Posts Tagged ‘family’
Are Costa Ricans the happiest people in the world?
That’s the opinion of a number of studies, all recently quoted by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in an interesting piece that explores some of the possible reasons for why Costa Ricans are generally pretty content with their lives. One reason, of course, may be the luck of their geography. Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the [...]
Maintaining their culture, from Bhutan to New York
I came across an interesting recent article in the NY Times about the growing number of immigrants from Bhutan who have recently settled in New York City. It’s not the most common of countries from which to draw an immigrant population, and indeed the numbers are still relatively small. But what caught my eye was a [...]
Sex becomes a less taboo subject among some Arabs
Sex has always been pretty much a taboo subject in the Arab world. It’s simply something that wasn’t discussed openly. Now, though, the first cracks are appearing in that wall of silence, and one of the individuals who is shedding light on the subject, interestingly enough, is a 45-year-old Emirati woman who quotes the Koran and doesn’t go [...]
Dating cultures around the world
Romance is universal. But the road to romance? Well, that’s a different story. Terry Ward of World Hum took a look at the dating cultures of five other countries in a fun story called Around the World in Five Dates. A sampling: Japan: The Japanese place great importance on saving face. In the nebulous world [...]
Hispanics may agonize over cultural values and elder care decisions
As we talk about differences in cultures around the world, it’s easy to forget that there are also many cultures and worldviews residing all around us. Among the various racial and ethnic groups in the United States, there are of course different foods, music and traditions, but there are also different ways in which people perceive the world [...]
“Couchsurfing” differs for Asians
I’ve previously covered couchsurfing on this blog, both the idea behind it and the actual organization that connects people around the world by offering free places to stay. Now comes an interesting story that compares Western and Asian cultures in terms of their levels of comfort with the idea of hosting strangers in one’s home. It’s great for [...]
Koreans learn to embrace adoption
Some countries easily embrace the concept of adoption. In the United States, for instance, adoption has long been commonplace and even foreign born children find easy acceptance in this multicultural society. In some other nations, though, people have struggled with the idea of adoption. This is especially true in a place like Korea, where family and ancestry are [...]
The “little emperors” of China
Want to know the long-term consequences of a society filled with one-child families? Apparently, the situation gets a lot more complicated when combined with an economy that produces too few professional level jobs. Check out the current situation in China, which is described in a fascinating article in Psychology Today. When China began limiting couples to one child [...]
Differences between individualist and group-oriented societies
David Brooks usually focuses on politics from a conservative perspective in his NY Times op-ed column, but every once in a while he has a piece that delves into culture in some form or other. That is what he does in today’s column, which looks at some of the differences between individualist and group-oriented societies. This [...]
Eating scorpions with your kids
Yeah, I know, not a likely activity. Unless you’re like Matthew Forney, who lives with his wife and two children in Beijing – where they have acquired tastes for decidedly non-Western cuisine. Forney wrote an amusing story about his family’s culinary adventures for the NY Times. In Beijing, where my family lives, I once returned [...]
Saudi gender relations: the female view
Yesterday, I had a post about gender relations in Saudi Arabia and the remarkable lengths that the society goes to in order to maintain separation between males and females of different families. I linked to a story in the International Herald Tribune in which young men were interviewed about their interactions with women. Today, we cover [...]
Saudi gender relations: the male view
It’s easy in the West for us to express shock or dismay at the state of gender relations in some Arab countries (the veiling of women, the separation of the sexes, etc.), and particularly in a very conservative culture such as Saudi Arabia’s. However, it’s also easy for us to forget that many people in those [...]
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Bob Riel is a writer and a traveler. Go here to read more about Bob, his work and the Travels in the Riel World blog.
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