Kate Fox

'She has not only compiled a comprehensive list of English qualities, she has examined them in depth and wondered how we came to acquire them. Her book is a delightful read.' (THE SUNDAY TIMES)

The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

Watching the English

Gavin

Pretty funny, maybe the first bit of cultural anthropology I've liked (because it is low-level and in fact exasperatingly empirical). Here is her on her own tribe: 


  
the... currently fashionable practice is to devote at least a chapter of your book or Ph.D. thesis to a tortured, self-flagellating disquisition on the ethical and methodological difficulties of participant observation. Although the whole point of the participant element is to understand the culture from a ‘native’ perspective, you must spend a good three pages explaining that your unconscious ethnocentric prejudices, and various other cultural barriers, probably make this impossible. It is then customary to question the entire moral basis of the observation element, and, ideally, to express grave reservations about the validity of modern Western ‘science’ as a means of understanding anything at all. 

At this point, the uninitiated reader might legitimately wonder why we continue to use a research method that is clearly either morally questionable or unreliable or both. I wondered this myself, until I realised that these doleful recitations of the dangers and evils of participant observation are a form of protective mantra, a ritual chant similar to the rather charming practice of some Native American tribes who, before setting out on a hunt or chopping down a tree, would sing apologetic laments to appease the spirits of the animals they were about to kill or the tree they were about to fell. 

A less charitable interpretation would see anthropologists’ ritual self-abasements as a disingenuous attempt to deflect criticism by pre-emptive confession of their failings – like the selfish and neglectful lover who says, ‘Oh, I’m such a bastard, I don’t know why you put up with me,’ relying on our belief that such awareness and candid acknowledgement of a fault is almost as virtuous as not having it. 

But whatever the motives, conscious or otherwise, the ritual chapter agonising over the role of the participant observer tends to be mind-numbingly tedious...



 Even with a style like that, this gets repetitive. But her explicit decoding would be so, so helpful to incomers or neuroatypicals. She is particularly good on the subtle way that class is central in Britain (not "no oiks allowed" but rather "can he choose and pronounce the word 'toilet' ").

I really enjoyed this book ! It's anthropology made available to everyone, fun to read and most of all very accurate. Also found it very useful to decipher and understand some mysteries of English behaviour.

mike

Sara Piteira 

Cristina P Miclea 

Dana Gamburg

Nikka Lowe

Liam Byrne 

In this completely revised and updated edition of international bestseller WATCHING THE ENGLISH, anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. Now with new survey data to add weight to her original fieldwork findings, and more extensive field-research and experiments to back up earlier observations, Kate Fox has deciphered yet more enigmatic behaviour codes, adding new rules, new subcultures, new chapters and over 100 updates. If you're English, this new edition of Kate Fox's acclaimed international bestseller will make you stand back and re-examine everything you take for granted - and if you aren't English you'll finally understand all our peculiar little ways. WATCHING THE ENGLISH has sold more than half a million copies and has been translated into many languages. Not only a worldwide bestseller, but also a set text for university anthropology courses, WATCHING THE ENGLISH has been widely praised as a revealing and entertaining dissection of the English national character.

Watching the English The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour

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