American Cultural Patterns

It's time for me to start reviewing the books we are reading for our next big class, Anthropology for the American Church (Dr. Rynkkiewich as our professor). I'm going to give you a "cheap" review. We have to write papers on each book. I'm just going to give you the first paragraph from each paper. I know I should give you more than a paragraph, but trust me, these aren't exciting papers. I'll post these paragraph reviews over the next few days.

Here's the first one (I would say "enjoy" but I haven't written these in an enjoyable way). In our papers we are supposed to sum the key theme in the first paragraph:

The central argument of American Cultural Patterns revolves around the dangers of unexamined ethnocentricity within American culture and its effect on cross-cultural interaction. The nature of American deep thoughts, or "“zero-order beliefs," ”(12) lead Americans to engage in behavior that too often confuses (at best) or demeans (at worst) our intercultural counterparts, especially in the arenas of conflict identification and/or resolution. The authors hoped, in writing this book, "to inform judgment and to assist readers in becoming intercultural communicators who are capable of making the necessary observations about themselves and their counterparts. (176)"