Purpose The pursuit of de-dollarization by BRICS, including Brazil, Russia, India, Chin and South Africa, though indirect, represents a development of growing global relevance in the evolving international monetary order. This study explores the stability of BRICS currencies within this broader context, emphasizing the bloc’s recent symbolic initiative to issue a common banknote. It advances optimal currency area (OCA) theory by integrating macroeconomic and institutional dimensions to assess the viability of a new currency framework. Design/methodology/approach This paper introduces the Currency Clear Condition Index (CCCI), which combines BRICS national currencies and sanction data using the Morris method. A panel vector autoregressive model is then applied to assess the effects of real gross domestic product (GDP), political stability (PS) and logistical shocks on the CCCI, drawing on data from 2010 to 2023. Findings Results show that Russia has exhibited the highest CCCI values since 2013, reflecting elevated exchange rate volatility and persistent sanctions. Impulse response analysis reveals that a 1% increase in the Logistics Performance Index raises the CCCI by nearly 2% for about 2.5 years, while a 1% improvement in PS reduces it by approximately 2.5% for 1.5 years. A 1% increase in GDP lowers the index by around 0.5% over 2.5 years. These findings indicate that BRICS de-dollarization depends more on macroeconomic strength and institutional stability than on logistical or symbolic actions. Research limitations/implications The analysis is confined to the 2010–2023 period and may not fully capture post-2023 developments. Future studies could refine the CCCI and evaluate its applicability to other regional blocs pursuing currency cooperation. Practical implications The analysis is limited to the 2010–2023 period and may not capture emerging dynamics post-2023. Future research can refine the CCCI and examine its applicability to other regional blocs. Originality/value The study broadens OCA theory by incorporating political and logistical asymmetries and introduces the CCCI as a novel metric for assessing currency-clearing feasibility under sanctions and financial fragmentation.

The increase in the electronic-based government system (SPBE) has increased by 4% throughout 2024 in Bogor City, showing the success of Bogor City's smart city in the aspect of e-goverment. On the other hand, Bogor City also has many awards. Therefore, this research will analyze the smart city strategy through e-government as an example of digital services. This research employs a qualitative method with a constructivist paradigm and a case study approach as proposed by Creswell. The case analyzed represents a positive example of how Bogor City has successfully implemented its smart city initiatives through the concept of e-governance. Data in this study were collected through in-depth interviews with six participants, consisting of three key informants, two supporting informants, and one expert informant. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis with the assistance of NVivo software to construct an understanding of Bogor City’s e-government strategies in enhancing the SPBE implementation. This study indicates that the Government of Bogor City has effective strategies like (1) strategic orientation and stakeholder mapping, (2) substantive policy underpinnings, and (3) symbolic action and hooked tagline. Implementation in Bogor smart city is (1) urban infrastructure and experiential signals, (2) strategic publicity and digital presence, and (3) public opinion and responsive governance.

Purpose: This study explores the critical issue of decolonizing African heritage through the restitution and reparation of looted archival materials, addressing the historical injustices of colonial dispossession that have marginalized indigenous histories and suppressed cultural sovereignty. The primary objective is to examine pathways for the restitution of archives and artifacts to foster social justice, indigenous self-determination and epistemic liberation. Methdology: Employing a qualitative methodology, specifically thematic analysis complemented by document review, the research critically analyzes scholarly discourses, legal frameworks and case studies, including the repatriation of artifacts like the Benin Bronzes and Timbuktu manuscripts. Findings: Key findings reveal that archival restitution is not only a physical process but also a symbolic act of restoring narrative authority, cultural identity and epistemic justice, aligned with postcolonial, restorative justice and decolonial theories. The analysis demonstrates that successful restitution initiatives contribute significantly to empowering communities, challenging colonial narratives and promoting cultural and political sovereignty, with practical examples from Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali and Egypt, illustrating tangible outcomes. Contribution to Theory: Decolonizing heritage necessitates a holistic approach rooted in legal, ethical and political frameworks, emphasizing genuine partnership, community participation and international cooperation. The insights affirm that restitution and reparation serve as vital catalysts for social justice and indigenous sovereignty, fostering an inclusive historical narrative and supporting Africa’s ongoing decolonization efforts.

The drama enacted in communal settings of real life symbolically gives meaning to people and things shaping various public spheres and their world-making practices, thereby ultimately ordering the makeup of society. It does so, as it is omnipresent in social life and able to convert ideas to collective action through enunciations of embodied performances. Nevertheless, the nature, constitution, processes, and outcomes of social drama are poorly understood within the tourism and events scholarship, while there are no apparent links to Hollinshead’s notion of worldmaking. Filling this gap, I delineate in this theoretical article the novel analytic framework of civic dramaturgy aimed at capturing the performative enactment of social drama as a semantic, narratological, and hermeneutic mode of symbolic action that enables the production of public spheres. Dramaturgy is seen as “civic” because it bears capacity for collective action, cocreating community conditions that make up people’s lives. In parallel, I pinpoint interrelationships between civic dramaturgy and world-making. I then discuss how the civic dramaturgy lens is significantly enhanced by Hollinshead’s refined conceptualization of worldmaking, concerned with the fluidity of less organized and power-driven forms of subjective becoming in touristic contexts. My approach regards world-making as a dramaturgic normalizing progression of imaginaries, histories, myths, and storylines creating or changing the ways in which things are understood symbolically and materially. I argue that the world-making imaginary adds to the dramaturgic repertoire with a spectrum of sites, subjects, places, and storylines, which view the world from certain standpoints but also tend to take on board different interpretations when they are performed as a result of the interaction between performances and audiences. Therefore, I suggest the adoption of a cross-fertilized “world-making dramaturgy” perspective as a multidimensional and post-disciplinary framework for the thorough analysis of social drama and its intersections with the production of public spheres. For conceptual clarity, I note that I intentionally use the spelling “world-making” with the hyphen denoting the distinction of the two conceptual spheres (world and making), and the variable outcome arising from their dramaturgic performance.

Asian film displays a range of perspectives on ritual and political issues of contest and contestation. Using modified snowball and purposive sampling, film and some television is selected for the presence of ritual politics, political theater, and important Asian cultural, religious, and/or political perspectives. Some perspectives identified are localized, regional, or may have resonance (not representativeness) in many parts of Asia from Kazakhstan, Nepal, India, and eastward; a few preliminary observations are offered in this regard. The current work is an effort in cultural de-coding, and perhaps cultural translation, using qualitative content analysis, coding, and comparative historical–institutional analysis at the intersection of culture and politics. The argument is methodological (qualitative), encouraging political scientists and others with interests in cross-national, comparative, and international religion and politics to delve into thick description using international, foreign-language film as a (relatively unmined) source of cultural data and cultural, values-oriented, and political messaging. Ritual politics is treated herein as formal or informal ritual involving symbolic activities occurring in a religious, semi-religious, or secular context that is used for political purposes, in a political context, or to effect a political message. The current work is preliminary and is part of a larger project; it provides a preliminary spreadsheet of 24 out of over 100 canvassed films seeking to combine conceptual variables with binary coding.

Purpose The advancement of information technology (IT) offers opportunities for leveraging senior-care services, a unique public service. Understanding how government leaders translate IT fashions into governmental actions is critically important for both scholars and practitioners in the current digital governance landscape. Drawing on sensemaking and social learning literature, we propose that government leaders’ IT fashion-grabbing and social learning influence their IT beliefs and the consequent governmental actions, including structural governance specification for and material engagement in IT-enabled senior-care services. Design/methodology/approach This study combined a survey methodology and objective data collection about reginal characters. 285 valid observations of town-level local governments in Beijing, China, were obtained. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for model testing. Robustness checks were conducted. Findings The results validated the effects of government leaders’ grabbing and social learning practices on organizational actions on IT-enabled senior-care services and these effects were mediated by their meaning-construction on IT. Furthermore, leaders’ construction of IT beliefs exerted a larger effect on symbolic actions than on substantive actions of local governments. Practical implications Government leaders need more prospective sensemaking with insight on plausibility and future to adapt to the fast-changing IT fashion. Leaders’ social learning is important for their meaning-construction and governmental arrangement in IT-enabled senior-care service delivery. Originality/value This study contributes to juxtaposition of sensemaking and social learning for explaining the new IT-enabled senior-care service delivery.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of gift exchange as an important social and cultural phenomenon that influences interpersonal and intercultural relations. The author explores the historical aspects of gift exchange, emphasizing its functions in different societies, from strengthening tribal and social ties to the manifestation of respect and solidarity between people. The paper analyzes the types of gifts, their symbolism and meanings, and examines the role of gift exchange in rituals such as weddings. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between the tangible and intangible aspects of gift exchange, as well as to the non-verbal communication that accompanies the gift-giving process. The exchange of gifts in wedding rituals plays a significant role in strengthening social and family ties, as well as in the symbolic confirmation of the intentions of the parties. The article focuses on the study of wedding gift exchange as an important ritual in different cultures, including in the context of Kazakh and Kalmyk traditions. In Kazakhs and Kalmyks, as well as in many Turkic-language peoples, gift-giving was one of the forms of communication and had one of the important material and symbolic meanings in the establishment and maintenance of social ties. The wedding gift exchange among Kazakhs and Kalmyks is an important part of a traditional wedding, reflecting the respect and mutual obligations between the families of the bride and groom. Attention is paid to the subject of the gift, its symbolism, the process of presenting gifts, the order, and the material value of these things. The wedding gift exchange symbolizes the union of two clans and the unification of their material and spiritual resources. In this paper, the wedding gift exchange in Kazakh culture is compared with that in Kalmyk culture. The study is based on a cultural approach, which allows us to consider the wedding gift exchange as part of a system of symbolic actions that consolidate social ties and cultural values. The main method was literary analysis, aimed at the comprehension of theoretical concepts of gift exchange and the interpretation of ethnographic descriptions. Keywords: wedding ceremony, gift exchange, Kazakh traditional culture, Kalmyk traditional culture, material and symbolic side of a gift, cultural communication, social interaction, everyday culture.

Objectives: This study explores the theme of rebellious women in existential feminist theory, analyzing how female rebellion for freedom and truth is depicted in film. Specifically, it aims to examine the representation of such rebellion in Poor Things, a 2024 Oscar-winning film, through an existential feminist lens. Methods: A qualitative-interpretive approach is employed, using Poor Things as the primary data source. Data analysis involves identification, extraction, interpretation, and presentation of themes related to feminist rebellion. Results: The study identifies three primary contexts for female rebellion: sexuality, marriage, and death. Central to this rebellion is a symbolic act in which the female protagonist undergoes a brain transplant with a goat's brain in response to harm inflicted by a man, illustrating her psychological and physical reclamation of power. This narrative highlights women's empowerment over male dominance. The film's experimental form utilizes a non-linear, flashback-driven plot, with characters portrayed in dualistic terms: humanism and freedom on one side, and evil and exploitation on the other. The setting oscillates between past and present, rendered in both black-and-white and full-color aesthetics, underscoring the absurdity of modern life. Conclusions: The film presents female rebellion as a path to freedom and truth, revealing the impact of male oppression and the enduring strength of women who resist it.

Jeffrey Alexander's theory of social performance is a medium–level theory aimed at interpreting cultural pragmatics and symbolic action through the analysis of social events (performances), obeying Alexander's higher theoretical constructions. This theory can be read in the logic of the performative turn, as a theory that is able to provide an explanation of how social reality is fulfilled. If Alexander concentrates on the interpretation of symbolic action and cultural context within social events (performances), which he interprets as the process of actors conveying the meaning of their socio-cultural situation to the audience, then the problem of the creative potential of performers of social performance realized in specific techniques of its organization remains unclear, for which Peter Snow criticizes him. Another problematic focus of the article is the debate that has begun in the modern cultural and sociological theoretical tradition regarding the role of the "actor" and the "audience" in successful performative performance. The article refers to the use of the methodology of social performance in relation to a specific empirical case of activists in the field of health — picketing, which examines how social performance using the analytical dominants of Alexander's theory; demonstrates by what technical means creativity is realized in the organization of successful performance; The obtained results are interpreted in the context of modern cultural and sociological theoretical debates regarding the role of actors and the audience in successful performative performance.

Black prophetic preaching offers a moral critique of individuals and oppressive powers rooted in Scripture and divine promises. However, in an ever-diversifying contemporary landscape shaped by persistent racial injustice, social upheaval, and compounded oppression, Black protest preaching is emerging as a sub-genre of this tradition that serves as a source of resistance and renewal for all. This article explores the theology and practice of Black protest preaching, using Ezekiel’s embodied homiletic acts in Ezekiel 4–5 and the contemporary observance of “Hoodie Sunday” as interpretive anchors, and how this type of preaching can be used in multicultural contexts. While prophetic preaching typically draws on moral exhortation to call a community toward change and speak truth to power, protest preaching functions through symbolic action, embodied resistance, and spatial disruption to make that truth unavoidable.

ABSTRACT This paper examines Western music education through Kenneth Burke's dramatism, revealing how traditional pedagogical practices function as symbolic actions perpetuating cultural hierarchies and conservative ideologies. We argue that institutionalised music education employs rhetorical mechanisms conflating scientistic and dramatistic approaches to music, particularly through repertoire selection and error correction. These mechanisms position certain works as inherently “correct” while othering alternatives, maintaining cultural supremacy that privileges Western Common Practice traditions and potentially limiting students’ creative development and contemporary career opportunities. We demonstrate how institutions tacitly deploy these mechanisms, creating self-perpetuating musical conservatism that disconnects students from industrial practices and innovation. In response, we propose the Shared Music Vocabulary (SMV) as an alternative framework acknowledging music education as rhetorical symbolic action entangled with social, political, and cultural identities. This approach prioritises intellectual property generation and embraces multiple disciplines simultaneously, offering more inclusive and industrially relevant music education.

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains one of Indonesia's most critical social issues, with thousands of cases reported annually and only a small proportion addressed legally. While global feminist movements like #MeToo and Ni Una Menos have been widely studied, there is limited research on localized feminist activism, particularly in regional contexts. This study explores the Women’s March Medan as a localized form of feminist resistance to GBV, aiming to understand how it raises awareness, builds solidarity, critiques structural inequalities, and navigates cultural and religious barriers. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with six participants, document analysis, media reviews, and direct field observations. Thematic analysis identified five main themes: (1) elevating vulnerable groups and critiquing structural violence, (2) symbolic actions as political statements, (3) constructing awareness of GBV, (4) localization of global feminist discourses, and (5) reclaiming public space amidst backlash. The findings highlight that the Women’s March Medan is not a mere replication of international feminist models but a localized adaptation blending global solidarity with Indonesia’s socio-cultural and religious contexts. This study contributes to feminist scholarship by demonstrating how grassroots activism in Medan transforms mourning into protest, negotiates legitimacy within cultural and religious frameworks, and asserts feminist presence in contested public spaces. It also offers insights into how local feminist movements adapt global discourses to respond to GBV in distinct socio-political environments.

ABSTRACT This article explores how Chinese international students in the UK use, adapt, and modify their names as part of an ongoing process of identity negotiation in transnational contexts. Drawing on a six-month mini-ethnographic study involving seven participants, the research examines naming as a dynamic, context-sensitive practice embedded in multilingual, affective and institutional settings. Adopting a poststructuralist perspective, the study employs the concepts of agency and investment to examine how students navigate both heritage and non-heritage names across academic, social, digital, and professional domains. Rather than framing naming as a binary between assimilation and resistance, the analysis reveals it to be a symbolic act shaped by emotional attachment, pragmatic considerations, peer perception, and imagined futures. Participants’ choices – from strategically consistent name use to emotionally driven renaming – illustrate how naming serves as a relational resource for managing visibility, negotiating misrecognition, and enacting self-representation. Ultimately, the study positions naming as a fluid and iterative identity practice, responsive to shifting social contexts and personal affiliations.

Abstract This study examines the economic ramifications of cola brand retaliation between India and the United States from 1977 to present, analyzing how beverage industry conflicts have influenced broader trade relations. Using mixed-methods research combining quantitative trade data analysis and qualitative policy assessment, this paper investigates the cascading effects of brand-specific trade disputes on bilateral economic relations. The research draws from World Trade Organization data, bilateral trade statistics, and industry reports spanning four decades. Results indicate that cola brand disputes have served as catalysts for broader protectionist measures, resulting in estimated bilateral trade losses of $2.3 billion over the study period. The analysis reveals three distinct phases of retaliation: the Coca-Cola expulsion era (1977-1993), the liberalization and re-entry period (1993-2010), and the contemporary regulatory warfare phase (2010-present). Findings suggest that brand-specific trade conflicts disproportionately impact consumer welfare and create precedents for non-tariff barriers in other sectors. The study concludes that cola brand retaliation exemplifies how symbolic trade actions can generate substantive economic consequences, recommending enhanced bilateral dialogue mechanisms and sector-specific dispute resolution frameworks to prevent future escalation. Keywords: trade retaliation, cola industry, Indo-US relations, non-tariff barriers, bilateral trade, protectionism

ABSTRACT This paper employs a literature study, video observation, and interviews with dancers to explore how classical ballet dancers interact and synchronize with musical rhythm in a solo dance to embody the narrative. The result suggests that dancer–music interaction is embedded within a complex dynamic system, in which the interplay between several processing layers, mechanisms, and multiple contexts is decisive. In these processes, dancers integrate the elements of ballet through mutual interactions with music and audience to embody a multimodal motoric narrative from the libretto, music, and choreography that differs from each one of those elements. Dancers typically synchronize their movements with the rhythm, emotionally interact with the melody, and empathetically interact with the overall sound of the music. Sensorimotor synchronization through various forms of beat induction is recognized as the primary form of interaction. These entrainments create spatiotemporal symmetries, corporeal articulation, and expressive gestures based on the physical and emotional attributes of the dancers. These processes can contribute to the narrative embodiment with the collaboration of the audiences through various emotional induction, metaphorical, and kinesemiotic mechanisms. Behind every symbolic motoric action of a dancer, there exist multiple contexts that the representations of dancers should be interpreted based on these contexts.

<p>The goal of this study is to explore chess teachers’ perceptions of the transformation of childhood in the context of cultural-historical psychology, their views on traditional and innovative aspects of chess education, and their impact on the internalisation of value orientations, as well as on the development of children’s socialisation and cognitive functions. Methods. The empirical part of the study is based on a survey of 104 chess teachers working in Armenian schools. Both quantitative methods (factor and correlation analysis) and qualitative methods (content analysis of open-ended responses) were employed. Particular attention is given to how teachers themselves perceive developmental changes in children, the transformation of value orientations, and their own role in fostering children's agency. The results. Teachers view chess as a symbolic activity through which children learn to plan, forecast, and analyze the consequences of their decisions—thus acquiring essential cross-curricular skills.</p>

This article examines how the oil industry's recent public communication strategies operate as petro-feminine spatial imaginaries , shaping and governing desires for climate action within affluent, carbon-intensive societies. Existing scholarship has interpreted the industry's post-denialist turn primarily as an effort to deflect accountability for climate change, either by blaming consumers or through greenwashing. Analysing recent corporate campaigns and expanding existing conceptualizations of petro-masculinity while engaging debates on neoliberal feminism and CSR/pinkwashing, I advance the concept of petro-femininity . I argue that oil companies are increasingly constructing spatial imaginaries that recast themselves as motherly figures, no longer denying or solely deflecting responsibility for climate change but instead caring for Mother Nature. This gendered stance displaces the reality of climate change, enacting an imaginary that mirrors and supports consumer desires for ecological reassurance, symbolic climate action, and carbon-intensive continuity. I consider how the growing penetration of the oil industry into global climate governance – strikingly epitomised by oil executives chairing recent COP conferences – is an expression of an evolving post-denialist petro-masculinity crucially made possible by petro-femininity. This hybrid governmentality fuses masculine authority with the comforting illusion of a motherly oil industry, enabling oil companies to present themselves as indispensable stewards of the energy transition.

Under the pressure of global low-carbon transformation, the sustainable development initiative of the United Nations has gradually become an essential orientation of corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. Based on the integrated theoretical framework of sustainable development finance, this work explores the relationships among corporate ESG performance, its financing constraints in China, and its influencing mechanism, as well as the role played by green innovation in this relationship. Using a comprehensive panel dataset of 1038 A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2023, totaling 11,418 observations, we find that corporate ESG performance and financing constraints exhibit a significant negative relationship, indicating that strong corporate ESG performance can effectively alleviate corporate financing constraints. To address endogeneity concerns, we employ a systematic generalized method of moments (GMM) and a two-stage least squares regression using lagged instrumental variables. The results of the mechanism test show that ESG performance mitigates financing constraints by reducing perceived financial risks, improving information transparency, and increasing access to government green subsidies. Furthermore, moderating effect analysis reveals that green innovation strengthens the mitigating effect of corporate ESG performance on financing constraints in this process, based on SDG 9. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that this mitigating effect of corporate ESG performance on financing constraints is more pronounced for firms in China’s economically advanced eastern region, for companies facing harder budget constraints, and in the period following the implementation of the stringent new Environmental Protection Law. Distinguishing between genuine and symbolic corporate actions, we provide evidence that only substantive ESG improvements, as opposed to “greenwashing,” are rewarded by capital providers. The findings provide insights for the formulation of government policies and corporate sustainability strategies in emerging markets.

Middle Eastern cinema has received increasing attention in academia for its cultural and gendered narratives, but family systems' emotional architecture in such films has received little attention. Filling this gap in the literature, this research applies Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory to examine intergenerational emotional processes in Wadjda (2012), the first feature film by a Saudi woman. In this study, I utilized qualitative, doctrinal methodology and applied deductive scene-based codes from Bowen’s eight constructs, which focused primarily on emotional differentiation, triangulation, projection, and societal emotional process. Findings suggest Wadjda’s resistance extends beyond a symbolic or superficial act of defiance, whereby she is able navigate maternal fusion, paternal absence, and societal constraints through her emotional processes associated with features of agency, autonomy and relational clarity. In social and familial systems, her portrait of agency exemplified systemically embedded agency that serves as a form of supported emotion-regulated defiance. By drawing on cultural and feminist film analysis with Bowen’s clinical theory, I challenged traditional perceptions of social family systems, providing a different lens to view emotionally supportive family systems as active sites of gendered negotiation. The contribution from this study extends family systems theory beyond a therapeutic sense, offering another approach to understand how emotionally enabled dynamics provide resistance in patriarchal societies. Specifically, it became apparent that depictions of agency in patriarchal cultures through an emotional systems framework may provide a deeper analysis of resistance than only through a symbolic critique.

The federal work program on informatics for the 11th grade at an advanced level indicates the need to study the "dictionary" data structure. When forming students' ideas about the new data structure, it is advisable to use teaching methods that stimulate students' cognitive activity. Such methods include creating a problematic situation and organizing a heuristic conversation to resolve it.To manage students' activities when creating and resolving a problem situation, it is convenient to use a sequence of interrelated tasks. To create a problematic situation when introducing the concept of "dictionary", you can use a task to build a frequency dictionary, and to analyze it, offer students tasks to identify characteristics in familiar data structures that do not allow them to use these structures.Tasks for forming an idea of the new data structure should include exercises on analyzing examples of using associative arrays to store various types of information, on mastering the concepts of "key" and "value", on mastering the syntax and semantics of accessing dictionary elements. Exercises for applying a new data structure to solve a problematic situation can include various types of tasks for organizing such types of symbolic activity as modeling, schematization and coding.