home country of England. King Mongkut is the beloved King of Siam (now Thailand). Before becoming King (at the age of 47) he spent 27 years as a monk. During this long seclusion, he acquired a profound knowledge of Buddhism, which people say made him the compassionate person he was. He also intently studied science, English and western philosophy. Many attribute this to his accomplishment of Keeping Thailand as an independent country while many other Asian countries became colonies of the French, British, etc. during this period in history. King Mongkut ruled during the mid-1800. Anna is in Thailand to be the tutor for the King’s children.

In this particular scene, she is being introduced to the Prime Minister as she has just arrived at the Royal Palace.

• How is business conducted differently in relation to time (from the chapter on nonverbal communication), as employed in this scene?
• Define Chronemics.
• Explain and/or Define what the text says about The Business Context—be specific and give examples.
• https://online.fiu.edu/videos/?vivoId=aeac4bc1a4f947ed93460f4dd729694a

3.

Japan

First meetings with Japanese are akin to opening ceremonies. If the first meeting physically takes place in a Japanese office, from an American point of view, it may seem formal to the point of being ritualistic. Nothing is left to chance. From the time that the business visitor arrives at the door and is appropriately greeted to the time that he is seen off from the sidewalk in front of the office building as his car or taxi pulls away, attention will have been given to every detail, including seating arrangement and refreshments and, perhaps even to what artwork is to be hung in the meeting room that day.

Seating arrangements both in private homes, restaurants, and even in offices during meetings are very important to Japanese and are treated with close attention. Who sits where is a genuinely sensitive matter even for relatively small gatherings. Japanese guests feel that they have been treated well when the seating arrangements are done properly in accordance with formal rules.

While informality and casualness are the concrete expression of hospitality in the United States, Japanese feel that they are being treated hospitably if things are done according to form. It is simply a mistake to tell Japanese guests to “sit wherever you like.” In Japan, an employee who fouls up the seating arrangements for an important occasion involving upper-level management can actually get demoted.

To arrange the seating of the Japanese guests correctly, it is necessary to know something about traditional Japanese rooms. The principles that apply there are carried over into Western-style rooms and even office conference rooms.

Every formal traditional Japanese room has a tokonoma. A tokonoma is a discrete area along one wall of a room that is a designated place of honor. The tokonoma can be identified by the artwork that is hung there, traditionally a scroll, or where perhaps a flower arrangement or sculpture is placed. It is considered the best spot in the room. The functional equivalent of the tokonoma in an office may simply be the wall on which the most expensive painting hands or simply the location of the best view if the room is in a glass-walled high rise.

In the traditional Japanese seating arrangement, the highest-ranking guest is placed with his back to the center of the tokonoma. Lower-ranking guests are positioned on either side on him in order of descending rank. The host group is seated on the guest group’s left flank with the highest-ranking member of the host group closest to the guest group. The lower ranking guests sit along the right flank of the higher-ranking guests, that is, facing the hosts. The traditional arrangement described may be modified in international meetings and sometimes must be modified to accommodate positioning of interpreters.

• Relate this to what the text says about The Business Context.
• Define what the text says about The Business Context—be specific and give examples.

4.

The Globe

Please check to see if the Image(s) you are being asked to review has a title. If there is a title, then I expect you to click on the title and read the corresponding document about the image and phrase your answer in a way that demonstrates your comprehension of this document as it relates to the theory in the text.

Go to The Globe. Locate the country of Botswana (in Africa). Take a look at the photograph for the San Tribe.

• After reading the link, summarize the culture of these people.

5.

Lost Boys of Sudan

As in much of Africa, war is an old and seemingly intractable reality for the people of Sudan. In fact, civil war has largely defined the country in the world’s eyes ever since it gained independence in 1956 from Egypt and the United Kingdom. In the ensuing 40 years, rebels from the country’s southern provinces – populated by black who practice African Traditional Religion and Christianity – have fought periodically against a Sudanese government dominated by the country’s largely Arab, Muslim northern population. The war has cost an estimated 2 million lives from fighting and famine, as the government and an array of southern rebel faction’s battle back and forth across a devastated landscape, with no apparent end in sight. The United States and other countries have tried to help the orphaned children due to these wars.

• Relate what the text says about Culture Shock Versus Adaptation (CH – Cultural Biases & Intercultural Contact) to what you viewed in the clip from “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”
• Define Culture Shock Versus Adaptation.
• Support your answer with specifics from the book and video.

6.

Tribal Life in New Guinea

• Why do the women of the Dani Tribe cut part of their finger off?
• Why do the men of the Asmat Tribe eat the brain of a defeated enemy?
• Is this a belief, value, norm or social practice? Explain (CH – What is Culture?)
• Define a belief, value or norm or social practice.

7.

Tribal Life in New Guinea

• Are the Dani, Asmat and Koriwai Tribes’ individualistic or collective cultures?
• Why? (CH – Theories Related to Intercultural Thinking)
• Summarize the difference between individualism and collectivism.