Cultural Upheaval Research Articles

UGALI AND UBUNTU: A CULINARY JOURNEY THROUGH BELONGING IN THE SELECT WORKS OF NGUGI WA THIONGO

Ubuntu emphasises the value of interpersonal relationships, group accountability, and interdependence. Ubuntu essentially represents the ideas that a person's identity is shaped by their relationships with other people and that a community's health is a prerequisite for a person's personal health. It is a tenet that fosters compassion, empathy, and teamwork in order to advance social cohesiveness and peace. Ubuntu is a prominent African philosophical idea that has received international popularity, especially in relation to debates over social fairness, leadership, and how to resolve conflicts. Ngugi wa Thiong'o explores deep themes of identity, community, and belonging in her chosen works by deftly combining the ideas of Ugali and Ubuntu. A common dish in many African cultures, ugali signifies more than just sustenance, it is a symbol of community, nourishment, and the shared experiences of meals spent together. The African ideology of Ubuntu, which states, "I am because we are," emphasises the interconnectedness and shared humanity of communities. This culinary tradition symbolises this principle. In the context of Kenya's sociopolitical environment, Ngugi's stories explore the lives of people who struggle with colonial tyranny, cultural upheaval, and the desire for autonomy. Ngugi highlights the value of community values and solidarity as crucial for overcoming adversity and restoring cultural identity through his moving stories.

Psychoanalytic Exploration of Identity and Loss in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

This psychoanalytic exploration delves into the nuanced dimensions of identity and loss within Kiran Desai’s literary masterpiece, The Inheritance of Loss. By applying critical psychoanalytic concepts, this analysis navigates the novel’s characters’ intricate subconscious motivations and conflicts against cultural shifts and globalization. The study unveils profound psychological landscapes within the narrative by employing a methodology that combines close textual analysis with established psychoanalytic principles. The characters, such as Jemubhai and Biju, serve as focal points for exploring the depths of their internal struggles in response to external forces. Concepts like repression and symbolism become invaluable tools in deciphering layers of meaning embedded in the narrative, enriching our comprehension of their psyches. The Inheritance of Loss is a set of external events and a profound exploration of the human condition. Characters, shaped by their unconscious desires and conflicts, become mirrors reflecting the broader societal implications of cultural upheaval. The narrative becomes a testament to the intricacies of human existence amidst a rapidly changing world. This psychoanalytic analysis provides a key to unlocking the depths of Desai’s narrative, offering a richer interpretation of the novel’s characters and themes. By unraveling the psychological tapestry woven into the story, the study provides insights into the universal struggles of individuals facing the complexities of identity, loss, and cultural transformation. Through this exploration, The Inheritance of Loss transcends its narrative boundaries, inviting readers to contemplate the human psyche’s profound and often hidden dimensions.

Rhetoric of Female Voices against Patriarchy in A Doll’s House

This article tries to explore the female subjugation in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Women confronts female domination, torture and other different domestic violence in different societies of the world in different ways. They get misbehaved and branded as secondary persons in the family in many societies of the world. They remain far from the fundamental rights in some cases. In many societies, they face economic, political, social and cultural upheavals. The protagonist of the novel Helmer treats his wife as a doll rather than a vital member of the family. He wants to keep her under his control in every matter of the family though she sacrifices her life for him wholeheartedly. Seeking emancipation in her family, Nora leaves her home, which marks the feminist voices against patriarchal domination prevalent in society. This article employs radical feminism proposed by Ti-Grace Atkinson. Society is a patriarchy in which the class of man is the oppressors of the class of woman. They oppose that the oppression of woman is the most fundamental form of oppression.

Emotional Empathy and Multiplex Derangement of Childhood in The Kite Runner: A Study of Cultural Upheaval and Collective Identity

Emotional Empathy and Multiplex Derangement of Childhood in The Kite Runner: A Study of Cultural Upheaval and Collective Identity

Prioritizing Our Values: A Case-Study Report that Examines the Efforts of a Group of University-Level, Communication Design Educators to Collectively Construct Inclusive and Equitable Design Teaching Practices in a (Post-) Pandemic Era

The Value Design Education Pledge was co-developed by the co-authors of this article: Associate Professor Anne H. Berry, Associate Professor Meaghan A. Dee, Assistant Professor Penina Laker, and Associate Professor Rebecca Tegtmeyer, with contributions by Kelly Walters (Assistant Professor, Communication Design, Parsons, The New School, New York City, N.Y., U.S.A.), to develop and promote long-term, inclusive, and equitable teaching practices that could positively affect design education. The pledge was initiated in the wake of events that transpired during the spring and summer of 2020—namely, the COVID-19 global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, both of which evolved across the United States during that time. It was also undertaken in recognition of 1) the changes and challenges that evolved as a result of remote and online learning having to be implemented across most U.S.-based, university-level and K-12 design education programs, and 2) the need for pedagogic accountability when decisions have been taken by faculty and administrators to commit to inclusive and equitable teaching practices.  This case study provides an overview of the timeline of events and the decision-making that preceded the development of the pledge, including the first AIGA (the professional association for design, and the primary funder of this journal) Design Educators Community (DEC) virtual roundtable in May 2020 that spawned a draft of actionable items and outcomes from educators (working at K-12, non-traditional, undergraduate, and post-graduate levels) who participated in the pledge initiative. As a key point of planning and emphasis, the Value Design Education Pledge was developed to meet two key goals. The first was to facilitate manageable and sustainable commitments to students and communities for design educators already overburdened by the strain of adapting curricula and the course materials that support them. The second was to encourage remote and online learning in ways that could effectively provide emotional and academic support to design students throughout the progression of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the social, political, and cultural upheavals that accompanied it. The authors research fueled the generation of ideas for further exploration of initiatives that could effectively support these goals, including:developing mechanisms for measuring students’ learning before and after they leave particular classes and programsidentifying ways to emphasize that the outcomes of design processes can provide humanistic, tangible, and positively transformative products, services, and systems; and building better mentor models that could be facilitated inside and outside of a variety of types of design classrooms. While the disciplinary focus of the pledge as it was initially developed was centered on design education, the authors believe that several items and ideas that emerged from operating it can be adapted to benefit education across a broader array of disciplines.

The Molin Collection Between the Old and New Regime


 
 
 Starting from the cross-analysis of printed texts, manuscripts and works of art preserved in the city’s museums, the essay reflects on the impact that the political, social and cultural upheavals triggered by the fall of the Serenissima had on the taste of the conservative Venetian nobility. In particular, it examines the case of Girolamo Ascanio Molin (1736–1814), a politician, scholar and writer who, between the late 18th and early 19th century, built an extensive collection, whose physiognomy evolved according to the historical context, the frequentations of the senator, the opportunities provided by art markets and the self-representation strategies adopted by the patriciate in response to the New Regime.
 
 

Managing power and psychiatric training in the United States, 1945–1990

In the wake of their heightened role in addressing the emotional challenges of United States soldiers during World War II, American psychiatrists increasingly argued that their knowledge of human nature, based on interpretation of unconscious processes, was a powerful tool in effecting changes in society. As they turned to training an adequate supply of psychiatrists to meet expanding demand, educators in psychiatry residency programs faced questions about whom to entrust with the power of psychiatric interpretation, how educators’ knowledge about trainees’ own unconscious processes should be harnessed, and how much to adhere to strict psychoanalytic doctrine in training. During the 1970s, social and cultural upheavals outside and inside psychiatry began to dismantle the grand claims of the postwar generation of psychiatrists, while shifts in the 1980s led educators to focus more on seemingly objective educational measures. Trainees’ and critics’ serious questioning of authority and structures in American society, and within psychiatry training programs, was perhaps as much of a factor – if not more – in the shift away from an emphasis on the interpretive power of psychoanalysis in favor of more eclectic and ultimately biological approaches in academic psychiatry.

Exploring Hikikomori-like idiom of distress a year into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Oman: Factorial validity of the 25-item Hikikomori Questionnaire, prevalence and associated factors.

Existing literature that examines the Hikikomori-like idiom of distress (HLID) initially labelled this phenomenon as a culture-bound syndrome. However, the increasing number of reports from other parts of the world suggest that HLID could instead be a culture-reactive idiom of distress, originating from biopsychosocial disequilibrium and cultural upheaval. The impact of imposed social withdrawal due to the Coronavirus 2 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic on the growing prevalence of HLID has not yet been adequately explored. Aims: The first objective is to examine the factorial validity of the 25-item Hikikomori Questionnaire (HQ-25) in Oman. Second, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of HLID following the lifting of SARS-COV-2 restrictions in the Arabian Gulf country of Oman. The third related objective is to examine factors associated with the variation of HLID. This cross-sectional online survey was widely distributed across the diverse socio-demographic population residing in Oman. After the validation of the questionnaire and the factorial validity, the Arabic version of HQ-25 was used to explore the prevalence and factors associated with HLID. A total of 1529 participants were included in the study (response rate = 76.5%), of whom 44% (n = 673) expressed HLID. We randomly split it into half, one for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (n = 764) and the other half for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (n = 765). From the EFA results, a three-factor model was found for the Omani version of HQ-25, which represented 52.87% of the variance with good internal reliability (Overall Cronbach's: 0.92; Socialisation: 0.92; Isolation: 0.84; Emotional support: 0.73). The CFA results report acceptable goodness-of-fit indices (χ2/df = 17.92, p < .001; CFI = 0.90; TLI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.04, 95% CI 0.02-0.07; SRMR = 0.05) of the three-factor model of the collected samples. All 1529 data were used in the respondents. The results of the logistic regression showed that married marital status (OR = 1.51, 95% CI: 1.12-2.03, p = 0.007), older age (OR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.95-0.99, p = 0.008), living in an urban area (OR = 0.71, 95% CI: 0.56-0.91, p = 0.006), unemployed occupational status (OR = 1.72, 95% CI: 1.30-2.88, p < .001), screen time (7+ hours vs. <4 hours: OR = 4.50, 95% CI: 3.16-6.41, p < .001; 4-7 hours vs. <4 hours: OR = 2.10, 95% CI: 1.61-2.70, p < .001), history of mental illness (OR = 3.70, 95% CI: 2.29-5.91, p < .001), and adverse childhood experiences (OR = 2.60, 95% CI: 2.03-3.20, p < .001) were significant risk factors for HLID. The factorial validity of the HQ-25 performed in this study appears to mirror the previously reported 3-factor structures. Some of the associated factors appear to support and, conversely, dissent from the findings of previous studies. These are discussed in terms of the attributions of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, demographic trends in Oman, and sociocultural factors specific to the region of interest.

ПРОЛОНГИРАНО РАСЕЉЕНИШТВО И КУЛТУРНО ПАМЋЕЊЕ: АНТРОПОЛОШКА СТУДИЈА СЛУЧАЈА РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЈЕ ЖИВОТА СРБА НА КОСОВУ И МЕТОХИЈИ

Given that anthropological work is a collaborative endeavour, this paper focuses on analysing collective memory practices through material gathered during interviews with the interlocutors from the fieldwork on displacement of Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija conducted in Niš, Belgrade, and in the region of Kosovo and Metohija in the period from 2020. to 2022. Through contextual analyses of literature and documentary films about the life of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, this case study examines social, political and cultural circumstances which affect the production of chosen works. The amateur documentary films Life Defined by a Loaf (2013), Pristina: Imperfect (Unfinished) Story (2016), Yellow Buss (2018), Vidovdan: One Day of Life (2019) and books Pristina, Pristinians and Time (1999), Kosovo and Metohija: to have and to have not (2004) of one of the main interlocutors, Radmila Todić Vulićević, who is herself a displaced person, are taken as primary material for the case study and compared with narratives collected during fieldwork. Since the paper is covering the fields of visual anthropology and anthropology of literature, the methodology is based on anthropological premises that memory is intersubjecitve. Treatment of memory as a social process therefore allows analysis of imagolocical aspects of the chosen works. The main aim is to contribute to the understanding of how remembering and forgetting intertwine in periods of social and cultural upheavals, and of the effects of post-war conditions on the life of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as displaced persons.

Indian Ideology in The Warpath: Lehman Brightman’s Red Power Journalism

The Warpath, the “angry Indian” newsletter founded by the militant but oft overlooked journalist Lehman Brightman, was one of several Red Power publications founded in the late 1960s as part of the social and cultural upheavals of that era. Brightman’s publication deployed several major themes as he argued for Native American rights and against the federal Indian bureaucracy, especially “America’s colonial office,” the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In The Warpath, Brightman demanded Indian liberation and self-determination, calling for direct political action at places like Alcatraz and Mount Rushmore, a place Brightman and other activists occupied in 1970. Brightman also celebrated Indian history and culture, criticized Indian stereotypes, excoriated moderate Indian leaders and, perhaps most significantly, investigated the appalling conditions at underfunded and understaffed Indian schools. His principal achievement was the articulation of a strident anti-racist and anti-colonial ideology that continues to resonate in Indian Country.

THE QUEST FOR UTOPIA IN BLACK THEATRE: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF NGUGI WA THING’O’S THE BLACK HERMIT

Utopia, the idea of a perfect society, has been a central theme in literature, philosophy, and art for centuries. The desire for utopia has inspired countless visionaries and reformers, who have sought to create a better world through various means, such as religion, ideology, science, or art. However, utopia has also been criticized and ridiculed as an impossible or even dangerous dream, that distracts us from the reality of our imperfect and flawed world.&#x0D; Ngugi Wa Thing’o, a prominent Kenyan writer and activist, has addressed the theme of utopia in many of his works, including his play The Black Hermit. Written in the 1960s, at a time of great political and cultural upheaval in Africa and beyond, The Black Hermit offers a complex and nuanced exploration of the quest for utopia in the context of black theatre. Through the character of the Black Hermit, a revolutionary who withdraws from the world to live in solitude, Ngugi raises questions about the nature and meaning of utopia, and its relationship to the struggles and aspirations of black people.&#x0D; The aim of this research is to deepen our understanding of Ngugi's work and thought by analysing The Black Hermit as a text that engages with the theme of utopia in a creative and thought-provoking way. It also examines how Ngugi uses the play to critique and challenge various utopia-building projects, and to propose his own vision of utopia as a process of becoming. The research also considers the relevance and significance of Ngugi's utopia to the contemporary world and the ways in which it speaks to universal human concerns.

Heart of the Country

How can we create a world that will offer our children wisdom, humanity, responsibility and hope? Shinichi Yasutomo, the extraordinary principal of a rural village school in Hokkaido, Japan, passionately believes he knows the way - by giving children a moral compass to guide their lives, by educating their hearts as wells as their minds. Heart of the Country takes time - a full calendar year, to follow the life of this extraordinary man and the families and children he has dedicated himself to. It is also the story of the village of Kanayama, a rural farming community bound together by love for its children and a deep respect for learning. Parents, elders and leaders of this once impoverished town have been tempered by the long journey through the cultural upheaval of postwar Japan. They embrace Principal Yasutomo’s vision of hope for the future, but not without wary glances back to the past. Produced in collaboration with the community of Kanayama, Hokkaido and the Hokkaido University of Education Japan.

Post-Colonial Review of V. S. Naipaul's Fiction

V.S Naipaul is acknowledged as one of the most talented writers dealing with postcolonial themes for his fictions. As a Nobel Prize winner author, he has written a number of fictions such as A House for Mr Biswas (1961), A Bend in the River (1979), Miguel Street (1959), An Area of Darkness (1964), In a Free State (1971), The Mimic Men (1967), India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990) and so on. The article presents a review of his postcolonial fictions with a thorough thematic analysis. Naipaul treats the themes of pessimism, identity crisis, social fragmentation, diaspora and internal struggles of immigrants. He also presents the futility of designing a new Westernised identity by discarding old roots. The political, social and cultural upheavals and its critical impact is also illustrated by the author.

Critical Reassessments: “My Heart Laid Bare”: A Deep Rereading of Daniel Hoffman’s Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe

Critical Reassessments: “My Heart Laid Bare”: A Deep Rereading of Daniel Hoffman’s <i>Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe</i>

The Magic of a Fetal Fetish in the Face of Climate Crisis and the Expanse of Dense Temporalities

In times of cultural upheaval, the image of the child, typically a White girl, has been used to represent the vulnerability of humanity as a whole. In the face of escalating climate crisis the fetus is now standing in to represent the future, and the uterus has become the only environment many politicians are willing to legislate. It appears the fetus has become a flexible fetish object used both to displace growing annihilation anxieties in the present and as a way of racially colonizing the future. As fetal protection and anti-abortion laws spread across the United States, gestating bodies have been identified as the primary threats to healthy pregnancy. Integrating psychoanalytic theory with concepts from anti-Blackness and Indigenous theories, I outline a situation where the fetal fetish functions as a colonizing temporal system of affect regulation that is currently being used consolidate and secure White, cisgender, able-bodied, heteromasculinity and human exceptionalism.

Breaking Metanarratives in Tim O’Brien’s text: A Postmodern Analysis

The Vietnam War was a splitting conflict that caused significant social, political, and cultural upheaval in American society. Tim O’Brien’s work explores the personal experiences of soldiers who fought in the war, their inner lives, and the complexities of telling true stories about the war. This paper discusses O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” as a representation of a unique literary work set in the context of the Vietnam War. The paper argues that O’Brien’s narrative style departs from traditional metanarrative styles by emphasizing individual traumas and inner experiences, which transcends the question of factual accuracy. The paper utilizes Jean-Francois Lyotard’s theory of metanarratives in the postmodern era to explore how O’Brien’s narrative style subverts traditional narrative structures, creating an emphasis on individual emotions and experiences. The paper argues that O’Brien’s narrative style, which includes fragmentary narration, personification of items, and conscious expressions from the narrator’s perspective, authentically elaborates the obscurity and disorder of people’s inner world during wars. This narrative style provides a meaningful way for people to empathize and connect with the text, especially during times of uncertainty and despair such as the COVID-19 pandemic. O’Brien disrupts metanarratives, making readers doubt their own viewpoints and beliefs, and deconstructs the textures of power and authority. While his work is significant in subverting authoritative storytelling, the loss of belief in overarching narratives may lead to social unrest, political upheaval, and economic instability. The combination of the metanarrative and the postmodern subversive narration might be a possible solution.

ON THE CULTURAL-ETHIC CATEGORIES TRANSFORMATION IN EUROPE OF THE XIX CENTURY: SEARCH FOR THE BASIC FOUNDATIONS

The article aims at discussing the XIX century’s European studies which influenced the new ethically-themed performance, viewed as the source of the main meaningful (or subject-to-subject) cultural categories. Social and scientific changes, which led to the “cultural upheaval”, made the scientists consider the value system newly and define the existence of the dynamic cultural-ethic elements as a system. Further this approach provided the basis for the division of the cultural categories into fundamental and meaningful. The vectors of ethic norms’ transformation are also under discussion, i.e. the development of philosophical ideas of the following researchers A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, Ch. Darwin, A. Bergson: voluntaristic (built on the philosophy of the will), evolutionist (based on the Ch. Darwin’s theory of biological evolution) and vital (designed on the metaphysics of Bergson’s Elan Vital). Viewed as a whole, both “philosophy of living” and Ch. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species seem to ground cultural categories of a moral and ethical value. Thanks to them, life turned out to be not only of irrational creative philosophical principle but also of the ultimate value; while the concept struggle for existence moved to Biology. Life as an ultimate value acknowledgment did not mean the full refusal from the morality with the social degradation, it was only associated with relativization of traditional (Christian, primarily) values. This acknowledgment did not involve the recognition of the human being’s unlimited selfishness which in practice had to give way to the “instinct” of solidarity found in animality.

The Promise of American Pentecostal Political Theologies

Abstract Political strife and cultural upheaval characterize public life in the United States today. When did it start? Not with Donald J. Trump’s election, but he certainly amplified and accelerated these trends. Do the Spirit of Pentecost and communities of people filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit offer a way forward beyond the acrimony, hatreds, bigotries, and political polarities? The articles in this issue think they do. With these concerns and questions in mind, the articles presented here assess, critique, and offer constructive proposals for pentecostal political theology and practice in the age of Trump and beyond. This introductory article lays groundwork, historical and theological, for the generative contributions these articles make to pentecostal political theology in the United States.

FEATURES OF MODERN RUSSIAN MASS LITERATURE

Well into the 20th century, Russian literature was an important forum for societal self-understanding. This function, however, was lost during the First World War. Revolution and civil war completed the transformation of the literary establishment, although another brief flowering followed in the 1920s. The chronological pattern of Russian literature at the beginning of the 20th century is mostly oriented towards the diverse movements, groups, and schools. Although some structures persisted in part into the years after 1917, they did not prove resistant to the political, social, economic, and cultural upheavals triggered by the war. Analogously, the authors changed not only their view of the world, but also their subjects and means of expression. For this reason, the war as an historical context of literary creation (with the decisive years of 1904/05, 1913/14 to 1917/18, and 1921/22) moves to the centre, including its interrelationship with the global revolutionary undercurrent of the time.

Fiddling with Southern California at a Time of Upheaval: A.E. Maxwell’s Mystery Series

Between 1985 and 1993, Ann Maxwell (aka Elizabeth Lowell) and her husband Evan, a former L.A. Times crime reporter who covered international crime, co-authored a series of neo-noir crime novels featuring the private-eye narrator Fiddler, an independently wealthy, Newport-based macho man with a moral compass and a shady past from which his wealth is derived, and his partner Fiora, a high-powered Orange County banker who made her way into high finance from a humble midwestern background. While the series’s plots and characters follow established genre conventions, the novels’ settings cannily spotlight regions and locales relevant to California in which the geopolitical transformations of the later 1980s and early 1990s were concentrated. The upheaval of California’s social fabric in places such as the Gold Coast, Orange County, Napa Valley, the Mexican border, and even Santa Fe (Los Angeles’s alter ego) provide the background for plots that range from Cold War spies and smugglers to a white-collar breed of criminals such as property development scammers, art forgers, and financial fraudsters, exposing the violent and criminal underbelly of a rapidly globalizing and accelerating economic system in which (some parts of) California played a central role. This article provides a geocritical reading of the mystery series that focuses on its modes of political and social critique of the era of Reaganomics, globalization, and the financialization of property, technology, and culture. The series reveals a sustained engagement with political, social, and cultural upheavals that position these locales as sites of contestation and struggles that are, or turn, violent in a variety of ways.