Transcultural Community Research Articles

Decolonising doctoral education in an era of pandemic

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral education. Pandemics throughout history have generated new educational theories and practices, accelerated some trends and signalled the abrupt end of others. The unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have particularly impacted upon First Nations and transcultural communities and People of Colour throughout the globe. A second significant recent global trend that occurred at the height of the pandemic was the reignited #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) protest campaign. This campaign drew attention to the vast inequities faced by black, transcultural (migrant, refugee, culturally diverse and international) and Indigenous peoples and triggered rapid action in higher education institutions against racism and unconscious bias.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper draws upon postcolonial/decolonial theory to demonstrate how the COVID pandemic and #BLM movement prompts us to revitalise doctoral education.FindingsThese two issues have created renewed urgency around the need to decolonise higher education and a desire to transform the “business-as-usual” geopolitical power dynamics that continue to privilege Northern knowledge over culturally diverse knowledge systems from First Nations and transcultural contexts. A key site where special opportunities exist to effect this transformation lies in doctoral education. Doctoral education is a significant location of new knowledge creation and the development of the world’s future researchers.Research limitations/implicationsApplying post/decolonial theory enables one to rethink how doctoral education should be changed to work towards greater decolonisation.Originality/valueThis study applies Santos’ ideas about “the sociologies of emergence” in the global South to think about how doctoral education should be reconstructed as a liberated zone of decolonisation and epistemic justice.

Changes and Chances in a Multipart Singing Community and Its Tradition, before and throughout the Global Isolation

The Sacred Harp community was among the groups most affected by pandemic seclusion. Their multipart singing practice is a cultural heritage that includes both oral and written traditions, and creates a strong interaction between people through formalized music codes and behaviours that emerge, develop, and manifest in highly iconic communal spaces. Since global isolation made live singing impossible, this trans-cultural community tried to preserve the continuity of its multipart singing tradition by developing a set of strategies based on virtual singing and online activities. Although the fundamental elements were drastically affected by the isolation, participants represented missing sound environments using all possible means to recreate the spirit and gestation of social singing. After participating as a singer with a local group during fieldwork, I had to reshape my research methods to the pandemic, focusing on aspects of music dissemination that are less evident during physical gatherings.

LINGUISTIC ECOCENTRISM AS META-DISCOURSIVE PRINCIPLE OF FUNCTIONAL PARADIGM

Introduction. The paper focuses on the principle of linguistic ecocentrism specified both as a discursive mechanism of the human consciousness ecologization, which determines the invariant parameters of various institutional discourses, and as a new vector of a functionalparadigm associated with overcoming anthropocentrism.Purpose. The research aims at defining the anthropocentrism as a meta-discursive principle of various institutional discourses in view of the invariance and correlation of their cognitive, semiotic, pragmatic parameters embodied with the notion of ecocentric meta-discourse. To achieve the purpose, we have applied the methodology composing of the inquiry subject’s characterizations including its observations in scientific studies and subsequent definition, as well as hypotheses and predictions about the inquiry subject’s structure, manifestations andconstituents.The major results refer to the interpretation of the linguistic ecocentrism as the principle of harmonious coexistence of the human with the environment, reflected by various institutional discourses. This principle both influences the ecologization of linguistics of the XXI century and changes its research priorities, principles and instruments providing further integration of cognitive-discursive, cognitive semiotic, sociocognitive, cognitive-pragmatic studies in order to comprehend the strategic, behavioral, cognitive, verbal and non-verbal human practices as the noospheric factors in the development of civilization. The article introduces the concept and outlines the prospects for studying the ecocentric meta-discourse as a prototype cognitive-semiotic model of various institutional discourses with explicit or implicit ecocentric component.Conclusion. The principle of linguistic eco-centrism is the structure-forming property of the “ecocentric metadiscourse”, which is constituted by the prototype cognitive, semiotic, pragmatic parameters while specifying and developing the knowledge and values about the harmonious coexistence of man with the surrounding world – nature, society, linguistic-culturaland transcultural communities.

Of Corn and Tares: Making Madras English, 1639–1696

abstract: This article proposes that English East India Company initiatives in seventeenth-century Madras—including the 1687 edict promoting the marriage of Company soldiers to “native women”—can best be understood as attempts to control the settlement’s mobility, and here “mobility” refers to both its residents’ capacity for physical movement and their susceptibility to social and cultural change. By embracing and even promoting some aspects of this mobility, East India Company authorities successfully changed the narratives that went along with it, thereby recasting not just the meanings that those narratives conveyed, but also the identities that they authorized. In so doing, Company authorities also prioritized corporate and state interests over those of the settlement’s transcultural community.

The Transcultural Community Resilience Scale: Psychometric Properties and Multinational Validity in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Few instruments assess community resilience. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the capacity of communities to support resilience of members deserves to be assessed to develop programs for improving mental health of affected populations. This article presents the development of the Transcultural-Community Resilience Scale (T-CRS), its underlying factorial structure and transcultural validity with a multilingual (English, French, Creole, Kinyarwanda), multinational (DR Congo, Haiti, Rwanda, Togo) and multicultural sample affected by this pandemic. A sample of 1,267 participants (40.9% women) were recruited in the four countries: DRC (n = 626, 43.4% women), Haiti (n = 225, 42.0% women), Rwanda (n = 174, 40.5% women), and Togo (n = 242, 33.2% women), with a mean age of 32 (SD = 10.1). They completed measures assessing individual resilience, depression and the T-CRS. Exploratory and confirmatory Factor Analyses, Cronbach alpha, coefficient H and the McDonald's Omega, and bivariate regression were used to estimate the underlying components of the T-CRS, its internal consistency and concurrent validity. Parallel factorial analysis and confirmatory factor analysis results revealed an excellent fit 3-factor structure. Internal consistency coefficients varied between 0.82 and 0.95. The T-CRS showed a good construct validity with a positive association with individual resilience and negative association with depression score. Developed with a collaborative approach involving researchers, practitioners, and clients/patients, the T-CRS and its three factors (community strengths and support, community trust and faith, and community values) demonstrated excellent psychometric properties for assessing community resilience among adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exploring Transcultural Community: Realistic Visions in Sami (Norwegian-Danish) and Ojibwe (Canadian) Novels

ABSTRACT: This article compares the protagonists’ identity constitution in the novels Og sådan blev det (2013) [And so it turned out] by Maren Uthaug (2013) and Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese (2014). Indigenous identity is historically and theoretically framed by political discourses and postcolonial theory. Indigenous concepts of land and story, concepts of cultural memory, western postmodern subject philosophy, and Indigenous research methods serve as a basis to explain the characters’ success in constituting their individual Indigenous identity within ethnically and culturally diverse communities while finding ways of mutual understanding, bridging the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous People. The novels suggest visionary but realistic ways of constituting Indigenous identity in transcultural communities and convey ethical values fundamental to all human beings—regardless of ethnicity and culture.

Author’s Strategies of the Interpretation of Russian Classical Literature in English-Speaking Community of Ficwriters

This article studies the problem of creating readers’ identity by the participants of interpretive communities joined around adaptations (fanfiction) of the Russian classical literature. In sociology and cultural studies, the researchers pay attention to the fact that in the active readers’ online communities, the boundaries of authorship are difficult to determine, which requires using the philological methods of text analysis. The research subject is the individual strategies of the transformation of Russian classics in the English-language readers’ texts (fics). The comprehensive analysis of these texts allows us to scrutinize the perception of the Russian classics in transcultural online communities. For the first time, the author’s identity in fanfiction is considered through literary commentary on the texts. The research goal is to highlight authorial strategies of interpreting Russian classics in fanfiction texts. This article provides an overview of research approaches to the problem of authorship in fanfiction and the results of surveying Anglophone readers writing fanfiction based on the Russian literature. The questionnaire allowed distinguishing the author’s corpora of the fics based on L. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and popular serials and films. In addition, the author describes the system of narrative techniques, which allows identifying the authorship of the ficwriter. The results show that the individual reading strategies are most reflected in the composition and organization of artistic speech as parts of an authorial style.

The market value of trans-cultural capital. A case study of the market of provision for Scandinavian retirement migrants in Spain

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyse in depth the market of provision for Scandinavian retirement migrants in Spain answering the following research questions: a) what kind of goods and services are typically on offer in the market oriented to Scandinavian retirees?; b) what are the main characteristics of the people who work in this market?; and c) how can we explain the varying levels of success that different providers have? To deal with the last research question we use a Bourdieusian framework to seek out connections between the type(s) of capital that each provider possesses (economic, social, cultural) as well as her/his living conditions. Our results indicate that ‘trans-cultural capital’ (Triandafyllidou, A. 2009. “Sub-Saharan African Immigrant Activists in Europe: Transcultural Capital and Transcultural Community Building.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32 (1): 93–116) a form of cultural capital defined as the ability to navigate between two cultures, is the key determinant that differentiates those who can economically benefit from retirement migration from those left behind. High levels of trans-cultural capital almost guarantee success in this market, but the absence of this form of capital among the vast majority of the local population explains the relatively small impact that retirement migration has on economic employment opportunities for locals. Our results are based on interviews with 80 Swedish retirement migrants, 120 workers and entrepreneurs who provide services for these migrants, and 20 experts in 24 villages on the Southern coast of mainland Spain as well as in the Canary Islands.

A classification of cultural engagements in community technology design: introducing a transcultural approach

Community technology design has been deeply affected by paradigm shifts and dominant discourses of its seminal disciplines, such as Human Computer Interaction, Cultural and Design theories, and Community Development as reflected in Community Narratives. A particular distinction of community technology design endeavours has been their cultural stance, which directs the agendas, interactions, and outcomes of the collaboration. Applying different cultural lenses to community technology design, shifts not only practices but also directs the levels of awareness, thereby unfolding fundamentally distinct cultural engagement approaches. Previous community technology design research indulged in cross-, inter-, and multicultural approaches to community engagement; it was occupied with meticulously deconstructing and reconstructing perspectives, interactions, roles, and agendas. We argue that when deeply immersed in joint design activities in long-term collaborations, we look beyond individual cultures and enter a transcultural mode of engagement. A transcultural community technology design endeavour supports a continuous creation and re-creation of new meanings, originating from individual entities yet being diffused and continuously reflected within the existing design space. We suggest that within community technology design, a context with abundant cultural diversity, a heightened awareness becomes a necessity. We exemplify different instantiations of the cultural engagement approaches within our long-term collaborations and technology design projects with indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo and Namibia. A transcultural approach to indigenous knowledge preservation and digitisation efforts with indigenous communities opens up a controversial debate about protecting versus integrating local epistemologies.

Local Colour: Investigating Social Transformations in Transcultural Crime Fiction

Over the last twenty years, Italian “migration literature” has made significant contributions to the redefinition of the country’s literary and cultural scene. While the initial phase can best be conceptualized as a generic “micro-system” encompassing canonical genres such as (auto)biography and the Bildungsroman, more recently, narratives of migration have diversified radically, exhibiting a high degree of linguistic and genre experimentation. The defining feature of some of the more successful recent novelists lies in their active engagement with critical social and political issues that concern contemporary Italian society through the vehicle of the crime fiction genre. A case in point is provided by Algerian-born Amara Lakhous, whose four recent novels Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (2006), Divorzio all’islamica a viale Marconi (2010), Contesa per un maialino italianissimo a San Salvario (2013) and La zingarata della verginella di Via Ormea (2014) all use strategies of genre hybridization (polyphonic migration narratives blended with giallo and noir structures) to problematize notions of citizenship and cultural identity. This article argues that borrowing the conventions of the giallo/noir enables Lakhous both to provide new insights into shifting constructions of “Italianness”/citizenship in a period characterized by the transition from national to transcultural communities and to accentuate the continuity of the dialogical relationship between the crime fiction genre and contemporary social reality.

The stone that mourns its victims: Haiti still recovering from its injuries and traumas 5 years after the 2010 earthquake.

On Jan. 12, 2010, at 4:53 p.m. local time, Haiti was struck by the largest earthquake in its modern history. The quake killed over 222,000 people, about 2.5% of the national population, and left more than 300,000 injured, between 4,000 and 7,000 amputees, and roughly 1.5 million homeless. Following the earthquake, studies were carried out to evaluate its impact on mental health. Depending on the age group and the time of assessment, prevalences ranged from 24.6% to 47.7% for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and from 26.0% to 46.2% for major depressive disorder (1–4). Studies also revealeddifficulties inmourning the deaths of those who went missing (5). The inhumation of corpses in mass graves without identification and without respect for any cultural ritual has greatly prevented survivors from mourning their relatives who perished in this disaster, as is described by participants in various studies carried out since July 2010 (2) and reported in other studies (6). In fact, as Kluger(7) suggested,whenthere isnograve,mourningbecomes endless. Indeed, according to figures from the Haitian government and international institutions, at least 180,000 corpses were put in mass graves without being formally identified (8). Moreover, to date, no list of victims has been established. In theabsenceof this list, forwhichnoofficial initiativehas been takenyet, thememorial of theearthquakehasbecomean important place of pilgrimage. Consisting of the stone shown here and its plate, on which is written in Creole “12 January 2010/We will never forget,” the memorial represents, symbolically, the solid remains of the disaster. Erected on the largest mass grave at the north entrance of Port-au-Prince, where between 70,000 and 90,000 corpses are buried, according to the authorities, it is a place of contemplation for relatives who pay tribute to victims at special occasions: birthdays,November1 (All Saints’Day), January12, etc. In the absence of tangible signs that can facilitate the grieving Memorial for the Haiti earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010 (photograph by Darwin Clormeus; used by permission)

Strategies Adopted by Transcultural Communities to Compensate the Loss of Collective Memory: A Case of Nepali Diasporas

Strategies Adopted by Transcultural Communities to Compensate the Loss of Collective Memory: A Case of Nepali Diasporas

Prognosis Critical: Resilience and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Australia

Prognosis Critical: Resilience and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Australia

Adolescent literacy and identity construction among 1.5 generation students

The emergence and significance of transnational adolescents at school and in society have recently been recognized, and yet, little is known about how their transnational lived experiences affect their literacy learning and identity construction. Thus, the study reported in this paper explored transnational literacy options and practices that two Korean transnational adolescents had experienced and addressed how their online literacy practices served them while negotiating their transnational identities. The findings show that the participants engaged in multiple literacy practices and forged transnational identities through online activities involving “creating and constructing a transnational and transcultural community” and “communicating via instant messaging.” The findings suggest that we should re-conceptualize the teaching and learning of students who share multilingual, transnational lived experiences and that we should re-examine what it means to be good, educated students and global citizens in the 21st century.

Sub-Saharan African immigrant activists in Europe: transcultural capital and transcultural community building

This paper argues that immigrant civic activism, which may at first glance seem to focus on diasporic ties and ethnic community building, becomes often a lever for transcultural capital and transcultural community building. The study is explorative of new repertoires and forms of transnationalism among sub-Saharan African immigrant activists in Europe. The findings suggest that immigrant civic activism, even if limited in size, proposes new types of transcultural societal networks and new forms of transcultural expression. In the first part of the study I discuss the theoretical background of transnationalism in migration studies and propose the notions of transcultural capital and transcultural community as working concepts. The second part of the study concentrates on the qualitative analysis of life story interviews with sixteen sub-Saharan African immigrants in Europe.

Migration: Policies, Practices, Activism

1. Migration: Policies, Practices, Activism Martin Bulmer, University of Surrey, UK, and John Solomos, City University London, UK 2. Migration and development: reconciling opposite views Alejandro Portes, Princeton University, USA 3. Asylum policy and asylum experiences: interactions in a Scottish context Alison Bowes, University of Stirling, UK, Iain Ferguson, University of Stirling, UK, and Duncan Sim, University of Paisley, UK 4. When contact with immigrants matters: threat, inter-ethnic attitudes and foreigner exclusionism in Spain's Comunidades Autonomas Xavier Escandell, University of Northern Iowa, USA, and Alin M. Ceobanu, University of Florida, USA 5. Global migration and South Korea: foreign workers, foreign brides and the making of a multicultural society Andrew Eungi Kim, Korea University, Korea 6. Sub-Saharan African immigrant activists in Europe: transcultural capital and transcultural community building Anna Triandafyllidou, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece 7. Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and identity processes among Albanian immigrants in Italy Russell King, University of Sussex, UK, and Nicola Mai, London Metropolitan University, UK 8. Immigrant integration: comparative evidence from the United States and Germany Hermann Kurthen, Grand Valley State University, USA, and Barbara Schmitter Heisler, Gettysburg College, USA 9. Diversity - a new mode of incorporation? Thomas Faist, Bielefeld University, Germany

12. Transculture: A Broad Way Between Globalism and Multiculturalism

AbstractThis paper develops a concept of transculture as a model of cultural development that differs from both leveling globalism and isolating pluralism. While culture frees humans from the material dependencies of nature, it also creates new, symbolic dependencies—on customs, traditions, conventions, which a person receives as a member of a certain group and ethnos. Among the many freedoms proclaimed as rights of the individual, there emerges yet another freedom—from one's own culture, in which one was born and educated. Transculture is viewed as the next level of liberation, this time from the “prison house of language,” from unconscious predispositions and prejudices of the “native,” naturalized cultures. The case of the Japanese poet Araki Yasusada (1903–1972), a survivor of Hiroshima, demonstrates how transcultural creativity, though cast in the form of a literary hoax, can produce an internationally recognized achievement. Transculturalism is especially needed in world politics, where the factor of fixed cultural identity based on race, ethnos, religion, or ideological commitments turned out to be a source of conflict and violence. This paper argues that the categories of opposition and identity do not preclude the significance of the third category, which is difference. The differences complement each other and create a new interpersonal transcultural community to which we belong, not because we are similar but because we are different. The transcultural perspective opens a possibility for globalization not as homogenization but, rather, as further differentiation of cultures and their “dissemination” into transcultural individuals, liberating themselves from their dependence from their native cultures. The global society can be viewed as the space of diversity of free individuals rather than that of fixed groups and cultures. It is an alternative to the clash of civilizations and a hope for lasting peace.

An Innovative Model for Conducting a Participatory Community Health Assessment

Understanding a community's perceived health care needs is essential to the promotion of community health. The purpose of this article is to review various methodologies used to assess community health care needs, and then provide a case example of a transcultural exploration of perceived health care needs of the residents of Utila, Honduras. This study presents a template for using unique assessment tools to empower communities to identify their health care needs. Implications for future transcultural community nursing studies are discussed.

Environment and sex ratios among Alaska Natives: An historical perspective

Human-environment interactions can affect the sex ratios of resource-dependent societies in a variety of ways. Historical and contemporary data on Alaska Native populations illustrate such effects. Some eighteenth and early nineteenth century observers noted an excess of females, which they attributed to high mortality among hunters. Population counts in the later nineteenth century and well into the twentieth found instead an excess of men in many communities. Female infanticide was credited as the explanation: since family survival depended upon hunting success, males were more valued. Although infanticide explanations for the excess of males have been widely believed, available demographic data point to something else: higher adult female mortality. Finally, in the postwar years, the importance of mortality differentials seems to have faded- and also changed direction. Female outmigration from villages accounts for much of the gender imbalance among Native populations today. Natural-resource development, particularly North Slope oil, indirectly drives this migration. In Alaska's transcultural communities, the present gender imbalances raise issues of individual and cultural survival.