Cultural Divides Research Articles

The Cultural Divide

AbstractWe study the evolution of cultural divides both theoretically and empirically. We propose a model of cultural change where intergenerational transmission and forces of social influence determine the distribution of cultural traits in society. We conduct an empirical investigation of the evolution of cultural heterogeneity in the USA between 1972 and 2018, using the General Social Survey. In recent decades, cultural heterogeneity between individuals has risen. Cultural divides between identity groups display contrasted patterns: increasing along lines of religion and political orientation, mildly U-shaped along income and racial lines, and flat or decreasing for gender and urbanicity. We interpret these empirical findings in light of our model, arguing that changes in modes of interaction within and across groups can explain the observed dynamics of cultural heterogeneity.

Support for a Populist Government in Poland

In the recent years, one of the most popular subjects of research in political science has been the rise of populism. In Poland, an anti-establishment government has won a second electoral cycle in a row. However, unlike in Hungary, the opposition received a comparable share of the vote. In this article, I try to show how a country with a seemingly homogeneous population could have become so divided. I argue that the current polarization is based on the lack of social recognition of the less well-off citizens and areas, and on the lack of social cohesion: deeply rooted cultural and moral divisions in society overlapping with differences in economic situation. Those underlying causes explain why civil society in Poland is still able to mobilize, but they also let us predict that the divisions will not disappear soon. Although the political preferences of the youth suggest a strong demand for more pluralism, the new gender cleavage may deepen with time, based on a similar logic: diverging life courses and a lack of social cohesion and recognition exploited by polarizing parties. The explanations offered here contribute to the understanding of not only the success of antiestablishment parties in Poland but also of the differences between the Western and Central and Eastern European political mainstream.

Robert Duncan and the Vernacular of Preliteracy

In 1947, Robert Duncan wrote to William Carlos Williams with great eagerness, enthusing about his desire, aided by his reading of Williams’s poetry, to “bring into active concern this whole question of the new vernacular.” This paper asks what Duncan means by a “new vernacular.” In contrast to naturalistic representations, which establish the vernacular as an organic reflection of national character, recognizable through its distinctive lexicon and its antagonism towards sophistication, Duncan associates the category with an abstracted quality of expression that all speech holds in common. He imagines the vernacular not as a type of language, self-evident and easily recognized, but rather as an epistemological stage, previous to subject formation and language acquisition, and rooted in Dante Alighieri’s image of the child first acquiring speech from his nurses. Duncan recapitulates medieval cultural divisions between the father tongue of Latin grammar and the mother tongue of fluid speech and posits the vernacular as a counter-national field of pre-semantic sound, conveyed through feminine modes of relation. The poet’s task, in Duncan’s imagination, is to return to those seedbanks of language, to re-plant the words of that early stage, in order to activate an organic music arising from preliterate babble that might transcend the boundaries that segregate speech communities.

FRONTLINE: Gentle sounds, distant roar: a watershed year for journalism as research

The Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) 2020 decision on disciplinary categories has profound implications for journalism as a research discipline. Journalism Practice and Professional Writing retain their six-digit Fields of Research (FoR) code within the Creative Arts and Writing Division, a new six-digit FoR of Journalism Studies has been created in the Division of Language, Communication and Culture, and three new FoR codes of Literature, Journalism and Professional Writing have been created for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Māori and Pacific Peoples within the new Indigenous Studies Division. This categorisation both confirms Journalism as a sovereign and independent discipline distinct from Communication and Media Studies, which has been in bitter contention for more than two decades. The ANZSRC confirmed its 2008 policy that the sole and definitive criterion for categorisation was methodology. This article explores the welcome ramifications of this decision for Journalism within Australasian university-based journalism and charts some of the issues ahead for journalism academics as they embark on the long overdue and fraught path to disciplinary self-recognition as an equal among the humanities and social sciences.

Muslim Youth and State Building; Challenges and Opportunities

The religious activities and appearance of Muslim youth in public lives has placed them in struggle for equality and recognition in their various communities and States. The feelings of alienation, persistent process of neoliberal globalization, geopolitics of neo-imperialism, the rise of a civilizational discourse in which “Islam” is positioned to be against anything ‘Western’ has caused remarkable changes in the social composition of Muslim minority countries. This has ponded Muslim youth to be deliberately alienated from ‘State Building’ processes leading to dissatisfaction with the State, marginalization, unemployment, stigmatization, political exclusion, underemployment, disruptive agents instead of agent of change portraying them as prone to radicalism and deviance. Muslim Youth gender, class, and cultural divisions seems not to be differentiated but are all homogenously treated as same leading to depression and deprivation prevailing in high rate among a vast segment of Muslim youth which means “the transformation into adulthood for ‘State Building’ will be something problematic in certain communities. This paper therefore tends to make an empirical analysis of this challenges and provide sustainable reforms, values and contributes as problem solving mechanism from the viewpoint of socio-political, economic moral authorities for discipline, control, and formulate policies for the young Muslim and the Muslim Youth authorities concluding with recommendations and suggestions for way forward.

THE ORAL CHRIST OF SHEMBE: BELIEVING IN JESUS IN ORAL AND LITERATE SOCIETIES

Our immediate challenge in South Africa is to balance the need for a redistribution of wealth with a regeneration of the economy; to stimulate democratic creativity and conflict while still preserving law and order. This is especially difficult because int his country we speak to one another from different ages – as is also the case of the UN.Even with forced segregation gone and the question of exploitation gradually being addressed, there still remains a deep cultural division. This is a division not so much between black and white/African and European, but between traditional and modern society, between pre- or semi-literate and literate society.In building ecumenical bridges between different sections of our population, and awareness of the socio-cultural conventions underlying our varying theologies, and especially christologies, is indispensable. It is in this regards that I will attempt to make a contribution.

Interfaith photovoice: an example of Muslim-Christian engagement in Canada

Religion is highly visible in the daily activities of Canadians yet the visibility of religious diversity has become a source of tension and conflict. The Interfaith Photovoice (IFPV) Initiative harnesses the visibility of religion and uses the photovoice process to strengthen relationships between Muslims and Christians, bridge cultural divides, encourage mutual advocacy, and engage communities around questions of faith and religious diversity. This article highlights the work of IFPV participants from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada through the qualitative analysis of thirty-nine images and six interviews with Christian and Muslim university students utilising a theoretical framework of deep equality and lived religion. The results of visual content analysis, which focused on cross-photo comparison, are supported by evidence from the interview data. The findings are explained under the themes of public religious spaces, religious and symbolic clothing, and institutions and gender. The IFPV process facilitated the development of agonistic respect between religiously diverse women and men on a secular campus in a pluralistic city, showing that religious freedom must include the choice to be seen as religious.

TRANSFORMATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION OF SERBIA IN TERMS OF SMART LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Learning and education in higher education in the conditions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) are experiencing rapid transformation. New technologies, first of all the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data technology, Virtual and Augmentative reality (VR and AR) and Artificial Intelligence are creating the conditions for radical changes in the learning and education landscape and boost the transition towards the next paradigm of learning and education, presented by smart learning environment. These technologies not only accelerate, facilitate and intensify the learning and education process, but also transform the learning and education process, penetrating the essence of the relationship between the teaching staff and the students and have a far-reaching impact on the role of teachers and the overall organizational culture in higher education institutions. The paper explains the concept, division and dynamics of organizational culture in higher education in Serbia, analyses the smart learning environment, compares the advantages and challenges in relation to e-learning and explains the possible model of smart learning environment from the aspect of interaction with organizational culture at universities. The aim of this paper is to determine the opportunities, challenges and perspectives of a smart learning environment and its impact on organizational culture in higher education institutions.

Doing being observed: Experimenting with collaborative focus group analysis in post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong

Democratising social inquiry is particularly relevant in the context of Hong Kong’s recent social movements, where political divisions have created rifts among families and friends. In exploring the Umbrella Movement’s personal impact on activists, bystanders and opponents, we developed a new methodology: collaborative focus group analysis (CFGA). Designed to create a safe space for communicating political differences, the methodology also aims to break down the distinction between researchers and researched and engages the latter as co-researchers. In our first application of CFGA, solidarity was exhibited across political and cultural divides, demonstrating the methodology’s potential to support collaborative knowledge-making among co-researchers with different political stances and educational and cultural backgrounds. By analysing the patterns of interaction that emerged within CFGA, we identify strategies for building ‘situated solidarity’ and maintaining ‘non-hierarchical dialogues’. In so doing, we assess CFGA’s potential and limitations.

Popular Will against Democracy: Populist Autocratization in Turkey

In this article, I study the relationship of the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) populism-in-power and democracy, from a comparative and historical perspective, and based on a critical engagement with the populism literature. I begin by highlighting the political institutional expression of the populist political vision (to reflect the popular will in power), which prioritizes competitive elections among a variety of modern democratic institutions and mechanisms. Based on this perspective, I outline a particular populist route to competitive (or electoral) authoritarianism: when in power, because populists exalt elections and undermine existing liberal democratic mechanisms that bridge people to power, they deprive citizens of the power to hold rulers accountable. I then trace the lineage of the populist political imagination in Turkey, demonstrating the continuities and discontinuities between the Democrat Party’s (Demokrat Parti, DP) and the AKP’s conceptions of the people and democracy. I argue that despite these parties’ differences on the level of the politicization of cultural divisions, there is a crucial continuity: the equalization of democracy with an exalted elected executive branch. Finally, I concentrate on the impact of the AKP’s populism-in-power on the Turkish political regime. I argue that because the AKP came to power in a defective democracy (with extra-democratic checks on the elected rulers and prone to the concentration of power), by 2011, the party managed to reframe Turkish political institutions according to their right-wing populist vision of democracy, an authoritarian regime with competitive elections.

Sport and War in an Irish Town

The relationship between Britain and Ireland — two islands united in one kingdom and bound — ensured that the British sporting revolution spread immediately to Ireland. On both islands the new sporting world was capable of transcending political, economic, social and cultural divides. It was also capable of underlining — even aggravating — such divides. Sport in Enniscorthy was a complex of class and gender and religion and geography and personality and political allegiance. The extremes of nationalist rhetoric and then rebellion, on the one hand, and the depth and strength of a sporting tradition associated with the sports of the British Empire, on the other, ensured that the sporting clubs of the town were presented as being organized for ‘foreign games’, or for the ‘games of the Gael’. This was a binary which did not take account for the broad swathe of motivations which account for the sporting tastes of people, but was, instead, a consequence of the reality of revolution — and its legacy. This article examines the impact that armed rebellion had on the sporting life of a country town in the south-east of Ireland.

The Regulation of “Sodomy” in the Latin East and West

The Regulation of “Sodomy” in the Latin East and West

ВПЛИВ КУЛЬТУРНИХ КОНТЕКСТІВ НА ФОРМУВАННЯ АНГЛОМОВНОЇ ПРОФЕСІЙНО ОРІЄНТОВАНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ В ГОВОРІННІ МАЙБУТНІХ ЛІКАРІВ У ПОЛІНАЦІОНАЛЬНИХ ГРУПАХ

Introduction. The article is devoted to the specification and argumentation of the influence of cultural contexts on the formation of English professionally oriented competence in speech of future doctors who study in polynational groups. Analysis of relevant research has revealed that while most scientific publications consider some aspects of intercultural communication in the context of professional activity or features of language training of students in multinational groups, the issues of English professionally oriented competence formation in polynational groups remain unresolved. Aim of the Study. The purpose of the article is to explain the causes of difficulties in the process of performing professionally oriented communicative tasks in English and outline ways to establish pair and group work of students in polynational groups in order to increase their learning productivity. The stated purpose of the study has led to the choice of the following research methods: 1) theoretical analysis of the scientific sources to define the meaning of the concept of “cultural contexts” and establish the features of polynational groups of students; 2) comparative analysis of verbal and nonverbal behaviour of representatives of high-context and low-context cultures; 3) scientific observation of the course of English professionally oriented speech training of students in polynational groups. Results. It has been determined that the reason for frequent misunderstandings among students of polynational groups while performing pair and group tasks on professionally oriented speech is the division of cultures into high-context and low-context ones. Three levels of behaviour that differ among high-context and low-context cultures and therefore cause misunderstandings among students of polynational groups when performing English professionally oriented communicative tasks have been identified. Conclusions. Ways to optimize the formation of English professionally oriented competence in speech of students in polynational groups, taking into account their cultural differences, have been suggested.

Clashing Values: Supranational Identities, Geopolitical Rivalry and Europe’s Growing Cultural Divide

Soon after the collapse of Soviet-type communism in Central and Eastern Europe, a new geopolitical division began to reshape the continent. Our study demonstrates that this newly emerging geopolitical divide has been underpinned by a corresponding cultural divergence, of which “emancipative values” are the most powerful marker. Using the European Values Study/World Values Survey 1990 to 2014, we find that the former Iron Curtain no longer constitutes a cultural boundary because the ex-communist states that joined the European Union have been converging with the West’s strong emphasis on emancipative values. Instead, a new and steeply growing cultural gap has emerged between the European Union and its Eastern neighbors. The two competing geopolitical formations in the West and East—the European and Eurasian Unions, respectively—have diverged culturally in recent decades. The divergence goes back to contrasting supranational identities that originate in different religious traditions, which rulers have increasingly accentuated to strengthen their nations’ endorsement or dismissal of emancipative values. Through this sorting-out process, emancipative values became an increasingly significant marker of a Western-vs-Eastern cultural identity. Our study is the first to link this groundbreaking cultural transformation to civilizational identities and geopolitical rivalry.

English

This research focuses on synthesizing concepts and needs for the development of teachers' competencies and studying the performance in accordance with the development model of competencies for teachers of the Early Childhood Development Center with application of empowerment evaluation. The research was divided into 3 stages. In the first stage, the needs for the developments of teachers’ competencies were investigated. The informants were 274 teachers and 10 educators and directors of Division of Education Religious and Culture. The research instruments were questionnaire and interview form. In the second stage, the development model which was verified by 5 experts. In the third stage, the evaluation of performance in accordance with the development model of 30 teachers and 5 supporters and researchers was conducted. The research instruments were test, observation form, questionnaire, and interview form. The quantitative research used statistics to analyze for mean, standard deviation, t-test, and Modified Priority Need Index while the qualitative research used content analysis approach. The research findings revealed that teachers’ needs for functional competency development showing its priority need index from 0.336 to 0.416. In addition, the educators and the directors of Division of Education Religious and Culture showed their needs to develop teachers’ functional competencies. Moreover, the development model of competencies for teachers consisted of 6 components: Basic concepts and principles, objectives, expected outcomes, training activity content, training activity process, and evaluation. The teachers’ mean scores of post-training were higher than pre-training at statistical significance level of 0.01. Key words: Early Childhood Development Center, local administrative organization, competencies, empowerment.

Intercultural Communication in Research Interviews: Accessing Information from Research Participants from Another Culture

Much research is done across cultural divides and necessarily relies on intercultural communication. However, existing practical guidelines for interviewing generally remain blind to the culture of the interviewer in relation to the interviewees. This affects the quantity and quality of the data collected from research participants who do not share the cultural or socio-economic background of the researcher. I address the implications of doing interviews that cross a cultural gap, showing how the researcher can step into the shoes of the Other and create cross-cutting ties. These practical solutions toward common pitfalls in intercultural research situations form a next step in reaction to a growing body of literature that critically reflects on how interviews are located in social contexts.

Conceiving of Contraception: World Society, Cultural Resistance, and Contraceptive Use, 1970–2012

AbstractTaking world society theory as our point of departure, we examine the effect of world culture on contraceptive use rates around the world. World-cultural rhetoric frames contraception as a necessity for economic development, a human rights issue, and a women’s health matter. Using data on contraceptive use among married women for a sample of 159 countries over the period from 1970 to 2012, we find that linkages to all three sets of discourses are associated with increased use of modern contraceptive methods, over and above countries’ sociocultural and economic characteristics. Nevertheless, we also find that world society influences vary across major cultural zones, defined in terms of predominant religions and geographic regions. World cultural effects are strongest in Orthodox Christian, Hindu, non-Western Protestant, and sub-Saharan African countries. There is no effect in Western and East Asian countries, where contraceptive use is comparatively high, or in zones such as non-Western Catholic nations, where the unmet need for contraception is often greatest. Compared to development and women’s rights rhetoric, health-based frames appear to have the broadest and most effective reach across cultural divides. Overall, however, we find that world society processes tend to produce cross-cultural convergence in contraceptive use rates.

Efficiency of combined action of antimicrobial preparations against poly-resistant strains of conditionally-pathogenic bacteria isolated from wounds of surgery patients

The strategy of use of combination therapy of antibacterial preparations is being broadly introduced to clinical practice to fight bacterial infections caused by poly-resistant strains of microorganisms. From the wounds of surgery patients, we isolated 67 clinical strains of conditionally-pathogenic bacteria identified as Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniaе, Proteus vulgaris, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Using disk diffusion method, the isolated bacterial strains were found to be most resistant to penicillin preparations: ampicillin, oxacillin, amoxicillin/clavulanat; tetracycline and cephalosporin of the II generation – cefoxitin. The percentage of strains insusceptible to these antibacterial preparations accounted for 65.0%. The division of antibiotic-resistant cultures regarding phenotype groups according to the level of their antibiotic resistance allowed determination of 4 PDR-, 8 XDR- and 14 MDR-strains. During the studies on experimental determining of MIC of antibiotic and antiseptics in the condition of applying them as monopreparations against isolated bacterial cultures, we saw significant exceess in the threshold values of MIC, and, first of all, regarding pandrug-resistant and extensive drug-resistant clinical microbial isolates. Use of combinations of antibacterial preparations was found to show the synergic effect of antibiotics (ceftriaxone, ofloxacin, gentamicin) and antiseptics (chlorhexidine, decasan), which is expressed in simultaneous decrease in MIC of each of the tested preparations by 2–8 times compared with their isolative application. Such combinatory approach regarding simultaneous application of antibacterial preparations may be considered as one of the most promising ways to combat poly-resistant clinical isolates of conditionally-pathogenic microorganisms and to offer a new strategic approach to prevention of spread of antibiotic resistance as a phenomenon in medical practice.

Delivering medical education for future healthcare needs: a community-focused challenge

ABSTRACT Medical schools are required to train the workforce needed to care for the population they serve. In the UK, we are expected to produce more graduates choosing to be general practitioners and to equip all graduates with the ability to care for an ageing population with increasingly complex care needs. These doctors need to be effective members of multi-professional teams, possessing generalist skills including an understanding of uncertainty and risk. Curricula where a significant proportion of clinical learning is based in general practice are best placed to address this pedagogic need. The authors evaluate the sociocultural factors which impede the expansion of undergraduate medical education in general practice. These include historic cultural divides between secondary and primary care, medical school leadership, funding, contractual arrangements and capacity in general practice to deliver increasing education of medical students alongside other established and emerging health professions. The piece concludes with two recommendations: undergraduate student teaching should be incorporated into contract negotiations and there must be urgent UK-wide investment in appropriate placement tariff for students. Furthemore, there is an imperative to pilot and evaluate novel collaborative approaches to the education of undergraduate medical and other health professions students.

Participatory backcasting: Building pathways towards reconciliation?

Stories create shared meaning between people. Scenarios are stories that provide people an opportunity to share their personal narratives of the future. This study documents how a participatory backcasting approach enabled communities to produce a range of normative scenarios and the policy pathways to achieve these desired states. The study created a space for constructive face-to-face dialogue in a community historically characterised by land use conflict. The sharing of scenarios through storytelling, helped bridge epistemic and cultural divides and created shared narratives of the future. Scenarios were place-based and focused on transforming the economy towards sustainability, and enabling political and economic reconciliation between First Nations (Indigenous peoples) and non-First Nations peoples. This approach fostered social learning, and strengthened networks across groups. The involvement of change-makers to action policy pathways was important for advancing post-workshop cooperation, and catalyzed meaningful steps towards reconciliation.