scholarly journals In Search of a Pan-European Culture: European Values, Beliefs, and Models of Selfhood in Global Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 868-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian L. Vignoles ◽  
Peter B. Smith ◽  
Maja Becker ◽  
Matthew J. Easterbrook

What, if any, are the common cultural characteristics that distinguish European societies and groups when viewed against a backdrop of global cultural variation? We sought to identify any shared features of European cultures through secondary multilevel analyses of two large datasets that together provided measures of cultural values, beliefs, and models of selfhood from samples in all inhabited continents. Although heterogeneous in many respects—including the value dimension of autonomy versus embeddedness—European samples shared two distinctive features: a decontextualized representation of personhood and a cultural model of selfhood emphasizing difference from others. Compared with samples from other regions, European samples on average also emphasized egalitarianism and harmony values, commitment to others in their models of selfhood, and an immutable concept of personhood, but not uniformly so. We interpret these findings in relation to a Durkheimian model of individualism.

Author(s):  
Volodymyr Savelʹyev ◽  
Olena Yatsenko

The range of educational services is really wide. The main reasons and goals of people's universities are as follows: the formation of knowledge, the formation of beliefs, the formation of will, the formation of man. Its motivation is a return to rationalism in everyday life and "concern" for the irrational. The establishment of adult education centers is an opportunity to promote democracy. Such education forms an awareness of the political, social and cultural that can serve as the basis for a true revival of European values. The modern globalized world needs a democratic education that is not limited to national borders and the national idea. For a commonly desired future, there is a need for a broader, panoramic and forward-looking view of European values and the integrative content of European culture. Adult education centers work with traditional universities, non-governmental organizations, local associations to unite society, unite the community for a fairer and more stable social life. Such centers perform the functions of integration and translation of cultural values, universal values of humankind, teach people to be effective in the unity of diversity: uniting people of different talents, competencies and skills into an effective organism of social order.


Author(s):  
Peter Francis Kornicki

This chapter focuses on the language rupture in East Asia, that is to say, the loss of the common written language known as literary Chinese or Sinitic. The gradual replacement of the cosmopolitan language Sinitic by the written vernaculars was a process similar in some ways to the replacement of Latin and Sanskrit by the European and South Asian vernaculars, as argued by Sheldon Pollock. However, Sinitic was not a spoken language, so the oral dimension of vernacularization cannot be ignored. Charles Ferguson’s notion of diglossia has been much discussed, but the problem in the context of East Asia is that the only spoken languages were the vernaculars and that Sinitic was capable of being read in any dialect of Chinese as well as in the vernaculars used in neighbouring societies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002202212098237
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Messner

The past few decades have seen an explosion in the interest in cultural differences and their impact on many aspects of business management. A noticeable feature of most academic studies and practitioner approaches is the predominant use of national boundaries and group-level averages as delimiters and proxies for culture. However, this largely ignores the significance that intra-country differences and cross-country similarities can have for identifying psychological phenomena. This article argues for the importance of considering intra-cultural variation for establishing connections between two different cultures. It uses empirical distributions of cultural values that occur naturally within a country, thereby making intracultural differences interpretable and actionable. For measuring cross-country differences, the Gini/Weitzman overlapping index and the Kullback-Leibler divergence coefficient are used as difference measures between two distributions. The properties of these measures in comparison to traditional group-level mean-based distance measures are analyzed, and implications for cross-cultural and international business research are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mladen Mladenov ◽  

The article presents some historical and theoretical aspects defining intermedia as an aesthetic, cultural and social phenomenon. Its appearance in the 1950s and 1960s was triggered by the changed attitude towards art in the conditions of growing technology in society and the blurring of boundaries between different arts. The concept of intermedia is created by a group of artists who unite under the common name Fluxus, meaning „ flow of life“. Group Manifesto – Dick Higgins, composer, poet, publisher - formulates intermedia as a merger into a „ flow“ of different ways of artistic expression and means of communication. The most important distinctive features of intermedia – accessibility, non-commerciality, freedom, social engagement, compliance of modern lifestyle and the new media in it are traced. It explains the role of this aesthetic practice as an instrument in creating the hypertext of contemporary art.


Author(s):  
MOHD FARADI MOHAMED GHAZALI ◽  
NORDIANA AB. JABAR

Lirik lagu merupakan salah satu manifestasi sastera yang mencerminkan ketinggian nilai budaya masyarakat pendukungnya. Lirik dan irama lagu semestinya nusa yang berpisah tiada dan menjadi hiburan dalam kehidupan manusia. Menerusi lirik lagu ia bukan hanya sekadar mengulit halwa telinga dan memberi hiburan semata-mata, malah dalam seni kata lagu juga terkandung dengan nilai, moral dan pengajaran yang mampu memberi didikan dalam membentuk keperibadian seseorang. Kepelbagaian genre dan bait lagu yang terhasil menunjukkan variasi kebudayaan daripada pengkarya yang menunjukkan kreadiliti keunggulan dalam sesuatu penciptaan karya. Kajian ini dilaksanakan sebagai merungkai persoalan tentang peranan lirik lagu terpilih dalam mengembleng unsur positif terhadap masyarakat pendengar. Selain itu, kajian ini juga meneliti bait-bait lirik lagu Tolong Ingatkan Aku, yang dihasil dan dinyanyikan oleh Ana Raffali sehingga diangkat mempunyai nilai komersial kerana telah dijulang sebagai juara lagu dalam Anugerah Juara Lagu Ke-25. Kaedah kajian ini dijalankan secara kualitatif atau kepustakaan melalui penelitian bahan seperti artikel, buku, majalah dan tesis. Teori resepsi dijadikan sebagai sandaran untuk meneliti dan merungkaikan setiap bait lirik lagu ini yang merangkumi aspek gaya bahasa, teknik penulisan, unsur kesamaran, bauran kiasan dan perlambangan atau semiotik bagi membuktikan falsafah gaya penyampaian pengkarya. Hasil kajian mendapati lagu Tolong Ingatkan Aku merupakan sebuah karya berbentuk lagu puisi yang terhasil dalam penyampaian implisit sebagai memberi pesanan, sindiran halus dan nasihat terhadap kehidupan manusia agar tidak alpa tatkala berada di kemuncak kegemilangan.   The lyrics of the song are one of the literary manifestations that reflect the high cultural values of its supporters. The lyrics and the rhythm of the song should not be separated tomb and become an entertainment in human life. Through the lyrics of the song it is not just about listening to the ears and providing entertainment, but also in the art of the word, the song also contains the values, morals and teachings that can provide education in shaping one's personality. The variety of genres and bytes of the resulting song reflects the cultural variation of the work that exemplifies the mastery of excellence in the creation of a work. This study was conducted to address the question of the role of selected song lyrics in shaping positive elements in the listening community. In addition, this study also examines the lyrics of the song Tolong Ingatkan Aku, which was produced and sung by Ana Raffali until it was commercially recognized for being nominated for a song of the year in the 25th Anugerah Juara Lagu. This research method is conducted qualitatively or literature review through the study of materials such as articles, books, magazines and theses. The reception theory was used as a guideline to examine and interpret every verse of the lyrics of this song, which included aspects of language style, writing techniques, ambiguity, metaphorical and symbolic or semiotic elements to prove the artist's delivery style philosophy. The result of the study found the song Tolong Ingatkan Aku is a work of poetic form that results in implicit delivery as giving orders, delicate satire and advice to human life to avoid the harp while at its peak.


2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 342-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra A. García ◽  
Julie A. Zuñiga ◽  
Czarina Lagon

People from non-White racial groups and other underserved populations, including Latinos, are frequently reluctant to participate in research. Yet their participation into research is foundational to producing information that researchers and health care providers need to address health disparities. The purpose of this article is to describe challenges we have encountered along with culturally relevant strategies we used in five research studies to recruit Mexican American participants from community settings, some of whom were also of low socioeconomic status. We found that the most effective recruitment strategies reflect the common cultural values of personalismo, simpátia, confianza, respeto, and familismo.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi

AbstractHow do migration and acculturation (i.e. psychological or behavioral change resulting from migration) affect within- and between-group cultural variation? Here I answer this question by drawing analogies between genetic and cultural evolution. Population genetic models show that migration rapidly breaks down between-group genetic structure. In cultural evolution, however, migrants or their descendants can acculturate to local behaviors via social learning processes such as conformity, potentially preventing migration from eliminating between-group cultural variation. An analysis of the empirical literature on migration suggests that acculturation is common, with second and subsequent migrant generations shifting, sometimes substantially, towards the cultural values of the adopted society. Yet there is little understanding of the individual-level dynamics that underlie these population-level shifts. To explore this formally, I present models quantifying the effect of migration and acculturation on between-group cultural variation, for both neutral and costly cooperative traits. In the models, between-group cultural variation, measured using F statistics, is eliminated by migration and maintained by conformist acculturation. The extent of acculturation is determined by the strength of conformist bias and the number of demonstrators from whom individuals learn. Acculturation is countered by assortation, the tendency for individuals to preferentially interact with culturally-similar others. Unlike neutral traits, cooperative traits can additionally be maintained by payoff-biased social learning, but only in the presence of strong sanctioning institutions. Overall, the models show that surprisingly little conformist acculturation is required to maintain realistic amounts of between-group cultural diversity. While these models provide insight into the potential dynamics of acculturation and migration in cultural evolution, they also highlight the need for more empirical research into the individual-level learning biases that underlie migrant acculturation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Vanheste

T. S. Eliot was the founder and editor of the Criterion, a literary and cultural review with a European focus that was published during the interwar period. The Criterion functioned as a platform for intellectuals with a shared perception of European culture and European identity. It was part of a network of European periodicals that facilitated an intellectual exchange between writers and thinkers with a common orientation. Examples of other reviews in the Criterion network were the Nouvelle Revue Française from France, La Fiera Letteraria and Il Convegno from Italy, the Revista de Occidente from Spain (edited by José Ortega y Gasset), and Die Neue Rundschau, the Europäische Revue, and the Neue deutsche Beiträge (edited by Hugo von Hofmannsthal) from Germany. In this article, I investigate the specific role the Criterion network of reviews and intellectuals played as an infrastructure for the dissemination of ideas about European culture during the interwar period. I also discuss the content of these ideas about the ‘European mind’. As to the latter, I suggest that Eliot positioned himself as well as his magazine in the European tradition of humanist thinking. Unfortunately, the Criterion’s ambition for a reconstruction of the European mind would dissipate as the European orientation of the 1920s was displaced by the political events of the 1930s. Eliot and his Criterion network expressed a Europeanism that has often been overlooked in recent research. The ideas discussed in this network remain interesting in our time, in which discussions about European values and European identity are topical. What is also highly interesting is the role cultural reviews played during the interwar period as a medium for exchanging such ideas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibylle Baumbach

This essay focuses on the question of what constitutes “new European” literature and explores the potential and pitfalls of concepts such as the “postnational” or “cosmopolitanism” and their impact on European and “new European” literature. Following a brief overview of what has been perceived as “old” versus “new” European literature, it looks back at Europe’s founding myth and Moschus’ image of Europa, more specifically Europa’s dream, to reconsider the cosmopolitanism of European literature and reflect upon both the continuous strife for the postnational and the question of emergence of “new” European literature. Providing a critical outlook with the regard to the promotion and proliferation of new European literature, this essay explores literary genres which seem particularly effective for communicating new European values ideas, especially concepts of transnationalism or cosmopolitanism that are often associated with European culture. In this context, the essay proposes the hybrid genre of the Menippeian satire as an inherently cosmopolitan and transnational genre, which is based upon the continuous crossing of borders without completely overcoming them, and can thus assist the “new European” agenda of literature.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document