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

Product Description

A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette in Sri Lanka

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Customer Reviews (1)

What a waste!
I recently spent three months in Sri Lanka and purchased this book before my departure.This book contained only information regarding business transactions and formal setting, which the average traveler will never encounter.It was a waste of money and a waste of space!If you aren't going to Sri Lanka for business than don't waste your money on this book like I did.The Lonely Planet Guidebook offers a nice overview of all the necessary etiquette you will need to know while your there! ... Read more

Product Description
You'll never feel intimidated and awkward about the customs and etiquette of another country again. With the insights provided in this CULTURE SHOCK! Guide, you'll learn to see beyond the stereotypes and misinformation that often precede a visit to a foreign land. Whether you plan to stay for a week or for a year, you'll benefit from such topics as understanding the rules of driving and monetary systems, religious practices and making friends. There are tips on political traditions, building business relationships, and the particular intricacies of setting up a home or office.Great for the business traveler, the foreign exchange student, or the tourist who makes a sincere attempt to cross the bridge into a new and exciting culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A must-buy for anyone moving to SL
Unfortunately I read this book after living in the country for 20 months. I found all of the information contained in the book well written, accurate and very useful. My only regret was that I did not read this before coming here as it would have made the 'culture shock' more understandable.

Very Informative and Helpful!
The writer for Culture Shock! Sri Lanka appeared to be very familiar with the country. I am married to a Sinhalese and before we traveled to the country for my first visit, I shared selections from the book with myhusband. He was pleasantly surprised that the information was fairlyaccurate. I referred to the book often during my travels and found it veryhelpful and right on point.

Better than most
This guide is better than most. Lots of useful information about cultural differences. It does not contain much tourist information though so it is best used together with a more detailed guide. ... Read more

Product Description
With the insights provided in this Culture Shock! Guide, you'll learn to see beyond the stereotypes and misinformation that often precede business travel to foreign land. Whether you plan to stay for a week or for a year, you'll benefit from such topics as understanding the rules of driving and monetary systems, building business relationships and the particular intricacies of setting up an office. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not bad
The general Culture Shock! book about Sri Lanka is more useful than this one. ... Read more

Product Description
Militarizing Sri Lanka is a study of the militarization that has buttressed the war between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE for over two decades. It highlights militarization as a process through which the ideology of militarism is shaped and shared in a manner that makes militant solutions to conflict a part of institutional structures and ways of thought. It foregrounds militarization as activity and agency, capable of adaptation and transforming society in significant ways; and as a deeply gendered, contingent and shifting process. It also analyzes both the construction and resistance to militarization and militarism, but in a manner that draws attention to their relationality rather than as self-evidently oppositional categories. ... Read more

Product Description
Sri Lanka has been the meeting point of many ideologies and ways of being. This has spelt heterogeneity, syncretism and conflict. In drawing upon the practices of empirical research promoted by Western intellectual traditions, the author demonstrates the strengths of these practices through his contextualised engagement with the pogroms of 1915 and 1983, as well as other incidents, as at the same time he delineates some of the limits of empiricist rationality.
This book is replete with rich ethnographic detail and serves as an exercise in historical anthropology which illuminates Sri Lanka's political culture. It not only opens out the contrast between Western and Indian world views, but also explores the human condition by bringing out the immediacy surrounding acts of victimisation and human beings in conflict.
''The Tamil Tigers and the Sinhala Militants have got a stranglehold on each other's necks; and both forces will not, and cannot let go.'' ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pioneering Work about Indigenous Taming the Demons as a Form of Psychotherapy.
In this book for the first time an attempt has been made by Beatrice Vogt to recognise similarities between Tovil, an indigenous healing ritual that is traditionally performed in Sri Lanka as a treatment for mental illness, and psychodrama. The autor, a psychotherapist by training, spent three years in Kandy, where she was able to become a pupil of a Tovil healer, Upasena Gurunnanse of Amunugama, who imparted to her his skills. Three detailed cases of Tovil healing are used to demonstrate how the therapeutic practice of the healer fits in the Sinhala Buddhist view of the world and how the Tovil can be compared to psychotherapy. Beatrice Vogt's pioneering work opens up for further research a field of knowledge, which has hitherto been confined to a limited group of healers. This book has become an essential manual for the study and training of satitherapy. I highly recommend it!!! ... Read more

Product Description
2006 hardcover, 374 pages, with 11 chapters and an introduction. In english. ... Read more

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A look at the geography, history, government, economy, people, lifestyles, language, and culture of this diverse island country. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Asia
Sri Lanka is a very multicultral country, with 70% of the population being Buddhist, 15% being Hindu, 8.5% being Muslim(mainly Sunni), and 6.5% being Christian(mainly Roman Catholic and Protestant).

Population wise, the people of Sri Lanka are (72%) Sinhalese, (18%) Tamil, and the rest of the population being Sri Lankan Moor and Burgher. ... Read more

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