Individualistic Activities Research Articles

Tradition of Buka Luwur in Sunan Kudus Grave as a Social Cohesiveness of the Ancient Village in Kudus-Central Java

This article presents the meaningfulness of the tradition of Buka Luwur (a cloth covering the grave of Sunan Kudus) to the residents of Kauman Village, Kota sub-district, Kudus, Central Java, an ancient village in. The study’s data were obtained through interviews, observations, and literature reviews and analyzed using a descriptive-qualitative approach. The study found that Sunan Kudus, the first Islamic preacher in Kudus, has been respected by the residents of Kauman Village through the annual tradition called Buka Luwur (replacing the Luwur with a new cloth every Muharam/Sura month). The Foundation Functionary of Menara Mosque, Sunan Kudus Grave, and the residents of Kauman Village perform the tradition. The event series is very dynamic, beginning with the ritual abstersion of keris and two spears, the legacies of Sunan Kudus, the distribution of Sura porridge and Jangkrik rice, Islamic Art Attraction, and the replacement of old luwur with the new one having various motifs, i.e., jasmine, unthuk banyu, kompol, and wiru which have symbolic meanings. The old luwur are cut into pieces and shared with the residents of Kauman Village and the attending guests. The tradition is conserved to respect the trace of preaching (dakwah) of Sunan Kudus. Sociologically, the residents of Kauman Village preserve this tradition because it has a normative dimension and brings about solidarity and voluntariness, as well as the value of cultivating a life-appreciating character. Therefore, the tradition of Buka Luwur as a basic necessity of every resident of Kauman Village has given the impact of the birth of a routine activity in the village, which is considered by the public as an exclusive and individualistic activity. However, the stigma is refuted by cultural facts.

Mobile seamless learning in primary education: a case study on second grade students in Greece

ABSTRACT The paper presents an experimental study aiming to explore primary school students’ response to Mobile Seamless Learning activities. The educational intervention and the consequent investigation were conducted in a suburban primary school in Greece, with second grade pupils, in the context of a learning subject entitled “Studying our Living Environment”. The participant students (n = 14) engaged in both face-to-face (in-class, outdoor) and online (home) collaborative and individualistic activities supported by a variety of digital applications. Primary research data were gathered upon completion of the intervention via 5 group interviews and 12 individual interviews. The findings have shown that Mobile Seamless Learning can facilitate pupils’ active engagement and improve their attitudes toward collaboration. Moreover, this approach can lead to the development of a learning community that promotes learners’ motivation, enables them to construct new knowledge, and develop essential skills.

Imaginary friend play in light of enactivism

Review of psychological data of how children engage in imaginary friend play (IFP) shows that it involves a lot of explicit embodied action and interaction with surrounding people and environments. However, IFP is still seen as principally an individualistic activity, where, in addition to those interactions, the actor has to mentally represent an absent entity in imagination in order to engage in IFP. This capacity is deemed necessary because the imaginary companion is absent or not real. This article proposes a proof of concept argument that enactivism can account for complex imaginary phenomena as imaginary friend play. Enactivism proposes thinking of IFP in a fundamentally different way, as an explicitly embodied and performative act, where one does not need to mentally represent absent entities. It reconceptualizes imagination involved in IFP as strongly embodied, and proposes that play environments have present affordances for social and normative interactions that are reenacted in IFP—there is no “absence” that needs to be mentally represented first. This article argues that IFP is performed and enacted in the world without having to be represented in the mind first, which best captures the social and interactive nature of this form of play.

Reframing and Reconceptualising Gambling tourism in Macau as a Chinese Pilgrimage

While dominant discourses, media representations and corporate entities in China downplay the presence of Chinese mainland gambling in Macau, Beijing sanctions millions of its citizens to make the journey to Macau to gamble each year. While Macau’s success is often put down to the extent to which visitors are drawn to a secular destination with integrated resorts to engage in individualistic activities, our approach explores Chinese gambling tourists’ movements, rituals and behaviours along post-structuralist lines, so as to generate new insights. The analysis shows how the metaphor of pilgrimage is an important lens to address individual and communal practices amongst outbound Chinese gambling tourists and brings to light the hyper-meaningfulness, shared values, ritualization, play, risk, and liminal conditions that characterise the processes of their entanglements and the centrality of commercial and political interests. In particular, the analysis indicates the need to explore the significance of cultural, spiritual, economic and social dimensions of Chinese outbound tourism, as well as the unique discourses of power and control affecting their movement and practices. By reframing and reconceptualising gambling tourists as a Chinese pilgrimage, we account for manifestations of culture, governmentality and intentional ritualization as well as contribute an alternative construction of pilgrimage beyond euro-centric accounts, which in turn, will stimulate discussion on geographies of pilgrimage.

Exploring the Concept of Empire in Pacific History: Individuals, Nations, and Ocean Space Prior to 1850

AbstractThe concept of empire pervades most scholarly discussions of transnational and world history, especially for the 18th and 19th centuries. However, empire as an analytical tool has its limitations for explaining the attitudes and behaviors of individuals in the early modern Pacific Ocean. Drawing on recent scholarship by scholars of the United States, Pacific, and world history, this essay highlights the individualistic activities and motivations of American traders and sailors as they sought profit in the Pacific borderlands prior to 1850.

Sealskins and Original Dimes: Exploitation, Class, and Commodity Fetishism in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby

Throughout Tar Baby, Morrison makes use of the original tar baby story in order to underscore the relationship between exploitation, commodity consumption, and social and economic domination. Commodities are presented as a dual snare that lead the novel's characters to pursue self-negating, individualistic activities and to repress the exploitative origins of wealth.

Concept of Learning

This study explains the concept of learning in the light of the opinions of behaviourists, connectivists andhumanists. The researcher focused on key points of difference among the behaviourists themselves and otherschools of thought on the topic. For this purpose, the qualitative paradigm of research was used and method ofcontent analyses was applied. According to the behaviourists learning is not an active but passive process ofmemorizing information that requires external reward. Understanding is merely seeing relationship or patternsand applications requires not more than transfer of training. According to the humanists learning is a personal actof individual to fully utilize his potential. It is essential that instructional activities should be based on thelearners’ basic needs for the success of the learning process. It is an unending curiosity that includes identifying,discovering, drawing in from the outside world and making that which is drawn in a real part of Me. Learningsituation must allow the learner to move at a pace that best suited to him. It should provide opportunities forcontinuous assessment and utilization of the feedback as a part of learning. Connectivists believe that learning isa way of being. It is an ongoing pattern of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups which they employ todeal with the surprising, new/novel, messy, obtrusive events and situations. It occurs in different of ways fromthe practicing communities, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks. It is a continuousprocess for a lifetime without separation from work related activities. They present a model of learning whichrecognizes that learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. It provides an insight and skills to thelearners how to flourish and progress in a digital era of technology.

Preliminary ethnographic research on the Bakoya in Gabon

Little is known about the Pygmy groups living in Gabon. The Bakoya, along with the Babongo and the Baka Pygmy groups live in this central African country. They settled about seventy years ago and now share the same village space with Bantu ethnic groups. After a summary of the historical background and the social organization of the Bakoya Pygmies, I will give a brief description of their subsistence activities to highlight the social changes and economic transformations that the Bakoya underwent, by comparing two groups of Bakoya Pygmies, one living in Imbong and the other in Ekata. This fi rst anthropological study has found how agriculture is important for subsistence and for earning money, a shift from collec- tive to individualistic activities, and less dependence on non-Pygmy neighbors, with some noted differences between the two Bakoya villages.

Cyberbullying: Youngsters' Experiences and Parental Perception

This paper describes a survey on the prevalence and nature of cyberbullying of and by youngsters and the parental perceptions. Two questionnaires, one for youngsters and one for their parents, were sent to 1,211 final-year pupils of primary schools and first-year pupils of all levels of secondary schools and their parents. Pupils completed the questionnaires in their classroom, and parents completed them at home. The results show that about 16% of the youngsters had engaged in bullying via the Internet and text messages, while about 23% of the youngsters had been victims of cyberbullying. Cyberbullying seems to be a rather anonymous, individualistic activity, which primarily takes place at home. The most frequently used nature of harassment were name-calling and gossiping. Youngsters mostly react to cyberbullying by pretending to ignore it, by really ignoring it, or by bullying the bully. Most parents set rules for their children about the way to they should use the Internet but are not really conscious of the harassments. They underestimate their own children's bullying behavior and have insufficient notion of their children as victims of bullying.

Kultūrinio ir simbolinio kapitalo gamyba: „Disney“ fenomenas

Straipsnyje lyginamos K. Marxo klasikinė kapitalo samprata ir P. Bourdieau aiškintos simbolinio ir kultūrinio kapitalo sąvokos. Analizuojami konkretūs "Disney" korporacijos veiksmai, susiję su šių kapitalo formų institucionalizacija ir manipuliacija. Siekiama parodyti, kaip simbolinis ir kultūrinis kapitalas yra susijęs su fetišizacijos ir personifikacijos veiksniais ir kokie instituciniai konfliktai dėl to kyla. Analizuojama "Disney" veikla siekiant išvengti tokio pobūdžio konfliktų: atsisakant auteur praktikos ir animuojant mėgstamiausius herojus. Nagrinėjama "Disney" ideologinių nuostat ų kaita: nuo masių žmogaus poreikių tenkinimo iki šiuolaikinio multikultūralizmo, diversifikacijos ir socialinės fragmentacijos puoselėjimo. Kritikuojamos Th. Adorno ir W. Benjamino pažiūros į "Disney", kaip į hegemoninę industrinio imperializmo korporaciją. Priešingai, pabrėžiama humanistinė, individualizuojanti, kooperacinė, edukacinė šiuolaikinio "Disney" veikla. Pasakojama apie "Disney" pragmatizmą, susijusį su vartotojų ir korporacijos abipusių interesų puoselėjimu kuriant svajonių ir utopijos šalį.

The St Andrews Institute for clinical research: an early experiment in collaboration

Sir James Mackenzie is revered by general practitioners as the father of general practice-based research.' His name is associated with the University Department of General Practice at Edinburgh and with the Chair at Aberdeen, and he is commemorated in the James Mackenzie lecture given annually at the Royal College of General Practitioners. His fame rests largely on his achievements as a solitary researcher while he worked as a GP in Burnley, a mill town in Lancashire, between 1879 and 1907. It was here that he carried out the pioneering work which contributed to the development of the new cardiology at the beginning of the century.2 His work in Burnley took him away from general practice and he moved to London to take up private and hospital consulting work to further the impact of his research. He regarded himself, however, as first and foremost a GP, and believed general practice was the proper place for clinical research.3 Mackenzie was so committed to this belief that he left London in 1919, an ill man at the age of sixty-six, and the GPs of St Andrews working together in collaborative research under Mackenzie's leadership. This paper will reassess Mackenzie's significance for the development of general practice-based research and for general practice as a specialty by examining this project of his later years. The Institute was an innovative venture at this time. Clinical research was still very much an individualistic activity and, as fewer GPs were doing research in the form of MD degrees, individual GPs were generally less likely to be involved in research.4 The St Andrews Institute can be seen as an attempt by Mackenzie to set up the kind of research structure for GPs that was beginning to emerge in the London teaching hospitals: specialist clinicians associated with university scientists. Mackenzie's model did not continue and there was a long gap before university departments of general practice emerged (the first professor of general practice was Richard Scott appointed in 1963 in Edinburgh).' The first section of the paper will fill in some background of Mackenzie's life and work before he came to St Andrews in order to give some understanding of his motivation and experience, and of his early fame. The second section will describe the Institute, its members, what it set out to do, and, particularly, how it was funded; and the final section will discuss why Mackenzie did not succeed in establishing the Institute on a permanent basis and assess its significance in the history of GP research.

Environment, Production and Social Difference in the Kalahari Thornveld, c1750–1830

This article considers the food production activities of people in the Thlaping and Tlharo chiefdoms in the present-day Northern Cape and North-West Provinces between c1750 and 1830. It considers food production methods, their environmental suitability and how food produtction related to social difference. It is arguted that the Tlhaping and Tlharo chiefdoms did not arise through the migration of agro-pastoralists, but that indigenous inihabitants began stock keeping and cultivating as the chiefdoms were established in the mid-eighteenth century. Thereafter food production remained extensive and the products of pastoralism – milk – provided the staple of the diet. Food production did not provide support for all people, and a significant class of foragers, who were not ethnically differentiated from other members of the chiefdons, lived at the bottom of the society and outside of the towns. It was possible for men to move between stock keeping and foraging in a process similar to the “ecological cycle” described by Richard Elphick for the Khoisan. However, chiefs and headmen exerted their power, in part gained through stock ownership, to protect their positions of wealth fromn the vagaries of nature and human competition. Agriculture was the most intensive use of the environmnent and supplemented food gained through pastoralism and foraging, rather than providing the staple. Production methods show it had relatively low labour requirements and may be understood as shifting cultivation. It was the responsibility of women, who could not achieve status through their production. Cultivation was a less individualistic activity than pastoralism, but its reciprocity did not amount to communalism. A consideration of production activities and yields in this enviroinment suggests that men invested their hopes for wealth in stock rather than in women’s labolur power; that success as stock keepers was not an option for all men, and that the exclusion of women from stock ownership was due to cultural forces and not a means of relegating them to service as agricultural labourers.

東北タイにおける地域開発と農村社会の対応 ドンデーン村周辺地区の事例から

The social organization in Thai village is highly conformable with the concept of social networks: in Thai village, independent villagers form networks of consummatory social relationship in order to secure one's existence. By the way, a survey report shows that, in northeastern Thai villages, incidental modernizing influences, e. g. urbanization, had led to economic heterogeneity within the village, but the disparity was increasing only because of the difference in rateof progress among villagers. The characteristic of social organization can rationalize this finding. First, there are not any social groups which put a curb on a villager's activity. So the rise in income is bacically a private affair. Therefore the increase in economic disparity might be an inevitability. But second, the “social networks are established on the premise that each person is “independent”. So even when individualistic activities has been actualized in changing economic environment, the social networks among villagers might be maintained. Then the increase in economic disparity shows the pattern described above, because the social networks function as a channel of information and loan. The validity of above rationale is supported by the findings from Don Daeng village and its vicinity in Northeast Thailand. The survey results consist of three parts: (1) . precondition: villager's life under subsistence conditions, (2) . economic changes after 1960 s, (3) . maintenance of social networks among villagers.

The Stock Exchange and Social Control

The traditionally individualistic activities of the stock exchange have given rise to various types of social control, of which the following three are outstanding representatives: (I) the control exerted by the exchange over its members; (2) the control exerted by the exchange over the companies whose securities are listed and traded through its facilities; (3) the control exerted over the exchange itself by the federal government. Regulation of the mechanics of trading in the interest of more efficient functioning has long been carried on by the exchange itself. This type of control has been augmented and improved by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any regulation of the exchange which would destroy the principle of the free competitive market, however, would run directly counter to the most important values of contemporary society. Such drastic control would threaten the basic complex of private property and hence would be fundamentally ineffectual.