A Gift from the Culture
"A Gift from the Culture", published in 1987, is a short work of space opera, by the Scottish science fiction author Iain M. Banks. The story is an early venture into the "complex and unusual and very distant" setting of the Culture, which Banks would further develop through various of full length novels, stories, and his essay "A Few Notes on the Culture".
Cultural contracts
Cultural contracts first appeared in Communication Quarterly in 1999. The theory is inspired by Ting-Toomey's (1986) identity validation model (IDM) that emerged from a study of European American and African American communication experiences. Both theories are rooted in the exchanges between strangers as described in Berger and Calabrese's (1975) uncertainty reduction theory. Cultural contracts focuses specifically on the exchanges between traditionally marginalized groups and majority groups in power in American society from the standpoint of the minority member. The theory is not limited to oral communication. Any value that makes up an individual's worldview, including behavior and other cultural norms, can be negotiated and subjected to a cultural contract.