Agents Of Cultural Change Research Articles

Mikrohistoria Bronisława Zielińskiego w polu translatorsko-literackim

Translators and interpreters have always played a key role as intercultural mediators, however, their biographies and functions as active agents of cultural change have only recently started to be studied. Following the sociological and material turn in translation studies, there has been a growing interest in the figure of the literary translator, not as a category of the translation process, but as a living human being who not „only” produces texts, but influences cultural transfer, introduces new poetics and shapes literary canons. Nowadays, researchers point to the necessity of describing the place and role of translators not only within Translation Studies, but above all, in the network of social contacts and relationships. The sociology of translators includes such issues as the status of translators in different cultures, pay rates, place and conditions of work, the public discourse of translation, i.e. the manifestations of the public image of the translating profession, which is visible, for example, in the press or in literary works. This area also encompasses research on translators’ attitudes towards their work, as revealed in essays, interviews, prefaces and translators’ archives. The paper focuses on the biography of the translator, placed in a broad historical and social context and thus, in the cultural and sociological dimensions of translator studies. In examining the biography of the Polish translator Bronisław Zieliński, the methodology of microhistory (adapted for translation studies by Jeremy Munday) will be used and combined with Anthony Chesterman’s theoretical proposal of translator studies.

Akulturasi dalam Arsitektur Jawa di Yogyakarta

Title: Acculturation of Javanese Architecture in Yogyakarta; Pedimented façades in Javanese architecture at the Kraton Yogyakarta and Dalem Notonegaran
 
 At the beginning of the 20th century, European Colonialism dominated almost all parts of the world. In this period, cultural acculturation was developed between European and local cultures in the colonised territory, including architecture. Many studies concerning architectural acculturation in the late colonial era emphasised the roles of European agents in appreciating while dominating the local culture. This research presents an alternative perspective by focusing on the Javanese elite as the agents of cultural change. Javanese architecture, on the one hand, with its long tradition, has recognisable stylistic formulation. On the other hand, it has a great degree of adaptation, giving chances for acculturation with many other architectural traditions. At the beginning of the 20th century, one exciting dynamic was the façade with pediment incorporating European Neo-Classical architecture. Originating in Ancient Greek Architecture, pediments continuously developed as a reference in European architecture. In Yogyakarta, the aristocratic circle adopted a pedimented façade supported by twin columns on both ends combined with many elements of Javanese culture. This research compares several pedimented façades with various cultural sources and architectural compositions in several buildings in the Sultan’s Palace of Yogyakarta and the princely residence of Notonegaran. From this comparison, this research discovers the progressive sides of Javanese architecture with many novel syntheses incorporating European architectural elements and Javanese ornamentations with novelty in composition, technology, and representation.

Public Humanities and Agents of Change: Have We Been Doing This All Along?

Abstract: Over the last several years, faculty have engaged students and community members in a series of collaborative projects with the goal of addressing complex issues such as identity, language, and belonging. I posit that the work we have been doing constitutes a broader innovative humanities project centered on cultural studies. To demonstrate as much, I explore current definition(s) of public humanities and outline activities that have comprised the endeavor in question. To conclude, I consider how reframing these events as a public humanities project, with students serving as agents of cultural change, could further contribute to the common good of the university, the campus community, and partners at dual and concurrent enrollment programs, while deepening engagement with local and state public institutions.

Mechanisms linking individual and organizational culture change through action research: Creating change agents for organizational and food safety culture development

This article proposes a more individualized approach to organizational and food safety culture development through the creation of culture change agents. The study used action research with individual therapeutic training of sensory and emotional skills as the action intervention to reveal underlying mechanisms of the culture and create long-term culture change. The study was conducted with a group of voluntary employees over a 3-year period at a department under Food Safety and Veterinary Issues in Danish Agriculture and Food Council. Data was collected using individual in-depth qualitative interviews with a novel questionnaire technique that facilitated participants to bring otherwise unconscious underlying assumptions to awareness. The study found that working intensely and therapeutically on an individual and group level, had a significant impact on the surrounding culture and social capital. Five underlying mechanisms were revealed linking individual culture change to changes in the social capital and culture of the department. Going through the five underlying mechanisms may enable individuals to get to the root causes of issues, facilitate more sharing and collaboration to learn from near-misses and failures, and take action despite facing uncomfortable situations, all important abilities to develop FSC. Based on the underlying mechanisms a ‘Change Agent Model’ was developed. The model illustrates the important underlying mechanisms that any individual or group can work through to become culture change agents and drivers for organizational culture and FSC development. This is the first of two articles.

Peer Wellness Coaches as Agents of Cultural Change in Academic Medical Research.

Peer Wellness Coaches as Agents of Cultural Change in Academic Medical Research.

Person-centred Music-making as a Cultural Change Agent for Compassionate Healthcare

To meet the care needs of the rapidly ageing patient populations, the cultivation of a compassionate patient-centred healthcare culture has becomecentral in the value-based healthcare discourse. A participatory music practice, ‘Meaningful Music in Healthcare’ employs a person-centred approach tomusic-making in Dutch hospitals. A grounded theory analysis on ethnographically collected data suggests that music-making serves as a social change agent and cultural resource for catalysing compassionate contact between healthcare professionals and patients. Processes of experiential growth and shared valuesin music-making and healthcare help to enrich care relationships and allow the emotional dimension of nurses’ professional performance to be explored.

Preface

The 2021 volume of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book brings together two collections of articles that strike out into less-charted territory, reflecting the Year Book’s commitment to publishing innovative and original scholarship. The first section, ‘German-Jewish Agency in Times of Crisis’, developed from a February 2020 conference on this theme held at the University of Sussex and sponsored by the university’s Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies/Centre for German-Jewish Studies. The second section, ‘Perceptions of Emotions in Modern Jewish History’, similarly emerged from a conference, ‘Agents of Cultural Change: Jewish and Other Responses to Modernity, ca. 1750–1900’, held at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC in October 2018 as part of the German-Israeli research project ‘Innovation through Tradition? Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity’. We are grateful to our colleagues David Jünger and Anna Ullrich for suggesting the first section and to Kerstin von der Krone for the second.

A Conceptual Model Proposal: Universities as Culture Change Agents for Sustainable Development

This paper aims to propose a conceptual model that synthesizes the existing findings concerning universities as culture change agents for sustainable development. The model could serve as a guidance on how universities might get involved in the pro-SD activities. It also underlines the prerequisite of the quality culture that should be introduced within all the activities of universities to successfully act as culture change agents for SD. This paper builds upon the holistic and inter-disciplinary approach to demonstrate that SD does not happen in isolation and that the role of universities in its creation is significant. This study includes a literature review to contextualize the impact of universities on culture and their potential role in SD. The conclusions stemming from the literature review materialize in the proposal of the conceptual model of the university as the culture change agent for SD. The elaborated framework responds to the need for greater clarity, ordering and systematization of the role of universities in the processes of initiating, promoting and modelling the SD-oriented changes while appreciating the role of culture as an enabler, means of social change and a result of SD-focused interventions. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge by offering a novel perspective on the assumed interrelations between university, its quality culture, university main operations such as education, research and engagement with the society as well as the culture and the agency of stakeholders in the context of meeting the world’s current demands without compromising the needs of future generations.

OMV decides to invest in construction of Iso-C4 unit at Burghausen refinery

This paper investigates the organizational roles that University Technology Transfer Organizations (UTTOs) adopt in response to their Regional Innovation System (RIS) stakeholders. In a qualitative case study, we focus on ‘systemic’ intermediation and investigate three French UTTOs within their respective RIS. Utilizing a conceptual framework anchored in stakeholder theory, four RIS stakeholders who operate at an operational or institutional level are identified. This broadens the traditional focus on academic and industry as the main stakeholders. In the three cases, we find that in response to these RIS stakeholders, six organizational roles were concurrently adopted: University Defender, Boundary Spanner, Investor, Cultural Change Agent, Territorial Builder, and Accountability Officer. It is discussed how the multitude of roles creates organizational tensions and their managerial implications. These findings improve the understanding on the influence of RIS on UTTOs and their organizational roles as part of a systemic and active approach to the innovation process.

University technology transfer organizations: Roles adopted in response to their regional innovation system stakeholders

This paper investigates the organizational roles that University Technology Transfer Organizations (UTTOs) adopt in response to their Regional Innovation System (RIS) stakeholders. In a qualitative case study, we focus on ‘systemic’ intermediation and investigate three French UTTOs within their respective RIS. Utilizing a conceptual framework anchored in stakeholder theory, four RIS stakeholders who operate at an operational or institutional level are identified. This broadens the traditional focus on academic and industry as the main stakeholders. In the three cases, we find that in response to these RIS stakeholders, six organizational roles were concurrently adopted: University Defender, Boundary Spanner, Investor, Cultural Change Agent, Territorial Builder, and Accountability Officer. It is discussed how the multitude of roles creates organizational tensions and their managerial implications. These findings improve the understanding on the influence of RIS on UTTOs and their organizational roles as part of a systemic and active approach to the innovation process.

La importancia del círculo. Las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en la conformación del clan de las mujeres

Faced with the dynamics of today's life, which encourages competition instead of empathy and collaboration, as well as the patriarchal tendency that has historically underestimated female support and knowledge circles, groups have emerged that promote the formation of new circles inspired by a mythical ancestral past, where the clan of women can become agents of cultural change. This paper analyzes the reflectivity of the coordinators of these groups and how communication technologies are integrated into their projects and practices, which play the role of medium and mediator in this contemporary redefinition of women's circles.

Gender, Language and a Lipstick: Creating Cultural Change in a World of Paradoxes

This paper addresses the paradoxes and possibilities for academic feminism in the Third Millennium drawing on feminist linguistics. It targets the role of language in the construction of social gender, focusing on data from Greek, and shows that gendering discourse can effect cultural change. It is suggested that academic feminists can be agents of cultural change when they promote feminist language reform in the service of challenging the dominant gender order.

Reuven Amitai & Michal Biran (eds.). Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change. The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors

Cet ouvrage est issu d’une conference organisee a l’Universite Hebraique de Jerusalem qui s’etait tenue en 2006 sur le role des nomades comme « agents des echanges culturels » dans l’Eurasie pre-moderne. Apres l’introduction de Michal Biran, les douze contributions ici rassemblees peuvent etre regroupees en trois ensembles. Les quatre premiers chapitres examinent ce phenomene en Asie orientale et occidentale dans l’Antiquite et pendant le Haut Moyen Âge (Gideon Shelech-Lavi, Anatoly Khazanov,...

Nursing with a Message: Public Health Demonstration Projects in New York City by Patricia D’Antonio

Reviewed by: Nursing with a Message: Public Health Demonstration Projects in New York City by Patricia D’Antonio Dennis Doyle Patricia D’Antonio. Nursing with a Message: Public Health Demonstration Projects in New York City. Critical Issues in Health and Medicine. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2017. xv + 145 pp. $85.00 (978-0-8135-7103-4). Nursing with a Message is a well-researched account of several demonstration projects that took shape in Manhattan’s East Harlem and Belleville-Yorkville health districts between the 1920s and 1940s. Each was intended to prove how public health and clinical care could be coordinated within a community health center. In providing local residents with easy access to a range of services, these demonstration projects relied heavily on public health nurses to enlist, educate, monitor, and collect data on those Italian American, African American, and Puerto Rican clients. Informing these projects was a blended public health model in which disease could be prevented through the promotion of individual health and wellness. Public health reformers and insurers insisted that physicians and allied health professionals ought to abandon a purely therapeutic focus and serve as agents of such preventive care. They advocated that physicians should provide annual medical exams, immunizations, periodic screenings for select diseases, medicalized childbirth, prenatal care, and dental checkups—all services many of us now take for granted as essential elements of comprehensive medical care in the United States. Coordinating with participating physicians and specialists at the health center, the public health nurses of 1922–41’s East Harlem Nursing and Health Demonstration Project facilitated these preventive services. With their professional monopoly over home visits, their adoption of social work’s casework approach, and their status as legitimate data-driven scientific experts, public health nurses were tasked with the difficult job of teaching clients to go to doctors for these preventive services. They also sought to instill them with a sense of personal responsibility for keeping up to date with all of these checkups, screenings, and exams. In addition, the Nursing Project’s public health nurses expanded their base of knowledge to include nutrition as they sought to teach mothers how to stave off disease in their families through healthier food preparation. Yet the public health nurses were [End Page 214] more than messengers. They were agents of cultural change whose work served as a model for the training of public health nurses both in the United States and around the globe. Still, this is much more than a story of how these pilot programs helped produce the U.S. health care system. Where D’Antonio really excels is in the attention she pays to what did not seem to work, did not see widespread adoption, or did not even merit inclusion. Even for such a slim volume, the examples are too numerous to mention them all here. For instance, while I expect that many scholars may be aware that nursing did not require any psychiatric training until after World War II, public health nurses, in adopting social work’s casework method, actually flirted with mental hygiene and preventive psychiatry in the 1920s. As well, project nurses, in zealously facilitating the medicalization of childbirth, missed an opportunity in the 1930s to investigate and prevent a major public health crisis stemming from that very major change: the high maternal mortality rates that accompanied delivery’s initial shift into the hospital. And throughout the book, the author reminds us that the individualized model of health and illness informing these projects pushed public health nursing even further from Lilian Wald’s original social justice vision. The only caveat I have for potential readers of this jam-packed, insightful study is that it does not offer illustrative examples of the nurses’ interactions with the patients they visited. Such evidence would have offered more tangible proof of the author’s assertion that these public health nurses did learn how to communicate their wellness messages while at the same time failing to address the client’s own demands and needs—especially those related to the social determinants of health. The absence of such case studies appears to be a reflection of the sources the author had...

The Impact of Social Media on Consumers\u2019 Acculturation and Purchase Intentions

Social media has emerged as a significant and effective means of assisting and endorsing activities and communications among peers, consumers and organizations that outdo the restrictions of time and space. While the previous studies acknowledge the role of agents of culture change, it largely remains silent on the role of social media in influencing acculturation outcomes and consumption choices. This study uses self-administered questionnaire to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents and examines how their use of social media affects their acculturation and consumption choices. This research makes a significant contribution to consumer acculturation research by showing that social media is a vital means of culture change and a driver of acculturation strategies and consumption choices. This study is the first to investigate the role of social media as an agent of culture change in terms of how it impacts acculturation and consumption. The paper discusses implications for theory development and for practice.

Teachers, Folklore, and the Crafting ofSerranoCultural Identity in Peru

This article examines two cases of folklorization led by teachers in Peru between 1939 and 1971, and characterized by the participation of the indigenous and mestizo subjects whose local cultures were transformed into folklore. These cases show teachers as active agents of cultural change in Andean schools, who were responding to de-Indianization by promoting aserrano(pertaining to the Sierra) regional identity among their students. In this fashion, teachers were reinventing “local traditions” to produce a new popular identity based on a common regional bond, through which indigenous and mestizo populations could negotiate new waves of cultural interaction with modernity and national society. The first case analyzes the projects of José María Arguedas and Emilio Barrantes to bring local folklore to the school curriculum and to promote an Andean popular culture. The second case explores school folklore competitions organized autonomously by provincial teachers, in which traditional dances were folklorized and turned into a popular spectacle. While framing both folklorization cases within the study of teachers as local intellectuals, the article also highlights the importance of a magisterial culture in Peru that, drawing from the progressive education movement, viewed teachers as agents of sociocultural change and nationalism.

Improving patient safety in the NHS: the culture change agents.

John Tingle, Reader in Health Law at Nottingham Trent University, and Jen Minford, Junior Doctor Coordinator, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, look at the role of patient safety culture change agents in the NHS.

Reuven Amitai & Michal Biran (eds.), Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors

Reuven Amitai & Michal Biran (eds.), Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change: The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors

Performing the Breastfeeding Body: Lactivism and Art Interventions

“Performing the Breastfeeding Body: Lactivism and Art Interventions” addresses the ways in which three contemporary North American artist-parents position themselves and their work as potential agents of cultural change around the topic of breastfeeding. Their socially engaged works challenge the increasing social divisions, seen particularly in the United States, around the breastfeeding body. By employing collaboration, intervening in institutional spaces as well as moving outside of them, and creating works that actively counter societal treatment of the breastfeeding body, these artists create raise critical questions and alter public and private spaces in ways that make visible and challenge one of the many taboos still surrounding motherhood. In order to destabilize the perceived spectacle of the breastfeeding body, each of these artist-activists stages a spectacle of her own, placing the breastfeeding body front and center by enacting breastfeeding as a private / public performance and simultaneously confronting public discomfort and culturally normative behaviors.

Literary Routes: Migration, Islands, and the Creative Economy

Exploring the links among accelerating patterns of migration, homogenizing forces of globalization, and transnational sites of creativity, this essay highlights the contributions that francophone voices from islands of the global South have made to the diversification of the knowledge economy. We discuss the critical effectiveness of literature as an agent of cultural change, focusing on minor writers who reach wide audiences by negotiating new pathways into the literary marketplace. The Comoran Soeuf Elbadawi, the Malagasy Jean-Luc Raharimanana, the Mauritians Ananda Devi and Shenaz Patel, and the Tahitian Chantal Spitz instigate literary dialogues that underscore ways of reimagining our world and redefining world literature. The issues they raise reveal the enduring relevance of literary studies and its interpretive approaches to a full appreciation of human diversity, which cannot be captured by purely quantitative methods.