When dealing with ‘distant cultures’ like China, communication is key. But a bit of business-is-business pragmatism doesn’t hurt either.
Tag: culture
CASTELMEZZANO — Basilicata is facing a bona fide demographic crisis. The small region, located between the boot and heel of southern Italy, is home to roughly 570,000 people. But due to a low birthrate and high rates of unemployment and emigration, it loses approximately 3,000 inhabitants every year. By 2065, according to a report by […]
Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials have very different needs and expectations regarding workspaces. And yet, in many companies they’re expected to work side-by-side.
Using social media platforms, professors from Pakistan and India developed a course that looks at the two countries’ histories without nationalistic biases.
-OpEd- WASHINGTON — It’s good that Starbucks, with its announcement this week that it will close thousands of stores for a day of “racial bias training” in May, is taking steps in the right direction after a video of two black men getting arrested in one of its coffee shops went viral. But white America’s habit of needlessly calling the police on black people is not just a Starbucks culture problem. It’s an American culture problem. The tragic examples are all over the Internet. In McKinney, Tex., in 2015, after a neighbor called police about a pool party, a responding […]
BENGHAZI — They call it the “Café of the Displaced,” and it’s always full. “It’s because my customers followed me here,” says Ahmed, a smile on his face as he pours a clever blend of coffee, cream, cocoa powder and sugar. Everybody’s known Ahmed for years. And they know his story, which is also the […]
In India, a centuries-old custom comes up against basic demands for human rights.
Barranquilla’s gay events at carnival time have shed social shaming and police harassment to become part of the intangible patrimony of this historic Caribbean city.
Safe from the disapproving eyes of their families, women writers gather secretly in Jalalabad to immerse themselves in poetry.
Vintage wallpaper and other Old World touches meld into chic Buenos Aires surroundings to push Home Hotel to be named the region’s top boutique address.
SEOUL — Stella came to South Korea on a government scholarship to do a PhD. She says when she arrived from Europe, she found that the degree came with some “unofficial” costs. “I heard that there should be some kind of payment every time that my committee of professors would meet to discuss my thesis.” Stella did not want to reveal her real name since she works for that same university now. She says she confronted her professors about these payments, but it didn’t go well. “I was explicitly told by one of the members of my committee that I […]
LJUBLJANA — I have been traveling for a few weeks now, on a journey filled with inner dialogue. Searching first for long-desired destinations, I was soon digging deep into my childhood. It was a walk toward the past — a backtrack of the images and sensations that were important in forming my personality. Doing it […]
A project that encourages villagers to protect local river sources is helping revive community life and traditional culture.
BUENOS AIRES — Eduardo Roverano, 61, inherited the family business, a Buenos Aires funeral home founded in 1883 by his great grandfather. “I have vague memories of when the funeral cart was drawn by black horses,” he recalls. “I began working at 15. And it wasn’t a desk job. They sent me to pick up […]
When El Espectador’s Aldo Civico spots a former henchman of the Medellin drug cartel in a restaurant, enjoying a meal and the well wishes of patrons, he wonders if something has gone terrible wrong with society at large.
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Iran’s Next Target: Justin Bieber
TEHRAN — Iran has had enough of Justin Bieber and the Great Satan corporate powers turning out such sinful teenage beats. The Islamic Republic has a plan to purge itself of the Western pop music scourge, by developing a national music awards program that will encourage local talent and hopefully restore home-grown Iranian song to […]
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No, The West Is Not In Decline
Europe, the United States and other parts of the so-called West may not be booming, but they’re not about to be superseded either. Quite the contrary, in fact.
CAIRO — “Everyone wants a tattoo now in Egypt,” says 23-year-old Kareem Shaheen as he sits on his bed sketching the outline of a flash of lightning. Shaheen started to tattoo less than a year ago under the name “Monkey Tattoo,” and hopes to open the first street tattoo studio in Cairo. “People relate getting […]
Robots have always fascinated us. In fiction or in real life, they crossed our path, for better or for worse. But where do they really come from?
A meeting with shamans in Colombia allows El Espectador’s Pablo Correa to experience an “indescribable” ritual.
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Waiting For The Rice To Dry
Rice is a staple food on the Indonesian island of Java. The country is one of the world’s biggest producers, and cultivating it means a lot of work for both men and women. But during the drying stage, there’s not much to do but wait.
The Swiss Amish in the United States are keeping alive a vocal art passed down from their ancestors in Switzerland and eastern France. Both a symbol of identity and entertainment, yodeling was also a source of inspiration for American country music.
-Essay- There must be an infinity of good stories to tell about the bus from Jerusalem to Ramallah. At its starting point, the streets are well kept, like in a first-world country, and the white stone buildings standardized. At sunset, they give the Israeli city a golden yellow hue. When you reach Ramallah, the dusty […]
Venezuela, a land that made 19th-century travelers marvel at its natural treasures, has become one of the last places any tourist would visit these days.
PARIS — Should Palmyra be rebuilt? And under what conditions? No sooner had Syrian forces and the Russian Army freed the “pearl of the desert,” a spectacular Greco-Roman city with traces of Eastern influence, from the yoke of the Islamic State (ISIS), then the debate over how to restore it to its former glory was […]
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The Painter’s Village
If Ornans looks picturesque enough on my photographs, it’s nothing compared to the way 19th-century painter Gustave Courbet — arguably the most celebrated artist from my neck of the woods — depicted the village in his masterpieces.
Libération, March 11, 2016 To mark the upcoming fifth anniversary of the start of the civil war in Syria, French daily Libération renamed itself Friday in Arabic, featuring a striking front-page image of children spinning on swings around a bomb. Calling itself Tahrir (“Liberation” in Arabic) for the occasion of the March 15th anniversary next […]
ROME — Italian soldiers and antiquity experts alike will help lead a new dedicated UN peacekeeping force designed to protect and restore the world’s cultural monuments exposed to war and other conflicts. Italian daily Corriere della Sera reports that the taskforce, the first of its kind, will be composed of 30 Italian paramilitary troops and […]
TEHRAN — Repeating something Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, said years ago — long before Iran’s latest clash with Saudi Arabia — Moussa reveals much about the current mindselt in the streets and cafés of the Iranian capital: “With the Great Satan we could forgive and forget,” he says. “But with the Ibn […]
BOGOTA — Bogotá”s new mayor, the technocratic Enrique Peñalosa, wants to remove some of the Colombian capital’s abundant graffiti — those deemed to be “non-artistic.” But the move is being perceived by some as a reversal of the socially oriented policies of his predecessor, leftist Gustavo Petro, who essentially considered all such street art socially […]
During its years of international isolation, Iran saw “culture” solely as a way to promote its Shia Islamic heritage. Yet Iranian officials recently have begun to take an interest in questions of national identity, heritage and Iranian civilization that are unrelated to the Islamic clerical regime and its values. As the country prepares to move […]
In our dreams, it’s a world of joyful sharing. In reality, Internet commenters often offer little more than cheap shots and manipulation. Researcher Joseph Reagle explores the history and degeneration of online invective.
Of all the milestones along the road to human civilization, none is more profound than the advent of reading and writing. But in the name of interactivity, the 21st century is marked by the shallow language of social media that risks burning all our acqui
BOGOTA — Spanglish: Is it a dialect? Ghetto talk? Whatever else it may be, Spanglish is now the brazen, no-nonsense fruit of two languages and cultures coexisting in the United States. It may sound a little crazy at times. For example, walking in a Latino area of New York one day, I saw a notice […]
SAO PAULO — Cemeteries are rarely considered places of beauty and pleasure. The one in the Sao Paulo neighborhood of Jardim Angela was also grim for another reason, considering that in 1996 the UN ranked it the most violent urban region in the world. But now a part of this graveyard is bringing some smiles […]
There is so much beauty to be found in the preservation of decay.Â
ANURADHAPURA — More than 20,000 farmers in Sri Lanka, mostly rice farmers in the north, have lost their lives in recent years because of an unexplained surge in kidney disease. It has now reached epidemic proportions, and patients are descending on overwhelmed clinics, lining up for the few dialysis machines available. Karnu Jemanta and his brother, who are working their rice field outside the village of Rambewa, are worried. “We’re not sick yet, but we may be soon,” Jemanta says. “People from the Health Ministry came and said it could be chemicals, or that we should drink more water when […]
Families of certain social standing in Egypt often educate their children in English. Publishing houses too are getting in on the Anglo influence, publishing literary works and texts written directly in English.
Argentina may be at the forefront of high-tech farming, but a growing number of the country’s urban dwellers want food produced by organic, local farmers.
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Buddha Watching
In the heart of the Kathmandu valley lies one of the most sacred and oldest Buddhist pilgrimage sites. At the top of the Swayambhunath dome, or stupa, Buddha is looking in all four directions. At this particular moment, I was hoping it meant a special protective glance over these two Nepalese cleaners, standing dangerously close […]