Book reviews

Reviewed by Dr. George Simons at diversophy.comYou will best profit from this book if you read with careful attention to your own experiences and to what goes on in your mind and your feelings as you move from page to page. The objective here is to recognize how you function and take better charge of improving your ability to see how your use of the history and culture stored in your unconscious can be either an essential asset or a terminal liability. Research into how we function neurologically and as a result, mentally, emotionally and behaviorally is a critical area...

Reviewed by Dr. George Simons at diversophy.com Joseph Shaules is well known among interculturalists for developing the model of deep culture, which opens the door to appropriating the research results of neurobiological studies, neurolinguistics and the advances of cognitive science. His new book furthers the exploration of the connection between language and culture and abets the jailbreak that we have been attempting to make from centuries of dualistic self-definition, to free ourselves to embrace our nature as holistic beings, or, as the book’s title puts it, “embodied minds”. No one who has achieved some fluency in a second language has not...

Reviewed by Dr. George Simons at diversophy.comThis collection of short academic monographs by a large group of collaboration researchers attempts to assess and further the progress of cross-culture cohabitation of mixed societies in a variety of corners of the world. It reports the results of a project titled Mutual Intercultural Relations in Plural Societies (MIRIPS) which employed a consistent multidimensional methodology to research, describe and evaluate relationships between national populations and ethnic minorities in seventeen societies, largely in Europe (Azerbaijan, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Switzerland), but also in India, Hong Kong, Australia...

Reviewed by Dr. George Simons at diversophy.com Angela Weinberger offers us, newly revised, in a practical hands-on process the essential what we need to know and do to professionally manage the global mobility which is both rapidly growing and shifting into new contexts. Whether mobility is managed by HR, global mobility specialists, corporate immigration departments, etc., the essential tasks of selection, preparation, guidance, and (re)integration of those who go or work abroad in multinational and global organizations must be unequivocally understood not just in theory but in the practical steps that lead to success. This workbook will enable the user to...

Reviewed by Dr. George Simons at diversophy.com Interculturalists are familiar with the range of approaches to culture in the social sciences and the intercultural field itself. Many of us started with the rather positivist and essentialist studies that provided initial insights, first best guesses into the behavior of cultural groups, but were also a slippery slope in the direction of bias and stereotyping. Subsequently, we have been turning our attention toward the iconic, memes, linguistic, performative and social constructionist approaches and storytelling as elements and theories for understanding and using culture, as well as teaching about it and applying it to...