Cultural Stratification Research Articles

The dialogical relation between the Here and the Elsewhere: the cultural stratification of the space. A case study: Le dernier roi d’Angkor by Jean-Luc Coatalem

The dialogical relation between the Here and the Elsewhere: the cultural stratification of the space. A case study: Le dernier roi d’Angkor by Jean-Luc Coatalem

Space of lifestyles in Finland, 2007 and 2018: Continuity, change, and the role of online activities and everyday participation

Has the space of lifestyles—a relational, holistic model of cultural stratification in a society—changed in recent years, marked by the rise of digitalization and social media? Does a better coverage of mundane “everyday participation”, besides conventional cultural indicators, change our view of the space of lifestyles? To tackle these questions, we construct the space of lifestyles in Finland for 2007 and 2018 using two repeated surveys, applying multiple correspondence analysis. With identical sets of indicators, we project observations from 2018 to the model of 2007 as supplementary individuals, which allows us to examine gradual changes in the space. We then build a more comprehensive model for 2018 that includes indicators of online and everyday practices not available in 2007. Measured identically, the results show considerable stability, whereas adding the impact of online and everyday practices subjected the space of lifestyles to profound change.

Angelenos? What’s That? Young Italians in Los Angeles in the Fiction of John Fante, Andrea De Carlo, and Chiara Barzini

ABSTRACT In the complex and varied history of Italian migration to the United States, the Californian experience has stood out for the original dynamics of its mobility, especially in relation to the transit of Italians to Los Angeles. This article investigates three descriptions of the Italian experience in Los Angeles in different moments in the city’s history as provided by three authors who embody different transnational Italian perspectives, namely John Fante’s Ask the Dust (1939), Andrea De Carlo’s Treno di panna (1983) and Chiara Barzini’s Things that Happened before the Earthquake (2017). This article explores how these representations of the Los Angeles experience have contributed to broadening the representation of Italian youth abroad. At the same time, my analysis identifies how the Italian experience has expanded the prism of literary interpretations of the city and deepened the knowledge of the metropolis and its dense stratification of ethnic communities and cultures.

Definitely (not) belonging to culture: Europeans’ evaluations of the contents and limits of culture

Despite the long history of debating its meaning and its current unprecedented ubiquity both in scholarly and popular discourses, little is systematically known about how “culture” is conceived by ordinary people. This paper examines how evaluations of the contents and boundaries of expressive culture are patterned among people in and across present-day European societies, and to what degree these evaluations associate with sociodemographic and politico-cultural divisions. Using survey data collected in 2021 in nine European countries and applying latent class and multinomial regression methods, the analysis reconstructs Europeans’ boundaries of the concept of culture – which objects, places and practices they see as belonging or not belonging to culture, and with which objects they remain ambivalent. The results show that the classical distinction between narrow (exclusive) and broad (inclusive) notions still structures Europeans’ evaluations of expressive culture, but it operates in several modes and with national and sociodemographic variations. In contrast to traditional assumptions, the narrow evaluations are associated with lower-status groups, while the upper-status groups embrace broad notions of culture. Moreover, the broad evaluations are associated with factors such as cultural cosmopolitanism and liberal-progressive political attitudes, highlighting the potential of extending cultural stratification research by the “bottom-up” study of patterned evaluations and understandings of the concept of culture itself.

E.E. Cummings's Shakespeare and the Modernist Middlebrow Sonnet

Abstract: As a popular experimental poet, E.E. Cummings embodied the intersection between "middlebrow" and "elite" cultural arenas as well as their competing claims to cultural institutions, such as the early-twentieth-century "Shakespeare industry" in the United States. Archival documents from Cummings's education at Harvard University and middlebrow studies together help to contextualize Cummings's conventional Shakespearean sonnets against middlebrow culture's emergence in the US. Cummings's Harvard notes show how the formal experimentation for which he is best known mirrors his readings in Shakespeare. These parallels signal the Shakespearean foundation of his own modernism and Cummings's participation in contemporary efforts to designate Shakespeare as an early modern modernist. Historicizing Cummings's conventional verse in this way also reveals how Cummings's Shakespeareanism, which blurs cultural hierarchy, has been obscured in the history of Cummings's reception as a middlebrow modernist by the mid-century "Battle of the Brows" and the cultural stratification it entailed.

‘Here she comes by God! ram away Doctor if one Bolus won’t do put in three’ – the Queen Caroline affair in satirical prints

ABSTRACT The present essay examines a sample of satirical prints and broadsides illustrating the main stages of the Queen Caroline affair (QCA). It claims that caricaturists and satirists used the vocabularies of melodrama and farce to transform a divorce scandal into an innovative political and cultural intervention in the public sphere. These popular literary and sub-literary traditions interwove the personal and the political elements of the case and created an innovative political language within a new print culture. This new print culture combined elements of ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature and culture thereby challenging cultural hegemony. Against the backdrop of the political protest that followed the end of the Wars in 1815, the satirical representation of the QCA questioned cultural stratification and gloried exploiting ‘unrespectability’ towards those in power. It was the triumph of laughter. Albeit for a brief period, this type of popular print culture undermined the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling class and became the most innovative attempt to build a more inclusive public sphere in the early nineteenth century.

Integrated analysis of robust sex-biased gene signatures in human brain

BackgroundSexual dimorphism is highly prominent in mammals with many physiological and behavioral differences between male and female form of the species. Accordingly, the fundamental social and cultural stratification factors for humans is sex. The sex differences are thought to emerge from a combination of genetic and environmental factors. It distinguishes individuals most prominently on the reproductive traits, but also affects many of the other related traits and manifest in different disease susceptibilities and treatment responses across sexes. Sex differences in brain have raised a lot of controversy due to small and sometimes contradictory sex-specific effects. Many studies have been published to identify sex-biased genes in one or several brain regions, but the assessment of the robustness of these studies is missing. We therefore collected huge amount of publicly available transcriptomic data to first estimate whether consistent sex differences exist and further explore their likely origin and functional significance.Results and conclusionIn order to systematically characterise sex-specific differences across human brain regions, we collected transcription profiles for more than 16,000 samples from 46 datasets across 11 brain regions. By systematic integration of the data from multiple studies, we identified robust transcription level differences in human brain across to identify male-biased and female-biased genes in each brain region. Firstly, both male and female-biased genes were highly conserved across primates and showed a high overlap with sex-biased genes in other species. Female-biased genes were enriched for neuron-associated processes while male-biased genes were enriched for membranes and nuclear structures. Male-biased genes were enriched on the Y chromosome while female-biased genes were enriched on the X chromosome, which included X chromosome inactivation escapees explaining the origins of some sex differences. Male-biased genes were enriched for mitotic processes while female-biased genes were enriched for synaptic membrane and lumen. Finally, sex-biased genes were enriched for drug-targets and more female-biased genes were affected by adverse drug reactions than male-biased genes. In summary, by building a comprehensive resource of sex differences across human brain regions at gene expression level, we explored their likely origin and functional significance. We have also developed a web resource to make the entire analysis available for the scientific community for further exploration, available at https://joshiapps.cbu.uib.no/SRB_app/

The Cultural Stratification of Yunnan Art During the Anti-Japanese War Period

The Cultural Stratification of Yunnan Art During the Anti-Japanese War Period

Voices of Black Folk: The Sermons of Rev. A. W. Nix, by Terri Brinegar

Voices of Black Folk: The Sermons of Rev. A. W. Nix, by Terri Brinegar

What cultural hierarchy? Cultural tastes, status and inequality.

Research on cultural stratification often draws on Bourdieu's misrecognition model to interpret socioeconomic gradients in cultural tastes and participation. In this model, an assumed cultural hierarchy leads individuals to adopt cultural tastes and behaviours whose status is congruent with that of their socioeconomic position (SEP). Yet, this assumed cultural hierarchy remains opaque. In this paper, we derive and test three empirical implications of the cultural hierarchy: (1) cultural activities have different status (recognition); (2) individuals in high and low SEPs have similar perceptions of the status of cultural activities (necessary condition for misrecognition); and (3) individuals prefer and engage in cultural activities whose status matches that of their SEP (status congruence). We collected survey data in Denmark and find that cultural activities differ in terms of perceived status (e.g., opera has higher perceived status than flea market), status perceptions are similar in high- and low-SEP groups and individuals prefer activities whose status matches that of their SEP. These results are consistent with the idea that a cultural hierarchy exists that sustains SEP gradients in cultural tastes and participation.

Westernization of Musical Culture and Cultural Stratification in Northeast India: Role of Western Music on the Consumption of Music among Youth

Abstract The musical culture in Northeast India is assimilated to Western music. The influence of Western music in the Northeast is more than in any other region of India. Folk music, regional film music, and Indian film music are developed as popular culture. The study revealed that Western music genres like rock, rap, and pop are integral to Northeast India’s music culture. In line with global music culture, rock bands in Northeast India are in operation that molded the music culture. Youths, particularly students, are ardent followers of Western music culture and developed a youth sub-culture. But a unique phenomenon also occurred, e. g. cultural stratification among sections of youths. The study revealed that the tribal youths are more attached to Western music than their non-tribal counterpart. It is highlighted that rural youths are more attached to regional and Indian film music, but urban youths prefer Western music.

Археологические раскопки на Наговицынском городище (последняя четверть V–III в. до н. э.) в 2020 г.

The article publishes the results of the 2020 archaeological research on the territory of the cultural heritage site of federal significance «Nagovitsynskoye (Fileyskoye) settlement» of Kirov. In accordance with the results of archaeological excavations at the settlement, a high degree of modern anthropogenic impact on the cultural layer of the site was determined and the chronological framework of its existence in the early Iron Age was established by the late Ananyino period (the last quarter of the V–III centuries BC). Eight pits were identified in the cultural layer, five of which can clearly be attributed to modern (XX–XXI century). Along with fragments of the Ananyino ceramics, modern garbage of the XX–XXI centuries (coins, casings, slagged glass, etc.) is recorded in their filling. Cultural stratifications of the Ananyino time, IV–III centuries BC, are also recorded.

New Finds Offering Insights into the Knight’s Manor in Chechło, Upper Silesia

The archaeological research conducted in 1970 confirmed that there are remains of a late medieval motte-and-bailey castle in Chechło. At that time, the structure was almost completely destroyed by farmstead construction, with only one small section of an earth wall preserved. During the conservator’s intervention in 1998, hundreds of unprocessed artefacts were discovered in the collection of the Provincial Office of Monument Preservation in Katowice, again drawing attention to this interesting site. Due to the expansion of the farmstead, the cultural stratification of the motte-and-bailey castle was damaged. Today, degradation and destruction by the contemporary infrastructure make it impossible to conduct further verification research, which would allow to better explore the remains of the site. Based on written sources and analysis of the finds, we can draw some new conclusions concerning its operation. There is no doubt that the manor already existed in the fourteenth century and that it was also used in the following centuries. It is difficult to say anything about the appearance of the manor at the time. It was most probably surrounded by an earth wall, small remains of which have been preserved until today. The discovered ceramic shards and fragments of stove tiles indicate that the residence was still used in the modern era, meaning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by representatives of the local gentry.

Oleksandr Mykolaiovych Karasiov ⸺ Prominent Researcher of Olbia Pontica (on the 120th Anniversary)

The life of Oleksandr Mykolaiovych Karasiov, a well-known archaeologist, a specialist in antiquity of the Northern Black Sea region, the discoverer of the Olbian agora, stoa, gymnasium and the central temenos of Olbia, was eventful. His biography and the path to archaeology was very thorny and difficult. However, until now the biography of this researcher has not been given enough attention, which is corrected by this article. Oleksandr Karasiov was born in St. Petersburg on August 3, 1902. During his busy life, before becoming an archaeologist, he managed to work as an extra in the health department at the registry office, volunteered in the Baltic Fleet as a journalist, began studying at the Higher School of Pilot-Observers and entered the Institute of Civil Engineers at the Faculty of Architecture. And this is not a complete list. Finally, in January 1925, he entered the Leningrad State University at the Faculty of Linguistics and Material Culture. Since 1926, during his studying at the university, O. Karasiov participated annually in the archaeological excavations at Olbia, which were initially led by B. V. Farmakovskyi, and considered himself as one of his disciples. Since that time, O. Karasiov was a tireless researcher of Olbia for 45 years, includingt 34 field seasons. The greatest archaeological achievements of O. Karasiov were made after the Second World War, when he, together with his wife, O. I. Levi, led the excavations at the «E» site, where for the first time they made the most significant discoveries published in the work Olvia. Temenos and agora and in many other articles. O. M. Karasiov owns the longest list of works on the monumental buildings of the Olbian temenos with a detailed examination of cultural stratifications, a functional definition of various types and purposes of stone structures, among which the most significant are the largest altar in the Northern Black Sea region, the temples of Apollo Delphinius, the spherical foundations of a possible Delphinion and the temple of Zeus of the Hellenistic time, large and small stoas, sacred treasury, etc. A thorough study of the monuments of the Olbian temenos, representing a single architectural ensemble and their publication, rightfully belongs to one of the most important archaeological discoveries made in Olbia and in the Northern Black Sea region in general.

Virtual Reality as an Artistic Space in the Context of Musical Art

The article highlights the modern view of musical art in the context of the development of information and communication technologies, which form the perception of art in the context of virtual interpretation. The relevance of the study is based on the prerequisites of the modern development of information and innovation society. There is a need for the perception of information in the context of virtual space in the context of the twentieth century. This trend changes approaches to human activities in different spheres of life, including artistic. This article shows the basic principles of virtual reality formation in the context of creating a space for the manifestation of musical art. The basic principles of perception of new artistic media in virtualization and digitalization are defined, and aspects of musical art reproduction are analyzed. This study shows the transformation of real life into virtual simple, which contributes to the spatio-temporal thinking of man and interprets the cultural achievements of human activity throughout the historical development. The article presents theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of musical art. The reflexion of the temporal phenomenon of cultural stratification and in-depth analysis of modern digital transformation in the context of virtual space formation is defined. Music discourse is analyzed in the context of cultural dynamics in the direction of the virtual world creation. The methods of analysis and synthesis, the research method and the method of discourse analysis were applied to study the virtualization of the musical environment. This study provided a basis for reflecting the effectiveness of the virtual environment for music art.

Matrix Metalloproteinase-3 Down Regulation and Cell Migration Inhibition in Human Pterygium Fibroblasts by Mitomycin-C, Curcumin and Fibrin Glue

BACKGROUND: Pterygium is an ocular surface disease that often occurs in tropical countries with a high recurrence rate. Matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) play a key role in the inflammatory process of pterygium. This study aims to investigate the ability of curcumin and fibrin glue (FG) in suppressing the expression of MMP-3, and whether can be expected as adjuvant therapy to reduce pterygium recurrence.METHODS: Human pterygium fibroblasts (HPF) obtained from primary cultured of pterygium were treated with no treatment, curcumin, mitomycin-C (MMC), and FG. MMP-3 expression was analyzed using immunocytochemistry and the intensity measurement was done using ImageJ software. Cell migration was measured by scratching and stratification of fibroblast culture after cell confluence, and assessed for 48 hours.RESULTS: The expression of MMP-3 were lower in the HPF treated with 100 mol/mL curcumin, 200 mol/mL, and FG (2205.84±86.1 pg/mL, 1002.51±25.22 pg/mL, 1131.55±17.71 pg/mL, respectively) in comparison with untreated HPF (4703.49±108.9 pg/mL). The expression of MMP-3 were significantly different between groups (p<0.001). Cell migration of HPF after scratching with curcumin intervention at 200 mol/mL decrease from 178.67±2.85 (24 hours) to 88.83±1.48 (48 hours). Meanwhile the migration in FG group also decrease from 180.4±2.56 (24 hours) to 72.45±1.25 (48 hours).CONCLUSION: Curcumin and FG able to reduce the expression of MMP-3 and inhibit the migration of HPF cells.KEYWORDS: curcumin, mitomycin C, fibrin glue, human pterygium fibroblast, MMP-3

Eternal life as privilege: Cultural boundaries and social stratification in death announcements (1950–2010)

Behind a veneer of “disinterested” concern, death rituals reflect and reproduce patterns of social and cultural stratification. This paper examines 296,483 death announcements published in a Turkish daily newspaper in a 60-year timespan. The content analysis of the texts shows that, first, the discourses around death reveal the complex overlaps between cultural boundaries and social stratification. Second, the patterns of social and cultural stratification in death announcements interweave with broad historical trends, making it possible to “read” societies through the lens of death. These historical trends map onto foundational issues, such as the gender gap, neoliberal transformations, modernization, and religiosity.

Intersections of class, lifestyle and politics. New observations from Norway

Although social class was once central to political sociology, it has become increasingly less so; many analysts now believe that one’s class position is less important in determining political attitudes and political party preferences. Simultaneously, more attention has been paid to what might be called the culturalization of politics, as epitomized by the US culture wars and stereotypes like the “latte-drinking liberal.” Here, political attitudes are regarded as primarily structured by people’s lifestyles and broader way of life. But do political preferences have to be explained by either relations of sociomaterial conditions (e.g. class) or cultural orientations (e.g. status and lifestyles)? In this article, we argue in favor of an approach that aims to reconcile these factors, allowing for the empirical mapping of whether and how they intersect in shaping political party preferences. We investigate this by using detailed Norwegian survey data to measure the extent to which intraclass heterogeneity in political party choices can be accounted for by the interaction between class and lifestyle. We employ a novel combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID). In drawing on constructed models of the social space and the space of lifestyles, we show that there are important correspondences between these spaces and that their interaction may help account for party choices. The results highlight the need for a more complex account than that suggested in recent works of cultural stratification research.

Cultural stratification in the UK: Persistent gender and class differences in cultural voraciousness

This paper adds to the literature on cultural stratification by revisiting cultural voraciousness, nearly two decades after it was first introduced as a measure of cultural participation designed to capture inequalities in the pace and variety of cultural activities. Specifically, using the UK 2014–15 Time Use Survey, we compare measures of cultural voraciousness in the UK in 1998 and 2015, focussing in particular on the way cultural voraciousness is associated with both gender and class. We find continuity over time in the patterns of relationship between cultural voraciousness, gender and class, which are not explained by income or hours worked. While women at the bottom of the class scale are still the most disadvantaged in terms of unequal access to cultural participation, high level managerial women now equal equivalent men in their voracious cultural participation. We conclude that not only is cultural voraciousness still useful in depicting cultural inequalities delineated by gender and class, and not only do gender and class gaps in cultural voraciousness persist over time, but also that there is evidence for accentuated class inequality over time in cultural voraciousness among men and among women.

Automated Identification of Immunocompromised Status in Critically Ill Children.

Easy identification of immunocompromised hosts (ICHs) would allow for stratification of culture results based on host type. We utilized antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) team notes written during handshake stewardship rounds in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) as the gold standard for host status; clinical notes from the primary team, medication orders during the encounter, problem list, and billing diagnoses documented prior to the ASP documentation were extracted to develop models that predict host status. We calculated performance for three models based on diagnoses/medications, with and without natural language processing from clinical notes. The susceptibility of pathogens causing bacteremia to commonly used empiric antibiotic regimens was then stratified by host status. We identified 844 antimicrobial episodes from 666 unique patients; 160 (18.9%) were identified as ICHs. We randomly selected 675 initiations (80%) for model training and 169 initiations (20%) for testing. A rule-based model using diagnoses and medications alone yielded a sensitivity of 0.87 (08.6-0.88), specificity of 0.93 (0.92-0.93), and positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.74 (0.73-0.75). Adding clinical notes into XGBoost model led to improved specificity of 0.98 (0.98-0.98) and PPV of 0.9 (0.88-0.91), but with decreased sensitivity 0.77 (0.76-0.79). There were 77 bacteremia episodes during the study period identified and a host-specific visualization was created. An electronic health record-based phenotype based on notes, diagnoses, and medications identifies ICH in the PICU with high specificity.