Immersions in Cultural Difference


Book Description

How immersive simulations--from a fictional border-crossing site to a mock terrorist training camp--attempt to foster understanding across cultures




Un/common Cultures


Book Description

In Un/common Cultures, Kamala Visweswaran develops an incisive critique of the idea of culture at the heart of anthropology, describing how it lends itself to culturalist assumptions. She holds that the new culturalism—the idea that cultural differences are definitive, and thus divisive—produces a view of “uncommon cultures” defined by relations of conflict rather than forms of collaboration. The essays in Un/common Cultures straddle the line between an analysis of how racism works to form the idea of “uncommon cultures” and a reaffirmation of the possibilities of “common cultures,” those that enact new forms of solidarity in seeking common cause. Such “cultures in common” or “cultures of the common” also produce new intellectual formations that demand different analytic frames for understanding their emergence. By tracking the emergence and circulation of the culture concept in American anthropology and Indian and French sociology, Visweswaran offers an alternative to strictly disciplinary histories. She uses critical race theory to locate the intersection between ethnic/diaspora studies and area studies as a generative site for addressing the formation of culturalist discourses. In so doing, she interprets the work of social scientists and intellectuals such as Elsie Clews Parsons, Alice Fletcher, Franz Boas, Louis Dumont, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz, W. E. B. Du Bois, and B. R. Ambedkar.




Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance


Book Description

This book explores how the cultural distinctions and conflicts between Anglo-Saxons and Normans originating with the Norman Conquest of 1066 prevailed well into the fourteenth century and are manifest in a significant number of Middle English romances including King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and others. Specifically, the study looks at how the material culture of these poems (architecture, battle tactic, landscapes) systematically and persistently distinguishes between Norman and Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. Additionally, it examines the influence of the English Outlaw Tradition, itself grounded in Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest, as expressed in specific recurring scenes (disguise and infiltration, forest exile) found in many Middle English romances. In the broadest sense, a significant number of Middle English romances, including some of the most well-read and often-taught, set up a dichotomy of two ruling houses headed by a powerful lord, who compete for power and influence. This book examines the cultural heritage behind each of these pairings to show how poets repeatedly contrast essentially Norman and Anglo-Saxon values and ruling styles.




Dress and Cultural Difference in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

Dress is a key marker of difference. It is closely attached to the body, part of the daily routine, and an unavoidable means of communication. The clothes people wear tell stories about their allegiances and identities but also about their exclusion and stigmatization. They allow for the display of wealth and can mercilessly display poverty and indigence. Clothes also enable people to play with identities and affinities: for instance, individuals can claim higher social status via their clothes. In many ways, dress is thus open to manipulation by the wearer and misinterpretation by the observer. Authorities—whether religious or secular, local or regional—have always aimed at imposing order on this potential muddle. This is particularly true for the early modern era, when the world became ever more complex. In Europe, the composition of societies diversified with the emergence of new social groups and increasing migration and travel. Thanks to intensified long-distance trade and technological developments, new fashionable clothes and accessories entered the market. With the emergence of a consumer culture, it was now the case that not only the extremely wealthy could afford at least the occasional indulgence in luxury items and accessories. Over recent years, research has focused on a variety of areas related to dress and appearance in the context of early-modern political, socio-economic, and cultural transformations both within Europe and related to its entanglement with other parts of the world. Nevertheless, a significant compartmentalization in the research on dress and appearance remains: research is often organized around particular cities and territories, and much research is still framed by modern national boundaries. This special issue looks at dress and its perception in Europe from a transcultural perspective and highlights the many differences that clothing can express.




Culture and Difference


Book Description

The yearning to remember who we are is not easily detected in the qualitative dimensions of focus groups and ethnographic research methods; nor is it easily measured in standard quantified scientific inquiry. It is deeply rooted, obscured by layer upon layer of human efforts to survive the impact of historical amnesia induced by the dominant policies and practices of advanced capitalism and postmodern culture. Darder's introduction sets the tone by describing the formation of Warriors for Gringostroika and The New Mestizas. In the words of Anzaldua, those who cross over, pass over . . . the confines of the `normal.' Critical essays follow by Mexicanas, poets, activists, and educators of all colors and persuasions. The collection coming out of the good work of the Southern California University system relates to all locales and spectrums of the human condition and will no doubt inspire excellent creativity of knowing and remembering among all who chance to read any part thereof.




Cultural Difference on Trial


Book Description

Cultural Difference on Trial: The Nature and Limits of Judicial Understanding comprises a sustained philosophical exploration of the capacity of the modern liberal democratic legal system to understand the thought and practice of those culturally different minorities who come before it as claimants, defendants or witnesses. Exploring this issue from within the tradition of contemporary analytical and naturalistic philosophy and drawing upon recent developments in the philosophy of mind and language, this volume is informed by a sound academic and practical grasp of the workings of the legal system itself. Systematically analysing the nature and limits of a judge's ability to understand culturally different thought and action over the course of a trial, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the workings of the modern legal system.




Africa, Cultural Studies and Difference


Book Description

Cultural Studies has evolved and continues to evolve primarily along regional lines. However uncomfortable this might be, the genie of British cultural studies cannot be returned to the bottle of history. Thus, national versions of cultural studies have arisen in a few African countries. This book engages two critical and seemingly contradictory tasks: i) to contribute to the development of cultural studies from the perspectives of African experiences and indigenous frames of reference; and ii) to examine these in terms of transnational trajectories of the field in ways that do not reduce them to one or other context. Much cultural studies remains concerned with Texts, often disconnected from their contexts. For the authors published here, the contexts include African philosophies, cosmologies and ontologies. It includes the writings of both residential natives and those who have re-located to the diaspora, a spread that opens conversations with international approaches that both include and exclude African experiences and work. This anthology juxtaposes many different kinds of cultural studies done in different parts of the world as a means of creating a global dialogue around the signifier of ‘Africa’. This book was published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.




Identity And Culture: Narratives Of Difference And Belonging


Book Description

Where does our sense of identity and belonging come from? How does culture produce and challenge identities? Identity and Culturelooks at how different cultural narratives and practices work to constitute identity for individuals and groups in multi-ethnic, ‘postcolonial’ societies. Uses examples from history, politics, fiction and the visual to examine the social power relations that create subject positions and forms of identity Analyses how cultural texts and practices offer new forms of identity and agency that subvert dominant ideologies This book encompasses issues of class, race, and gender, with a particular focus on the mobilization of forms of ethnic identity in societies still governed by racism. It a key text for students in cultural studies, sociology of culture, literary studies, history, race and ethnicity studies, media and film studies, and gender studies.




Culture and Difference


Book Description

Focusing on the prevailing ideas connected to cultural and social diversity, this collection of essays deploys a variety of critical methods originating from social, cultural, and literary theory to analyze the relationship between historical and social forces and recurrent cultural beliefs and values.




Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity


Book Description

Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity: Critical Cases engages the paradox of cultural difference and social solidarity within contemporary contexts. Several of the essays in this book focus on individuals negotiating with perceptions of their personal, social, and political identity. Other contributions frame the political perceptions of the individuals and the cultural communities those perceptions construct. In this collection are essays concerning immigrants and the negotiation of sacred, political, and cultural spaces in the United Arab Emirates, the UK, Germany, and Australia as well as analyses of internal cultural differences and solidarity in Québec, Canada and Turkey. Selections include an analysis of language accommodation asymmetry in the Gulf States; ethnopluralism and right wing extremism in Germany; the search of renewed Alevi identity in Australia; and the difference between post-war and post-EU ascension Polish immigrants in the UK. In addition, two essays concern challenges and analysis of Canadian and Québécois multi-culturalism. Finally, three contributions focus on Turkey through an analysis of perceptions of the dead in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict; transformation of urban identities in the Turkish city of Mersin; and how plurality is incorporated into symbolic representations of religious difference in Antakya, Turkey. Each essay in this book describes processes of differences and solidarities within specific contexts, challenging implicitly or explicitly the paradoxical entanglement of the two. Through this collection, the editors intend to begin to demonstrate the possibility of a broader acceptance of solidarities through difference.