Cultural Logic Research Articles

Toward a cinematic transtopia

Has Chinese independent cinema begun to foster a discursive space – or what Howard Chiang calls a transtopia – where trans identity, subjectivity, and agency can be debated, discussed, and reconfigured? In this article, I conduct a close analysis of The Rib (Zhang Wei, 2019). Under the current conditions of Chinese independent filmmaking, which have rendered trans self-representation nearly invisible, The Rib presents an option of how a visible space can still be fostered. The Rib can be considered a collaborative creation between a cisgender male director, two cisgender male actors, a gender nonbinary activist, and a community of trans people in a district in Tangshan dominated by Protestant moral conservatism. By representing themselves and their friends on screen, these creators draw our attention not to the way they come face-to-face with those social inscriptions that seek to overdetermine their subjectivization. What emerges in this film, I argue, is a form of care and kinship and a potential space for knowledge coproduction between cis and trans creators and activists. It also puts into question how trans (plural) and their studies are often mapped onto and rewritten by what Fredric Jameson calls the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Феномен Бахтина и загадка культуры: от диалога к интертекстуальности

In this article, M. Bakhtin's dialogue is considered as a principle underlying culture. At the same time, in accordance with the method of analytical stratification of modes and existentials of human existence, the dialogue is presented as a three-level structure, including existential, symbolic and normative planes. The paper shows the consistent shift of Bakhtin's attention from the existential (interpersonal) layer of dialogue, which is emphasized in the thinker's earliest works, through its symbolic dimension (as communication mediated by language), to the normative regime unfolding in the logic of the exchange of objectified results of speech activity. The article considers the positions of three followers of Bakhtin, in which the specified regularity is most clearly expressed. The merit of V. Bibler is the understanding of dialogism as the general logic of culture. Yu. Lotman introduced the idea of intertextual exchange into the understanding of the logic of culture. J. Kristeva most radically departs from the idea of an individual subject, eliminating the existential and symbolic dimension of dialogue. At the same time, dialogue as a complex intersubjective relationship does not allow to fully resolve the mystery of culture, to reveal its own law, since it is itself founded by a deeper foundation. The authors, in accordance with the stable anthropological tradition, propose to consider the principle of gift or gift exchange as such a basis. Cultural anthropology fixes the above principle as the beginning of the cultural life of any human communities.

Introduction: Volatility in finance, art, and culture

AbstractThe term ‘volatility’ applies to changeability: both that which can be measured, such as temperatures and stock prices, and that which cannot be easily measured, such as affects and emotions. Quantitative financial volatility has typically been studied quite separately from art, culture, and everyday life. Randy Martin's work, which addressed the resonances between volatility in dance and finance, was a notable exception. Martin focused on derivatives, which played a critical role in the development of financialized capitalism, especially between 1973-2008. Arguably, however, derivatives are no longer the key drivers of volatility as a social and cultural logic. New assemblages of asset managers, rentiers, and online platforms - along with a pandemic, new banking crises, and ongoing climate emergency - are reshaping how volatility is produced and navigated. How might we rethink volatility in order to better grasp its changing logics? This introduction unpacks existing debates on volatility in finance, art, and culture, suggesting several directions in which new work in this area might depart from existing frameworks - some of which are pursued in this special issue. We focus on three broad lines of exploration: rethinking the intellectual histories of volatility; rethinking volatility across disparate post-2008 contexts; and imagining volatile futures through art practice.

Философия смысла

Healing the inner rupture of Russian culture caused by the reforms of Peter the Great is an urgent need which is still on agenda. This task can be accomplished by relying upon the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’ that manifested itself as the basic value in the course of millennium of Russian history. Implanting the European section into the overall layout of the vsechelovecheskoye design of Russian culture will help bridge the gap between the culture of the upper strata totally bound by the spirit of European domination (evropeynichanye, “Europe-apping”, according to N.Ya. Danilevsky) and the culture of the lower strata governed by the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’. To overcome Europe-apping, which is still a pressing task, means to overcome the dogma of European culture as obshechelovecheskoye (common to humankind) by basing the dis­course on the vsechelovecheskoye category. Vsechelovecheskoye, as opposed to obshe­chelovecheskoye, was elaborated in Russian thought starting from the 19th century. For­mation and manifestation of the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’ represents the sense of the Russian history tying it together over all breaks and revolutionary catas­trophes. “Humankind” can be conceived of only as a notion based on sobornost’, not as a unity of any kind, for it developed, in the course of its history, a number of the big cul­tures each of which based itself on its indigenous logic irreducible to the logic of any other big culture. The basic task the Russian philosophy faces, in order to develop itself as the philosophy of sense, is to study and elaborate on the actual manifestations of the logic of sobornost’ and vsesubyectnost’ in the course of Russian history as the logic of vsechelovecheskoye global design for humankind.

Hoping against the Odds: Understanding Refugee Youths' Aspirations for Gaining Overseas Scholarships

Why do young refugees in the Dadaab camps in Kenya aspire to gain resettlement-based scholarships for tertiary education when the odds of getting them are minimal? The existing literature sheds light on the strong educational aspirations of refugee youth. However, our understanding is obscure of why they persistently pursue lofty educational goals when the chances of achieving them is not optimistic, especially through emergency education programs. This study contributes to our understanding of this puzzle, theoretically and empirically. In the study, I draw from ethnographic research, including semistructured interviews and future aspiration mapping exercises with Form One students, as well as interviews with their teachers. I then present several interconnected explanations that address the research question. First, students believe that success in education is a way for them to get out of the camps. Second, they imagine that getting an overseas scholarship will resolve their difficult economic conditions and academic restrictions. Third, they believe that, by working hard to succeed and being motivated by the dream of getting an education abroad, their chances for other tertiary education will increase. In this study, I argue that the cultural logic of hoping to achieve a better future through education sustains young people's motivation to pursue overseas scholarships, which outweighs the low odds of attaining them.

Gheirat as a complex emotional reaction to relational boundary violations: A mixed-methods investigation.

People from different cultural backgrounds vary in how they define, perceive, and react to violations of relational boundaries. Muslim cultures are diverse and include nearly one in four people in the world, yet research on their relational and moral norms is scarce. We contribute to narrowing this gap by studying gheirat, a moral-emotional experience ubiquitous in Muslim Middle Eastern cultures. In four mixed-methods studies, we study how gheirat is experienced, what situations elicit it, and its social functions among Iranian adults (N = 1,107) using qualitative interviews, scenario- and prototype-based surveys, and an experiment. The prototypical experience of gheirat consisted of diverse appraisals (including sense of responsibility, insecurity, and low self-worth) and emotional components (including hostility, social fears, and low empowerment). We identified three types of relational violations that elicit gheirat: harm or insult to namoos (people and self-relevant entities one is obliged to protect), romantic betrayal by namoos, and intrusions by a third person. Each violation type led to a distinct variant of the prototype. Contrary to folk theories of gheirat, we did not find support for the idea that gheirat is a predominantly male experience. However, an experiment on the signaling effects of gheirat revealed that gheirat expressors are ascribed both positive and negative traits, but positive traits prevail for men and negative traits prevail for women. We discuss how the results contribute to a better understanding of Iranian social life and intercultural contact, as well as the implications for theories of emotion and the cultural logic of honor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive Mapping and Thirdspace in Spatial Literary Pedagogy

Abstract This piece is a reflection on spatiality as critical approach in the classroom. The article focuses on a seminar taught during spring 2019, in which cognitive mapping and thirdspace were used as tools to analyze twentieth-century American literature. Through the elaboration of thirdspace provided by Edward Soja in his seminal work Thirdspace: Journeys through Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places and Fredric Jameson's definition of cognitive mapping found in Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, this study offers examples of how literary cartography can be used as a tool in the classroom to reflect on the social and historical conditions that informed specific literary narratives.

카를로스 루이스 사폰의 『안개의 왕자』의 현대적 의미

The cultural logic of the contemporary century is skeptical of absolute ideology or belief in reproduction and seeks familiarity and diversity. The popular genre that the public enjoys is not a crisis, but rather makes the genre more rich. Modern society’s norms, life, daily life, and social system kept the illusion of a dark place behind memories and consciousness in the periphery, but The Prince of Mist introduces new areas lying just beneath the surface of civilized life into the novel genre. As a reaction to everyday things through supernatural events, the obsessive and impulsive flow of fear and twisted desire is the novel’s main theme. The novel has gained huge popularity as a fun and entertaining story with supernatural elements and romance. It is loved beyond the sarcasm of the past Gothic novel style. We talk lightly about social criticism, but inside it tells the story of our desire and the cultural spirit. It also transforms the typical structure of gothic novels to show aspects that criticize the typical modern spirit of reason and rationality. On the other hand, the novel also serves to enrich the dilapidated imagination in which most social practices are achieved by technical and practical values. This is because there are all kinds of things in the infinite universe that cannot be solved by human knowledge. It is also said that it is a world full of chaos and unknown uncertainty, such as a watch going backwards or a sculpture park full of mysteries and magical events.

Critical education as an attempt to question the dominant habitus through the educational system

In the article, I analyze the role of education in the prevailing system of neoliberal capitalism. On the one hand, it is used by the dominant culture characteristic for the upper classes to imprint appropriate ideological assumptions in the minds of students. On the other hand, there is strong resistance to the practices of subordination and implementation of the logic of the prevailing system. Illich's concept of deschooling society recognizes that compulsory education should be abolished. Critical educators such as Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren argue that the resistance present in the school testifies to the possibility of using the school to shape critical citizens capable of defending democracy. In my article, I argue that it is possible to partially free oneself from the logic of the dominant culture and to partially emancipate the habituses characteristic of the lower classes. However, it is not my goal to illustrate the ideas present in the theories under analysis by referring to specific examples in the field of a particular educational system.

Filming as being, images as evidence

When is film taken as evidence of the past and of truths in the world and when does the content become less significant than the practice of making images itself? The meaning of moving images change as the material and cultural logics and technologies of image production and circulation evolve. In legal and journalistic public discourse, recorded images are meant to be empirical evidence that can hold people accountable for their actions. Video camcorders and then mobile phone cameras democratized recording equipment which in many cases revealed abuses of power. But mobile technologies for recording and circulating film—as well as shifting genres for interpreting them—have also reshaped how audiences understand the veracity of what they see and hear. In shifting attention from content to context, cellphone filming becomes about circulation itself. Rather than a means for gathering evidence (epistemic) it is a sign of presence (ontologic). This has implications for legal cases of sex-gender and racial violence when visual evidence, rather than leading to successful prosecutions, creates defensive outrage amongst the powerful.

Emoticon and Its Impact on Social Culture in the Context of New Media

The development of information technology promotes the continuous upgrading of media. The emergence of new media has brought about changes in language symbols. The rise and popularity of network emoticons are the result of media technology, audience demand and cultural logic. The essence of Internet emoticons is an auxiliary means of Internet communication with the function of emoticons, which is mainly used to express the emotions and attitudes of both parties. Especially in the communication of youth groups, it carries not only a simple symbolic meaning, but also a new emotional expression and a unique subculture. But the network excessive entertainment, also easy to bring some effects. By examining the influencing factors of new media language, this paper discusses the use and influence of emoticons in the context of new media, in order to attract attention and reflect on youth group culture.

More Human Than Human: The Exile in Blade Runner

More Human Than Human: The Exile in <i>Blade Runner</i>

On Dankwa's Gift

On Dankwa's Gift

한국 무속 신화에 나타난 여성의 죽음 연구

This study aims to read the meaning of life and death culturally anew, focusing on the narrative of women’s death in Shaman myths. In shaman myths, death and resurrection events after death occur only in women (goddess). There is always death in the life of a woman who lives as a family member of a daughter, wife, and mother. Women’s death situations and the process of solving problems vary from myth to myth. However, women in myths are performing a common task in that they face a death incident while playing a role as a family member. In addition, the common narrative structure of ‘life → death → life’ can be confirmed in the process of a woman’s life leading to death and a series of events leading to another life after death. However, there is always a middle term between ‘non-life’ and ‘non-death’ in the narrative from life to death and the narrative from death to life. From this, a new cultural reading of life/death could be explored. As a result of analyzing the narrative structure and narrative method of women’s death, the women of myths are resolving the contradiction between living and dead life. Such death is not a tragic event that signifies the end of life, but shows the continuity of life in that it becomes an immortal existence that never dies as death. In this respect, the death of a woman in shaman myths is understood as a sacred event that leads to belief in the immortality of a divine being. Women face death as a mechanism to resolve the deficiencies given to life. Through this, you can read the myth of enabling filling with emptiness. It is natural for women in shaman myths to become the protagonists of cultural creation in that they rule the human world by traversing the lives of this and the afterlife. However, the cultural meaning and logic of the myths inherent in the death of women have not received much attention because of the male god’s activities shown in the myths. Death functions as an inevitable narrative device that heralds the emergence of a new goddess, and contributes to reading a new culture in that it causes an expansion of the perception of life/death.

На пути к многоцивилизационной целостности

The article considers the possibility of new multi-civilizational integrity in the context of the concept outlined in the new monograph by A.V. Smirnov “The Logic of Sense as a Philosophy of Mind”, where the author argues that a multipolar world is possible as sta­ble only as a multi-civilizational one and calls into question three currently dominant the­ses in the humanities. They are: 1) globalization is a natural process; 2) globalization of economic processes must necessarily be accompanied by cultural and civilizational globalization; 3) the civilizational project, which is implemented by the West in its histor­ical development and taken as the basis of globalization, is universal in its essence and is the best socio – political and economic model for the whole world. Historical experience and analysis of modern practice show that new multi-civilizational integrity will not work as long as the Western project is considered as the only possible prospect for modern civi­lization, and its ideals and values are presented as a role model. At the same time, the im­plementation of the value orientations of the consumer society outside Europe generates new crises and contradictions, not fitting into the national and cultural characteristics of other countries. Therefore, the way out to the points of growth of a new civilizational integrity should be not found in the West at all, but should be explored in those cultures that have preserved the traditional ground under the influence of modernization pro­cesses. Without ignoring the centuries-old experience of the development of Greek-Latin-European culture, A.V. Smirnov argues, it is necessary to conduct a study of the logic of non-Western cultures, which currently constitutes an important task of the theoretical development of the project of a multi-civilizational world.

Logics of control and self-management in narratives of people living with HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B

In Australia, the response to HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B has largely been through the constructed category of ‘blood borne viruses’ which treats these viruses as an interconnected set of conditions with respect to their mode of transmission. In this paper, we explore how people understand their viral infection, and compare the logics underpinning these different understandings. In-depth interviews were conducted with 61 participants who were either living with a blood borne virus or were the family members of people living with them. Our analysis reveals that the viral infection was often described as ‘just a condition that needs to be managed’, albeit in potentially exhausting ways. This understanding hinged upon a biomedical logic in which viral invasion was seen as causing illness and in turn necessitating biomedical intervention. In contrast, some participants with hepatitis B presented their infection as a condition unintelligible through Western biomedical logics, defined instead by symptomology – in terms of ‘liver disease’, and/or ‘liver inflammation’. This focus on symptomology calls into question the soundness of prevention and management responses to hepatitis B based in biomedical logics and reveals the extent to which living with a virus involves multiple, sometimes incompatible, cultural logics. The different logics underpinning HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B reveal shortcomings of framing these viruses together as a coherent single construct.

The capability imperative: Theorizing ableism in medical education

Medical education programs profess commitments to justice, equity, and inclusion, seeking to diversify the profession and better serve patient populations. Although disability has more recently joined recognized categories of valued diversity, significant barriers remain for disabled learners in medicine. This paper develops the concept of the capability imperative, derived from a constructivist grounded theory study examining disability inclusion at four U.S. medical schools that analyzed technical standards policies and interviews with 19 disabled students and 27 school officials (faculty and administrators). Through three motifs (the selfless superhuman; the “real world” of medicine; and the malleable student), the capability imperative enforces the characteristics of a good physician, justifies institutional arrangements, and seeks to produce a learner who can conform to these expectations. Drawing on critical disability theories of ableism and crip theory, the paper argues that the capability imperative represents a context-specific manifestation of ableism that upholds a cultural logic of compulsory hyper-ablebodiedness and mindedness. This logic is antithetical to inclusive goals. Exploration of what constitutes a physician and whom this vision serves may help to shift the professional culture towards justice and unroot disabled peoples’ ongoing marginalization in the medical profession.

The Desire of Mothering Towards Educational Success: How Does “Cultural Logic” Operate in Schooling Practices?

This paper primarily seeks to explore how mothering practices in different social classes reflect on the schooling experiences of students. We particularly focus on the desire for mothering towards educational success. We draw on Lareau’s (2003) theory on “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth” to understand the possibilities of mothering embodied in various schooling practices. The data for the study were generated via 26 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with mothers from the middle and lower-class. The findings demonstrate that the educational and socio-economic status of mothers significantly modifies their children’s schooling practices. However, the results reveal that mothers from lower-class backgrounds develop some principles of academic survival skills that they transmit to their children. Strategies to support their children’s schooling that mothers from lower-class backgrounds implemented emerge where they interact with schooling practices conducted by middle-class.

Building care amid navigating liability risks: The possibility of policy-driven care in China's drug-control arena

For Chinese policymakers, shouldering responsibility is often associated with high liability risk, thus resulting in low-level care for risky and stigmatized populations such as drug users. Therefore, it is crucial to explore ways to improve care access in such an uneasy policy environment. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan province in southwestern China from 2013 to 2021, this paper traces the policy-making process of the Yunnan Province Methadone Oral Solution Take-Home Treatment Work Proposal. All stakeholders involved considered this policy attempt “impossible” at first, as the highly addictive methadone becomes an illegal drug once it is taken outside a clinical setting. By analyzing how a group of local government officials, together with medical practitioners and drug users, strive to legitimize and ultimately implement the policy, I argue that people's concern over liability risks strengthens the boundary between methadone as a “drug” and methadone as a “medicine,” between methadone solution drinkers as “drug users” and as “patients,” and between “inside the clinic” and “outside the clinic.” By utilizing a culturalist approach to explore the possibility of care in such a context, this paper reveals that a “heqing heli hefa worthy-of-being-cared-for” discourse is crucial in that it acts as symbolic capital to dissolve the above boundaries embedded in the dominant political culture. Moreover, it is the key cultural logic of the “building” of care. The findings also illustrate how local policymakers negotiate and balance responsibility and liability to create a potential policy space for enabling care practices. Additionally, this study sheds light on the inclusion of care for the most stigmatized and marginalized populations, and has broad implications for policy-making in other contexts.

Cultural scripts of risk consciousness: police practices in high-risk offender management programs

ABSTRACT Risk discourse pervades criminal justice institutions. One such example is high-risk offender management programmes. Officers who work in these programmes routinely carry out an array of policing practices to manage high-risk individuals. To reduce risks of recidivism and facilitate social reintegration, these practices range from traditional law enforcement tactics of monitoring and surveilling, to collaborating with agencies and organisations outside of the criminal justice system. Here, the authors utilise the concept of risk consciousness to describe and analyze the cultural logics officers mobilise when perceiving, evaluating, and managing high-risk individuals. Using qualitative interviews conducted with police agents working in Canadian high-risk offender management programmes, this study examines how offender management agents justify and inform their actions. We find officers often invoke a reflexive risk consciousness to interpret and respond to subjects’ riskiness and behaviours. Drawing on different cultural scripts, agents frame subjects as both needing help and as dangerous offenders necessitating further monitoring and law enforcement intervention. In doing so, agents simplify offender management strategies by enforcing accountability while simultaneously neglecting subjects’ subjectivity.