Academic literature on the topic 'Melanesia Civilization Western influences'

The notion that “Westernization” is a process that is unconditionally positive in its impact has dominated both Western and Soviet accounts of Russian intellectual and cultural history during the period before the Emancipation of 1861. As a consequence, Westernization has been described as synonymous with progress, rational economic behavior, greater tolerance, civilization, and the advancement of individual freedom. Although this rather uncritically pro-Western approach to the study of Western influences has produced important research and analytical insights, the assumption that a homogeneous Western culture everywhere generates liberal and democratic influences is in fact highly problematic. As I have suggested elsewhere, it is very difficult to make the empirical case that any one Western political or economic model can be applied to Germany, France, and Italy as well as England. And in the Russian context, a belief in the unmixed benefits of Westernization obscures some of the most important ironies and contradictions that characterize Russian economic debates and strategies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

There were fundamental differences in political philosophy and culture between Islamic and western-Christian or European civilization in the period up to c.1500, notably concerning the nature of the political community, of religious law and of the mode of political discourse. Europe proved open to Greco–Roman influences and thus developed, as Islam did not, a notion of the legitimate secular state.

Extreme cinema is an international trend which encompasses a wide range of cinematic genres: thrillers, dramatic narratives, so-called “art films,” and horror films. In the context of Asian extreme films, we find an especially highly-dynamic crisscrossing of influences. There is an assumption in the Western imagination that the Asian diaspora is unidirectional insofar as Asian populations gravitate toward the beacons of Western civilization. Trends in post-millennial extreme cinema however disrupt this particular diasporic narrative. This article argues that post-millennial extreme films are not simply a bidirectional flow, but rather a complex circulation of themes, aesthetic motifs, and filmmakers.

Purpose This paper aims to explain the modern unintended human-personal self-destruction and the importance of diverse society-specific holistic cultures (“native cultures”) and social value systems as the remedy. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a viewpoint, as both the explanation and the proposed remedy are based on the present author’s historical, theoretical and normative considerations. Findings First, the author’s interpretation of pre-modern to modern Western societies reveals that some important pre-modern Western values are given to the modern era as part of the market value system. Second, some Mercantilist ideas have strong influences on Classical economic theory and methodology. Third, the modern Western value system – the market value system – corresponds to the Core Synergism of Modern Civilization or the complex driving force of Modern Civilization. Social implications This paper is designed to facilitate reflection on the excessive emphasis on economic/market values. Originality/value The present author’s normative framework for social value system (“integral harmony”) is used for explaining a likely remedy of the unintended human-personal self-destruction. Also, for solving the human-personal predicament, this article integrates native culture, balance and harmony into economic thinking to promote sustainable development for a viable human future. Concluding remarks provide a summary for clarification of the remedy.

This article aims at discussing the historical-social development of the witch’s image according to cultural, social and religious perspectives since the earlier stages of our Western civilization until the contemporary era. This historic overview will be discussed according to mythological influences referring to the construction of the female image as transgressor which originated the acclaimed Middle Age “witch hunt”. In order to do so, we will use works by Civita, (1997), Blécourt (2017), Clark (2006), Maxwell-Stuart (2017), Page (2017), Sharpe (2017) and Wallis (2017) apart from contemporary film versions from The Wizard of Oz (1939) through The Witch (2015), which depict the witch’s image transformation, so we can analyze, through its iconography, how such image was and is determined by the demands of several historical eras.

ABSTRACTNew Guinea was settled by ancestors of present day Papuan-speaking communities 40,000 years ago. Between 3 and 5 millennia BP, waves of Austronesians (AN) followed and settled mostly on the offshore islands and along some coastal areas of the New Guinea mainland. According to a well-received view, AN Diaspora originated from Taiwan and dispersed from there to inhabit much of island Southeast Asia, Malagasy and islands of the South Pacific. Austronesian colonisation was augmented by their superior cultural traits including horticulture and marine technology. In their conquest they assimilated weaker, nomadic pre-AN aboriginal communities as was the case with the Negritos of northern Philippines; settled beside or with earlier sedentary communities as was the case in Western Melanesia; or settled on uninhabited islands in Eastern Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia (Pawley & Ross, 1995). Beside demographic movements, other forces were at work. Trade-induced contact between Asia and New Guinea was in place before European contact. A trade link promoted by the Sultan of Tidor was extended to involve some communities of West New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) and the West Sepik Province some 5,000 years ago. As a result, trade items such as plumes of the kumul (bird of paradise), spices, sandalwood, aromatic barks and sea slugs from “islands of the coast of Western New Guinea “found their way into the Middle East markets about 4,000 years ago (Swadling, 1996). Other internal or external forces such as intermarriages and so on were at work also (see Bellwood, 1978). This fairly brief prehistory of what went on in the northern region of New Guinea raises questions about possible cross-cultural or cross-linguistic influences. Indeed, it does pose a challenge to those who endeavour to piece together a pre-linguistic history of lexical “ruins” found to suggest cognate relationships among languages of the northern region of New Guinea. This essay attempts to adumbrate a linguistic etymology of “loan cognates” that Abu', a Papuan language of the Torricelli Phylum of the central Sepik region, shares with AN languages. It commences with a list of lexical items and statements about their etymologies. This approach inescapably leads to a delineation of the kinds of attitudes the Abu' have towards foreign linguistic elements. The paper concludes with a typological statement about grammatical typology as an additional explanation to both the Papuan-Austronesian contact, and the trade-link theory as bases for the diffusion of areal or regional linguistic features among languages of the East Sepik and Sandaun (West Sepik) provinces.

Even though mental health is usually discussed from the western worldview, it has been existent in Kenya even before civilization. The main objective of this paper therefore is to assess the impact of cultural beliefs on mental health among some selected communities in Western Kenya. This paper was guided by the social psychology theory which posits that social influences, perception and interaction are vital in understanding social behavior. The paper adopted the descriptive survey design to present data thus studying the situation as it is in an attempt to explain it. The sampling techniques were Purposive which was used to select the specialists. The study instruments were interview schedule, Focus Group Discussion and documents review. The validity o the instruments were established through content validity by experts from MMUST. This paper established that cultural beliefs have both a negative and positive impact on mental health in the sense that anxiety and trauma from broken taboos and norms led to mental illness whereas the performance of rituals brought about peace and psychological contentment hence mental health. This article recommends that cultural beliefs which lead to mental health should be preserved for the same purpose.

Public participation is widely regarded as a vital component for making environmental decisions more democratic, legitimate, and effective. Yet, research on this subject has largely focused on rights and principles instead of context and process, especially in non-Western settings. To address this gap, this article explores how local voices on environmental issues were muted in a Chinese rural context. It describes controversies surrounding a cultural and ecological tourism development in Heyang, a transforming village in the east coastal region of China. Based on semistructured group interviews, the article reveals that although many issues found in the Heyang case resonated with similar cases in Western settings, such as the lack of access to information and the problematic solicitation of public input, fundamentally, the local voices were muted by the village council’s blind adoption of an urban-centric ecological modernization agenda and its neglect of local villagers’ emotional attachment to their land properties. The above findings not only draw our attention to how participatory communication can be compromised by contextual factors but also invite us to reconsider how China’s existing urban–rural division fundamentally influences its ecological civilization.

The present state of our spirituality is a consequence of the influences of particular circumstances of life. Undoubtedly, the general changes in the social, political and economic orientations of society significantly influence the nature of the processes taking place in the spiritual sphere. The transition to the rails of market reforms, the affirmation of the principle of pragmatism as a kind of measure of the effectiveness of human life, the priority of economic values ​​over others, including spiritual values, leads to a deepening crisis of spirituality, crisis of man. And in this connection M. Berdyaev's words appearing to warn him against uncritical perception of the values ​​of Western civilization, which, incidentally, is quite characteristic of modern Ukrainian society, appear to be quite correct: the loss of the spiritual center. " And further: “The autonomy of economic life led to its dominance over the entire life of human communities. Mammonism has become the defining force of the age. ”

Balkan complexes of “worse Europe” in works of Ermis LafazanovskiOver the centuries, the European continent was divided into different spaces according to different axes: both geopolitical and economic history of East and West and the historical and geocultural division into North and South. Differentiation was present in Europe in vari­ous ways, either by the use of geographical terms, which became the indicators of difference, or how the politicians wanted to see it – split into Western Europe, Eastern Europe or Central and Eastern Europe. They represent the heterogeneity and diverse influences of civilization, that are reflected in its culture.The division into different cultural spaces is mirrored in the literature. Here, from a broad selection of south Slavic literature, for the basis of analysis two works of contemporary Macedo­nian writer Ermis Lafazanovski were selected: novel Hrapeshko and short story Exotic cantata. They reveal the existence of cultural differences and traditions, represented in the antinomies friend–foe, top–down which show spatial differences in Europe burdened by her stereotypes.

The legend of Shambhala incorporated in the Tibetan Canon, has been one of the favourite motives of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the centuries. High lamas and laity alike venerated the legend connecting their innermost aspirations with it. For some it represents a mystical millennial country revealing itself only to the chosen ones, while others perceive it as a symbol of the hidden treasures of the mind. This way or the other, the legend of Shambhala remains a living belief for many. The present hardships of Tibet made the legend with its leitmotif of future victory of Buddhism, especially viable.
When the legend reached the West in the beginning of this century, it inspired many westerners including political leaders, and acquired diverse and innovative interpretations.
Conveying the ever cherished human dream of a better world beyond ours, the legend of Shambhala proved to be a ubiquitous symbol surpassing its original Buddhist framework.

This creative project is a study of cultural awareness in architecture. The hypothesis states that architecture is one of many cultural manifestations in a society. One seeking contemporary architecture in a society should explore the idea of contemporary culture in that society. This study aims to point out the relationship of living patterns and living spaces (culture and architecture). Living patterns are influenced by their own cultures and, at the same time, the characteristics of living spaces reflect the aspects of living patterns. To explore contemporary living spaces, cultural issues must be considered.However, culture is dynamic. It is changed by reasons of time, place and people. Even though the tradional cultures in a society continuingly permeate to the next generations, some of them disappear as time, place or people change. Therefore, to study the issue of culture in contemporary society, traditional and new cultures are reckoned with as contemporary families adapt both cultures into their lifestyles.While Thai society has maintained its own unique culture, recently globalization has brought influences of Western ideas into Thailand. These influences are effecting Thai culture and bearing on how housing responds to a changing society.The work is divided into two parts, research and design. To explore the deeper meaning of contemporary living spaces, the research focuses on the importannce of culture to the characteristics of living spaces. It analyzes cultural and social changes that have influenced contemporary Thai families. This cultural analyses confirms that the meaning and design of contemporary living spaces are directly influenced by cultural adjustments.To support the hypothesis and research, a housing project for contemporary Thai families is proposed. It is a schematic design that incorporates the cultural analyses into the design process. The design is a model for organizing cultural information into the design of living spaces.
Department of Architecture

Edkins' theory is mainly consisted of two parts, comparative linguistics and researches on religious ideas of ancient Chinese people. At the same time, he also attempted to find western elements in ancient Chinese astrology, astronomy, philosophy and technology. His theory, together with other supporters, formed a special visual angle through which some Sinologists connected the Chinese culture with the main stream of the general history of human civilization constructed by western scholars. It seams to them that the Chinese civilization and the western civilization are not two different systems. To some Sinologists at that tine, whether the Chinese civilization could be correctly understood or not, rests on whether scholars could find its relation with western civilization. After a series of researches, almost all the elements of Chinese civilization were brought into the hermeneutic system of the west. The mystic color of China faded.
Edkins' theory is not completely new. In the 16th century, Jesuits began to interpret Chinese language, history and religion through the theory of the western origin of Chinese civilization. From the second part of the 19th Century to the first years of the 20 th century, this theory became popular, and among many advocates, there are not only westerners like John Chalmers, Joseph Edkins, Terrien de Lacouperie and Thomas Kingsmill, but also Chinese like Zhang Tai-Yan, Liu Shi-Pei and Huang Jie, etc. Meanwhile, various versions evolved from this theory, different from one another in the time and place that civilization came to China from the west. Some of them mix religious faith with academic studies together, and others' opinions are much more like scientific researches. Strange in the sight of scholars nowadays, this theory had its special meaning at the very beginning of western Sinology.
It seems that Sinologists of the 19th century did not try to describe China as an utter other, totally different from the west. On the contrary, they attempted to eliminate the difference. So this dissertation can also help us to get a deeper insight into the conception of Orientalism.
This dissertation is to discuss the methods that some Sinologists used to decipher the Chinese civilization by examining Joseph Edkins' works on Chinese language and civilization. Edkins is a missionary and Sinologist who advocated the theory of the western origin of Chinese civilization.
陳喆.
Adviser: Xue Yu.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2069.
Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 152-164) and index.
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
School code: 1307.
Chen Zhe.

This dissertation explores the transformation of a small town in South East Transylvania, Sighisoara, historically defined through a strong German presence. Despite the small number of Germans remaining in the region after the massive migrations of the last decades, historical German privilege (made visible through and materialized in the long-lasting architecture) is reformulated and re-configured in the present precisely through processes connected to valuing and producing this built landscape as historical heritage. Claims for stakes in the development of the area become entangled with an interest in heritage preservation publicly performed by a diverse set of (mostly foreign) actors. By analyzing a failed development project, the gentrification of the historical citadel, transformations in public spaces, and NGO and historical preservation funding, I argue that Germanness offers a discursive space in which local desires for a developed West are able to articulate, productively, with Western nostalgias for a developmental do-over, as well as with fears for an endangered European heritage at the 'margins' of Western civilization. This dissertation contributes to the anthropology of post-socialist transformations in Eastern Europe by drawing attention to the relationship between ethnicity and participation in a global capitalism. It shows how a continuous, living engagement with the "outside," the "West," with consumer capitalism has been part of local quotidian subjectivities and understandings of the world, all mediated by desire and access to mobility and possibility. Understandings of people's current relationship with development, consumption, the idea and reality of capitalism cannot be disentangled from these continuities, and I argue for locating analysis precisely in these relationships. This dissertation also brings a critical native voice to the body of English language Eastern European anthropology. At the same time, it attempts to both build on and disrupt historical approaches to the region by forging analytical and substantive continuities with discipline-wide approaches to ethnicity, development, and heritage tourism.
text

伍紅玉.
Submitted: November 2007.
Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-204).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
Wu Hongyu.

China's relations with the world have been an influential factor determining Chinese self-perceptions and how 'foreigners' and one of their languages, English, are perceived in the country. Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, China's defeats in wars, unequal treaties and humiliations by foreign countries (mainly from the West) destroyed China's self-image as a 'middle kingdom'. Exacerbated by the deteriorating relations with the West in the twentieth century, English became associated with "barbarians", "military aggressors", and "anti-Communists" (Adamson 2002). There is, and always has been, the fear of the spread of culture(s) associated with English which can lead to the weakening of Chinese identity. This fear was instrumental in the development of the 'ti-yong' principle: "Chinese learning for essence (ti), Western learning for utility (yong)" (" {u4E2D}{u4F53}{u897F}{u7528}") (Zhang 2001: 18), which prescribes the role of English as a tool separated from Chinese essence and, has been guiding China's English education policies. Since the late 1980s, there has been a massive progression of globalisation in China, characterised especially by the entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the hosting of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The two events signify the most active participation of China in the global community in the last few decades following the 'reform and opening up' ('{u6539}{u9769}{u5F00}{u653E}') in the late 1970s. As a global language, the roles English plays in China's integration are significant. English is the principal language of trade partners, technicians, scientists and tourists, an essential tool for modernisation and a vehicle to ensure China's voices are heard. In China, a series of government{u00AC}initiated and bottom-up English campaigns have been embarked on and foreign v language education policies have also aimed to equip Chinese people with this essential modern skill. Despite the eagerness to integrate into the global community, globalisation has opened up China to the world and, in learning English, Chinese people are more exposed to western cultural values and beliefs. This, coupled with the absence of a clearly identifiable self-image, has presented challenges to the integrity of Chinese identity and the upholding of the 'ti-yong' principle. Chinese identity and culture has had to confront the influx of English and its associated culture(s). The present research stems from two issues of interest which are interrelated: the roles of English in today's China and what it means to 'be Chinese'. From an applied linguistic perspective, this research aims to investigate Chinese perceptions of 'Self in relation to other countries symbolising 'the Other' through English as a window. In particular, this thesis looks into what it means to 'be Chinese' from the official and popular perspectives using the 'ti-yong' principle as a reference point. To address the research aims, a case study was conducted. It investigates the Chinese government's views on English as reflected in a government newspaper, as well as popular opinions through questionnaires and interviews. Official discourses are identified and analysed using critical language analysis frameworks including the work of critical literary criticisms, in particular, that of Bakhtin, and Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis is also inspired by Pennycook's critical approaches to global English. In investigating the popular discourses about English, Qmethodology was used to collect questionnaires and interviews data. This research focuses on the interviews as the primary data. In particular, the analysis of Chinese identity draws on post- VI structuralist approaches which take identity as ever-changing and multiple. This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One reviews and establishes the concept of 'being Chinese' and the ways Chinese perceive their country, identity and language which are important contextual information for the present study of Chinese identity. The Beijing Olympics are used as a window into modern China to provide the broader socio-cultural and political contexts of the study. To conclude the chapter, some keywords that are central to the understanding of Chinese perceptions of itself and the world are also explained. Chapter Two discusses the history of English in China from the eighteenth century onwards, the impacts of English on Chinese perceptions of its identity and how English learning has been linked to the identity challenges of China as a nation. Along the lines of how the 'ti-yong' principle has manifested in different periods, the official discourses about Chinese identity and the challenges English learning has presented are illustrated with reference to China's current policy directions and some existing literature. Chapter Two then discusses the theoretical framework adopted in the case study to analyse the impacts of English on Chinese identity as well as the research focus and aims that guide the present research. The case study ofthis thesis, including data collection methodology and analysis, is presented and discussed in Chapter Three to Chapter Five. Chapter Three introduces and discusses the data collected for the case study, the data collection methodology and approaches to data analysis. The chapter discusses the theoretical frameworks used including Bakhtin's literary theories, Critical Discourse Analysis and Q methodology. Chapter Four examines the data collected from the government newspaper, People 's Vll Daily, to uncover the official Chinese perceptions of English and 'being Chinese' in relation to the outside world. It discusses how Chinese agency is claimed in learning or using English and is related to Chinese discourse of globalisation. Chapter Four also demonstrates how Chinese cultural values and ideologies are manipulated to re{u00AC}accentuate the purposes of English and postulate the ideological construction of Chinese identity in the discourses about English. Chapter Five discusses the results of the interviews conducted during fieldwork in Beijing with university and high school students, teachers and parents. Within the framework of 'frame-shifting' of cross-cultural psychology, the interviews were set up to investigate the significance of Chinese identity for the participants. The chapter particularly focuses on the similarities and differences between the official and popular discourses. In comparing the two discourses, it also investigates the extent to which 'non-standard' language and identity ideologies exist and the ways in which English learning influences 'being Chinese' among the people. The findings reveal some issues around the upholding of the 'ti-yong' principle. Chapter Six discusses the manifestations of 'being Chinese' at the national, local and personal levels as reflected in the case study. It concludes the thesis with the implications of the case study for the status of the 'ti-yong' principle and a note on the potential areas for future research.

劉鳳霞.
"2012年8月".
"2012 nian 8 yue".
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-201).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in Chinese and English.
Liu Fengxia.

The purpose of this study is to define the role of civilization’s critical powers in the civilization life cycle. The role of information-communication processes is particularly crucial in this quest. The terms “rise” and “fall” of civilization reflect this chronic issue in comparative civilization studies. Spengler, in his book The Decline of the West (1918), argued that all cultures are subject to the same cycle of growth and decay in accordance with predetermined “historical destiny.” Toynbee in his Study of History (1934), compared civilizations to organisms and perceived their existence in a life cycle of four stages: genesis, growth, breakdown, and disintegration. A mechanism of “challenge-response” facing civilizations influences their abilities at self-determination and self-direction. However, according to him, all civilizations that grow eventually reach a peak, from which they begin to decline. It seems that Toynbee’s civilization life cycle is too short, since his “breakdown of growth” phase is in fact a point in time and the “disintegration” phase is too pessimistic in its title, only perceiving the “universal state,” often under a form of “empire,” as an ancient regime which only wants to maintain the status quo and is doomed to fail. But history shows that some civilizations may last a long time in relatively good shape without being in imminent danger of disintegration. Sorokin argued in Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937) that three cultural mentalities, ideational (spiritual needs and goals), sensate (“wine, women, and song”), and idealistic (a balance of needs and ends) are the central organizing principles of a civilization’s life cycle, and that they succeed each other always in the same order according to super-rhythms of history. According to Sorokin, Western civilization has for the last 500 years been in the sensate stage, reaching now its limit, and will soon pass to the next idealistic stage (which, according to this author, could be the universal civilization).

In Le génie de l’Orient..., published in Brussels in 1846, Leopold Leon Sawaszkiewicz presents the collection and work of the Polish collector and connoisseur of Oriental cultures Ignacy Pietraszewski, who translated the Zend-Avesta – the holy book of Zoroastrianism – from Persian into Polish, French, and German. Sawaszkiewicz uses Pietraszewski’s rich collection of Islamic numismatics as a jumping-off point for numerous observations on the relations between the West and the East, from the perspective of the historic ties between the Poles – bound for nearly a millennium to Western Christian values – and the Turkish, Arab, Persian, and even Indian Orient, in which they searched, aside from artistic and literary inspiration, for traces of their own deep cultural and ethnic roots. This view of the rootedness of Polish culture in the universe of an apparently/actually distant imagination and mentality, makes it possible to reconsider the present conditions for honest and substantive dialogue between these different cultural and geopolitical regions. Sawaszkiewicz’s and Pietraszewski’s visions of the Orient, conceived at a time when the existing geopolitical order was confronted with the (re)birth of European national identity myths, bear witness to the active participation of Polish intellectuals in the debate on the foundations and future of Western civilization.

This chapter examines the peculiarity of the Enlightenment as a category in the history of Western culture by highlighting the important differences and points of contact and reciprocal influences between the views of the Enlightenment held by philosophers and those held by historians. It considers efforts in the twentieth century to analyze the “Enlightenment question,” which proved pivotal in the study of the rise of modern European civilization. It also discusses the double nature of the eighteenth-century epistemological paradigm, caught between history and philosophy, as well as its unique historiographical character. Finally, it shows how, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment opposed a brand new philosophy of history to a centuries-old theology of history.

The chapter, together with the next chapter, argues that the period saw the re-imagining of age relations between adults and children away from a disciplinary approach towards one characterized by liberal principles based on a 'scientific' understanding of the child's emotional interiority; the parenting goal was to 'help and understand' children. The chapter examines several of the influences involved in the process such as cultural responses to the widely perceived post 1918 'crisis' in Western civilization, as well as the impact of Freudian psychoanalytic thought and practice. It also considers the 'new psychology', the rejection of behaviourism, notably by Susan Isaacs, the child guidance movement and the emergence of 'new era' progressive education. These developments, it is claimed, were important origins in what came to be known as social democracy's post 1940s family ideal.

In our everyday life, as we work or travel, we are always confronted with many kinds of borders: political ones when we travel to other countries, or cultural ones, when we meet people with different backgrounds or lifestyles. We generally take these borders as something natural or let alone as something sacrosanct. And although in the Western civilization, we are aware of the fact that we have big difficulties in accepting the other‘s point of view or her way of life, we rather reinforce the borders and isolate ourselves from influences alien for our traditional or so-called pristine world. How could people of different cultures, religions, or languages manage to live together in the most harmonic way possible? Music is one kind of art which inspires and unites people across borders, but so does imagination: The Aletic Republic as a fictional republic transcends a world from imagination into a tangible place full of persons, landscapes, stories, poetry, and moods.

This chapter defines a framework for the crosscultural communication process, including efficiency and cost. The framework provides some directions for dialogue among civilizations, which is one of the main routes toward creation of the universal civilization. A developed architectural design of the cross-cultural communication process is based on a universal system approach that not only considers the complexities of the various cultural hierarchies and their corresponding communication climates, but also compares and quantifies the cultural-specific attributes with the intention of increasing efficiency levels in crosscultural communication. The attributes for two selected cultures (Western-West and Egyptian) are estimated in a normative way using expert opinions, measuring on a scale from 1 to 5 with 5 as the best value. Quantifying cultural richness (R), cultural efficiency (?), modified cultural differences (DMC, and cultural ability (B) reflects how a given culture’s strength can overcome cultural differences and enhance its competitive advantage (V). Two components of the culture factor cost, explicit (CE) and implicit (CI), are defined, examined and quantified for the purposes not only of controlling the cost of doing business across cultures, but also to determine the amount of investment needed to overcome cultural differences in a global economy. In this new millennium, global organizations will increasingly focus on the critical value of the cross-cultural communication process, its efficiency, its competence, its cost of doing business. In order to successfully communicate crossculturally, knowledge and understanding of such cultural factors as values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors should be acquired. Because culture is a powerful force that strongly influences communication behavior, culture and communication are inseparably linked. Worldwide, in the last 20 years, countries have experienced a phenomenal growth in international trade and foreign direct investment. Similarly, they have discovered the importance of crosscultural communication. As a result, practitioners and scholars are paying attention to the fact that cultural dimensions influence management practices (Hofstede, 1980; Child, 1981; Triandis, 1982; Adler, 1983; Laurent, 1983; Maruyama, 1984). In recent years, empirical work in the crosscultural arena has focused on the role of culture on employee behavior in communicating within business organizations (Tayeb, 1988). But current 346 Asymmetric Communication work on cross-cultural business communication has paid little attention to either (a) how to adapt these seminal works on general communication to the needs of intercultural business or (b) how to create new models more relevant to cross-cultural business exchanges (Limaye & Victor, 1991, p. 283). There are many focused empirical studies on cross-cultural communication between two specific cultures (e.g., Wong & Hildebrandt, 1983; Halpern, 1983; Victor, 1987; Eiler & Victor, 1988; Varner, 1988; Victor & Danak, 1990), but such results must be arguable when extrapolated across multiple cultures. The prevailing western classical linear and process models of communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949; Berlo, 1960) neglect the complexity of cross-cultural communication. Targowski and Bowman (1988) developed a layer-based pragmatic communication process model which covered more variables than any previous model and indirectly addressed the role of cultural factors among their layer-based variables. In a similar manner, the channel ratio model for intercultural communication developed by Haworth and Savage (1989) has also failed to account completely for the multiple communication variables in cross-cultural environments. So far, there is no adequate model that can explain the cross-cultural communication process and efficiency, let alone estimate the cost of doing business with other cultures worldwide.