Cultural Mandate Research Articles

Big and Small: A Cultural History of Extraordinary Bodies by Lynne Vallone

Reviewed by: Big and Small: A Cultural History of Extraordinary Bodies by Lynne Vallone Amy Nottingham-Martin (bio) Big and Small: A Cultural History of Extraordinary Bodies, by Lynne Vallone. Yale UP, 2017. In Big and Small: A Cultural History of Extraordinary Bodies, Lynne Vallone centers size as an often overlooked, though easy to see, dimension of human identity that deserves careful consideration, along with race, gender, and class, in understanding how societal attitudes shape cultural norms and hierarchies. Examinations of perception of "out of scale" bodies offer particularly fertile ground for revealing cultural constructions of normality and difference because, according to Vallone, "[i] n ascribing values to those bodies that challenge us—the very big and the extra small—we also seek reassurance in the ordinary, the norm," and "[o]ur dismissal of the anomalous body, our disgust or fear of the extraordinary … as well our ongoing fascination with size difference are all cultural symptoms of an unease with difference" (2, 6). Vallone's project therefore not only encompasses a history of extraordinary bodies but also traces their significance as well as cultural mandates for their signification. In delving into the meaning-making of these bodies, "big and small" describes not only the subject matter but the approach Vallone takes. Her ambitious examination of the "big" questions of understanding "complex social identities, power relations, constructions, and cultural categories of the miniature and the gigantic" eschews a single theoretical lens and sweeps across multiple disciplines, time periods, genres, methodologies, and discourses to tackle "aesthetic and epistemological" questions surrounding both imagined and real bodies (3). Whew! Such a scope necessitates limitation, which consists of going "small" in terms of an in-depth focus on particular figures—variations of Tom Thumb, depictions of dwarfs and pygmies, gigantic robots, and obese girls—that serve as encapsulations and indices of themes at issue in her larger questions. Following the logic in the book's title, Big and Small is divided into two parts: "Small Bodies" and "Big Bodies," also [End Page 234] referred to as "Miniatures" and "Monsters" in the book's introduction. However, the analysis in each part does not really fall into a neat division between big and small; instead, Vallone weaves a consideration of the small relative to the big and vice-versa to shed light on questions of who counts as human, the future of bodies, and what becomes "normal." The introduction to part one, "The Little Man," maps out the rationale for study of small bodies, more particularly small male bodies (Vallone notes that female thumblings have been well analyzed elsewhere and is more interested in constructions of masculinity in miniature). Vallone argues that consideration of how common threads of "youth … monkeys, patronage, costume, performativity, masculinity, portraiture, otherness, freakishness, civility, savagery… [a]nd, of course, size" (18) are woven into narratives of little men who loom large in the cultural imaginary. She demonstrates how the study of Jeffrey Hudson, Charles Stratton (better known in Barnum's shows as General Tom Thumb), and Ota Benga leads to understanding how these figures come to stand for abstracts beyond themselves, how they function at a symbolic or metonymic level as "emblem, epitome, index, or dictionary" (18) of humanity in order to address anxieties about human origins and preservations of social hierarchy and power. The four chapters comprising "Small Bodies" constitute a robust exploration of the meaning of "little men" juxtaposed with "greatness" in various forms. Chapter one, "In the Beginning Was Tom Thumb," examines how various incarnations of what Vallone terms the Tom Thumb trope "dance delicately on the divide between faith and science" (31), particularly in the face of growing knowledge of the microscopic world, by illustrating preoccupations with conception, both in the sense of the act beginning life and in the broader sense of construction of modes of thought. Vallone then uses her tracing of this history to shed light on how contemporary incarnations of the Tom Thumb trope, with its competing images of the preciousness and potency of the small, continue to shape the emotionally fraught and polarizing contemporary discourse on abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and in-vitro fertilization. In chapters two and three, "The Dwarf in High...

Sexualidades y reproducciones, argumentos y desafíos en Argentina a principios del siglo XX

This article attempts to describe the sexual and reproductive experiences of working women in Argentina, seeking a nexus in the tense maternity- working woman relationship that fundamentally characterizes the period 1900-1940. The main objective of the writing is to analyze the ways in which society regulated the female duty, naturalizing the motherhood that was endorsed by the scientific and cultural mandates of the time. We observe this through a bibliographic review that allows to give some visibility to the subject, both by the research strategies used, and by the theoretical analyses carried out. In short, we will start from devising the female-mother binomial as a social construct that crossed beliefs prevented the full enjoy of their civil, social and political rights.

Intercultural missional leadership: Theological foundation and biblical narratives

This article explores the concept and practice of the missional leadership from three perspectives: the biblical worldview, cultural mandate and narratives of biblical examples. The research explores two elements of missional leadership, which is comparable to the leadership theory as it delves into the concept of ‘missional’. This research also unearths understanding the relationship between missional leadership in intercultural environments to the biblical worldview that is based on biblical theology. Furthermore, the exploration seeks to find a relationship between the intercultural missional leadership and the cultural mandate endowed by the triune God to mankind as God’s image. In addition, the research also carefully looks into the following biblical models that exemplify intercultural missional leadership: Moses, Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul. Narratives of the Bible show that God reveals his leadership through his providence to accomplish his goal according to his pleasing will, as God is the only resource to intercultural missional leadership. This study seeks to demonstrate how missional leadership in missiology coincides with theological common concepts of the biblical worldview and the cultural mandate in the biblical theology, which will be exemplified through biblical narratives. Both have the same goal to accomplish God’s kingdom according to the timeline of the historical phases in biblical worldview: creation, fall, redemption and restoration. It investigates present-time applicable principles through three biblical narratives, providing a reasonable basis of correlation between culture and the gospel.

문화명령과 현대기술: 개혁주의 기술철학의 의의와 한계

문화명령과 현대기술: 개혁주의 기술철학의 의의와 한계

Participatory information governance

PurposeThis paper examines the recordkeeping governance requirements of the childhood out-of-home Care sector, with critical interlaced identity, memory, cultural and accountability needs. They argue that as we enter a new era of participation, new models for governance are required to recognise and dynamically negotiate a range of rights in and to records, across space and through time. Instead of recordkeeping configured to support closed organisations and closely bounded information silos, there is a need for recordkeeping to reflect, facilitate and be part of governance frameworks for organisations as nodes in complex information networks.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports on a key outcome of the Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child National Summit held in Melbourne Australia in May 2017, the National Framework for Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care, and the research and advocacy agenda that will support its development.FindingsThe authors argue that as we enter an algorithmic age, designing for shared ownership, stewardship, interoperability and participation is an increasing imperative to address the information asymmetries that foster social disadvantage and discrimination. The authors introduce the concept of participatory information governance in response to social, political and cultural mandates for recordkeeping. Given the challenges associated with progressing new participatory models of recordkeeping governance in the inhospitable environment of existing recordkeeping law, standards and governance frameworks, the authors outline how these frameworks will need to be re-figured for participatory recordkeeping.Practical implicationsThe National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care seeks to address the systemic recordkeeping problems that have been most recently highlighted in the 2013-2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.Social implicationsThe National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care will also address how a suite of recordkeeping rights can be embedded into networked socio-technical systems. This represents an example of a framework for participatory information governance which can help guide the design of new systems in an algorithmic age.Originality/valueThe proposed National Framework represents a new model for recordkeeping governance to recognise and enact multiple rights in records. Designed to support the lifelong identity, memory and accountability needs for those who experience childhood out-of-home Care, it aims to foster the transformation of recordkeeping and archival infrastructure to a participatory model that can address the current inequities and better enable the design and oversight of equitable algorithmic systems.

English

Bureaucracy in Buganda polity transcended the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial era. During each era, the principles which underpin the Weberian bureaucracy manifested variously. Pre-colonial bureaucracy manifested as a strong chain of command through the hierarchical kingdom structure; and centralized control by the King through the chiefs. During the colonial times, bureaucracy had duality in the chain of command and allegiance where chiefs served both the King and colonial administrators. Unlike the pre-colonial era, laws were written and some employees directly under the colonial administration were recruited due to their technical competences and served with impersonality. The post-colonial bureaucracy was an extension of the colonial bureaucracy albeit with more of the Weberian form. Buganda wanted to operate as a state within a state where the King held political and executive powers of Uganda as a state but at the same time retain the position of the head of the monarch (Buganda) within Uganda. Abolition of monarchies created a lull in the late 1960s to early 1980s. Coming into power of the NRM regime reinstated the monarch albeit with more cultural mandate than political and administrative clout. The bureaucratic machinery remained in the Kingdom administrative hierarchy without the powers it enjoyed during the pre-colonial and colonial era. This article provides historical development of Buganda monarch during the different eras. It chronological highlighted the growth; peaking and anticlimax of bureaucracy in the Buganda. Whether the bureaucracy in Buganda will regain its original form under the current government remains to be seen. Key words: Bureaucracy; polity; government, pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial.

“Being Alone with Yourself is Increasingly Unpopular”: The Electronic Poetry of Jenny Holzer

“Being Alone with Yourself is Increasingly Unpopular”: The Electronic Poetry of Jenny Holzer Leisha Jones (bio) Internationally renowned visual artist Jenny Holzer has built a storied career appropriating, writing, moving, and projecting text toward both poetic and political ends. She has famously repurposed the advertiser’s text scroll, marquee, billboard, and building surface to engage mass forms of communication in the service of art. Working in and through ‘found’ art practices made famous by Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and Sherry Levine’s appropriations, Holzer re-invents the postmodern sign as ad-poem or public aphorism through text grafts, ranging from the philosophical to the mundane. In her text scrolls, projections, and web works, Holzer dissects the language of the cultural mandate in midair, challenging the weighty dominance of word on page toward a surface of pixel and speed. She also interrogates site-specific locales by literally reshaping them in texts, layering official repositories of history under the contradictory stories of individuals. Holzer’s primary strategy of appropriation, both of form and of content, offers a feminist corrective for the marginal and the margin by recontextualizing and foregrounding noncanonical voices in public institutional spaces. This essay examines the lineage of Holzer as a hybrid producer of electronic literature, and investigates the morphology of her most enduring work, Truisms, in light of the electronic literature genre. While some of Holzer’s work falls outside the parameters of this “born-digital” oeuvre,1 I argue that versions of her Truisms series produce [End Page 423] some of the same effects on readers or viewers as their generated for the screen counterparts, such as the experience of text as object, the semiotic fluidity of words in LED motion, the decentering of language as a tool for chronological communication, and a schizophrenia of the ever-present in which the flow of information in the timeless space of the virtual continually exceeds practices of meaning-making. The technological forms Truisms takes across the span of Holzer’s more than 40-year career also chart her development as an electronic artist and writer. She morphs Truisms from paper flyer to LED text scroll to xenon projection to interactive webwork, and with each incarnation Truisms is born anew. Holzer introduced game-changing technologies to reanimate Truisms, with kinetic LED signs in 1982 and xenon projectors in 1996 (Schindler). According to an Art in America review of Holzer’s 15-year retrospective For Chicago, in 2008, she “increased the agility of her art, and over the years she has been able to accelerate and slow the words’ delivery with increasing precision, opening up a playful range of speed and pattern for writing that is often dark and angry” (Obourn). While the origins of Truisms may not strictly adhere to the born-digital criterion necessitated by the genre of electronic literature, the digital milieu and continued innovation of electronic work sustained over the course of Holzer’s career situates it in the emerging canon of electronic literature. Like other literary genre canons, electronic literature has key foundational works that are critically acclaimed and meet the born-digital mandate. It may seem odd to turn toward a contested holdover such as a ‘canon’ in a time when feminist, critical race, and sexuality scholars have all but disintegrated this old hierarchy of white men and token others (in theory more so than practice), but it is precisely this hangover of organized and recognized excellence that can function to familiarize and legitimize the new genre of electronic literature’s cultural and academic purchase. As such, the addition of Holzer’s Truisms to the literary category of experimental women writers, specifically as part of the history of electronic literature, reveals the nexus between the worlds of visual art and literature. “A Sense of Timing is the Mark of Genius”—Introductions Jenny Holzer’s art is exhibited and collected all over the world in places like Berlin, London, Basel, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro, and Istanbul. Her [End Page 424] works are featured on the Museum of Modern Art’s website and in their collection, and lauded by venerable art critic Roberta Smith as “singular, consistent, and relevant . . . and influential.” Truisms and Inflammatory Essays, 1979...

Misi Kristen di Indonesia: Kesaksian Kristen Protestan

ABSTRACT: In this article, the writer reveals the presence and struggles of Protestant churches in Indonesia doing God's mission within world's largest Muslim population country. Firstly, the writer explains the challenges and strives of Protestant churches since the time of Dutch colonialism, Japanese colonization, until Indonesian independence which includes the Old Order and the New Order. This article also highlights Indonesian churches’ struggle of independence to release themselves from the control of Dutch government, fully leaning to Christ, as well as the strategic role of Christianity in preventing nation’s disintegration to make Indonesia one. After that, the writer then performs critical reflection on the struggles of Protestant churches in Indonesia from the perspective of Reformed theology. The writer found that the presence of Christian mission in Indonesia is far from the force of arms and economic greed. However, churches in Indonesia cannot detach themselves from various challenges and suffering in God's mission which includes Evangelical Mandate and Cultural Mandate. Therefore, while they are still entrusted by Christ, churches in Indonesia ought to perform their dutiful calling faithfully and joyfully. KEYWORDS: God's mission, witness, evangelism, protestant church in Indonesia, ideology, religion-state relation, mission's institution

Beginning at the beginning: Reading missio Dei from the start of the Bible

While Missiological hermeneutics have pointed to the missio Dei concept as key to the entire Biblical narrative, these readings have described God’s mission activity as commencing after the entrance of sin, rather than at the beginning of the Bible. This article argues that a mission hermeneutic ought to begin with the Bible’s opening chapters, where humanity’s vocation in the narratives of Genesis 1 and 2 need not be treated as a separate “creation mandate,” but as involvement in the missio Dei. Iranaeus’ theology provides a precedent for thinking that God’s perfecting work was still at an early stage when sin entered creation; and G. K. Beale’s reading of Eden as a garden sanctuary to be expanded gives at least one exegetical avenue for seeing the creation narratives as continuous with the mission entrusted to Abraham’s descendants. Missio Dei participation, then, is inherent to humanity, and sin’s origins can be framed as a refusal to embrace it.

Gendering Globalized Flows in Bertrand Bonello’s Tiresia

Presented as the conciliatory voice of wisdom, Teiresias, the blind Theban seer who had been both man and woman, exemplifies how transcending gender can lead to a questioning of normative, victimizing cultural mandates within the polis. This gender-bending acquires further applications in Bertrand Bonello’s 2003 film, Tiresia, about the myth-informed travails of a transsexual Brazilian illegal immigrant prostitute in France. The film daringly deconstructs the dividing lines within contemporary globalized flows: immigrants vs. citizens, men vs. women, dogma vs. humanity. The performative gender of “Tiresia” exposes but also exacerbates the effects of cultural violence, yet also intimates peaceful alternatives.

1 Timothy 2:13–15 as an Analogy

ABSTRACT While 1 Tim 2:13–15 is often treated as providing three points in support of the paraeneses in vv. 11–12, this article argues that 1 Tim 2:13–15 forms an analogy that draws on the narrative sequence of Gen 2–3 to ground the commands of the preceding verses. The analogy draws a parallel between the events of the garden and the experience of the Ephesian church. It alerts them to the next step in the sequence following the transgression of Eve, which was the temptation and fall of Adam. The analogy is extended in v. 15 to show an alternative outcome whereby the Ephesian women, like Eve, may be saved from the consequences of their sin by embracing “faith, love, and holiness with propriety” as opposed to the rigors demanded by the false teachers. Rather than complete the pattern of the garden in which Eve persuaded Adam to sin, the Ephesian women are to learn peaceably, refrain from teaching the men, and submit themselves to duly appointed authorities. If the preceding verses, especially the demands of vv. 11–12, are grounded in this analogy, then it cannot be claimed that they are based on a “creation mandate,” which permanently subordinates women or forever prevents them from teaching men.

Rosario Castellanos, feminista a partir de sus propias palabras

A partir del análisis de sus escritos periodísticos, se recupera a Rosario Castellanos como una pionera intelectual del feminismo mexicano. Se defiende la idea de que en sus artículos periodísticos se plasma con fuerza y lucidez un pensamiento feminista moderno, que gira en torno a los efectos del mandato cultural de la feminidad, aportando a la crítica de la situación de las mujeres mexicanas. Castellanos rechaza el victimismo, reivindica la necesidad de terminar con la autocomplacencia femenina y propone que las mujeres se responsabilicen de sus vidas, madurando y puliendo ideas que hoy en día tienen vigencia y radicalidad notables.

Forjar un cuerpo trabajador. Etnografía retrospectiva sobre la construcción de masculinidades

Through a retrospective ethnography conducted in Jerez, Zacatecas with a group of old men with experience of migration, I argue that the social construction of masculinity is recreated and implemented by them, and by others, through the physical and symbolic construction of worker bodies. Through the reconstruction of the cultural cycle of life as well as the career and family pathways I show that men build and represent their bodies through two cultural mandates of masculinity (workers and suppliers), a notion that emphasizes the existence of certain regularities in the gender system, in this case, the constants of masculinity (Rose, 2008).

Doing emotions: The role of culture in everyday emotions

ABSTRACTEmotional experience is culturally constructed. In this review, we discuss evidence that cultural differences in emotions are purposeful, helping an individual to meet the mandate of being a good person in their culture. We also discuss research showing that individual’s fit to the cultural emotion norm is associated with well-being, and suggest that this link may be explained by the fact that normative emotions meet the cultural mandate. Finally, we discuss research that sheds light on some of the collective processes of emotion construction: social interactions and emotion representations are geared towards promoting emotions that are conducive to the cultural mandate. In conclusion, we suggest that individuals become part of their culture by “doing emotions” in a way that is consistent with the cultural mandate, and that in intercultural interactions, emotions can be literally “at cross purposes”: each person’s emotions are constructed to fit the purposes of their own culture.

Re-totalizing Culture

With the growth of concern over diminishing cultural diversity, homogenization, and the preservation of tangible patrimony, UNESCO has increasingly assumed a lead position in devising new legislative instruments – programs, proclamations, conventions, and treaties – for the safeguard and regulation of cultural heritage. This cultural policy has been re-directed in the last two decades by a newly emergent and confident cosmopolitan political bloc that has attempted to reverse the organization’s Occidental bias by extending the protection it gives to tangible heritage to include intangible cultural expressions. This new political interest coincides with wider demands for the re-totalization of both aspects of culture aimed at encouraging the institutional use of vernacular interpretations in place of typological and externally imposed classifications. While these movements share a common interest in the decolonization of institutional culture, there is no overarching consensus on the means by which authority over interpretation can be returned to and exercised by originating communities and practitioners. To support its relatively new cultural mandate, UNESCO has revised its definitions of culture. These re-articulations – largely appropriated from specific anthropological discourses – expand the concept of culture to include its tangible and intangible manifestations, and provide a legitimating moral and intellectual authority to promote its wider acceptability. This essay represents a modest attempt to define and trace the influence of part of the rhetoric generated by globalized institutional cultures on museum practice and to raise questions on the current choices museums have been called to make.

‘Constrained collaboration’: Patient empowerment discourse as resource for countervailing power

Countervailing powers constrain the authority and autonomy of the medical profession. One countervailing power is patient consumerism, a movement with roots in health social movements. Patient empowerment discourses that emerge from health social movements suggest that active patienthood is a normative good, and that patients should inform themselves, claim their expertise, and participate in their care. Yet, little is known about how patient empowerment is understood by physicians. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in an American medical school, this article examines how physicians teach medical students to carry out patient encounters while adhering to American cultural expectations of a collaborative physician-patient relationship. Overt medical paternalism is characterised by professors as 'here's the orders' paternalism, and shown to be counterproductive to 'closing the deal' - achieving patient agreement to a course of treatment. To explain how physicians accomplish their therapeutic goals without violating cultural mandates of patient empowerment I develop the concept of 'constrained collaboration'. This analysis of constrained collaboration contrasts with structural-level narratives of diminishing professional authority and contributes to a theory of the micro-level reproduction of medical authority as a set of interactional practices.

Enacting motherhood: time and social change in Chile

Motherhood is changing. An increasing number of women are deciding to remain childless, having fewer children, postponing their transition to motherhood, and simultaneously pursuing careers. These changes are deeply embedded in a reconfiguration of the times of motherhood. Although the intersection of motherhood and time has been widely acknowledged by gender and feminist studies, less attention has been paid to how in the making of motherhood women reproduce, negotiate and subvert time mandates and norms. This article aims to underscore the importance of time and how it relates to the enactment of motherhood in contemporary societies by analysing the planning, timing, sequencing, and simultaneity of the transition to motherhood in Chile. Through the analysis of 15 life story interviews with urban women from Santiago de Chile, this article addresses the intersection between social change, motherhood and time by showing how in the making of the transitions to motherhood women reproduce, negotiate and subvert traditional and emergent cultural mandates and social norms on the times of motherhood.

Cultivating Shalom: A Response to John Stackhouse’s Epistemology

John Stackhouse’s new book, Need to Know, takes up the complexity of the Christian pursuit of knowing and serving God in the fullest sense of those terms by attending to the Creation Mandate and the call to love God and one’s neighbor. He sees the problem as Christians either compartmentalizing or capitulating to culture in their thinking. The traditional Wesleyan Quadrilateral (Stackhouse calls it the Christian Quadrilateral) needs an upgrade, which Stackhouse seeks to provide. This involves an overview of current understandings of epistemology, including cognitive pluralism, and an engagement with intellectual resources (the pentalectic) through modes of apprehension. His most provocative conclusion, and a convincing one to me, is that now we know only in part, and God seems content with this state of affairs (17). The strengths of this book are many, including the following three items. First, Stackhouse demonstrates unwavering commitment to wrestle with the paradox of seeking to know that which in the end is perhaps beyond human understanding. Second, he makes a passionate plea for Christians to act boldly on what they have been given to know. Third, he integrates current concerns of our postmodern culture with the Christian vision for human and creation flourishing by offering an epistemology that is both responsive and responsible (18). He hopes his efforts will build community as all humans “seek the common good in global flourishing” (90). At first read, a weakness in his effort is the book’s organization, for in addressing the several components of vocation, epistemology and Christian calling, Stackhouse pursues several side issues or offers lengthy digressions that interrupt the argument’s march forward. Yet perhaps the very configuration of the book exhibits the spiral nature of knowing, for events inform beliefs, and new events and experiences further impact those beliefs, and subsequent actions and responses call for adjustments in our knowing and doing. Stackhouse moves the reader along, anticipating possible objections and encouraging new vistas as he pursues his “outline of just how Christians ought to think about whatever they are called to think about” (18).

Feeling right is feeling good: psychological well-being and emotional fit with culture in autonomy- versus relatedness-promoting situations.

The current research tested the idea that it is the cultural fit of emotions, rather than certain emotions per se, that predicts psychological well-being. We reasoned that emotional fit in the domains of life that afford the realization of central cultural mandates would be particularly important to psychological well-being. We tested this hypothesis with samples from three cultural contexts that are known to differ with respect to their main cultural mandates: a European American (N = 30), a Korean (N = 80), and a Belgian sample (N = 266). Cultural fit was measured by comparing an individual’s patterns of emotions to the average cultural pattern for the same type of situation on the Emotional Patterns Questionnaire (De Leersnyder et al., 2011). Consistent with our hypothesis, we found evidence for “universality without uniformity”: in each sample, psychological well-being was associated with emotional fit in the domain that was key to the cultural mandate. However, cultures varied with regard to the particular domain involved. Psychological well-being was predicted by emotional fit (a) in autonomy-promoting situations at work in the U.S., (b) in relatedness-promoting situations at home in Korea, and (c) in both autonomy-promoting and relatedness-promoting situations in Belgium. These findings show that the experience of culturally appropriate patterns of emotions contributes to psychological well-being. One interpretation is that experiencing appropriate emotions is itself a realization of the cultural mandates.

Cultural variation in implicit independence: An extension of Kitayama et al. ().

Previous research shows that European Americans are consistently more independent (or less interdependent) than Japanese when implicit indices are used to assess independence (vs. interdependence). The present work extended this evidence by including a novel implicit association test (IAT), as an index of implicit attitude towards independence and interdependence. Consistent with the previous findings, as compared to Japanese, Americans were significantly higher in multiple indices of implicit independence (vs. interdependence) including personal (vs. social) self-definition, experience of disengaging (vs. engaging) emotions and personal (vs. social) form of happiness. Furthermore, as compared to Japanese, Americans had a significantly more positive implicit attitude towards independence assessed with the IAT. As also observed in the previous research, explicit measures showed inconsistent cross-cultural patterns. Lastly, we observed little statistical within-culture coherence among the implicit measures of independence (vs. interdependence), consistent with a view that the implicit indices capture alternative ways for individuals to achieve the cultural mandate of independence or interdependence.