Death in Colonial North America: Cross-Cultural Encounters

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik R. Seeman
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Labor Exploitation ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Colonial Encounter

Death is universal yet is experienced in culturally specific ways. Because of this, when individuals in colonial North America encountered others from different cultural backgrounds, they were curious about how unfamiliar mortuary practices resembled and differed from their own. This curiosity spawned communication across cultural boundaries. The resulting knowledge sometimes facilitated peaceful relations between groups, while at other times it helped one group dominate another. Colonial North Americans endured disastrously high mortality rates caused by disease, warfare, and labor exploitation. At the same time, death was central to the religions of all residents: Indians, Africans, and Europeans. Deathways thus offer an unmatched way to understand the colonial encounter from the participants’ perspectives.

Feasting at Roca: Cross-Cultural Encounters and Society in the Southern Adriatic during the Late Bronze Age

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Iacono
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Social Encounters

This study examines some assumptions related to Late Bronze Age interaction between the Aegean world and central Mediterranean societies. It asserts that, contrary to what is often assumed, this relationship was extremely important and had considerable social consequences. It is argued that such an importance can be appreciated only by acknowledging that interaction is constituted by real-world social encounters. On the basis of this insight, the contextual evidence from the site of Roca in Apulia is analysed. It is proposed that archaeological remains here represent a series of public events—i.e. large feasts—possibly entailing the participation of people of different cultural backgrounds and in which a subtle strategy of representation of relative distance and closeness was adopted to promote interests within Roca's community. Such interests are interpreted with reference to the increasing connections between the eastern and western portions of the Mediterranean, substantiated in the circulation of metal and pottery models and types.

scholarly journals Allegory Encourages Self-reflection and Multi-cultural Understanding in a College Communications Course

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Bettina P. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Asian Students ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Significant Interest ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
Student Reactions

Urban college students (n=179) from diverse cultural backgrounds and regions received instruction in the writing of short narratives, or allegories, to express generalizations about human behavior. At the beginning of the three-month semester students were given samples of allegories concluding with a lesson and then were asked to create an original allegory. These original narratives were analyzed and their conclusions categorized. Students’ allegories expressed diverse cultural values although there were cross-cultural similarities. Findings indicated Asian students expressed significant interest in attaining wisdom and a balanced life over time. Latinx emphasized attaining self-respect, love, loyalty and fair treatment. Eastern Europeans were concerned over breaking a trust. Being deceived by appearances was a mutual concern for North Americans, Latinx and Europeans. At the semester’s end a survey of student reactions indicated students gained increased cultural understanding from sharing their work. Implications are that allegory may be used as a literary device to achieve self-reflection and understanding of other cultures.

South Sea Tales

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
South Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Material

The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of ‘The Beach at Falesé, the folktale plots of ‘The Bottle Imp’ and ‘The Isle of Voices’, and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in The Ebb-Tide. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection - the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume - Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross- cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.

I See Myself through My Avatar: Evidence from East Asia and North America for Acculturated Effects on Virtual Representation Preference

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunwoo Yoon ◽  
Patrick T. Vargas
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Future Research ◽  
East Asians ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
North Americans ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Quasi Experiment

In the present research we argue that avatars, as identity containers, can mirror people’s self-concepts. Research in cultural psychology suggests that East Asians tend to be more tolerant of contradictions and that they more easily adjust their self-concepts in accordance with changing contexts compared to North Americans (see Heine 2001). We therefore assume that preferred forms of avatars among East Asians and North Americans are different because of this self-concept variability across cultures. We conducted a quasi-experiment to explore how people in the two cultures differently evaluate two forms of avatars, human-like and cartoon-like avatars, in terms of likeability and preference. We found that East Asians rated cartoon-like avatars more favourably than North Americans. Moreover, compared to North Americans, East Asians preferred cartoon-like avatars to human-like avatars for their hypothetical avatars to play games. We conclude by discussing implications for future research.

scholarly journals A study of ethnic perception gap on consumer boycott of Korean and Canadian University students

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mie Kyung Jae ◽  
Hyang Ran Jeon
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Parent Company ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Corporate Accountability ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Korean Students ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison ◽  
Influential Variable

Purpose In this paper, the authors aim to offer a cross-cultural comparison of the boycott intentions of university students in Canada with those of students in Korea. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from students at Inje University and York University via self-administered questionnaire. A t-test found that Canadian students’ answers showed significantly greater scores in ethnocentrism, boycott attitudes prior to reading the target article and motivations related to self-enhancement compared to those acquired from Korean students. However, the motivation of counterarguments and the boycott intentions of Korean students’ toward Rogers, the parent company of Maclean’s magazine, showed significantly higher scores than those gained from Canadian students. Findings The boycott case used in the study is Maclean’s magazine, a Canadian news magazine, which published a controversial article called, “Too Asian? Some frosh don’t want to study at an “Asian” University”. A noticeable gap in each group of students’ boycott attitude and intentions toward Rogers, the parent company of Maclean’s magazine was found. Originality/value In the multiple regression analysis, the boycott motivation of self-enhancement was the most influential variable on boycott intentions. The boycott case examined in this paper is a practical case study of cross-national grouping as well as the perceptional difference of the locus of corporate accountability that comes from cross-cultural backgrounds.

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