scholarly journals “They have no taste in Morocco.” Home furnishing, belonging, and notions of religious (im)perfection among white Dutch and Flemish converts in Morocco

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina ter Laan
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Material Religion ◽  
Home Furnishing ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
West European

AbstractThis article focuses on furnishing practices in the domestic space of the homes of white Flemish and Dutch Muslim female converts to Islam who made hijra (Islamic migration) to Morocco. Fed up with European Islamophobia and longing for a place that supports and strengthens their faith, they decided to emigrate to a Muslim country. However, remarkably, once settled in Morocco, many experience discontent with regard to a perceived “lack of true Islam” in the country. To gain insight into the positions and experiences of these women, I look at how they create a sense of belonging through furnishing practices in the domestic space of their new homes. I am interested in how various senses of belonging are expressed and come together in relation to their construction of religious belonging and place, and are renegotiated through domestic decoration practices. Building on literature on home, transnational migration, conversion, and material religion, I demonstrate that mechanisms of distinction and notions of religious (im)perfection intersect in the organization of the domestic space. Based on ethnographic accounts, I argue that my interlocutors bring a “culturalized” West-European Islam to Morocco, with tastes and sensibilities that jostle uneasily against local Moroccan religious practices but also allows them to repair some of the privileges they lost upon their conversion in their homeland. Lastly, this article shows that it is through the engagement with mundane material forms, but also with absence and empty spaces, that Islam becomes present in their domestic spaces, enhancing the cultivation of their ethical selves.

The value, costs, and meaning of transnational migration in rural Oaxaca, Mexico

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey H. Cohen ◽  
Bernardo Rios ◽  
Lise Byars
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Southern Mexico ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
The Social

Rural Oaxacan migrants are defined as quintessential transnational movers, people who access rich social networks as they move between rural hometowns in southern Mexico and the urban centers of southern California.  The social and cultural ties that characterize Oaxacan movers are critical to successful migrations, lead to jobs and create a sense of belonging and shared identity.  Nevertheless, migration has socio-cultural, economic and psychological costs.  To move the discussion away from a framework that emphasizes the positive transnational qualities of movement we focus on the costs of migration for Oaxacans from the state’s central valleys and Sierra regions.   

Livestreaming from the bedroom: Performing intimacy through domestic space on Twitch

2020 ◽  
pp. 135485652097832
Author(s):  
Bonnie ‘Bo’ Ruberg ◽  
Daniel Lark
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Form ◽  
Cultural Connotations

This article looks at the appearance of domestic spaces on the popular livestreaming platform Twitch.tv, with a focus on livestreams that appear to be shot in streamers’ bedrooms. Many Twitch streamers broadcast from their homes, making domestic space central to questions of placemaking for this rapidly growing digital media form. Within the home, bedrooms merit particular attention because they carry particular cultural connotations; they are associated with intimacy, embodiment, and erotics. Drawing from observations of gaming and nongaming streams, we map where bedrooms do and do not appear on Twitch. We locate the majority of bedrooms in categories that foreground connections between streamers and viewers, like Just Chatting, Music & Performing Arts, and autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). By contrast, across a wide range of video game genres, bedrooms remain largely absent from gaming streams. The presence of bedrooms on Twitch also breaks down along gender lines, with women streaming being far more likely to broadcast from their bedrooms than men. Here, we build from existing research on both livestreaming and digital placemaking to argue for an understanding of place on Twitch as fundamentally performative. This performance is inherently gendered and bound up with the affective labor of streaming. In addition, we demonstrate how the bedroom, even when it does not appear on screen, can be understood as a ‘structuring logic’ of placemaking on Twitch. Given the history of livestreaming, which grows out of women’s experiments with online ‘lifecasting’, the bedroom sets expectations for the type of spatial and emotional access a stream is imagined to offer viewers. In this sense, the absence of bedrooms in gaming streams can be understood as a disavowal of intimate domestic space: an attempt by predominantly male streamers to distance themselves from the implicit parallels between livestreaming and practices like webcam modeling.

scholarly journals Sustaining Trajectories

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-310
Author(s):  
Lamont D. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Degree Attainment ◽  
Academic Majors ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Social Work Programs ◽  
Social Work Program ◽  
Insight Into

While the literature is replete with studies on persistence among students across academic majors, few studies examine the nature of persistence among Black males enrolled in baccalaureate social work programs. This qualitative study offers some insight into how a sample of four Black male graduates from an accredited baccalaureate social work program persisted toward degree attainment. Three themes emerged from this study: (a) family encouragement and support, (b) sense of belonging, and (c) presence of Black male professors. Findings suggest the need for social work educators to consider programmatic initiatives acknowledging the role of families in persistence efforts, facilitating connectedness, and recruiting Black male professors or other Black male mentors.

scholarly journals Illicit Motherhood: Recrafting Postcolonial Feminist Resistance in Edna O’Brien’s The Love Object and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Hell-Heaven

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Dibyadyuti Roy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Literary Output ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist

Cultural constructions of passive motherhood, especially within domestic spaces, gained currency in India and Ireland due to their shared colonial history, as well as the influence of anti-colonial masculinist nationalism on the social imaginary of these two nations. However, beginning from the latter half of the nineteenth century, postcolonial literary voices have not only challenged the traditional gendering of public and private spaces but also interrogated docile constructions of womanhood, particularly essentialized representations of maternity. Domestic spaces have been critical narrative motifs in these postcolonial texts through simultaneously embodying patriarchal domination but also as sites where feminist resistance can be actualized by “transgress(ing) traditional views of … the home, as a static immobile place of oppression”. This paper, through a comparative analysis of maternal characters in Edna O’Brien’s The Love Object and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Hell-Heaven, argues that socially disapproved/illicit relationships in these two representative postcolonial Irish and Indian narratives function as matricentric feminist tactics that subvert limiting notions of both domestic spaces and gendered liminal postcolonial subjectivities. I highlight that within the context of male-centered colonial and nationalist literature, the trope of maternity configures the domestic-space as the “rightful place” for the existence of the feminine entity. Thus, when postcolonial feminist fiction reverses this tradition through constructing the “home and the female-body” as sites of possible resistance, it is a counter against dual oppression: both colonialism and patriarchy. My intervention further underscores the need for sustained conversations between the literary output of India and Ireland, within Postcolonial Literary Studies, with a particular acknowledgement for space and gender as pivotal categories in the “cultural analysis of empire”.

Birds of a Feather Do Not Always Flock Together: A Critical Analysis of Latina Engineers and Their Involvement in Student Organizations

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa M. Banda ◽  
Alonzo M. Flowers
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Student Organizations ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Engineering Majors ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Minority Females ◽  
Insight Into

While an abundance of literature addresses undergraduate students’ lack of success in engineering programs, fewer studies examine the persistence of minority females, especially of Latinas. This study employed a qualitative method of inquiry to gain insight into the reasons why Latina undergraduate engineering majors sought membership in student organizations. Data analysis emerged the following findings: (a) fulfilling academic and social needs, (b) seeking a sense of belonging, and (c) choosing not to coalesce on the basis of race. The categorization of the aforementioned broad themes provides greater insight into the reasons why Latinas sought membership in certain student organizations.

From Royal Prayer Books to Common Prayers: Religious Practices in Late Medieval and Early Modern Poland

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 180-188
Author(s):  
Urszula Borkowska Osu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Christian Education ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Liturgical Year ◽  
The World ◽  
Prayer Books ◽  
Insight Into

The Union between Poland and Lithuania, whose foundations were laid in 1386 with the baptism of Jagiello, the pagan grand duke of Lithuania, and his marriage to Queen Jadwiga (Hedwig), daughter of the last king of Poland, marked the beginning of a systematic Christianization to which the pagan Lithuanians offered remarkably little resistance. Recent research on religious practice under the ruling Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland and Lithuania (1386–1572) shows that royal piety was often designed to elicit participation at a popular level, cementing both the diffusion of Christian involvement across the newly unified kingdom, and in turn the role of the royal family at its centre. Surviving royal accounts and prayer books can offer a privileged insight into the personal religion of the monarchs and their relatives. These accounts, although only partially extant, constitute an objective source by which religious practices may be understood. Created for bureaucratic reasons, to keep order in the Treasurer’s Chancery, rather than to present the king as pious, they detail expenses for masses and other opera pia of the king and his family, recording the rhythm of royal religious practices – for the day, the week and the whole liturgical year. The accounts also provide evidence of sacramental practices and royal almsgiving. Pious literature composed at the behest of the Jagiellons, combined with extant pedagogical treatises and didactic sermons delivered in the presence of the monarch, is particularly valuable in admitting us into the world of royal Christian education.

scholarly journals Narratives of Territorial Cohesion and Economic Growth: A Comparative Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 218-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatjana Boczy ◽  
Marta Margherita Cordini
Keyword(s):  
Regional Planning ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Local Economic Development ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Spatial Diversity ◽  
Sustainable Growth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Eu

The ability of regions to develop new productive capacities and to address the needs of inhabitants has become central in the EU agenda to trigger cohesion, sustainable growth and equality. This ability does not derive only from material assets but also from cognitive ones, such as trust, ways of cooperation, governance cultures and sense of belonging. Cognitive aspects are in fact fundamental in making the most of the greater potential of territorial features. Using the concept of territorial capital, we investigate this mix between material and cognitive assets in regional planning discourses. Territorial capital raises issues of spatial diversity and inequality as questions of access. Starting from the theoretical framework suggested by Servillo, Atkinson, and Russo (2011) on attractiveness and mobilization strategies, this article addresses the issue of territorial inequalities on material and cognitive bases by analysing mobilization discourses on territorial capital at a regional scale in Italy and Austria. The investigation of three case studies at differentterritorial scales (urban, suburban and rural) in each country allows both intra-regional and inter-regional comparison. By mapping the discursive structures of local economic development documents and key-actor interviews, we analyse the different mobilizing strategies in these contexts. Comparing inter-regional mobilization provides an in-depth insight into differences as well as similarities of cohesion strategies in regional planning on multiple levels. This can spark new territorially sensitive schemes for further sustainable socio-economic and equalising development that connects with the social structures on the ground.

scholarly journals I Walk With Vanessa: A Story About a Simple Act of Kindness by Kerascoët

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri Beach
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Children's Books ◽  
Children’S Books ◽  
Chain Reaction ◽  
Distinct Colour ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Insight Into

Kerascoët. I Walk With Vanessa: A Story About a Simple Act of Kindness. Random House Children’s Books, 2018. This is a wordless picture book from French illustrators, Kerascoët. This husband and wife duo, Marie and Sébastien solely illustrate, without the use of text, the ability to combat bullying in modern society. They accomplish this difficult task by placing emphasis on the characters’ emotions through the use of distinct colour throughout the images, clearly depicting the story’s message. Because there are no words, this amazing resource provides students with the ability to interpret the book individually, creating unique perspectives such as an idea, "who else needs help other than Vanessa?" This book provides fresh insight into how society can unite together by creating a positive chain reaction when faced with bullying. Throughout the illustrations, this team accomplished this task extremely well, by providing the audience with diverse characters, creating a sense of belonging. This allows the reader to view the characters as if they were looking at their own reflection, seeing into their lives, therefore enabling them to relate to the book. With this, I truly believe that it is essential for children's books to act either as a window or a mirror for children.      Overall, I feel that this book is ideal for a target audience of pre-kindergarten to grade two. The drawings are simplistic, with few details, allowing children to predict the storyline easily, leaving a thorough investigation of the book. I cannot wait for students to "read" this book to me.  Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Terri Beach

scholarly journals Love, Betrayal and Violence: A Female Subjugation in Shakespeare’s Play Othello

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Dr. ABHA SINGH
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
Honour Killing ◽  
Indian Setting ◽  
Insight Into

 Women across historical, social and religious boundaries have been pitted against the asphyxiating patriarchal norms and rigid cultural constructs which bestow power, dominance and freedom on man, and push her into the margins of both, society and domestic space. The current paper attempts to explore the mechanics of domestic violence, and its treatment in William Shakespeare’s Othello. The aim is to ascertain how the playwright addresses the issue of crime against women within the familial and social world of his times. Based on the theme of power politics within domestic hierarchy, the play not only lays bare a grim picture of domestic abuse and violence against women in matrimony, but also offers an insight into the psyche of abusers. The dialectics of power struggle in the play written in the 16thcentury is a reflection of the playwright’s sensitivity towards the existential reality of women of his times and his negation of male hegemony and criminal violence in conjugal relations. . Vishal Bhardwaj adopted Othello to make the film Omkara in 2006. Bringing the 17th century Elizabethan society in the 21st century Indian setting, Bhardwaj deftly pointed out the present scenario. There are numerous cases of a father’s restriction on daughter’s freedom of choice, brother’s threat to the sister for not to disgrace their family apart from ‘honour killing’. This continues even in the household of her ‘soul mate’ for whom she dares to defy every challenge. The predicament of modern Desdemona’s in the hand of Othello bears the testimony of Shakespeare’s immortal creation and its never ending relevance. The universality of Shakespeare is still rejoiced due to his experiment on the core region of the human psyche which fails to alter even with high-tech service or ‘progressive’ education.  

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