A developer's guide to social customs
Handshakes, bows, cheek kisses, namaste gestures. The first 3 seconds of human contact carry more social information than the next 30 minutes of conversation.
Chopstick etiquette, bread-breaking protocols, tipping norms, the politics of who pays. Every meal is a negotiation between hunger and social performance.
18 inches intimate, 4 feet social, 12 feet public. Edward Hall's proxemics mapped the invisible bubbles that surround every human body.
The British queue. The Italian scrum. The Japanese precision line. How people wait reveals how they distribute fairness among strangers.
Four seconds of silence in Finnish conversation is normal. In American conversation, it is unbearable. Silence means different things in every culture.
The obligation to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. Marcel Mauss showed that gifts are never free -- they create debts that bind communities together.