Socio-historical Context Research Articles

Jean Bretonnel, boxing coach (1925-1989): a cultural approach to understanding a remarkable career trajectory

ABSTRACT Jean Bretonnel was a prominent French boxing coach/manager active from 1925 to 1989. He succeeded in shaping a new profession and, above all, in getting French boxing recognised by the Americans who at that time controlled the professional sport globally. Admittedly, he benefited from a favourable socio-historical context during France’s post-war reconstruction, when boxing matches were among the country’s most popular sporting spectacles. But how do we account for Bretonnel’s individual success in this competitive environment? In this article I explore the professional trajectory of Jean Bretonnel on two levels. On the one hand I consider his personality, examining notions of culture and relationship to culture as encapsulated in the concept of “cultural form”. On the other hand, his career path is analysed in terms of the “system” he established by drawing on both his network of contacts and his specialist knowledge as manager and coach.

Between Symbolic Distancing and Following Desires

Abstract Over the past decades, Judaism and Jewishness have been subject to transformation and more fluid boundaries. This article looks at women’s conversions to Judaism in Germany. Analyzing differing biographical trajectories, the article shows how individuals negotiate their desire to become Jewish, which is often closely related to an experience in Israel and a Jewish partner. Arguing that the context makes the conversion, I show how desires and negotiations are deeply entangled with the socio-historical context of German society as well as with the erotic and sexuality. I demonstrate how becoming Jewish presents a way of symbolically distancing oneself from biographical experiences of difference, which are negotiated in and through the conversion. As these conversions are not uncontested, I also show how becoming part of Jewish socialities evokes a negotiation of one’s positionality at the intersection of gender and religion.

Stylistic Features of National Chinese Vocal and Song Creativity

The article is devoted to the consideration of Chinese song culture from the standpoint of its development based on folklore. The purpose of the article is to identify national stylistic features of Chinese vocal and song culture in accordance with regional characteristics, as well as in the process of socio-cultural changes in the country. Among the main tasks of the study was to highlight the significance of the musical folklore of China in accordance with its place in the composer's creativity, as well as in the context of socio-cultural changes. The research methodology: the dialectical method as a way to distinguish the stylistic components of Chinese composers’ work as a unity of traditions and innovations; the deductive method due to the research orientation from the general (socio-historical context) to the specific (reference to the genre); the historical and cultural method to identify general stylistic regularities of the aesthetic, ideological, and socio-cultural levels in the context of historical changes; elements of genre and style analysis to identify the genre component of chamber vocal music. The scientific novelty of the obtained results lies in the fact that for the first time in the Ukrainian scientific space, the influence of national traditions as a permanent quality of vocal and song creativity is considered; the study of the regional component in accordance with the development of Chinese vocal and song culture is in-depth. Conclusions. The result of the study was the highlighting of Chinese vocal and song creativity as a synthesis of folklore and academic influences, where folklore, associated with the peculiarities of phonetics and vocabulary, intonations of the national language are of central importance. In its development and formation, the Chinese vocal and song composing school has created a powerful base that determined the further vector of Chinese song culture in general, namely vocal arrangements of folk melodies, which logically entered the genre of chamber music, where national and stylistic origins later intersected with models of the Western song-romance style.
 Key words: national style, vocal lyrics, Chinese music, folklore.

Texts from a carnivalesque time of change: four poems in Estonian Half-German

ABSTRACT This article focuses on four poems written in Half-German by three Baltic German authors: ‘Die Oberpahlsche Freundschaft’ (1818/1857) by Jakob Johann Malm, ‘Karluscha Tattelbaum’ (1903) and ‘Benjamin Paul Püttisepp’ (1909) by Arthur Usthal, and ‘Reise ins Ausland’ (1954) by Walter von Wistinghausen. Literature written in Half-German emerged in a particular socio-historical and linguistic context, which is outlined in the first part of the article. The focus of this article is on the nineteenth century – the heyday of this literary tradition. All four poems will be discussed in the context of carnival culture according to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of popular culture.

Decolonising Islam: Indigenous Peoples, Muslim Communities, and the Canadian Context

The problem of empire has been a key theme in Islamic Liberation Theology (ILT). However insightful, ILT’s engagement with the category of empire has generally presumed a particular colonial configuration in which Muslims are located on the receiving “end” of power, being occupied by an external, non-Muslim force. But what about the presence of Islam within settler colonies, in which voluntary Muslim migrants are structurally complicit in the ongoing disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples? Focusing on the Canadian context, I ask: How can we decolonise Islam in the settler colony? That is, how can Muslims address their own complicity with the settler colonial project, standing in solidarity with native peoples and revisiting their own faith tradition in the light of that praxis? I argue that decolonising Islam entails three hermeneutical moves: (I) gaining a critical understanding of the socio-historical context, namely, the history of empire on the land; (II) deconstructing the boundaries between “migrant” and “settler”, which actually serves to vindicate the former group, releasing them of accountability and responsibility; and (III) engaging in bold theological reflection on the Islamic tradition. This final theological step, I maintain, is a two-fold dynamic: expounding Islam as both a radical subject that decolonises and a problematic object requiring decolonisation.

Nativized exoticism in “el país de todas las sangres”

ABSTRACT In this paper I develop a perspective of nativized exoticism to describe how discourses around Peruvian Chineseness as both assimilated and exotic promote a multicultural mestizo national narrative that nevertheless overlooks questions of representation and the subject gaze. Using a qualitative approach, my argument connects micro-level analysis of spoken and mediated discourse to the broader contemporary and sociohistorical context. Findings extend existing work on processes of racialization in diaspora and the image of Asians as “perpetual foreigners” as well as imagined societies (Anderson, B. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso) and myths of equalizing mestizaje in Latin America. Findings further connect cotidian discourses to broader issues of appropriation and materiality within the national identity narrative.

Platforming inclusion at U.S. media industry events: confronting Hollywood’s lack of representational diversity

ABSTRACT Incremental structural adjustments define attempts to advance representational diversity in Hollywood. This essay considers U.S. media industry events as catalysts for change. Using the 2020 Austin Film Festival and Writers Conference as a case study, I examine how attendees platformed the topic of inclusion after summer protests reignited calls for equity throughout media industries. Participant observation across the festival's virtual spaces locates my critical deconstruction of four panels wherein representation of historically underrepresented groups, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), was a focal point. Although the festival did not overtly engage with the political moment, it platformed people who did. Conversations on craft fed into a ubiquitous conference concern with “truth” in storytelling, foregrounding sociohistorical contexts and individual specificities when representing diverse experiences, and highlighting positionality when empowering writers to tell their stories. Despite the constraints of dominant production norms, events enable underrepresented groups and their allies to shape industry discourses.

Linguistic racism: Origins and implications

This special issue of Ethnicities focuses on the phenomenon of linguistic racism. Linguistic racism constitutes the intersection of language, race/ism, and in/equality, as seen in racialized discourses on the relative status of languages and bi/multilingual language use, particularly as these are directed toward non-dominant language speakers. The theoretical framings underpinning the contributions in this issue draw on sociological discussions of critical race theory, and sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological discussions of language ideologies, linguistic racism, and raciolinguistics. Racialized discourses of language (use) are situated within sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts, grounded in nationalism and colonialism, that privilege dominant national and international languages, public monolingualism, and native-speaker competence in those languages. In contrast, related linguistic hierarchies of prestige pathologize the language uses of non-dominant language – often Indigenous and/or bi/multilingual – speakers and construct their language use in both overtly and covertly racialized terms. The result is regular linguistic discrimination and subordination experienced by non-dominant language speakers, inevitably framed within wider racialized institutional and everyday discursive practices. The contributions herein explore these issues in relation to Indigenous and other non-dominant language use(s), and their (mis)representation, in the media, workplace, and academia, in the contexts of New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, and the United States.

MATERIALIDADE SÓCIO-HISTÓRICO-CULTURAL SOB UMA CONSTRUÇÃO DIALÉTICA DA LINGUAGEM

This work is an excerpt from the dissertation presented to the Master's Program in Teacher Training at the State University of Paraíba and continued in the doctorate by the Graduate Program in Language and Teaching at the Federal University of Campina Grande, aiming to develop an educational proposal for the Archive Municipal Public of Campina Grande-PB, through pedagogical workshops under the methodological perspective of Bakhtinian studies, taking into account the socio-historical and cultural context of discursive genres, found in the documentary collection and the cultural formation of teachers. The educational product developed during the master's research was based on the dissemination of the documentary collection, as well as on encouraging the ability to read through verbal and non-verbal texts from the activities carried out in the pedagogical workshops. With regard to the procedure and data collection, interviews were conducted (semi-structured and via Google Forms) with local officials and education professionals. In order to meet the proposed objectives, we resorted to the theoretical contribution of Bakhtin (2016; 2010), Di Camargo (2020), Faraco (2009) and the Bakhtin circle in dialogue, seeking to interact satisfactorily with the conditions of discourse and dialogical relationship of the most diverse genres found in the documentary collection, the locus of the research. It is concluded that the educational proposal developed served as a means of interaction between the archive, the teacher and the school, which in turn addresses themes involving cultural, economic and social aspects, contributing to the social and cultural formation of the subjects involved.

Emergence and Dimension of Medicalization Phenomenon in the Socio-Historical Context: With a Glance at the Dimensions of Medicalization in Iran

Introduction: Medicalization can be defined as the process by which some aspects of human life come to be recognized as medical problems, while before that, they were not considered pathological. Considering the importance of an awareness of the dimensions and consequences of medicalization, the present study aimed to securitize the historical aspects, emergence, and dimensions of medicalization with a glance at this phenomenon in Iran. Method: This descriptive-analytical study tried to address the dimensions and process of medicalization in a historical context and finally discuss the motor engines, aspects, and effects of medicalization in Iran. Results: Modern medicine and capitalism use three motor engines, including consumers, technology, and controlled medical care, to dominate and govern societies. During the last few decades, especially in the post-war period, medicalization has found its place in Iran's society with the change of cultural and consumer patterns. Conclusion: Due to the keen dependence on technology and the capitalistic paradigm, modern medicine has been affected by the discourse and capitalist view in some areas. Therefore, some aspects of human life have been redefined under the label of disease and put in the cycle of supply and demand.

Leadership moments: Understanding nurse clinician-scientists' leadership as embedded sociohistorical practices.

Nurse clinician-scientists are increasingly expected to show leadership aimed at transforming healthcare. However, research on nurse clinician-scientists' leadership (integrating researcher and practitioner roles) is scarce and hardly embedded in sociohistorical contexts. This study introduces leadership moments,that is, concrete events in practices that are perceived as acts of empowerment, in order to understand leadership in the daily work of newly appointed nurse clinician-scientists. Following the learning history method we gathered data using multiple (qualitative) methods to get close to their daily practices. A document analysis provided us with insight into the history of nursing science to illustrate how leadership moments in the everyday work of nurse clinician-scientists in the "here and now" can be related to the particular histories from which they emerged. A qualitative analysis led to three acts of empowerment: (1) becoming visible, (2) building networks, and (3) getting wired in. These acts are illustrated with three series of events in which nurse clinician-scientists' leadership becomes visible. This study contributes to a more socially embedded understanding of nursing leadership, enables us to get a grip on crucial leadership moments, and provides academic and practical starting points for strengthening nurse clinician-scientists' leadership practices. Transformations in healthcare call for transformed notions of leadership.

Southern multilingual moves in education: agency, citizenship, and reciprocity

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to southern theorization of multilingualisms. Noting the predominance of northern-generated academic debates, we discuss perspectives from close engagement with southern socio-historical and political contexts, and through prioritizing community and teacher outlooks on multilingualism. Our account is illustrated with examples of linguistic citizenship that highlight local agency and dialogue in border-crossing across multiple linguistic and institutional regimes. Drawing on examples from our research in Brazil, South Africa and Australia, we focus on four agentic multilingual moves that illustrate linguistic citizenship and challenge coloniality. Each of these moves (contestation, transgression, negotiation, and conversation) implies that teachers must situate their work within relationships of reciprocity, and ‘from below.’

Teacher supply in Ireland: anatomy of a crisis

ABSTRACT The last several years have seen an escalation in calls for an adequate response at governmental level to the reality of a teacher supply crisis in Ireland. This article traces the evolution of the crisis, providing important socio-historical context and analysis. It argues that while the issue of a steady supply of teachers has been a feature of the evolving complexion of the Irish educational landscape for decades, the problem has become more pronounced in recent years. Despite this accentuation, there has been a reluctance at a policy level to engage with meaningful dialogue and action which risks irrevocably damaging the profession and ultimately the education system.

La Transformación del culto

In this article I seek to contribute to the understanding of certain aspects of the ritual life of the native societies of the North Calchaquí Valley during the Inka colonization. For this, I am going to focus on the strategies developed by the people and families who were transferred from their villages of origin and resettled in the vicinity of imperial settlements, thus going on to live under the Inca orbit. The main axis will be placed on the rituals that are practiced inside the houses, such as 1) burials and 2) the daily ceremonial. To analyze this I will compare two different socio-historical contexts, a) two sites with long-standing occupation with evidence of Inka contact where the imperial influence was not so direct and b) two sites located in the vicinity or within Inka settlements, where the influence of the Tawantinsuyu was more direct. Based on this, I will argue why there is a rupture of memory and the sense of place in the families that were resettled and how new frameworks of meaning are created in this new socio-political context in which they found themselves.

The Death of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism

ABSTRACT The paper offers a mutliscalar appreciation of vernacular cosmopolitanism as changing across space, time, and networks of relations. Drawing on observations from the UK and Greece, I argue for an expanded understanding of vernacular cosmopolitanism to incorporate everyday appreciations of multiculturalism, tolerance, and social liberalism that are produced within specific socio-historical contexts. Proposing a theory of ‘timespace’ where epochs are structured by networks of potential relations, affects, bureaucracies, and prevailing ideologies that guide individual and collective actions, I argue that vernacular cosmopolitanism is no longer a prominent worldview in Western democracies. Freedoms to fully realise cosmopolitan ideals are intimately entwined with the structures and affects of a timespace, which gives momentum to, provides guidance, and inherently opens and closes doors to the types of life that can be pursued. In the UK and Greece, current affective structures present people with vastly different projects, recommended paths, and futures to aspire to. With the sharp turn to the right in the post-truth age, vernacular cosmopolitanism has receded at the grassroots level. I thus propose that vernacular cosmopolitanism is under attack as epochal change offers alternate prevailing worldviews.

Some remarks on the Latin of the Didymoi ostraca

AbstractThis paper aims to discuss the linguistic data provided by over 400 ostraca from the praesidium of Didymoi in the Eastern Desert, with a focus on Latin texts and phenomena of interference with Greek. After providing an overview of the socio-historical context of Eastern Egypt, this research conducts a general quantitative analysis of the linguistic features of the Latin ostraca and compares them to other corpora which are similar in terms of chronology and geographic provenance. Our analysis reveals peculiarities of the Latin ostraca from Didymoi, which are further investigated through a qualitative analysis to identify potential levels of variation.The results of the analysis aim to demonstrate two main points. Firstly, it is not to be ruled out that the Latin language had a greater presence in Roman Egypt than commonly believed, extending beyond the coram imperio public sphere. Secondly, the Latin language emerging from these ostraca is to be considered as a bundle of varieties reflecting in most cases interlanguage stages among learners who have Substandard Latin, variously tending toward Neo-Standard, as their target language.

Non-invasive study of the dyes and pigments in the Chinese woodblock New Year paintings

Woodblock New Year painting is a traditional Chinese folk art that flourished during the 19th and early 20th centuries. These paintings feature a wide variety of colors, particularly after the introduction of synthetic colorants from Europe in the late 19th century. The scientific identification of dyes and pigments used in these paintings can provide valuable insights into the socio-historical context of the time. However, the history of materials used in the printing of New Year paintings is still lacking adequate information. In this study, we employed a combination of spectroscopic and imaging techniques, including Macro X-ray fluorescence imaging (MA-XRF), hyperspectral imaging, and Raman spectroscopy to identify the dyes and pigments used in two Yangliuqing New Year paintings. Our analysis revealed the presence of both traditional pigments and synthetic colorants, such as vermilion, Prussian blue, and methyl/crystal violet. We also discovered several color-matching techniques used to create light pink, light orange, and dark purple hues. These findings suggest that synthetic colorants were gradually replacing traditional pigments in China due to the growth of global trade at that time. Furthermore, our research provides valuable information for the conservation, preservation, and display of New Year paintings.

Indigenous Māori Notions Of Consciousness, Soul, and Spirit

The Indigenous Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand have a knowledge system embedded with understandings related to consciousness, soul, and spirit. Although the effects of colonization are vast and ongoing, these knowledges have not been completely lost, and endure as an essential part of Māori comprehensions about the nature of everyday life and reality. We provide an overview of the socio-historical context of Māori, before briefly summarizing Māori cosmogony. We then discuss some of the more popularized ways the constructs of consciousness, soul, and spirit are interpreted from an Indigenous Māori perspective, while importantly highlighting that there are no single words in the Māori language that readily translate to these concepts, making the task of elucidating what the terms mean for Māori somewhat complex. Our articulations are intended as a brief overview, rather than an extensive extrapolation.

Rationalising the Political: The Concept of Interest in Postmodern Public Law

References to public interest are abundant in legal scholarship, jurisprudence, and legislation. However, the meaning of interest still remains rather a common sense idea without legible standards or criteria. The article offers to conceptualize it in a broader socio-historical context, as this concept cannot be treated in isolation from the evolution of the Western scientific paradigm that aspires to rationalize the world, to rationally explain and construct a cognitive map of both social and natural environments. To explore the history of “interest” in law means to grasp and reconstruct the phases of the fundamental revolution that legal thought has undergone since the mid-XVIII century. The article offers a bird-eye view of how the concept of interest gained currency and infiltrated law. This evolutionary perspective could explain certain coherence and similarity of various meanings proposed for the concept of interest in case law and scholarship. The article argues that interest becomes socially recognizable and viable when it is perceived and interpreted as such. It acquires validity in legal argumentation if it fits into the cultural schemata of legal framing. The article purports to deconstruct interest as a category. It argues that three key assumptions underpin the concept: (1) interests are social constructs; (2) interests are generated by argumentation (to qualify as interest an existing or perceived good, purpose, motive, aspiration, or claim requires argumentation that triggers “frames of interest” - cognitive representations and constructs); (3) interests are vehicles whereby normative ideas of justice, society, and the world, generated and validated by other normative orders, are adapted, legitimized and incorporated into law. The article discusses the practical implications of these assumptions. In a judicial proceeding, public interest analysis should explore the central organizing idea of a public interest argumentation against three analytical components: (1) substantive (refers to the interest analysis); (2) quantitative (refers to the “society”/ “public” analysis); and (3) qualitative (refers to analysis focusing on whether the argumentation triggers cognitive representations and constructs that reference moral principles). Finally, the reconceptualization of interest as a social construct can shed new light on legal argumentation and the so-called “five I-s of legal reasoning”: intuitiveness, incidentality, indeterminacy, ideology, and irrationality. Though indeed often intuition-driven, interest as a social construct that fits into legal framing is not incidental, indeterminate, or irrational. Incrementing and unfolding via interaction and competition with discourses and legal frames, interests bring in certainty, predictability, and determinacy to open-ended concepts of law.

Modelul gazetăresc al banditului social în romanul tâlhăresc al secolului al XIX-lea

The popularity of the idea of social banditry is closely related to the socio-historical, economic and cultural context, and literature and history only record the reasons why the noble thief, in many variants the outlaw, become some of the central figures of the Romanian historical novel of the 19th century. The outlaw novel is detached from the literary body of the hajduk prose and proposes another series of motives for the actions of the main characters. Cruelty is no longer euphemized by the oversize of the noble character, and the passionate prowess, selfishness, and murder foreshadow the outlaw’s refuge in a society of outcasts, which opposes the official societal model. Through the character of the social outlaw, Panait Macri and Ilie Ighel propose another model of social bandit, the thief who, although initially occupying a privileged social position in the community to which he belongs, commits out of passion a gruesome crime, which will serve as an occasion for his exclusion from the community structure from which he claims. The social thief renounces the aura of vigilante or protector of the horned, and, yielding to the dark desires for the attainment of personal power and prosperity, becomes the embodiment of the evil to be feared, a hypostasis which does not make him repugnant in the collective imagination but, on the contrary, attractive.