Customer Reviews:
 Hilarious and revealing observation of the English by a social anthropologist June 28, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Kate Fox, a social anthropologist and Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, who has lived in England, America, Ireland and France, takes a revealing look at the quirks and habits of the English people. Being very English herself, she holds a mirror up to the English national character and reveals the most famous traits as well as the most bizarre reflex reactions. She attempts to discover the curious, hidden rules of behaviour that all English people seem to follow, but few are aware even exist. In a separate section consisting of 14 pages she focuses on defining Englishness and attempts to define Englishness in contrast to being British.
Writing with gentle humour and astute perception she portrays the foibles in the English and in herself as well. Kate Fox is immensely perceptive about all kinds of English cultural values, behaviours and oddities. Watching the English falls into two main parts: part one - Conversation codes; part two - Behaviour codes. The first part covers everything from the obsession with the weather through English humour to how people use mobile phones. The second part deals with how the English behave inside their own homes or when visiting other people's homes, life in the workplace, food, drink, eating-habits, sex... and many more topics.
Though the smallish print might irritate some, it's an easy read with good flow and the reader will get much material to provoke lively discussion with anyone interested in the English.
Anthropologist Kate Fox, has forced herself to engage in many humiliating field tests-- like bumping into people on purpose and seeing how many people say `sorry'-- in order to test the common theories about English behaviour. Watching the English is the result of her research. Fox's book displays most of the traits that she points out as representing the English: being sensitive to the tiny signifiers of class status (e.g. the `M&S test', which identifies your class by your shopping choices at that particular department store), it purposely avoids taking itself too seriously and is continuously self-deprecating (of course, this is the `popular anthropology', not the real scientific one). Admitting to being neither, Watching the English is positioned between satire and science.
Warmly recommended for anyone from another culture, who tries to survive living in Britain, or live among the English abroad. People working in international teams with English members or bosses would have many aha-insights through this book.
 useful in understdg ppl's behaviour June 18, 2007
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
Written by an English anthropologist about her own nation's behaviour. There're some interesting explanation on why British ppl are so uneasy socializing, talking about money and may sometimes talking in the opp way (hypocrisy). While many of the explanations suggested by the author are convincing, I found those behaviour not unique to the British, they can be observed in our Chi society as well! So it's useful in understdg ppl's behaviour.
Prodigious - and prodigiously funny June 3, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
As an American social scientist who has an English partner and has visited the UK multiple times, I found this book engrossing for many reasons. Kate Fox does the miraculous: she makes fascinating reading out of chapters on tea, queue-jumping, arrangements of knick-knacks, incessant talking about the weather, and myriad other English characteristics that so charm, frustrate, and baffle we non-English of the world. Moreover, her writing is hilarious - she has a droll, tongue-in-cheek, utterly English sense of humor that had me laughing through every chapter.
The book is incredibly useful, too. I read it after my English partner recommended it to me, saying he had never read anything that captured the English so well. The insights in the book clarified several things to me and greatly reduced the quantity of cultural faux pas on my part. It also gave my partner a great deal of insight into his own personality as well as his interactions with Americans. Plus, it led to many, many fascinating discussions between us about (among other things) the markers of class and attitudes about it, the nature (and point) of politeness, and how it is that societies can make us who we are.
The only shortcoming of the book is that I still don't understand Vegemite, but I think that may just be beyond comprehension.
Best book on the English ever March 23, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have read a few books on the British lately filled with sweeping generalizations--many of their ideas are false or outdated or narrowed to one section of society. This is not one of them. It is written by an anthropologist who has taken great trouble and pains to find out the reasons behind the behavior of Brits. I would definitely recommend this book, but remember there are exceptions to the norm such as Richard Branson, Jamie Oliver, Michael Caine, any of the Beatles, J.K. Rowling. These are just some of the Great Brits who are creative, optimistic and entrepreneurial.
Lively, humorous, intelligent March 8, 2007
8 out of 13 found this review helpful
Have you been watching?
For heaven's sake, it's been 25 years since "Brideshead Revisited" (1981) was on PBS! The 11 episode British miniseries was so enthralling I couldn't miss a week: the haunting theme music, the deep, cultivated voice of narrator Jeremy Irons, the huge, stately English country house, Oxford university, the story.
And "Inspector Morse" with John Thaw, all 33 episodes on PBS "Mystery!" (1987 to 2000). To grasp the clues, I always felt I needed to watch one more time, but never did. One day, if I live long enough, maybe I'll go back -- to the smart, cranky character, his sidekick Lewis, the vintage red Jaguar, the Oxford setting, the complications.
More recently, "Masterpiece Theatre" had "Bleak House." Actually, a year ago! What characters. What interactions. What scenes.
There's something about those English. Yes, we've been watching them, and listening. So has Kate Fox, a cultural anthropologist, author of "Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour."
Dr. Fox is in her mid-forties, pretty, slim (her English pub nickname was "stick"). She was also watching, questioning, and taking notes for her book, all over England for over a decade. She is co-director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford.
You can see a fetching picture of her on their Web site [...]
"Watching the English" is no boring, arcane academic treatise. The writing is lively, humorous, and intelligent. You will end up with a detailed picture of all those English classes and their identifying traits -- the working classes, the middles, the uppers, the aristocracy, the royals, even the Queen. What they're doing, what they're saying, how they jostle one another. Typical! Quite!
Almost anyone can identify a British accent. After Miss Fox, you'll have insights into everything else about the English that makes them English.
You'll see what distinguishes the classes from one another and from the rest of us. The good and not so good. Nothing is off limits: pubs, houses, furnishings, meals, cars, trains, clothes, make-up, children, schooling, sports, flirting, the bedroom, work, holidays, weddings, funerals, emotions, attitudes, public behavior (okay, "behaviour").
Miss Fox is a lengthy, thorough, and rewarding read. Three cheers!
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