White Skin Privilege: Modern Myth, Forgotten Past

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Peter Frost
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Selection Pressure ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
White Skin ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Preference ◽  
European Women ◽  
Modern Myth

Abstract European women dominate images of beauty, presumably because Europe has dominated the world for the past few centuries. Yet this presumed cause poorly explains “white slavery”—the commodification of European women for export at a time when their continent was much less dominant. Actually, there has long been a cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women, with the notable exception of modern Western culture. This cultural norm mirrors a physical norm: skin sexually differentiates at puberty, becoming fairer in girls, and browner and ruddier in boys. Europeans are also distinguished by a palette of hair and eye colors that likewise differs between the sexes, with women more often having the brighter hues. In general, the European phenotype, especially its brightly colored features, seems to be due to a selection pressure that targeted women, apparently sexual selection. Female beauty is thus a product of social relations, but not solely those of recent times.

scholarly journals A STUDY OF FEMALE IN CONTEXT TO DREAM VERSUS REALITY IN BHARATI MUKHERJEE’S JASMINE

2017 ◽  
pp. 192-198
Author(s):  
Jagdish Joshi ◽  
Surekha Patil
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Bharati Mukherjee ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Main Protagonist ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The U.S

Female has been dominated by patriarchal society since ages. Her voice does not have any significance or importance in Indian society. Women have all potentialities and abilities like men; still they are not recognized or appreciated as equal to men. This is the predicament of women who confine women in restricted social codes and norms. Her individual self has no reorganization in the patriarchal society. Women’s duties were confined to the specific areas especially household works. Her dreams never convert into reality due to the rigid mindset of patriarchal. Bharti Mukherjee is one of the eminent female writers who write about women and the problems faced by them and so that we can say women are at the center of her texts. Bharati Mukherjee deals with the themes of Indian Women particularly the problem of cross-cultural predicament and crisis. Her work has helped to break the silence on some women's issues which were not discussed in the past due to the fear of prevailing attitude of patriarchy. To raise people's awareness, she writes particular about what she sees around her. She writes how the female protagonist tries to tackle the problem of loss of endeavors to assume a new identity in the U.S. She leaves her country to fulfill her dreams and wishes but reality was totally different. Mukherjee introduces us to the various changes that her novel’s main protagonist Jasmine goes through, as she journeys from the world of rural Indian Punjab to that of America’s Mid-West, discovering her American dream in the process. At last she realizes that self-independence is not to be an Indian or American but to be at peace with herself.

“Metempsychosis” and “Marvelous Affinities”: Re-Imagining the Past in the Ilyāḏah by Sulaymān al-Bustānī (1904) and in the Divano di ʿOmar ben al-Fared by Pietro Valerga (1874)

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-298
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Benigni
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Histories

Abstract This article focuses on the image of the past in two translations produced in the contexts of the Arab Nahḍah and of the Italian Risorgimento. The first translation is the Italian rendering of ʿOmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s mystical poems, published in 1872 by Pietro Valerga (1821-1903). The second is the Arabic translation of the Iliad, published in 1902 by Sulaymān al-Bustānī (1856-1925). Both translators refer to the past as a translation strategy: Pietro Valerga reads Ibn al-Fāriḍ through the verses of Petrarch and, in his work’s introduction, emphasizes the transmission of medieval Arab poetry to Italy; Sulaymān al-Bustānī reconstructs the world of the Iliad through Arabic poetic tradition and compares Greece to the ǧāhiliyyah (pre-Islamic age). The article sheds light on the potential of translation as a space of re-imagination of the past and invites us to read the works as two distinct, yet akin, attempts to express original interpretations of Italian and Arabic literary histories based on syncretism and cross-cultural translatability.

Fragmenting Hominins and the Presencing of Early Palaeolithic Social Worlds

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chapman ◽  
Bisserka Gaydarska
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Cognitive Evolution ◽  
David Bohm ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Distributed Elements

This chapter introduces the fragmentation premise — the idea that the deliberate breakage of a complete object and the re-use of the resultant fragments as new and separate objects ‘after the break’ was a common practice in the past. It also summarizes the main implications of the fragmentation premise for the study of enchained social relations and of the creation and development of personhood in the past. Enchained relations connect the distributed elements of a person's social identity using material culture. These concepts of fragmentation, enchainment and fractality are used to think through some of the earliest remains of objects in the world. Following the philosopher David Bohm, the discussion supports the co-evolution of fragmentation in both consciousness and in objects, and compares Bohm's three-stage ideas to Mithen's model of cognitive evolution and Donald's model of external symbolic storage.

scholarly journals Reality bytes. Hybrid inter-faces, hybrid selves

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Mario Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

Kyoto UniversityOver the past 20 years, computer games have become a very integral part of consumptive practices, acting as a guide to mediate multiple selves. This sets the context for this paper, a philosophical inquiry into the creation and mediation of ‘selves’ through the consumption of Japanese computer games, taking a detailed look at some of the symbolic and semiotic structures that permeate game structures. Games placed in the realm of human creativity and normative freedoms are as argued in this paper, a subtle form of the Deleuzian concept of assemblage.This paper argues that the ‘self’ as seen through computer games manifest multiple ‘selves’ that highlight the fluidity of identities which are being fabricated, disseminated and transmitted from Japan. Through an analysis of a number of Japanese games popular in Japan and actively consumed abroad, this paper examines an underlying grammar that transcribes the self and how social relations are reworked through technological enquiry. This paper further highlights how computer-dominated social practices that have heavily flowed from Japan have introduced very specific ontological ways of seeing the world to a whole generation of games players residing in other geographical spheres.

scholarly journals The Dark Side of F. Reflections on Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Antisocial Media. How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Jakub Jakubowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Adverse Impact ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

The book takes a natural and necessary direction on the path to the modernization of the critical tradition, choosing Facebook, which has provided numerous reasons to be criticized by the author of this book, and by others. After a relatively long stage of cognitive optimism which prevailed in the discourse on the internet and democracy, this relationship has begun to be looked at with increasing caution and doubt (Loader & Mercea, 2011). With Brexit, Trump and several other ‘phenomena’ around the world, we have become disillusioned about the ability of the internet in its modern incarnation to help us rebuild a badly bruised democracy (Tucker et al., 2017). The book systematically identifies these illusions, accusing Facebook of exerting an adverse impact on social discussion, redistribution of goods, social relations and values, access to reliable information and so on. Using the concept of myth (cf. Barthes), the author argues that Facebook covertly constructs our vision of reality the same way television did in the past.

Comment

1961 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-214
Author(s):  
William J. Goode
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Marriage Patterns ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Cultural Data

The sociologist's apparent bias against historical data is founded in the main on the restricted definition of a “fact” which he has come to accept during the past generation. Having found by tedious and pedestrian work that many popular impressions about social relations in our own time are incorrect, he has become sceptical of the possibility of ascertaining the facts about historical populations whose members can no longer be interviewed or observed. But I sense among my fellow sociologists a diminishing parochialism and for this reason I welcome Lawrence Stone's work on marriage patterns among the English nobility in the 16th and 17th centuries. I should like to weigh his conclusions by reference both to general social science principles and to cross-cultural data.

Reading the Bible through Filipino Eyes

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara E. Bowe
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Filipino Culture ◽  
Western Experience ◽  
The Stranger ◽  
Honor And Shame

This paper presents first a brief introductory reflection on the “stranger as guest”—the strengths and weaknesses of a foreigner's perspective on cultural difference. Part Two presents an analysis of reading the Bible in a Filipino context. Part Three examines the world of the Filipino reader with special attention to three primary characteristics shared by the biblical world and Filipino culture: namely, an emphasis on honor and shame, concern for indebtedness and reciprocity in social relations, and the sense of dyadic personality and corporate consciousness. Part Four employs these insights in some examples of reading the Pauline letters through the eyes of a Filipino. This “reading” demonstrates the richness of cross-cultural (i.e., non-Western) experience as a resource for interpreting biblical texts.

scholarly journals Indonesian Perspective of Wellbeing: A Qualitative Study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herdiyan Maulana ◽  
Patricia Obst ◽  
Nigar Khawaja
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Qualitative Thematic Analysis ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Cultural Research ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Aspects

Cross-cultural research suggests that wellbeing may be experienced differently by distinct populations. While research on wellbeing in non-Western populations has increased, there is limited empirical evidence regarding wellbeing in Indonesia. As the fourth largest country in the world, and with its unique socio-cultural characteristics, the potentially distinctive Indonesian experience of wellbeing has been overlooked by international scholars. The present research investigated the Indonesian perception of wellbeing using a qualitative thematic analysis approach. Thirty Indonesian adults participated in semi structured interviews which focused on their understanding and experience of wellbeing. The analysis revealed a number of keythemes: fulfilment of basic needs; social relations with family and community; and the positive world views of self-acceptance, gratitude, and spirituality as key aspects of wellbeing. Although these overarching themes are commonly reported in wellbeing research, the expression of these themes was unique to the Indonesian context. This study enriches the wellbeing literature and understanding of the experience of wellbeing in the Indonesian context and paves the ways for further research.

The Oxford History of Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Comparisons

The fifth volume of this series offers chapters on the writing of history globally since 1945. Divided into two parts, part one selects and surveys theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches to history, and part two examines select national and regional historiographies throughout the world. It aims at once to provide an authoritative survey of the field and to provoke cross-cultural comparisons. This is chronologically the last of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past across the globe from the beginning of writing to the present day.

Population Diversity and Ancestral Diversity As Distinct Contributors to Outgroup Prejudice

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 885-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Shrira
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Population Diversity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Intergroup Attitudes ◽  
Heterogeneous Populations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Population ◽  
The World ◽  
Diverse Groups

Previous research has shown conflicting findings on how population diversity influences outgroup prejudice. In some cases, prejudice is greater when minority groups make up a larger portion of the population, whereas in other cases, prejudice is lower as diversity increases. This article examined how the diversity of a culture’s ancestry—or its historical heterogeneity—would be related to outgroup attitudes. Historically heterogeneous populations descend from ancestors who have migrated from many parts of the world over the past 500 years and, as a result, have a longer legacy of contact with diverse groups of people. The results of two cross-cultural studies found that greater heterogeneity predicted lower levels of outgroup prejudice, and some evidence that diversity in the current population was related to increased prejudice. The findings suggest that intergroup attitudes have deeply entrenched roots that cannot be fully understood by looking at current indicators.

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