Cultural Activism Research Articles

PERAN COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM DALAM MENDUKUNG KAMPUNG JELEKONG SEBAGAI DESA WISATA SENI DAN BUDAYA

This research was conducted to describe the role of community based tourism in supporting Jelekong village as an arts and cultural tourism village. Research using the method used is desk research, this study utilizes secondary data as a source of literature. The results of this study indicate the role of the community in supporting Jelekong Village as an Arts and Culture Tourism Village. The results showed that positive community attitudes and participation in supporting cultural tourism villages seen from the many types of cultural activist groups as well as cultural actors in the Village Arts & Culture Tourism Village can encourage coordination and cooperation in tourism village organizations. Improved community skills and village policies also support the development of tourist villages. Tourism activities in this village can have multiple impacts on the growth of the community's life sector, especially economic improvement through additional income from tourist visits. The main motivation for the community in carrying out art activities is to maintain and enhance the uniqueness as an art and cultural tourism village in supporting sustainable tourism.

Youth participation in traditional cultural practices in contemporary Tumu: An exposé on the Ceremonial Costume Art of Fuowie Nasolo, a youth cultural iconic figure in Tumu

Youth participation in traditional cultural practices in contemporary Africa (Ghana) has been on the decline due to the alarming rate at which African youth assimilate foreign cultures. Many African (Ghanaian) youth nowadays mock African (Ghanaian) ethnic cultures in favour of Western cultures. However, previous research suggests youth cultural activism in Tumu, Ghana. This positive development has the tendency to preserve and promote the cultural identity of Tumu. This study, therefore, sought to establish the motivation behind youth participation in traditional cultural practices in contemporary Tumu with a specific focus on the costume art of Fuowie Nasolo, a youth cultural iconic figure in Tumu. Qualitative descriptive analysis of interview transcripts and photographic data gathered from twenty-five (25) heterogenous-purposively sampled informants reveal that youth cultural activism in contemporary Tumu is engendered by the sustained cultural tutelage provided by the elders of Tumu. Additionally, it was emphasised that youth cultural participation in contemporary Tumu is extrinsically motivated by the admirable cultural activism of Fuowie, the unifying leader of Tumu youth cultural group. A cursory study of the cultural manifestations of Fuowie’s ceremonial costume art, reveals the royal, heroic, and wardress culture of the indigenes of Tumu. Since Fuowie’s cultural activism significantly complements the effort of Tumu elders in promoting youth cultural participation, the study calls for sustained collaboration between Fuowie and the elders of Tumu to massively promote youth participation in traditional cultural activities for cultural preservation, cultural restoration, and the construction of authentic cultural identity of the people of Tumu for posterity.

Transgressive marginalities in youth pop culture: negotiating the challenges of the post-colony in contemporary Zimbabwe

In the last two decades, Zimbabwe has faced a series of intractable political and socio-economic crises, resulting in abject economic collapse, stratospheric levels of inflation and massive youth unemployment. The country’s youth have responded to these endless crises through creative artistic expression via music and satirical videos, which are often circulated on social media platforms. This cultural activism by Zimbabwean youth is indicative of the distinctive ways in which the intersections of media globalization and situated local conditions have animated new popular cultural forms by youth in Africa. This paper, harnesses Nancy Fraser’s (Fraser, N., 1990. Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text (25-26), 56–80) concept of alternative public spheres and Mikhail Bakhtin’s (Bakhtin, M., 1984. Rabelais and his world. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.) notion of the carnival to analyse young people’s satirical videos posted on social media as creative responses that are used to protest the lived realities of economically marginalized youths even as they articulate significant needs and aspirations of their own. The paper views and analyses social media as a platform that is used to criticise and lampoon post-colonial excesses by the ruling elite who wield political and economic power. Youth popular culture is explored as a platform on which urban youths have sought to highlight and to contest the politics of survival in contemporary Zimbabwe in some highly creative and innovative ways.

Between visibility and elsewhere: South Asian queer creative cultures and resistance

ABSTRACT This article draws on existing interviews and creative material from LGBTQ + South Asians who have lived and spent significant time in the UK as part of the Cross Border Queers project. It begins by considering creative forms of diasporic activism and creativity in the UK that have emerged from South Asian LGBTQ + communities and individuals. We discuss the ways in which South Asian LGBTQ + diasporic organising was formed through a sense of shared racial and class solidarity and especially under the umbrella of political Blackness. We then move on to the role played by cultural activism to see how artists have used culture as a way to advance social change and increase the visibility of South Asian LGBTQ + communities in the UK. We place different genres of visual culture, curation, performance and oral history to evoke how South Asian queer migrants articulate a distinct form of subjectivity and aesthetic practice.

Tragom jedne fotografije - tablo maturanata Srpske pravoslavne bogoslovsko-učiteljske škole u Prizrenu 1896. godine

This story of the life paths of the teachers and students of the seminary is told on the trail of a photograph, that is, a tableau of the graduates of the Serbian Orthodox Theological-Teaching School in Prizren, in 1896. It is about their contribution to education, church, Christianity, theology, literature, ethnology, and science. Like other photographs created in studios throughout the Serbian cultural space, they are more than documents, they are an inexhaustible treasure for historians and other cultural workers. They visually remind us of our ancestors and tell us about a time that no longer exists, the time of nobility. Professors and graduates are dressed according to the European style of clothing, unusual for those occasions and that time, when professors had to wear a fez, so as not to be distinguished from citizens of other religions. The place and time of the photograph is the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire, Kosovo Vilayet, the 'Dark Vilayet'! An authentic 1896 photo from Prizren is a true rarity. There is no information on taking photos in the archival material of the Theological School, but one thing is certain, the photography was created in Prizren that year, but the name of the photographer is unknown. There are 27 people on the tableau, rector Ilarion (Ivan) Vesić, eight teachers, Trivun Dimitrijević, Kosta Lozanić, Mihailo S. Tasić, Milan Gajić, Sava Jakić, Danilo (Nedeljković), Vasilije Stojanović, Apostol Filipovic, and 18 graduates, Toma Burković, Ljubomir A. Bulatović Ibrijski, Milutin V. Vukić, Janićije (Naća) Živković, Janko Đorđević, Haralampije Ilić, Pantelija Mandić, Dusan Nekic, Milan Nikšić, Radivoje R. Orlović, Atanasije Petrović, Blagoje Petrović, Obrad Popović, Nikola Rožić, Mladen Stojanović, Petar Ćićarić, Vladimir Popović and Zdravko Tasić. This is the first generation of high school graduates who completed the six-year Serbian Orthodox Theological-Teaching School. The Council of the Theological School declared them capable of being teachers and they were issued with certificates of teacher training. When they finished their education, they were between 17 and 26 years old. Except for one student who continued his education at the Belgrade Theological School, all the others were appointed as teachers. Obviously, the need for trained teachers throughout Old Serbia was great that year. In further service, five students were ordained as priests, one teacher became a merchant. Only one former student finished the Spiritual Academy, and two continued their education after the Theological School. Of the 18 students, five were from Prizren, three from the surrounding area. For the first time, a student from Bosnia attended the Theological School. Four young men were from Macedonia, two from Montenegro, two from the Kingdom of Serbia, and one from Kosovo. Of the nine teachers, four had university degrees, two were monks, which was a requirement for the Theological School. In different years, they were able to make contact with the students and help them not only as teachers, but also as guardians, because it was a boarding school. The goal of the Theological School in Prizren was to educate and form an educated staff of teachers and priests, which it successfully realized. Teachers and priests in Old Serbia were, in addition to their vocation, a kind of national workers and cultural activists because the Theological School moulded them as patriots.

«ПЕРИФЕРИЙНАЯ СТОЛИЦА» ИЛИ ОБЩЕСОЮЗНЫЙ ЦЕНТР? ВЕКТОРЫ КУЛЬТУРНОГО РАЗВИТИЯ СВЕРДЛОВСКАВ 1940–1980-Х ГОДАХ

The paper examines the process of forming a cultural center of national level in Sverdlovsk, that is, a stable community of cultural actors working in one city and producing art which is measurably famous across throughout the country. The authors state that such cultural center arose in Sverdlovsk in the 1930s–1960s based on the acquired status of a “peripheral capital”, with Pavel P. Bazhov became the first Sverdlovsk literary figure possessing national popularity. Although local art and literary workers enjoyed certain popularity in the 1940s–1950s, it remained within a strict hierarchy of culture and was aimed at producing a “quasi-ethnic” Ural specificity. However, due to the socio-economic change of the 1960s, which led to the rapid growth of intelligentsia and bureaucracy (mainly in the fields of science, technology, planning, and projecting) in the city, Sverdlovsk cultural actors started to pursue innovative strategies, based on fashion, humanism, environmentalism, and historicism, to satisfy the growing non-market demand. Thus, in a planned economy, for the emergence of a national cultural center, not only stably funded cultural institutions were required, but also the presence of scientific and technical non-market demand, which would allow one to go beyond the strict hierarchy of cultural centers in a centralized Soviet system.

Provincial Cities’ Anniversaries and the Formation of Soviet “Peripheral Capitals”

This article analyses some aspects of the socioeconomic and political uses of anniversaries in the Soviet and contemporary Russian history to boost the development of the territory. Initially, the desire of the young Soviet state to sever all ties with the past made the “anniversary question” almost absurd. Soviet anniversary traditions formed in the late 1920s–1930s when the 3rd, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th anniversaries of organisations and enterprises were celebrated everywhere. The article also mentions personal anniversaries, which celebrated the time of work in a particular institution, or in a particular specialty and other reasons. Additionally, the author considers the political decisions of the Soviet / Russian authorities on the regulation of the “anniversary question”. Starting with the late 1940s, the anniversary of a city could be a political campaign, a way of symbolic mobilisation and accumulation of resources. On the other hand, cities’ anniversaries caused a surge in local historical and cultural activism, contributed to the formation of local lore communities, and stimulated the formation of local identity. Particular attention is paid to the resonant “dispute of historians” considering the date of foundation of the city of Perm at the turn of the 1970s, which is personified in the controversy between F. S. Gorovoy and B. N. Nazarovsky becoming a model for the establishment of anniversaries of local centres. A new interpretation of the above polemic is proposed in the context of the Soviet public history formation. The first full-scale anniversary of Perm (as well as a few other Soviet cities) demonstrated its potential as a socioeconomic technology and stimulated urban development and accumulation of the provincial / regional capital. The celebration of anniversaries forms a specific temporality of key dates and gives an impetus to the development of the symbolic component of metropolitan identity.

Exploring Sundanese Folklore in the Cultural Diversity of the Ciletuh Palabuhanratu Geopark, West Java, Indonesia

This research article is about the exploration of Sundanese folklore in the Ciletuh Palabuhanratu Geopark which is now also known as the Ciletuh Palabuhanratu UNESCO Global Geopark. It refers to an area along the south-west coast of Sukabumi West Java, Indonesia. The Ciletuh Palabuhanratu Geopark is rich not only with its natural diversity like geodiversity and biodiversity but also with its cultural diversity. This article is made as one of the outputs of the community service done in Waluran village in the Sukabumi regency of West Java. This village is just one tiny place situated in the vast areas of the Geopark. The problem is that the cultural diversity around the Geopark has not been thoroughly explored yet, including its folklore. Using qualitative method, this research is aimed at exploring the Sundanese folklore specifically the intangible one involving legends and tales through the active participation of the Palapah cultural activist community and the local tour guides. The community service results in the emergence of folklore explored by each target participant from their surrounding area and the majority of them deal with the naming of places called toponym. It can be explored that the geodiversity is reflected in the place names.

Javanese ethnomathematics: Exploration of the Tedhak Siten tradition for class learning practices

Tedhak Siten is a Javanese traditional ceremony that marks the 8th month of the baby’s age, marked by the baby's readiness to set foot on the ground. This tradition has a philosophical meaning with Javanese cultural values related to the concepts of calculating the ceremony time and the geometric shape of the ceremonial equipment used. The purpose of this study was to explore the cultural activities of the Javanese community by outlining the mathematical concepts contained in the implementation of the Tedhak Siten ceremony. This research was a qualitatively descriptive study through an ethnographic approach. Ethnomathematical data were collected from two experts those were the head of a traditional Javanese culture studio and a cultural actor active as a leader of Javanese traditional ceremonies. The ethnomathematics found in the study were counting the date or time for the implementation of the Tedhak Siten tradition and the elaboration of geometric concepts in the form of ceremonial equipment used to perform traditional customary procedures. This research had an impact as a mathematics learning material that originated from the wisdom of the local Javanese community by applying the concepts of time units, least common multiples, modulo 5, modulo 7, circles, triangles, rectangles, cylindrical volumes and spherical volumes.

Hatobangon: Character Building and Revitalization of Cultural Values in Panyabungan

Theoretically, the culture that is still running in a group is a sign that cultural actors still play a role in the midst of society. In this context, cultural moral values and actions should also color the cultural group. It is different in Panyabungan, although Panyabungan is known as a district that is thick with nuances of customs, some of the people in Panyabungan do not describe a community with character in accordance with local cultural values and moral actions. This article was written in order to see how hatobangon's role in guiding the character of the community in Panyabungan. The research method used in this article is filed research with a descriptive-qualitative approach then the data is analyzed reductively. The results of this study found that hatobangon in guiding the character of the community in Panyabungan was only limited through traditional ceremonial containers. Meanwhile, in revitalizing customary values, hatobangon only socializes customary values in the community in their daily associations. In conclusion, hatobangon in its role in guiding the character of indigenous peoples in Panyabungan needs wider space for movement and government involvement.

The Oral Traditions As Communication Media In Transforming Religious Culture Values At Bali-Hindu Community

This study aims to conduct a study of the practice of oral traditions used as a medium of communication in the transformation of religious culture values at the Balinese-Hindu community in Lombok. This phenomenon is related to the decrease in the intensity of the practice of oral traditions in the midst of the modern communication media flow as a consequence of technological developments, especially information technology. This research is designed in an interpretive qualitative type in order to study the shift in the use of traditional cultural communication media, especially in practices of oral traditions. This study found that the influence of modern communication media which is increasingly widespread in the midst of people's lives with technology that is constantly evolving provides flexibility for people to access religious messages conveyed to the public. The development of modern information technology has a significant impact on the preservation of oral traditions created by past civilizations which have been handed down to the Balinese-Hindu society nowdays. In this regard, it is necessary to participate in cultural activists and related parties in order to build awareness about the importance of preserving oral traditions as a medium for communicating noble values ​​in religious culture.

Indonesia’s G20 Presidency 2022: Connecting Soft Power and Digital Diplomacy Practice on Instagram

The purpose of this paper is to answer two research questions. The first one is how Indonesia utilizes culture as the soft power resource in G20 Presidency 2022 and the second one is the practice of Indonesia’s digital diplomacy on Instagram in G20 Presidency 2022. This research utilizes two conceptual frameworks, the concept of soft power and its cultural element, as well as the concept of public and digital diplomacy. The methodology used in this paper is a qualitative method. The primary data are gathered from Indonesia’s government statements and an official Instagram account that has been verified, @indonesia.g20, as a purposive sample. The secondary data of this article are taken from academic journals and e-books. All data used in this research are limited from December 2021 until May 2022 as part of the early phase of Indonesia’s G20 Presidency. The findings of this research are: (i) Indonesia uses the element of culture as part of promoting its soft power at the global stage through G20 by using cultural element in the G20 Presidency logo; (ii) the strategic issues regarding culture are combined with performances to showcase the variety of Indonesia’s cultural actors and communities; (iii) the practice of digital diplomacy, in terms of agenda-setting, has used three methods to spread information regarding the G20 agendas: by providing technical information, explaining substantive messages of G20 priority areas, and inviting active engagement through quizzes on G20 issues; and (iv) digital diplomacy on @indonesia.g20 Instagram account has covered the involvement of non-state actors.

Anu Mänd and Marek Tamm. Making Livonia: Actors and Networks in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region

Anu Mänd and Marek Tamm. <i>Making Livonia: Actors and Networks in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region</i>

Kultur als rurbane Ressource. Ethnografische Perspektiven auf Steuerungsprozesse von „Kunst und Kultur in ländlichen Räumen“

The article examines how “culture in rural areas” is conceptualized by cultural policy and cultural actors and which potentials of valorization are attributed to it. In doing so, I highlight the tensions that become evident in talking about arts and culture in rural areas and how these affect funding policies and self-perceptions of cultural actors. The effect of a distinction-oriented cultural dispositive is elaborated and its interaction with structures of cultural policy is presented. Finally I reflect on the effect of scholarly contributions in an application-oriented way to the debate on the value of arts and culture with a plea for a broad concept of culture.

Subverting war narrative in the purview of gender justice: Analysing Bishkanta (2015): A Liberation War documentary from Bangladesh

This article analyses how a Bangladeshi documentary film Bishkanta (The Poison Thorn) () directed by a feminist and cultural activist Farzana Boby negotiates the gendered war narrative of Bangladesh and how the film is being used as an enabling platform for the Birangonas (‘war-raped women’) to express their long-time endured suffering and outrage. The Liberation War of Bangladesh (1971) is amongst the most represented themes in Bangladeshi media culture. However, feminist scholars have been critical about the gender blindness of the depictions, with women’s experiences encoded only as victims. Hence, a documentary demanding recognition of women’s contributions and enabling space for women to speak about their losses, pains and grievance is an exception. By analysing the narrative techniques (i.e. plot, perspective, language and frames) this article shows how Bishkanta represents the stories of female rape survivors and make a claim for gender justice. Our findings suggest, despite Boby’s good intentions, Bishkanta has been reproducing the mainstream victimhood narrative ascribed to these women and occasionally reinscribing the gendered ideology of Liberation War in the mainstream nationalist discourse.

Taskla or The Creation of a New Literature

AbstractTaskla means literature in Tamazight. A neologism, taskla has been used since the 1980s by a group of Kabyle cultural activists, who had joined together in the academic association Imdyazen, to refer to modern literary genres that have been emerging in the field of Amazigh creation since at least the 1960s. Members of the Moroccan Association for Research and Cultural Exchange (AMREC) also adopted the term to encapsulate the work they were doing to construct the new Amazigh literature. This article reconstructs the choices that Moroccan Amazigh activists undertook to establish a full-fledged literary field between 1967 and the early 2000s. Contextualizing this new literature in a longer history of lmāzghī (Amazigh writing in Arabic script), the article reveals how a process of intentionality and active construction of the field has led to the development and current flourishing albeit changing, landscape of Amazigh literature.

Use this sound: Networked ventriloquism on Yiddish TikTok

This article explores body–voice entanglements in TikTok through the prism of ventriloquism. It suggests that TikTok is an app of network ventriloquism, that is, an audiovisual technology–based web of dissociations and reconfigurations of users’ bodies and voices. Yiddish serves as a case study for how TikTok’s features build an infrastructure for language, heritage, and cultural activism. We analyze YiddishToks as an instantiation of the ways TikTokers embody actual technolinguistic and ventriloquistic interconnections as well as bond with past generations. YiddishTokers interlace times and spaces and recontextualize Yiddish media history. TikTok’s algorithm participates in this reanimation of Yiddish’s past; it is a transparent, audible director that prompts the network off-stage. TikTok is an algorithmic network ventriloquism app that mediates between human and non-human voices.

The Kadu Lexicon local wisdom of geographic’s toponymic at Pandeglang Regency, Banten Province

Kadu lexicon is a form of language phenomenon as a product of cultural development that is unique. The lexicon of kadu is found of geographic’s toponymic at Pandeglang Regency, Banten. The development of toponymy at Pandeglang can never be separated from various aspects or various geographic phenomena that are present behind the name of the place, because the naming of the place is based on the experience and considerations of the community as cultural actors. This study aims to describe: (a) the use of kadu lexicon in geographic’s toponymic with socio-cultural conditions at Pandeglang Regency. Analytical description becomes the method in this study with written data sources and oral data sources. From the results of the study found toponyms at Pandeglang Regency using kadu lexicon, which is 47. Of all the toponyms there are 12 categorizations based on words that follow kadu lexicon and 4 groups of elements forming geographic toponymic words at Pandeglang Regency.

Soft power kultury rosyjskiej w kontekście wojny Federacji Rosyjskiej przeciwko Ukrainie

The article aims to look at Russian culture as a soft power through the prism of the large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and to analyze the changes in its perception that have occurred as a result of these events. Russian culture, especially high culture, is known and appreciated in the world, which gives it the power of attraction and the possibility of exerting influence. At the same time, it is not only a source of prestige and a tool for promoting Russia, but also spreading Russian imperial myths that contributed to the invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, the operation of Russian cultural institutions outside the borders of the Russian Federation is strictly controlled by the authorities, and its popularization is treated as a “special operation”. Russian culture imposed imperial optics on the perception of “near abroad”, deprived Ukraine of the right to its history, identity and cultural heritage. Due to its colonial nature, it does not perceive the suffering of oppressed nations, and is therefore unable to prevent the tragedy of their destruction, as is the case with Ukraine and its culture. As a result of the initiated war, Russia has embezzled some of its soft power. However, there is no consensus among the international community regarding the imposition of sanctions on Russian culture. Ukrainian cultural activists accuse the international community of hypocrisy because, in defending Russian culture, it does not perceive the deliberate and systematic destruction of Ukrainian culture. Russian culture requires a reinterpretation and unmasking of the imperial optics, as consuming it indiscriminately poses a threat to the national security of the “near abroad” states.

Contemporary Babon Angrem Batik Motif Design For Mitoni Traditional Cermination In Central Java

The life cycle ceremonies that symbolize the human journey are all found in traditional Javanese batik because in batik there is a symbol or meaning of life. At the age of 7 months of pregnancy, Javanese people usually hold a ceremony called mitoni, this ceremony is equipped with various ubo rampe, one of which is Babon Angrem batik. Changes in times including changes in cultural actors have caused many shifts in customs. This traditional ceremony began to be abandoned or become less complete due to economic factors. Individuals in this millennial era with modern perspective have witnessed a shrink of benefits of having traditional ceremonies. In response to this problem, the idea emerged to develop a long cloth with a millennial pattern that still adheres to the existing standard as a the mitoni ceremonial equipment. Batik is one of the assets that can be processed as a creative industry. By reprocessing and redefining the existing traditional motifs from today’s modern perspective, while maintaining the their originality. This design will certainly solve the problems of batik and tradition, to meet the current style for the present generation. The Babon Angrem batik motif is applied on batik cloth to result in innovative products. The Babon Angrem batik motif, which is designed in a contemporary way, displays bright and warm colors that convey the a mother's love symbolized in the philosophical meaning of the Motif of Babon Angrem. The motifs of Babon Angrem include Babons ( hen) facing each other, hen laying eggs, ukel motifs that adorn all repetitions of Babon motifs, and ceceg which complete the background of this batik .