Abstract
This chapter begins from the standpoint of Western theories and definitions of, ‘What is culture?’ Although a brief review, the complexities around defining culture are apparent and significant. It is then contended that Western theorisation of culture was not appropriate in the context of the research informing this book. Based on the assumption that generation and development of theories in humanity and social science is not free of context (e.g. political, historical, geographical), cultural theories developed in multicultural democratic contexts may not have the same relevance as those locally developed to analyse the phenomena of a hegemonic nation. Thus engaging Chinese concepts and theorising of culture is offered as an alternative perspective to the norm of Western dominant theorising and conceptualisation, which has provided one-way generalist cultural views. The theoretical underpinnings for this approach and the methodology of the research are included and followed by an outline of the structure of the book.
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Han, J. (2020). Introduction. In: Theorising Culture. Palgrave Studies in Teaching and Learning Chinese. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23880-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23880-3_1
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