Proceeding of the World Conference on Cultural Studies
The Proceedings of the World Conference on Cultural Studies (CULTURALCONF) include peer-reviewed papers from the World Conference on Cultural Studies. Conference Proceedings is intended to share knowledge in the field of Cultural Studies. Learn more about Cultural Studies Sciences Conference
The Projections of Memory in the Theater of AbdulRahman Al Mannai
This paper investigates the theme of memory in the theatre of AbdulRahman AlMannai, a prominent Qatari playwright and director. In addition, AlMannai was a founding member of the theatre movement in Qatar in the 1960s. The paper aims to study how AlMannai’s plays reflect contemporary political, social, and economic changes through the lens of memory, focusing on the historical context before and during the discovery of oil in Qatar. Relying on textual analysis as the primary methodology, this paper examines three key plays: [yā lyl yā lyl] (oh night oh night), [zinzānat albaḥr] (the Sea dungeon) and [rasā͗l aba aḥmad elḥuwaily] (The letters of Aba Ahmed Alhuwaili). The analysis focuses on AlMannai’s integration of elements such as historical manuscripts, folklore music, and poetry to enrich his narratives and engage the audience's collective memory. Finally, this paper emphasizes the significance of Al-Mannai's theatre as a vital reflection of Qatar's socio-cultural changes, providing insights into the ongoing impact of collective and historical memory on contemporary realities.
Copyright (c) 2024 Proceeding of the World Conference on Cultural Studies
Understanding Cultural Values in Advertising:A bibliometric Analysis of Global Trends and Practices
At the heart of the contemporary economic landscape, brands play a predominant role in individuals' daily lives, transcending geographical and cultural extremities to become key players in our globalized society. In this context, advertising, as an essential communication tool, serves as a bridge between brands and their target audiences, creating a space where diverse and sometimes divergent cultural values intersect. This is why this study examines current trends around the embodiment of culture and the respect of values in advertising campaigns. The PRISMA framework (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) was used to select relevant documents for this bibliometric analysis. A quality assessment was applied to this study, which primarily focused on mapping the existing literature on cultural advertising. The quality assessment began with the consideration of original research articles, excluding all conference papers and proceedings. By focusing on scientific publications, this document examines the types of publications, the number of publications, the countries, the most cited publications, and the most prolific authors. The results highlight several key research concerns that will be presented, namely the cultural dimensions that must be considered before launching any advertisement, as well as consumer attitudes towards these advertisements and towards the brand.
Navigating Cultural and Operational Frontiers: Refining Global Mobility Policies
This paper explores the evolution and effectiveness of global mobility policies at PT Pertamina International EP, with a specific focus on stakeholder engagement. By analyzing historical and recent policy documents, along with insights from AIRINC reports, the study highlights the strategic shifts in Pertamina’s approach to managing international assignments. It emphasizes how stakeholder feedback, primarily from HR personnel and expatriates, has been instrumental in shaping policy revisions. The findings demonstrate that active stakeholder engagement not only enhances policy relevance and employee satisfaction but also ensures policies are well-aligned with international HR standards. The paper discusses the impact of effective engagement strategies on the cultural integration and technological utilization within global mobility practices, revealing significant improvements in operational efficiency and stakeholder satisfaction. Recommendations are made for further integrating stakeholder input into the policy-making process to foster a more responsive and dynamic global mobility framework. This study provides valuable insights into the role of stakeholder engagement in optimizing global mobility policies to better support an organization's international operations and workforce needs.
Diasporic Conception of Home: Exploring Belonging and Nationalism Among TheSudanese Diaspora in Britain
The research investigates diasporic concepts such as belonging, long-distance nationalism, and cultural identity formation and maintenance among the Sudanese diaspora in Britain. The study used semi-structured, in-depth interviews as the main method of data collection with members of the Sudanese diaspora, focusing on the 2nd and 1.5 generations within the 18-35 age group. To demonstrate a clear understanding of the participants' perspectives on home from a place of inbetweenness; the study questions their contrasting cultural identity, and navigating complex nationhood between Sudanese and British. The primary objectives of this study are to: 1. Examine how the cultural identity of the young Sudanese diaspora is shaped in multicultural settings in Britain. 2. Explore the diaspora's concept of home by examining their sense of belonging and national identity between Sudan and Britain. 3. Investigate how digital diasporic spaces influence and contribute to the diaspora’s transnational nationalism. Additionally, the Digital Diaspora space massively reshaped long-distance nationalism; immensely influencing the diaspora’s notions of long-distance participation, cultural maintenance, and new identity formation. Participants' AfroArab identity was a significant topic of discussion due to the overlap of interviews with the Black Lives Matter movement. Furthermore, the data collection occurred after the 2018-2019 revolution in Sudan, in which many participants were involved transnationally through digital diaspora spaces. The findings demonstrated distinctions between Home and Homing while illustrating a deeper interpretation of Nostalgia, Memory and Environment, as well as various aspects of Membership and Belonging.
A Son Over a Daughter: A Research on Continuing Son Preference in China from the Perspective of the Interaction between Collectivism and Individualization
Between the 20th and 21st centuries, feminism and gender equality have made significant progress in China. Despite this, the preference for male newborns remains prevalent in contemporary Chinese society, leading to an unbalanced gender ratio at birth (111.3:100 according to the latest national population census). This suggests that the advancement of Chinese feminism has not fully addressed the societal norm of favouring male newborns. While the gender ratio at birth is crucial to gender equality, existing research often overlooks the disconnection between the progress in gender equality and the continued preference for male newborns in China. This study utilizes national population censuses as primary data sources and analyzes discourse on Chinese social media as supplementary data. It adopts various cultural perspectives to explore the causes of this phenomenon, examining the interplay between individual, familial, and national dynamics. Since the 20th century, the interaction between traditional collectivism and contemporary individualisation has resulted in unique features of Chinese individualisation that prioritize family success and national prosperity over individual values and freedoms. Although Chinese women's liberation benefited from these interactions, the emphasis on collective success has also reinforced the preference for male newborns, highlighting a blind spot in the development of Chinese feminism.
Representations and Perceptions of the Collective Imaginary of Trikitixa in its Process of Rooting in The Basque Popular Culture: 1889-1937
The Basque-style diatonic accordion or trikitixa arrived in the Basque Country in the last decades of the 19th century to take root in popular culture and fully integrate with Basque identity during the first decades of the 20th century, thus defining itself as a new cultural input in a context of accelerated socioeconomic transformations that led the incipient Basque nationalism to have to define what, as far as culture is concerned, it considered properly Basque. The nationalist discourse based on the purity of the Basque identity represented a campaign of contempt towards the newcomer accordion to which the elitist classes joined to belittle everything considered popular. The article compares the magnitude of the rejection messages received by the trikitixa with what was perceived by the Basque society as a whole, in order to show to what extent, the attempted dismissal of cultural expression permeated the collective imagination that the participants of popular festivities formed about the instrument.
The Heart of Dark Elves: Orientalism, and Manifestations of Asian Cultures in Tabletop Games and Western Fantasy
There are countless depictions of elves in media, many of which are not simple fresh iterations of those designed by Tolkien and his contemporaries. Dungeons and Dragons, a table-top role-playing game on the rise since its inception in the 1980s, contains the interpretation of the Tolkien elf doctored by the creators of the game – Arneson and Gygax – to fit their needs and perceptions of something that was the “Other”. Today, our world is different, and these studies of cultural properties have spread from academia alone into the view of the general populace. The importance of origins for and prejudices involved during the creation of the realms of fantasy we escape to for a handful of hours each week grows with each passing day and each new voice adding to that clamouring vox populi. This paper seeks to recontextualise the issue of the orientalism that wormed its way into the origins of Dungeons and Dragons, and package it in a more digestible fashion for a wider audience. In fashioning the arguments included in this article, we may explore the way that the elves of Dungeons and Dragons reflect the Hindu diaspora, and the manner in which the biases and opinions of Gygax and the writers for the games since then have infiltrated aspects of our popular culture.
Individual and Collective Determination: Anarchism and Utopianism in V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta depicts a dystopian version of the United Kingdom in the 1990s, preceded by a nuclear war in the 1980s that devastated the rest of the world. Since both the comic and the movie are set in a dystopian setting ruled by Norsefire, the fascist government, scholars broadly argue that V for Vendetta should be considered a dystopian work. However, in this paper, I set out to prove that it is indeed a utopian work by drawing on definitions of utopia, eutopia, and dystopia. Although Moore and McTeigue present the comic and the film in a dystopian setting, they should still be considered utopian for establishing a utopian anarchist revolution. It is essential to read V for Vendetta with a utopian lens to see the importance of individual anarchist mindset in the utopia that Moore and McTeigue suggest. The comic and film demonstrate that constructing a utopian anarchist state needs individual and community determination. This paper ultimately suggests a new reading of the politics of film and the comic, contrasting Moore’s opposition to the film and encouraging reading them together rather than contradicting one another.
What Is Gender Doing in the Female Body?Tracing the Relationship Between Identity and Culture Formation Through an Assessment of Gender in the Female Body
Within popular discourses in cultural studies, the body is posited as a site of inquiry that is studied in a relationship between an identity and a culture – discussing often how an individual identifies themselves through the body, and how culture takes shape through these bodies itself. The body acts as a symbol for these identities and cultures, where these symbols operate through social roles and relations of the society in which they get formed and understood. These social roles and relations also then implicate on this relationship through various social paradigms in the society, such as gender, caste, creed, race and ethnicity. These social paradigms then can be seen operating through the body as a symbol. Critics like Mary Douglas (1970) have pointed how there exists two ideas of bodies; one where “the body symbolizes everything” and one where “everything symbolizes the body.” Taking these ideas as departure points, the paper aims to focus on bodies as symbols in one such social paradigm, gender, issuing an inquiry into gendered bodies in respect to identity and culture formations. Upon tracing these gendered bodies, it evaluates how body also becomes a symbolic ground for gendered differences to be meted out in a hierarchy, paralleling power plays and contestations. These hierarchical differences can also be then witnessed in subjugations in the society, which often comes at a toll for the traditionally assumed-to-be ‘inferior’ and ‘weak’ bodies. At the brink of this toll, an insertion of the ‘female body’ becomes this paper’s prime aim, which extends its physiological corporeality to be gendered in the symbolic, constructing women identities in and against cultural norms of hierarchy. The paper then seeks to study gender and gendered bodies in relationship to identity and culture formations, where the prime focus becomes the female body in which these hierarchical differences can be substantiated, written against, and sought for liberation. For this, it will look at anthropological accounts of various everyday experiences of the female body, constructing woman identities, translating cultural norms, and understanding these differences itself.
Religion is a great rule of the environment which is played by rules and regulations. It is a systematic way of the natural environment of cause and effective theory that causes living beings that are conglomerated with the four elements such as air, fair, earth and water. There is no being that is out of these four elements. The environment is also conglomerated with these four elements as well. Religion is a way of trusting something that is mentally well-formed but there are some religions which play against the environment which is not acceptable for a proper religious meaning. It plays a vital role for beings wholesome and unwholesome actions which are driven through the physical forms. Religion plays a great rule through the environmental way of consequence that is called the fruition of cause and effective theory. We can directly express it by our own mental sentiment, which is an effective theory of our own action which is called “Environment” and “Religion”. Religions and the environment are involved with each other and we cannot separate from each other. They are interconnected between moral conduct. Religion and environment are the way of living in a peaceful manner.
Preservation and Innovation: Integrating Sustainable Practices and Historical Georgia's Intangible Cultural Heritage in Architecture
This research paper, titled "Preservation and Innovation: Integrating Sustainable Practices and Historical Georgia's Intangible Cultural Heritage in Architecture," delves into a multifaceted exploration of sustainable architectural practices and the integration of Georgia's rich intangible cultural heritage. Focusing on the Meskhetian terraces as a case study, this paper navigates the intricate relationship between architectural preservation, innovation, and cultural heritage in the context of contemporary Georgia. The Meskhetian terraces, a striking manifestation of sustainable agricultural practices, serve as a focal point for investigating the importance of terraced landscapes in different countries. Drawing on global examples, this research elucidates the multifarious reasons behind their utilization and underscores their pivotal role in shaping future architectural endeavors. Georgia's historical significance as a wine country and its UNESCO-designated intangible cultural heritage provide a compelling backdrop for examining the interplay between tangible and intangible elements in architectural preservation and innovation. By shedding light on Georgia's commitment to safeguarding its cultural heritage and its synergy with the principles of sustainable architecture, this paper underscores the transformative potential of integrating intangible cultural heritage into contemporary architectural practices. Furthermore, this research explores the nexus between Georgia's UNESCO recognition and its burgeoning tourism industry, illuminating how the incorporation of intangible cultural heritage enriches the visitor experience and fosters sustainable tourism development. In essence, this paper advocates for the harmonious coexistence of preservation and innovation, highlighting the importance of sustainable practices and the integration of intangible cultural heritage in contemporary architecture. It offers valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners seeking to forge a dynamic and culturally resonant path forward in the realm of architecture, while simultaneously honoring the heritage that has shaped Georgia's rich tapestry of culture and history.
Copyright (c) 2023 Proceeding of the World Conference on Cultural Studies
The Woman in Nawal al-Sa'dawi's Imagination: A Well-Deserved Interactive Emotional Movement
Dictionaries unanimously agree that the term "character" refers to the traits that distinguish a certain person from another. Each trait of the character of the individual should take into consideration his general external appearance and the nature of his abilities, decisions, motives, reactions, expertise, and the total values and attitudes that direct his behavior. The literary character is one of the imaginary or real individuals with whom the events of the novel or play deal. A number of values and traits are attributed to it, which can be discovered through the dialogue, the verbs and the description that the reader reads or hears. Like every human or non-human being that appeared in literature, whether individually or collectively, the character has a specific function in the story. Besides, it has physical, moral, and rational traits, which vary from one character to the other according to the function that is attributed to it, whether major or minor, and according to the literary genre in which it plays a certain role. In short, the character can be defined as the total traits that constitute the nature of the human being.
We exist in a significant geo-political nexus in history of global development. As African nations and Indigenous peoples around the world begin to kinetically resist neo-colonial trajectories, the west determines to redirect/impose past suppressions onto new targeted geographies. This paper will survey developments from 15th and 16th Century Papal Bulls through, government legislation and policy developments including the American Indian removal act of 1830, Berlin Conference of 1884-85, the Morgenthau Plan, late 20th Century Neo-Colonial exploitation and continuing early 21st Century attempts at reinscription. Within this context, the piece will conclude with a brief discussion of Larissa FastHorse’s the Thanksgiving Play as a response to the American holiday as against the backdrop of history.
Cultural Thought and Arts’ Theory in Cuba Crossing Paths for Good Old Cultural Studies
Although History of Art studies within academia, began in the late thirties of the Twentieth Century in Cuba, regretfully Arts’ Theory has been an underdeveloped discipline. For this paper, we use the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge in its historical perspective, as a tool for analyzing Jorge Mañach’s cultural thought. This was one of the most important Cuban intellectuals of his time, who wrote some of the most notorious essays of Cuban Literature. We analyze his cultural essays, and also, the cultural institutions, intellectual initiatives and networks that supported his theoretical ideas. Essentially, the early Cuban 20th century reproduced some of the colonial matrix of power but, surprisingly, the Mañach’s theories featured relative epistemic autonomy and, therefore, decolonial thinking features yet to be studied. Hence, we place the focus on the social conditions and cultural structures that might have enhanced Jorge Mañach’s cultural thought in order to prove its epistemic status within Cultural Studies.
Being Black Skinned: A Doomed Fate? Brazilian Voices and the Others
Blacks all over the world are not happy. They are not happy because ofthe Biblical curse, but because of the combination of the following three social factors that help keep them down: the poverty the world of the Blacks, Blacks frustrating Blacks and the humanity denied to Blacks by Corporate world in the West. This is the issue developped in the presente study through a textual analysis of Ralph Ellison´s Invisible Man, Zora Neale Hurston´s Their Eyes Are Watching God, Ahmadou Kourouna´s Waiting for The Vote of Wild Animals, Aminata Sow Fall´s La Grève des Bàttu, Paolo Scott´s Phenotypes.
Influence of Cultural Norms on FormalService Engagement Among Survivors ofIntimate Partner Violence: A Qualitative Meta-synthesis
For victim-survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), receiving help from formal services such as specialist family violence, health, or criminal justice services can be critical for their safety and well-being. Previous research has found cross-cultural differences in the rates of help-seeking behavior, with women from non-Anglo-Saxon communities less likely to seek formal help than Anglo-Saxon populations. This qualitative meta-synthesis has integrated qualitative evidence to examine the relationship between specific cultural norms and formal service engagement for female victim-survivors of IPV from non-Anglo-Saxon communities. A comprehensive search of seven databases was conducted for peer-reviewed articles published between 1985 to May 2021, in addition to searching gray literature. Thirty-five articles met the criteria for inclusion, representing 1,286 participants from 20 cultural groups. Based on a thematic synthesis approach, five key themes that captured specific cultural norms that influence formal service engagement were identified: (1) gender roles and social expectations, (2) community recognition and acceptance of abuse, (3) honor-based society, (4) the role of religion, and (5) cultural beliefs and attitudes toward formal services. These findings have important implications for responses to family violence, particularly concerning family violence education for non-Anglo-Saxon ethnically diverse communities and best-practice strategies to improve the cultural relevancy of formal service providers.
African Language Newspaper as An Instrument to Advance Sustainable Development Goals
Mass media in Africa is an important tool for disseminating development messages, to inform and mobilise people towards mass participation. In African mass media, language is an important consideration because Africa has multiple languages and cultures. Language has a huge impact on socioeconomic development, and language cannot be separated from empowerment. The effectiveness of mass media in assisting society to achieve development is influenced by the choice of language in distributing messages by a media organisation. For mass media to be effective in assisting society in realising Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDG), educational and informative content on mass media must be in the indigenous languages of the majority. This study explores how the development news feature as news content in the isiZulu language newspaper Isolezwe, through a mixed methods design using focus group interviews and content analysis. This study examines the coverage of development news in the Isolezwe newspaper. The study aims to emphasise that African language newspapers can be used to advance sustainable development goals. The findings of the study reveal that Isolezwe newspaper publishes news stories on development issues. Development news stories covered in the newspaper include the following: women empowerment and children, social and moral development, education, health, and lifestyle. The study recommends that Isolezwe newspaper must publish news on other developmental issues such as climate change, conservation, and promotion of the environment; and creating partnerships for sustainable development.
Cultural Dialectic and Appropriation Through Musical Sampling: A Study on Marlene Shaw's "The Woman of The Ghetto"
This paper examines the sampling of Marlene Shaw's "The Woman of the Ghetto" as a cultural dialectic and appropriation of the black female experience. Initially, this revolutionary song raised equity and social justice issues, holding policymakers and legislators accountable through public discourse. However, the selective sampling of the song (both lyrics and musical elements) initially drains it from its own narrative, making it an aesthetic artefact, isolated from its own context, and then repurposes that artefact in narratives unrelated or even opposite to the original meaning. Thus, through sampling over decades, the powerful message is appropriated by different perspectives, creating a discussion of priorities and focus points. When Shaw emphasised the need for recognition and justice, this was used as musical decoration and even to promote agendas such as violence and misogyny that contributed to the original injustice. This study delves into the song's original meaning, Marlene Shaw's background, and the social setting in which it emerged to explore the broader implications for gender and diversity studies.
Triangulating Instrumentalist, Technicist, And Formalist Academic, Approaches to Cinematic Lighting Semiotics
As a practicing cinematographer and lighting technician initially trained at a private South African tertiary education institution specializing in film and performance, and now enrolled at a state-funded South African university for a Master’s in Creative Media Production study, I have recognized a curriculum deficit relating to lighting application versus academic discourse on this topic. On the premise that semiotic quality should be a key consideration when it comes to filmmakers’ lighting choices, in my current study I aim to contribute to the development of a holistic approach to cinematic lighting semiotics education to help unleash the full communicative potential of lighting. I am triangulating three approaches to meaning making through cinematic lighting: the instrumentalist approach of selected standard pedagogic texts for cinematography students; the technicist approach of craft literature as emblematized in American Cinematographer; and the more formalist approach of film semiotics theorization pertaining to light and shadow. Creating a framework based on such synthesis stands to help augment curricula, and to this end I will also be developing a student booklet as well as applying the framework in a practical reshoots of three key scenes from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). This latter will in effect recast this piece of Weimar cinema in a modern light – demonstrating in the process what can be done when modern technologies are applied to filmmaking in a semiotically deliberate, theoretically astute manner. This presentation concentrates on how I developed the synthesized framework and what it entails.