Kultur 5

This week's readings I found to be a seemingly arbitrary combination of articles. I am not sure that the article regarding public interactions/politeness has any actual meaning. Rather than something unique to German culture this seems to be something more unique to American culture as I am extremely doubtful that this phenomenon is unusual when compared to heavily populated Asian/South American/African areas. Likewise, for the article about dating norms; rather I feel that there are two norms of dating, one "American" and one for everywhere else. Again, my instinct is that undeveloped countries are better described by the German version than the American version. Even if German norms are extreme for Western European nations, I am not sure they are still not closer to them then to American openness. The argument, to a lesser degree, I would extend to the sex shop article. Save nations dominated by Islam I am not sure this would be startling in many places, although that doesn't imply it exists. I think that is the norm for areas of Western Europe, and I am sure you could find a similar principle, possibly in a different form, in Asia and underdeveloped areas. I think that these articles revealed more about American culture than they did about German cutlure. Sam Engel