Sociocultural Understanding of Miscarriages,Stillbirths, and Infant Loss: A Study of Nigerian Women

Miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant loss are a constant threat to Nigerian women. Little research has sought to understand the cultural silence and taboo that typifies these issues needs and its impact on the women. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with Nigerian women, this study explored the sociocultural understanding of perinatal loss among Nigeria women. A thematic analysis of the women’s narratives indicated that cultural norms and practices contribute to disenfranchised grief, which translates into ridicule and blame for women, identity loss, marital instability, and a feeling of despair. The findings point to a need for more empirical research into the grieving processes of diverse populations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien reviewed

Abstract

Press reviews of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films appeared in a range of European magazines at a time when Hou’s films were hardly, if at all, available for watching in European cinemas. This essay asks what, in this context, may have been the reviews’ function. By way of an examination of a representative sample of these texts, I argue that, far from negotiating a relationship between, on the one hand, the producers, distributors and exhibitors of Hou’s films and, on the other hand, Hou’s European public, reviews of Hou’s films served to mediate the gradual and capillary instillation of new modes of viewing films. Reaching Europe very sparingly at a time when European cinemas had finally capitulated to the increasingly aggressive marketing strategies of distributors of Hollywood produce, the construction of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien as an auteur became available for the ‘educational’ realignment needed in order to sell Hollywood cinema better, not in spite of, but because of, the negligible European circulation of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films.     

Narrations on intercultural experiences in South African contact zones

The study is anchored in Pratt’s theory on ‘contact zones’ (CZ) and explores CZs in Gauteng-Province in Post-Apartheid South Africa, where experiences are influenced by highly diverse and hybrid cultural and language backgrounds. This article presents autoethnographic narrations of experiences of South Africans, addressing the void of emic perspectives in CZs in South Africa.Methodologically, the study follows a qualitative research design and is anchored in the social constructivist research paradigm, using 19 narrations of individuals. Four narrations, which mirror the experience of individuals from South African minority groups (Coloured and Indian) are presented in more depth in this article. Findings are analysed through content analysis. Limitations and ethical considerations are highlighted.Findings show the described experiences in CZs with regard to four categories: intercultural conflict, intercultural identity development, intercultural communication and its barriers, and intercultural non-verbal communication. They mirror predominant themes in South African contemporary society with specific focus on CZ experiences of minority group members, present boundaries created through the experience and narration of difference and possible ways to deal constructively with diversity within selected CZs. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations for future theory and practice are given, not only for the South African context, but also for constructive intercultural relations elsewhere.     

Konfiden and the promotion of Indonesian short films

Abstract

After the New Order stepped down in 1998 and the Department of Information was closed down in 1999, the Indonesian government loosened their control on film regulation. At that time, theatres rarely screened Indonesian films and there had been no film festivals in Indonesia for a long period. Meanwhile, advanced digital technology had provided a digital film camera – for the non‐professional user – that more people could afford. Some young Indonesians believed that lots of Indonesians had a digital film camera and used them to make films, instead of just recording family gatherings. These youngsters – mostly from big cities – came from different backgrounds and usually met at alternative film screenings in foreign cultures centres or the Indonesian Cinematheque. Most were well‐educated and dreamed of watching films from their own country. They therefore organized a film festival in 1999 under name ‘the Indonesia Independent Film‐Video Festival’. They chose a short‐film format for the festival because it was easier for common people to make a short film than a feature film with a digital camera. The organizer of the Indonesia Independent Film‐Video Festival established an organization in early 2000 named Konfiden. After 2000, Konfiden tried to promote Indonesian short films at international short‐film festivals such as the Oberhausen Short Film Festival and Tampere Short Film Festival. After 2002, Konfiden’s festival was not the only short film festival in Indonesia. Several film communities in Java started to organize short film festivals. The Konfiden’s next step is to build a film market, database, and to shape the quality for Indonesia short films.     

“I Have a Voice”: Reexamining Researcher Positionality and Humanizing Research With African Immigrant Girls

This personal perspective piece examines the researcher’s positionality through the stance of humanizing research in multiethnic youth communities. Drawing on Paris and Paris and Winn’s notions on humanizing research, this article reexamines positionality by revisiting two subjectivities in a three-year qualitative case study with African immigrant girls. This reexamination considers the ways in which the research and the participants participated in dialogic consciousness-raising that were personal and interconnected. Overall, this personal essay analyzes the ways in which the researcher and the participants fostered relationships while transforming their communities to reflect and act upon the world around them. In doing so, they explored the humanizing nature of what it means to “have a voice” together.     

Pan-African solidarity in South Africa: An empirical public opinion analysis

Social cohesion issues, such as xenophobia and racism, are major societal challenges for South Africa. What can be put forward to address these challenges? By drawing together separate threads of literature from Pan-Africanism and common ingroup identities, the study puts forward the Pan-African Solidarity thesis: low levels of supranational identification with Africa undermines social cohesion in South Africa and low supranational identifications are caused by local ideational/socio-psychological factors as well as cluing from political elites. This thesis is unique, mass identifications with Africa are understudied and little is known about how people in the country identify with the continent. In order to validate this Pan-African Solidarity thesis, the article will answer three important questions: (i) are mass identifications with Africa in South Africa low?; (ii) are attachment to an African identity associated with anti-minority views?; and (iii) what is driving mass identifications with Africa? An IPSOS funded attitudinal dataset fielded in four of the country’s nine provinces was used to answer these questions. Results provide empirical support for the Pan-African Solidarity thesis and found that a continental identity was related to intolerance of different outgroups (e.g., racial minorities, refugees and cross-border migrants). This is consistent with the expectations of the Common Ingroup Identity Model. But the study also makes original contributions to the literature, finding that the formation of continental identifications is informed by South Africa’s history of white settler colonialism. Cross-border contact, retrospective sociotropic evaluations, pro-black sentiment and trust in national elites were identified as determinants of citizens' identification with Africa.     

Screen violence and partition

ABSTRACT

Recent film and television treatment of South Asia from UK producers have introduced new angles on the violent politics of colonial past, whether this be the activities of the East India Company in the early days of Empire, or about Partition, at the ostensible Raj’s end. The controversy over Gurinder Chadha’s 2017 film Viceroy’s House is taken as an opportunity to consider the new South Asian film and television studies and the emergent scholars that are challenging conventional media studies models. The co-constitution of here and there is given as an analytic lens through which to comprehend representation and stereotyping in films “about” politics in South Asia, and the view taken is that a debilitating divide and rule, via mechanisms of representation, remains strongly in place, despite the fighting efforts of the new South Asian media scholarship.     

Indigenous patterns of music discovery: Khwe Bushmen and hip-hop in Platfontein,South Africa

ABSTRACT

Hip-hop has become a platform for young Khwe Bushmen to negotiate restrictive urban spaces following the tribe’s resettlement near the city of Kimberley in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Previous studies on music discovery tend to ignore the plight of indigenous and rural youth who struggle to keep up with the pace of global trends. Using qualitative data obtained through participatory observation, interviews, and focus group discussions, I argue that class remains a significant factor in the discovery of music. In many African indigenous communities, a few persons with higher socioeconomic status play a significant role in the acculturation and distribution of digital music and music cultures.     

The Meaning of Urban Violence in Africa: Bulawayo,Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1960

Until recently the abundant literature on South African urban history has seen violence in towns and cities in terms either of anti-colonial protest or of labour consciousness. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission defined the urban violence with which it was concerned as exclusively political. More recently, however, questions of spatiality, township culture, generation, and gender have offered alternative or supplementary explanations.

This article moves from the South African historiography to the less well known history of Southern Rhodesian towns and townships. In particular it focuses on Rhodesia's main industrial centre, Bulawayo. Between 1929 and 1960 there were four dramatic events in Bulawayo which involved varying degrees of violence. These were the ‘faction fights' of December 1929; the railway strike of 1946; the general strike of April 1948; and the so-called zhii riots of 1960. There have recently been authoritative analyses of the 1946 and 1948 strikes. This article therefore concentrates on the events of 1929 and 1960.

The 1929 ‘faction fights' have been claimed for political economy by a classic article which sees them essentially as a response to changing patterns of colonial labour exploitation; the 1960 riots have been claimed as the first achievement of confrontational African nationalism in Southern Rhodesia. This article argues that an alternative explanation can be found in internal African struggles for dominance of an emerging black urban culture. It analyses the 1929 violence as a struggle between ‘stylish’ young labour migrants and a longer established township elite. It analyses the 1960 riots as a ‘war’ between the township poor and the newly prosperous traders and rentiers. Both episodes greatly complicated the prospects for a unitary urban nationalism or for effective and combined labour action.     

The communications challenge of a post-apartheid South Africa: The intercultural agenda

Based on personal experience in South Africa (1984–1985), this paper broadly outlines and discusses the intercultural dimension of the South African dilemma. The intercultural communication needs are viewed as fundamental for the promotion and sustaining of positive structural changes that will emerge post-Apartheid. By reviewing events in South Africa and summarizing a recent South African study emphasizing the intercultural needs, the paper posits a readiness for addressing the issue and asserts that intercultural communicators do not have the option of “disinvesting” in South Africa. The paper briefly reviews two programs in South Africa addressing the intercultural needs agenda.     

Olive Schreiner,Epistolary Practices and Microhistories

ABSTRACT

Focusing on the letters of the South African feminist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner (1855–1920), this article explores Schreiner's strategic uses of letter-writing as a key tool in her work as a cultural entrepreneur in a number of different social and political contexts. In advocating a microhistory approach which recognizes that macro and micro are interconnected and should be seen as lenses of perspective rather than as separate spheres, we examine various strands of Schreiner's ‘cultural project’ and consider how her epistolary activities articulated and furthered this.     

The Heuristic for Thinking About Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT)

Michèle was hurrying to class. How, she thought, could she offer the students in her African American English in Society and Schools class a method of understanding, comparing, and abstracting the studies they had been reading in class? The heuristic described in this study evolved from a desire to capture aspects of several seminal studies that illustrated how African American English was deployed in classrooms for productive work with African American students. Michèle recalled that whenever she asked graduate students or practicing teachers what they, other teachers, and schools might do to improve the schooling of students of color, one of the most consistent responses was Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP). However, when pressed and asked what one would detect in classrooms where CRP is being put into practice, few were able to specify what an observer might see. Specifying the dimensions of CRP and its relationship to the heuristic had not been on Michèle’s mind. Even so, it was during the class discussion that the heuristic’s relevance to CRP became clearer. Jonathan, who had been tapped as a teaching assistant in an English language arts methods class, believed HiTCRiT could be modified to use with teacher education candidates, as a substitute for the standardized lesson planning tool used in the department. He piloted its use with the class the following semester. Utilizing HiTCRiT to explain research and existing practices as well as to assist teachers in creating culturally relevant instruction modified and shaped it, creating a more robust tool. Thus, the HiTCRiT came into being and came to inform our thinking and teaching practice.     

Intercultural Communication Training for English Language Teachers: A Case Study of an Immersion Program for South Korean Teachers

Little research has been conducted that explores connections between the fields of intercultural communication and English-language instruction. To address this gap, we report on an intercultural communication course delivered as an integral part of a short-term professional development immersion program for English-language teachers from South Korea. Study results indicate that intercultural communication training served to enhance participants’ pragmatics awareness along with sensitivity regarding sociocultural influences on communication that they experienced in situ. After the four-week course, most of the participants expressed desire and readiness to integrate intercultural communication into their teaching in South Korea. Intercultural communication training promises to complement pragmatics instruction aiming at improving English-language learning and teaching.     

The construction of national identity in South Korea and the tradition of masculinity in Korean Abstract Painting

ABSTRACT

Korean Modern Art History began to be produced in the 1970s, when Western Modernist Art History, based on Formalism, was introduced as a matrix to map the ‘evolution’ of 20th century Korean Art. Korean modern art history is based in the same paradigm as the West, beginning with Impressionism and ‘ending’ with Abstract Expressionism. First introduced to the country from the West immediately after the Korean War, Korean Abstract Expressionism is now deemed as South Korea’s ultimate ‘progressive’ and ‘modern’ art form, a ‘Korean’ painting style combining the Western art form with traditional artistic concepts of ‘Scholarly Painting’ (muninhwa). Japanese‐influenced painting styles originating in the colonial period (1910–45) are rejected as ‘non‐authentic.’ The problem is that Scholarly Painting was a gender and class specific art born from the rigid Confucian culture of pre‐modern Korea, and thus its revival as an ‘ultimate modern’ and ‘Korean’ form has the consequence of locating traditionally‐gendered notions of art and artist at the core of the South’s modern art. This essay uses a Semiotic approach to deconstruct this gendered modernist rhetoric by tracing the emergence of the sign ‘Koreaness’ in South Korean modern art, showing how it is defined within Korean Abstract Painting as an ‘ultimate Korean sign’ and how its use of anti‐Japanese rhetoric covers up the traumatic history of the Korean War.     

The great upsurge of South Korea’s social movements in the 1960s

Abstract

I intend to show the characteristics and limitations of South Korea’s social movements in the 1960s and examine its formative potentialities in the growth of social movements thereafter. Whereas the 1960s in the Western world is characterized by the surge of ‘new social movements’ and waves of upheaval in the Third World, it would not be the case of South Korea. The ‘subject’ of the movements looks similar, but the context and raised issues proved markedly different. Some old‐school left‐wingers who conceived the strategy of socialistic national liberation survived the emergence of new ‘liberal’ generations in South Korea’s 1960s. The structural crisis of Korea’s anticommunist ruling class caused by the democratization movements and the growth of nationalism at the turn of the 1960s instigated the military coup of 1961, which finally brought Yushin dictatorship in 1972. Although South Korea’s social movements remained isolated from the world through the ‘long 60s’, it may be viewed as a significant part of the division of the ‘liberal consensus’ in the American‐led East‐Asian bloc.     

The effects of Latino immigrants’ acculturation strategy and U.S. Americans' assimilation attitudes on perceptions of accommodation satisfaction and willingness to communicate

Guided by the acculturation framework (Berry, 1980, 2011) and communication accommodation theory (CAT; Giles, 1970, 2016), this study examines the effects of an immigrant target’s acculturation strategy on U.S. Americans’ accommodation satisfaction and willingness to communicate with the target and the potential interaction effect between the immigrant’s acculturation strategy and the participant’s assimilation attitudes. Supporting the hypotheses, results indicated participants with lower assimilation attitudes were most satisfied with the integrated target’s accommodation behaviors, followed by the assimilated and separated targets. In addition, participants with higher assimilation attitudes were equally satisfied by the integrated and assimilated targets’ accommodation, followed by the separated target. Across all levels of assimilation attitudes (i.e., low, moderate, and high), participants were more willing to communicate with the integrated or assimilated (no significant difference) target than with the separated target. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed regarding acculturation and inter-ethnolinguistic group relations.     

“I disagreed with a lot of values”: Exploring Black immigrant agency in ethnic-racial socialization

Ethnic-racial socialization is a mechanism through which immigrant parents instill in their children a sense of pride in their culture while preparing them for negative experiences with racial and cultural out-groups. For Black immigrant parents, this can include promoting a wariness of Black Americans in their children. Through this lens, we investigated an understudied intercultural dynamic via interviews with 12 first- and second-generation African and Caribbean immigrants. Using deductive and inductive analyses, we first examined the socialization messages they received about Black Americans from their parents, finding that in addition to messages inculcating ethnic and cultural pride, the participants also heard warnings about affiliation with Black Americans. Those messages relied on personal experiences and harmful stereotypes. Second, emergent from the data were examples of the ways the participants rejected their parents’ warnings. Experiences outside of the home appeared to influence views that were alternative to their parents. This novel finding provides avenues for future research investigating Black immigrants’ paths to a sense of connection or distancing from Black Americans.     

A Chinese in the new world: television dramas,global cities,and travels to modernity

Abstract

After having lain dormant for some 20 years during 1973 and 1991, the Singaporean film industry is experiencing a revival. Films produced since the early 1990s have been resolutely ‘local’ in their portrayals in an effort to ground this emergent cinematic modernity. Only a handful of these films have, however, received any international attention; most remain ‘too local’, ‘too colloquial’ to be exported further afield. This paper explores those visions or versions of the local presented in contemporary films from Singapore that simultaneously manufacture a brand of foreignness assimilable by international audiences. Through an overview of films from the revival period, this paper will show that the images that do travel successfully overseas are those that portray the dark side to Singapore’s road to economic modernization, the failed processes of an Asianized modernity. It is these images, representing one vision of an ‘authentic’ social reality, that is recognizable by international audiences in the context of previous successes by Asian films utilizing a shared form of (local) expression. My question is whether we can read these images as a particular kind of ‘slang’ – a vagabond expression that represents a filmic vernacular that also strategically invokes a cinematic modernity for the Singaporean film industry. This argument may extend to other (emergent) Asian cinemas that also participate in the production of this particular brand of foreignness. The paper will therefore provide some initial speculations towards the regionalization of cinema and ask whether such a move might be desirable and what its purpose might be.