Product Description
This book is suitable for ages 9 to 14 years. This fascinating book takes a look at the interesting mix of people and cultures that make up South Africa today. A special section focuses on traditional African beliefs and healing. ... Read more

Product Description
Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships.

Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include


* customs, values, and traditions
* historical, religious, and political background
* life at home
* leisure, social, and cultural life
* eating and drinking
* do's, don'ts, and taboos
* business practices
* communication, spoken and unspoken


"Culture Smart has come to the rescue of hapless travellers." Sunday Times Travel

"... the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries." Global Travel

"...full of fascinating-as well as common-sense-tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas." Observer

"...as useful as they are entertaining." Easyjet Magazine

"...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world." New York Times
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Where are the women?
This book was an interesting introduction to South African culture and customs, but it did not answer my question on the most acceptable clothes for women to wear. In particular, do women wear primarily skirts and dresses or are pants perfectly acceptable? This is an important question considering the Muslim community.I do not want to offend anyone. Furthermore, how are women expected to interact with men? Do women shake hands with men, etc... The book discusses how men greet one another and the proper dress for men, but very little on women.

Well done!
Points out major cultural differences in a way that is entertaining and easy to read, while at the same time being very informative. ... Read more

Product Description
South Africa can be considered the newest of African nations, with the ending of Apartheid in 1994. It is one of the most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically varied countries on the continent and the economic powerhouse of southern Africa. This inclusive overview is a must-have for all readers wanting a meaty introduction to South Africa today, in an historical context that pulls the strands of all South Africans, from Zulu to Afrikaner to Indian, together. Some highlights from the myriad of topics covered include oral history, multireligious traditions, wood sculpture, communal ties, cone-on-cylinder housing, changing roles of women, conjugal arrangements, and British and Boer influences. ... Read more

Product Description
This new history of South Africa provides a significant and unique addition to the existing one volume texts by emphasizing African contributions and encompassing the previously hidden voices.This book incorporates important new perspectives on South African geography and the spatial dimensions of segregation and apartheid, environmental studies, and the dynamic literature on identities and ethnicity. The book also highlights how Europeans and Africans shaped the environment, politics and the economy to develop a complex multi-racial nation.For readers who want a detailed understanding of all the forces that have shaped South Africa to date. ... Read more

Product Description
With over three million copies in print, CultureShock! is a bestselling series of culture and etiquette guides covering countless destinations around the world. For anyone at risk of culture shock, whether a tourist or a longterm resident, CultureShock! provides a sympathetic and fun-filled crash course on the do's and don'ts in foreign cultures. Fully updated and sporting a fresh new look, the revised editions of these books enlighten and inform through topics such as language, food and entertaining, social customs, festivals, relationships, and business tips. CultureShock! books are packed with useful details on transportation, taxes, finances, accommodation, health, food and drink, clothes, shopping, festivals, and much, much more. ... Read more

Product Description
The features and faces of South Africa's indigenous cultures are as varied as the continent's many textures and colors. In Cultures of South Africa: A Celebration author Peter Joyce and photographer Roger de la Harpe celebrate this extraordinary diversity - of tradition, custom, history and geography of the land.

This spectacular, full-color volume explores the paths that South Africans have walked over the centuries and contextualizes the richness of the people and places within the cultural landscape that is the legacy of South Africa. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A must for anyone living or visiting there
Cultures of South Africa: A Celebration by Peter Joyce, photos by Roger and Pat de la Harpe is a marvelous book about all the different peoples who live in South Africa. Each chapter tells the history and customs, rituals and traditions of the various tribes who have inhabited the country since before recorded history. It also tells the story of the Dutch and their descendents and other current inhabitants. Each chapter is filled with beautiful photos of the peoples and their colorful traditions, dances, costumes, and ways of life. It is a treasure of a book for any resident of South Africa and a perfect memento for any visitor there. It is a must! ... Read more

Product Description
Symptomatic of an emergent shift away from prescriptive and deterministic accounts of change in South Africa, Predicaments of culture in South Africa posits an open-ended and speculative approach to the question and agency of culture. The key question, posed by Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, `what does it mean to be a South African?' is shifted from its familiar ontological and epistemological habitat, `what is identity?', the better to embrace its ethical and political rider, `what are identities for?', and its more pragmatic possibility, `what can identities do?' These qualifications - Bhabha's - form the building blocks that skew and enrich existing presumptions about South Africa's history, its present moment and its future.

Jamal challenges and qualifies the conflicting and contiguous drives of fatalism, positivism and relativism, which are the dominant claimants upon the South African cultural imaginary. It is this critical non-positionality that forms the distinctive trait of an inquiry which, in eschewing allegiance and closure, opens up the debate about what it means to be South African and the role of culture therein.

`In hindsight, and with the hither side of the future before us', Jamal's driving assumption is that `world society is advancing towards yet another age of ignorance;an age beyond suspicion and irony, in which thought, whether self-critical or not, is no longer the agent of reason'. Jamal calls for an urgent reappraisal of the absence of love - of lovelessness - which he sees as the infected root of South Africa's inability to create a positively affirmative cultural imaginary. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

irrelevant culture shock ... who knew?
In preparing for my six month stay in South Africa, I purchased a number of travel guides, including this one in the Culture Shock! series. Despite the foreboding cover, I had some hope that it might contain relevant information. Unfornately, it is a smattering of weird advice from a strange white woman who apparently has little to no understanding of the current state of South African culture today. Her most insane advice is to "try not to mention race at all when describing someone in South Africa," advice so absurd and inaccurate that it makes Afrikaner rugby players seem multicultural. Moreover, the book seems to be aimed at middle-aged businessmen settling in Jo'burg, so unless you fit that category, best to steer clear. Especially as a student studying at university in Pietermaritzburg, I find the content of the book to be transparently racist, classist, and decidedly unhelpful. It does say that you shouldn't bring your pets across the ocean with you when you move here because one of her friend's dogs died from the shock of the plane ride. Culturally shocking, no?

You Won't Get it
American and European visitors to South africa won't really find this book helpful. It does not sufficiently explain the cultural diversity or political environment of the region. While white South Africans are essentialy from western culture and embrace western democracy, black (and other) South Africans have many different cultures and languages, and most embrace communist ideaology. The key is also understanding the polical landscape which overshadows everthing in South Africa. While Apartheid is long dead, racist oppression is not. The oppressor has simply taken a new form - that of the ANC government which clearly demonstrates contempt for the US and Western Democracy, which favours the individual.
The all powerful ANC monolith favours government intervention in the economy (the essence of communism)to ensure its' "Transformation" (a euphemism for the ethnic removal of whites).Scince coming to power the ANC has oppressed the white youth of South Africa by imposing racist legislation designed to re-engineer South African society with no regard for individual human rights. In response the true proponents of Democracy, South Africa's Democratic Party, have protested and been met with virulent critism by this evil regime.The ANC classes all white South Africans who do not agree with the Anc Regimes' Satalinist purges as being selfish "racists" who cling to "privilege. (i.e. to protest when your human rights are being violated by the state is a wrongful act.)Under the ANC the oppression of the white minority has been compounded by inter alia: total domination of the national mass media and "transforming" it into a nationalist propaganda tool, the undermining of political opposition rallies through state orchestrated violence, tne passing of the Internet Interception and Monitoring Act - designed to route out the last vestiges of contrary thought,the covert, state sponsored ethnic cleansing of white South African farmers, the passing of the racist Black Empowerment bill - which prevents large companies form doing business with small minority owned businesses, the heinous Employment Equity Act becoming even more stringent in enforcing racial discrimination and what is effectively a return to the apartheid days of job reservation, this time against a helpless minority (all done by using what was done during apartheid as justification - sheer hypocracy), government corruption and squandering of taxpayer and investor funds, a continuous, racist anti-minority propaganda message being broadcast to the international community and stregnthening of ties with known terrorist and oppressive regimes such as Zimbabwe, Algeria, Communist China, Iraq and Cuba (to name but a few).Anit-American sentiment may also be experienced by those tourist not on a "sanitized" tour.The facade of "non-racialism" may fool you if you are just visiting, but if you decide to immigrate, youand your children will then be faced with the harsh reality of living under a racist government.

superficial, uninformative, and disappointing
This book was a tremendous letdown after the other excellent books in the Culture Shock series I have read - you can find just as much information in a good travel guide.

I bought the book expecting insightful comments from a South African writer about 'customs and etiquette', as it is subtitled; instead the book is filled with trite comments and self-explanatory 'cultural tips.' In the 'cultural quiz' at the end of the book, there are questions like "You are invited to a dinner party by your boss at their home. Do you..." answers include "Say yes, and whoop around the office telling everyone, including those who may well have not been invited, that you are off to eat with the boss." In another book, this might have been a joke answer, but the level of 'cultural insight' in this book is so poor that it wasn't funny at all.

Unlike some of the other books in the series, this book is clearly aimed for a audience planning to be in South Africa for the long-term, perhaps immigrating. It gives insufficient attention to shorter-term visitors, off-the-beaten track travellers, volunteer NGO workers, or people who might be living somewhere other than the rich white suburbs.

Though the author has travelled to other countries, she doesn't seem to have a grasp on what situations are most 'culture-shocky' to new arrivals. An immigrant author from another country would probably have done a better job at pointing at what visitors will find most odd or difficult to adjust too.

Dee Rissik does not even address the topic of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender visitors or immigrants to South Africa, despite the fact that this is the only country in the world where sexual orientation is legally protected in the constitution. Her sections on women, lifestyles, marriage, nudity, pub culture, and even sex, never once mention GLBT concerns or interests. This is enormous heterosexist oversight is unforgivable.

I was ready to give up halfway through the book, but pushed all the way to the end, hoping for some redeeming quality. The closest it comes is two or three pages of 'common south african words used cross culturally.'And that, in itself, is not sufficient to justify purchasing the other 200-odd pages of this book. ... Read more

Product Description
A engaging inquiry into the history of South African film and its future - one that focuses on the country's cultural history while squarely facing questions of race. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
This is a celebration of the rich diversity of the South African peoples, and the various traditions, beliefs and customs that have contributed to the making of this multicultural nation. In this extraordinary portfolio, author Sue Derwent and photographers Roger and Pat de Ia Harpe explore the many faces and cultures that make up this remarkable landscape. From the Sotho and Nguni to the Shangaan-Tsonga and Venda, many of these ancient cultures and lifestyles are still maintained and nurtured according to the conventions established by their ancestors over the centuries. The complexity of language, the timelessness of ritual, and the inherent skill reflected in indigenous craft are all integral to traditional African culture, and the inspirational images captured here honour the ancient traditions - among them arts and crafts, spiritual belief and customs - of their ancestors and the rich tapestry that remains their legacy. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This collection is concerned with the problems and pleasures of writing literary biography in the context of South African writing. Stephen Gray's introduction outlines the choice faced by the researcher: between writing revisionist history (À la Strachey) and the personal bias the portraitist must take into account when conducting the retrieval especially of lost and enigmatic figures (À la Symons). Concentrating on the unattached irregulars of the arts in South Africa - often "the" arts of their times - Gray stresses the value of the free-lance figure in the formation of an evolving colonial and post-colonial literature.
Subjects included are: "Charles Maclean", alias "John Ross," who recorded his experiences of the Zulu King Shaka in Natal's first captivity narrative; "Douglas Blackburn", rated as the successor of Swift for his satires of the Anglo-Boer War conflict; "Beatrice Hastings", polymath journalist whose lovers included Katherine Mansfield and AmedeoModigliani; "Stephen Black", founder of indigenous South African drama in English;" Edward Wolfe", the Bloomsbury painter who began as a child-actor in the mining town of Johannesburg; "Bessie Head", who became the Botswana-based wise-woman of African literature before her untimely death in 1986, yet never knew her own origins; "Etienne Leroux", the Free State rancher who, in Afrikaans, wrote much-banned postmodernist novels; "Mary Renault" whose bestselling novels set in Ancient Greece peculiarly represented the shutdown of democracy in apartheid South Africa; "Sipho Sepamla", stalwart of the "Soweto Poetry" school which came to prominence after the 1976 Soweto uprising; and "Richard Rive", novelist, cultural commentator and liberation icon, murdered in his prime. The portrait gallery of the figures who have shaped and defined the role of literature in South Africa is both revealing and provocative, showing the route taken by some lesser-known talents in their struggle to establish the rights of authors in an often indifferent or repressive state.

... Read more

Product Description

Originally published in 1953.

Product Description
The post-apartheid public sphere in South Africa has been characterised by race tensions and distrust. Socio-economic inequalities and structural unemployment are contributing to widespread crises. In addressing the conceptual and empirical questions relating to the transition to democracy, the contributors to this volume take the questions of culture and identity seriously, drawing attention to the creative agency of citizens of the 'new' South Africa. They raise important questions concerning the limits of citizenship and procedural democracy. STEVEN L. ROBINS is Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Stellenbosch North America: Ohio U Press; South Africa: David Philip (PB) ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from African Arts, published by The Regents of the University of California on December 22, 2004. The length of the article is 4978 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: South Africa's culture of collecting: the unofficial history.(Art and Freedom)
Author: Sandra Klopper
Publication: African Arts (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 2004
Publisher: The Regents of the University of California
Volume: 37Issue: 4Page: 18(8)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more