Cultural Debates Research Articles

Broadcasting the Life and Death of Victorian Cities: Urban Heritage in Ken Russell's Early BBC Shorts, 1959–61

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the question of how to care for and preserve Victorian urban heritage was an important topic in public debate. At the beginning of his career at the BBC, Ken Russell made four highly original short documentaries that address this issue from several different points of view. John Betjeman: A Poet in London (1959) and Shelagh Delaney's Salford (1960) offered middle-class and working-class perspectives on the large-scale destruction of Victorian buildings to make way for modern planning and high-rises, while A House in Bayswater (1960) and London Moods (1961) further elaborated on points made in the first two films. Considered as a thematic cluster, these four films map how several discourses intersected on the contested site of Victorian urban heritage, not least the different voices of middle-class and working-class stakeholders, both of whom had an interest in preserving aspects of urban architectural heritage, but for widely different reasons. As such, a close reading of these films demonstrates how topical documentaries can become, over the distance of more than half a century, a powerful site for reconstructing and understanding the subtle shadings of past attitudes and old cultural debates.

Valuation and vulnerability. An analysis of the reception of two illness narratives in the contemporary Swedish literary landscape

The proliferation of autobiographical accounts of illness, or autopathographies, has attracted considerable scholarly interest. Nevertheless, a notable gap remains in our understanding of how these narratives are received and evaluated. This article addresses this gap by examining the dynamics of value negotiation surrounding two autobiographical illness narratives in Sweden: Kristina Sandberg’s En ensam plats (A Lonely Place, 2021) and Sara Meidell’s Ut ur min kropp (Out of My Body, 2022). Theoretically, the article is grounded in a constructivist framework of value. In addition to exploring how Sandberg and Meidell address the value question in their illness narratives, it presents a detailed analysis of reviews and debate articles to uncover the underlying values expressed in the reception of these narratives. The analysis reveals that the value discussions center on aesthetic, emotional, social, and ethical dimensions, reflecting broader cultural debates about illness and its representation. While Sandberg’s narrative raises questions about the portrayal of illness experiences, Meidell’s narrative provokes discussions about its potential impact on readers. In sum, this article highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of value creation and negotiation pertaining to illness narratives.

Modernity, Latinità and the Nation in Italian Modernist Magazines (1914-1922)

This article explores the intersection between Latinity, modernity and nationalism in Italian magazines between 1914 and 1922. It argues that these notions, which had been at the center of cultural debates since the post-Risorgimento years and were re-elaborated during the First Word War and in the immediate postwar period, challenge and complicate the common assumption that reformulations of Latinity and classicism should be interpreted primarily as a return to tradition, which sanctioned a separation of the spheres of art and politics that had been conflated by the pre-war avant-garde movements. This study contends that the intersection between classicism, modernity and nationalism in Italian modernist magazines resulted in a rethinking of the notion of Latinity. This rethinking, both artistic and political, encompassed reformulated ideas of Mediterranean Europe and a repositioning of Italy within it. In this sense, the politicization of classicism embedded art in the historical identity of the nation and was instrumental in the formation of the ideological basis of the relationship between art and the fascist regime.

What goes up must come down? 25 years of public trust in the police

Public trust in the police is an almost ever-present feature of United Kingdom policy, political and indeed cultural debates, and this has been true right across the past quarter century. Concentrating on the population-level picture, and on England and Wales, in this article I outline what we know about changes in ‘trust and confidence’ over the past two decades or so, and make comparison with changes in other, closely associated, indicators. Why it might be that over this period trust in police first increased significantly, and then declined? Answers to this question implicate what might be termed the political economy of trust. Change in public trust may be due to a whole set of factors operating across multiple levels of policing and the society in which it takes place.

Contesting Notions of Cultural Purity: Analysis of Yvonne Owuor’s Dust and The Dragonfly Sea

There is usually a pronounced tendency to venerate one's ethnic or communal culture and to abominate any perceived intrusions of other people's cultures. Trumpeting the pristineness of communal roots, traditionalists spread the belief in the mythic purity of their past and the intolerance of anyone or anything foreign that threatens its further existence. They feel duty-bound to protect the traditional culture from foreign influences. They do not appreciate mixed ethnic and cultural heritage; they think of themselves as pure in their ethnic and cultural origins. They are not open to borrowing foreign ideas and institutions that are considered the basis of contemporary cultures. Yet, there is always a masked recognition of mixed heritage. Cultural debates cannot be divorced from foreign influences. This study explores the contestation of the notions of cultural purity in Owuor's Dust and The Dragonfly Sea. Through the construction of narratives of experience, the lived and told stories re-imagined in the two literary works emphasize the diversity of cultural identities that are negotiated within personal, historical, and situational contexts. The study acknowledges that literature is a mirror of society, and contemporary literary works not only provide a lens through which the question of cultural construction can be understood. This study examines Yvonne Owuor's two novels to explore her representation of these post-colonial debates on cultural purity. The objective of this study is to demonstrate how notions of cultural purity are contested in Dust and Dragonfly Sea. The study employs the post-colonial literary theory. The main characters' experiences in Owuor's Dust and The Dragonfly Sea demonstrate that cultural purity is a mirage. The phrase 'cultural purity' is in itself oxymoronic. No culture can be divorced completely from other cultures. A culture contains many influences from other cultures. Even that which is considered a traditional or single culture has adopted a trait or practice from another in the past. Resistance to change, as exhibited in some traditional cultures emanating from the fear of extinction, are misgivings that hardly last for long. These so-called traditional cultures do not lose all their characteristics; rather, they borrow things from other cultures and evolve to accommodate new realities. The results of this study will be particularly significant because it will serve as a key reference point for post-colonial scholars with biases towards cultural fluidity.

Navigating parental decision-making: Intersex surgeries in Italy

Decision-making dynamics in Italian paediatric care for Intersex and Variations of Sex Characteristics (VSC) involve a complex interplay between medical practices, parental perspectives, and socio-cultural factors. This article explores how medical professionals and parents make decisions amid cultural debates on gender, the body, and autonomy. It addresses aspects of why surgical intervention, with limited child involvement, is often seen as the ‘only option’ in the ‘conservative’ culture of Italy. The article continues to highlight the rise of parent-led human rights-based activism in Italy, challenging prevailing narratives in intersex/VSC paediatric care. Using qualitative data from two studies, including interviews with 15 Italian stakeholders and 38 Italian parents, as well as participant action research, the article provides insights into Italian medical and parental perspectives. The findings emphasize the need for nuanced support, education, and resources to empower parents in order to uphold the rights and well-being of intersex individuals.

Bankruptcy of the Category of Religion

This article takes as its point of departure the 2022 Interim Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, entitled “Indigenous Peoples and the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief.” The report recommends “collaborat[ing] with indigenous spiritual leaders and influencers to support conservation efforts and the sustainable development of traditional lands through a human rights-based approach.” We ask what a human-rights-based approach to the conservation and sustainable development of traditional Indigenous lands looks like. More specifically, would such an approach be in line with the worldviews of the Indigenous peoples potentially affected by such conservation or development? We consider these questions both legally and theologically. We acknowledge that the protection of human rights is better than their violation, but we also take seriously critiques of this standard human rights discourse. We argue that case studies such as Oak Flat, Lake Titicaca, and the Klamath River call us away from abstract affirmations of the human right to religious freedom and toward a rights-of-nature framework – even as we consider critiques of this framework as well. Ultimately, both Western legal discourse and Western religious studies discourse reduce Indigenous cosmologies (which are metaphysical systems) into cultural debates, thus erasing the sovereignty of Indigenous lands and peoples. A decolonizing approach therefore requires a rethinking of the sacred.

Gender-Bender Narratives: Radicalizing Effects of Disinformation That Threatens Gender-Normative Views

Gender norms have become a focal point of cultural debate and wedge issues in political elections, leading to discussions on how they may impact political and psychological processes and potentially radicalize individuals who feel threatened by or uncomfortable as the norms shift. We investigated the relationship between beliefs about gender-threatening disinformation narratives and radicalization, and the role of “fragile” masculinity and femininity in this relationship. In an original sample of 1,698 participants, we found that belief in gender-challenging narratives had a direct and positive relationship with radical intentions in men, whereas fragile femininity mediated the relationship between gender identity-challenging narratives and radical intentions. These suggests that threatened gender norms and disinformation are both significant factors in the psychology of radicalization.

Mito, tipo e destino della casa mista nelle Alpi centrali

Tacitus’ La Germania is a crucial foundation for any literary analysis of the origins of the domestic constructions in the Alps, where two cultures converge: that of the German log builders and the Latin stone masons. These narrative gains strength from the observation that two distinct settlement typologies are linked to these construction traditions: the former do not live in villages but occupy the territory in a scattered manner with rough constructions, while the latter form urban centres built more civilly with worked stones and bricks. The Alps represent a geographical border, an indefinite, permeable, and absorbent watershed that has facilitated a continuous exchange between these cultures since ancient times. The coexistence of stone and wood is, in fact, the defining characteristic of the Alpine house, particularly in the central Alps. The relationship between the wooden and stone parts of the se buildings assumes the value of a collective ritual. This ritual, celebrated in architecture, expresses the social life, economy, and nature of its territory. The “mixed type” house remained a subject of incessant exploration throughout the twentieth century and the focal point of a heated and fruitful cultural debate, just as the Mediterranean house represented the model of eternal modernity for the rationalist architects of the twentieth century. The essay explores the potential of the Alpine “mixed” house as representative of a model of enduring environmental sustainability.

Cultural Debate in the 21st Century on Declining Multiculturalism in Europe

Cultural Debate in the 21st Century on Declining Multiculturalism in Europe

Controversy and Interpretation of Quotes from the Bhagavad Gita Surrounding the Movie Oppenheimer

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita during the Trinity nuclear test by Oppenheimer, the main character of the movie Oppenheimer, released in 2023. The phrase he quotes is “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”. The phrase from Gita quoted by Oppenheimer in the film, along with the image of the provocative flash of a nuclear bomb and a mushroom cloud, contribute greatly to the visualization of the apocalypse of the end of the world. Quotes from Gita that we encountered through Oppenheimer’s documentaries, interviews, and autobiography are reproduced through movies, and children are learning these sentences at school. This article analyzes the phrases in Oppenheimer’s Gita and the possibility of mistranslation, and interprets various criticisms from mythologists, religious scholars, and philosophers surrounding the quote from various angles. This study analyzes cultural debates about symbolic and suggestive Hindu short verses and presents the theoretical basis for the true meaning and issues in religious philosophy. Through Oppenheimer’s film, the Gita has once again become a symbolic scripture representing Hinduism, and the passages he said are being reproduced as quotations representing the Gita. At this point, we discussed the issues of debate and criticism by modern scholars surrounding the passages.

Between Predator and Prey

This article focuses on the works of Denilson Baniwa, a prominent artist in the Indigenous contemporary art movement in Brazil. The purpose is to examine views of whiteness, which, in Baniwa’s performances and visual images, intertwines with shamanism and an Amerindian cosmology of predation and revenge. The theoretical approach of the article is not restricted to art history but draws on a broader range of anthropological literature and cultural theory. Furthermore, the article discusses how Baniwa’s art contributes to the cultural debate and research on Brazilian modernism with a critical focus on the issue of race. This foregrounds a critique of how the Brazilian avant-garde claimed to have incorporated Indigenous cosmologies into an anthropophagic sense of Brazilianness. The methodology used in the article is based on visual theory, emphasising the experience of artworks that claim a right to look back. This reframes the viewing of art into a question of friendship and enmity or even life and death.

Revisiting Edward Said: Culture vs Materiality (A study of his positionality Conflicts in Al-Ahram's articles)

Keeping in view the distinct status of Edward Said in postcolonial discourse, the contexts of his intellectual endeavors reflect an unconscious or innocent indifference to material issues the post-colonial societies were immediately facing after the end of formal colonization. This research article seeks to understand the politics of discourse that Edward Said’s formative works and his Al-Ahram articles exhibit by deconstructing the texts to revisit his celebrated intellectual cum political status among the postcolonial cultural and academic intelligentsia during the previous century. Edward Said seems a significant cultural force behind the curtain who helped the socio-cultural identities of marginalized communities to attain their socio-political exterior in a discourse that was essentially a sovereign attempt to voice the marginalized people enjoying the territorial place only. He substantiated his intellectual position in Culture and Imperialism (1993) and cemented it with historiographic evidence from the text and tradition that constructed the cultural space only, for that matter; but when he started authoring articles for Al-Ahram (An Egyptian Newspaper), he foregrounded his positional interior that was conflicting with his own previously established positions. He shifted the material debate to cultural lifeways, societal experiences, and nativity, and in doing so he innocently facilitated capitalism in establishing the fruitless discourse of cultural politics. but when Edward Said started writing for Al-Ahram, he concentrated more on material issues than cultural debate, especially when he started emphasizing his concerns regarding the Palestine issue. This is what I understand as positionality conflicts. This article attempts to investigate Edward Said’s articles to unearth his determined ideological/political narratives constructing cultural discourse and later confrontation with space, place, culture, and identity, which turned out to be more material than mere ideological. In a way, Edward Said realized over time that his earlier works were not grounded which signified the cultural exterior only.

Who controls ‘the narrative’? journalistic emplotment and political discourse in the networked public sphere

Over the last decade there has been a massive spike in use of the word ‘narrative’ in both media reportage and political discourse. This essay interrogates the rhetorical function and theoretical assumptions of this widespread usage, arguing that narrative rhetoric operates as a form of metajournalistic discourse shaping coverage of domestic politics and international relations while revealing an anxiety about the authority of contemporary news media. The prominence and semantic variability of the word narrative in public discourse is both a symptom of and a response to an epistemological crisis wrought by information overload and a fragmented public sphere in the digital age. The essay examines usage of the familiar phrase ‘control the narrative’ to reveal how journalistic discourse self-reflexively frames the dynamics of cultural debate. In this formulation, ‘the narrative’ operates as a synonym for what Chadwick (2017) calls the ‘political information cycle' in a hybrid news system, signifying an ongoing discursive struggle in which news media construct their moral and epistemological Others in a global communications network: social media, foreign state-run media, and competing news media. By tracking the phrase in coverage of the global COVID-19 outbreak and the notorious Steele Dossier in five major US dailies throughout 2020, this article demonstrates how the metajournalistic quality of narrative rhetoric facilitates an intramedia struggle for moral and referential authority in the networked public sphere.

A Standing Invitation to the Gods: Philosophy of Religion and the Phenomenology of the Sacred

Does philosophy of religion, specifically, have anything to contribute to the cultural debate about the modern crisis of meaning, and particularly to attempts at retrieving a sense of enchantment beyond human construction? Suggesting a methodological rapprochement between philosophy of religion and phenomenology, I explore a recent popular attempt to reenchant the world through a retrieval of the sacred: All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (2011) by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. Using their work as a foil, I discuss the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics in the experience of the sacred, specifically the possibility of a pluralism that is nonetheless realist; the necessity of social embeddedness and pedagogy in the constitution of sacred meaning; and finally, the problem of moral discrimination within this sphere. Through this critical discussion a constructive argument emerges: philosophy of religion done in a phenomenological mode has resources to address these difficult issues, and thus to explore experiences of the sacred in ways that are metaphysically sophisticated, attentive to historical tradition and pedagogy in the constitution of meaning, as well as to the need of communal moral deliberation in the sphere of the sacred.

A qualitative exploration of young female Muslims’ perspectives of abortion and belonging following the 2018 Irish Abortion Referendum

IntroductionIn 2018, Ireland conducted a referendum, ultimately supporting the legalisation of abortion. The views of religious minority groups can go unheard ‘by an insensitive majority’ in national cultural debates. This study explores female Muslim Irish university students’ perspectives on abortion and the impact of the 2018 Irish abortion debate on their sense of belonging within Ireland.MethodsTen female Muslim university students completed semi-structured interviews. The interview comprised seven open-ended questions examining perspectives on abortion and a sense of national belonging. A thematic analysis was carried out on the data.ResultsSix major themes emerged: (1) specific circumstances, (2) Islam, (3) family, (4) misuse of new laws, (5) stable sense of national belonging, (6) consequences of historical abortion legislation. Participants were largely supportive of the legal changes. Participants indicated that their sense of national belonging might have been affected if their religious beliefs had conflicted with the referendum outcome.ConclusionsParticipants largely supported the legalisation of abortion in Ireland, provided that the new laws aligned with their Islamic beliefs. The research indicated the referendum did not affect young Muslim women’s sense of belonging in Ireland.Policy ImplicationsMany national debates on social issues focus on winning majority support. This research highlighted the importance of canvasing and reflecting on the perspectives of people from minorities in order to reinforce a sense of larger political belonging.

The Dissident Power of Queer Art and Curating in Central Eastern Europe

The text aims to explore the political, cultural and artistic implications of LGBTQ+ art and curatorial practices in Central Eastern Europe in the 21st century. Currently, queer exhibitions, are on the rise in post-communist Europe, especially those held in contemporary art centres and museums. They cast light on new queer art and activism and the volatile sexual politics in the region because of the significant increase in the number of artists working with LGBTQ themes and the topical political background of this movement and its impact on cultural debates. Curators are developing innovative perspectives on sexual, social and artistic dimensions of queer exhibitions in this geographic context still seriously affected by homophobic state policy. The objective is to feature three art shows of major queer artists which have been organised in Hungary, Poland and Estonia in the last decade. The exhibitions are: The Survivor’s Shade: The Life and Work of El Kazovsky at the Museum of Fine Art- Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest in 2015/16; Daniel Rycharski: Fears at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw in 2019 and Jaanus Samma. Not Suitable for Work. A Chairman’s Tale, Museum of Occupations and Freedom, Tallinn in 2016. The three artists and their exhibitions have been selected because they were organised by major cultural institutions in the capitals, they have achieved a significant social impact and huge audience and the artists have played an important role in the contemporary art scene in each country. Their work is a current manifestation of the queer artistic and intellectual culture that has been developing slowly in the region since the 1980s and has come to play an increasingly important role in recent years. The exhibitions and art of the three artists are a starting point for a broader outline of the themes and important figures in recent queer art in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). Moreover, in each case, they appear in a complex and difficult political context related to the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Hence, I would like to propose a thesis about the dissident power and status of queer art and curating in CEE.

When decorations have a function. Technology and aesthetics in contemporary facades

This paper, starting from a reflection on the role of decoration and ornament in history, their evolution in the cultural debate, and some significant case studies, discusses the relation between function and decoration in the artistic and architectural discussion from the 20th century until nowadays. The representational function of architecture has always been based on the ornamental and decorative elements, which allow the readability of the building and the transmission of meanings and information. This function is even paradoxically performed in works conceived as manifestos of anti-decorativism. In light of the most recent trends, architecture reclaims this communicative function, manifesting the tendency to be an image, primarily through the design of the external surfaces and envelopes on which the semantics and iconicity of the new languages of contemporary architecture are based. The architectural object becomes an image – an image of itself, its designer, the context and the culture that generated it – precisely thanks to its ornamental and decorative dimension, which is discussed and analysed in this article.

CRITIQUING MODERNITY: A STUDY ON THE POSTCOLONIAL ‘HOMECOMING’ IN R PARTHASARATHY’S ROUGH PASSAGE

R Parthasarathy’s verses have won critical acclaim for their distant yet passionate evocation of the modernist themes in Indian English poetry. Listed among the literary modernists of the post-independent era headed by Nissim Ezekiel, he blended the modernist alienation with postcolonial disillusionment and created a distinctive ‘Indian English idiom’ to express the deep concerns of the postcolonial societies. Drawing heavily from Indian regional cultural resources, his poetry follows the mimicking subjects from the colonies, their disenchantment with the coloniser and the journey home. This enables him to champion the cause of postcolonial cultural assertion without compromising the narrative conventions of literary modernism. Contextualising the poetic collection Rough Passage, the paper analyses the cultural implications of Parthasarathy’s poetry and argues that the culture he presented as Indian are largely high cultural forms and thus his poetry falls prey to the cultural debate in Britain in the early 20th century. Contrasting high and low cultural forms present in the collection, the paper exposes the role colonial cultural thought plays in the formulation of postcolonial discourses.

Exode des cerveaux et traumas culturels dans Avalon : Les secrets des émigrants heureux par Bogdan Suceavă (I)

Despite its impact on the education, research and health system, Romanian brain drain is still neglected in both the political agendas and cultural debates. Furthermore, the theme is almost absent within contemporary literature starting with the writings anchored in the transition period, which is precisely that of the first significant waves of labor and high-skilled emigration, but also that of some major social and cultural traumas. In this context, Avalon: The Secrets of the Happy Émigrés (2018) by Bogdan Suceavă fill up a main cultural gap as far as it individualize the social-historical traumatic experience of brain exodus by means of an autobiographical narrative which offers at the same time a realistic image of the so called “happiness” of émigré scholars, comprising their big efforts for achieving the highest performances in their field of research. Revealing the differences between the American and Romanian academic systems, which are condensed in the illustrative story of the hero-narrator, Avalon… incorporates, as Bildungsroman, a “cultural pedagogy” shaped especially under the guiding of one of the leading mathematicians on the world, Professor Bang Yen-Chen, but which is also grounded into the significant previous formative experience. In the same time, Avalon… offers a lesson of cosmopolitanism, which integrates, by means of literary memory, the cultural values of the post-communist East, especially those of Romanian recent pasts. Our analysis of the novel is focused on the “cultural-pedagogical” dimension of its multilayered architecture, in which the intertwined autobiographical, historical, and sociological levels are mobilized for converting the personal and collective traumas in a project of identity revision and rebuilding.