Towards a deep epistemology: knowing in historical and cross-cultural context

This study seeks to define universal standards of human rights within a cross-cultural context. It begins with a review of three positions in the prior literatures regarding the relationship between culture and definitions of human rights. These three positions are: Western normative hegemony; weak cultural relativism; and strong cultural relativism. The paper then considers various feminist critiques that call into question the basic assumptions of all three prior views. The paper concludes by arguing that there are universal standards of human rights that apply to all cultures. My own position argues that these universal standards are part of an emerging "global culture."

With the globalization of culture and the improvement of economy, overseas sales of big brands have become a major destination. The international fast-paced, high-quality labels with location and mobility advantages have quickly entered the Chinese domestic market characterized by strong demand and demographic dividend, and soon have conquered a market place. Under the current cross-cultural context, whether the product message sent overseas can suit the culture, psychology and customs of the target country, has become a key factor in its determining business success. This article chooses UNIQLO as the main example, put its Chinese Localization strategy under the difference of Chinese and Japanese cultures. Base on the grasp of the status quo of China's fast fashion market, consumers' life attitudes and media habits under the background of economic and social development, uses the theoretical frameworks related to cultural differences to analyze the brand’s cross-cultural explanations of its own concept, the location of the communication Discourse, the choice of media and its communication effect to further promote the understanding of brands’ cross-culture communication and provide reference to fast fashion brands’ communication beyond the boundary.

Accentuated by globalization, the overlapping and the dissemination of values, beliefs and perceptions pertaining to different cultures have reached an unprecedented level, phenomenon which, with the contribution of new technologies and the international media, led to the creation of a new global culture. The constant movement of large masses of people with different personal goals has brought into contact individuals coming from various cultures, who found themselves in the position of trying to understand, filter and harmonize new cultural practices as well as developing skills for coping with them; due to widespread businesses spanning national borders, negotiation practitioners frequently encounter business opponents from unfamiliar cultures and resort to strategies and tactics meant to cross cultural boundaries and the obstacles of the business context. The paper is an overview of concepts and findings regarding the origin of the global culture as cultural co-existence in the international space, with an emphasis on the concepts of cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural competence, cultural variables and their impact on cross-cultural negotiations.

In what ways does a society perceive itself as beautiful? Do images of physical perfection indicate aspirations of the social or national body, the perfect body/face emblematic of the collective self-image? In recent years, under conditions of economic and cultural globalization, practices and discourses to render the body beautiful have come under increasing scrutiny. Concerned with the marketing and commodification of body ideals, these studies trace the deleterious effects of advertising, fashion, and celebrity culture in various national and cross-cultural contexts. Yet beauty itself is strangely absent in historical and aesthetic accounts of traditional and new media. In this essay, I try to account for this absence and to provide an alternative view of Indian society's relationship to media images of the body. Using examples from popular cinema, I explore the historical and cultural meanings underlying the fascination with the beautiful.

This paper argues that many philosophical arguments within the education discourse are too little embedded in their own historical contexts. Starting out from the obvious fact that philosophers of education use sources from the past, the paper asks how we can deal with the arguments that these sources contain. The general attitude within philosophy of education, which views arguments as timeless, is being challenged by the insight that arguments always depend upon their own contexts. For this reason, citing past authors, heroes, or enemies without respecting the context says more about our interest at the present time than it does about the times of the authors examined. Conversely, the contextual approach helps us to avoid believing that ‘timeless truths’ are to be found in different texts of different ages. However, the present contribution in no way advocates a total relativization of statements. Quite the contrary; it claims that the contextual approach helps us to understand the traditions and contexts within which we ourselves, as researchers, are positioned. And this self‐awareness is believed to be the proper starting position for theoretical statements about education.

This book introduces readers to the historical, performative, and cultural context of pansori, a traditional Korean oral story-singing art. Written by a scholar-practitioner of the form, this study is structured in three parts and begins by introducing readers to the technical, aesthetic, and theoretical components of pansori as well as the synthesis of vocal and percussive elements that stage the narrative. It also reflects on the historical contexts of pansori alongside Korea’s transformation from Joseon monarchy to modern statehood. It argues that with colonial annexation came modernist influences that Korean dramatists and audiences used to create distinct new genres of Korean performance, using the common thread of pansori. It further explores the dynamic interplay of preservation and innovation, beginning in the post-war designation of national performance art and continuing with developments that coincide with Korea’s imprint on cultural globalization. Along with Korea’s growth as a world economic center, a growing enthusiasm for Korean culture around the world has increased the transmission and visibility of pansori. Chan E. Park argues that tradition and innovation are not as divergent as they are sometimes imagined to be and that tradition is the force that enables innovation. Unique among treatments of this subject, this book is written from combined researcher and practitioner perspectives. Drawing on her ethnographic work and performance practice, Chan E. Park interweaves expert knowledge of both the textual and performative aspects of the form, rendering legible this dramatic tradition. Pansori as voice theatre examines the practice of pansori, Korean oral storysinging, in its historical, performative, and cultural context. There are three sections to the text. Section One analyzes technical, aesthetic, and theoretical components of pansori. Using translated samples, the book explicates the synthesis of vocal and percussive elements that, together with the listening ear, stage the narrative. Section Two critically reflects on the historical contexts of pansori alongside Korea’s transformation from Joseon monarchy (1391-1910) to modern statehood. In the case of pansori tradition, the posited strict class hierarchies of Joseon were in fact porous, as attested by the patronages and collaborations over generations. With colonial annexation (1910-1945) came modernist influences that Korean dramatists and audiences localized into distinct new genres of Korean performance using the common thread of pansori. Section Three examines the dynamic interplay of preservation and innovation, beginning in the post-War designation of national performance art (gugak) and continuing with off-mainstream, fusion, and hybrid developments that coincide with Korea’s imprint on cultural globalization (hallyu). Along with Korea’s growth as a world economic center (late twentieth century to present), a growing enthusiasm for Korean culture around the world has increased the transmission and visibility of pansori through institutions of popular culture. Ultimately, tradition and innovation are not as divergent as they are sometimes imagined to be. Rather, a study of pansori suggests that tradition is the centripetal force that enables innovation for the collective theatrical imagination.

This article frames the special issue by offering a broad reflection on the historical development of ideas that have informed debates concerning intermediality and its pedagogical contexts. It opens with a brief articulation of media and intermedial theory to inform the debate. The challenges of contemporary media hybridity are then set within an historical context by tracing the origins of current (perceived) knowledge dichotomies and hierarchies into the philosophical canons of Western antiquity. In examining distinctions between the different types of knowledge and expression that form the constituent parts of contemporary intermedial theatres, the article considers philosophical debates, traces historical trajectories and probes social dynamics from Aristotle to the present. Moving on to the current historical and social context of intermedial practice and pedagogy, the article examines specific challenges and opportunities that emerge from our own intermedial age. This multifaceted and trans-historical approach leads the authors to suggest that old hierarchical and divisional structures impact upon contemporary practices, affecting how those are perceived, received and valued.

Social and individual lifestyle patterns are undergoing rapid change in the 21st century. The globalisation of the culture, economy and technology requires ‘global’ design. Globalisation shapes culture and trends in a more integrated way, and Internet technology enables designers to deliver their services and practices without regard for geographical borders. However, diverse regional and local cultures and individual preferences still significantly affect design practice. In China, with its diverse and developing cultures, the trend for smart communication has generated new lifestyle choices, creating marketing opportunities and challenges. We observed the use of smart mobile devices among young people in Hong Kong and Beijing, and compare and discuss the differences in preferences and use scenarios for smart mobile devices in a first to analysing data from users and attempting to trace a new cross-cultural design pattern for smart communication. We conclude that a holistic perspective on smart mobile products and services is needed to solve the problems brought about by the information age in cross-cultural contexts.

Discriminatory and marginalising discourses affect the cultural and social realities of people in all human societies. Across time and place, these discourses manifest in numerous tangible and intangible ways, creating stigma and forms of exclusion by means particular to their cultural, historical, political and social contexts. These discourses also manifest in varying degrees of harm; from verbal abuse and behavioural forms of exclusion, to physical abuse and neglect, and exclusionary practices at institutional, legal and regulatory levels. Such forms of stigma cause direct physical and mental harm and other forms of persecution. 
 
 The papers in this special issue arise from a one-day symposium held at the University of Queensland in February 2013. The symposium, ‘Stigma and Exclusion in Cross-Cultural Contexts’, brought together researchers and community-based practitioners from across Australia and overseas to explore marginalization, discriminatory discourses and stigma in a wide range of historical and cross-cultural settings. By critically engaging with experiences of social, political and cultural exclusion and marginalisation in different contexts, we aimed to elucidate how discourses of stigma are created, contested and negotiated in cross-cultural settings. We also aimed to explore stigmatisation in its lived realities: as discourses of exclusion; as the fleshy reality of discrimination in social worlds; as part of the life narratives of individuals and groups; and as discourses of agency and counter-discourses in responding to stigma.

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER been ampler throughout. What is a reader to make of an extraordinary word like "rewin" (in the first lyric quoted on p. 93), for example? This cettainlydemandsexplanation.Even so, theseare small points.The book is generally worthwhile and buttressed securely with scholarship. ALANJ. FLETCHER University College Dublin DAVID WILLIAMS. The Canterbury Tales: A Literary Pilgrimage. Twayne's Masterwork Studies, vol. 4. Boston: G. K. Hall, Twayne Publishers, 1987. Pp. X, 115. $17.95. The main argument ofthis short, shrewd study is that Chaucer "makes the problem of the function of language and poetry the very subject of his poetry" (p. 6). Aware that other critics (like Robert Burlin and Lisa Kiser) have made similar cases, Williams is concerned to show that this is so in the pilgrimage-framed Canterbury Tales: Basic to the pilgrimage is recognition of one's personal disorder and the desire to reconstruct order in the self through the discovery and reaffirmation of order in the world. In a pilgrimage like Chaucer's, created by the telling of tales with a confessional character, it is essential that the pilgrims, as audience, understand clearly the stories they hear, and that the pilgrims, as authors, understand the implications of their own stories, in order to perceive how these tales have ordered or disorderedtheworlds theydescribe. It is essential, that is, if fictionhas thepowerto redeem itself. [P. 53] In brief background chapters ("Historical Context," "The Philosophical Debate") Williams emphasizes Chaucer as a philosophical poet alert to contemporary debates between proponents of realism and nominalism. His ethical reading of the Tales (in a chapter entitled "Language Re­ deemed" that is half of the book) reveals Chaucer to be unsympathetic toward the nominalist view that language is "heuristic" and permits only relative meaning (p. 20). Particularly in the tales of those entertaining but deconstructively misleading pilgrims the Miller, the Wife of Bath, and the Pardoner(a "radical"nominalist),Williams seesvariousattempts at discon­ necting fiction from reality. Harry Bailly's reply to the Pardoner reflects not only the "common man's intuition" about mimesis (p. 85) but a general, 208 REVIEWS older Christian belief that "the basis of fiction is reality, and when that is removed all communication becomes expository" (p. 74). The Nun's Priest's Tale and The Parson's Tale insist on the stability of language, the former "by showing both the danger of its abuse in fiction and its inherent ability to correct that abuse," the latter "by clarifying and reaffirming the orthodox truths that through language can be applied to life," and they prepare for Chaucer's final statements on "right content and right lan­ guage" in the Retraction (p. 90). At that endpoint: Given Chaucer's formula for fiction, in which characters become authors, authors become audiences, and creatures become creators, we, as readers, discover through our association with Chaucer on this third level ofaudienceship that the existential formula is the reverse ofthe fictional: we, as audience, must become authors, and our stories will be, like those of the Canterbury pilgrims, as good as our lives. [P. 1031 Williams's claim that the Tales embodies Chaucer's mature poetics is convincing overall and in most of its details. Some passing observations couldhavebeen given more explanation:What are the "comicreasons" why Chaucer putsMelibee in prose (p. 37)? Is The Parson's Tale generically only a sermon, and for whom is it "boring" (pp. 38, 90)?Why does the Franklin "loathe" himself (p. 45)? Is the Reeve really aformer carpenter (p. SS)? Are the poor widow and her daughters in The Nun'.r Priests Tale undeniably "a standard medieval allegory of the Church" (p. 91)? And, whether or not that is the case, have they no other function? Had thisTwayne series allowed the author more space, he probably could have developed these assertions and tested his thesis against other tales besides the handful he analyzes at length. One broader sort of reservation. It is always a difficult assignment to write for a double audience such as the pair the Twayne series envisions ("an incisive critical reading...that is accessible to students"), and at times one notices a gap between the kernel ofWilliams's larger...

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER to try to turn a series of lectures into a monograph, but to have published them as a collection of independent essays. For the chapters of Politique are, in the fullest sense, ‘‘essays.’’ Individually, they bring into brilliant focus some of the most neglected and little-known texts of the period. Collectively, they illustrate the difficulties future scholars will face when they try to find a compelling framework within which to view this challenging material as a whole. Wendy Scase University of Birmingham Carolynn Van Dyke. Chaucer’s Agents: Cause and Representation in Chaucerian Narrative. Madison and Teaneck, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Pp. 371. $63.50. Carolynn Van Dyke justly observes that, although examinations of agency and subjectivity have been productive for Chaucer critics, such studies often slide into generalizations or vaguely psychoanalytic interpretations of either character or author. She sets out to redress this problem by synthesizing a concept of agency from a stimulating variety of critical contexts, including literary theory, philosophy, computer science, legal studies, social sciences, and business (no doubt relying partly on her own varied experience as a scholar of computer science as well as literary studies). Agency, as Van Dyke conceives it, ‘‘need not be human, social, or even animate’’ (p. 17), nor does it need to be intentional or autonomous. Ultimately, however, this definition of agency is so capacious that it becomes less rather than more useful. While it does allow consideration of an array of unusual agents, this inclusive notion of agency is difficult to pin down in any meaningfully specific way and, as a result, exercises of agency often escape detailed examination. Van Dyke’s individual readings tend to focus instead on Chaucer’s multivalent characterizations of various agents. The first chapter establishes this definition of agency and examines its theoretical and historical contexts. Van Dyke identifies several crises of agency in late medieval culture, including divisions of power within spiritual and secular hierarchies, the philosophical debate between Scholastic Realism and Nominalism, and conflicting ideas about authorship PAGE 554 554 ................. 16596$ CH13 11-01-10 14:08:51 PS REVIEWS and textual authority. She concludes somewhat reductively that Chaucer ’s representations of agency, which are multiple and shifting, reflect these contemporary circumstances. Each of the subsequent chapters takes up a different type of agent in relation to the particular genres within which Chaucer deployed it; the three immediately following the introduction exploit the space opened up by a broader definition of agency to consider allegorical figures, animals , and pagan gods. Chapter 2 focuses on allegory, tracing Boethius’s influence on Chaucer’s polysemous allegorical narratives and insisting that they are among his most artistically mature and aesthetically accomplished works. Van Dyke uses three dream visions—the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls, and the Legend of Good Women—to demonstrate that Chaucer employs allegory to represent universal agency even as he particularizes such agency and problematizes it through parody, ambiguity, and irony. The third chapter engages provocatively with the literary and philosophical debate during the Middle Ages over animal agency as either completely absent or anthropomorphically complex, suggesting that Chaucer’s representations of animals draw not on human characteristics but on ‘‘zoological reality’’ and that, ‘‘paradoxically, he thereby blurs the boundaries between their agency and ours’’ (p. 106). Van Dyke shows that The Squire’s Tale translates the falcon and her agency so completely into the human world that any meaningful avian equivalent is lost, whereas The Nun’s Priest’s Tale reveals Pertelote and Chauntecleer to have an agency that seems both familiarly subjective and fundamentally appropriate to their animal natures. The chapter concludes with The Manciple’s Tale, reading it as an example of how human and animal agents can fall or fail but may thereby gain a kind of liberty. Chapter 4 takes up the acknowledged problems that medieval Christian authors faced when working with pagan elements of classical literature , but views those problems through the filter of agency. Van Dyke argues that pagan gods were treated with a kind of ‘‘theological ambivalence ’’ even in classical texts and that Chaucer recognizes and re-creates this (p. 114). She examines...

Increasingly, medical students are required to face up to ethical issues in their training and practice. At the same time, there is growing interest in philosophy courses in the ethical issues raised by medical practice. This textbook, designed primarily for students of medicine, develops the issues to a philosophical level complex enough to be satisfying to students of philosophy as well as MA students on applied ethics courses. The author advocates an approach to medical ethics which breaks out of the straitjacket of the narrow choice between utilitarian or deontological theory, and contains a valuable discussion of practical wisdom. It maintains a balance between case studies and philosophical arguments - which are developed in a historical context, and will be of interest at all levels of the medical profession.

Contents: B.B. Kachru, Ladislav Zgusta: Illinois Years. - Bibliography of Publications by Ladislav Zgusta. - B.B. Kachru, Introduction. - I: Contextualizing Culture: D. Bartholomew, Otomi Culture from Dictionary Illustrative Sentences. - P. Corbin, Un Film, Deux Linguistes et Quelques Dictionnaires. Un Regard Particulier sur Simple Mortel de Pierre Jolivet. - J.A. Fishman, Dictionaries as Culturally Constructed and as Culture-Constructing: Reciprocity View as Seen from Yiddish Sources. - F.J. Hausmann, Allusions Litteraires et Citations Historiques Dans le Tresor de la Langue Francaise. - L.F. Lara, Towards a Theory of the Cultural Dictionary. - W.P. Lehmann, Spindle or the Distaff. - Y. Malkiel, Principal Categories of Learned Words. - E.A. Nida, Lexical Cosmetics. - II: Lexicography in Historical Context: F. Karttunen, Roots of Sixteenth-Century Mesoamerican Lexicography. - T.B.I. Creamer, Current State of Chinese Lexicography. - D.A. Kibbee, 'New Historiography', History of French and 'Le Bon Usage' in Nicot's Dictionary (1606). - N. Dinh-Hoa, On Chi-nam Ngoc-am Giai-nghia: An Early Chinese-Vietnamese Dictionary. - G. Stein, Chaucer and Lydgate in Palsgrave's Lesclarcissement. - III: Ideology, Norms and Language Use: M.A. Ezquerra,Political Considerations on Spanish Dictionaries. - D.M.T.Cr. Farina, Marrism and Soviet Lexicography. - C. Marello, Florence like Athens and Italian like Greek: An Ideologically Biased Theme in the Forewords of Some Italian Thesauri of the 19th Century. - A. Wierzbicka, Dictionaries and Ideologies: Three Examples from Eastern Europe. - R.D. Zorc, Philippine Regionalism versus Nationalism and the Lexicographer. - IV: Pluricentricity and Ethnocentricism: J. Algeo, British and American Biases in English Dictionaries. - C.W. Kim, One Language, Two Ideologies, and Two Dictionaries: Case of Korean. - B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Worldview and Verbal Senses. - C. Poirier, De la Soumission a la Prise de Parole: Le Cheminement de la Lexicographie au Quebec. - J. Whitcut, Taking it for Granted: Some Cultural Preconceptions in English Dictionaries. - V: Dictionaries across Languages and Cultures: Y. Kachru, Lexical Exponents of Cultural Contact: Speech Act Verbs in Hindi-English Dictionaries. - R.J. Steiner, Bilingual Dictionary in Cross-Cultural Contexts. - VI: Language Dynamics vs. Prescriptivism: A.P. Cowie, Learner's Dictionary in a Changing Cultural Perspective. - R.H. Gouws, Dictionaries and the Dynamics of Language Change. - F.E. Knowles, Dictionaries for the People or for People? - VII: Language Learner as the Consumer: G.M. Dalgish, Learners' Dictionaries: Keeping the Learner in Mind. - VIII: Structuring Semantics: F.F.M. Dolezal, Dictionary as Philosophy: Reconstructing the Meaning of Our Father. - M. Ritchie Key, Meaning as Derived from Word Formation in South American Indian Languages. - J.P. Louw, How Many Meanings to a Word? - IX: Ethical Issues and Lexicologists' Biases: D.L. Gold, When Religion Intrudes into Etymology (On The Word: Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Source of English). - T. McArthur, Culture-Bound and Trapped by Technology: Centuries of Bias in the Making of Wordbooks. - X: Terminology across Cultures: Z. Polacek, Amharic Lexicography and the Dynamics of Sociopolitical Terminology. - G.O. Richter, Grammatical Indications in Chinese Monolingual Dictionaries. - XI: Afterword: B.B. Kachru, Directions and Challenges.

Among all the factors that triggered Chinese feminist movements during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the introduction of Western feminism played an important role. While the Western influence on early Chinese feminism has been widely acknowledged, the problems that arose due to historical and cultural differences have yet to be more thoroughly discussed. This article will explore how Pearl Buck's first novel East Wind, West Wind problematizes Western feminism in a cross-cultural context, and how the novel criticizes the misunderstanding of Western feminism by Chinese male intellectuals. In addition, while acknowledging Pearl Buck's feminist concerns regarding the liberation of Chinese women and the representation of feminist ideals within her text, I argue that Buck gives voice to a few women at the cost of other women's silence. I argue that feminism is a complicated process that can never be translated through a single voice. The purpose of the article is to highlight the challenges of being bridges, and to call more attention to cultural differences and historical contexts in feminist practice so that the bridging function of feminism can be more effective across cultures .

The classical Chinese work of supernatural fiction Liaozhai zhiyi is the ancient Chinese novel that has been translated into the most foreign languages. During nearly two centuries of transmission to the West, “strange” (yi 異 ) has become the focal point for sinologists’ translation and study of Liaozhai zhiyi . Shaped by different historical contexts and scholarly concerns, the interpretations of yi by sinologists have evolved alongside broader developments in Western sinology, creating multiple levels of discourse. From the misinterpretations of the early Sino-Western contact period, to using Liaozhai zhiyi to observe the “strangeness” of customs out of a desire to understand Chinese social life, and finally to the deep exploration of fundamental characteristics of Chinese culture, European and American sinology has regarded this idea of “strangeness” as a bidirectional link for understanding the other and examining the self. Ultimately, sinologists elevated the yi of Liaozhai zhiyi from a culturally specific literary experience to a universal discourse resource, while enriching the understanding of Liaozhai zhiyi in cross-cultural contexts.