Cultural Outsiders Research Articles

The role of the insider translator in conservation and development: comparing multilingual (auto)ethnobotanical books from Tanzania, Thailand, and Taiwan

Abstract This article compares recent multilingual (auto)ethnobotanical books from Tanzania, Thailand, and Taiwan in terms of the role that the “insider translator” might play in linguistic, cultural, or environmental conservation or development. The books were motivated by similar concerns, but differed in the backgrounds of the authors, including translators and compilers. How did the backgrounds of the authors – as cultural outsiders or insiders – condition the form and content of the (auto)ethnobotanical books? What approach to authorship might be most effective for achieving the intended aims of the (auto)ethnobotanists? Based on textual analysis, interviews, and fieldwork, the main findings are as follows. The interlingual translation in the Tanzanian and Thai cases was unidirectional out of the local language, because the compilers, who were outsiders, were more concerned about the conservation of endangered languages, cultures, and environments. There was no division of labor between compiler and translator in the Taiwanese case, and the translation was bidirectional, because the authors were committed to the development of their language. It stands to reason that an autoethnobotanical effort, one made by cultural insiders, to conserve traditional plant knowledge or develop an ancestral language would be more effective than an ethnobotanical one; but the long-term effectiveness of any of the multilingual (auto)ethnobotanical books needs further comparative research.

The Days After the Funeral: An Ethnolinguistic Analysis of Christian Post-Funeral Death Practices in Jish (Northern Israel).

This study is in ethnolinguistics, the interface between culture and linguistics. It provides an ethnography (detailed description) of post-funeral death practices among Maronite Christians in Jish, a small village in northern Israel. It also linguistically analyzes some concepts and cultural norms related to these practices and explicates (i.e., defines in simple, universal terms) them using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. At the micro-level, this study provides a precise description and analysis of post-funeral death practices in one community sharing the same linguaculture (i.e., the same ways of speaking and living). This precise description and analysis can, in turn, provide an opportunity for a precise comparison between these Jish death practices and their counterparts in other micro-communities. Additionally, this study provides cultural outsiders (those who are outside the culture) with insights into some aspects of the Jish linguaculture; thus it may be of interest to linguists and anthropologists.

Islamic views on local tourism engagement in conservative societies: an insight from Oman

ABSTRACT Understanding the diverse viewpoints within host communities is vital for achieving sustainable tourism development. While literature often addresses pro-tourism perspectives, scant attention is given to anti-tourism factions (unsupportive cohort of society) and those not directly benefiting. The current study addresses this gap, employing social exchange and social distance theories to explore opposition to Western-style tourism. Interviews with 22 respondents across five traditional villages in Oman reveal concerns about religious and cultural preservation, privacy, and lifestyle. The results showed that perceptions of social distance significantly shape community attitudes and behaviours towards tourists, particularly those perceived as cultural outsiders. Despite challenges, respondents adopt a nuanced approach, balancing cultural preservation with respect for tourists. Findings further illustrate that communities use symbolic markers to maintain cultural identity and cohesion amid external pressures and perceived risks. The study offers insights into culturally sensitive tourism strategies in religiously conservative societies.

Negotiating fit into host country work settings: Understanding the interplay between the past and the present in the accounts of skilled refugees

How do marginalised cultural outsiders negotiate fit into new work settings? I draw on a discursive (re)positioning lens to examine qualitative interview accounts of a group of skilled refugees in Britain and provide insights into three temporal moves they make to portray themselves as unconstrained by a lack of host country cultural know-how, able to swiftly address gaps in knowledge and skills, and able to blend in. I theorise newcomer self-socialisation as a temporal (re)positioning dynamic that involves retrospectively defining oneself as a particular kind of person who has the potential to fit. I argue that temporal (re)positioning enables newcomers to maintain worth, secure external validation and impact on their contexts. I propose that the simultaneous foregrounding and minimising of the past is an important mechanism for skilled refugees to negotiate an ambivalent sense of fit into new work settings.

Amy Levy’s Decadent ‘Medea’

Abstract This essay focuses on Amy Levy’s 1882 ‘Medea. A Fragment after Euripides’, suggesting that the poem offers a meditation on decadence and its possibilities. Specifically, Levy examines its potential as a means of exploring the experiences of a cultural outsider, experiences that resonate with Levy’s own circumstances as an Anglo-Jewish New Woman whose primary attachments were to other women. While Medea had emerged from mid-Victorian literature and poems like Augusta Webster’s ‘Medea in Athens’ as a wronged woman whose victimization merits troubled sympathy, Levy develops a sceptical view of this interpretation. When Levy’s Medea pleas for sympathetic understanding, her listeners have none to offer the figure of racial and sexual otherness in their midst. Drawing from late-century revaluations of Euripides and his work by writers like John Addington Symonds, Levy restores Medea to her status as a decadent femme fatale. In doing so, she calls attention to the limitations of sympathy as a means of understanding while proposing decadence – a language of excess, irony, and ambiguity – as a language available to cultural outsiders for challenging their marginalization.

The Benefits of Being a Cultural Outsider: The Journey of MNEs Becoming Less Hierarchical in France

The Benefits of Being a Cultural Outsider: The Journey of MNEs Becoming Less Hierarchical in France

Decolonising intercultural theology and research: What role for cultural outsiders?

This article addresses some reasons and requirements for intercultural theologising as boundary-crossing interaction to be decolonised and hold decolonising potential itself. Decolonialism being concerned with both those in ‘marginalised’ and in ‘privileged’ positions, this article focusses on some of the latter’s challenges, responsibilities and opportunities. Grounding the argument in writings of scholars from disciplines like linguistics, cultural anthropology, decolonial studies and various strands of theology both from the Global South and the Global West, epistemological motivators for a decolonising theology will be sketched in the first step. The second step involves a consideration of an appropriate methodology called ‘chosen vulnerability’. Central to it would be the learning and using of vernacular languages in order to move towards cross-cultural understanding from emic perspectives. In step three, an attempt at implementing such will be portrayed that was a core component of a recently completed interdisciplinary PhD project. Based on contextual learning of isiXhosa, several church-related concepts in English and isiXhosa were investigated and compared in a subsidiary study. The findings are used to illustrate how chosen vulnerability can enable humble contributions to decolonising theologies. This is achieved through emic approaches and perspectivism.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article raises awareness for sometimes hidden epistemic inequalities and suggests ways in which those in relative cultural-linguistic power can reduce the imbalance. This is of relevance primarily to intercultural theology. In turn, such insights from intercultural theology can benefit academic research in cross-cultural contexts in general.

The phenomenon of the outsider as the main character in modern popular culture (on the example of series and films of the 1990s and later)

Introduction: studying this phenomenon allows to understand the reasons for the popularity of this character in popular culture. The purpose of the article is to conduct an analysis of the phenomenon in the context of modern mass culture by analysing modern films and series, to reveal its characteristics and significance for the viewer, as well as to consider the impact of this phenomenon on modern society. Method: the following scientific methods were used in this study: the method of content analysis, the method of scenario analysis, and the method of interpretive analysis. Results: the results of the study showed how they are depicted in mass culture, how their role has changed over time, their influence on the perception of social and cultural problems, as well as their influence on the formation of an individual’s identity and self-determination. The study examines aspects such as conformity, marginalization, and exclusion of outsiders in popular culture. The research uses methods of studying the content of TV series and films, their storylines, dialogues, and images dedicated to the research topic. The analysis of intertextual elements in the scripts of films and series was carried out, which allowed revealing the connections between different works and cultural contexts. An analysis of the social aspects of the phenomenon, such as marginalization and exclusion, was also carried out. Conclusion: the research has practical significance for cinema and television, as it can help content creators in choosing the main character and shaping his character

Queer African literary communities: The anthology as political genre

The inaugural Gerald Kraak anthology titled Pride and Prejudice (The Gerald Kraak Anthology: African Perspectives on Gender, Social Justice and Sexuality) (2017) is a collection of poetry, fiction, journalism, photography, and scholarly writing that focuses on queer and other marginalised identities in Africa. The individual contributions place the queer cultural outsider at the centre of the text. The power of the anthology’s collective voice challenges normative subjectivity and its practices of exclusion by showcasing the subjects’ joy and suffering, and, through the collectivisation of individual experience, new possibilities arise for a recentred queer subjectivity that challenges imposed normative boundaries. The process of writing is a relatively private activity to explore and express identity and sexuality. In contrast to the privacy of writing is the act of sharing this writing with an audience that witnesses these private and often hidden identities and sexualities. This article focuses on how this anthologised collection of marginalised cultural ‘others’ shifts the borders of what is considered deviant by reading the entries through Judith Butler’s concepts of ‘legibility’, where the outsider is placed at the narrative centre.Contribution: This article contributes to studies on marginality, queer African literature, genre and anthologies.

Not by Words Alone: Early Holocaust Graphic Narratives as a “Minor Art”

Abstract Immediately after the Holocaust, scores of Jewish survivors created graphic narratives, in word and image, about their individual and collective wartime experiences under Nazi oppression. This essay will make a case for these early postwar works as a “minor art.” “Minor” captures the material characteristics of this low-capital, low-circulation printed matter: slight in weight, small in size, modest in price, and ephemeral in quality. It also describes their “poor” images that pull, in form and structure, from popular culture (comics, cartoons, illustrated books) on the margins of modernist concerns (composite image-texts relying on narrative storytelling). Borrowing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of “minor literature” as a deterritorialized, political, collective utterance, I argue that disciplinary notions of “art” and “testimony” have prevented us from seeing this “minor art” and recognizing how its vernacular, amateur art practices allowed survivors to reconstruct the past, remember communities and identities erased, and reclaim their own narratives of persecution. Created by a minority (a decimated Jewish community) working on the peripheries of the art world, they tell a Jewish story using Jewish frames of reference to create a community outside of majoritarian culture. What is at stake in them is not only a poetics of recollection but a politics of representation: of seeing with Jews as a critical act by dominated persons against the dominant, antifascist master narrative of WWII and the primary media of its dissemination, photography and film. Ultimately, this “minor art” can have major implications for both how we understand the crucial first decade of survivor initiatives and how we write our histories of Jewish art.

Cross-cultural research on early childhood teacher education curriculum design

This study was an attempt to compare the distinctive features in current Early Childhood Teacher Education (ECTE) curricula conducted at two universities, one in China, and one in the US. Document reviews, interviews, and questionnaires shed light on the two different approaches to curriculum design. Two program directors and 25 participants, viewed as “cultural outsiders,” were recruited. Results showed that the US model could be viewed as “deep” learning while the Chinese model was seen as “broad” learning. The US ECTE curriculum focused on a robust connection between general education and professional courses, strong standards, content-centered professional courses, multiple cultures, and more credit for field experience. The ECTE curriculum at the Chinese university provided a wide variety of general education and professional courses, arts-related professional courses, national cultures, and more modalities for field experience. This study also examined the impact of culture and society on the ECTE curriculum design.

Social networks are shaped by culturally contingent assessments of social competence

Cultural outsiders, like immigrants or international students, often struggle to make friends. We propose that one barrier to social connection is not knowing what it means to be socially competent in the host culture. First-year students at a U.S. business school (N = 1328) completed a social network survey and rated their own social competence and that of several peers. International students were rated by peers as less socially competent than U.S. students, especially if they were from nations more culturally dissimilar to the U.S. International students’ self-reported competence ratings were uncorrelated with peers’ judgments. Social network analysis revealed international students were less central to their peer networks than U.S. students, although this gap was reduced if peers evaluated them as socially competent. Peer-reported competence mediated the effects of international student status on social network centrality. Since learning local norms takes time, we suggest inclusivity will require host communities to define social competence more broadly.

Fishers of song: Music education and community in Andavadoaka, Madagascar

What might pre-service music teachers learn by stepping outside the formal curriculum? In between semesters student teaching in New York City, I investigated music education practices in the Vezo fishing village of Andavadoaka, Madagascar. By investigating how this community practices advanced musicianship learned primarily outside the classroom, I aimed to understand what formal music educators can do to improve musicianship in our communities. This research focuses on the teaching and learning of music as observed through one community institution (the Catholic school) and three knowledgeable, local music makers (Gustin, Felicia, and Sylvera). Through ethnography and oral history, I asked, what is the relationship between community and music education practices in Andavadoaka? And, how do my observations as a cultural outsider provide insight into the relationship between community and music education practices in the formal, school settings where I was learning to teach? Three themes emerged from these experiences. By imbuing our classrooms with a participatory ethos, practicing music in a richer cultural context, and tapping into the social networks inhabited by our students, we can musically develop our communities far beyond their current limits.

A History of Violence: A Critical Overview of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Approach to Terrorism

On 15 March 2019, Brenton Tarrant fired indiscriminately at congregants as they gathered for prayer at the Linwood Islamic Centre and Al Noor Mosque in Christ-church, New Zealand. The media labelled the event New Zealand’s “loss of innocence” and its first experience of terrorism; MPs across the house described the attack as foreign and imported. However, there are various incidents in New Zealand’s history prior the Christchurch attacks that arguably also fit the definition of terrorism but have not been officially identified or charged as such. The government’s selective use of the terrorism label suggests that in the case of terrorism, phenomenally similar actions may be labelled differently depending on the identity of the perpetrator and the perspective from which the action is described. In order to understand how the government decides whether an act is a case of terrorism or not, this article traces the evolution and social context of New Zealand’s counter-terrorism legislation from the early colonial period to the Christchurch attacks. In doing so, this article finds that in New Zealand, terrorism has been routinely framed as the fault of foreigners and cultural outsiders. This suggests that the official definition of terrorism in New Zealand is not constant or objective, but is instead guided by historical conditions which make political sense of the current terrorism reality.

Historical changes in politeness norms

Abstract Although French courtly models spread to Europe, little research has compared the development of politeness in France with more remote European linguacultures. To fill this gap, I examine folk understandings of historical politeness in Finnish and French linguacultures. Concentrating on cultural outsiders’ own understandings – that is, French people living in Finland and Finns who live or have lived in France – my study lies within the framework of a discursive approach, and draws upon data from five focus-group discussions and their dialogical discourse analysis. My study shows that the different forms of government, levels of urbanisation and branches of Christianity reportedly influenced differences in Finnish and French politeness. Yet, during participants’ stays in these respective countries, an affinity towards politeness was described as stemming from globalisation. Future research should examine if the frames of expectations of politeness in Europe are generally moving closer towards one another.

Marked and managed: performing a “good” White identity in non-White spaces

ABSTRACT As dominant group members, Whites tend to experience race as a low salience identity, particularly in interactions in White settings with other Whites. Using data collected from in-depth interviews with White partners in interracial relationships, this paper analyses what happens when Whites enter non-White settings and become racially marked. How do Whites understand the meaning of their Whiteness in these settings and what strategies do they use to manage others’ impressions? White participants reported experiencing hypervisibility, a sharp awareness of their racial identity, and heightened apprehensions about being perceived as potentially racist and culturally inept. Consequently, participants made conscious changes to their behaviours (e.g. body language, food consumption), speech, and appearance as a means of signalling a “good” White identity and establishing belonging in spaces where they were marked as racial and cultural outsiders.

Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early Spanish Rule by Christina H. Lee

Reviewed by: Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early Spanish Rule by Christina H. Lee Florina H. Capistrano-Baker Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early Spanish Rule. By Christina H. Lee. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,. 2021. Pp. xii, 216. $74.00. ISBN 978-0-190-91614-5.) A small statue of the Christ Child with a darkened face towers above the blurred images of devotees’ hands holding the divine image aloft. The main title (Saints of Resistance) in large white font against an orange background anchors the eyes as they travel below to the secondary title and author’s name. The evocative title and book jacket design entice the reader to explore the contents within. The book is organized in six chapters including the introduction (chapter 1) and conclusion [End Page 202] (chapter 6). Each of the four main chapters focuses on a particular Philippine devotion: Santo Niño de Cebu (chapter 2), Our Lady of Caysasay (chapter 3), Our Lady of the Rosary (chapter 4), and Our Lady of Antipolo (chapter 5). The font is reader-friendly, and the photographs, though black and white, are well chosen. The author, Christina Hyo-Jung Lee, is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. Her work addresses cultural productions of Iberian Spain and the Spanish Pacific. Born in South Korea and raised in Argentina, she immediately engages the reader with her introductory statements: My first visit to the Philippines was laced with simultaneous feelings of eerie familiarity and strangeness. I encountered reverberations of my Hispanic and Asian upbringing wherever I went (p. 1). The introduction includes a useful review of studies on iconographic devotions in the Spanish world in general, and in Spanish colonial Philippines in particular. Lee’s transpacific background, native fluency in the Spanish language, and meticulous scholarship generate important new interpretations and insights into popular Philippine devotions heretofore unexplored. For example, her careful rereading of primary sources interrogates conflicting translations of sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s chronicler Antonio Pigafetta’s original account of their encounter with the ruler Humabon and his wife on the Philippine island of Cebu. An important point of contention is whether the image now venerated as the Santo Niño de Cebu is indeed the icon that Magellan had gifted Humabon’s wife in 1521 (pp. 19–21). Combining contemporary field research in Cebu with critical re-reading of early Spanish accounts, Lee calls attention to competing narratives where local inhabitants claim the statue as their own, all versions claiming that the Spanish usurped a pre-existing local devotion by snatching the image away. The next three chapters on Our Lady of Caysasay, Our Lady of the Rosary, and Our Lady of Antipolo similarly explore how foreign icons and narratives are purposely appropriated as autochthonous phenomena and subsumed into the corpus of Filipino culture. Closely reading primary sources, Lee points to mechanisms that transform the narrative of European images into counter-hegemonic narratives and strategies of resistance. Lee concludes with the general observation that the santos discussed “were widely embraced by their followers . . . because their devotions embedded narratives that memorialized their communities’ survival and resistance amid impossible situations” (p. 132). Lee’s intriguing interpretations and engaging writing style, free of jargon that often plagues academic writing, encourage the reader to read the entire book in one sitting; and to re-read and ponder the ideas presented anew. I have advocated in previous publications for scholarly dialogue between “cultural insiders” and “cultural outsiders” to de-colonize and move forward the discourse [End Page 203] on global history. In studying Spanish colonial Philippine iconographic devotions, Lee occupies a liminal space between cultural insider and outsider, creating an intellectual bridge for both to meet. This book is useful for students and scholars of cultural history, art history, religious studies, and material religion. It is a must read for scholars of the sixteenth-to-nineteenth-century Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker Ayala Museum Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...

Русская паремиологическая картина мира с позиции носителя китайской лингвокультуры

The relevance of this study is due to the growing need for successful intercultural cooperation between representatives of Chinese and Russian cultures. Due to objective extra-linguistic factors, there is an intensive exchange of knowledge between China and Russia. The flow of Chinese students to Russia is increasing; in the learning process, they are interested not so much in learning the functioning of the Russian language system, but in understanding the “Russian world”. This process can be hampered by the discrepancy between the original and the perceived cultures. To overcome this barrier, it is necessary to form such knowledge that will be in demand and understandable to a cultural outsider, therefore, there is a need for an explanatory study. The purpose of this work is to study the conceptual complex “Life — Death”, implemented in the Russian linguistic picture of the world, from the position of a bearer of Chinese linguistic consciousness. We are trying to analyze those stages of acculturation that a representative of a different linguistic culture overcomes in the process of mastering a new conceptual reality for him. It is important to take into account that a linguistic personality, formed in the context of the original culture, acts according to the principle of Omnea mea mecum porto: “one’s own culture” becomes for him a starting point in the epistemological process, the background against which the actualization of new meanings unfolds. Research methods: descriptive method, conceptual analysis, linguo-culturological commenting method, contextual analysis, corpus method, questioning.

James Joyce’s Modernist Dublin: Leopold Bloom and the Critical Eye of Ulysses’ Outsider

This paper analyses the ways in which Leopold Bloom critiques Dublin city life from his position as the excluded outsider figure of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Consideration will be given to Bloom’s engagement with Dublin and its transformation into a cosmopolitan city, its effect on Irish identity and consciousness, and its relationship with the Catholic Church. Finally, an attempt will be made to situate the ruminations of Ulysses’ hero within a wider context of a distinct Irish modernist movement that, as Ronan McDonald suggests, offered an “outright hostile response to essentialist ideas of […] Ireland or Irishness” as was previously “advanced by the Irish revival at the fin-de-siècle” (178). The prevailing question at hand, then, is this: how does Bloom’s critique of a modernising Dublin, from the position of the cultural outsider, coincide with the wider concerns of an Irish modernist movement that was responding to ideas laid out by their nationalist forebearers?

On the verge of extinction: the semantics, pragmatics, and etymology of eight endangered similes in Jish Arabic

Abstract This study has aimed (1) to look into the meaning and origin of eight similes used by older, but not by younger, native speakers of Jish Arabic and (2) to explicate their meanings using simple, universal human concepts. It is hypothesized that, with the passage of time, these similes will go extinct. That is, not only will they stop being used, but they will also not be recognized by native Jish Arabic speakers. Thus, by discussing their meaning and etymology, these similes can be preserved in writing, especially as Jish Arabic does not have any written records. By explicating them using simple, universal language, their meaning will be accessible to cultural outsiders.