Heterogeneous Cultural Backgrounds Research Articles

A Perspective on the Opera Audience of the 21st Century

"When it comes to contemporary audience of the opera, we have in mind a multitude of individuals with extremely diverse and heterogeneous cultural backgrounds, very different tastes and expectations related to the show and to the artists who perform on stage. Perhaps the famous Italian loggionisti who once made up the dreaded galleries, although still present, are no longer as influential as in the past centuries; and the splendid euphoria of the opera lovers from the 1950s and 1960s has faded. The extremely refined and knowledgeable elite is also becoming less numerous. But Opera still incites the interest of the public and arouses passions at the same time. Who is today's audience and what makes them attend and influence the Opera show? What are the managerial strategies for attracting new audience to the auditorium? The social distancing and the restricted access of the public in the performance halls during the recent coronavirus pandemic is also highlighted in the article. Keywords: Opera Audience, 21st Century, communication, audience reception "

Pleasure, Polyphony, and Networking in Agents of Ishq


 
 
 
 Contemporary media ecologies offer online interactive practices opportunities to focus on social engagement with users by increasingly operating in collaborative and co-creative modes of production and circulation. This article focuses on an online multimedia bilingual (Hindi and English) project in the Indian context Agents of Ishq (2016) conceptualized by the documentary practitioner and artist, Paromita Vohra. In a country where the dominant narratives in mainstream media have primarily centred around sexual violence, the interactive audio-visual website features creative graphics, audio podcasts, first-person accounts with creative illustrations, Bollywood memes, GIFs-driven stories, photo essays, mixed media art, videos, poetry, prose around the themes of sex, love, choice, desire, gender, and freedom. The interface invites the user to explore, open up and listen to conversations around sex education, histories of desire, pleasure, sexual experiences, social and legal discussions on conscious agency and intimacy. The database-driven project draws on Indian popular culture, art and socio-cultural context to promote amongst its users and audience the ability to listen to and respect others’ complex lived sexualities. Vohra’s work acts as a context provider to the varied intimate and personal voices, authors, collective and performative, artistic forms engaging with each other towards a common objective of opening enabling, inclusive conversations between young Indians around diverse sexual cultures which are not solely instructive and normative. The non-linear echoes of these discussions can also be heard (and continue) over social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. The project also intervenes in the real world through workshops on gender, sexuality and consent with different practitioners (researchers, doctors, educators, students) and organizations. Drawing on Wiehl’s proposal of Interventionist Networking Methodology, the article analyzes how the interactive project features a multiplicity of forms, representation and circulation which encompass personal accounts by the users, strategies of the practitioner and her collaborators, and challenges of engaging the target audience who belong to a multitude of heterogeneous cultural backgrounds and socio-economic classes. The digital world has offered people the chance and various ways to privately connect outside their immediate social spheres, in a way the everyday life may not. However, it has also gradually changed from a space of experimentation and plays to a space that reflects the normativity and pressures of the offline world. The article also calls attention to the dynamism between digital and physical spaces through this case study. It suggests how the polyphonic attributes of online interactive media can tap into it – creating art that respects the individuality of the human experience while acknowledging the multiple ways it may articulate itself. 
 
 
 

Advances in Research on Technological, Pedagogical, Didactical, and Social Competencies of Preservice TCFL Teachers

With the development of China, learning the Chinese language has received more and more attention from international students. Teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) is crucial for spreading Chinese culture and promoting cultural exchanges. In recent years it has become the focus of attention of many scholars, and the heterogeneous cultural backgrounds and diverse language needs of learners determine that TCFL should promote the development of students’ intercultural communication competence in language practice with the use of educational technology. In this study, 82 preservice teachers as an experiment group and 64 preservice teachers as a control group participated in this study; this research aims to improve the quality and level of TCFL, using innovative teaching tools as a means to target preservice TCFL teachers and create a teaching–learning design strategy based on the smart teaching tools Moso Teach (MT) and Rain Classroom (RC). The findings from this research show the importance of the use of smart teaching tools and the improvement of preservice teachers during the experiment compared to preservice teachers with traditional methods. This paper answers the following questions: (1) How to improve preservice TCFL teachers’ competencies by integrating smart teaching tools into their learning process? (2) How to integrate technological, pedagogical, didactic, and social competencies into preservice teachers’ daily teaching CFL?

Examining the measurement invariance of the Practice Environment Scale-Nursing Work Index in the United States.

The increasingly diverse nursing workforce in the United States often creates challenges for researchers in meaningfully interpreting survey data from large samples of nurses with heterogeneous cultural backgrounds. Considering this, the purpose of this study was to determine the measurement invariance of the Practice Environment Scale-Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI) between registered nurses (RNs) reporting as Asian/Pacific Islander and those reporting as White. Data from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators®, collected in 2018 from RNs (N = 27,619) providing direct patient care, were used in this study. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine measurement invariance. Interpretation of the fit indices across models (configural, metric, and scalar) provides support for measurement invariance of the PES-NWI across the two groups. There is empirical support for pooling PES-NWI data and comparing it across these two groups.

МІЖКУЛЬТУРНІ ВЕСІЛЛЯ В КОРЕЇ: НА ШЛЯХУ ДО МУЛЬТИКУЛЬТУРНОГО СУСПІЛЬСТВА

This study examines how cultural communication is occurring in the process of wedding between Korean and Slavic people with heterogeneous cultural backgrounds, and whether multicultural coexistence and multicultural identity are created in Korean society. In this study, Korean-Slavic couples’ weddings will be divided into four types according to the way of expressing identity in their wedding. By discussing whether wedding couples represent the cultural and traditional elements of both sides in balance, and even properly combine the symbols and rituals of both cultures to create a new culture of integration, this study aims to examine the situation of multiculturalism in Korean society.

Misconceptions of group norms concerning coping are a risk for negative social interaction: A cross-sectional study using the vignette method

Greater use of a norm-violating coping strategy relates to higher risk of negative social interactions and to higher distress. We examined the factors that are linked to the use of a norm-violating coping strategy and those that moderate the relationship between the coping strategy used and social interaction. Results of a cross-sectional survey for 74 Japanese undergraduate students and 68 Japanese workers indicated that, in a group with frequent contact, misconceptions about group norms concerning coping strategy relate to more negative social interactions. To draw causal inferences, a replication study with a large sample from heterogeneous cultural backgrounds is necessary.

The Story of Diaochan: From Chinese fiction to English drama — on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and G.G. Alexander’s Teaou-Shin

This is a descriptive case study which attempts to explain how the story of Diaochan 貂蟬, the famous episode in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, gained its afterlife in the western milieu by being translated and rewritten. This article focuses on the analysis of G.G. Alexander’s Teaou-shin, A Drama from the Chinese, in five Acts, and proposes that during the transformation of a Chinese fictional script to an English theatrical text, the themes and spiritual entity of the story were shifted in order to appeal to the European audiences in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it argues that the differences between Chinese fiction and English drama are generated from distinct literary genre as well as heterogeneous cultural background.

The view from the crossroads: Brazilian culture and corporate leadership in the twenty-first century

The transfer of western leadership theories and practices across the globe has inspired criticism in recent years, suggesting the need for local/indigenous theories of leadership. Such search, however, is troublesome in countries with a heterogeneous cultural background where the constant influence of outside cultural/social/economic parameters abound. The purpose of this article is to identify local/indigenous practices of leadership in one country with a heterogeneous cultural background – Brazil. In this conceptual article, we explore selected literature to investigate the topic of Brazilian culture and its particular style of corporate leadership.

Understanding IJV performance in a learning and conflict mediated context

Determinants of international joint venture (IJV) performance are examined within the context of cross-border learning. Using a structural equation model, we test the multifaceted interactions among strategic goal congruency, national culture differences, learning and conflict. Cross-border learning is recognized as a kernel variable which is influenced by matching strategic motives, national culture differences, and conflicting relations, and which affects the performance of IJVs. In particular, we hypothesize that interpartner goal congruency and national culture differences have an indirect effect on IJV performance through cross-border learning and conflict; previous studies established their direct relationship. The test results show that congruent strategic motives and cultural similarity had a positive effect on cross-border learning, which was reinforced by learning capacity, and which in turn led to better performance. Conflicting relations between partners and heterogeneous cultural backgrounds were shown to discourage cross-border learning.

The Perception of Risk of Heart Disease Scale: Development and Psychometric Analysis

Perception of risk of getting heart disease is an important predictor of individuals' engagement in a healthy lifestyle. This study describes the development and testing of the Perception of Risk of Heart Disease Scale (PRHDS). The 20-item instrument was tested in successive steps with 295 individuals for internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. The three subscales of dread risk, risk, and unknown risk had internal consistency values ranging from .68 to .80. The total scale alpha was .80. Evidence of the instrument's stability over time was supported by subscale test-retest reliabilities ranging from .61 to .76. Construct validity was documented with a positive correlation between PRHDS and the Health Promotion Lifestyle Profile II (r = .20 to .39). Further psychometric testing of the PRHDS in a larger sample with a heterogeneous cultural background is recommended.