Cultural Stories Research Articles

Art Therapy and Experiences of Acculturation and Immigration

This article describes an expanded case study methodology that was used to explore the value that art therapy processes have in expression and understanding of the complications of immigration and acculturation. Data collected from two art therapy groups of Hispanic/Latino youth and immigrant women at an urban parish were analyzed to develop an understanding of art therapy as a support in the sharing of difficult and complex cultural stories.

Storytelling and Brand Identity in Cultural Digital Archives Industry

This study identifies a causal relationship among storytelling marketing strategies, consumer identity, and consumer intentions toward cultural and creative brands that use digital archives for marketing Chinese calligraphy, ancient paintings and literature. We show that storytelling can affect culture identity through event marketing. Brand identity and culture identity exert positive cultural influences on consumer brand opinions. Thus, producers or marketers of cultural brands could improve consumer-brand relationships by promoting cultural stories at exhibitions associated with their brands. To attract visitors, they could arouse cultural resonance by sharing the creative ideas that inspired their unique products. Our proposed approach could impress visitors and increase their awareness of the refined products offered by cultural brands.

Informal Learning at Stonehammer and English Riviera Geoparks

Geoparks are a relatively new concept with the Global Geopark Network being established in 2004, and extensive data has not yet been collected from geopark visitors to determine if these sites contribute to public awareness of geological topics. In many ways, geoparks are similar to zoos and museums and serve as centres for informal learning. They provide geological, historical and cultural stories and allow scientists to contribute to informal learning by communicating their research to the general public in an understandable fashion using a variety of methods. One mandate of the UNESCO-supported Global Geopark Network is the promotion of geoeducation. Geopark visitors who are science literate are better able to fully appreciate and understand geological significance. In the current study, we surveyed visitors’ awareness and knowledge of the geopark and geology/earth science and compared responses from visitors at a newly established Global Geopark (Stonehammer, Canada) and an established Global Geopark in England (English Riviera). Regardless of the fact that the English Riviera Geopark was more mature and therefore had more opportunity to develop and promote its educational programmes, the results of the current study did not indicate that there was a higher awareness and/or knowledge levels among geopark visitors to an established geopark. This may simply be a result of the hype and attention given to the establishment of a new “attraction” in a community and, if so, would confirm the importance of continuous promotion.

Myth, resistance, and identity in Timor-Leste's Nino Conis Santana National Park

Since the end of the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste in 1999, a significant revival of local cultures and identities in public life has been occurring. In this article I discuss aspects of identity and culture among Fataluku-speaking people in relation to the recent establishment of the Nino Conis Santana National Park over much of their homeland. Today Fataluku cultural and historical stories provide a basis for their status as an autonomous and sovereign cultural group, as well as a legacy of intercultural negotiation and alliance that arguably reflects regional patterns of migration and social change over thousands of years. With the park's 15,000 residents continuing to rely on its forests and reefs for subsistence, recent restrictions on hunting have highlighted the need for increased local community support if the park is to achieve its conservation aims. I argue that long-standing traditions surrounding the negotiation of social and political change within Fataluku society provide a potential basis for cooperation with the new nation–state and for developing community-oriented park management policies.

Law, culture and Euro-crime: using Spiral to teach French law

Stories about law and lawyers are ubiquitous within Western popular culture. These stories have an influence on popular legal culture: the beliefs and values which ordinary people hold about the law. The dominance of popular cultural stories based within an Anglo-American legal context is thus significant, in particular in the forming of a perception within popular legal culture that legal systems are homogenous. An understanding of legal diversity: that is, of law as contingent on cultural, social and political conditions adds a valuable dimension to legal education, both from a vocational perspective and in terms of the academic value of the discipline. This paper addresses the relevance to legal education of cultural approaches to law, and argues that stories from popular culture can be effective ways of introducing students to legal diversity. The example of the French show Engrenages, shown in the UK as Spiral, is used, as it deliberately situates itself within French legal culture and engages with debates that are specific to that culture. Reflection on the supposedly “universal” themes within global popular culture and the underlying specificities of the storylines in Spiral can help students perceive systemic and cultural difference at a deep level.

The sons of Westwood: John Wooden, UCLA, and the dynasty that changed college basketball

For more than a decade, the UCLA dynasty defined college basketball. In twelve seasons from 1964 to 1975, John Wooden's teams won ten national titles, including seven consecutive championships. The Bruins made history by breaking numerous records, but they also rose to prominence during a turbulent age of political unrest and youthful liberation. When Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton--the most famous college basketball players of their generation--spoke out against racism, poverty, and the Vietnam War, they carved out a new role for athletes, casting their actions on and off the court in a political light. The Sons of Westwood tells the story of the most significant college basketball program at a pivotal period in American cultural history. It weaves together a story of sports and politics in an era of social and cultural upheaval, a time when college students and college athletes joined the civil rights movement, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and rejected the dominant Cold War culture. This is the story of America's culture wars played out on the basketball court by some of college basketball's most famous players and its most memorable coach.

Negotiating belonging in Australia through storytelling and encounter

From 2010 to 2012 a diverse group of young people participated in an oral history theatre project, Chronicles, which aimed to support them to claim a personally meaningful Australian identity. Oral history theatre was used to facilitate a process whereby the young people were able to reconnect with their personal family histories, encounter Aboriginal young people and stories, and together interview Aboriginal Elders. Through this process, they could develop new understandings of their own social identities, and meanings of and possibilities for belonging. ‘Centring diverse lives, decentring whiteness’ and ‘a different starting point: Aboriginal ways of knowing’, were the two key outcomes that we report on. Bringing people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds together to share stories of history, culture and identity, offers a unique vantage point from which to rupture dominant narratives about belonging/non-belonging and show up whiteness, and together forge a new Australian identity reflective of everyday multiculturalism.

Incest Taboos and Kinship: A Biological or a Cultural Story?

In most, if not all, societies, incest taboos—perhaps the most universal of cultural taboos—include prohibitions on marriage between parent and child or between siblings. This universality suggests a biological origin, yet the considerable variation across societies in the full range of prohibited marriage relations implies a cultural origin. Correspondingly, theories regarding the origin of incest taboos vary from those that focus on the biological consequences (were marriage-based procreation allowed to include inbred matings) to those that focus on social consequences such as confounding social roles, especially within the family, or restricting networks of interfamily alliances, were marriages to take place between close relatives. For those focusing on the biological consequences, the sexual aversion hypothesis of the anthropologist Edvard Westermarck has played a central role through seemingly providing an empirically grounded, causal link from the phenomenal level of behavior to the ideational level of culture. Yet the matter is not so simple and requires rethinking of what we mean by kinship and how our ideas about kinship relate to the widespread occurrence of incest taboos and the extensive variability in their content.

Alenka Sottler: Slovenia ⋆ Illustrator

Alenka SottlerSlovenia ⋆ Illustrator Samantha Christensen Alenka Sottler was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1958, and grew up among a family dedicated to the arts. Her father was a sculptor, while her mother worked for a leading newspaper and printing company. Alenka first learned to draw and sculpt in her father's studio, where she cultivated a love of art that would take her through both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. In 1988, Sottler began to work as a freelance painter and illustrator for Slovenian and foreign publishers and magazines, including the largest Slovenian publisher, Mladinska knija. Since then she has illustrated more than 45 books, with a particular flair for fairytales. She has won many awards, including the Hinko Smrekar Award at the Biennial of Slovenian Illustration, and awards from other countries such as Japan, Croatia, and Italy, as well as five certificates of Merit from the Annual Exhibition in New York, and she made the IBBY Honor list in 2008. She has received other accolades for her work, most prominently for her illustrations in Folk Tales from Around the World. Sottler often takes risks and experiments with her craft. Her artistry steadfastly displays an awareness of the importance of artistic freedom of expression. Her style is contemporary, with subtle elements of modernist painting tradition reminiscent of the Late Gothic and Early Renaissance. She is an extremely with precision and consistency, allowing her images to adhere to a system and form their own personal narrative. Alenka Sottler has illustrated many children's classics and cultural stories and fairytales, and has also brought to life the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde by incorporating her own artistic style and technique to the texts. Sottler's colorful, contemporary style has also illustrated distinctly Slovenian cultural texts—works by poets and authors such as Oton Župančič and Grigor Vitez—and her artistic contributions to these canonical works prove that illustration is an important aspect of Slovenian literature and culture. Selected Bibliography • Agnes Cecilija [Agnes Cecilia]. Text Maria Gripe. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1998. Google Scholar • Pepelka [Cinderella]. Text Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 2006. Google Scholar • Pravljice [Fairy Tales]. Text Oscar Wilde. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1999. Google Scholar • Svetlanine pravljice [Svetlana's Fairytales]. Text Svetlana Makarovič. Dob: Miš, 2008. Google Scholar • Svetovne Pravljice [Folk Tales from Around the World]. Ljubljana: Nova revija, 2004. [End Page 4] Google Scholar Copyright © 2014 Bookbird, Inc.

Lon Marum—People of the Volcano

In June 2013, the Vanuatu National Cultural Council, the regulatory body for research in the Republic of Vanuatu, introduced a one-year moratorium on social research in the country. The moratorium restricts new outside researchers from undertaking social research in Vanuatu and asks current researchers to submit a report on their research projects. Its purpose is to take stock of research being undertaken and to develop appropriate policies for research in Vanuatu.1 It is a response to exploitation of cultural knowledge and is an initiative by Vanuatu to take ownership of their cultural stories and knowledge, as well as the responsibility to conduct their own research. Lon Marum—People of the Volcano is an exploration of different understandings and ways of presenting and owning knowledge. The film tells the story of communities on the Vanuatan island of Ambrym and their connection to one of the most active volcanoes in the world. The film begins in the community, where we learn, through mythical stories and community narratives, how the fire came to the island and the volcano came into being. Community members reenact scenes from ancestral times. For example, Chief Stanislas da Mangkon reenacts the magic song for controlling the fire. He explains how the fire was discovered and brought from Malakula island to Ambrym using the Magic Transport. The fire was eventually moved further up to the center of the island, where it is today. The first part of the film sets up the fact that local chiefs have control over the volcano as well as have ownership of the story of the volcano. “If someone wants to go up the volcano, and have good weather, they should ask me first for permission,” comments one of the volcano chiefs.

Low-Wage Capitalism, Social Difference, and Nature-Dependent Production

Internationally, neoliberalism is often associated with the export-oriented production of nontraditional agricultural goods from poorer to richer countries. Shrimp aquaculture is a very important aspect of this process. Economic geographers, sociologists, and others have critically analyzed the problems of shrimp farmers and the adverse environmental effects of shrimp aquaculture. But they have generally neglected a crucial dimension: the conditions under which men, women, and children work for a wage in producing shrimps. The story of shrimp culture has been, more or less, the story of the missing wage laborer. Drawing on in-depth interviews in India, this paper discusses the conditions of laborers in export-oriented shrimp culture. It shows how the export-oriented production of shrimps results in the reproduction of a working class that works for abysmally low wages and under very poor conditions. The exploitation and domination of aqualaborers happens in ways in which capitalist relations are mediated by place-specific relations of difference and the specificities of nature-dependent production.

Telling stories about abortion: abortion-related plots in American film and television, 1916–2013

ObjectivesPopular discourse on abortion in film and television assumes that abortions are under- and misrepresented. Research indicates that such representations influence public perception of abortion care and may play a role in the production of social myths around abortion, with consequences for women’s experience of abortion. To date, abortion plotlines in American film and television have not been systematically tracked and analyzed. Study designA comprehensive online search was conducted to identify all representations of pregnancy decision making and abortion in American film and television through January 2013. Search results were coded for year, pregnancy decision and mortality outcome. ResultsA total of 310 plotlines were identified, with an overall upward trend over time in the number of representations of abortion decision making. Of these plotlines, 173 (55.8%) resulted in abortion, 80 (25.8%) in parenting, 13 (4.2%) in adoption and 21 (6.7%) in pregnancy loss, and 16 (5.1%) were unresolved. A total of 13.5% (n=42) of stories ended with the death of the woman who considered an abortion, whether or not she obtained one. ConclusionsAbortion-related plotlines occur more frequently than popular discourse assumes. Year-to-year variation in frequency suggests an interactive relationship between media representations, cultural attitudes and policies around abortion regulation, consistent with cultural theory of the relationship between media products and social beliefs. Patterns of outcomes and rates of mortality are not representative of real experience and may contribute to social myths around abortion. The narrative linking of pregnancy termination with mortality is of particular note, supporting the social myth associating abortion with death. ImplicationsThis analysis empirically describes the number of abortion-related plotlines in American film and television. It contributes to the systematic evaluation of the portrayal of abortion in popular culture and provides abortion care professionals and advocates with an initial accurate window into cultural stories being told about abortion.

Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture

Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture

Ditchin' the Master's Gardening Tools for Our Own: Growing a Womanist Methodology from the Grassroots

© 2015 by the board of trustees of the university of ill inois This essay explores the autoethnographic possibilities of critical service-learning research and the emerging realities of a community-centered womanist methodological response. As Cynthia Dillard points out, “[T]he underlying understanding of the nature of reality and the forms of discourse one employs (or is encouraged or permitted to employ) to construct realities in research . . . significantly impacts not only what can be said and how it is said, but where it is said” (On Spiritual Strivings 1, emphasis added). Drawing from Alice Walker’s definition of womanist as a commitment to “survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female” (xi), I argue that this approach is especially relevant to research centered on urban communities and populations of color. Womanist epistemology challenges assumptions requiring such groups to be represented and “spoken for” based on a singular conception of “truth” through a positivistic lens (Dillard, “On Spiritual Strivings” 4). Given their commitment to Black female cultural expressions, everyday conversations, and life stories, womanist epistemology and theory seek to disrupt dominant ways of knowing. Both have strong implications in research, creating an ethos of responsibility that not only provides a space for previously unheard voices to speak but also builds meaningful relationships among community members and researchers that ensure more accurate representation extending well beyond data collection and interpretation.

Culture as a Protective Factor: The Use of Storytelling in a Teen Pregnancy and STI Prevention Curriculum

The University of Hawaii Center on Disability Studies, in collaboration with two community partners, Planned Parenthood of Hawaii and ALU LIKE, Inc. has developed the Pono Choices teen pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) curriculum for Hawaii middle school youth. Pono Choices draws explicitly on Hawaiian cultural values and cultural practices as the foundation for the curriculum. The partners also created an original Hawaiian cultural story to reinforce the teen pregnancy and STI prevention message. This creative approach – culture as a protective factor to prevent an unintended pregnancy or STI, has merit for wider consideration in broadening work in the health education arena, especially in working with difficult to reach populations.

Using Narrative Communication as a Tool for Cultural Products Planning: Conceptual, Theoretical and Model Building

This study aims to provide a thinking model for design to understand all of the factors that affect cultural product planning. The development of cultural products is different from industrial products. Nevertheless, in the past product evolution process, how to select and interpret the traditional cultural characteristics with modern product originality, and further meld this into modern products to promote artistic conception at the spiritual level is a problem that is worthy of exploration. This study focuses on design communication using the Delphi technique to discuss communications in cultural product planning. It is suggested that design communication factors be taken into account when implementing activities concerning story. This study recommends three points for better cultural product development design communication. The designer should first review and explore what is the “awakening concept” of the cultural story. Second, “introspection” into the meaning should be explored. Third, design communication planning should be integrated in an attempt to reach “emotional resonance” for five senses experience and empathy.

Leaders and Heroes: Modern Day Archetypes

This paper explores the salience of archetypes through modern day idealization of leaders as heroes. The body of research in evolutionary psychology and ethology provide support for archetypal theory and the influence of archetypes (Hart & Brady, 2005; Maloney, 1999). Our idealized self is reflected in archetypes and it is possible that we draw on archetypal themes to compensate for a reduction in meaning in our modern day work life. Archetypal priming can touch a person’s true self and result in increased meaning in life. According to Faber and Mayer (2009), drawing from Jung (1968), an archetype is an, “internal mental model of a typical, generic story character to which an observer might resonate emotionally” (p. 307). Most contemporary researchers maintain that archetypal models are transmitted through culture rather than biology, as Jung originally argued (Faber & Mayer, 2009). Archetypes as mental models can be likened to image schemas, foundational mind/brain structures that are developed during human pre-verbal experience (Merchant, 2009). Such schemas are recurring within cognitive processes and establish patterns of understanding and reasoning. Archetypes can provide an operative paradigm or schema in which an individual can experience the world, be compelled to action, and provide a model for behavior. Maloney (1999) cites the growing body of research from several fields that support the premise that the mind is innately structured. Early knowledge persistently and consequentially shapes both subjective experience and behavior. With mental models, an individual has a framework with which to operate, understand, and explore. Archetypes are expressed in a number of ways, especially through myths, cultural stories, and tribal lore (Jung, 1968). Archetypes are generic story characters, but often represent key roles in narratives, that possess familiar and consistent traits and converge around central life themes (Faber & Mayer, 2009; Jung, 1968). A study by Faber and Mayer (2009, p. 314) demonstrates that people can reliably indentify individual archetypes in rich media sources. In addition, Maloney (1999) found that an individual considering a hypothetical long-term relationship with an archetypal image, including anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic images, can evoke affective responses, as was theorized by Jung. Such studies support the premise that an “archetype itself is never directly expressed in a symbol or image, but rather, it guides mental use of images and symbols to conform to certain themes or motifs that are found everywhere” (Hart & Brady, 2005). Archetypal themes such as quests, attachments, and conflict are robustly relevant in adult cognition. There is a saliency to archetypal images that can elicit certain responses. The 1 Shadraconis: Leaders and Heroes: Modern Day Archetypes

Becoming Los Angeles: Stories of Nature and Culture. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Becoming Los Angeles: Stories of Nature and Culture. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Chinese Diasporic Women’s Writing, Gender and Identities

This article analyzes Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts . how she constructs a Chinese diasporic feminist identity via autobiographical, familial, and ethnic collective remembrance. In analyzing this memoir, this article is concerned with how gender, identity and memory are interrelated and how they are performed in the Chinese diaspora in America. In rereading the memoir for personal, familial and collective remembrance practices, this essay suggests that Kingston conveys three mnemonic traces: memory as archeological excavation and memory as continuous revision and retranslation; memory as a tool to challenge and to subvert traditional gender ideology; and the relation between memory and storytelling, in which Kingston equates memory and voice with storytelling and silence with oppression. Kingston uses memory narratives as a strategic method to question traditional system of gender identities, roles and expectations. She excavates cultural and familial stories or collective memories, and then revises or retranslates them to understand her place and identities in America and in the Chinese diaspora. Kingston is conscious that the process of recovering, retranslating, and transmitting personal, familial, and ethnic collective memory is always fractured, negotiated, and a product of struggle. Hence it destabilizes constructions of identity and community formation along with knowledge production. Kingston notes that women are frequently the transmitters of memory . personal, familial, cultural, and collective. through their storytelling. This article illustrates that ethnic collective memory, like cultural identity, is a site of heterogeneity and difference, where some memories can perpetuate homeland and diasporic patriarchy while other memories can provide more liberating narratives for women and young girls. The Woman Warrior is an attempt to rewrite both Chinese diasporic memory by challenging its sexism and the national official memory of the United States by pointing to its history of gender inequality, racism, and Orientalism.

Sara E. Melzer, Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture

Sara E. Melzer, <i>Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture</i>