East Asia informal networks beyond the borders: sharing of ideas,skills, and experiences against capitalization of the commons

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the practices of networking by cultural collectives relating to art/activism in Asia. In recent years, independent, grassroots cultural and social spaces based on equal membership and multi-level networks have been created in this area. These spaces also function as experimental places to create models of alternative societies featuring sustainable lifestyles by connecting people beyond separate genres, such as art, music, agriculture, and craft. Thus, the practice of creating such places leads to an attempt to form new social relationships for common life, creation, and labor through the networking of individuals’ lives, which have become withdrawn, isolated, and forcefully separated by repressive social structures. Moreover, gathering at these places creates a collective subjectivity and shared emotions among their members. In many areas, collective political and artistic practices have been created, which transcend borders, cultures, and languages. The sharing processes of such practices have been steadily advancing.     

Celebrity

ABSTRACT

Recent debates about the meaning and role of cultural history have focused on the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘society’. Some have taken this opportunity to position cultural history as a site of resistance to ‘biological’ explanations of human behaviour. In contrast, this article argues that ‘biological’ methodologies – particularly the perspectives of evolutionary psychology – can usefully contribute to the historical understanding of culture and social development. To this end, it outlines the fundamentals of Darwinist psychology, suggests options for interdisciplinary cooperation and uses the topic of interpersonal violence to explore the potential for uniting cultural, social and evolutionary psychological methodologies.     

Learning language that matters: A pedagogical method to support migrant mothers without formal education experience in their social integration in Western countries

BackgroundCourses for migrants in Europe are mostly aimed at literacy in western languages as a means for participation in society. These curricula are not suitable for migrants without previous basic education, which leaves groups of migrants vulnerable to alienation and without support for social integration.MethodThe IDEAL-programme (Integrating Disadvantaged Ethnicities through Adult Learning), which takes a participatory didactic approach and in which daily personal and family life is the starting point for learning, was provided and evaluated in the Netherlands and Sweden in 2011–2013. The participants (N = 16) were migrant mothers of Berber and Arabic origin without formal educational experience. The teachers shared the same background and served as role model facilitators and social brokers.ResultsThrough exploring their personal narratives, the participants showed new insights, skills, and attitudes on the topics of communication, health and parenting. All participants showed progress in language acquisition and participation in society. The Dutch group of migrant mothers reported to use less physical punishment and threats to their children, and to practise more positive parenting skills instead.DiscussionLiteracy oriented programmes for social integration are not suitable for all migrants and do not encourage acculturation. The proposed method offers a feasible alternative, so that migrants may be more adequately supported in their efforts for social integration in receiving societies. In order to advance the future development of participatory programmes for civic education, several key intervention design principles and political conditions are discussed.     

Does service learning affect the development of intercultural sensitivity? A study comparing students’ progress in two different methodologies

Numerous studies have highlighted Intercultural Sensitivity (IS) as a key competence in an increasingly multicultural society. This study examined the extent to which a cohort of first year undergraduate students enrolled on the same Didactics course, and in two different training modalities – Service Learning (SL) and non-Service Learning (non-SL) – developed IS. It was based on a quasi-experimental design of repeated pre-test and post-test measures, comparing the two groups. The sample consisted of 233 Spanish students at higher education institutions, and data was collected using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). The SL group displayed significantly higher levels of IS in all factors except in the denial/defence and minimization stages. Results indicated the effectiveness of SL regarding specific subscales within the IDI instrument. The findings add new depth to our understanding regarding which teaching methodologies contribute to the development of IS and to the training of active citizens in Spanish university students. The discussion focuses on the need for intercultural service experiences to promote IS. The results have broad implications for policymakers and educators who are interested in enhancing transformative educational experiences and effective teaching methodologies for developing students’ IS in higher education.     

Working Within the Crisis

ABSTRACT

This article examines microhistories and the histories of the everyday both in the context of developments in social and cultural history since the 1960s, and in the light of political and social change in post-war European society. Moving beyond debates about historical narrative, it emphasizes issues of perspective, space, size and historical distance in shaping historical interpretation. This historiographical trend, it argues, emanates from two major debates within the social sciences and politics. One concerns the nature of everyday life under modern capitalism and ‘consumer society’, the other the vexed issue of human agency. Focusing particularly on Italian microstoria, it argues that such writing is best understood as the commitment to a humanist agenda which places agency and historical meaning in the realm of day-to-day transactions, and which sees their recuperation as the proper task of the historian.     

Livelihoods and informal trade at the Bangladesh border

Abstract

Cross‐border informal trade is one of the most important issues between India and Bangladesh. It takes place between people who live a short distance apart, but who find themselves separated by an international boundary. The people of international border areas believe that cross‐border informal trade is a process to maintain a sustainable livelihood because it provides a livelihood to the unemployed. This research has analysed the nature and impact of informal border trade between India and Bangladesh. It has highlighted the sources of security and insecurity through the process of informal border trade. It also analyses the different socio‐economic conditions of informal border trade in border trade prone areas. This research argues that although informal border trade is considered illegal, it is necessary for the maintenance of the livelihood for the poor in the bordering areas. The state failures in fulfilling the needs of the poor force them to involve themselves in informal border trade.     

People's security: Okinawa's anti-bases movement

Abstract

The evolution of moral panics is dependent on the particular social context and the ability of certain issues to trigger concern within society. In this paper, the authors have employed a cross‐comparative study of the heavy metal music subcultures in Singapore and Malaysia to understand the differences in the issues that generate such panics based on the socio‐political context of each country and its current concerns. Although the youth involved in both cases are marginalised male Malays, the framing of their alleged deviance and criminality permits, in the case of Singapore, only a limited possibility for moral panic creation given the conservative socio‐political governance that limits allegations such as ‘Satanism’. In the case of Malaysia, where a ‘large‐scale’ moral panic involving black metal emerged in 2001, the recent trend towards Islamisation gave fodder for the condemnation of black metal based on the allegations of the anti‐Islamic behaviour of Muslim youth involved in the black metal scene. In both cases, such groups were exploited by parties claiming to defend the social fabric of the moral majority, but in the latter case it took on grave implications due to the extent of the state and public response. This paper thus argues that the framing of these moral panics is an important component determining the relative ‘success’ of the panic or its ability to capture public and state imaginings.     

Building a new society on the base of locality: transformation of social forces in Taiwan during the 1990s

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explain the transformation of social forces in Taiwan during the 1990s, as well as the “ideals of society” embedded in Community Construction that aims to reconstruct the local community. Based upon the analysis of discourses of movement agents, I differentiate four ideal-types of “good society” configured in the Community Construction. First, by the ideal-type of “indigenous (bentu) society,” people hope to reconstruct local history and local culture. Secondly, by “civilized society,” people want to build a society in which its residents live in solidarity and civility. Thirdly, by “civil society” people emphasize the importance of grassroots democracy and the subject position based on locality in order to respond to forces of the state and the market. Lastly, by “civic society” people aims to construct communities encompassing different geographical ranges, in which people from different backgrounds can live together and integrate into a civic nation. Among these ideal-types, “civic society” is the articulating link between “indigenous society” and “civil society,” while locality has become the fundamental element in defining “culture” and “community” in Taiwan. As a result, the cultural resistance based on locality has transformed into the cultural governance focusing on locality.     

Seoul and the time in motion: urban form and political consciousness

Abstract

This paper explores the political effects of the cognitive change in the visual environment of colonial Seoul. It asks how the new urban imagery was perceived by the Korean population. It analyzes the ways in which they experienced urban forms, techniques of advertisement and urban infrastructure such as street‐cars and trains. It argues that the engagement of people with mobility, urban symbols and spectacles in the colonial city had stimulated different ways of seeing and thinking about who they were and what they had become, a new collective identity that is neither a subject of the Chos[obreve]n dynasty nor the Japanese colonial state. This paper demonstrates that colonial Seoul represented not only the technique of Japanese colonial subjugation but also generated a new grammar for imagining new identity and difference. The urban environment of the colonial city reflects not entirely a strategy of the colonizer but a tactic of the colonized in appropriating the different meanings of new social life, which was brought by, but not exclusively under, the control of colonial space and time.     

Caught between empire and occupation: censorship,deimperialization, and Koreans in postwar Japan

ABSTRACT

The collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945 plunged East Asia into a state of flux and upheaval, making necessary the redrawing of geopolitical borders and the redefining the “boundaries” of nationality, language, and legal status. As part of this broader process, Koreans in occupied postwar Japan, via the platform of the magazine Democratic Korea (Minshu Chōsen), advocated for a joint process of decolonization and deimperialization whereby both Koreans and Japanese could construct a society free of imperial hierarchies. U.S. Military Occupation policy and censorship, however, thwarted these efforts and disallowed the possibility for the inclusion of a Korean subjectivity within the space of the Japanese nation. Facing intense political pressure, Koreans in Japan started to shift toward a “non-national” Zainichi Korean subjectivity distinct from the two Korean-nation states established in 1948. Further, through analyzing the case of Koreans in occupied Japan, this article sheds light on the broader impact of occupation censorship on postwar Japanese society and how the post-imperial transition to a nation-state model was a tumultuous one.     

Queer cultural movements and local counterpublics of sexuality: a case of Seoul Queer Films and Videos Festival 1

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine the ways in which popular culture can restructure the relationship between sexuality and power, through the case of Seoul Queer Films and Videos Festival, a cultural arena of newly emerged queer discourses in Korean society. In the past 10 years, queer discourses in Korea have undergone a rapid change. With heterosexual normativity being challenged and ‘queer’ being consumed as a cultural code, Korean spectators come to engage with a queer film festival in multilateral and sometimes contradictory contexts. This study will try to pose a controversial question to the heterosexual society by reading the complex interactions between film festivals, films and spectators while paying attention to the experiences of the participants in the Seoul Queer Films and Videos Festival and pointing at the political implications of queer films now in 2006. Through this, I try to look for possibilities of a queer cultural movement which rejects being co‐opted by the heterosexual society, constructs new ideas of social powers in relation with sexuality, and seeks alternative visions for such change in relations.     

The practice of cultural ecology: network connectivity in the creative economy

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on approaches to collaborative knowledge exchange projects between UK universities and the creative economy. It develops a preliminary account of cultural ecology as a systematic approach to producing impact in the creative economy. It argues that such an approach is a powerful way to aggregate micro-businesses and small and medium sized enterprises in a meaningful network of new relationships. The paper uses social network analysis software to begin to visualise the pattern of relationships that constitute the ecosystem. The paper reports on the work of the Research and Enterprise for Arts and Creative Technologies Hub, one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy established by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.     

Conference agenda

ABSTRACT

The Indian state, when it announced the opening of its borders – physical and imaginary – to globalisation, also embraced new digital technologies of telecommunication and transportation in its attempt to reconfigure itself as a global player in the world market. The neo‐liberal economic policies and the restructuring of the State had immediate and far reaching impact on the question of citizenship. The technologised State posited the need for a technosocial subject – a subject that was not only a consumer/user of technology but also subject to the different technological networks instituted towards a new‐modernism. The fetishisation of such a technosocial subject entails a new regime of discipline and containment that produces certain glorified non‐legal subject positions which challenge the efforts of the State to create a homogeneous sanitised cyberscape. This paper is an attempt to examine the production of illegalities with reference to cyberspace, to make a symptomatic reading of new conditions within which citizenships are enacted, in the specific context of contemporary India. Looking at one incident each, of cyber‐pornography and cyber‐terrorism, the paper sets out to look at the State’s imagination of the digital domain, the positing of the ‘good’ cyber citizen, and the production of new relationships between the state and the subject. This essay explores the ambiguities, the dilemmas and the questions that arise when Citizens become Subjects, not only to the State but also to the technologies of the State.     

The work of the audience: visual matrix methodology in museums

ABSTRACT

Visual matrix methodology has been designed for researching cultural imaginaries. It is an image-led, group-based method that creates a “third space” research setting to observe audience groups re-enacting lived experience of an event or process that takes place in the third space of a cultural setting. In this article, the method is described through its use in relation to an art-science exhibition, Human+ Future of the species, where three audience groups with investments in technology worked with exhibition material to achieve a complex ambivalent state of mind regarding technological futures. The visual matrix has been designed to capture the affective and aesthetic quality of audience engagement in third space by showing what audiences do with what is presented to them. We argue that such methodologies are useful for museums as they grapple with their role as sites where citizens not only engage in dialogue with one another but actively re-work their imaginaries of the future.     

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.     

Evaluating equity: assessing diversity efforts through a social justice lens

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a formative evaluation of The Art Institute of Chicago’s initial efforts to diversify the museum field through the Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative (DAMLI) programme. DAMLI is supported by the Walton Family Foundation and Ford Foundation as part of a movement to diversify the arts & cultural workforce in the United States. In Spring, 2018 the author was contracted to evaluate the museum-wide initiative to systematize and improve the experiences of high school, college, and graduate interns from demographic groups currently underrepresented in museum leadership fields. Through the use of [Fraser, N. (1995). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, 1–19.] social justice framework, this paper will focus on the recruitment, selection, and management of internship experiences of the first four cohorts of undergraduate and graduate-level interns within the programme. The paper begins with an overview of recent diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the arts & cultural sector – highlighting the systemic issues leading to the need for such initiatives and presenting a typology for organisational responses to the issue. This paper then categorise the type of organisational change sought by The Art Institute of Chicago based on Fraser’s two-dimensional social justice conditions and remedies framework in order to assess whether or not the Art Institute is achieving its goal of attracting, retaining, and empowering a diverse set of students and influencing their decision to pursue a career in the museum field by providing an equitable and inclusive environment during the internship. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of this work for arts and cultural organisations interested in diversifying the cultural workforce.     

A lonely and beautiful country: reflecting upon the state of oblivion in Turkey through Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys

Abstract

Through an in‐depth analysis of internationally acclaimed Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 2008 film Three Monkeys (Üç Maymun), this article discusses the politics of Ceylan's cinema against the backdrop of the current memory debate in Turkey. Turkey has a troubling relationship with its past. The process of the foundation and the early development of the Turkish nation‐state included traumatic events during which ethnic and religious minorities were massacred, deported, or encouraged to migrate. There have also been several violent incidents in Turkey's subsequent history that include massacres, mass killings, political assassinations, as well as military coups. It is a widely held opinion that social memory in Turkey is based on forgetting and denial, that is, Turkish society deals with the troubling events in its past by turning a blind eye to them. Drawing upon the question of how it may be possible to make the traces of forgetting and silence observable, this paper argues that Ceylan's film, despite its seemingly apolitical story, has indeed profound political connotations since its narrative and visual organization serve to display the prevailing mood of silence, oblivion and complicity in Turkey.     

Re-imagining the local in national cultural policy formulation – the case of the Anglophone Caribbean

ABSTRACT

The formulation of cultural policies in the Anglophone Caribbean constantly straddles the demands of global, regional and national imperatives as a function of its position as a region of post-colonial, small-island states. This paper will argue that the role these factors play in the art of policy making problematises conventions in the current global/local (glocal) debate circulating in the arena of Cultural Policy Studies. The paper shows that cultural policy making in the Caribbean constitutes a mélange of approaches that are in a constant state of contestation during the policy-making process. It employs content analysis of cultural policy texts from selected Caribbean states, as well as an analysis of stakeholder views from the national cultural policy consultations in Trinidad and Tobago to derive its findings. A Five Factor framework was developed to illustrate the range of responses that guide and shape local actors and activities in the national cultural policy domain. The research concludes that the relationship between the national and local (nocal) actors has to be re-imagined if cultural policy is to deliver on its promise of social transformation in the Caribbean.