Tag: Cultural Studies,
Affective Politics of Citizenship in Reality TV Programs Featuring North Korean Refugees
This paper is concerned with emerging affective politics of citizenship in contemporary South Korean society. Focusing on the recent reality TV programs (i.e. talk shows) that featured North Korean refugees, this paper examines how North Korean refugees in South Korean society come to be recognized as one of the multicultural minority groups. In South Korea, …
Uncompleted Body and Representation of Etiology: The Cultural Context of Women with Breast Cancer in Taiwan
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between of uncompleted bodies and self-explanations of the etiologies in cultural context through narrative stories of women with breast cancer. In Taiwan, above 90% breast cancer women have suffered from surgeries combining with chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and their decision makings are very different from most …
Performing (Non-) Compliance Body, Subjectivity and Medication in Psychiatry
Medication and its compliance is regarded as the cornerstone for therapeutic relationship and efficacy by the contemporary psychiatry. From the perspectives of the patients, however, the question of being compliant or not with psychiatric medications is a serious and complicated issue beyond what psychiatry can figure out. As the recipient subject of psychiatric medication, patients …
The Hall of Mirrors: Reflections on Cultural Belonging
Culture is not only a defining element of a society but also a natural attribute of a human being. While it manifests itself in a kaleidoscopic array of various elements, what makes it universal and therefore accessible is that common humanity, which bonds the seemingly unconnected elements. I argue that cultural belonging is navigated by …
Transcending the Catastrophes and Horrors of History: Atomic Bomb Threat and Activism in Tanaka Chikao’s ‘The Head of Mary’
The moments of the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing, along with the Holocaust, is imprinted in our memory to be the most terrible disaster mankind has suffered. The moment was promising to end the most destructive war in human history. It also, paradoxically enough, resulted in another disastrous massacre or what anthropologist Mircea Eliade …
A Book Review Analysis on Haruki Murakami in Four Countries
Haruki Murakami novels are popular around the world. We analyse how his novels are read in foreign countries and identify the cultural differences, using the amazon book reviews on his novels in Japan, US, UK, and Canada. We set the target novels “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” and “Norwegian Wood” because types …
Comparison between Japanese Tipping Customs, Kokorodzuke, and Western Tipping Customs: Japanese Cultural Uniqueness Making Foreign Tourists Confused
Our research topic is a discovery of Japanese cultures uniqueness making foreign travelers get confused from tipping customs’ differences between Japan and western countries. Most people think that there is no tipping custom in Japan, and this is correct in most situations. Therefore, many foreign tourists can enjoy Japan without worrying about tipping. However, there …
The Trope of Ibayong Dagat in the Narratives of Filipino Diasporic
The study involves the reading and interpretation of narratives of Filipino diasporic who may be Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) or contract workers, returnee OFWs, migrant Filipino workers who converted to permanent residency and/or on to citizenship of the receiving countries. The narratives come mostly from the Philippine radio program “Serbisyong OFW” which is aired every …
Global Identity and Culture Transmission
In the 80s, the Hong Kong entertainment and cultural scene were more liberal compared to present times as they were able to absorb foreign culture despite the gap between eastern and western countries. Hong Kong established a local culture by using foreign culture as reference, which was called a culture moment. Hong Kong tried to …
Surrealism: A Global Cultural Movement with Local Political Agency
Surrealism is a cosmopolitan cultural movement that transcends the very notion of a nation-state. Notwithstanding, it has been canonised as Paris-centric, which belies its global expanse. Whilst surrealism’s cultural impact remains globally untrammelled, it empirically mustered political dissent in the local politics of Haiti, Martinique and Mexico. I postulate that Surrealism’s political impact was greater …
Globalization and the Rise of Ethnic Conflict in Southeast Asia
The rise of ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia is a phenomenon brought about by the tension coming from the assertion of cultural identity in the region vis-à-vis the forces of globalization. Globalization has a huge impact in the social, cultural, economic and political aspect of the countries in the region. The reconfiguration that it caused …
A Culture of Peace and Indigenous Women’s Engagement in Peacebuilding: A Cross-Cultural Concern
Southeast Asia is home to various cultural communities beset with war and conflict. Peace building efforts in the islands have been raised to a certain level of intensity. With the hopes to avoid war and conflict, initiatives toward achieving peace have been documented, but mostly, those which are wanting of stories involving women in the …
The Global and Local Urban Identity
The notion of urban identity has been the subject of many researches. In the era of globalization, the impact of urban change and the challenges which faces the local urban identity of the city increases. Some cities are experiencing a serious struggle with the issue of identity in various ways while they are exerting a …
Culture, Language and Applied Linguistics: Language Teaching and Cultural Awareness
The role of culture in a field as vast as applied linguistics is so pronounced and vital that even a highly selective overview might not be sufficient to be comprehensive. What follows might be a synoptic account of the role of culture in the realm of applied linguistics. The enigmatic point which even makes the …
Mother Goddess in Kerala: Discursive Struggles and Contested Signifiers in a Popular Faith Phenomenon
Mata Amritanandamayi faith is a popular faith phenomenon that began in Kerala, South India during the late 1970s. Over the years, Mata faith has undergone changes informed by and in response to the debates and discussions in the Kerala public sphere, and the sensibilities of an expanding middle-class. The central character of the phenomenon, devotion …
The Phenomenon of Glocalization Practices of Japanese Popular Culture in Indonesia
Globalization is a phenomenon that can make boundaries between regions become apparent or border-less. Globalization itself has evolved into an influential paradigm since the beginning of the 1990s where between regions or countries are able to give each other their influence to other countries, through economics, politics and culture. Thus the existence of globalization has …
Action Heroes and Representations of Masculinity
This presentation contextualizes cultural construction of hegemonic masculinity and discusses ways in which action film heroes in Muay Thai and historical films are represented. Traditionally, the quality of nakleng is desirable for Thai action heroes along with having mastery in a particular skill. In a moral realm, the idea of gratitude or kwarm-katanyu, in Thai, …
Reversed Realities: National Pride and Visual Coding
What is national cultural identity? How does such identity affect other plausible kinds of identities i.e., gender? Is there authentic Thai identity? These questions are what interest me and are part of my thesis entitled “Transcultural Identity of Thai Femininity (1960s-present)”. By using critical theory perspective, I set out to examine Siam/Thailand diachronically from the …
A Few Good Men: Identity and Representation of Museum Volunteers
Most people usually value benefaction of donating to the temple, only a few appreciate to do in the museum. Being museum volunteer is another kind of donation. This article aims to answer two questions: 1) How museum volunteers define and valuate the goodness? 2) How museum volunteers present the goodness through museum activity? The research …
Hidden Biases of Cultural Schema
Communicating efficiently involves having an assumed set of knowledge underpinned by a learned system of cultural values, or what can be called cultural schemata. The American cultural self, for instance, is underpinned with the schemata of existentialism, individualism and competition. Schemata creates hidden biases in the way we behave, make decisions and judgements. Most often, …
Intercultural Parenting: A Discussion of Power Relations and Reverse Acculturation
The study employed a qualitative and social constructionist approach to examine cultural differences in intercultural parenting and how intercultural parents negotiated their differences. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty eight intercultural couples/parents. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data and understand the meanings of participants’ experiences. The findings revealed that while intercultural couples experienced …
Chinese Indonesians at the Crossroads: Post-Suharto Identity Dilemma in the Rise of China in the New Media Age
China’s rise to global prominence mostly represented in the new media has provoked the prevalence of re-sinification, as well as de-sinification, among Diasporic Chinese throughout the world, including the new generations of Chinese Indonesians. It is most commonly shared that nowadays Chinese Indonesians are expected to help bridging the gap between Indonesia and Mainland China …
Negotiating Power in Culturally Determined Bioethics Secular vs Islamic Bioethics in Decision Making
The supposition of this paper is that bioethics in its different strata is culturally determined. Other than universal in the sense of ‘neutral’, secular bioethics-which is internationally leading the field of bioethics academically and in praxis is an expression of a particular, materialistic worldview that does generally not consider spiritual or other-worldly dimensions. Islamic culture, …
Exploration of New Understanding of ‘Culture’.
Culture is a term which has various definitions with many contradictions. A general apprehension about the culture limits it to a broad or narrow sense of homogeneity and in the need of certain exclusion. The present understanding of culture is inevitably responsible for conflict between two cultures. The solicitation to particular belief or value system …
Existence of the Tradition of Moon Festival in Hat Yai District, Songkhla Province
This article aims to investigate the existence of the tradition of Moon Festival in Hat Yai District, Songkhla Province. The data of this qualitative study were gathered from related documents, research reports, and in-depth interviews with Thai Chinese in Hat Yai District, Songkhla Province. The study found that the tradition of Moon Festival could still …
The Birth of Contemporary Culture: The Unwanted Child?
The paper proposes to investigate two threads that eventually intersect. On the one hand it aims to look at the evolution of contemporary global (consumer) culture, more specifically the culture of neoliberalism. On the other hand, it looks at some of the critical reflections that pondered upon these phenomena at the time they came into …
Construction of Lukang’ s Cultural Memory (Das Kulturelle Gedchtnis) and Spirit of Place (Genius Loci) in the Qing Dynasty: A Study Based on Shih Shu-Ching’s Walking Through Lo-chin and Lin Hui-Cheng’s The Street and Town Structure of Lukang in the Late Qing Period
In 1976, Shih Shu-Ching published liuliWa (Glazed Tiles), which captured public attention to the importance of cultural heritage preservation. The well-known scholar and architect, Han Pao-Teh, even attempted to an open dialogue with Shih’s work with his ‘Glazed Tiles and Soil Tiles: Discussing Local Art Preservation via Shih Shi-Ching’s Glazed Tiles.’ In 1977, Han launched …