Extending the Conceptualization of Performability with Cultural Sustainability: The Case of Social Robotics

Individuals’ capacities to contribute to more sustainable living are deeply influenced by their early life experiences. Hence, there is a need to discover which experiences are relevant to young children’s contemporary and future contributions to more sustainable living. Perceiving children as aesthetically oriented to the world and their sense of belonging as a core experience for social and cultural sustainability, and using the example of dancing, we investigate how such a sense of belonging can be supported through aesthetic first-person experiences. This article is therefore structured around the following research question: How can adults’ experiences of themselves, others and their sense of belonging—when dancing—inform explorations of ways to foster embodied and aesthetic belonging for social and cultural sustainability in early childhood education (ECE)? Drawing on a phenomenological study, we analyse interviews with four dancers, who differ in age, gender and dance genre. Our analysis reveals their experiences when dancing as being in a meditative state, having a sense of freedom and feeling body and mind as one, described as an overall “different”, resilient way of being and belonging in a social context. Our findings indicate that facilitating moments of sensible and bodily awareness can support a non-verbal understanding of oneself and others, as well as arguments for promoting aesthetic experiences while dancing as relevant to sustainable practices in ECE.

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Exploring Military Artefacts in Early Childhood Education: Conflicting Perspectives on Cultural Sustainability, Belonging and Protection

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052587 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2587

Author(s):

Åsta Birkeland ◽

Liv Torunn Grindheim

Keyword(s):

Early Childhood ◽

Early Childhood Education ◽

Local Area ◽

Positive Interactions ◽

Focus Group Interviews ◽

Cultural Sustainability ◽

Childhood Education ◽

Group Interviews ◽

Chinese Kindergarten ◽

Insight Into

Social and cultural sustainability is outlined as creating surroundings that include and stimulate positive interactions, such as promoting a sense of community and a feeling of belonging to a community, by being safe and attached to the local area. Artefacts chosen in early childhood education (ECE) institutions are integrated parts of the culture in which the ECE institutions are embedded; artefacts, thus, are understood as serving belonging and cultural sustainability. The study examined what insight into cultural sustainability could be surfaced in conflicting perspectives about military artefacts in ECE. Focus group interviews were conducted with Chinese and Norwegian graduate students and ECE researchers, during which photographs of a Chinese kindergarten where military artefacts and toys were highly represented. Conflicting perspectives on military artefacts among the participant surfaced how belonging are closely intertwined with protection and where to belong: locally, nationally or internationally. The skeptical approach to military artefacts is challenged by awareness of different ways to promote national pride and entanglement among generations. The findings indicate a need for more research on conditions for belonging and the normative complexities of artefacts in cultural sustainability.

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Urban Industrial Tourism: Cultural Sustainability as a Tool for Confronting Overtourism—Cases of Madrid, Brussels, and Copenhagen

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13094694 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (9) ◽

pp. 4694

Author(s):

Carmen Hidalgo-Giralt ◽

Antonio Palacios-García ◽

Diego Barrado-Timón ◽

José Antonio Rodríguez-Esteban

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

Reference Data ◽

Urban Tourism ◽

Industrial Heritage ◽

Cultural Sustainability ◽

Cultural Spaces ◽

Patterns Of Behavior ◽

Historic City ◽

Selection Of ◽

Industrial Tourism

The chief objective of this research was to analyze how the industrial heritage of three European capitals—Madrid, Brussels, and Copenhagen—has been integrated into the dynamics of their urban tourism, thereby generating new resources and cultural spaces. In regards to the latter point, this study poses the working hypothesis that industrial heritage can function as a tool for cultural sustainability, which allows for deconcentration away from historic city centers subjected to significant overtourism. To verify this hypothesis, a methodology has been designed based on the selection of specific indicators and the creation of maps, taking as reference data from the Tripadvisor travel portal. The results obtained are truly encouraging, and it would be interesting to expand this study by incorporating new case studies to allow us to discern additional patterns of behavior around urban industrial tourism.

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An Exploratory Analysis of Museum Attributes from the Perspective of Tourists and Residents: The Case of Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, Spain

Societies ◽

10.3390/soc11020064 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 64

Author(s):

Alicia Orea-Giner ◽

Jorge Calero-Sanz ◽

Carmen De-Pablos-Heredero ◽

Trinidad Vacas-Guerrero

Keyword(s):

Choice Experiment ◽

Local Community ◽

National Museum ◽

Visitor Experience ◽

Convenience Sample ◽

Cultural Sustainability ◽

Museum Management ◽

Visitor Perceptions ◽

Subjective Value ◽

Attribute Evaluation

Attribute evaluation provides an understanding of the perceived quality and subjective value of the museum visitor experience. The principal contribution of this paper is to analyze the attributes perceived by tourists and the local community (Madrid residents) of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (Madrid, Spain), utilizing the results from choice experiment and willingness-to-pay questionnaires. To analyze in depth the assessment regarding the museum attributes and the visitor perceptions of them, the relevance-determination model was applied. Data collection was achieved with a questionnaire using a convenience sample of international tourists and the local community, providing a total of 775 valid surveys. The results of the application of the relevance-determination analysis (RDA) show that there are two types of attributes: higher-impact core and lower-importance attributes. The attributes with the highest subjective value perceived by interviewed tourists and interviewed residents are the location, the building, and the permanent collection. These results show that there are substantial differences between the perception and appreciation of these attributes by interviewed residents and interviewed tourists. The results provide valuable information that can be applied in practice to devise strategies for economic and socio-cultural sustainability aimed at improving decision-making in museum management.

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Cultural Sustainability in University Students’ Flamenco Music Event Attendance: A Neural Networks Approach

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13052911 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (5) ◽

pp. 2911

Author(s):

Jesús Manuel De Sancha-Navarro ◽

Juan Lara-Rubio ◽

María Dolores Oliver-Alfonso ◽

Luis Palma-Martos

Keyword(s):

University Students ◽

Cultural Capital ◽

Research Work ◽

Cultural Consumption ◽

Cultural Sustainability ◽

Intangible Heritage ◽

Live Music ◽

Socioeconomic Profile ◽

The One ◽

The Relationship

University students consume live music; however, almost 40% declare that they have never attended a flamenco show, an intangible heritage of humankind. Numerous studies have shown that cultural capital and socioeconomic profile, among other factors, are variables that influence cultural consumption, and therefore, cultural sustainability. Considering the relationship between several variables, this paper pursues a double objective. On the one hand, identifying the factors that influence attendance at flamenco shows, and on the other, proposing a predictive model that quantifies the likelihood of an individual attending a flamenco show. To this end, we analyse flamenco consumption by means of a survey conducted on 452 university students, using Multilayer Perceptrom (a non-parametric model), a methodology based on an artificial neural network. Our results confirm the importance of cultural capital, as well as personal and external factors, among other. The findings of this research work are of potential interest for management and planning of cultural events, as well as to promote cultural sustainability.

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Reinforcement Learning Approaches in Social Robotics

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21041292 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 1292

Author(s):

Neziha Akalin ◽

Amy Loutfi

Keyword(s):

Reinforcement Learning ◽

Real World ◽

Social Robotics ◽

Research Field ◽

Social Robots ◽

Learning Approaches ◽

Reward Function ◽

Optimal Behavior ◽

Learning Challenges ◽

Starting Point

This article surveys reinforcement learning approaches in social robotics. Reinforcement learning is a framework for decision-making problems in which an agent interacts through trial-and-error with its environment to discover an optimal behavior. Since interaction is a key component in both reinforcement learning and social robotics, it can be a well-suited approach for real-world interactions with physically embodied social robots. The scope of the paper is focused particularly on studies that include social physical robots and real-world human-robot interactions with users. We present a thorough analysis of reinforcement learning approaches in social robotics. In addition to a survey, we categorize existent reinforcement learning approaches based on the used method and the design of the reward mechanisms. Moreover, since communication capability is a prominent feature of social robots, we discuss and group the papers based on the communication medium used for reward formulation. Considering the importance of designing the reward function, we also provide a categorization of the papers based on the nature of the reward. This categorization includes three major themes: interactive reinforcement learning, intrinsically motivated methods, and task performance-driven methods. The benefits and challenges of reinforcement learning in social robotics, evaluation methods of the papers regarding whether or not they use subjective and algorithmic measures, a discussion in the view of real-world reinforcement learning challenges and proposed solutions, the points that remain to be explored, including the approaches that have thus far received less attention is also given in the paper. Thus, this paper aims to become a starting point for researchers interested in using and applying reinforcement learning methods in this particular research field.

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Changes of Spatial Characteristics: Socio-Cultural Sustainability in Historical Neighborhood in Beijing, China

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13116212 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (11) ◽

pp. 6212

Author(s):

Huiming Liu ◽

Bin Li

Keyword(s):

Open Space ◽

Morphological Characteristics ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

City Development ◽

Original Design ◽

Spatial Characteristics ◽

Spatial Continuity ◽

Cultural Sustainability ◽

The City ◽

Beijing China

This paper uses a typological approach as a tool to establish an analytical framework from a physical perspective to understand ‘place‘ and to identify key spatial characteristics that could adapt to local needs to deliver socio-cultural sustainability. Six representative housing types with their spaces and uses that were introduced in a historic neighborhood in Beijing, China are selected as case studies. Their morphological characteristics at the building, open space and neighborhood scales are examined, and typological transformations among the cases in terms of the degree of spatial continuity are identified. The paper proposes an analytical framework consisting of fifteen indicators to assess socio-cultural sustainability at the different morphological scales (building, open space and block/neighborhood) of the residents of the six cases. The score of changes from its original design is brought into calculations of continuities of spatial characteristics, which present the transitions and transformations of morphological characteristics in relation to adaptation of local needs and uses. The analysis results show that the spatial characteristics were changed when political-socioeconomic ideologies changed, and local needs and uses were transformed to follow these mutations, and finally, the methods of use in different morphological scales mostly differed from historical norms. Although the continuities of spatial characteristics were significantly changed, they are positively and continually accommodating the transformations and transitions of local needs and uses. On the other hand, the invariant spatial characteristics are important, which last despite transformation of the city development and changing of political-social-economic ideologies, and could be maintained for future development to enhance sociocultural sustainability.

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