In Chapter Two ("Commodity and Delight") of Home: A Short History of an Idea, Canadian architect and writer Witold Rybczynski contrasts cultures that have adopted a sitting-up posture with those that favor squatting.
from Home: A Short History of an Idea (1986)
by Witold Rybczynski
Differences in posture, like differences in eating utensils (knife and fork, chopsticks or fingers, for example), divide the world as profoundly as political boundaries. Regarding posture there are two camps: the sitters-up (the so-called western world) and the squatters (everyone else). Although there is no Iron Curtain separating the two sides, neither feels comfortable in the position of the other. When I eat with oriental friends I soon feel awkward sitting on the floor, my back unsupported, my legs numb. But squatters don't like sitting up either. An Indian household may have a dining room with table and chairs, but when the family relaxes during the hot afternoon, parents and children sit together on the floor. The driver of a three-wheeled motor scooter in Delhi has to sit on a seat, but instead of doing so in a western manner he squats cross-legged, his feet on the bench instead of on the floor (precariously to my eyes, comfortably to his). A Canadian carpenter works standing up, at a bench. My Gujarati friend Vikram, given the choice, prefers to work sitting down, on the floor.
(Home: A Short History of an Idea by Witold Rybczynsk was published by Viking Penguin in 1986.)
