SITUATIONAL PLACES: RETHINKING GEOGRAPHIES OF INTERCULTURAL INTERACTION IN SUPER‐DIVERSE URBAN SPACE

Cities in general and public urban spaces in particular have re‐emerged as important places where strangers from different social and cultural backgrounds interact. The growing number of intercultural encounters assumed by contemporary urban studies calls for a theoretical examination of how these encounters are conducted. In this article we therefore critically examine the interplay between cultures, strangers, performances, encounters, and urban built environments. This means bringing together the theoretical ideas of super‐diversity, culture in world society, and situational places. The article argues that intercultural interactions between strangers in cities – and elsewhere – shape the cultural conditions of contemporary world society. First, super‐diversity is discussed as a cultural reality of world society. Drawing on empirical evidence from psychology, intercultural interactions between strangers are then demonstrated to be part of ritualized cultural negotiations. Finally, the notion of situational places is put forward as the conceptual nexus between these cultural encounters and the urban environment. This perspective allows the integration of bodily performances between strangers, spatial and situational context, and the resulting places of encounter.     

运用明示——推理模式分析翻译中的不可译性——以霍克斯《石头记》译本为例

从语用学角度来看翻译是一种跨文化、跨语言的明示——推理过程或行为。翻译的交际行为是一种三元关系,有原文作者、译者和译文读者的交流行为,因而在翻译的过程中存在着一定的复杂性与局限性——不可译性。本文结合霍克斯的《石头记》译本,应用明示--推理模式来说明翻译交际过程中原文作者、译者和译文读者之间认知环境和能力之间的不平衡和不一致,来解释翻译过程中不可译性不意味着不译,只意味着翻译中的一种局限性,使我们能够更加清楚地了解造成这种局限性现象的原因。     

Tourism,leisure and work in an east African pastoral society (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article investigates what happens with leisure experience between cultures when the Mursi of southwestern Ethiopia meet with international tourists. I propose that instead of regarding leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, it might fruitfully be approached as a process that evolves when different societies meet, i.e. as a constantly emerging (and disappearing) practice in cross‐cultural encounters. Tourism, studied broadly from an anthropological point of view, offers an excellent field for this investigation. The Western ideology of leisure, mobilized by tourists in non‐Western settings, is a good entry point to make tangible how societies understand leisure pursuits in intercultural encounters.     

Blended learning with international students: a multiliteracies approach

While the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) continues to transform learning, international migration and the increasing complexity of intercultural exchange and communication continue to do so as well. In this paper, we connect the dots and ask how ICTs can be used to enhance the learning experiences of international students. Using a case study of a new program for first-year international students at a Canadian university, we bring together insights from blended learning and multiliteracies approaches to show how multiple cultural references and multimedia can form the basis for the development of new potentials between learners, knowledge, and disciplinary practice. This involves an analysis of the innovative structure of a two-course sequence in Human Geography, followed by a discussion of student feedback on the model. Based on our results, we conclude that blended learning offers not only a sophisticated approach to multiliteracies in the context of an international student setting, but for teaching students in the social sciences and humanities more broadly.     

Enhancing the mobility of collections and access to cultural heritage: immunity of cultural objects from seizure in Poland

This paper analyses, from the perspective of cultural policy considerations, the legal regime established by the recent Polish law on the immunity from seizure of cultural property on loan (2015). It deals with current trends of international museum exchange and explains the benefits and risks involved in cross-border loans of cultural material. This analysis is carried out by focusing on the actual practice and experiences of Polish museums, national and international regulations in force, and human rights considerations. The authors attempt to situate the Polish model for the protection of foreign cultural property on loan within the broader comparative context of the domestic legislation on museum exchange adopted in selected national jurisdictions. The article also offers a more general cultural policy discussion in the context of international museum exchanges of cultural material. Laws and policies facilitating such exchanges are weighed against other rights and interests encompassed in the protection of cultural heritage and the realisation of all human rights, including cultural rights.     

Footprint or fingerprint: international cultural policy as identity policy

This article focuses on government policy aimed at the presentation of the nation abroad through cultural activities and its relation to national identity, external cultural policy. The methodological framework is offered by the discourse analysis of Wodak and the notion of identity of Laclau and Mouffe, treating policy as a discourse. A closer look is taken at the concept of cultural diplomacy and the closely related term nation branding. This article will show how the shift in paradigm also changes the role of ‘the other’ in the construction of national identity and how this influences the role of the arts in international cultural policy.     

Searching for the Intercultural,Searching for the Culture

This paper questions a dominant view of culture as being relatively bounded and hermetic by questioning the concept of an intercultural domain that is brought into existence as a necessary consequence of this view. The paper suggests that recognition of cultural processes does not lead to the need to posit ‘a culture’ which is constituted by them. The view that ‘a culture’ is a relatively autonomous, relatively hermetic and relatively homeostatic entity arises, this paper argues, in the birth of nationalism and the founding years of anthropology, which are intimately linked. This approach, characterised here as modernist, is criticised for failing to deal well with complex cultural relationships. It results in the need to theorise an intercultural space, or a realm of cultural change, between cultures theorised as entities. Here the later work of Malinowski is used as an exemplar. The paper argues for alternative conceptualisations, such as Gluckman's suggestion that intercultural relations occur within social fields which are the proper subject of anthropology, and Strathern's contention that ‘society’ is a redundant concept, yet not denying ‘sociality‘. The case of the Aboriginal people of Broome in their struggle with the state over the terms in which their prior rights to land will be recognised is used to illustrate this.     

Audience perspectives on the European dimension in Aarhus 2017 events: impacts of EU cultural policy

Abstract

The EU’s cultural policy of creating a recognisable, common European identity is exemplified by the EU’s cultural programme, European Capitals of Culture (ECOCs), whose official purpose is to highlight similarities and differences across European cultures to generate a greater sense of European identity among the citizens of Europe. To date, there has been little qualitative investigation of how ECOC attenders perceive the representation of European culture in the events and what they think about using ECOC events to promote Europeanisation. In this article, I use the methodology of intercept interviews at four Aarhus 2017 events to explore these two aspects. Findings indicate that the inclusion of European culture in Aarhus 2017 events often went unnoticed by the event attenders, and there was uncertainty about what European culture might actually comprise. Instead of perceiving ECOC events as promoting Europe, event attenders tended to interpret Aarhus 2017 events within a local, national or international framework, with ECOC events perceived as promoting tolerance and intercultural understanding. The findings are discussed in relation to the value of ECOC as a political-cultural initiative for generating European citizens’ identification with the EU.     

旅游跨文化学习中的主客互动——阳朔太极拳的教与学

中国传统文化的传播对于实现文化自信具有重要意义。本文关注了近年火热的“外国人赴阳朔学太极”现象，综合运用非参与式观察法、深度访谈法与文本分析法，以“身体符号”的意义变迁为研究脉络，探讨“外国人学太极”这一跨文化情境下的主客互动活动，分析外国人赴阳朔学太极的动因、互动过程与内在机制。研究发现：从互动媒介来看，身体作为符号在跨文化情境中发挥着重要的媒介作用，身体符号的意义也在跨文化互动中逐渐深化；从互动过程来看，不同主体的角色和观念以身体符号为媒介在跨文化互动中实现交互协商，由此加深主体对于自我的认知。人与人之间的学习型紧密联结强化了人与地方之间的关系。     

Soft power,global governance of cultural industries and rising powers: the case of China

This article addresses the importance of cultural industries for the strengthening of the soft power of the rising powers and it seeks to understand how the cultural industries allow rising powers to shape the structures of their international environment. More specifically, studying the cases of People’s Republic of China and of the movie industry, my article focuses on the current evolution of the relationship between the Chinese authorities and the film industry, as well as on the development of the domestic film market. I further aim to draw up an inventory of China’s role within the global governance of cultural industries. Finally, I aim to highlight the global cultural competition that China faces, emphasizing the practices of the US administration and Hollywood. I argue that even if China is the current centre of gravity within the world economy, it still has a long way to go in order to shape the distribution of resources within the global governance of cultural industries and to play a crucial role in the international battle of cultural symbols.     

Socioeconomic Rights: A Dialogue With Islam

There are some who believe that there will be an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the Muslim world and the West. By contrast, this article contends that there are many opportunities for constructive dialogue between the two that can bridge the cultural divide. Specifically, the article proposes a cross‐cultural dialogue on social justice as a promising starting point for productive intercultural engagement. The article discusses the rich tradition of social justice in the Muslim world, and the ways in which these Islamic tenets are implemented by a range of Islamist political parties, including Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), Morocco's Justice and Development Party (PJD), and Tunisia's Ennahda Movement. Given the West's relative dearth of mainstream social justice parties, the article proposes that, on this count, it has much to learn from the Muslim world.     

Makarios cultural diplomacy legacy in the republic of Cyprus

ABSTRACT

The article explores the cultural diplomacy initiatives undertaken by the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) during Makarios presidency (1960–1977) in order to strengthen the state acknowledgement and visibility in the international scenery and promote a nation brand focused mainly on the Hellenocentric aspect of the Greek-Cypriots’ cultural identity. Cyprus, a recently independent state (1960), shaped its cultural diplomacy practices according to the political developments; on the escalation of bi-communal conflicts internally and the international insecurity provoked by the Cold War rhetoric. This paper aims to map certain state cultural initiatives in an attempt to make connections between the internal identity-building process and the external projection of cultural identity and gain a better understanding about how a small-sized state can pursue and project a nation brand abroad by practicing the diplomacy of culture.     

Gender and geography in Italy

Abstract

This article attempts to provide a picture of Italian gender geography in order to better understand the discipline’s key achievements and development. Rooted in a lively tradition of feminism stretching back to the 1970s, Italian gender geography has faced cultural and academic resistance while achieving a number of milestones. There is still much to be done if the multifaceted theme of gender is to be fully engaged by Italian geography. However, seminars, national and international congresses on gender geography themes, and the dialectic encounter with international gender geography have stimulated the domestic debate since the new millenium. Italian gender geographic voices may be self-perceived as limited and isolated but are continuously engaged in the struggle to overcome the many structural and cultural constraints imposed by Italian society and academia. This article tries to review Italian gender geography’s history to look forward and encourage new agendas and projects within a larger academic audience.     

Consociationalism under examination: Is consociationalism the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey?

Some scholars maintain that the Republic of Turkey should construct a consociational model to manage its ethno‐cultural diversity. This article suggests consociationalism is not the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey, where there is some degree of interethnic moderation between ethnic Kurds and Turks at the grassroots level. In the presence of this mass‐based moderation, a consociational formula is unlikely to provide Turkish political leaders with political incentives that urge them to cooperate and enter into consociational power‐sharing arrangements with their Kurdish counterparts. This renders consociational power‐sharing arrangements difficult to promote or enforce in Turkey. In the absence of such incentives, any multicultural reform of the consociational formula would not be sustainable in Turkey. There would simply not be enough popular support for such reforms. There are some electoral strategies that offer both majority and minority leaders political incentives to move toward the moderate middle, form interethnic coalitions, foster interculturalism, and increase the number of intercultural citizens. These strategies are offered by centripetalism, another multiculturalist approach to managing ethno‐cultural diversity.     

The cultural paradiplomacy of Barcelona since the 1980s: understanding transformations in local cultural paradiplomacy

This article seeks to explain the conditions for the emergence and institutionalization of the cultural paradiplomacy of the city of Barcelona and its local effects. The recognition of the city as an active participant on the international stage is based on its evolution from an industrial to a service economy. Against this backdrop, Barcelona’s city council, in common with many other city authorities operating in the world’s metropolises during the 1980s, initiated its own cultural paradiplomacy as a strategy for attracting capital and promoting local development. This policy became established as part of a new multilevel system of governance. This article analyzes the causes of the institutionalization of this activity from an intergovernmental perspective. It concludes that in the context of economic globalization, the emergence of cities’ cultural paradiplomacy is strongly related to the restructuring of the State and its external administration and to the intensification of the ‘cultural branding’ of cities as a tool for global competition.     

Policing intercultural encounters: adventures in Beijing

This article reflects on the notion that China is viewed in the West as a site of absolute cultural Otherness, and contributes to debates around the manner in which Euro-Chinese intercultural interaction is imagined in European thought. Adopting a perspective inflected by Foucault's representation of disciplinary power, and by critical work pursued in the field of Contact-Studies, it scrutinises European cultural artefacts that map Beijingese space, and the adventures in that space of the European subject. These artefacts, which deal with different Beijings, are Victor Segalen's Rene´ Leys; Pierre-Jean Remy's Le Sac du Palais d'E´te´; and Christian Garcin's Le Vol du pigeon voyageur. The essay shows that the novels defy our expectation that variant ‘distillations’ of China—Imperial, Republican, post-Maoist—might invite different representations. And it concludes that the novels examined evince a European desire not to represent Beijing, and China, as a zone of transcultural contact.     

Helmut Schmidt and the Shaping of Western Security in the Late 1970s: the Guadeloupe Summit of 1979

On 5 and 6 January 1979, US President Jimmy Carter, British Prime Minister James Callaghan, French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt met on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. These secret talks à quatre were intended to be a relaxed frank and free exchange on the current state of global politics, though Western security issues lay at the discussions’ heart. As we now know, it had been Schmidt who, behind the scenes, had been pressing the Carter administration to pursue informal (transatlantic) summitry - the Chancellor's preferred modus operandi. In view of growing Euro-strategic imbalances due to Soviet arms build-up, he sought to achieve political co-ordination among the key North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) players on the theatre-nuclear-forces-modernisation-cum-arms-control issue. Schmidt's pushiness reflected West Germany's new political assertiveness, but also the Chancellor's desire to personally promote national interests in nuclear politics at the top table (similar to his approach as a shaper of international economic and energy policies). This article will explore why this ‘parley at the summit’ mattered, how within this intimate forum Schmidt pursued his goals, what diplomatic tactics and methods he employed, and to what extent he managed to control and shape proceedings and outcomes.     

微生物分子生态学技术在文物保护中应用的进展

微生物分子生态学技术近年来在文物保护研究中得到了广泛的应用,已经成为控制文物被微生物侵害的一个不可或缺的工具。本研究较系统地总结了国内外利用微生物分子生态学技术进行文物保护研究的进展,为更有效防治微生物危害侵蚀文物,进而长久的保存文物提供理论支持。