Contemporary Cultural Practices Research Articles

Tropicalizing platformization? Tensions in research on algorithms and platforms in Latin America

This short article critically examines the growing body of research on algorithms and platforms in Latin America. Drawing on an analysis of articles published in Portuguese or Spanish in journals of the region, we discuss the main analytical approaches that shape Latin American platformization research. We reveal a tension between two dominant analytical orientations. On one hand, there is a tendency to directly apply concepts and theories from the global North to interpret Latin American experiences, a phenomenon we call “tropicalization.” On the other hand, research from the region also produces context-specific knowledge that questions established theoretical frameworks or bridges the study of the local and the global. While both orientations are valuable, we emphasize the importance of developing analytical approaches tailored to address the specific realities of Latin America. These approaches underscore the significance of regionally grounded scholarship in understanding contemporary cultural practices.

Platform-mediated live musical performance in China: New social practices and urban cultural spaces

This paper provides a non-Anglo-American geographical discussion of digitally mediated cultural activities. Taking China’s live music industry as an entry point, we seek to theoretically and empirically understand the complex roles of digital technologies that influence contemporary cultural practices. We argue that digital platforms have reshaped the production and consumption patterns of Chinese live musical performance. Focusing on the ShowStart platform as a case study, we measured the role of the platform by collecting and analysing its performance records over a two-year period and observed the rising influence of independent small labels and small-scale performance venues in China’s live music industry. Live houses, a special type of small venues that used to be niche subcultural spaces dominated by underground musicians, have become popular urban cultural consumption spaces in this platform era, expanding rapidly in large cities and expected to gradually penetrate lower-level cities. Furthermore, with the increasing commercialization of the live music market under platformization, we point out that the state’s digital surveillance of the industry is also increasing, and the state’s urban resource allocation for live music venues may be misplaced.

Lukautim Yu Yet Gut (Take Good Care of Yourself): Moka Gomo Women Pursuing Health in Papua New Guinea

Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with women in Imbonggu (Southern Highlands Province), this article explores contemporary cultural beliefs and health practices, including health-seeking experiences. We show that contrary to some expectations, women do believe in biomedicine and their cultural beliefs do not generally seem to prevent them from seeking medical care. We find that women aspire to ‘take good care’ of themselves, and repeatedly pursue medical treatment, even when a cure is elusive. Contemporary cultural values such as comfort, strength and freedom encourage women to use medical services and they rarely engage with healers categorised as traditional. Reproductive abandonment in Papua New Guinea includes failing to provide medical infrastructure, failing to recognise the structural and social origins of ill health, and making assumptions or generalisations about women’s health beliefs and behaviours. These conditions limit women’s ability to have healthy (re)productive lives.

Intimate Archives: Interventions on Gender, Sexuality and Intimacies

ABSTRACT Across the Global North and South, there have been exciting engagements with the concept of the archive in recent decades. These debates are of both scholarly and political significance, especially when it comes to contemporary struggles for minority rights, belonging, and recognition. The overlapping fields of gender, sexuality, and queer studies have made major contributions to rethinking the archive - to raise new and important questions about gendered and sexualised intimacies, affect, memory, historical formations, activism and contemporary cultural practice. Contributing to this growing body of work, the present Special Issue: Intimate Archives: Interventions on Gender, Sexuality and Intimacy presents cutting-edge scholarship in African studies - working from various disciplinary standpoints - to occupy, engage and play with the archive as a politically urgent and intellectually productive theme. In this introduction, we underscore how the contributions to the volume mobilise the ‘archive' as more than an institution or a place; it works as an underlying metaphor and a call for thorough contextualisation and a radical re-imagination of the historical experiences - the intimate historicity – of gendered and sexualised lives amidst societal and political change, from colonialism to liberation, from criminalisation of sexual ‘deviance’ to ongoing struggles for visibility and rights not only in Africa but in the broader Global South.

Animation sociocultural activities management

The purpose of the article is further generalization of animation sociocultural activities management within the context of general theory and practice of culture management and characteristic features of realization of contemporary cultural practices, investigation of ASCA management within the context of general culture processes management system under conditions of destabilization of society.
 The methodology. Based on the systematic approach, contemporary culture management analysis method and sociocultural animation con-cepts generalization method were used. Connection between culture management and animation acti-vities was explicated. Synthesis of scientific stances enables proposing a new take on general and specific aspects of managing contemporary sociocultural animation. Comparison of scientific stances enables uncovering development prospects of culture practices in the post-crisis period and provides an opportunity to propose their transformation direction.
 The results. Investigation of animation sociocultural activities management within contemporary scientific and practical contexts is multi-leveled (broad and narrow context). Connection to applied cultural studies enables analyzing ASCA management as maintenance of quality of sociocultural interaction, creation of organizational conditions for invigorating society subjects and regulating culture-creating being in the post-crisis period. Connection of different culture management levels enables implementation of the animation effect of sociocultural activities in various constituents of a respective field (teaching, recreation, tourism etc.). Effectiveness of regulating sociocultural animation depends on systematic view on its performance under conditions of contemporary culture senses creation, coherence of management and integration levels of means of animation, coordination of performance of main management functions, taking into account its specificity within the culture space, and ensuring adherence to animation activities principles.
 The scientific topicality. Contemporary global challenges (pandemics, military conflicts, total informatization) upon encountering permanent issues of society (socioeconomic troubles, ideological rigidity and value instability) become not only causes for change of a culture model, but also cause a search for productive innovative answers, which will become the basis for further culture-creation in the post-crisis period. Effectiveness of the idea of animation in the sociocultural field was proven both in theoretical research and thanks to realization of cultural practices. It is known that animation is the synonym for invigoration, sometimes even identified as social creativity, and is a factor of overcoming social extinction and alienation.
 The practical significance. Culture management enables not only realization of management functions, but also accompanies motivation of subject stance, hastens interaction in the culture field, supports and leads to carrying out initiative in a sociocultural space. Innovative approaches to sociocultural animation are brought into being through topical practices, which require thorough planning, organization, coordination and effectiveness control. Thanks to culture management, not only technical and material resources for activation of animation idea through understanding, explaining, promoting and realizing it in specific actions are regulated, but also intellectual, creative and information ones as well, which modernizes contemporary sociocultural processes.

Bonding with the Lord: Jagannath, Popular Culture and Community Formation ed. by Jyotirmaya Tripathy and Uwe Skoda

Reviewed by: Bonding with the Lord: Jagannath, Popular Culture and Community Formation ed. by Jyotirmaya Tripathy and Uwe Skoda Tracy Coleman Tripathy, Jyotirmaya, and Uwe Skoda, eds. Bonding with the Lord: Jagannath, Popular Culture and Community Formation. New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2020. Building on work undertaken in the Orissa Research Projects—ORP I in the early 1970s, ORP II in the early 2000s—this collection of essays further expands the scope of Jagannath studies. While the publications following ORP I focused on Puri and examined the religio-political history of Jagannath, and works resulting from ORP II shifted the focus to various peripheral traditions in Odisha and their connections with Puri, the present volume explores "what Jagannath means in everyday contexts" (xvi). As the editors state in their theoretically rich introduction, "while not derecognising the historical Jagannath, what is attempted here is a novel look at the deployment of Jagannath in contemporary and popular cultural practices involving the sensorium in the widest sense. The project of culturalising and vernacularising Jagannath … not only materialises Jagannath in people's everyday practices but also democratises Jagannath scholarship, hitherto confined to institutional and textual articulations" (xvii). Far from "desacralising Jagannath and reducing devotees to consumers" (xviii), such an approach recognizes multiple registers and "multiple ways of experiencing sacred and secular Jagannath" and "highlight[s] people's agency" in the production and mediation of Jagannath culture (xix–xx). The volume is divided into three sections: (1) mediating Jagannath, including four chapters examining sight, sound, cinema, and performative spiritual discourse (prabachana) as modes of mediation; (2) practicing Jagannath, where three chapters explore food/prasad culture, household rituals, and devotional music as modes of practice; and (3) re-placing Jagannath, with three chapters focused on temples outside Odisha—in Chennai, New Delhi, and Agartala in Tripura; a final chapter by editor Uwe Skoda reflects on scholarly communities of practice and collaboration between European and Indian scholars in advancing Jagannath studies, and on their work thus far, including manuscripts and archives, publications and conferences, and exhibitions. Together these multidisciplinary studies exploring "bonding with the Lord" make a notable contribution to bhakti studies, asserting the significance of affect in embodied forms [End Page 444] of devotion entailing emotional and physical bonding among devotees and between devotees and Jagannath. In addition to the strong introduction that provides a theoretical framework for the volume overall, the chapters in section one, titled "Mediating Jagannath," identify central themes of omnipresence, accessibility, and intimacy underlying the analyses in every chapter. Just as Jagannath's state cult is associated with watchfulness and protection (9), so his internationally recognized eyes become the site of bonding in darshan and bhakti (6). As his familiar image circulates in the global marketplace far from Puri and Odisha, the "quintessential Jagannath" embodies the "presence of the sacred not only in the secular but also in the ordinary" (21). Divine presence becomes intimately accessible not only visually, but also aurally, in vernacular devotional songs (janana), made more popular, portable, and affordable as music technology advanced in the twentieth century (chapter 2). Similarly in film (chapter 3) and prabachana (chapter 4), vernacular media reach literate and illiterate alike, eventually traversing the Internet as well, enabling Odias in the diaspora to cultivate bhakti for Jagannatha. In all such forms of "material religion," the senses are engaged (78), inviting devotees everywhere, and in their everyday lives, to be "in communion with Jagannath" (82), and to encounter divinity in all that is ordinary (84-85). Illustrating these underlying themes, two chapters are especially compelling. In chapter 5, "Eating with Eyes: The Food Economy of Jagannath Culture," Umasankar Patra examines prasad that is cooked and sold in Odisha's urban temples and spiritual centers beyond Puri. Patra argues convincingly that such commercialization of "deterritorialized" prasad represents a democratization of Jagannath culture "driven by the 'periphery' to subvert the centralization of authority symbolised in the Puri temple" (92-93). In chapter 9, "Delhiwallah Jagannath and the Odia Diaspora," Gautam Choubey provides a social history of Delhi's temples at Hauz Khas and Thyagraj Nagar, examining how Jagannath culture "facilitate[s] secular enterprises such as occupational migration, community formations and even cultural revival in a foreign environment" (180). Evidence...

More than Needle and Thread: Inuit Knowledge Sharing and Well-being through Community-based Programs

ABSTRACT Community-based educational programs coordinated and run by local residents, Inuit organizations, and nonprofit organizations are periodically offered in communities in Nunavut. This article presents examples of these programs from the communities of Kangiqłiniq (Rankin Inlet) and Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet) as well as programs connecting Inuit with belongings in museum collections held outside of Nunavut. The research involved anthropological methods of participant observation, interviews, and ethnographic insights from experiences of organizing and participating in programs. Indigenous research methodologies also guide the research. We elaborate how community-based programs provide opportunities for Inuit knowledge generation and transmission while contributing to well-being and community cohesion. These programs can (re)connect and engage Inuit with knowledge of the land, traditional and contemporary cultural practices, and Inuit belongings that have been disconnected from communities and individuals through colonial processes.

Living life or denying death? Towards an understanding of the bucket list

ABSTRACT Since the movie The Bucket List was released in 2007, the practice of compiling a list of things that people wish to achieve during their lifetime – a bucket list – has become increasingly popular amongst not only those who have received a terminal diagnosis (as in the movie) but also the wider population. Moreover, predominant in such lists are tourism-related goals. Surprisingly, however, little academic attention has been paid to the role and significance of the bucket list. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the literature. Drawing on the outcomes of an exploratory survey framed within terror management theory (TMT), it considers the relationship between the bucket list and existential anxieties and, in particular, the extent to which a fear of death motivates the compilation of such a list. The research reveals that the compiling a bucket list has become a contemporary cultural practice which, though evidently a means of managing existential anxieties, is also an explicit manifestation of consumption directed towards the creation of identity and self-esteem. The paper concludes by identifying future areas of research in the context of the bucket list.

АКТУАЛЬНІ КУЛЬТУРНО-МИСТЕЦЬКІ ПРАКТИКИ ТА ПРОЦЕСИ: ПРОБЛЕМАТИКА НАУКОВОГО ДИСКУРСУ

The purpose of the article is to specify the definition of relevant terms and concepts in the paradigm of applied cultural studies. The article reviews the concepts of “cultural practices and processes”, “art practices”, “art processes” and issues regarding the term definition and their combination. It defines “Cultural Science”, “Cultural Studies”, and “Culturology”, and places art practices in cultural discourse and “contemporary issue” in the system of the contemporary art research. Thus, at the present stage, it is essential to consider the art and cultural research issues because of their crucial social point. The research methodology applies methods of the system-wide cultural approach, in particular, the method of synthesis, which has helped to compare and generalise research sources and literature; system method for analysis of cultural aspects of art processes. Thus, with the help of the methods mentioned above, we collected the existing theories on an appreciation of the issue’s properties and gave scientific credence to it. The scientific novelty of the article is to express a comprehensive definition of “contemporary art and cultural practices and processes”; to clarify the role of the object in interdisciplinary research using the analysis of the international and domestic scientific discussion of theoretical and practical research of art and cultural practices. Conclusions. Thus, researching Cultural Studies as an interdisciplinary field that examines the ties between political and social relations and the impact of cultural processes in general, we propose an author’s definition of “contemporary art and cultural practices and processes”. By them, we imply the civil significant and the incredibly innovative aesthetic activity of a person/people associated with the creation of art pieces, their acquisition by public spaces, preservation, permanent application or demonstration, as well as a qualitative change in the states or phenomena of art forms, systems, objects, interactions that occur during the development of global or definite society culture, and are considered up-to-date at the time of their emergence and generate an acute social resonance. Contemporary art and cultural processes are characterised by uniqueness, and their variability is determined by a combination of conditions and circumstances. For this purpose, they are dynamic forms, and art and cultural practices can be treated as artefacts of these forms.

The felt value of reading zines

This article explores the meaning and materiality of contemporary zines. As do-it-yourself and profit-resistant publications seeing a sustained resurgence, zines are an interesting and valuable case within the cultural sociology of reading. Based on a thematic analysis of 73 zines collected from a 2019 zine fair, and qualitative interviews with 16 zine readers, in this article we consider the ‘felt value’ (Simmel 2005 [1916]) of zines. We explore how contemporary zines—via their content and form—intimately speak to both the weight and frivolity of life, how they intensively grapple with questions about relationships and ways of living, and what this means for how meaning is made material(ly) in the form. Conceptually, we bring together Thumala Olave’s (2017, 2020) work on affect and reading with Alexander’s (2008a, b) work on iconicity and immersion and Bennett’s (2018a, b) work on the significance and diversification of DIY projects in contemporary cultural practice. We identify four iconic properties of the contemporary form: a DIY ethos and aesthetic, anti-mainstream positioning, an intimacy, and an intensity. These iconic properties offer insight into how reading zines is made meaningful through the iconicity and immersive materiality of the analogue zine form.

Aspects of the "carnivalization" of contemporary cultural practices

The relevance of the article is due to the need to reflect on a new cultural phenomenon that presents the cultural practices of modern chronotopos. The philosophical and cultural concepts of the state of culture are analyzed and the tendencies reflecting instability (transitivity), uncertainty, ambivalence of cultural practices and carnivalization of all spheres of life are revealed. The philosophical reflection of the essence, character, signs of carnivalization made it possible to explicate the phenomenon of "carnival" through its ideological and behavioral components. In the context of the dialogue of medieval and contemporary culture, the essence of carnivalization as a phenomenon of culture is revealed. This context is considered as a special means of restoring the integrity of worldview, world outlook, world attitude. The problem of cultural practices orientation to their value-semantic (axiological) uplift is also actualized. The nature and essence of such categories as "carnival laughter", "carnival freedom", "carnival behavior", "ambivalence" are investigated, characteristic features of carnivalisation are identified and it can be considered as a way of modeling and constructing contemporary cultural reality. The fact that the modern cultural space creates conditions not only for the functioning of carnivalization within the primary function - renewal, creation of a new life-world, but also a new world-view and meaning-making. The constructive role of cultural dialogue in the process of praxeological growth of the subjects of carnivalization has been determined. It is shown that the concept of carnivalization of Mikhail Bakhtin remains relevant at the present stage of cultural development. The discovery of carnivalization as a certain signal of the crisis of culture and the way out of it gives reason to consider carnivalization as a factor of self-organization of culture, as a complex organized system.

One: Egúngún curated by Kristen Windmuller-Luna

One: Egúngún curated by Kristen Windmuller-Luna

Reopening the Bunker: An Architectural Investigation of the Post-war Fate of Four Scottish Nuclear Bunkers

The Cold War bunker stands as an anomalous, bulky reminder of an era of both existential anxiety and high-modernist optimism within architecture. Quickly abandoned at the end of the Cold War, since the early 1990s these remains have attracted increasing interest from enthusiasts, heritage professionals and academics, and attempts have also been made to find new uses for them. This article will examine — from an architectural perspective — this cultural re-engagement and the potential for renovation and adaptive reuse of these structures. Through a consideration of the post-war fate of four Scottish bunker sites — Barnton Quarry, Gairloch, Cultybraggan and Kirknewton — the lingering influence of preparation for war, and adaptation for peace will be traced, examining the ongoing cultural production of these places through their mnemonic resonances across wider architectural canon, and their symbiotic relationship with the contemporary cultural practices which valorize them.

Plato’s “Republic”: Sample of Proto-Project Mental Activity and Primary Experience in the Design of New Social Forms

The author devotes the article to the analysis of Plato’s “Republic” in the context of the Genesis of project thinking and project activity as an anthropological result going back to the early stages of culture and primary personality-oriented ancient practices. The research attempts to trace the scheme of the movement of “project ideas” proposed by Plato “designer”. Later these ideas would be widely known as “an ideal state” and for many centuries would become a model of government. Plato’s “project ideas” considered by the author still remain in demand and are actively used in contemporary project cultural practices. For this purpose, the author makes the transition to the plane of historical and cultural retrospective of the origin of project thinking phenomenon with the objective twists and turns of its genesis. The author also attempts to reflect on this process, to study and clarify a number of points related to the prelude and dynamics of the development of the project approach to the organization of modern reality. At the same time, the text substantiates the author’s position on the interpretation of Plato’s “Republic” as an early typical example of Proto-project thinking formed in the depths of ancient cultural practices. Project thinking is a promising project of the existence of culture, a kind of matrix of self-realization of a significant part of our contemporaries. The main conclusion of the study is the ability to recognize the work of Plato “State” as one of the first samples of proto-design on the basis of the presence of a large number of typological features of design and the absence of a smaller number of such. We believe that Plato’s work “Republic” on most parameters falls under the concept of “project activity”, because in it we were able to identify most of the components of socio-cultural design.

The heritage of slavery in British jazz festivals

ABSTRACT This article explores site-specific heritage questions of the contemporary cultural practice of festivals of jazz – a key transatlantic music form – by bringing together three areas for discussion and development: questions of slavery heritage and legacy; the location, built environment and (touristic) offer of the historic city; and the contemporary British jazz festival, its programme and the senses or silences of (historical) situatedness in the festival package. Other artistic forms, cultural practices and festivals are involved in self-reflexive efforts to confront their own pasts; such are discussed as varying processes of the decolonisation of knowledge and culture. This provides the critical and cultural context for consideration of the jazz festival in the Georgian urban centre. Preliminary analysis of relevant jazz festivals’ programmes, commissions and concerts leads to interrogating the relationship – of silence, of place – between jazz in Britain, historic or heritage locations and venues, and the degree or lack of understanding of the transatlantic slave trade. The heritage centres clearly associated with the slave trade that also have significant (jazz) festivals referred to include Bristol, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Lancaster, Liverpool, London, and Manchester.

“To learn healing knowledge”: Philosophy, psychedelic studies and transformation

“Philosophical learning” may be summarised in Sobiecki’s fitting catchphrase “to learn healing knowledge”. This catchphrase is taken from an article on the use of psychoactive plants among southern African diviners. In the spirit of this link, I aim to challenge contemporary negative attitudes to the topic of psychedelics, and argue that there are good reasons for philosophers to pay attention to the role that the psychedelic experience can play in promoting philosophical perception. I argue first that the results of some contemporary studies affirm the benefits of psychedelic use in an “orchestrated guided experience”. Secondly, I argue that the aims of such “orchestrated guided experiences” are consonant with the nature of philosophical learning. Philosophy, understood as a learning practice, has a strong historical precedent and ties to contemporary indigenous cultural practices. Here I cite research into the use of psychedelics and the Eleusinian Mysteries at the origin of Western philosophy. Numerous cultures, ancient and contemporary, venerate psychoactive substances as agents of learning, healing, and transformation. Thus, contemporary mainstream philosophy may have opportunities to learn, or relearn, from southern African indigenous cultural practices. Considering the positive light in which the topic of psychedelics will be painted, I will conclude by suggesting that psychedelics have the potential to play an important role in fostering the deeply transformative “philosophical learning” that is the condition for positive social change. This makes the topic of psychedelics worthy of philosophical reflection.

DIY peer review and monograph publishing in the arts and humanities

In order to explore monograph peer review in the arts and humanities, this article introduces and discusses an applied example, examining the route to publication of Danielle Fuller and DeNel Rehberg Sedo’s Reading Beyond the Book: The Social Practices of Contemporary Literary Culture (2013). The book’s co-authors supplemented the traditional ‘blind’ peer-review system with a range of practices including the informal, DIY review of colleagues and ‘clever friends’, as well as using the feedback derived from grant applications, journal articles and book chapters. The article ‘explodes’ the book into a series of documents and non-linear processes to demonstrate the significance of the various forms of feedback to the development of Fuller and Rehberg Sedo’s monograph. The analysis reveals substantial differences between book and article peer-review processes, including an emphasis on marketing in review forms and the pressures to publish, which the co-authors navigated through the introduction of ‘clever friends’ to the review processes. These findings, drawing on science and technology studies, demonstrate how such a research methodology can identify how knowledge is constructed in the arts and humanities and potential implications for the valuation of research processes and collaborations.

Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka by Dick Blau and Rick March

Reviewed by: Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka by Dick Blau and Rick March Kari Veblen Dick Blau and Rick March, Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015. 200 pp. $29.95. In Polka Heartland, glorious photographs and compelling narrative showcase the polka as a midwestern genre with particular focus on the Wisconsin context. Stereotypes are simple—contemporary cultural practices are anything but. In the case of the polka, this infectious art-form defies easy classification. The polka is both a dance and a loosely defined kind of music. Neither music nor dance steps are monolithic as there are diasporic interpretations through German, Polish, Croatian, Tex-Mex, Irish, Czech-Bohemian, Yugoslav, Scandinavian, and other polka variants. Collaborators Dick Blau and Rick March create an absorbing account here with their combined talents. Professor Emeritus of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Dick Blau's photography is exhibited in [End Page 100] numerous museum collections. Blau's subjects range from psychological portraiture, to personal family dynamics, to celebrations that include music and dance, ritual and gesture. He has documented polka extensively and co-authored three photo-ethnographies. Musician and folklorist Richard March brings his deep immersion in the polka scene as well as his considerable experiences as Wisconsin State Folklorist and co-host of Wisconsin Public Radio's "Down Home Dairyland." These collaborators are well positioned to continue the growing scholarship of this vernacular practice alongside colleagues such as James P. Leary, Victor Greene, Robert Waltzer, Charles Keil, Angeliki Keil, Paula Savaglio, David J. Jackson, Ann Hetzel Gunkel and others. The book unfolds in ten chapters, beginning with the author's own connections to polka, followed by an account of the 1986 Ellsworth Polka Festival. Chapter two explores origins of the polka, which exploded as a European dance fad in the 1840s. March examines and questions early accounts of traditional origins: Connecting the polka to peasant origins would have appealed to Romantic-era intellectuals, who were infatuated with the idea of peasant culture but had little knowledge of actual peasants and their ways. … In fact, no one can show a specific central European peasant dance that clearly is the antecedent of the polka. (27) March considers the waltz, an earlier couples' dance that shocked conservative sensibilities, to be a more likely model for the later, even more shocking polka. Chapter three traces polka's migration to America as a craze hitting New York in the 1840s. At this time polka was a mainstream dance unconnected to ethnicity and so popular that entrepreneurs linked their products to the dance. Save for the polka dot, most of these commercial enterprises are forgotten. Polka sheet music illustrations memorialize local doings and fashions: fabulous fowls on display for Barnum's National Poultry Show, Punch and Judy puppet shows, and politically oriented themes such as "The Battery Wagner" honoring the Southern Confederacy. The "Hippopotamus Polka" commemorated the 1850 gift of a young hippo to the London Zoo from the Ottoman pasha of Egypt and is preserved in a copper-plate etching of a hippopotamus in suit coat cavorting with a hoop-skirted lady in ringlets and bows. [End Page 101] American variations of the dance are explored through chapter four. Factors such as the development of instruments (saxophone, accordions and concertinas) and instrumental groups such as the brass band and marching band fed into emerging polka variations. March comments that nationally-identified polka traditions were in a period of incubation from the 1880s to 1920s, and that ethnic variations beginning to emerge toward the end of that time period. Chapters five through nine sample the diversity of current polka styles in the Upper Midwest: Wisconsin "Bohemian," Dutchman-style, Polish, Slovenian, and Mexican variations. In this section vignettes, mini-ethnographies, and interviews brings the dance to life. Key figures in each genre as well as instrument makers, important musical families, and influential bands are highlighted. As well, there are interludes throughout the book devoted to beer's long association with the dance, the Polka Mass, the Concertina Bar and other topics. In chapter five, the Wisconsin "Bohemian" style is represented by an array of ensembles derived from town...

Sisterly Disaffection: Women's Colleges, Theatre and the Limits of Dissent

This essay explores contemporary cultural practices of feminist politics emerging within the women's college campus at the University of Delhi. Through the study of two examples of a public demonstration and campaign against high prices of certain essential provisions and a formal performance outside the campus, the essay tries to map cultural practices, transgressions and political potentials, but also the limits and shortcomings. The essay intends to read these examples through a gender critique and alternate registers of sisterhood, collective imagination and solidarity.

The Emergence of the Contemporary: Japanese Postwar Art in Twenty-First-Century Brazil

34 Portfolio Curated by Pedro Erber The Emergence of the Contemporary: Japanese Postwar Art in Twenty-­ First-­ Century Brazil On July 14, 2016, The Emergence of the Contemporary: Avant-­Garde Art in Japan,1950–­1970 opened at Rio de Janeiro’s Paço Imperial. The exhibition was on view until August 28, thus coinciding with Rio’s 2016 Olympic Games. I curated the show with the collaboration of Suzuki Katsuo and the support of the Japan Foundation. We presented a panorama of avant-­ garde art in Japan between 1950 and 1970, focusing on artists whose practice and theoretical reflections marked the transition from painting toward three-­dimensional objects, performance, and conceptual art. We brought together some of the most representative works of the period as well as documentary photographs, films, and other historical items. The exhibition thus contextualized the trajectory of the avant-­garde in its dialogue with events that shaped the history of the postwar era, such as the movements against the renewal of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (ANPO) in 1960 and 1970, the Expo ’70 in Osaka, and, in particular, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It was the first major exhibition of Japanese avant-­garde art ever to take place in Brazil. This Portfolio feature presents an annotated record of The Emergence of the Contemporary. It combines an account of the exhibition’s framework and content with reflections on the goals, implications, and challenges of showing postwar Japanese art in twenty-­ first-­ century Brazil and a discussion of the tactics we developed for approaching this task. I chart the curatorial strategies we devised to bring the radical creativity of Japan ’s postwar avant-­ garde into dialogue with the past and present of Brazilian art and with the contemporary social and political moment. In Figure 1. A Emergência do Contemporâneo: Vanguarda no Japão, 1950–­ 1970. Exhibition invitation model in Portuguese. 36 Portfolio addition, I discuss the theoretical underpinnings of our attempt to unsettle conventional views about Japanese art, the origins and the stakes of contemporary art, and the transnational panorama of contemporary cultural practices.1 In the decades following the Second World War, Japan was the stage for some of the most radically innovative avant-­ garde movements of the twentieth century. Visual artists, critics, and writers engaged in a common effort to reinvent the place of art in a society rebuilding itself after the devastation of war and years of cultural censorship under the fascist regime of the Japanese empire. In 1963, Miyakawa Atsushi, one of the most acute theoreticians of postwar art in Japan, observed that the reach and nature of the transformations taking place in artistic expression were such that the modern paradigm had become obsolete, and in its place emerged a new paradigm, which he termed, in almost premonitory fashion, “contemporary art” (gendai bijutsu) (Miyakawa 1980, 16). Miyakawa’s observation not only referred to Japanese art, which was not an isolated phenomenon, but also reflected a general effort to think contemporaneity as the sharing of a common historical time across national , linguistic, and cultural borders. The goal of attaining contemporaneity (dōjidaisei) with the international art world was regarded as a crucial task among artists and critics in postwar Japan (see Tomii 2016, 11–­44). Implicitly subscribing to an understanding of historical time as a kind of universal progressive development, from which Japan had been supposedly cut off during the fascist era, they regarded catching up with Western modernity and bringing Japanese art “up to date” as the first, inevitable step toward the possibility of authentic artistic expression. To catch up with Euro-­American modernity and attain “international contemporaneity” or “world relevance” (sekai-­sei) was not only a matter of reinventing the role of art within Japan’s postwar society but of reinventing the role of Japan within the postwar international order (see Winther-­ Tamaki 2001, 15–­ 16). It is therefore no wonder that, perhaps more than anywhere else, the emergence of contemporary art as a discursive category in postwar Japan went hand in hand with a pressing sense of—­ and preoccupation with—­ contemporaneity. Yet the contemporaneity of Japanese postwar art, which we sought to...