Ideological Work Research Articles

The visual construction of the people’s country and the Chinese nation: political aesthetics in the Ethno-documentaries of New China

This paper discusses the political positioning of the people and the cultural image of the Chinese nation through the lens of the Social-historical Scientific Documentary Films of China’s ethnic minorities (hereafter referred to as “the Ethno-documentaries”) by restoring the problem to the site of the investigation of humanities and social sciences and the General Surveys on (Folk) Arts in the early years of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s. Through detailed analysis of specific Ethno-documentary films, this paper explores how the social sciences conducted its “Social and Historical Investigation of China’s Ethnic Minorities” via the medium of film to convey the advanced social concepts and ideological work of the new regime through the historical narrative of art and politics. This study highlights three key points. First, the “Chinese nation” as a modern political concept dates its origins back to the 1920s with the emergence of the “National Heritage Reorganization Movement” and the “Doubting Antiquity School.” However, it was only through the medium of the Ethno-documentaries that this concept was visually and aurally represented in films for the first time, which draws our attention to the fact that the entry point for understanding modern China lies in discerning the relationship between culture and politics. Second, when discussing the relationship between culture and politics, this study juxtaposes the Ethno-documentaries and “art for workers-peasants-soldiers,” which developed during the same period. These two forms of art focus respectively on national history and the suffering of the lower classes of society, and it is this intertextual nature of the historical narrative that jointly anchors the cultural and historical view of New China. Lastly, historical view is the core of the humanities, social sciences, and art disciplines in New China. Previous studies have mainly attributed certain phenomena to the “politicization” or “pan-politicization” of a particular historical period due to disciplinary barriers and cultural trauma and have stopped discussing such topics in depth. In contrast, the significance of the political aesthetics in the Ethno-documentaries is to have transformed classical Chinese artistic language into a modern one to represent the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. It also raises a question of re-sinicization of many modern political issues that have persisted until now: How do today’s Chinese art works vividly depict the prosperity of this country and its hardworking and courageous people?

Conventionalized impoliteness formulae in third-party assessments

Abstract The paper examines the ideological work accomplished by the use of conventionalized impoliteness formulae in third person reference, when the person being criticized or brought into disrepute is not present in the here-and-now of interaction. Drawing on Interactional Linguistics and data from audio-recorded informal face-to-face Greek conversations, the study shows that speakers mobilize conventionalized impoliteness formulae, along with other linguistic resources, in the course of third-party assessments to evaluate sociocultural experience, and establish interlocutors’ shared negative affective stance toward the third party picked on due to their national group membership. This practice reproduces everyday nationalism that unites offenders against national ‘others’. The study enhances our understanding of the recontextualization of conventionalized impoliteness formulae in talk-in-interaction, and the role of affective stance in the discursive formation of (national) identities.

Forms of perpetuating the historical memory of the Heroes of the Soviet Union in urban toponymy (using the example of commissar Moskovsky Street in Tambov)

Importance. The activities of the Tambov city authorities, public organizations and institutions, their motives in the work on the preservation of military historical memory in the urban enviro nment during the second half of the 20th – beginning of the 21th century on the example of perpetuating the memory of the first Hero of the Soviet Union from Tambov region – A.N. Moskovsky, are considered. The importance of the research lies in the fact that the use of trends in modern historical science, namely, an interdisciplinary approach to research, political history and historical urbanism, allows us to obtain qualitatively new knowledge about the activities of the Russian cities authorities (based on Tambov materials) to preserve military historical memory in urban toponymy and objects of monumental art during the second half of the 20th century – the beginning of the 21th century.Materials and Methods. The methodological basis of the research is based on the principles of consistency, historicism, and objectivity. Comparative historical, problem and chronological methods are used. The research is based on such general scientific methods as analysis, synthesis, generalization, and systematization. The main sources of the research are archival materials stored in the State Archive of Tambov Region, the State Archive of Socio-political History of Tambov Region, published and posted on the Internet, as well as materials in the funds of the Museum and Exhibition Center of Tambov Region.Results and Discussion. The features of the ideological work of local authorities on the development of military historical memory are analyzed. The patterns and continuity of approaches in the military historical work of the city authorities at different chronological stages are revealed. The mechanisms of preserving the memory of a particular hero, senior political instructor, commissar A.N. Moskovsky, are investigated. The forms of historical and patriotic information about the objects of urban toponymy and monumental art created during the development of the urban environment, concerning the perpetuation of the memory of A.N. Moskovsky, are highlighted.Conclusion. As a result of studying the problem, conclusions are drawn about the multi-faceted approach in the work of city authorities, institutions and public organizations for the preservation of military historical memory in the region.

A Teaching Design of Ideological and Political Education in the College English Listening Curriculum Based on OBE Concept

Under the guidance and requirements of ideological work in colleges and universities in the new era, curriculum ideology and politics have always been a highly-valued part of political work and curriculum sublimation of the government. As an important content of higher education, college English listening courses should better effectively combine curriculum ideology and politics with teaching contents. This not only enriches the content of English listening teaching activities but also enables students to think deeply and form correct views on life values, moral values and worldviews. In the English teaching method, the OBE concept insists on being “student-centered,” which is a results-oriented education model. On the premise of combining the syllabus and teaching content, this paper designs and discusses the first chapter of unit 3 in the book “Over to You 2” from the aspects of the specific teaching process, the analysis of the OBE concept and the integration of curriculum ideological and political elements, to give inspiration and reference based on the concept of OBE.

Research on the influence mechanism of college students' mainstream consciousness leadership under the background of mobile Internet

In recent years, the rapid innovation and popularization of mobile communication and new media technologies have brought about profound changes in the mode of social information dissemination. For college students whose ideological values are still in the critical period of development and change, how to enhance their mainstream ideological leadership in the mobile Internet era and guide the ideological and behavioral development of college students with socialist ideology guided by Marxism has become a common focus of attention in society and academia. At present, the research on the mainstream ideological leadership of college students in the academic community mainly focuses on the negative impact of modern communication technologies such as new media on the ideological work of colleges and universities and the corresponding countermeasures, while the theoretical core and internal composition of the mainstream ideological leadership, as well as the deep impact logic, positive and negative impacts and systematic improvement paths of the technological and social changes in the mobile Internet era on the mainstream ideological leadership of college students are still insufficient. Therefore, this study aims to go beyond the research perspective of traditional college ideological education management, deeply explore the basic connotation and force composition of the mainstream ideological leadership, systematically analyze the deep impact logic of the mobile Internet era on the mainstream ideological leadership of college students, sort out its improvement opportunities, and explore the structural dilemmas in it, and propose a systematic path for improving the mainstream ideological leadership of college students.

Review of Alessandra Seggi’s <i>Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences</i> (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

Despite the abundance of scholarly literature on the representation of suicide in various entertainment forms, few books exist on the subject. In the arena of film analysis, two books that immediately come to mind are Steven Stack and Barbara Bowman’s (2011) Suicide Movies: Social Patterns 1900-2009, a magisterial study that plumbs 1,158 feature-length films for causes or motives for suicide and Claire Sisco King’s (2012) Washed in Blood: Male Sacrifice, Trauma and the Cinema, which examines the cultural and ideological work done by films on heroic suicides. Whereas the former aimed for breadth, the latter aimed for depth. Though they remain relevant, the two titles are somewhat dated, so I was pleasantly surprised to receive Alessandra Seggi’s recent book, which combines breadth and depth and zeroes in on one of our most vulnerable populations: our youth. [... ]

Microbial semiotics: Sites of ideological work in antibiotic resistance

Microbial semiotics: Sites of ideological work in antibiotic resistance

Повседневная жизнь населения Кабардино-Балкарии в годы Великой Отечественной войны: историография, источники

The article examines the study of the everyday life of the population of Kabardino-Balkaria during the Great Patriotic War in Russian and foreign historiography. The article pays particular attention to controversial issues that require an analytical approach. Research by historians devoted to the problems of the relationship between government and society, labor and normalized everyday life of the population is analyzed. The research reveals that there is not sufficient understanding of the experience of state and public associations in organizing social protection of the population. Prob-lems related to state policy and public initiatives to provide targeted support to the most vulnera-ble categories of the population and assistance to the front have been studied. A study of publica-tions on the state of medical care and living conditions of the population does not provide an ob-jective picture of the problem under consideration, since many of them lack a comparative analy-sis with all-Russian and regional indicators. The works of historians provide a detailed analysis of the issues related to information and ideological work, particularly in shaping the public con-sciousness of the population. At the same time, it has been established that the forms and methods of forming patriotic values of the civilian population in the rear remain undisclosed. The study of works related to the study of the daily life of the Balkar population in the conditions of a special settlement made it possible to determine conceptual approaches to the problem under study and to identify the characteristic features of its transformation at different stages. Characteristics of col-lections of documents and archival sources are given. Authors conclude that Russian and regional historiography reflect, to some extent, the study of the everyday living conditions of various popu-lation groups. However, the everyday life of the inhabitants of Kabardino-Balkaria has not been studied based on modern principles and methods of historical science.

Динамика культурно-политического развития ингушского народа в 1920–1930 гг.

The dynamics of the cultural and political development of the Ingush people during the 1920–1930s is examined in the article, focusing on the gradual elimination of their statehood. It presents an overview of the contradictory policies of Soviet power in the region. On one hand, processes of modernization and Europeanization were pursued under a unified Soviet policy, while on the other hand, they exhibited regional specificities. The inherent contradictions in the Soviet power’s national policies were inevitable within the totalitarian model of command-administrative systems. Despite declaring internationalism as the basis for a future communist society, the practical process of autonomization often involved the territorial division along ethnic lines, which sometimes did not align with the local population’s national composition. Territorial administration was arbitrary, leading to land disputes that remain relevant today. The Soviet government, pursuing a policy of cultural development of the Ingush Autonomous Region, creating a network of educational institutions, forming national personnel from among the Ingush, simultaneously carried out repression of the Ingush intelligentsia. This process was accompanied by territorial disturbances, resulting in the loss of established infrastructure alongside the loss of statehood. The policy of “korenizatsiya” (indigenization) was marked by excesses; however, the struggle for the cultural development of the Ingush people, as an integral part of the ideological work of the Soviet state, ultimately achieved significant successes.

An intertextual reading of the novel Defend the Name.

The general objective of this intertextual analysis's was to explore Wolde's novel Defend the Name (1969) with the view to identify and interpret the several thematic and stylistic intertexts that are woven throughout the narrative. Based on available research, there is a scarcity of critical studies that have utilized the theory of intertextuality for the analysis and interpretation of Ethiopian prose fiction in English, particularly within the novel genre. The current study was aimed to partially fill in this critical gap. In doing so, the theory of intertextuality is employed as theoretical-analytical framework of the study. The findings of this intertextual analysis concentrated on the thematic and stylistic intertexts that were woven throughout the plot of the book Defend the Name. These intertexts included biblical allusions, colonial literary devices, contemporary theoretical and ideological works, and cultural and historical discourses that the book intertextually engages with in addition to other literary and nonliterary works. This study provides insightful information about the thematic diversity of Defend the Name and its involvement with multiple intertexts through its intertextual analysis. It enhances the reader's comprehension of the story, characters, and larger sociopolitical situations that the novel addresses, demonstrating the author's skill in fusing together a variety of literary, scriptural, ideological, and cultural aspects.

THE IDEA OF ALASH AND CENSORSHIP

The article examines the censorship policy of the Soviet government, which strictly prohibited the propaganda of the idea of Alash. Chronicle data and the creative heritage of Alash figures, as well as archival materials of the Semipalatinsk Museum of Local Lore and the archive fund of East Kazakhstan Region (now Abai region) were used as the object of research. Historical data and narrative data were analyzed on the basis of mutual historical-comparative and comparative approaches to research, evidence of hypothetical conclusions was revealed by the method of biographical parallel and content analysis (quantitative, qualitative). As a result of the study, it was determined that the main cause of various movements and uprisings, considered colonial policy and the struggle for independence, is the struggle for the idea, and the definition of the idea of Alash is given. In addition, methods of underground, secret or disguised ideological work against the censorship mechanism, which tightly controlled the propaganda work of the idea of Alash, were revealed.

Construction and Practice of "Five Education" Education Mode in Colleges and Universities Based on "Youth Red Dream Journey" Activity

With the in-depth promotion of ideological work, red education activities in colleges and universities have gradually become an important way to carry forward the traditional spirit and shape students' values. Based on the practical activity of "Youth Red Dream Building Journey", red education is combined with the "five education" model of education in colleges and universities, which realizes the effective promotion of students' all-round development of morality, intelligence, physicality, aesthetics and labor. In this study, a six-month follow-up study of the "Youth Red Dream Journey" was conducted in two universities in Guizhou through questionnaires and in-depth interviews, involving more than 400 students and teachers. The study focuses on analyzing how the universities effectively construct and practice the "five education" model of educating people in the process of "Youth Red Dream Building Journey", how to stimulate students' patriotic passion through the excavation of red resources and inheritance of traditional spirit, as well as how to consolidate and enhance students' sense of social responsibility and sense of historical mission. How to consolidate and enhance students' sense of social responsibility and sense of historical mission. Through the comparative analysis of students' ideological and political quality, academic and professional knowledge, physical and mental health, aesthetic and cultural level, and labor skills before and after the implementation of the activities, the study reveals the obvious effect of the socialization of the activities on the improvement of students' comprehensive quality. The study found that there are still many challenges in the implementation of the concept, such as insufficient integration of resources, and insufficient relevance and continuity of activities. This study proposes strategies to improve the construction of the "five education" model, such as strengthening the effectiveness of ideological and political education, optimizing the development and use of red education resources, and innovating red education methods and means, in order to provide useful reference and practical guidance for the future "five education" work in universities. In order to provide useful reference and practical guidance for the future work of "five education" in colleges and universities.

Historical Interpretation and Modern Analysis of Mao Zedong's on the Ten Relationships based on the Construction of Socialist Road with Chinese Characteristics

As Mao Zedong's representative ideological work, On the Ten Relationships has not been practiced and tested in Chinese society, but it still plays an important role in guiding the development of China's development in terms of ideology and theory. In addition to studying and exploring the historical background at that time, this paper also carries out a comprehensive analysis and exploration of some of Mao's personal problems, especially in the interpretation of the "On the Ten Relationships" article by article, which is connected to some of the social events. In terms of research methodology, this paper mainly adopts the reverse reasoning of logic of thought as the method of reverse research, in addition to the use of the main axis of time and causal variables as a mixed analysis.

Reading in the Classroom and Beyond: Learning from Early Career English Teachers

ABSTRACT This essay emerges out of conversations with early career English teachers about their experiences of teaching literature. During those conversations, they reflected on their own literary socialisation, including the reading they did at home and at school, as well as their tertiary education. They then considered what they had learnt as teachers from the way their students engage with literary texts in classroom settings. Their insights into the nature of a literary education provide a counterpoint to the ideological work of standards-based reforms, even though their professional practice has been unavoidably shaped by those reforms. They open up dimensions of a literary education that contemporary curriculum and policy discourses fail to recognise. Above all, they highlight the importance of affirming the primacy of a reader’s personal response to a text as a condition for any meaningful conversation to take place in classrooms.

The geopolitics of anti-Asian racism: A critical discourse analysis of dominant Western narratives on China in the COVID-19 era

Over the past decades, dominant Western institutions have increasingly perceived China as a challenge to a US-centric world order and framed it as a threat to Western values. We propose that understanding the synergies between these institutions’ messaging on China and the reported growing number of incidents of anti-Asian racism can illuminate what drives the latter, especially in the COVID-19 era. We draw from theories of globalization, political socialization, and stigma to identify dominant narratives on China during COVID-19 through a critical discourse analysis of public documents, spanning close to three years, from governments, civil society entities and actors influential in public policy, and Western mainstream media. We show that the dominant Western narrative is that China is a threat to Western values and to humanity, both perceived as interchangeable. This narrative is constructed through double standards and the omission of relevant geopolitical contexts that might help Western publics to develop a more nuanced perspective of China’s role in world affairs. The ideological work of “othering” China and whoever refuses to condemn it is all but inevitable, as is the message of “Us versus Them” with the potential to legitimize anti-Asian racist beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. Discourse is not a slender surface of contact, or confrontation, between a reality and a language (langue) […] in analysing discourses, one sees the loosening of the embrace [between] words and things, and the emergence of a group of rules proper to discursive practice. These rules define not the dumb existence of a reality […] but the ordering of objects [performing] a work that […] displaces its own data, and reveals, at the end of the day, a quite different task. A task that consists of not - of no longer - treating discourses as groups of [signifiers] but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue). It is this 'more' that we must reveal and describe. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, 1972, P. 48 & 49

‘Being bilingual will open doors for them’: Ideologies informing French immersion educators’ perspectives on bilingualism

Purpose: New Brunswick, Canada, established its English-French Official Languages Act (OLA) in 1969 to promote linguistic equality for historically minoritized Francophones, premised on a language-as-right ideology. The OLA has been presented to Anglophones, however, as creating access to English-French bilingualism for various kinds of capital through a neoliberal language-as-resource ideology. In this context of conflicting ideologies, we wondered about the perspective of French immersion (FI) educators – the interface between policy and practice – regarding the purposes of bilingualism. We frame our question within Bakhtin’s notion of ideological becoming, asking: As potential mediators of their students’ ideological becoming, what are the perspectives of FI teachers and principals regarding the purposes of bilingualism? Design/data: We examine nine principals’ and 17 FI teachers’ discourse in semi-structured interviews conducted in New Brunswick. Data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory procedures, and further categorized according to Bourdieu’s constructs of capital. Findings: Our analysis indicates the dialogic nature of ideological becoming. On the one hand, authoritative neoliberal ideologies dominate the educators’ discourse regarding the purposes of bilingualism for their students. There was little attention to a socially-situated view of bilingualism enacted in a variety of communities of practice. On the other hand, we also note evidence of resistance against and distancing from this dominant ideology in educators’ own ideological becoming regarding bilingualism’s purposes for themselves. Originality: Bakhtin’s theory of ideological becoming provides a way to consider the entangled workings of ideology within language education for both educators and students. Implications: We thus propose professional development for educators to understand their own ideological becoming and develop students’ ideological becoming and their identities as bi/multilingual speakers.

Russian Tragedy of the Transcendent

The author of the article offers his refl ections on the issues of the value of a human being and his mortal life, using as an example the disputes between Nikolai Berdyaev and Vasily Rozanov on the nature of Christianity and its attitude to human life and fl eshly world. According to the author, the ascetical character of Russian Orthodoxy and the special emphasis on the spiritual aspect of human life over certain periods of our history downgraded the value of material existence as well as the value of human life. Similar tendencies can be also traced in contemporary Russia, particularly in some trends of political thought and ideological works.

Urbanization without guarantees: articulation, rentier capitalism and occupancy on the agrarian urban frontier

ABSTRACT This article engages with the work of Stuart Hall to examine conditions of agrarian city-making on India’s urban frontier. The article draws on Hall’s writings on articulation and marxist method to propose an approach to studying the urban frontier “without guarantees’. That is without a priori presumption of the total consolidation of the non-urban to a financial-capitalist urban fabric. Examining India’s agrarian-urban frontier, the article argues that the expansion of capitalist urbanization is being commanded, appropriated, and rejected by a decidedly agrarian set of actors, social relations, and technologies. On the frontier both the state and capital are subject to a series of agrarian articulations: bargains, compromises, and reformulations with agrarian and non-urban society that alter the very character of urbanization itself and challenge the received grammars of critical urban theory. In contrast to “extended urbanisation” approaches that assert the primacy of macrogeographical capitalist intentions, the article argues following Hall, that these urban-agrarian articulations on the frontier are fundamentally uncertain, requiring specific political and ideological work to sustain and frequently subject to collapse and resettlement. The final section of the article outlines three core conditions of agrarian-urban articulation in the present conjuncture: rentier capitalism; land occupancy and territorial blockade.

Representations of an Ebola ‘outbreak’ through Story Technologies

BackgroundAttempts to understand biosocial phenomena using scientific methods are often presented as value-neutral and objective; however, when used to reduce the complexity of open systems such as epidemics, these forms...

The Dilemma and Response of Ideological Education in Colleges and Universities

As the front line of youth ideology and public opinion, the actual effectiveness of ideological education in colleges and universities is directly related to the answer to the important question of “what kind of people to cultivate, how to cultivate people, and for whom to cultivate people”. There is an urgent need to closely combine the universality of ideological functions with the special requirements of ideological construction in colleges and universities. Ideological education in colleges and universities is faced with realistic dilemmas in terms of environment, subject and object, carrier and discourse, etc. The extreme importance of ideological work determines that strengthening ideological education in colleges and universities is imperative. Therefore, it needs to be guided and regulated by means of era orientation, value orientation, carrier extension and discourse transformation.