Cultural Agenda Research Articles

Culture as a Resilient and Sustainable Strategy in Small Cities

This article studies the recent evolution of five cases of small cities in the interior of Spain that several decades ago invested in culture as a strategy to maintain their populations and increase the quality of life of their inhabitants. These are case studies of differentiated characteristics in which the analysis of their evolution offers important keys for developing cultural policies in any small city in the world. The examples of Allariz, Almagro, Astorga, Puigcerdá and Trujillo allow for the corroboration of how betting on culture as a resilient and sustainable strategy generates positive results for their populations. Allariz, in the province of Ourense, is showing a cultural identity development that emerged as a movement to reject the pollution of the Arnoia River. In Almagro, in the La Mancha province of Ciudad Real, the recovery in 1955 of the only Corral de Comedias preserved since the 17th century allowed for the inauguration in 1979 of the first Almagro Classical Theatre Festival, and from then on, a whole series of restorations and new constructions related to theater and the performing arts, which turned a small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants into the national theater capital. Astorga is a small two-thousand-year-old city in the province of León, which is trying to recover as a living history museum to face the current reality of demographic and economic crises. Puigcerdá, in the province of Girona, the historic capital of Cerdanya, is another small town in which cultural management and production is much larger than it would be corresponding to its demographic size. Lastly, Trujillo, in the Extremadura province of Cáceres, a city of pre-Roman origin known in the 16th century as the birthplace of conquistadors in America such as Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, is another small town of less than 10,000 inhabitants that is committed to creating and maintaining a rich cultural agenda with an important weight for the history and relationship between America and Spain and the recovery of the civil and religious heritage of this small monumental city. These are five enclaves, in summary, that have for years followed a clear strategy of betting on identity and culture to improve the well-being of their inhabitants and the local development of their economy, and which, as this research demonstrates, have made it possible to avoid the biggest problems of the impoverishment and abandonment of other nearby towns with similar characteristics.

What a Desirable Woman Is Like: Hsia Moon and the Cultural Agenda of Leftist Film Companies in Hong Kong, 1951–1966

Hsia Moon (Xia Meng) was a famous leftist film star in postwar Hong Kong, whose social persona was tailored for specific cultural purposes under the prevailing star system. Her early cinematic roles generally portrayed exemplars of women’s empowerment, as derived from the programmatic ideas of the New Culture Movement in the early decades of the twentieth century. But from 1958 onward, Hsia Moon’s characters began to transform in a more traditional and family-oriented direction. In her film Garden of Repose (1964), for example, the female protagonist voluntarily retreats into the family space, offering a quite different answer to the question of women’s liberation. While this story, one among many, threatened to undermine Chinese women’s painstaking struggle for individual freedom that had been in train for many decades, Hsia Moon’s well-maintained social persona justified the harmonious landscape of family life and conjugal relations, redefining women’s family-oriented position as a kind of “Chineseness.” This Chineseness was not limited to the artistic level. Rather, it was a sociocultural representation of leftist filmmakers’ nostalgic memory of their distant homeland, that is, Mainland China itself. And at another level, Chineseness also embodied the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to maintain cultural ties with British-controlled Hong Kong through the political metaphor of a “big family,” which in China’s prescribed hierarchical order alluded to the state. In this sense, Hsia Moon and her characters provided an alternative option to women’s empowerment within the master narrative of the nation-state and the cinematic star system helped shape that narrative.

Aesthetics of obscenity: the avant-garde text and underground impact of My Own Mag and Poetmeat

ABSTRACT This article uses archival research to analyse the text, aesthetics and impact of two little poetry magazines of the early 1960s: Poetmeat edited by Dave Cunliffe and Tina Morris, and Jeff Nuttall’s My Own Mag. Building upon previous studies which show the part small press publications played in distributing innovative US verse and the influence that had upon UK poetry, it illustrates how the experimentalism of Poetmeat and My Own Mag contributed to this process. This research builds on my own book Hidden Culture, Forgotten History (2017), James Charnley’s recent Nuttall biography Anything but Dull (2022) as well as the work of art historian Andrew Wilson and academic Gillian Whiteley to argue that the production of these two journals pursued a political as well as a cultural agenda. I contend that little poetry magazines went beyond the dissemination of avant-garde verse, illustrating how the experimentalism carried by the two journals was part of a process which bridged the gap separating different artforms, the development by which conceptualism later came to the fore. Further, it proposes that the cut-ups of William Burroughs were key to this transformation. Finally, the article concludes by raising questions about the behaviour of Cunliffe and Nuttall which may explain their continuing obscurity.

Ассоциация пролетарских писателей в Саратове как провинциальный эпизод в истории ВАПП

Saratov’s literary process in the New Economy Policy Period was defined by the small regional budget, the slow speed of documentation circulation, and the absence of distinct political guidance from the Party and literary censorship organs up to the mid-1920s, as the themes of the cultural agenda were often chosen by the trade unions. The regional Proletkult became the foundation for the Saratov Association of Proletarian Writers (SAPW). Until the moment the SAPW received the support of the central organs, it did not have sufficient energy for creative and propagandistic activities, which were left to the Proletkult. On gaining this support, the organisation became dependent on the guiding Moscow organs. The search for new ways for proletarian literature revitalised the academic study of literature in Saratov. A new group of literary scholars appeared, which brought new life to Saratov philology. A significant contribution to this was made by G. Lelevich.

Culture and Creativity Take Center Stage in the EU: How We Got to the EIT-KIC, and What Lies Ahead

The foundation for the EIT-KIC Culture and Creativity was laid in many steps, through a series of EU policy developments. Moving from the seminal report on The Economy of Culture promoted by the acting European Commissioner for Culture Jan Figel in 2006, we have witnessed a gradual development of the idea that cultural and creative sectors are a main driver of socio-economic development in Europe. This trajectory can be reconstructed in the sequence of the Work Plans for Culture that have spanned the last decade and in a few milestones such as the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 and its major legacies, the European Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage and the New European Agenda for Culture. Let’s briefly consider how all such components have been instrumental to the birth of the EIT-KIC Culture and Creativity, and how an understanding of such process is still fundamental today to fully appreciate the potential and criticalities of this new, ambitious endeavor.

Turkish Radio and TV Broadcasting Corporation’s new streaming application and the continuity of music policy as an educational institution

While numerous studies focus on streaming platforms as new business models or as novel elements in the supply chain, there is a notable gap in research addressing how streaming is operationalized within the context of state cultural policies. This study aims to fill this gap by conducting a preliminary examination of Turkish Radio and Television Broadcasting Corporation’s (TRT’s) digital transformation through its music streaming platform, TRT Listen. This research contributes to the international literature by highlighting various potential approaches to the digitalization of public radio broadcasting. This study, which examines the purpose and realization of TRT Listen, first provides a historical overview of TRT’s radio broadcasting and thus reveals the continuity in TRT’s cultural policy, which is shaped as a mission to educate the public and inculcate a national cultural identity, from radio broadcasting to the platform app. Two different research methods were used in this study: walk-through technique for the app and in-depth interviews with TRT’s staff and music industry representatives. The basic argument suggests that TRT Listen represents a continuation of historical music policies and nation state cultural agenda inherited from TRT’s radio era. However, at the operational level, this strategic continuity seems to disappear in the audience engagement techniques of digital platforms. The three main discussion sections of this article – TRT Listen’s strategic orientation, content curation and copyright management – reveal the platform’s mission to educate the public culturally in Turkey.

Праздник русской березки: советское инсценирование концепта тринитаризма

This paper is focused on the means of transforming Trinity Sunday and attempts to “reinvent” this festival into the Russian Birch festival. In late 50s of the 20th century in a burst of the anticlerical campaign, the Soviet festival committees were concerned with creating new secular rituals, and anti-religious analogues of festivals, which would be able to get rid of ingrained “popular Orthodoxy”. The modes of performing the meaningful core of Trinity Sunday are a subject of this research, and theatrical and methodological scenario-based experience in holding the Russian Birch festival is an object. This research is based on numerous methodological guidelines, scenarios, reviews, and transcripts of relevant committees, which made it possible to shed light on complicated processes of generating a new festival. This paper represents the way, in which heroic and plot and compositional framework of original Trinity Sunday was being substituted. This research results in the following: in spite of the anticlerical position being declared, which had constituted the basis for the substitution of Trinity Sunday for the Russian Birch festival, in fact, the newly “invented” festival duplicated the basic functions and elements of the trinitarian concept and was within the framework of Trinity Sunday in terms of archetype. Moreover, the association with commemoration of the dead appropriate to Trinity was reflected in a cult of a heroic death of a soldier of the Soviet Army and updating of other cultural agendas.

Culture as a tool for strengthening European identity

The role of culture in the process of Europeanization and supporting the formation of a European identity and a cohesive society has been emphasized by the European institutions since the 2000s. Today, the cultural policies of the EU aim to use culture as a source of soft power to enhance the degree of awareness of the European identity. The New European agenda for culture, the Creative Europe program, through the projects it assists, contributes to strengthening the European identity, providing support for the cultural and creative sectors in line with the priorities of the European Commission for a greener, more digital and more resilient Europe, for European democracy and the promotion of the European way of life. The objective of the European integration of the Republic of Moldova implies the support and implementation of the European cultural policies as a crucial element of strengthening social cohesion for the development of the sense of belonging to the European identity.

The review of the book "The Soviet health care at international arena in 1920-1940: between 'soft force' and propaganda (the Western Europe and the USA)" by P. E. Ratmanov

The review considers the book "The Soviet health care at international arena in 1920-1940: between "soft force" and propaganda (the Western Europe and the USA)" by Ratmanov P. E. The author, on the basis of rich range of historical sources for the first time introduced into scientific turnover, minutely examines phenomenon of the presentation of "The Semashko model" in the international arena. The main array of events described in the book is chronologically divided by two periods - the 1920s and the 1930s. Each of these periods is characterized not only by various forms of presentation of the Soviet health care, but also by directions of cooperation with partner countries. The monograph demonstrably shows that effectiveness of the Soviet medical propaganda was affected by composition of the audience, place and time. Besides, interest in the West to the Soviet model in many ways depended on personal sympathy and political beliefs of representatives of medical community. The author of the book considers the promotion of samples of the Soviet model of medicine as "trade of the future", i.e. demonstration of common values of the ideology of the Soviet health care, its local successes and promises of major achievements in the future. The monograph is to be recognized as an important step in the study both of the history of scientific medical diplomacy and the role of science in cultural agenda of the Soviet state.

The art of the possible? Supporting a patient safety culture in mental healthcare to maximise safety

PurposeThe current national patient safety strategy for the National Health Service (NHS) in England states that actions need to be taken to support the development of a patient safety culture. This includes that local systems should seek to understand staff perceptions of the fairness and effectiveness of serious incident management. This study aims to explore the perspectives of patient safety professionals about what works well and what could be done better to support a patient safety culture at the level of Trust strategy and serious incident governance.Design/methodology/approachA total of 15 professionals with a role in serious incident management, from five mental health trusts in England, were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis and qualitative description were used to analyse the data.FindingsParticipants felt that actions to support a patient safety culture were challenging and required long-term and clinical commitment. Broadening the scope of serious incident investigations was felt to be one way to better understand patient safety culture issues. Organisational influences during the serious incident management process were highlighted, informing approaches to maximise the fairness and objectivity of investigation findings.Originality/valueThe findings of this study offer original insights that the NHS safety system can use to facilitate progression of the patient safety culture agenda. In particular, local mental health trusts could consider the findings in the context of their current strategic objectives related to patient safety culture and operational delivery of serious incident management frameworks.

The Berber Question And (Re)Imagining The Nation In Contemporary Morocco

This paper aims to emphasize that the French colonial intervention in Morocco represents a metamorphic historical turning point that should not be bracketed from the general process of revisiting the teleological assumptions about what constitutes the contemporary Moroccan Identity. It sets the challenge of problematizing the Nationalists’ cultural agenda whose insistence on a fetishized continuity with the precolonial history has eclipsed the disruptive effects of the colonial configurations and symbolic struggles of groups who were cast aside though they were at the center of anti-colonial resistance. Telling Morocco’s colonial history from a third perspective would bring hitherto neglected and silenced actors, in our case the Berber tribal groups under the spotlight, and draw together both elite and not elite actors into the scope of analysis. The premise behind analyzing the Berber oral poetry which was composed and sung on the eve of colonial expansion, is to understand the standpoint of these “peripheral groups” over matters of political allegiance and Jihad, away from the totalizing narratives of the official historiography. These artistic outlets are primary sources of a significant importance because they provide unexplored details of how Berber groups endured living at the center of the struggle between the colonial administration and the Arabophone nationalist elite. They demonstrate also the complex adjustments and inter/ intra- tribal negotiations these groups have to go through to reconfigure those mechanisms of power that sought to annihilate their subjectivities as agents of change

Cultural Hegemony, Liberal Conscience, and Understanding Post - 9/11 American Fiction on Arab Woman

This article analyses the impact of Post-9/11 political and cultural agendas on writers’ attitudes toward Arab woman as a milestone in contemporary scholarship on neo-orientalism. Inspired by the Discourse Theoretical Approach to hegemony and imperialism, this manuscript offers a significant conceptual contribution to studies on the life of Arab women in post-9/11 narratives, City of Veils (2010), as racist, imperial and xenophobic discourse structured around exclusionary visions of the other. With these thoughts in mind, this study focuses on conceptualising the life of Arab woman by Ferraris who has lived in Arabia as a wife of Saudi citizen, as a representative of the climactic epoch in post-9/11 American fiction. It intervenes in debates about the political and cultural value of narratives by showing how post-9/11 narrative project engages specifically with geo-politics and hegemonic agendas. This conceptualisation helps understand how ideologies such as Islamophobia, racism, and populism in post-9/11 narratives all contribute to hegemonic discourse, how hegemonic discourse can be clearly attached with imperialism, and how neo-orientalist authorship can be articulated by writers beyond the neo-orientalist agendas.

Routine Literacy Practices as a Cultural Agenda: Children’s Experiences of Writing “Difficult” Chinese Characters in Australia

ABSTRACT This paper illustrates how spaces were created for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to emotionally engage in traditional Chinese literacy practices in a primary school in Sydney, Australia. The ethnographic data allow insight into how ordinary activities organised around character tracing and writing can pedagogically evoke students’ “discomforting” emotions while socialising them into ways of becoming and embodying a “real Chinese.” By providing a range of alternative readings that counter and challenge the hegemonic and essentialised discourses, we instantiate that repetitive, non-challenging Chinese literacy practices are charged with a cultural agenda that teaches the students to think, behave and feel (or be) “more Chinese” in CFL learning and their interface with Chinese communities. Such work has implications for future research agenda in the Australian and global context regarding how students’ emotional experiences help shape and reshape their emerging and dynamic learner identities when pedagogies of discomfort are implemented in foreign languages education.

When East meets West: A practitioner inquiry of culturally responsive pedagogy in an Australian Chinese as a Foreign Language classroom

AbstractA nuanced description of “what” (the curriculum) and “how” (the pedagogy) to teach in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) education remains unexplored in existing scholarship. This paper addresses this paucity by undertaking a practitioner inquiry to explore the intersection of Eastern pedagogy and Western students in an Australian CFL classroom, with the aim of improving classroom practice and enhancing low socio‐economic status (SES) students’ learning experiences. Ten language lessons were segmented into phases and analyzed within the parameter of classification and framing theorized by Bernstein. An analysis of research journals and students’ focus groups shows culturally responsive pedagogy integrating constructivist and traditional Chinese approaches to teaching has the potential of inducting underprivileged students into knowledge about curriculum and language, providing them with linguistic capital and high aspirations for the future. Pedagogically, this article offers insights for CFL teachers to mediate Chinese and Western teaching beliefs and education schemas; practically, the findings glimpse the ways in which CFL education can be discursively constructed as a cultural agenda that (re)shapes the educational experiences of underprivileged students and mobilizes them into critical hopes that can be acted upon. This paper has important implications for foreign language theory building and for responding to the “back to basics” curriculum approach in schools serving disadvantaged communities.

The museum sector as an actor in human security

ABSTRACT The global museum sector is in a process of redefining and expanding its work areas. A main reason for this is cultural heritage as a growing issue in human security, and protection as a transnational cross-sectoral topic. Based on interviews this article examines how museum actors experience the sector’s role within the nexus of cultural heritage and human security in armed conflict. The article addresses the sector as a dynamic network of transnational organisations navigating in geopolitical and -cultural agendas arguing that this new role is not institutionalised and largely depends on individual interest and political agendas. This results in a disparity in allocation of protection responses and funding where the major Euro-American museums are frontrunners in understanding and performing the new role while the museum sector as a whole lacks an international system. Consequently, heritage protection in general should be incorporated in international humanitarian strategies and stabilisation work.

Redressing Historical Bias: Exploring the Path to an Accurate Representation of the Past

The study examines the role of historical bias and the ways in which it can be addressed to achieve a more accurate representation of the past. The study aims to identify the factors that contribute to historical bias, the impact it has on our understanding of history, and the strategies that can be employed to overcome it. The study employs a mixed-methods approach that includes a comprehensive review of relevant literature, interviews with scholars and historians, and analysis of historical narratives. The study finds that historical bias is perpetuated by a variety of factors, including political and cultural agendas, the limitations of available evidence, and the perspectives and biases of historians themselves. The study also identifies several strategies that can be used to address historical bias, including the adoption of a more diverse and inclusive approach to historical research, the incorporation of multiple perspectives and sources, and the acknowledgement of historical injustices and their impact on marginalized groups. The study concludes that a commitment to redressing historical bias is necessary to achieve a more accurate and inclusive representation of the past, which can in turn contribute to a more just and equitable society.

EU Cultural Policy: Divided institutional interrelationships and strategic changes in policy development

The EU has engaged with cultural policy especially after the Maastricht treaty in 1992. To compare the division within two EU institutions, this paper mainly analyses the EU official documents: the “European Agenda for culture in a globalizing world”, published by the European Commission in 2007 – which was the first “Communication” regarding cultural policy – and “Work Plan for Culture” which was published as “Conclusions” by the Council of the European Union. The aim of this paper is to reveal that the Council focus only on a part of the policy of the European Commission on culture. It also concluded that the main strategies of the EU cultural policy have changed to incorporate some non-profitable aims.

Media and сultural agenda in the EU countries against the background of russian military aggression in Ukraine (sociological and contextual research)

The relevance of the problem is due to the importance of the media agenda for the information security of society and the state. The purpose of the study is to analyze the formation of a common media and cultural agenda in the EU countries regarding the coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war since February 2022. The study uses theoretical (analysis, synthesis, systematization, generalization and interpretation of results) and empirical (data collection, observation, comparison) research methods. The content of online versions of print media that shape public opinion in Poland and Germany was analyzed. The results showed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the formation of a common media agenda in the EU, the unanimous recognition of Russia as a party to the conflict and an aggressor country, the realization of a rethinking of EU international policy and the need to identify new strategic partners. German publications recognize the war as a new reality and raise the issue of mobilizing Europe for collective security. Energy dependence on Russia is recognized as a political mistake, and support for Ukraine's statehood and European integration course is expressed through the theme of common European values and solidarity in the fight against the aggressor. The Polish media demonstrate maximum support for both military and civilian Ukrainians from Polish society, sympathy for refugees, and the need to achieve peace through Russia's military defeat. The cultural agenda in the media of both countries is presented primarily through the topic of preserving monuments threatened by military operations on the territory of Ukraine. The results of the study deepen the understanding of the mechanisms of public opinion formation and its influence on political decisions, and are of practical importance for information security specialists, journalists, politicians, diplomats and anyone interested in the role of the media in civil society.

Digital heritage infrastructures as cultural policy instruments: Europeana and the enactment of European citizenship

ABSTRACT Europeana is a digital infrastructure aggregating the most extensive collection of cultural heritage data in Europe. Launched in 2008, it has enjoyed the political and financial support of the European Union and its member states, becoming the most ambitious and financed digital cultural project to date. For this reason, Europeana is an outstanding example of how the European Commission has used digital heritage platforms to pursue its cultural agenda. Nevertheless, the social and cultural implications of this digital infrastructure are still understudied. Following Europeana’s evolution, this article explores Europeana’s role in transforming the cultural sector and defining a European digital cultural policy. Analysing how the goals of the EU cultural policy have been implemented in the development of Europeana, this article reveals how Europeana has been instrumental in steering the digitisation of the European cultural sector through the development of standards and best practices. Furthermore, through digital heritage curation, Europeana plays a critical role in producing the narrative of a European past, promoting the construction of European citizenship.

The cultural practice from the decentralized autonomous government of Canton Pindal

The Decentralized Autonomous Government of the canton Pidal, performs social practices where a cultural dimension is expressed, in which infinite artistic expressions and manifestations of local, regional and national identity are linked, these actions place cultural practices in an identity with respect to ideology, not as false consciousness, This practice can be carried out following the traditional ways in which it is done from the municipal activity where it has served interests linked to the maintenance of social oppression, or it can deploy coherent ways with social emancipation in which people and human groups become protagonists giving solution to their problems. The research work created a project with a community self-development approach to strengthen the cultural management of the Directorate of Social Development of the Municipality of Pindal, it began with an initial participatory diagnosis on cultural practices, to propose a cultural agenda to improve the management of the social and cultural area of the local government of the canton of Pindal through the methodology of community self-development.