Geography of Thought write-up

[roddy]

I picked this up via the discussion I started earlier on non-fiction readings on China. I think it was Gato's recommendation earlier, but can't check as I'm writing this offline (and if I was online, I wouldn't be writing this, I'd be playing chess. I have a chess problem.) Olle at Hacking Chinese has also done a write-up on the book recently.

 

We've probably all heard some version of the "Westerners all think like this, Chinese / Asians all think like this..." tropes. The one that springs to mind is the use of logic in everyday life. This book takes a closer look at the differences, backed up with reference to actual scientific studies. The author, one Richard Nisbett is a social psychologist.

 

It's not a long book at 229 pages, and it's very accessible for the non-scientist. If I had one overall criticism it'd be that there could actually have been more detail on the science stuff. I'll also note that my copy was published in 2003, and presumably there's been some more work done over the last decade. The Kindle edition is marked as a 2010 edition, but I can't see reference to any updating or extra content, so I'm assuming there isn't any. Given that any more recent books looking at the same matter would be a fine thing to recommend. Looking at you, Gato...

 

You start off with a couple of chapters looking at things historically - how the Greeks developed formal logic, while the Chinese came up with a more holistic, dialectic approach, and the social reasons for that - a mobile trading nation versus a static agricultural one.

 

The meat of the book follows, with a look at the actual differences. One that sticks in the mind is the Fundamental Attribution Error - a failure to consider circumstances when attempting to explain someone else's behaviour, and instead focus on individual characteristics, and then to do the exact opposite when justifying your own actions. Eg, "John didn't lend Tom money as he's really stingy. I didn't lend Tom money as I'm a bit short this month."

 

But Asians do that a lot less - they're more likely to consider possible contextual reasons. And if you go back to the way children are socialised via reading primers and how their parents play with them, you can see why - there's a differing focus on either individuals and objects, or relationships and the whole. And give adults a scene to describe, and you can see the differences persist - "There's a really big fish there, looks like he's trying to find something to eat." vs "It's a fish tank with some rocks and plants, the fish are all swimming around together."

 

Some of the stuff I'm kind of dubious about. For example a study found that in-between culture types - Asian Americans, people from Hong Kong - can be primed to respond in an Asian or Western way by first showing them typical Chinese or Western scenes. There have been some incredible claims made for priming, and not all of them have been proved to be replicable. But then maybe this is my Western bias preferring to believe that people are constants, unaffected by context.

 

So you have five chapters on those types of differences - roughly, individualism, world view, causal attribution, categories vs relationships, and logic.

 

Then there's a 'so what?' chapter - how does all this relate to, eg, rates of Nobel Prize winning. education, etc. And an epilogue - are we all converging, or are we due a clash of civilisations?

 

Overall a very readable and accessible book, but if there's a more up-to-date one on the same topic it might be a better option.

 

Amazon.co.uk - Amazon.com (I have this pipedream that one day Amazon affiliate income from book reviews will be enough to justify me paying for people's review copies of books)

 

 

[Baron]

Why don't you contact the publishers and ask them to send you copies for reviews? Might be a quicker route to free books

 

Question aside, useful review. Thanks.