Title: Explains a lot of ethnic conflict
Review: This book is a must read. I read it about 20 years ago when I was actively working to defuse ethnic tension -- of which there was a lot -- at a major university. Normally, talking about different cultures' senses of time is a way to get people really mad, but Hall's non-judgmental approach was a great way to get people on both sides of the ethnic divide to better understand what was going on. Unfortunately, intellectual understanding is not the same as being able to move between M-time and P-time (the two basic approaches Hall found). I had minority students who understood the need to adapt to the university's M-time, but who ran into major internal and community barriers. And, when I (from the majority culture) tried to move into P-time, I couldn't do it, even though it clearly was more efficient in those instances. Even though understanding doesn't solve the problem, it is an important first step.
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