Culture

• "Culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems and resolves dilemmas", Hofstede, "Culture's Consequences", Sage, 1980.
• "'culture' ... means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication,and representation, that have relative automony from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure ... Secondly [...] culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society's reservoir of the best that has been known and thought. ... In time culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with the nation or state... Culture in this sense is a source of identity", (Edward Said,"Culture and Imperialism", p.xii).
• "The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them", (Edward Said, "Culture and Imperialism", p.xiii).
• Cultural differences, according to Trompenaars, can be factorised down to differing attitudes to people, environment and time.
• "Culture works to justify its own initial suppositions", Riding the Waves of Culture, Trompenaars, p.161