Diaspora as method: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and the Asian Australian Studies Research Network

ABSTRACT

What is the place of the diasporas within the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies movement, and how can Asian diasporas in the West contribute to Inter-Asia's intellectual project of “problematising Asia”? Developing a notion of diaspora as method, this essay highlights the complementary relationship between the Asian Australian Studies Research Network and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies network. It argues that the Inter-Asia network has much to gain from embracing the Asian Australian diaspora as an interlocutor with shared priorities and concerns, and that Asian Australian studies can also productively learn from Inter-Asia's alternative model of institutionalisation, thereby expanding its theoretical and methodological frames of reference.     

Measuring cultural value in Canada: From national commissions to a culture satellite account

In Canada, government initiatives for the measurement of cultural value can be traced to the 1949 Royal Commission on National Development in Arts, Letters and Sciences, and later evolved to include more empirical measurement with the Culture Statistics Program (1972) as well as research into the social dimensions of cultural investment. In 2009, Statistics Canada launched a four-year Feasibility Study to culminate in the creation of a Canadian Culture Satellite Account (CSA), an accounting framework to measure the impact of culture, the arts, heritage and sport on the Canadian economy. Taking account of both the recent and broader historical context out of which the CSA emerged, this paper examines its intended use and future plans. The CSA is a useful tool to the Government of Canada in supporting its activities related to the funding of culture, but this paper takes the position that it is not in and of itself a sufficient means for measuring the value of culture in Canada, and so it is best understood as part of a constellation of tools with differing but complementary approaches.     

Role of Cultural Intelligence in Acculturation: Explorations on a Physiognomic Minority Diaspora in India

The aim of this study was to analyse how cultural intelligence (CQ) influences the acculturation process and adaptive outcomes of a physiognomic minority indigenous cultural group in India. This study (N = 246) concerning the northeastern (NE) Indian diaspora in Indian cities outside the NE region. Path analysis showed that integration and assimilation predicted higher adaptation; while marginalization and separation lowered adaptation. Likewise, CQ positively predicted adaptation and also moderated the relationship between acculturation strategies and adaptation. Therefore, findings reflect the flexible facilitative role of CQ in promoting adaptation of minority groups in acculturation context.     

The Persuasive Influence of Nollywood Film in Cultural Transmission: Negotiating Nigerian Culture in a South African Environment

The popularity and viewership of Nollywood films have expanded across African and Western cities especially those with considerable Diaspora population. This study seeks to investigate whether watching Nollywood films is likely to lead to cross-cultural transmission of Nigeria’s cultural heritage to audience members in South Africa. Data for the study were collected using observation and surveys with Likert-type scales involving participants from a South African college. Results show that watching Nollywood films was significant in increasing participants’ knowledge and appreciation of Nigerian culture. Observed patterns indicate that a small portion of participants could mimic or reproduce some common Nigerian expressions and exclamations while a negligible percentage of participants could actually speak a smattering of Igbo, one of Nigeria’s three major languages.     

Capturing the Cultural Olympiad in Scotland: the case for multi-criteria analysis

This article examines the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad through the lens of a devolved Scotland, exploring how the Scottish cultural programmes and projects are being evaluated, and what this approach might offer for the wider UK and international context. Structurally, the article begins with a discussion of the relationship between sporting mega-events and culture, focusing specifically (although not exclusively) on the sport and cultural nexus around the Olympic Games. The discussion then moves to consider conceptual, policy and practice debates around cultural value, examining the extent to which existing research tools and techniques satisfactorily capture the contribution of culture to major events, public and social policy. Methodologically, the article draws on elite interviews with strategic stakeholders directly involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of Scotland's London 2012 Cultural Programme. The authors conclude that, when taken alongside other cultural evaluations conducted nationally and internationally, there is a need to develop a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) that can more effectively capture cultural value around major sporting events in the UK. This study has demonstrated a level of dissatisfaction within the Scottish cultural community about the limitations of existing mechanisms for measuring the value of culture within the mega-event platform. A robust, but nuanced, impact assessment is required because, unlike the UK as a whole, Scotland has a unique opportunity to undertake a longitudinal study assessing the conditions for legacy put in place as a result of the London 2012 Olympic Games for the subsequent 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. However, further research is required into the efficacy of the MCA for assessing cultural value generally and within the framework of major sports events, in particular.     

Evaluating legacies: Research,evidence and the regional impact of the Cultural Olympiad

From the bidding stage onwards, the London 2012 Olympics has been framed by an explicitly instrumental agenda, with objectives including increasing participation in sport in the UK and economic and physical regeneration in host sites, through investment in the Olympic Park and its surrounding infrastructure. The bid also signalled the ambition that London 2012 should be the first Olympics to deliver legacy through a nation-wide cultural programme in the build up to and alongside the Games [Kennell, J. & MacLeod, N. (2008, November 6–8). A memetic framework for the conceptualisation and evaluation of the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Paper presented at the 2nd Bi-annual International Tourism Studies Association conference in Shanghai, China. Retrieved from http://gala.gre.ac.uk/3951/], deliberately putting in place infrastructure for each English region and nation, shortly after the bid's success was announced. The ensuing national Cultural Olympiad, part funded by Legacy Trust UK, was evaluated through a series of research exercises which aimed to document the legacy and impact of the cultural programme. Through the case study of a regional programme in the North West of England, “We Play”, this article considers how evaluation research has been used locally to develop policy stories and legacy narratives which interpret and interact with the changing landscape of arts funding and cultural policy in the UK.     

Socio-Economic Profile of Shopkeepers in Embedded Markets: Social and Cultural Perspectives From a Hundred Years of Bengali Literary Works

Retailing, in the context of developing economies, has been claimed to be a social practice. A review of fictional literature from the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal may enhance our understanding of the social and cultural history of independent retailing. The evidence from social sciences shows that most retail markets in the economically less developed countries function in similar ways. Such a similarity in social structures may be explained using the concept of embeddedness. This article identifies the history of socio-economic roles of rural unorganised retailers in the embedded markets of developing economies through the discourse analysis of Bengali fictional literature.     

Cultural policy indicators: reflections on the role of official statisticians in the politics of data collection

Cultural policy indicators are being constructed in many countries today as a consequence of reforms in public governance aimed at increasing cost-effectiveness and general efficiency as well as transparency and accountability. Drawing upon a project of the Finnish Ministry of Education, the article discusses the responsibilities of official statisticians in regard to the collection and processing of data to be used as “evidence” of the outcomes of cultural policies. Official statisticians are bound by an ethical code that emphasises the objective and independent production of information on different aspects of the economy and society. Direct involvement with the construction of cultural policy indicators may threaten the integrity of official statisticians, because such work would require close collaboration with administrators and decision makers who have their own particular interests in the cultural field. Moreover, the system of cultural statistics, which was established internationally at the turn of the 1970s, has a history of providing justification for public cultural policies. The Finnish project, in which two officials from Statistics Finland functioned in the role of commissioned experts, was officially about societal effectiveness indicators but was extended to encompass arguments for cultural policy. The final report even went as far as to propose that cultural considerations could be mainstreamed through indices and evaluation schemes covering all policy sectors. The article shows how easily official statisticians are drawn into the politics of data collection in the field of culture even when precautions are in place. The article concludes that the code of ethics of official statisticians serves as an indispensable buffer against partiality, but, to put this ideal fully into action, cultural statisticians need to develop reflexive practices that combine an applied approach and critical discourse. Such practices are similar to those outlined recently by cultural policy researchers.     

Towards the westernized body: a popular narrative reinforced by men's lifestyle magazines in Indonesia

This paper will spotlight changing views with regard to Indonesian men's body aesthetics. It will explore how, in response to discourse contained in lifestyle magazines, the physical bodies of Indonesian men have become the primary mechanism through which to exercise agency. However, many local Indonesian customs consider men's agency to be dependent upon their ability to control bodily desire. The paper aims to give an overview of how modernization and westernization as contemporary conditions in postcolonial Indonesia serve as the background to the narratives provided by men's lifestyle magazines. In order to provide an insight into how modern white narratives are valued in Indonesia, I will begin by examining the history of Dutch colonialism as a basis for racial classification. Proceeding, I will discuss how that history relates to contemporary practices of social stratification: the belief that being married to a westerner will bring perfection to one's descendants’ genes; the trend of consuming special vitamins and formulas that will change particular parts of the body; and the assumption that having western genes will bring both success and wealth. Moreover, I will also discuss the ways in which the magazines define the “ideal” body, and how that “ideal” body thus becomes the hegemonic body – one that functions as the gateway for men to achieve a good life.     

Does Cross-cultural Competence Matter when Going Global: Cultural Intelligence and Its Impact on Performance of International Students in Australia

Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a critical competency in the modern world. By examining 189 international students from an Australian university, this study investigates the impact of CQ and cultural exposure on intercultural adjustment and academic performance. Significant positive relationships are found between facets of CQ and Interactional Adjustment and General Adjustment, but a significant negative relationship with Academic Performance. We also demonstrate the validity of a new construct of Cultural Exposure (CE) including three dimensions (Geographical, Environmental, and Inherited) with both Geographical and Environmental dimensions producing a strong positive correlation with Academic Performance.     

Two cultures: the use and non-use of hypotheses in cultural policy research1

In the hard sciences research programmes are designed to generate evidence consistent or inconsistent with particular hypotheses. Hypotheses unsupported by evidence are modified or abandoned. The framers and testers of scientific hypotheses are members of the same profession, similarly trained and likely to interpret evidence in similar ways. They have professionally generalized responsibility for the quality and integrity of each other's work. Peer review systems are in place to monitor performance and expose chicanery. This is not the case in the cultural policy research arena. Here, policymakers, arts advocates and academic policy analysts are breeds apart. Their professional affiliations and lines of accountability are radically unlike. We have highly selective “advocacy” evidence on the one hand; highly developed but untestable academic theory on the other, suggesting the hypothetical existence of evidence for which academics are not allowed to look. Policymakers avoid “what if?” questions because they are paid to maintain positions of certainty. Academics ask, but lack the data to answer. Neither approach is satisfactory for shaping the future. This paper explains how the two opposing research traditions came into being and points to some of the problems which poor communication between theoreticians and practitioners can create.     

Mixed Methods Research – Nonverbal Observations of Cultural Convergence in Online and Offline Contexts: Testing Hall’s Low- Vs. High-Context Framework

ABSTRACT

Extending the existing low- and high-context culture theoretical framework, the current research examined the extent to which globalization has shaped low- and high-context cultures in relation to nonverbal communication. The current study employed an exploratory sequential design mixed research method. The first phase of the study observed cultural convergence evident in people’s nonverbal communication in real life and reported the observations qualitatively. In the second phase of the study, a quantitative content analysis was carried out. The content analysis, namely sentiment analysis, examined the occurrences of people of diverse nationalities expressing their emotions when they provide reviews of airlines on a travel website and empirically test the relevance of low- and high-context theoretical framework in the era of globalization. A total of 85,228 reviews of 592 airlines available on a travel website were downloaded using a web crawler. The qualified records used for analysis included records from the following regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America, Northwestern Europe, Southern Europe, and United States. An analysis of variance on the number of words people used in writing travel reviews online yielded significant variations among the seven regions. This data also sheds light on cultural convergence.     

Cultural Honours and Career Promotions: Re-conceptualizing Prizes in the Field of Cultural Production

Despite their implications for careers, cultural goods and honours in the field of cultural production have rarely been examined as career events by culture researchers. More typically, cultural prizes are examined as they relate to the process of cultural valorization or are used to construct samples of venerated cultural products or producers for subsequent analysis. However, embedding cultural goods and distinctions in the career trajectories of cultural producers provides important neglected context. The example of the Academy Awards, the equivalent of a promotion in film acting, demonstrates the usefulness of the perspective. The research concludes that previously understood gendered age disparities are linked to earlier life course events, social networks, and structural factors that govern access to the career track. Implications for cultural policy are discussed.     

The Philosophical Conflict between the School of Baghdad and the School of Khorasan in the Tenth Century: Towards a New Understanding of the Development of Islamic Philosophy

Historians often present the evolution of Islamic philosophy through a limited number of philosophers beginning with al-Kindī and concluding with Ibn Rushd. This practice tacitly asserts that Islamic philosophy developed only in accordance with this “sequential” or “chronological” context that assumes it was the inevitable evolution of Aristotelian thought in Arabic. However, most of those who present Islamic philosophy in this manner appear to have overlooked the fact that it developed in the context of a philosophical conflict that emerged between the two schools to which the majority of Islamic philosophers belonged – the School of Baghdad and the School of Khorasan, which appeared in the tenth century and introduced philosophy to Islam and Muslims. This study stands apart from earlier attempts to present Islamic philosophy by considering these two schools and the frequently violent disputes that occurred between them. It is based on an historical-analytical approach accompanied by a rereading of numerous historical and literary texts and presents a reinterpretation of the works of Ibn Sīnā that differs from past interpretations of the history of Islamic philosophy. The study concludes with a thorough examination of the texts and contexts, which demonstrates the existence of the two philosophical schools and their significant contributions to the development of Islamic philosophy, albeit with their own distinctive elements. The study also argues that the philosophical School of Baghdad migrated to Morocco and Andalusia and arrived, in some respects, in Europe through Ibn Rushd, whereas the School of Khorasan appeared in Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination and in modern Iranian philosophy.     

Between Asia and empire: infrastructures of encounter in the archive of war

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we stage a conversation about our experiences researching everyday histories of encounter between Asian and Asian diasporic subjects during the Pacific and Vietnam Wars. Through readings of materials from the archives of two empires, Britain and the United States, with bloody records of military intervention in east and south-east Asia, we show how wartime inter-Asian, Afro-Asian, and Asian diasporic geographies of relation overlapped with and animated one another, helping to (re)produce trans-local communities of affinity over space and time even as they also functioned as infrastructures for empire. Throughout, we reflect on the infrastructures – material, institutional, epistemological, affective – that make inter-referencing possible, both for our subjects and, importantly, for ourselves. If our archives resonate, what does this tell us about the trans-imperial durability of the intimate infrastructures we show taking shape in 1940s China and 1960s Vietnam respectively?     

A national culture for Pakistan: the political economy of a debate

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between (national) culture and state formation, arguing that the former is effectively a field of contestation where struggles over hegemony between various classes and social blocs are played out. Cultural nationalism has been the pre‐eminent form of nationalism in the twentieth century, particularly within the anti‐colonial and postcolonial contexts. Since this form of nationalism lends itself to moral regulation by ruling classes in a way that civic or political nationalisms do not (given its ability to produce and manipulate emotional affect) it becomes imperative to understand its relationship to power and to the project/process of state formation. This paper uses the case of postcolonial Pakistan as a lens through which to explore and analyse the complexities of this relationship during the early years of the Pakistani nation‐state. Using primary material – Constituent Assembly Debates and the texts of important intellectual debates on culture during this period – I show the different ways in which Pakistani culture was defined at this time, the politics and interests behind these various articulations, and their ultimate impact on state formation.     

The measure of all things: on the use of time as a value indicator in arts impact assessment

Like money, time is a scarce resource. People used to economizing with one are likely to economize with the other. This proposition has serious implications for cultural economics (as for economics generally); three in particular are explored here. (1) Because cultural values are learned, and learning takes time, from the sorts of learning experience to which people have committed time in the past much can be inferred about their probable cultural consumption behaviour in future and about their attitudes to art. (2) The arts deliver socio-economic impact by encouraging new forms of belief – altering people's values essentially. Beliefs then influence action. Impact assessors must confront the question of value generation head on. (3) Use of time indicators will enable assessors to capture and quantify impacts which barely register on the usual money-economic scale, generating new categories of evidence directly if unconventionally relevant to cultural policy debate. The discussion is situated in historical context, drawing attention to a rich tradition of time-reflexive thinking within professional economics. The assumption underlying much of modern, purposely “neoclassical” cultural economics – that cultural value can best be measured in terms of willingness to pay or willingness to be paid money – is not strictly necessary either in economic theory or in economic practice, and for impact assessment purposes it is not always helpful. Sections following the historical introduction take careful account of recent developments in cultural economics, and to facilitate further reading frequently refer to the summative handbooks edited by Ruth Towse (2003) and Victor Ginsburgh and David Throsby (2006).     

Highbrow cultural participation of Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands: Testing an identification and social network explanation

Little is known about ethnic differences in highbrow cultural interests, because research on social differentiation in cultural participation has traditionally focused on educational or income inequalities. Employing data from the Netherlands’ Longitudinal Lifecourse Study 2010 we explored the extent to which educational attainment, national identification and social integration explain inequality in cultural participation among Turkish and Moroccan immigrants, and to what extent the effect of education was moderated by aspects of social identification and integration. Our results indicate that Turks and Moroccans, who identify more with the Netherlands and have a social network that includes larger numbers of Dutch and higher educated friends, are more active in the cultural realm. Most interestingly, we found that strong identification with Dutch society actually moderates the relationship between an immigrants’ educational attainment and their cultural participation: that is, highly educated people of Turkish and Moroccan descent, who strongly identify with the Netherlands, participated more in highbrow culture than their highly educated counterparts who identified less with the Netherlands.     

The Mountain Came Long Ago to Mohammed: The American Cultural Invasion of Mexico as Seen in the Short Fiction of María Cristina Mena

Actualmente se propone que la penetración cultural de los Estados Unidos es un hecho que data de los últimos 15 años. Mediante el análisis de las obras de la norteamericana de origen mexicano, María Cristina Mena, encontramos que este fenómeno viene presentándose por lo menos desde principios del siglo XX. A lo largo de este ensayo se destaca la gran aceptación que tienen en México los productos y las costumbres norteamericanas por lo que cada vez es más fácil encontrar compañías estadounidenses en este país.