Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour | 
 enlarge | Author: Kate Fox
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $10.99
You Save: $6.96 (39%)
New (17) from $10.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 2514
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1857885082
Dewey Decimal Number: 390.0941
EAN: 9781857885088
ASIN: 1857885082
Publication Date: May 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080704211911T
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A bestseller in the UK, Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look English Society. Putting the English national character under her anthropological microscope, Fox finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior. Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments-even using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig-Fox discovers what these unwritten codes tell us about Englishness.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
The Bible to the English ways! May 29, 2008
A pleasure to read and to smile at some of the most British ways of seeing life and smelling the weather!
Watching the English April 12, 2008
I've only just begun reading, but so far, it's been quite enjoyable. The author writes with humor. I've some British online friends. I've been able to use tidbits from the book when joking around with them.
Excellent Study, Worthwhile Reading September 21, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I had read Barzini's well known works on the Europeans and thoroughly enjoyed this book on the English.
The approach is academic yet palatable, laden with insightful observations and well deserves consideration as a work of anthropological interest. The author maintains an objective distance and professional methodology which impart a delicious irony; we are conditioned to primitive cultures as the provenance of these studies, she turns the focus upon what some may argue as the bastion of civilization.
As a guidebook to a cultural understanding of the English this work is invaluable. The expose on class is penetrating and amuses as there are unexpected twists; such as decorating your home or garden with a modicum of lower class objects, the inside joke apparent only to the cognoscienti.
Hilarious and revealing observation of the English by a social anthropologist June 28, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Kate Fox, a social anthropologist and Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, who has lived in England, America, Ireland and France, takes a revealing look at the quirks and habits of the English people. Being very English herself, she holds a mirror up to the English national character and reveals the most famous traits as well as the most bizarre reflex reactions. She attempts to discover the curious, hidden rules of behaviour that all English people seem to follow, but few are aware even exist. In a separate section consisting of 14 pages she focuses on defining Englishness and attempts to define Englishness in contrast to being British.
Writing with gentle humour and astute perception she portrays the foibles in the English and in herself as well. Kate Fox is immensely perceptive about all kinds of English cultural values, behaviours and oddities. Watching the English falls into two main parts: part one - Conversation codes; part two - Behaviour codes. The first part covers everything from the obsession with the weather through English humour to how people use mobile phones. The second part deals with how the English behave inside their own homes or when visiting other people's homes, life in the workplace, food, drink, eating-habits, sex... and many more topics.
Though the smallish print might irritate some, it's an easy read with good flow and the reader will get much material to provoke lively discussion with anyone interested in the English.
Anthropologist Kate Fox, has forced herself to engage in many humiliating field tests-- like bumping into people on purpose and seeing how many people say `sorry'-- in order to test the common theories about English behaviour. Watching the English is the result of her research. Fox's book displays most of the traits that she points out as representing the English: being sensitive to the tiny signifiers of class status (e.g. the `M&S test', which identifies your class by your shopping choices at that particular department store), it purposely avoids taking itself too seriously and is continuously self-deprecating (of course, this is the `popular anthropology', not the real scientific one). Admitting to being neither, Watching the English is positioned between satire and science.
Warmly recommended for anyone from another culture, who tries to survive living in Britain, or live among the English abroad. People working in international teams with English members or bosses would have many aha-insights through this book.
 useful in understdg ppl's behaviour June 18, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Written by an English anthropologist about her own nation's behaviour. There're some interesting explanation on why British ppl are so uneasy socializing, talking about money and may sometimes talking in the opp way (hypocrisy). While many of the explanations suggested by the author are convincing, I found those behaviour not unique to the British, they can be observed in our Chi society as well! So it's useful in understdg ppl's behaviour.
|
|
|
