Who on Earth are we?
Who on Earth are we? is a series about culture and how it affects us. It explores some of the major differences between cultures and looks at what happens when people from different cultures meet and communicate. The series is presented by Marc Beeby.
Part 12
Series review and intercultural advice: In the last programme of the series Marc Beeby reviews the topics of the previous programmes and also presents a guide to turning theories about culture into successful and beneficial inter-cultural practice.
Part 11
Culture shock: Marc Beeby looks at clashes of culture and how we experience them without even leaving home.
Part 10
Barriers to inter-cultural communication: Marc Beeby discovers that it is our own culture that usually causes the most difficulties when it comes to communication with people from other cultures.
Part 9
Cultural dimensions: One of the first people to recognise the importance of the distinction between individualist and collectivist cultures was the Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede - the man responsible for one of the largest intercultural surveys that's ever been conducted. It's Hofstede's work and its results that we hear about in this programme.
Part 8
Individual and collective based cultures: In the last programme Marc Beeby began an investigation into the differences between cultures where the individual is seen as central – individualist cultures – and those where the group is the most important unit – collectivist cultures. In this programme he looks at more of these differences.
Part 7
Individual and collective based cultures:
If you're someone who likes privacy, your own space, making your own decisions, you probably belong to a culture where the individual is central. But if you like to have other people around you, and feel the need to 'do the right thing', your culture is probably one where the group - or the 'collective' - is the most important unit.
Marc Beeby begins to examine this subject.
Part 6
Culture and time and space:
A less obvious way in which cultures differ is in their attitudes to time and space. In the programme Marc Beeby looks at this subject and learns about Indian Standard Time and how the idea of personal space is different around the world.
Part 5
Culture and non-verbal communication:
People from different cultures not only speak different languages, they also use non-verbal communication in different ways. When people use non-verbal communication in a way that is different from what we're used to, there can be problems. Join Marc Beeby as he looks at this feature of communication.
Part 4
Culture and communication:
Communication's done so naturally by all of us that we take it for granted, and we don't think very much about what happens when we communicate. We just think, 'well we're all human and we all communicate therefore communication must be easy and it must be universal'. But in fact communication isn't a simple process at all, as Marc Beeby finds out.
Part 3
Language and culture: Marc Beeby looks at language as one of the building blocks of culture and discovers that we don't all describe the world in the same way.
Part 2
What is culture? In this programme Marc Beeby tries to answer this question and discover just why culture is so difficult to define and talk about.
Part 1
In this first episode of Who on Earth are we? Marc Beeby introduces the topic of culture and inter-cultural communication. We hear some anecdotes relating to cross-cultural surprises and discover that the more we learn about other cultures, the more we learn about ourselves.
Links to other Talk about English series
