Present-day Culture Research Articles

Imágenes del pasado en la cultura visual contemporánea

The reuse of ancestral iconographies in contemporary contexts is a cultural practice with a long historical background. In architecture and the visual arts, the revival of Greco-Roman antiquity in Europe or North America, or neo-indigenism in Latin America, are examples of this. In present-day culture, it manifests itself in various forms, from reinterpretations of classical myths in advertising or comics, to the use of iconography from classical or pre-Hispanic antiquity in music or urban art. Contemporary visual artists also reinterpret the pre-Hispanic past to address current social and political issues. These retrospective borrowings not only enrich cultural expression, but also challenge dominant narratives, promote diversity and raise awareness of history and cultural identity.

INFLUENCE OF SOCIETAL NORMS ON THE MOTIVATIONS AND CHALLENGES OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN HARYANA’S MSMES

Within the context of present-day culture, the concept of a "competent woman" has undergone substantial transformation, surpassing conventional stereotypes and encompassing attributes such as self-reliance, perseverance, and resolve. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the influence of societal norms on the incentives and problems encountered by female entrepreneurs operating within micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the state of Haryana. In this study, a quantitative researchis utilised, focussing on a sample of 369 female entrepreneurs from Rohtak. Regression analysis is employed to evaluate the relationship between societal norms and entrepreneurial outcomes. The findings indicate that societal norms account for approximately 65% of the heterogeneity observed in the incentives and obstacles encountered by these entrepreneurs. The findings demonstrate a statistically significant and positive correlation, wherein cultural standards exert an influence on both the motives and difficulties experienced. The present study provides significant contributions to the understanding of social issues that impact women entrepreneurs. Additionally, it offers recommendations for the development of tailored support structures aimed at cultivating a more inclusive entrepreneurial climate in the region of Haryana.

Almodóvar’s High Heels revisited: a scandalous or thought-provoking portrayal of a judge?

ABSTRACT Taking as its focus the 1991 movie High Heels by Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, this article argues that the multi-layered narrative style of Almodóvar's films make them especially suited to the examination of present-day culture and society. High Heels is the story of a troubled mother–daughter relationship compounded with the subplot of a judge who is entrusted with the investigation of the murder of the daughter's husband. A judge by day, at night he performs as a drag artist in a gay bar (as well as occasionally slipping into other roles). The article contends that, rather than the two plots being in a hierarchical relationship, they are intertwined. Bringing her own biographical perspective as a former judge, Ruth Herz considers the significance of the Almodóvar's judge Dominguez's role as the one who navigates the intricate labyrinth of facts, feelings, and fantasies, and who mediates between the two plots. The unique method employed by Dominguez in his quest for the ‘truth’ challenges the deep-seated notion among the general public and in the judiciary itself of what judgecraft is. He demonstrates – albeit in a typically scandalous, parodic way – how the process of judging continues to remain enigmatic even under democracy, despite the claim of transparency and open courts.

Whiteness and settler colonial logics in the Pacific Northwest hops and craft beer industries

ABSTRACT The rapidly expanding Pacific Northwest (PNW) craft beer industry and the heralding of Seattle as an epicenter of “hoppy beer” has benefited from geographic proximity to the Yakima Valley, revered by many as the “hops capital of world.” In this article, I center theory from Black studies, Native studies, and critical whiteness studies to examine the intersectional violences of settler colonialism and whiteness as structuring logics of the PNW hops and craft beer industries. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2012 and 2019, I argue that the settler colonial history of PNW hops cultivation and present-day culture of exclusion that extends outward into relationships with craft brewers, sustain a hegemonic whiteness. Moreover, I suggest that craft beer culture in the United States, as a site of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, has benefitted from ongoing dispossession through gentrification and cultural appropriation. By way of conclusion, I discuss the possibilities and limitations of existing attempts to dismantle whiteness within the US craft beer industry.

Play: A Historical and Cultural Approach

The article examines the historical dynamics of the theoretical and methodological approaches to the essence of play and their significance in modern scholarship and culture. The role of play in the philosophy of ancient times is highlighted. Classical playing theories are presented: Friedrich Schiller’s and Herbert Spencer’s theories of surplus forces, Richard Lazarus’ theory of recuperation, Karl Groos’ theory of exercise and G. Stanley Hall’s theory of recapitulation. Play (as a way to achieve pleasure) is examined through Karl Bühler’s theory. We pay attention to Freud’s psychodynamic theory in the context of understanding play, as well as the views of Erickson and Winnicott. Bateson’s metacommunicative theory is singled out separately. The theory of cognitive development by Piaget and Vygotsky pays special attention to the consideration of approaches to the understanding of play. The role of play in the context of pedagogical, cultural, and anthropological research is presented. Due to the analysis of the presented theories, we made the conclusion about the role of play in present-day culture. The study aims to find out the meaning of play in the representation of modern youth. To solve the tasks set, we used the sociological research method. As a result, we surveyed the young people of the city. This survey allowed us to understand the place of play in modern young people’s lives and reveal its attitude to gaming activities. With the help of a survey, we identified such essential functions of play as relaxation and entertainment. The least important of these was the psycho-technical function. Computer and desktop games were recognized as the most popular types of play among modern young people. The least interest among respondents is caused by such a type of play as gambling. This work is only an initial stage in the study. We plan to continue the study on a representative sample.

О педагогических инновациях в контексте метаморфоз современной музыкальной культуры

Music theory in Russia and in other countries has substantially elucidated the contemporary academic music culture in its most diverse manifestations. However, educational practice which is focused on academic traditions has been realizing to a greater degree the lack of balance between pedagogy and culture. An evaluation of the situation as a critical one calls forth the ideas of a fundamental renewal of the strategies of musical teaching which are declared to be innovations. The article poses the question about the indispensability of the rectification of this conception, which is endowed with theoretical and practical value, but requires concretization in connection with the placed goals. The author examines the innovational educational principle of work on the advancement of the universal cultural background of students of higher educational institutions and colleges. In correspondence with such a phenomenon as the visualization of audial compositions permeating the network space, this involves a broad implementation of the visual element into the teaching of music theory disciplines. The principles of teaching must transform themselves from the positions of present-day culture and the new mechanisms of its existence.

Automatic Alcohol Detection System

Abstract: In pretty much every industry and field, innovation keeps on disturbing old frameworks and opening up new pathways. Not more so than in the field of law enforcement, where analysts, designers, and tech virtuosos are chipping away at further developed apparatuses not exclusively to uphold DUI, yet additionally to forestall it. Maybe the most encouraging of these drives is the Alcohol Safety Detection System, fostering an innovation that will consequently keep an intoxicated driver from driving an engine vehicle, an attempt will be made to fabricate a locking mechanism for vehicles so it would not begin without an Alcohol detection system. This paper portrays a driver alcohol concentration detection framework dependent on breath testing, created utilizing a microcontroller Compatible Compiler, that permits the program of microcontroller boards. The framework can gauge the liquor from the breath test and control the activity of the vehicle start framework to forestall smashed driving. Additionally, the utilization of virtual instrumentation gives high adaptability, in contrast to traditional methods. Drunken driving has become a significant problem in present-day culture. It is a typical reason for vehicle crashes including human mistakes. This venture focused on developing a system to prevent, in anticipation of making everyday traffic safe. Keywords: Alcohol safety detection system, MQ3 sensor, Arduino UNO.

Navigating an unwanted heritage: displacement, accommodation and effacement in Lublin’s local heritage initiatives

ABSTRACT This article presents three instances of heritage activism in Lublin, Poland, in which activists responded to the ‘unwanted’ nature of Jewish heritage with strategies of displacement, accommodation and effacement. Lublin is a city with a substantial prewar Jewish heritage; it was also the site of Nazi genocidal policies that transformed the Jewish Quarter into a ghetto, deported its inhabitants to death camps, and destroyed the material landscape of Jewish life. Post-War urban development obscured the traces of this process. In addition, there is no widespread social and political agreement that the Jewish past in particular should find expression in present-day public culture in Lublin. Using three cases this article argues that Lublin is an instance in which political democratisation and heritage activism are often at odds, and that heritage outcomes reflect this.

Cultural Spectrum in Arvind Adiga’s Selection Days

Cultural Studies have played a pivotal role in understanding and evaluating the power dynamics of the social, political, economic and ethical world order by empirically engaging and focusing on the present-day culture, tracing its historical roots and explicating its attributes with reference to a particular literary text and its reception in a society. Arvind Adiga, the Man-Booker Prize winning Indo-Australian author, in Selection Day, has adroitly detailed how cricket as an individual entity impacts the cultural phenomena of a society by confronting its inherent myriad issues. The narrative delves deep into the lives of two siblings – Radha and Manju, witnesses the dramatic turnaround of events and tries to capture the themes of unfulfilled desires and preordained destinies. The novel also explores how the sport holds different meanings and significance for different characters, each of whom view the game in the light of their own ideology. The author foresees and sensitizes the theme of homosexuality, which is still a taboo and been unheard of, within the sports fraternity. Adiga’s critique of the parental felony, embodied in Mohan Kumar, and its repercussions is the most compelling theme at the heart of this work of fiction. Selection Day powerfully binds together the societal phenomena of class construction, unquenchable thirst for money, sexual orientations and ideologies with a single thread and studies how culture, in itself, is an ever-evolving phenomenon.

The Concept of “Ressentiment” as a Promising Theoretical Resource for the Analysis of Protests against Offensive Art

The interest of the authors in the problem of conflicts around art, has become a constant and integral characteristic of present-day culture motivated their studying of ressentiment. The dominant discourse of protests against contemporary art is the discourse of offensiveness. The article describes several difficulties in studying the phenomenon of offence, which are in the sphere of social psychology, ethics, and philosophy of art. We suggest a hypothesis about the possibility of a common ground for conflicts that include the discourse of offensiveness: we propose to look for the source of an offence not in a work of art, but in the state of the recipients, their value attitudes, and the actions arising from them. As an auspicious theoretical resource, we put forward the concept of ressentiment widely used in philosophy and social sciences, is put. The article tracked the history of philosophical reflection on ressentiment from F. Nietzsche and M. Scheler to the beginning of the 21st century. We also highlighted the complexity and semantic ambiguity of the notion. A distinction between moral and sociо-political resentment as positive values and ressentiment as a destructive state is made. A comparative analysis of the concepts of ressentiment disclosed its social and existential foundations (“ontological ressentiment”), its role as an active and primary motivator of protest actions of a subject who feels offended. Ontological ressentiment generates an attitude toward an artistic event as a source of offence. The cultural field charged with ressentiment, seeks and finds various objects for its active outlet, and the art world becomes an attractive platform for the effective manifestation of this value attitude. The characteristics of “ontological ressentiment” revealed enabled one to explain the reactions and actions of the public, effectively protesting against contemporary art. The article also outlines the prospects of applying the theory of ontological ressentiment to the analysis of cases in the field of art.

NEW FORMS OF ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES PRESENTATION AS INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGE: CLASSIFICATION PROBLEMS

The article analyzes the dynamics of the forms of presentation of biographies of Ukrainian cultural icons. It has become evident in the Ukrainian cultural environment recently. It is noted that modern Ukrainian culture overcomes Soviet matrices and cliches of its key figures’ apprehension (such as Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka). On the other hand,it tends to expand the boundaries and character ranks of its cultural pantheonsignificantly. This is important for the formation of a post-totalitarian Ukrainian identity; therefore,itrequires new scientific approaches, analytical work, systematizations and classifications. On the way of global revisions of the forms of presentation of nationally significant personal cultural experience, global transgressions of modern culture are important, which confidently moves from atomic facts and trends to systems and corpus texts presented as open and structured constructs with a complex system of internal connections. Formats of biographical worlds, dialogism, interactivity, multimedia and audience coverage are also importantfor modern presentationas it contributes to intensive artistic and marketing searches and the crystallization of intellectual potential into self-sufficient projects capable of organizing new force fields around themselves and generating new meanings.The author's classification of forms of presentation of biographies of cultural figures is suggested. It featuresnot only the trends in Ukrainian literature, but also in the related to it humanitarian segments of the present day. The latter include publishing, radio, cinema, Internet technologies, the sphere of cultural industries. Each point of the classification is illustrated by the facts of modern Ukrainian culture whichappeared, with rare exceptions, over the past three years. The classification demonstrates significant shifts in the development of new presentation formatsfrom biographical works created and published in traditional text booksand to digital world formats that are not universal, but specialist specific. The present-day culture generates interactive multimedia formats to meet the demands of the mass recipient.

Early Modern Social Networks: Antecedents, Opportunities, and Challenges

This article reflects on the rising use of concepts, theories, and methodologies taken from social network analysis in early modern history, along with the opportunities and challenges it presents. Scholars have been quick to attribute the growing interest in historical social networks to movements for interdisciplinary research, new possibilities presented by digital technologies, and the prominence of the term “social network” in present-day culture. In contrast, this article reconnects recent trends to longstanding attention to the nature of early modern social relations, which has its roots in the foundations of modern social thought laid in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and developed through the postwar decades in both history and sociology. In doing so, the article shows the extent to which social network analysis shares antecedents, interests, and goals with more traditional historical methods. It argues that, when sensitively applied, network approaches present many opportunities for historians engaging with enduring questions about the nature of social relations in the past.

The observer actant in the contemporary legal discourse: a semiotic meditation

ABSTRACTThe sensorial access to the law that a society grants to its members is underpinned by a logic of exhibition and disclosure that, in turn, results from a more abstract cultural propensity to either transparency or opacity. Through investigating the systems of signs by which the functioning of the law is either concealed to external audiences or manifested to them in a more or less spectacular way, one can gain a firmer grasp on the juridical aesthetics of a society. This semiotic approach entails two advantages: on the one hand, the possibility to compare and contrast different regimes of disclosure and secrecy in the synchronic dimension, connecting the discourse of the law with other – apparently distant – types of discourse, adopting the same aesthetics of transparency or opaqueness in other domains of social life and discursive production; on the other hand, the opportunity for a more insightful intelligence of the diachronic development of such aesthetics, so that it may be interpreted as the long-term byproduct of historical watersheds in the history of culture. The article, in particular, proposes to link the socio-pathology of anorexia with several other practices and texts of present-day culture that adopt the same rhetoric of transparency in other discursive arena, including that of law. In all these sign productions, indeed, the trend that predominates is one that, adhering to an ideology of immediacy and transparency, pretends to eliminate all filters, all hindrances, but also all material signifiers that would mar the purity of the content. Although this utopia cannot correspond to any actual semiotic state – for any content needs a material expression to be conveyed – it nevertheless exerts a powerful influence on the present time, until it manifests itself in extreme forms of ‘transparentist’ radicalism.

The Culture of Excess: A Review of George Cotkin's <em>Feast of Excess: A Cultural History of the New Sensibility</em>

George Cotkin's Feast of Excess (2016) argues for the existence of a "New Sensibility" in American culture and arts. Defined by its artistic excess and exaggeration, the New Sensibility, Cotkin argues, is a hybrid of modernism and postmodernism, sharing characteristics of both while also maintaining its own unique style. Feast of Excess traces the evolution of the New Sensibility from its initial emergence in the early 1950s through its becoming a cultural commonplace in the 1970s. In each chapter, Cotkin examines a single artist—ranging from authors and musicians to actors and comedians—and a single year. Ultimately, Feast of Excess argues that the New Sensibility has fundamentally shaped our present-day culture.

Getting to the Point

Getting to the Point Stefan Iversen (bio) I really like music documentaries. If forced to rationalise this taste, I would point out two main reasons: one is to experience the aesthetic joy that can be derived from audio-visual performances; the other (less easily put on a cultural pedestal) is to revel in the decadent details of remarkable anecdotes, an important part of the story-bound fabric that provides music celebrities with [End Page 477] their cultural auras. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese delivers aplenty on both accounts. Combining unseen footage from Bob Dylan’s experimental and mythical 1975 tour of United States and Canada with present-day interviews, the film shows Dylan and artists such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, and Allan Ginsberg performing and writing together in all sorts of creative collaborative activities. It also provides an informative stream of juicy stories about the tumultuous life of an (or perhaps even the) anti-establishment figure in modern music culture. During one such anecdote, it dawned on me that there might be a different point to the movie than the one I thought I was getting. In a present-day interview, actress Sharon Stone tells the story of how she as a young woman got involved with the tour and with Dylan. Dylan tricked her into believing he wrote “Just like a woman” for her, which then led to Stone joining the troupe. Wondering how this spectacular coincidence was missing from my previous knowledge about either cultural persona, I turned to the Internet as the movie ended, only to realise that the reason I did not know about this was that it never took place. Billed as a documentary, the movie offers no inter- or paratextual hints that central parts of it are made up; it has even been submitted to the Oscars in the documentary category. Upon closer inspection, other (but not all) interviews in the film appear to be discussing either completely or somewhat made-up events. The main framing device of the movie, a story about the eccentric filmmaker Stefan van Dorp who allegedly shot the concert footage, is made up. The concert footage itself, however, does document Dylan on and off stage in 1975. As a consequence of these conflicting textual and paratextual fragments, viewers (or at least this viewer—others might not even realise the presence of invented material1) are faced with a set of interpretational challenges, operating with all kinds of delays and with huge variance, depending on the particular cognitive environment of the individual viewer. This “Bob Dylan story” is not only a story about Bob Dylan or a story by Bob Dylan but contains an implicit double genitive: The intermingled narrative of fictionalised and informative events is itself like Bob Dylan and, vice versa, the combination of the words “Bob” and “Dylan” points less toward a biographical person and more toward a story with multiple conflicting points, effectively deconstructing the myth of the rock star. The film is by no means unique in its disruption of traditional distinctions between inventive and informative communicative devices: from experimental art such as autofiction and happenings via unconventional [End Page 478] documentaries to hoaxes, information campaigns, and even contemporary politics, present-day culture is riddled with texts that confuse their audiences due to subversive or mutually exclusive attributions of status as either fiction or nonfiction—texts that diverge from straightforward purposes and that are not so much out to make a point as to divide it. In order to approach such texts and try to understand their broader, real-world ramifications, one need not move away from definitions and distinctions about what it is that fictionalised discourse does, rather the contrary. A solid theory of how things normally work is needed to explain diversions of this kind. The understanding of fictionality as a rhetorical resource suggested and elaborated on by Walsh and others is such a solid theory. It offers a convincing, coherent paradigm through which to approach the forms and functions of fictional discourse. Its considerable explanatory powers stem from the fact that it avoids a series of pitfalls, inherent in most other theories of fiction...

Radiografía de la poscultura española: Ambiciones y reflexiones (2013) de Belén Esteban

The cultural democratization of post-Franco Spain meant the removal of the division between high and low culture. Such democratization of Spanish culture meant a new concept of culture in which, as stated by the postmodern motto, “everything goes,” and that in television translated as the proliferation of reality shows and trash TV and in literature as non-intellectual publications aimed at entertaining readers. Belén Esteban's work Ambiciones y reflexiones (2013) is a good example. I make use of this work to prove that what has traditionally been considered as “low culture” is not necessarily a culture inferior to “high culture” in Spain today. Thus I underline the necessity of replacing the term “low culture” or counterculture for “postculture.” The methodology I utilize is made up mostly of the critical theories of Helen Graham and Jo Labanyi regarding the dichotomy between high and low culture, Cristina Moreiras-Menor's postulate about the need for accepting show culture and consumer culture in Spain due to the split with the dictatorial past this culture signifies, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s rejection of present-day mass culture, a rejection that the aforementioned theorists challenge. Additionally, I support my study with José Álvarez-Junco's premises regarding the difficulty of defining national identity, a crucial topic in Ambiciones y reflexiones and which is related to the high/low culture dichotomy. Luis Moreno-Caballud’s criticism about democracy and its meaning in our neoliberal cultural market complements the critical methodology of this analysis.

САКРАЛЬНЫЕ МЕСТА (ОБЪЕКТЫ) В КУЛЬТУРЕ КАЛМЫКОВ: ОДИНОКИЙ ТОПОЛЬ

The article describes rites of worshipping the tree, the cult of which had anticipated the emergence of the main world religions. The Single Poplar is a sacred object of present-day Kalmyk culture believed to have the ability of bestowing good fortune, progeny, and sound health. The rituals performed near the old tree are essentially ancient and have intertwined with the Buddhist tradition.

<em>Bayonetta</em>: A Journey through Time and Space

<em>Bayonetta</em>: A Journey through Time and Space

Introduction: Death and the Contemporary

Since Michel Foucault aligned the ‘power of sovereignty’ with the ‘disqualification of death’ in his 1975 essay ‘Society Must be Defended’, death has been at the forefront of biopolitical and geopolitical debates. Through a contemporary lens Achille Mbembe, writing in 2003, stated that the expression of sovereignty ultimately resides ‘in the capacity to dictate who may live and who may die.’ Yet Mbembe’s necropolitics also questions the sufficiency of biopower to account for the question of death and sovereignty in the twenty-first century. This themed issue in many ways extends Mbembe’s challenge by taking up the complex, often contentious subject of death in present-day culture as it is thought, and as it operates, within and beyond biopolitics. In bringing together articles from scholars across the fields of politics, biomedicine, law, philosophy, and literature, this issue interrogates the conceptual status of death in biopolitical discourse by considering emerging post-biopolitical and post-human contexts. Foucault understood the status of death in 1975 as ‘something to be hidden away.’ With twenty-first century global conditions, death as a subject has become more visible, imbricated with, and paramount to ideas of the postcolony, necro-economics, the necropolitical, and ethical and legal debates surrounding the right-to-die. At the same time, new technologies of warfare in the ‘War on Terror’ have meant that death has acquired new forms, through modes of violence that often annihilate the body. Such forms of death challenge traditional ritualizations of death and render death increasingly invisible. The issue intervenes at the intersection of biopolitical and post-biopolitical fields of knowledge, entering current debates on critical social and political issues such as euthanasia, the death penalty, and contemporary geopolitics. A number of the essays collected in the volume examine new forms of geopolitical violence, reveal unacknowledged bioethical states of exception, and engage with new liminal states of death created by medical advances. These articles are brought into a transdisciplinary dialogue with studies that explore the way in which contemporary visual art and literature offer new ways of representing death and emerging biomedical phenomena. In doing so, the scholarship of this issue offers theoretical means to navigate contemporary conceptions of death at the juncture of biopolitical and post-biopolitical discourses.

Researchers of Culture Confronted with the “Treasures of Culinary Heritage” in Upper Silesia as Described in the Most Recent Cookbooks

Considering that in the last few years culinary matters have become a fashionable topic, the author is making a preliminary attempt at assessing many myths and authoritative opinions related to it. With respect to this aim, she has reviewed utilitarian literature, to which culinary handbooks certainly belong (Concerning the studies of comestibles in culture). In this context, she has singled out cookery books pertaining to only one region, Upper Silesia. This region has a complicated history, being an ethnic borderland, where after the 2nd World War, the local population of Silesians acquired new neighbours: repatriates from the Eastern Borderlands annexed by the Soviet Union, settlers from central and southern Poland, as well as former emigrants coming back from the West (The treasures of culinary heritage’ in cookery books from Upper Silesia). The author discusses several Silesian cookery books which focus only on the specificity of traditional Silesian cuisine, the Silesians’ curious conservatism and attachment to their regional tastes and culinary customs, their preference for some products and dislike of other ones. From the well-provided shelf of Silesian cookery books, she has singled out two recently published, unusual culinary handbooks by the Rev. Father Prof. Andrzej Hanich ( Opolszczyzna w wielu smakach. Skarby dziedzictwa kulinarnego. 2200 wyprobowanych i polecanych przepisow na przysmaki kuchni domowej , Opole 2012; Smaki polskie i opolskie. Skarby dziedzictwa kulinarnego. 2500 wyprobowanych i polecanych przepisow na przysmaki kuchni domowej , Opole 2014), which have become a culinary bestseller in Upper Silesia. The author perceives these books as an interesting and unusual example of a monothematic collective lecture pertaining to the multi-cultural character of Opole Silesia, the noticeable foreign influences and the globalisation of culinaries. In her opinion, these books constitute a very rich set of materials pertaining to the present-day culture of consumption in Poland, with a discernible emphasis on Opole Silesia.