When the Soviet Union broke apart, most of the

world was stunned. Many thought of the Soviet

Union as a very powerful country, and until the
breakup most gave very little thought to the many
different and geographically separate cultures that
comprised the Soviet Union. Anthropologists were
not as surprised by the breakup because they knew
that the Soviet Union contained a large number of
culturally diverse groups of people, such as
Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Kazakhs,
among many others. Most of the countries that
became independent after the breakup of the Soviet
Union Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan,
etc. were populated largely by people speaking a
particular language and sharing a particular culture. In retrospect, if more peo
ple had known that
there wasn t much of a shared culture in what we
formerly called the Soviet Union, perhaps the
breakup would not have been so surprising. This is
not to say that the breakup was caused solely by
cultural differences. The fact of the matter is that
social scientists are still far from understanding
what accounts for why a country splits apart, and
why the break-up may be violent or peaceful. We
do know, however, that if we want to understand
what happens to a country, it is important to pay
attention to how the different cultures in the country get along and how much of
a national culture
has developed.
The focus of Countries and Their Cultures is on
the cultures of the countries around the world,
what is and what is not commonly shared culturally by the people who live in a c
ountry. As the
reader will see, some countries have a distinctive
national culture. That is, most of the people in the
country share a distinctive set of attitudes, beliefs,
values, and practices. Other countries hardly have
a shared culture, and maybe not even a dominant
one. Many of these culturally diverse countries like
Nigeria and Kenya had their political unity imposed
upon them by colonialism. There were hundreds of
different cultures, many of them not even politically unified, before the coloni
al power imposed
control over the whole area. The major new commonality was that the various cult
ures had to deal
with a new overarching political authority, the
colonial authority. Often, the eventual achievement
of independence was not sufficient to create much
in the way of a national culture. Only time will tell
whether these new political entities will endure and
whether national cultures will develop.
In a country with many cultures, the emergence of a common culture can occur gra
dually
and peacefully as people interact over time or when
immigrants voluntarily assimilate to a dominant
culture. More often than not, cultural dominance
emerges in the context of one group having superior power over the others. Afric
ans brought as
slaves to what is now the United States did not
choose to come, nor did Native Americans choose

to have their lands taken away or their children

sent away to boarding school to learn the ways of
the dominant culture. But even without force,
sheer differences in numbers can have profound
effects. There is little doubt that where a particular
ethnic group vastly outnumbers others in the
country, the culture of that ethnic group is likely to
become dominant. Examples are the Han of China
and the Russians of Russia.
Multiculturalism is quite characteristic of most
of today s countries, but countries vary greatly in
the degree to which ethnic groups co-exist peacefully and in the degree to which
diversity of culture
is tolerated and even sometimes celebrated.
Germany for a long time (until the 1930s) was tolerant of Jews, but then it chan
ged and exterminated them in the 1940s. Why ethnic conflict
emerges at some times and in some places is only
beginning to be understood.
Cultural anthropology and the other social sciences can help us understand. Cult
ural anthropology got started as a discipline when people began
to realize, with imperialism and colonialism, that
the ways of life of people around the world varied
P R E F A C Eenormously. In the beginning of the twentieth century, there were s
till many cultures that depended
on hunting, gathering, and fishing, with no agriculture or industry. Villages in
many places were
hardly linked to their neighbors, much less to
state-type polities in the outside world. The world s
cultural diversity was greater and more fragmented than it is today. Now the wor
ld is a multiplicity of nation-states, multicultural (multiethnic)
polities that formed as little or larger empires, or as
products of colonialism. In an earlier reference
work, the 10-volume Encyclopedia of World Cultures
(produced under the auspices of the Human
Relations Area Files [HRAF] and published by G.K.
Hall/Macmillan), the focus was on the cultures
typically studied by anthropologists. A different
language, not shared by neighbors, is often a key
defining feature of a group of people who share (or
who shared) a culture. Thus, countries and their
usual multiplicity of cultures were not the focus of
that encyclopedia.
In this reference work, we focus on the cultures
of countries. We have asked our authors to describe
what is culturally universal in the country they are
writing about and what varies by ethnic group,
region, and class. Information on widely-shared
behavior and values, as well as on cultural variation within the country, is now
recognized as
important to understanding politics, civil rights,
business opportunities, and many other aspects of
life in a country. Our focus on culture makes
Countries and Their Cultures unique. No other single
reference work comes close to matching the range
of cultural information offered in these volumes.
Another unique feature of Countries and Their
Cultures is the discussions of do s and don ts
for a culture, including what to make small talk
about and what not to talk about. For example, visitors to the United States may
be familiar with

much of American culture, but if they divulge the

real state of their health and feelings to the first
American who asks How are you?, they have
much to learn about small talk in the United
States.
A third unique feature of Countries and Their
Cultures is the discussion of ethnic relations in a
country, including material on whether one particular ethnic group became domina
nt or whether a
national culture developed out of a community of
disparate cultures. In some cases, particularly in
newly developing nations, there is relatively little
shared culture, and so there may be little national
culture.
We are able to provide the information contained in these volumes through the ef
forts of
more than 200 contributors-social scientists
(anthropologists largely, but also sociologists, historians, geographers, and po
litical scientists) as
well as others who usually have firsthand experience in the countries they write
about and know
the language or lingua franca of that country.
Thus they are able to provide integrated, holistic
descriptions of the countries, not just facts. Our
aim was to leave the reader with a real sense of
what it is like to live in a particular country.
Our list of countries consists largely of politically independent entities. Howe
ver, we have
included some geographically separate entities that
are politically part of other countries. Examples are
Anguilla and Bermuda, which are dependent territories of the United Kingdom; Fre
nch Guiana and
Guadaloupe, which are French overseas departments; and Hong Kong, which is a spe
cial administrative region of China. Our advisors also
suggested we add entries for major divisions of the
United Kingdom: England, Northern Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales.
Articles all follow the same format to provide
maximum comparability. Countries with small
populations have shorter entries; those with large
populations or complex ethnic composition are
longer in length to accommodate the complexity.
USING COUNTRIES AND THEIR CULTURES
This reference work is meant to be used by a variety of people for a variety of
purposes. It can be
used both to gain a general understanding of a
country and its culture(s), and to find a specific
piece of information by looking it up under the relevant subheading. It can also
be used to learn about
a particular region of the world and the social, economic, and political forces
that have shaped the
cultures of the countries in that region. We provide
a substantial bibliography at the end of each country entry.
Beyond being a basic reference resource,
Countries and Their Cultures also serves readers with
more focused needs. For researchers interested in
comparing countries and their cultures, this work
provides information that can guide the selection of
particular countries for further study. For those
interested in international studies, the bibliographies in each entry can lead o

ne quickly to the relevant social science literature as well as providing a

state-of-the-art assessment of knowledge about
the world s countries and their cultures. For curriculum developers and teachers s
eeking to internationalize the curriculum, this work is a basic