When a social worker encounters cultural studies

Abstract

This is a personal narrative, which reflects upon my experiences of encountering cultural studies after attending the Teaching Cultural Studies Workshop. For me, the term ‘cultural studies’ represents something abstract, fancy, and thus difficult to understand, and which intimidates disciplines that emphasize application over theorization, such as social work. However, my fear of cultural studies was overcome in this workshop through the lived experiences of being respected for differences. This personal experience reflects the historical construction of social work within scientific hierarchy, so that the relevance of cultural studies and social work is not recognized by social workers. Despite the often difficult‐to‐understand style, cultural studies does provide important venues for social workers to obtain qualitative understanding of an individual's problems and crises within a social context, which is crucial to effect strategies of resistance among vulnerable populations.     

The state question in Chinese popular cultural studies

Abstract

This note is an attempt to trace the change and continuity of leftist political policies, and to analyse why the Left generally, especially the Malay Left, has not been successful in Malaysian politics. It questions why the Malaysian Left was stafter the Second World War but slowly dissipated until it is almost crippled now. Other than examining the formation and the roles of the Malaysian Left and their struggles for independence, this note also sorts out the factors of the unsuccessful struggles to get wide Malay support for the Malay-dominated Malay Nationalist Party of Malaya (PKMM) and the Chinese-dominated Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).     

Problems and problematics of teaching cultural studies in Taiwan

Abstract

The essay was written in the context of a Teaching Cultural Studies (in Asia) Workshop. In dialogues with practitioners and young faculty in Taiwan and Asia, it utilizes the author's own past and present experiences to articulate the difficulties and problematic of teaching Cultural Studies. The main argument proposes that teaching Cultural Studies needs to be grounded in local intellectual traditions and histories upon which critical works out of Asia and the Third World will have to be actively engaged to overcome the dominant condition of knowledge which singularizes the West as the only source for intellectual interventions.     

Use of cultural criterion groups and discriminant analysis in acculturation studies

Based on the argument that empirically verified cultural distance, rather than proximity to a set of arbitrarily determined cultural elements of the host culture, should be the base for the assessment of acculturation level, this report demonstrates methodological procedures involving the use of criterion groups and discriminant analysis for measuring cultural distance. Specifically, 158 Koreans in Korea and 125 Americans served as criterion groups who responded to a series of value statements. Discriminant analysis results indicate that this procedure is extremely useful in identifying value judgments and their relative weights, which contribute to the maximal distance between the two cultures. Classification and cross-validation results also exhibit that an individual's cultural identity can be predicted with an accuracy higher than 90%.     

Detraditionalization of society and the rise of cultural studies in South Korea

ABSTRACT

The Korean government has started to introduce neoliberal economic policies since the late 1980s and has strengthened its policies even more since the Asian Financial Crisis. Korea has opened markets in almost every sector and applied restructuring policies to every sector, and the Korean government has eagerly concluded Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The first FTA was signed with Chile, and after signing that agreement the trade deficit with Chile doubled compared with before the Korea–Chile FTA. Now, the Korean government has been playing a very active role at the global level, including multilateral trade institutions. The Korean government is now negotiating with the US for another North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) +plus.     

Intersection of Asia,feminism and cultural studies: Yonsei University's experience in South Korea

Abstract

This article addresses the issues of how feminism, cultural studies and inter‐Asia studies can intersect amicably and meaningfully as an institutional program by using Yonsei University as an example. Speaking from the position of someone who is one of the founders and teachers of the Graduate Program in Cultural and Gender Studies at Yonsei University, I endeavor to analyze the possibilities and limitations of combining these fields together. This article suggests that practitioners of inter‐Asian cultural studies carefully formulate and establish a conceptual framework as foundation upon which we can begin to discuss some possible commonalities for future curriculum. I believe that the framework ought to focus more on the ‘post‐nation state paradigm,’ and incorporate the achievements of both critics of global capitalism and the neoliberal order, and creators of new meanings – including migrants and youths – as a possible transnational subjectivities. Inter‐Asia cultural studies also needs to learn some lessons from the history of the belittlement and groundless exclusion of feminism experienced by the Birmingham School and Korean cultural studies practitioners and the gender‐blindness they held.     

Cross-cultural training effects on cultural essentialism beliefs and cultural intelligence

The study reports on the implementation of a brief intercultural training intervention as part of a university course. The intervention consisted of a series of six lectures, one simulation game and one behaviour modification session, administered over a period of four weeks. Measures of cultural essentialism and cultural intelligence (CQ) were obtained prior to the first lecture and one week after the completion of the last training session. A total of 107 students participated and pre-post test scores were matched for 49 participants. The findings show that cultural essentialism increased, but cognitive and meta-cognitive scores decreased following the intervention. Personality moderated the trainings’ effectiveness: more open-minded students at Time 1 were more likely to report increases in motivational CQ at Time 2. Challenging claims about negative effects of psychological essentialism, cultural essentialism beliefs were positively related to both open-mindedness and cognitive CQ over Time. Implications for brief intercultural training interventions are discussed.     

Mindreading across cultural boundaries

Two studies were conducted to examine the role of culture in mindreading (i.e., the ability to read the mental states of others). We focused on features of the target (cultural ingroup or outgroup), as well as features of the perceiver (cultural competencies, Mono-Cultural or Cross-Cultural) that might affect mindreading accuracy. Study 1 found no difference in the mindreading accuracy of Caucasian Australians (N = 166) when presented with Caucasian Australian ingroup or Korean outgroup targets. However, exploratory moderation analyses showed participants’ mindreading of outgroup targets was more accurate the more open to experiences they were. Mindreading of outgroup targets was also better, the higher participants’ motivational cultural intelligence. Study 2 examined mindreading among Mono-Culturals and Cross-Culturals (N = 223). We found that Mono-Culturals were less accurate when mindreading outgroup than ingroup targets, but this effect was not observed for Cross-Culturals. Furthermore, cultural grounding was positively associated with mindreading accuracy of in/outgroup targets. The studies provide evidence that openness to other cultures and cross-cultural experiences respectively facilitates mindreading accuracy.