Political culture and women's representation in lower state legislative chambers: 1971 and 1977

The effect of political culture on women 's political socialization emphasizes that politics is a masculine role to the detriment of female political participation in lower state legislative chambers. However, it would be extremely simplistic to assume this cultural bias has the same impact throughout the United States.This article utilizes Daniel J. Elazar's conceptualization that there are three ideal subcultures (Moralistic, Individualistic, Traditionalistic) which dominate the American states. Elazar specifies that a Moralistic subculture seems more open since its citizens and political leaders view politics to be a healthy endeavor in order to obtain the good society. Every citizen has a duty to participate in politics. States dominated by the Individualistic subculture view politics as a “dirty—if necessary—business, better left to those who are willing to soil themselves.” It is assumed that professionals can best perform in this competitive world. Finally, a Traditionalistic subculture which dominates the South emphasizes that politics is limited to maintaining the existing political patterns of authority. The characterization of what politics is and who should participate becomes extremely important since it may run counter to some female stereotypes which indicate women may be less intelligent, weaker and less competitive.Using Elazar's cultural concept as an independent, environmental variable, an analysis of variance found significant differences in women's representation between the three subcultures in 1971 and 1977. Even more important, the barriers to women's representation seem far less, longitudinally, in the Moralistic-dominated states than in the other sub cultural-dominated states.     

How Should I Respond to Them? An Emergent Categorization of Responses to Interpersonally Communicated Stereotypes

Political correctness defines stereotypes as inappropriate to communicate. However, responses that interpersonally communicated stereotypes receive in conversation may collaboratively produce a different meaning about the appropriateness of stereotype use. The current research reports two studies that explore responses to interpersonally communicated stereotypes and the role these responses play in the perpetuation of stereotypes. This project contributes qualitative research in intercultural communication that exposes a variety of tolerant response types available to communicators and demonstrates how these responses are managed interactionally in ways that show tolerance for communicated stereotypes.     

The effect of vertical-horizontal individualism-collectivism on acculturation and the moderating role of gender

Based on a sample of 131 Chinese international students in Germany, the study examined (1) the influence of vertical-horizontal individualism-collectivism (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998) on mainstream and heritage acculturation and (2) the moderating role of gender on these relationships. It was hypothesized that both vertical-horizontal individualism would enhance mainstream acculturation and both vertical-horizontal collectivism would enhance heritage acculturation. From a gender role and a value-motivation perspective, a moderating effect of gender was also hypothesized. Since the vertical dimension is related to power and achievement values which is more important for men, men who scored high in this dimension would be more likely to acculturate than women. Since the horizontal dimension is related to universalism and benevolence which is more important for women, women who scored high in this dimension would be more likely to acculturate than men. The hierarchical regression analysis shows that (1) women's mainstream acculturation was higher than men's, but no gender difference was found in heritage acculturation; (2) the influence of horizontal individualism on mainstream acculturation was stronger for women than for men, but adopting vertical individualism has an equally positive effect on acculturation for both gender groups; (3) vertical collectivism had a positive influence on heritage acculturation for men but not for women, while horizontal collectivism had a stronger influence on heritage acculturation for women than men. These findings were discussed using a gender role perspective and the possible changes in cultural transitions.     

Women in politics: A global review

At the end of the 1970s, discrimination against women as political participants continues, but it is being challenged and, in some countries, steadily eroded. There are only eight countries in the world today in which national law excludes women from political processes that are open to men. While in most countries that have elections, women lag behind men in exercising the franchise; the tendency is for the difference in men's and women's voting rates to narrow over time in stable electoral systems. However, there is an enormous disparity between women's attainment of formal political equality and their real exercise of political power. The numbers of women in public office remains low in most countries; in very few do women fill even 10% of such positions. Yet there are scattered signs of improvement, with slowly rising numbers of women in elective and appointive offices. The real centers of political power are still overwhelmingly dominated by men, but the fact that women in most countries can enter the political contest on a routine basis is a sign that exclusion based on sex roles is diminishing.     

The role of adult attachment in international students’ acculturation process

International students face a variety of challenges in their acculturation process. Acculturation, the process of adapting to a new cultural environment, is highly variable and influenced by environmental and individual factors that exist before or arise during acculturation. Among the moderating personal factors existing prior to acculturation, adult attachment has received attention as an important variable impacting the acculturation process and adaptation outcomes. Based on the bi-dimensional model of acculturation (Berry, 1997) and the concept of adult attachment (Bowlby, 1977), the current study hypothesized that an insecure attachment (i.e., high attachment anxiety and avoidance) would predict more acculturative stress, less psychological adaptation, and less sociocultural adaptation. We also hypothesized that students who highly identified with their heritage culture and were highly acculturated to the U.S. culture would experience higher levels of psychological and sociocultural adaptation. Also, we examined if adult attachment moderated the effects of acculturation on international students’ psychological and sociocultural adaptation. International students enrolled in higher education institutions in different geographic locations in the United States (N = 221) completed measures of adult attachment, acculturation, acculturative stress, and psychological and sociocultural adaptation. The results suggested that attachment anxiety was a significant predictor of international students’ psychological adaptation. High acculturation to the U.S. significantly predicted more sociocultural adaptation. Attachment avoidance significantly moderated the effect of acculturation to the U.S. culture on international students’ psychological distress, while attachment anxiety was a significant moderator for the effect of acculturation to the U.S. culture on sociocultural adaptation.     

Rural women in development: Veil of invisibility, world of work

Over the last decade, evidence has been accumulating that the process of development has resulted more frequently in greater economic marginalization than benefits for poor rural women in much of the Third World. Yet recent efforts aimed at incorporating these poor non-urban women into development have been hampered by the “veil of invisibility” hiding their past and present conditions and contributions. This article formulates some hypotheses concerning female invisibility as well as productivity, and then contrasts the extant view of rural Third World women as relatively unproductive with (1) evidence drawn from evolutionary history, and (2) data from new micro-level and UN studies. The former indicates that women were the primary producers in most pre-agrarian human groups. The latter indicate that women continue to produce approximately half the world's food, although there is dramatic regional variation. The article concludes with an analysis of the statistical biases and stereotypes that obscure these contributions and briefly indicates the cost of this invisibility to the countries involved as well as to the women themselves.     

American Commentaries

ABSTRACT

Despite widespread assertions as to the ‘Americanization’ of British culture in the first half of the twentieth century, the true extent of this cultural transfer remains open to question. This article considers what the British people actually knew about ‘America’, its institutions, culture and way of life, in this period through an analysis of coverage of the USA in the British news media (press, newsreels and wireless) in the inter-war years. Specific attention is paid to the attempts of the BBC – in particular through the broadcasting work of Raymond Gram Swing and Alistair Cooke – to provide an understanding of contemporary America beyond the widely cited stereotypes of ‘Chicago gangsters and Hollywood blondes'.     

Biculturalism and self-construal

Evidence on the dimensionality of self-construal points to the coexistence of both an independent and an interdependent self-image. Drawing on conceptualizations of the acculturation process, this study is a preliminary examination of the distinctiveness of four hypothesized self-construal patterns: Bicultural, Western, Traditional, and Culturally-alienated. Different types of individuals, having experienced varying amounts of cultural contact and having made different choices in adjusting to cultural groups, might portray distinctive self-construal patterns. Especially intriguing was the notion that those with a well developed sense of interdependence and a well developed sense of independence could be described as bicultural. To test this, persons from four a priori identified groups were selected to represent the four patterns of self-construal. We predicted that on a measure of self-construal, the mean scores of the respondents in the four groups would differ in strength with the bicultural experience group, in particular, exhibiting both a high independent and a high interdependent score on a measure of self-construals. Our hypotheses were supported. In terms of independent self-construal, the Bicultural and Western groups scored significantly higher than the Traditional and Alienated groups. For the interdependent self-construal, the Traditional and Bicultural groups scored significantly higher than the Western and Alienated groups. The bicultural group was the only group to score significantly higher on both types of construals. The availability of both types of self-construal would likely facilitate communication and adaptive behaviors for persons interacting in multiple cultures.     

Power Distance and Facework Strategies

The literature argues that in global business communication the concept of “national culture(s)” is becoming obsolete because globalization leads to cultural convergence. This article argues that “national cultures” are not obsolete in global organizations. Two focus group interviews were conducted in a global corporation using folk perceptions as a framework. Employees were asked to discuss their work practices and agreed that uniform standards could not be used across cultures. The article concludes that, despite globalization, we do not see evidence of cultural assimilation in global employees’ work practices, but rather that stereotypes of national cultures are used to provide orientation.     

Can cultural values eliminate ostracism distress?

Ostracism has negative psychological and behavioral outcomes, thus making it crucial to better understand how these effects can be mitigated. Two experiments tested whether cultural values can moderate immediate as well as delayed reactions to ostracism in two populations with very different values concerning interactions with the opposite sex. The Ultra-Orthodox population in Israel constitutes a specific subculture whose values differ considerably from those of secular Jews in Israel. In particular, Ultra-Orthodox Jews adhere to strict separation between genders, which is enforced by Ultra-Orthodox men. It was hypothesized that being ostracized by the opposite gender on a computer game would be less distressing in particular for Ultra-Orthodox men than for secular men and women who cultural values have no such prohibition. In both experiments, Jewish secular and Ultra-Orthodox men and women played Cyberball, a virtual ball-toss game against two ostensible players (half same gender, half opposite, but all with their in-groups). The findings showed that whereas secular men and women were more distressed when ostracized by a member of the opposite sex, Ultra-Orthodox males reported lower distress on both the needs satisfaction and mood measures after they were ostracized by ostensible Ultra-Orthodox female players than when receiving fewer ball tosses from ostensible Ultra-Orthodox male players. It is argued that when cultural values provide a rationale for ostracism, this can eliminate ostracism distress. The discussion centers on ways cultural and other embedded values can mitigate the negative outcomes of ostracism.     

“Gangnam Style” in Dhaka and inter-Asian refraction

This essay explores the political implications of the flash mob dance in Dhaka, Bangladesh performed in response to the 2012 global viral sensation of South Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video. The global fame of “Gangnam Style” has much to do with its success online and in the U.S. popular music industry. It, however, also solicited suspicion from popular culture critics that the images of comical PSY worked successfully thanks to unchecked consumption of the racial stereotypes of Asian men. While recognizing these problems as more than valid, this essay simultaneously calls for a more transnational and inter-Asian understanding of the material to argue for a productive quality of PSY’s performance. Using “refraction” as a mode of thinking about inter-Asian circulation of pop culture, this essay considers the flash mob performed in Dhaka, Bangladesh as an important yet underexplored case study that shows different performative practices associated with “Gangnam Style” deeply rooted in historicity of colonialism and nationalism. The case study shows that the circulation of “Gangnam Style” materialized through a performance in Dhaka enlarged contemporary discourse among young urban Bangladeshi spectators around Bangladeshiness and its cultural identity. This complicated an easy assumption about “Gangnam Style” and its success in the U.S. mainstream pop culture, while simultaneously displacing the Bangladeshi cultural subjects from the immobile position of “the Other.”     

Transnational dream,transnational practice: Tracking women students in Asia's knowledge diasporas

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a worldwide increase in women travelling on their own to seek educational and career-advancement opportunities, rather than as legal appendages of husbands. In northeast Asia this trend is particularly marked, and the increasing representation of women among the ranks of northeast Asian international students in Western nations can be seen as part of this trend. This essay engages with Youna Kim's book, Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters, and considers Kim's answers to the question: what are the subjective and material experiences of geo-cultural mobility for the current hyper-mobile generation of young northeast Asian women?     

Desire: A History of European Sexuality. By Anna Clark/Sexuality in World History. By Peter N. Stearns

ABSTRACT

The present article uses Nell Dunn's Up the Junction (1963) to explore class, gender and the city in the 1960s. It focuses on three elements: the book's representation of post-war, urban working-class identity; the place of gender and sexuality within that representation; and, finally, Nell Dunn's own position as a middle-class observer. It argues for the continuing relevance and dynamism of class as a social referent in post-war, ‘affluent’ Britain. The article also explores the meaning of ‘slumming’ in the context of the mid-twentiethcentury city, against the background of ‘affluence’ and the emergence of the ‘permissive society’. What becomes particularly apparent in both contexts is the importance of femininity and female sexuality in the representation of mid-twentieth-century London, whether in terms of the portrayal of working-class women or the position of the middle-class author.     

Testing a model of emotional and coping responses to problems in adaptation: Foreign students at a Canadian university

The purpose of this research was to develop and test a model of cross-cultural adaptation which proposes that adaptation to movement across cultures involves three processes: learning new social norms, matching behavior to these norms, and matching one's self-concept to the newly acquired behaviors and social norms. According to this model, adaptation problems arise when the foreigner fails in one or more of these processes so as to create various types of mismatches between the components of norms, behavior, and self-concept. Each type of mismatch was hypothesized to lead to a particular affective response and to be most effectively resolved by unique coping strategies which would restore balance among these three components. Successful adaptation, then, occurs when the foreigner uses the coping strategy which is appropriate to the type of mismatch problem encountered in the acculturation situation.This study tested the hypothesized relationship between mismatch problem, affective response, and coping strategy. Subjects were 40 foreign and 40 Canadian students at a Canadian university. They were presented with scenarios depicting five types of mismatches in hypothetical acculturation situations. Results showed that subjects' interpretations of these agreed with the mismatches proposed by the model. Moreover, their reported affective and coping responses confirmed the majority of the hypothesized relationships. These findings suggest the mismatch model may serve as a good framework for classifying diverse adaptation problems and for predicting the coping strategies which would effectively resolve these.     

Yugoslavia: other modernities,other histories

The Non-Aligned Movement was a transnational political project, a coalition of small and middle-sized states, mostly former colonies and developing countries, from the global south or the Third World. It was formed in 1961 in Yugoslavia at the Belgrade summit. The NAM represented the first major disruption in the Cold World map, a quest for alternative political alliances, for “alternative mundialization.” Culture was accorded particular importance in the NAM, despite the fact that it never took center-stage at summits and conferences. However, NAM’s cultural politics strongly condemned cultural imperialism and epistemic colonialism. Western (European) cultural heritage was to be understood in terms of “juxtaposition”; this heritage would be interwoven with and into the living culture of the colonized, and would not simply be repeated under new (political) circumstances. Consequently art and culture in the NAM were largely about politics and history, or to put it differently, they were a way of staking a claim to history. It seems the movement was somehow aware of the fact that this was the only way it could enter the world’s (cultural) space on an equal footing. There existed a heterogeneous artistic production, a variety of cultural politics and extensive cultural networks which enriched the cultural landscape of the NAM and enabled discussions about the meaning of art outside the Western canon.     

Re-examining intercultural research and relations in the COVID pandemic

The authors provide an urgent call for cross- and intercultural scholars to re-examine many of the related themes and classic or contemporary study areas of “intercultural communication” and “intercultural relations” in light of the impacts that the novel coronal (COVID-19) pandemic is having on human interaction both across and within our social-cultural contexts. As scholars focusing on intercultural communications/relations, education, management, psychology, and social issues, the global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a range of intercultural problems or issues that need to be researched to better understand related aspects of human suffering, social disruption, and economic inequalities. New research projects/papers need to address how these impact key intercultural theme/topic areas like cultural attributions/expectations, values/beliefs, identities, perceptions/stereotypes/prejudice, language/speech codes, cultural systems/patterns, acculturation/adaptation, intercultural effectiveness/sensitivity/competence, and conflict (Kulich et al., 2020, Table 3.7). Some research areas and applications potentially affected by COVID are highlighted, including our sense of national/international identity and cooperation, our mediated or actual social networks, our ways of framing or carrying out intercultural or cross-cultural cooperation, new issues emerging in inter-group contact, how we apply cross-cultural taxonomies or dimensions to analyze data, and how these ultimately affect our relationships with each other across all levels of culture (from dyads, to groups, sub- or co-cultures) or express and affirm interculturality at such times. Each area is highlighted by calls for specific types of intercultural research to address these challenges and opportunities.     

Beyond the ‘feminization of masculinity’: transforming patriarchy with the ‘feminine’ in contemporary Japanese youth culture

Contemporary Japanese society has seen the emergence of aesthetically conscious young men who employ ‘feminine’ aesthetics and strategies as ways of exploring and practising new masculine identities. In this paper, I explore the significance of this emerging trend of male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men who have taken to aesthetically representing themselves in these ways. This cultural trend is often described as the ‘feminization of masculinity,’ echoing the gendered articulation of rising mass culture in terms of the ‘feminization of culture,’ which acknowledges aspects of the commercialization of masculine bodies in Japan of the 1990s onward. While this view successfully links important issues, such as femininity, beauty, and the gendered representation of the self in a broader context of capitalist culture, it does not sufficiently convey a sense of agency in the young men's lively practices of exploring and expressing new masculine values and ideals. Rather than viewing ‘feminization’ simply as a sign of commodification, I argue that these young men strategically distance themselves from conventional masculinity by artificially standing in the position of the ‘feminine’, where they can more freely engage in the creation of alternative gender identities. From this point of view, the use of the phrase ‘feminization of masculinity’ often implies a fear and anxiety on the part of patriarchy over the boundary‐crossing practice that seriously challenges the stability of gendered cultural hegemony. Moreover, such anxiety driven reactions easily merge with nationalist inclination, as those threatened tend to seek the consolidation of patriarchal/hegemonic order by eliminating ambiguities and indeterminacy in cultural/national discourse. I conclude that the cultural hegemony of contemporary Japan could better sustain itself by incorporating non‐hegemonic gender identities, which would allow it maintain an open space for critical imagination and effectively diffuse an obsessive and ultimately self‐destructive desire for transparency/identity.     

Identity and Otherness: Maghribi Images in the Historiography about Alfonso XI of Castile (1311–1350)

This work studies the information that the historiography on King Alfonso XI of Castile offers on the Marīnid dynasty of Fes. In spite of the confrontation between the two states in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for the control of the Strait of Gibraltar and the southern part of Andalusia, the Alfonsine texts (the Crónica del Rey don Alfonso el Onceno, the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI and, to a lesser extent, the Poema of Alfonso Onceno) attempt to reconstruct the history of the rival sultanate through a verifiable and rigorous approach comparing with Arab sources from that period. In this regard, their ideological conception moves away from the usual stereotypes, which are generally negative in the way they portray the other, i.e. the Maghribi opponent. In contrast, Alfonsine historiography assumes the empathetic portrayal of the identity values of the rival as part of the task of the historian, and uses the history and deeds of the adversaries to highlight the victory of the Castilian monarch over them.     

Diversity in the ethnic media audience: A study of Spanish language broadcast preference in the U.S.

The present study hypothesized that the media use and preference of ethnic minorities may not be due solely to language ability or level of acculturation, but rather may be role specific. Individuals assume several different roles in the course of the average day and media use may reflect the expectations associated with these roles. It was further hypothesized that radio, which can be used in a wide variety of situational settings, would yield different typologies of people who preferred ethnic language stations. However, television, which is generally viewed just at home, was conceived of as more likely to yield a homogeneous user group. Data from 993 Mexican-Americans living in the Southwestern U.S. conformed to these expectations. Two distinct profiles of Mexican-Americans who preferred Spanish language radio were created. However, only one profile of Hispanics who preferred Spanish language television emerged. The findings have important implications for theory regarding the role media plays in the lives of immigrants and ethnic minorities as well as for practitioners designing communication messages for ethnic audiences.     

Towards a post-critical praxis: Intentional states and recommendations for change in acculturation psychology

I offer a way of conceptualizing and researching acculturation psychology and thereby hope to offer a tentative course to take us beyond the critiques addressed in this issue. First, I propose an alternative characterization of acculturation psychology by addressing what changes in acculturation. This proposal is anchored in [Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press] notion of intentional states (e.g. psychological experiences described by terms like ‘identity,’ ‘anger,’ ‘faithfulness,’ and so on) that illustrates how culture and psychology are deeply interdependent. In the dynamic cultural changes that occur in instances of acculturation, intentional states themselves change. Second, I address why such changes ‘matter’ to people by exploring the embodied experience pertaining to intentional states—thereby extending the notion beyond Bruner's use of it. This extension is made by drawing on the phenomenology of M. Bakhtin who proposes how culture shapes our own personally embodied experience of intentional states. Change in the sociocultural context thereby involves changes on a personal experiential plane and, as such, experientially ‘matters’ to people. Over the course of this proposal, I provide six recommendations for the praxis of acculturation psychology. Because the general praxis in acculturation psychology, as it currently stands, makes it difficult to implement these recommendations, I highlight an example of a research study that follows the recommendations contained herein.