Navigating the cultural turn

This study consisted of a design research into the application of Pintados tattoo patterns in a furniture product design and used semiotic theories to explore furniture product design methods. The research was carried out in three phases: (1) semiotic analysis (thematic analysis), (2) Quality Function Deployment (technical case study), and (3) cultural code analysis. The purpose was to find new strategies to convey scientific-based design information in introducing the cultural connotations of Pintados tattoo patterns to modern design. The main results of this study were: (1) the developed Pintados furniture design was semiotically projected onto a traditional time development axis, a localized spatial development axis, and a cultural conforming/cultural difference axis; (2) the cultural code analysis revealed that the psychological aspect reflects affect, transmission, and identification codes, while the behavioral aspect generates function and transmission codes, and the physical aspect expresses aesthetic, transmission, style and hue codes; (3) designers are recommended to start from their own traditional roots, meaning in this case that the ‘culturally literate market’ must be part of the Visayan community and must be aware of the Pintados tattoo tradition. By considering developments from the pre-colonial past to the present, we can assess the paradigm shift of cultural codes from the traditional interpretation to the contemporary modern understanding, stripped of preconceived biases imposed by the hegemonic Western mindset. These biases, which are a systemic problem in the process of semiotic practice (discourse, design, production and distribution), can be addressed by art and design appreciation and a thorough analysis of consumer culture.

Whereas others have considered the interrelationship between feminism and sociology in terms of the impact of the former on the latter, this paper focuses on the influence of sociological thought on feminist theory. Sociological perspectives were much in evidence within feminist thought in the 1970s, but the shifting disciplinary hierarchies associated with the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1980s have since undermined sociology's influence within feminism - and especially in feminist theory. One consequence of this, I suggest, has been the erasure of some important sociological insights and perspectives from the map of feminist theory. In particular the origins of social constructionism have been forgotten, along with much that was distinctly social in this approach. In charting the course and assessing the effects of the ‘cultural turn’, I make it clear than not all feminists have followed that route. I argue for the recovery of the social from its eclipsing by the cultural and for the continued importance of a sociologically informed feminism into the 21st century. In making the case for a distinctly sociological approach to central feminist concerns, I will take sexuality as a case study. Here I seek to demonstrate that sociology has more to offer feminism than the cultural focus of queer theory.

Much of the critique of the 'cultural turn' erroneously assumes that politics and representation are mutually exclusive. An examination of constructions of ethnicity and citizenship in two Sydney case studies demonstrates the deeply politicized nature of representations. Case study materials are drawn from anti-mosque politics and from discourses surrounding a suburb associated with Indo-Chinese-Australians. Representations are both expressive and constitutive of citizenship. Cultural minorities are compelled to engage in representational battles. Media research and cultural studies theory indicate that audience empowerment offers strategic political promise. Suggestions for empowering cultural minorities in their representational battles, and a research agenda, are articulated.

In Relevance in Argumentation, author Douglas Walton presents a new method for critically evaluating arguments for relevance. This method enables a critic to judge whether a move can be said to be relevant or irrelevant, and is based on case studies of argumentation in which an argument, or part of an argument, has been criticized as irrelevant. Walton's method is based on a new theory of relevance that incorporates techniques of argumentation theory, logic, and artificial intelligence. The work uses a case-study approach with numerous examples of controversial arguments, strategies of attack in argumentation, and fallacies. Walton reviews ordinary cases of irrelevance in argumentation, and uses them as a basis to advance and develop his new theory of irrelevance and relevance. The volume also presents a clear account of the technical problems in the previous attempts to define relevance, including an analysis of formal systems of relevance logic and an explanation of the Grecian notion of conversational relevance. This volume is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in those fields using argumentation theory--especially philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science and communication studies, in addition to argumentation. The work also has practical use, as it applies theory directly to familiar examples of argumentation in daily and professional life. With a clear and comprehensive method for determining relevance and irrelevance, it can be convincingly applied to highly significant practical problems about relevance, including those in legal and political argumentation.

This article will discuss Pragmatics in English for understanding Indonesian by studying the origins, contents and main theories of pragmatics which include speech act theory, conversation implication theory and relevance theory, then incorporating it into English teaching in universities to deepen students' knowledge about pragmatic science so as to avoid the use of pragmatic errors and increase students' pragmatic competence. After analyzing the three pragmatic theories based on case studies, it was found that pragmatic theory had an extraordinary impact on the practice of teaching English in tertiary institutions. By introducing relevant pragmatic theories in teaching English in tertiary institutions, it can describe the precise and clear meaning in English-Indonesian communication.

Methodology in the Use of the Old Testament in the New: Context and Criteria

The main aim of the article is to propose a new version of sociology of literature under the name of ANT-ology of literature. In the first part of the text I sketch a map of modern controversies on status and situation of literature and literary studies in contemporary world. I underline the fact that descriptions of this situation proposed by literary and academic establishment is always critical and that in fact this diagnosis are presented from conservative point of view. Afterward I discuss classical approaches of sociology of literature starting in 19th century till present-day and cultural sociology of literature connected with cultural turn in humanities and social sciences. However, I underline that all those approaches are anthropo- and textocentric. Hence, the crucial is the last part of the article. I argue on the necessity of application of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory into the literary studies and I describe possible advantages of ANT-ology of literature. If we take seriously into consideration the ideas of human and nonhuman actors, collective instead of society, abandon the “context”, focus on empiric and case studies, and if we will follow the actors, etc., presented version of literary studies will be entirely different – redefined and renewed.

With the advance of "cultural turn", the cultural elements involved in translation activities have become a rising concern in translation studies. As for the translation of a literary work from an underprivileged culture into a dominant one, this type of cross-cultural communication is deeply affected by postcolonialism. In light of postcolonial theory, translation not only serves as a tool for colonization, but also a medium of resisting and interfering with colonial culture. The translation strategies adopted by the translator reveals his/her subjectivity and stance. Furthermore, the translation product can pave the way for equal and effective communication between countries. Based on the framework of postcolonial translation theory, this study sets out to determine the hybridity nature of the Julia Lovell's English version of Xi You Ji from three aspects: linguistic features, culture and literary norms. It finds out that Lovell's dual identity has drastically affected her employment of strategies. Lovell's version promotes the positive image of Chinese culture, more importantly, it is of great significance in dispelling cultural hegemony and spreading Chinese culture.

1. Introduction The regular thinking in social science has related crime with the state power and control institutions, but not with the sphere of culture. That false theoretical dichotomy between culture and formal social structure, ignoring their close and natural interconnections should be discarded. The organisation of society and culture on the one side and state institutions on the other side, obviously function hand in hand, because they are intertwined. Human life proceeds in communities, where informal social relations prevail, and the conceptions, for which the state, on the strength of the formal rules it has established, is by and large external. Social science must be able to enclose the cultural reality and the elements of social structure into coherent theoretical framework embracing them both. Cultural-civilisational analysis focuses on crime-related symbols, signs and messages conveyed through them. In accordance with Talcott Parsons the cultural system includes all man-created symbols, providing purpose to their life; culture is the most powerful actor in society. Dominating values are essential, transmitted from generation to generation, governing the development of society and organised social structure. Cultural system thereby affects social patterns of conduct, shaping personality and giving meaning to human existence (Parsons 1951). Underlying cultures are values, and cultural contradictions amount to opposition in values. The meanings of the same pattern of conduct can be similar while they can easily differ in different cultural environments. Mechanisms of estimating events actually taking place may also drastically differ. According to an integrated approach, crime is inherent in cultural phenomena. Through law enforcement the social reality is formed, because controlling crime not only secures public order and safety, but creates daily a certain socio-cultural environment. Therefore such control is a crucial issue as seen from the nationbuilding and political-technology aspects, because the criminal justice system is related to cultural self-assertion. What the criminal justice system and its parts (e.g. police, courts, prisons) of a given state look like, and how they function is established by the legal culture, proceeding from dominating conceptions, respected in that society and considered normal and equitable. Discussions on the links between crime and culture in criminology have not even started. Traditional confines have been maintained, and regular domains have been handled. Little is known about different civilisations in the matters of crime, there is no general model for carrying out the respective comparative studies. The failure to perceive a wider perspective prevents distinguishing between significant aspects and those of little significance, instead focusing on issues of tertiary import (e.g. some intra-civilisation variations). What we call introspective perspective in criminology has turned out subjective and inefficient. Consequently, not much has been created in the theoretical aspect; in research of crime the developments taking place in other (research) domains have mostly been postponed. Advances in technologies have produced seminal novel information, which however is not systematised nor analysed for lack of relevant theories. This is the root source of problems arising when we compare crime in different civilisations-cultures and the practices of crime control. A solution could be negotiated by the approach where crime and all relevant phenomena are consistently regarded against the cultural background. In that case 'culture' would not be just another variable or factor, but the determination of the whole context, where the cause-effect relations actually work, thus making it possible to elucidate and understand these relations. Such mental move could also be defined as 'cultural turn' for criminology, where crime analysis would by underpinned by a certain representation of human environment. …

As a discipline Translation Studies (TS) has undergone a considerable number of ‘turns’ since its official genesis with Holmes’ paper on The Name and Nature of Translation Studies (1988/2004). These overlapping and loosely defined paradigms have encapsulated the shifting focus of Translation Studies over time, reflecting not only a variety of approaches to conduct translation, but also, more importantly, the diversity of ways to study translation. Starting with the linguistic turn, passing through the cultural turn in the 1980s, the interdisciplinary turn in the 1990s, and the empirical turn in the 2000s (see Snell-Hornby 2006), the 2010s has seen the focus split between the sociology of translation (Angelelli 2014), cognitive inquiries into translation (Ferreira and Schwieter 2015) and, most recently, the so-called predictive turn (Schaeffer et al. 2019). This re-orientation towards the use of data collection methods in what we have now come to refer to as Cognitive Translation Studies has tended to concentrate on the process of translation, as opposed to the product of translation. House (2013), for instance, when discussing this ‘linguistic-cognitive orientation’, mused about behavioural experiments focusing on the translation process. Other books addressing the cognitive dimensions of Translation Studies also tend to adopt the same process-oriented focus, the only exceptions being studies on the products of audiovisual translation (AVT). Back in 2006, Jean Boase-Beier was one of the first scholars to specifically mention a ‘cognitive turn’ (Boase-Beier 2020, 84ff—the notion was first mentioned in a conference paper in 2006), in part due to the rise in think-aloud studies, studies on the reading of source texts and research incorporating broader cognitive issues such as relevance theory. It is within this latter conception of ‘Cognitive Translation Studies’—drawing on the cognitive element of stylistics (and cognitive poetics) and the cognitive experience of style—that this book falls, concentrating not on the process, but on the cognitive effects of the product of translation in conjunction with the effects of the original text. This reception-oriented paradigm—for text-based translations, at least—is a truly nascent field, with only a small handful of studies as yet dedicated to studying the cognitive dimensions of written translations. As will become clear over the coming chapters, the research presented in this book draws on a variety of scholarly traditions—new and old—with a view to tying them together into a unified, yet multifaceted approach to study the experience of translated products alongside source texts.

Recent urban scholarship on the rise of the tourism industry, place marketing and the transformation of cities into entertainment destinations has been dominated by four major themes: the primacy of `consumption' over 'production'; the eclipse of exchange-value by sign-value; the idea of autoreferential culture; and, the ascendancy of textual deconstruction and discursive analyses over political economy critiques of capitalism. This paper critically assesses the merits of these four themes using a case study of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. The analytical tools and categories of political economy are used to examine the rise and dominance of tourism in New Orleans, explore the consequences of this economic shift and identify the key actors and organised interests involved in marketing Mardi Gras. 'Marketing' is the use of sophisticated advertising techniques aimed at promoting fantasy, manipulating consumer needs, producing desirable tourist experiences and simulating images of place to attract capital and consumers. The paper points to the limitations of the 'cultural turn' and the 'linguistic turn' in urban studies and uses the concepts of commodification and spectacle as a theoretical basis for understanding the marketing of cities, the globalisation of local celebrations and the political economy of tourism.

This article deals with three interrelated issues: first the ‘cultural turn’ of Itamar Even-Zohar in contrast to the ‘cultural turn’ in Translation Studies, then the application of an augmented version of Polysystem theory in a short case study, and finally the question of objectivity and neutrality in descriptive polysystem studies. It is argued that Polysystem theory and other cultural theories of translation, be they descriptive or politically committed, can be mutually enriching rather than incompatible, and that, with some augmentation and further development, it may serve as an adequate framework for research into the ‘external politics’ of translation.

Social policy and the context in which it is practised and developed are undergoing significant transformations. Evidence of the increasing influence of the 'market' on social programs is placing considerable pressure on the logic and legitimacy of western welfare states. Welfare state models, characterised by state intervention, are now commonly cast as the villain in a story of welfare dependency and moral decay. In political discourse, a focus on the individual character traits of welfare claimants is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance in a marketised social policy environment. In investigating what this 'meta-narrative' of change means in specific local contexts, this thesis empirically examines the influence of a market-orientated discourse on the policy and practice of public housing in Queensland, Australia. The specific instance of market inspired policy change that is examined in this thesis is the public housing 'reforms', introduced by the Queensland Government in 1997. There are many models and theories that can be used to study social policy change. This thesis begins by reviewing positivist, critical and poststructural approaches. It is argued that 'post-positivist' theories have much to offer existing understandings of policy practice, particularly the linguistic or 'cultural turn' in the social sciences that has placed the category of 'discourse' firmly on the social sciences agenda. Poststructural theories, responsible for promoting the category of discourse, have received a mixed reception in the field of social policy. There are some social policy academics who interpret poststructuralism as depoliticising the critical agenda of social policy research, while others see it as fruitfully opening up new lines of inquiry and new sites of struggle. One of the purposes of this thesis is to engage with this debate by highlighting the implications and effects associated with the discursive dimension of policy practice. The research design used to investigate this area of policy practice is an exploratory, qualitative case study. The empirical methods used to generate an interpretative account of policy change consist of (1) twenty semi-structured interviews with a range of policy actors from the Queensland public housing 'policy community' and (2) a textual analysis of written policy documents relating to the public housing reforms. The theory and tools associated with critical discourse analysis (CDA) are applied to the data to determine the role of policy language in the change process. The dimensions of the empirical analysis include: changing 'orders of discourse in the policy community'; power relations and 'discourse coalitions' between policy actors; and the importance of identity and subjectivity in the process of policy development and interpretation. An emphasis on the dialectical relationship between discourse and material practices is a constant theme in the empirical analysis. The analysis concludes with a discussion about the possibilities that critical discourse analysis offers social policy research and policy-making studies. It shows that CDA can usefully be applied to disrupt hegemonies and highlight the constitutive and transformative power of language and its ideological investment.

Reviewed by: Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715 by Eric Jorink Jennifer Spinks Jorink, Eric , Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715 (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 191), trans. Peter Mason, Leiden, Brill, 2010; cloth; pp. xxii, 472; 70 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$172.00, €133.00; ISBN 9789004186712. Eric Jorink's stimulating book prompts the reader to reassess the relationship between religion and the observation of the natural world in the Dutch Golden Age. He argues that while the natural world was increasingly the object of empirical scrutiny and measurable observation during this period, its theological status as the Book of Nature (second only to the Bible) remained critically important, fundamentally shaping, and in turn being shaped by, new biblical scholarship that engaged with natural history. Jorink draws upon an extensive range of primary sources and deftly utilises methodologies drawn from the history of science, theology, and intellectual history. The work reflects the 'cultural turn' that has contributed to making the history of science such an influential sub-field in recent historical scholarship. Reading the Book of Nature is thematically structured and weaves together analyses of texts and collections created by humanists, natural historians, and biblical scholars. It identifies a range of key figures including Constantijn Huygens, Nicolaes Witsen, Johannes Swammerdam, and Bernardus Paludanus, characterised by Jorink as 'the well and sometimes lesser-known scholars and curiosi' (p. 29). A particular strength of Jorink's book lies in his discussion of publications and discourses at a range of levels, rather than focusing on 'canonical natural philosophers' (p. 29) like René Descartes and Christiaan Huygens (who still feature, but do not dominate the narrative). Jorink argues for a very wide conception of early modern science that incorporates contemporary concepts including 'exegesis, the humanist tradition, natural history and the culture of the collecting of curiosities' (p. 19), and the book is accordingly wide ranging, though it does not lose focus. Following extensive preliminary material that conceptually teases out and historically contextualises the Book of Nature, the strands of the argument are woven together through a series of thematically organised chapters that provide convincing and coherent case studies. In a substantial chapter on comets, Jorink builds upon traditional studies in the history of science that stressed the importance of comets for the development of techniques of precise observation and measurement, and on more recent analyses that have foregrounded early modern humanist debates about comet theory from antiquity. The chief contribution of this chapter lies in Jorink's examination of a series of Dutch authors who combined biblical and classical understandings of comets and in so doing subjected the astrological and prodigious functions of comets to increasing scrutiny. The overarching trend was a move towards a worldview in which comets still [End Page 206] functioned as signs, but signs quite simply of 'God's almightiness' (a frequent phrase in the book) rather than as portents of events to come. The following chapter examines the new seventeenth-century fascination with insects as objects of observation and representation. While this is relatively well-trodden ground in studies of scientific method and scientific instruments, and in studies of the iconography of Dutch art, Jorink throws new light on this field by situating lesser-known figures within a chronological overview, and especially by intensively reassessing the religious dimensions of Johannes Swammerdam's studies of insects in the 1660s and 1670s. The two concluding thematic chapters - on collections of curiosities, and on printed books of wonders - work particularly well in tandem and provide nuanced readings of how evidence from the natural world, broadly conceptualised, was collected, scrutinised, and presented to wide publics through print as well as to smaller groups of connoisseurs. The discussion of collections extends to incorporate categories of objects beyond those found in the natural world, and most notably Egyptian artefacts. This allows Jorink, in one of the most compelling sections of the book, to establish how biblical scholarship and debates about language and chronology affected the changing categorisation and presentation of many forms of knowledge. He also traces an eventual shift towards a focus on regular rather than exceptional...

There is a strong sense in which 'everybody knows' what geography is about. After all, it is studied in school compulsorily to the age of 14, and both the increasing incidence of overseas travel and the prevalence of maps and place descriptions in media reporting give geography an apparently uncompli cated role as a descriptive support to the under standing of everyday life. However, such a view is at variance with the core concerns of academics in geography-even those for whom 'place' is a major focus of interest. Numerous academic commenta tors continue to highlight concerns that what we actually do bears little resemblance to 'popular' conceptions of the discipline (Unwin 1987; Crang 1996). Such concerns have focused not only on the fact that the analytical and interpretive aspects of academic work are overlooked, but also that signifi cant developments within the discipline have been neglected or misunderstood (Rawling 1996). Of course, these concerns about a divergence between academic and popular geographies are not new. It has long been argued that non-academic practitioners have been slow to catch up with devel opments in academic geography, and divergences within the discipline have to some extent been amplified following each of the so-called paradigm shifts since the quantitative revolution (Strachan 1984). The relationship between academic geogra phy and school syllabuses is a helpful example: it is difficult and costly to review school syllabuses, and when changes do occur, they are often in response to wider educational and social developments, which do not necessarily give priority to the pre occupations of university geographers (Rawling 1996). One of the problems lies in the difficulty of identifying precisely which changes to school sylla buses might produce an improved understanding of the academic contribution in geography. The approaches of conventional science, while very much under interrogation in some areas of the discipline (see, for example, Demeritt 1996), need to be taught not only as a foundation for appreciating the debates raging over its weaknesses, but also as the premise for responding to many of the most pressing dilemmas in environmental and technologi cal spheres. At the same time, school students need to be introduced to the 'social' scientific approaches that are essential for understanding human environ ment interactions, and to appreciate the scope that lies within the humanities for yielding insights into the ways in which processes such as language can construct our understanding of the world (see, for example, Barnes and Gregory 1997; Doherty 1997). School geography curricula have battled with such issues for generations, and yet the problem is still only partially resolved, as any lecturer faced with classes of fresh undergraduates will, we suspect, only too readily confirm. The Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG) (1997, 2) has acknowledged that 'public understanding of what geography is and what it has to offer often falls far short of reality'. As the issues of the 'new regional ism' and the 'cultural turn' in human geography have begun to establish another new landscape for geo graphical work, perhaps it is time once more to