Grassroots Culture Research Articles

Female migrant workers’ theater, labor NGOs, and grassroots culture in China: variations on the theme of “home”

AbstractThis paper explores self-representations of female migrant workers in mainland Chinese grassroots theater, understood as a localized variety of trans-Asian people’s theater. It discusses the 2018 playThey Saythat was created by women associated with the Shenzhen-based NGO Green Rose Community Center. The analysis of the text and its performance seeks to shed light on the multifaceted identities of the authors and performers of the play, who left the countryside for precarious work in Shenzhen’s production and service industries. Beyond offering a close reading of the play with a particular focus on the images of “home” and “homemaking,” this paper embeds female migrant workers’ cultural activities into a larger social context that is shaped by state policies, non-governmental organizations, cultural norms and values, and legacies of the socialist era.

Participatory Culture in Chinese Transmedia Fictions

As a new literary form in China, Transmedia fictions are constantly impacting the status of traditional paper novels. Participation culture is an important feature of Transmedia fictions, and it plays an important role in transmedia creation and communication modes. As a representative of mass culture and grassroots culture, Transmedia fictions continuously increase their influence in people's spiritual and cultural life and impact the status of traditional elite culture through a very participatory creative process and communication process. Through the study of the participating culture in Chinese Transmedia fictions, we can have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of this literary form, which will promote the future development of world literature.

Protection and Inheritance of Traditional Culture in Urbanization Construction Based on Genetic Algorithm under the Concept of Environmental Protection.

Chinese traditional culture is a typical “moral culture,” and traditional morality is the core and essence of culture. However, in recent years, the phenomenon of following the trend of rural construction has been particularly serious, and many villages have lost their original features. To solve the above problems, the genetic algorithm can be used to further explore the traditional culture of urbanization construction. A genetic algorithm is a natural evolutionary process that imitates natural selection and genetic operation in nature to obtain optimal solution, in which genetic operation mainly includes the processes of gene replication, crossover, and mutation. This paper studies the traditional culture of urbanization construction based on the genetic algorithm under the concept of environmental protection. Among the accuracy of urban construction land expansion, in 2018, the accuracy of ant colony algorithm, data mining algorithm, and particle swarm optimization algorithm is 58%, 51.8%, and 56.7%, respectively. The accuracy of this genetic algorithm is as high as 58.8%. It can be seen that the genetic algorithm in this paper has the highest accuracy in the expansion of urban construction land. Therefore, in the process of large-scale urbanization based on the genetic algorithm, we should pay attention to not being separated from traditional culture, not letting farmers lose their regional culture, local culture, and grassroots culture, and protecting the cultural-ecological environment on which these cultures depend.

Social Sustainability in Adolescents’ Music Event Attendance

This study focuses on social sustainability of music events in adolescents’ lives through their perceptions and own words as they describe their live music experiences. Scrutinizing music event attendance from the social sustainability perspective demonstrates that the cultural content per se is not as meaningful as the social network that comes together in such events. The research questions were: How is social sustainability manifested in adolescents’ music event attendance, and what are the implications? The research data comprised the results of a web survey directed at 15–18 year old adolescents. Bonding and bridging, as well as the sense of community, were present in adolescents’ descriptions of live music experiences, producing various forms of well-being effects. The sense of belonging was almost missing from the narratives, which suggests that how adolescents consume music has a decaying interest in the grassroots culture that fosters the sense of belonging. This has major implications for the development of popular culture.

Innovators in Urban China: Makerspaces and Marginality with Impact

In China, the emergence of makerspaces, hackerspaces, Fab Labs, and innovation labs reflects top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The grassroots movements and governmental efforts promoting innovation and creativity are part of the maker trend linked to the rise of the Internet and access to digital tools. The urban imaginary of the maker culture creates networks and events both globally and locally. The first makerspaces opened in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 2010 and attracted the attention of the government, which published an initiative in 2015 that influenced the typology of makerspaces in China. The ephemeral spaces for innovators, hackers, makers, and entrepreneurs shaped by this cultural context and local ecosystem are urban phenomena investigated with social anthropological and experimental methodologies to better understand the extension and platformisation of these autonomous and co-opted communities and narratives. This research fills the knowledge gap on makerspaces in China in recent years, showing the impact of governmental initiatives on a grassroots culture, the possible roles of makers, and the complexity and unlimitedness of the maker culture through international partnerships for projects such as Designed in Ethiopia and Kabakoo Academies.

Toward a Grassroots Culture of Technology Practice

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can support grassroots social movements toward greateroutreach and better day-to-day communication. In this paper, we present the results of action research with alarge-scale grassroots social movement, the Southern Movement Assembly (SMA), exploring their uses andperceptions of ICTs. We find that the ICTs chosen by the SMA are often at odds with their grassroots cultureof inclusion and participation-which results in inequitable sociotechnical realities within the movement. Forexample, people with technical skills gain more power as they start to control organizational processes. Astechnical skills are most commonly associated with racial, gender, and socioeconomic privileges, this leads toinequitable participation. We conclude by calling for a grassroots culture of technology practice rooted inanalyses of systemic exclusion with a continuous effort to center the marginalized voices and experienceswith technology.

Rethinking game heritage – towards reflexivity in game preservation

ABSTRACT While games and the cultures that have sprung up around them are diverse and vastly different from each other, most exhibitions dealing with them are based on a limited understanding of games that relies on symbolic brands on one hand and on the centrality of playable experiences on the other. This bias is potentially replicated by heritage institution collections starting to define how games become cultural heritage. While games research has shown that games are firmly nestled in a participatory grassroots culture, these kinds of perspectives are curiously lacking in exhibitions. By connecting previous work on critical and intangible heritage with game studies literature, this paper emphasises the importance of various productive communities for game heritage. The concepts of intangible and critical heritage suggest that the inclusion of players and communities into the game heritage process could offer a more diverse heritage discourse. But participatory practices in collector run museums tend to produce game heritage which is implicitly working towards the same kind of one-sided understanding of games that has been criticised heavily in game studies. The critical expertise of museum professionals is needed in order to start incorporating the varicoloured practices of communities into our understanding of game heritage.

Alexander Burganov: a New Code of Time and Space

Summary: The article is devoted to the analysis of the work of Alexander Burganov, an outstanding contemporary sculptor and graphic artist. The study of the categories of Space and Time on the example of his works is the main theme of the article. The author believes that Time and Space in Burganov’s work are unique categories and correspond to reality least of all; the author gives examples of specific works and convinces that Burganov has modeled a bright, recognizable, unique personal code with the help of sculptures, graphic works, texts, installations, and artistic gestures. Today, this is especially noticeable as the culture of the 21st century has sharpened and almost brought to a logical conclusion the awareness of artistic being, formed in the second half of the 20th century, and is now on the verge of new creative realities leading to conceptual discoveries in art. The author believes that the artist keenly captures the invisible waves emitted by the developing cultures and subcultures of the 21st century, in which a body devoid of naturalistic sensuality is coldly and symbolically akin to antique statues. The author pays great attention to the analysis of new materials in Burganov’s creative work, believing that the 21st century has brought great changes not only to the form but also to the substance of the bodies of statues and sculptural compositions. Marble is replaced with plastic, bronze coexists with gypsum, metal meshes surround voids and follow the movements of the wind. Paper on an iron frame is a rightful hero of this “Olympus”. It should be noted that there is no place for imitation. New material dictates its conditions for shaping and participates in the interpretation of a new image.Analyzing the contemporary space of culture, the author states that the experiences of European crises have brought into art restraint and minimalism, democracy and the idea of some kind of universal permissiveness in creating and judging art. However, the predominance of mass culture, which received a completely new face and opportunity owing to the virtual space spilled over reality, was the main marker of the culture of the early 21st century. Today, a mixture of styles and cultures, a combination of incongruous is a new reality introduced into our lives by virtual culture. The author emphasizes that it was this invisible space that Alexander Burganov could feel and has reflected in his work. This has made his works relevant and understandable to a new generation which almost does not feel the classics. The author concludes that Alexander Burganov’s work has become a kind of bridge connecting the worlds of classics and modernity, high and grassroots culture, myths and reality.

OPERA ON THE FOND COURTYARD: REPRESENTATION OF THE CITY IN ODESSA PAINTING

The article is devoted to the study of the city with the help of representative approaches, in particular, the presentation of the three types of city representations in Odessa paintings of the 1950s–2010s, the clarification of the relationship between the models of the city’s mental familiarization and representative artifacts. Artifacts act as markers of a specific local identity, which in turn represent certain culturally significant infrastructural complexes of local communication. The purpose of the analysis is to establish a correlation between the object and subject of artistic creation and various mythologies of the city as the basis of representation. The Opera is presented in the article as a marker of the European type of urban infrastructure, which localizes special lifestyles, types of communication, special visuals that form the historical type of Odessa identity. Representation of the courtyard reflects another type of mythology and urban communication – a reduced, close to the grassroots culture of the urban outskirts and communal social behavior. The inability to capture the Whole of city leads to the appropriation of details – a crystallized detailing of architectural and infrastructure elements.

“Grassroots Idol”: Research on Cultural Significance of Web Celebrities

Web celebrities refer to the “grassroots idols” popular and well-liked on the Internet. The characteristics, coding patterns and consumer psychology of grassroots culture are in this way: to feel the pleasure of excitement and entertainment through comic and grotesque performances; to meet the need for success and encouragement through perseverant and inspirational stories; to get the freedom through free, easy and romantic plots. This unique web phenomenon not only shows the landscape of grassroots culture, but also meets the psychological needs of ordinary Internet users, and thus gives the web celebrities a corresponding cultural significance.

Birokrasi, Perilaku dan Budaya Organisasi dalam Lembaga Pendidikan Islam Roudlotul Athfal UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta

This research discusses bureaucracy and organizational behaviour and culture in Islamic education institute i.e., Roudlotul Athfal UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta. This research aims to study the implementation of institutional bureaucracy and to build organisational behaviour and culture. This is a qualitative research applying three methods of data collection, namely: (1) observation, (2) in-depth interview, (3) emphasizing the value of dialogue ​​(small colloquium, discussion or sharing), (2) Integrating Islamic values ​​to build organizational behaviour such as honesty, discipline and mutual respect. (3) Cultural acculturation as part of the organizational cultural identity, such as maintaining the grassroots culture including how to behave, how to communicate in certain language and other social interactions. These aspects ​​turn into the basic values of institutional bureaucracy in facing various challenges, social changes as well as competition among numerous Islamic educational institutions.

Performance Negra e a Dramaturgia de Corpo no Batuque

Resumo: Uma importante contribuição da Etnocenologia e dos Estudos da Performance para o campo de estudo das Artes Cênicas é a ampliação do que pode ser considerado como cena, espetáculo ou performance, rompendo fronteiras, calcadas no colonialismo do saber, que separaram radicalmente arte e cultura popular, polarizando criação e tradição. Essa quebra de paradigma abre a possibilidade de pensar as dramaturgias corporais presente nos rituais afro-brasileiros como um constructo da relação corpo e ancestralidade. É nessa perspectiva que o presente artigo apresenta uma discussão sobre a performance negra dos batuques, mais especificamente a Suça, da cidade de Natividade, estado do Tocantins.

Demolition, Documentary and the Politics of Minjian on Contemporary Chinese Screens

China’s transformation in the reform era has been most immediately experienced by many ordinary citizens in spatial terms, as existing urban communities have been dispersed and their environments levelled, to be replaced by ‘spaces of flows’ that prioritise speed, mobility and circulation. A wide range of Chinese films have represented this experience from the perspective of existing urban communities. This article argues that in certain ‘unofficial’ documentaries produced outside China’s state-sanctioned channels of production and distribution, using small, highly mobile digital video cameras, an engagement with grassroots communities has opened up a new space on screen, in which a critical questioning of the developmental ethos driving contemporary China becomes evident. A close analysis of Ou Ning’s Meishi Street (2006), Shu Haolun’s Nostalgia (2006) and Du Haibin’s A Young Patriot (2015) will illustrate how the unofficial spaces of localised, grassroots cultures (minjian) are represented in these works as sites of resistance to the coercive imposition of a globalised modernity on Chinese cities.

The Chinese Style "Misreading" in the Cross Cultural Communication—Take Japanese Writer H. Kuriyagawa’s Translation in China as an Example

In the process of cultural transmission and communication, it inevitably produce cultural misreading: conscious and unconscious misreading. Although misreading is the global universal law, but different areas or countries have showed the unusual personality. The spread of H. Kuriyagawa in China is a typical Chinese style conscious misreading phenomenon. The reason of Chinese style misreading's existence is about two things. One is Chinese scholar believe that Chinese traditional culture should be the noumenon, foreign theory just as supplement. Another is the differences between elite and grassroots culture. We should understand the cultural phenomenon of misreading, and oppose to use produced in the values of a culture system to judge another culture system. It is a method to avoid, digest and reduce the negative effect, and it’s also could guide, expand the positive method of misreading.

Stages and Pathways of Development of Nonprofit Organizations: An Integrative Model

Most research suggests that nonprofit organizations (NPOs) should professionalize in order to become more efficient. Yet, a growing body of literature emphasizes the importance of preserving some of their original grassroots culture. Based on a qualitative meta-analysis of 19 in-depth cases from the past decade, our integrative model contributes to this debate in three important ways: first, we suggest that most NPO pathways of development are characterized by the acquisition of a dual nature i.e., a community setting a value-based mission (stage 1) and a professional structure involving formal and centralized coordination aimed at effectiveness (stage 2); second, that this dual system often leads NPOs to an existential crisis characterized by contradiction and indetermination (stage 3); and third, that this indetermination constitutes a window of opportunity for deciders to more deliberately arbitrate the orientation adopted by their NPOs (stage 4). We discuss the role of deciders, beyond institutional pressures, to explain why the nonprofit sector is still relatively diverse. We propose voluntarism and institutional entrepreneurship as important mainstays of nonprofitness.

The myth of “shanzhai” culture and the paradox of digital democracy in China

This article analyzes the Internet-based campaign for the “shanzhai” Spring Festival Gala in connection with the rise of “digital democracy” and the burgeoning economy of grassroots culture in China. Emerging as a bottom-up challenge to the political and economic monopoly of CCTV's annual Spring Festival Gala, the campaign rode on the popular myth of shanzhai culture, which captured people's imagination for its associations with grassroots digital democracy. By depicting how different social players appropriate the narratives of shanzhai to construct a collective social imaginary of democracy, the article explores the specific formation of an Internet-facilitated shanzhai democracy, arguing that the myth of shanzhai currently enables and confounds political resistance in China. It nurtures a political subjectivity that encourages the instrumental marriage of affective emotion, populist anarchism, and commercial self-branding and publicity, and cultivates a “shanzhai” democracy that thrives on the commodification of politics and the monetization of the netizen's and the public's affective labor. The myth of shanzhai reflects the contested nature of digital democracy in contemporary China, marking a transitional space, a symbiotic relationship with power, and a fluid frontier to be constantly redefined and defended.

Renegades on the Frontier of Innovation: The Shanzhai Grassroots Communities of Shenzhen in China's Creative Economy

Two Australian researchers specializing in China's creative industries examine recent developments in southern China commonly associated with the shanzhai phenomenon (e.g., production and sale of cheap local facsimiles of globally branded goods). While shanzhai is often condemned as the embodiment of China's "knock-off" industries, the authors argue that it might be more appropriately viewed as an instance of China's emerging creative economy and an example of rapid prototyping. The paper traces the evolution of shanzhai mobile phones and the materialization of the shanzhai ethos in popular culture. In arguing that shanzhai provides inputs into creative industries, the paper describes the fuzzy boundary between formal and informal culture and notes the interaction between three spheres of activity: official culture, the market, and grassroots culture.

Black Aesthetics Unbound

How did the Black Arts movement become an antitext movement? How did the black aesthetic of this movement use the tension between the bound and the unbound? This essay examines the movement’s critique of a dominant “museum exhibit” cultural industry that transformed grass-roots culture into highbrow capital. The author argues that the movement resisted the “museum exhibit” of the dominant-culture industry by dramatizing the tension points between inner space, outside space, and unbound space. The aesthetic warfare of the movement is shown to be a struggle against the textualization of gesture and process. This antitext struggle is brought into close relation with the often unrecognized conceptual art movement at the core of the Black Arts movement. The AfriCOBRA tenet of “mimesis at mid-point” leads the author to a reconsideration of the explicit theorizing, during this movement, about the need for both representation and abstraction. As artists worked books for their most antitext and anti-object possibilities, words were worked for their most oral and visual possibilities. The antitext impulse became the impulse to shape the black aesthetic around sonic imagetexts (textual performances that aimed to somehow avoid framing and containing ephemeral but excessive acts of sounding black, looking black, and becoming black).

Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements

In developing a micro-level comparative critique of both congregation-based community organizing (CBCOs) and their secular and community-based next of kin, Organizing Urban America paints a much-needed portrait of the grassroots culture of American organizing. Swarts's original analysis of “the factors that constrain and enable” (xv) American social movement organization culture provides a rare glimpse inside low-income urban collective action. Since so much of the scholarship on collective action campaigns has, until recently, been overly influenced by the rational actor mode, Swarts's attempt at giving voice and agency to grassroots local organizers is a welcome corrective. For as she accurately describes, in the traditional scholarly narrative “actors are public officials and other elites, and the role of the grassroots movements is to protest policies initiated by others” (xxvi). But, the reality of what sociologists have come to call “new” social movements is that, far from being simply reactive, these movements are in fact generating the frames for their own contention. In other words, these new social movement actors are themselves active agents of policy creation. Therefore, it is obligatory that we develop a perspective from “below” to counter the dominant traditional discourse from “above.” Our global world increasingly demands scholarly attention on the agency of socioeconomic mid- and low-level actors and on their collective strategic choices. Swarts provides a new American standard for such a focus. In comparing four community organizations over a period of 10 years, her book serves not only as a corrective measure to the inordinate amount of literature on social movements that focuses on leadership at the expense of agency, but as a model for a new style of participatory action research that has too often been discredited, or ignored, by the academy.

Art as Cultural System: Towards a New Genre of Artist-in-Residence

This paper discusses the ”new genre of artist-in-residence” in the West and in Taiwan, as it has opened wider horizons beyond more narrowing traditional views. In this new genre, the process of art making plays a role in the construction of history, helping thus people to contemplate their memory and identity by retuning to grassroots culture. In addition, the space of the artist-in-residence becomes a potential field for site-specific art practice. Moreover, the increase of spaces devoted to artistic events could benefit to nearby areas. They are not just attractive to artists; they also bring in customers and investments. Therefore, the space of the artist-in-residence becomes a vigorous force in urban regeneration. If the collaboration of artists with people from different professions can be common practice, the one between artists and architects is all the more challenging and often has to be dealt with in current residency programs. What makes successful collaboration is that artists and architects may free each other from institutional modes of thinking related to their own profession. They may learn from each other and rediscover the existing gaps between art and science. In this way, such practices undertaken by artists, architects or other professionals can contribute to constructing the social landscape that surrounds us and that exists from one generation to the next.