scholarly journals The Global Jukebox: A public database of performing arts and culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Lomax Wood ◽  
Kathryn R. Kirby ◽  
Carol Ember ◽  
Stella Silbert ◽  
Hideo Daikoku ◽  
...  

The lack of standardized cross-cultural databases has impeded scientific understanding of the role of the performing arts in other domains of human society. This paper introduces the Global Jukebox (theglobaljukebox.org) as a resource for comparative and cross-cultural study of the performing arts and culture. Its core is the Cantometrics dataset, encompassing standardized codings on 37 aspects of musical style for 5,779 traditional songs from 992 societies. The Cantometrics dataset has been cleaned and checked for reliability and accuracy. Also being released are seven additional datasets coding and describing instrumentation, conversation, popular music, vowel and consonant placement, breath management, social factors, and societies. For the first time, all digitized Global Jukebox data are being made available in open-access, machine-readable format, linked with streaming audiovisual files to the maximum extent allowed while respecting copyright and the wishes of culture-bearers. The data are cross-indexed with the Database of Peoples, Languages, and Cultures (D-PLACE) to allow researchers to test hypotheses about worldwide aesthetic patterns and traditions, including earlier findings by Alan Lomax and his research team regarding coevolutionary relationships between the performing arts, social structure and cultural history. The Global Jukebox adds a large and detailed global database of the performing arts to enlarge our understanding of human cultural diversity.

2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1733) ◽  
pp. 1606-1612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Rzeszutek ◽  
Patrick E. Savage ◽  
Steven Brown

Human cultural traits, such as languages, musics, rituals and material objects, vary widely across cultures. However, the majority of comparative analyses of human cultural diversity focus on between-culture variation without consideration for within-culture variation. In contrast, biological approaches to genetic diversity, such as the analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) framework, partition genetic diversity into both within- and between-population components. We attempt here for the first time to quantify both components of cultural diversity by applying the AMOVA model to music. By employing this approach with 421 traditional songs from 16 Austronesian-speaking populations, we show that the vast majority of musical variability is due to differences within populations rather than differences between. This demonstrates a striking parallel to the structure of genetic diversity in humans. A neighbour-net analysis of pairwise population musical divergence shows a large amount of reticulation, indicating the pervasive occurrence of borrowing and/or convergent evolution of musical features across populations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Craig Alan Hassel

As every human society has developed its own ways of knowing nature in order to survive, dietitians can benefit from an emerging scholarship of “cross-cultural engagement” (CCE).  CCE asks dietitians to move beyond the orthodoxy of their academic training by temporarily experiencing culturally diverse knowledge systems, inhabiting different background assumptions and presuppositions of how the world works.  Although this practice may seem de- stabilizing, it allows for significant outcomes not afforded by conventional dietetics scholarship.  First, culturally different knowledge systems including those of Africa, Ayurveda, classical Chinese medicine and indigenous societies become more empathetically understood, minimizing the distortions created when forcing conformity with biomedical paradigms.  This lessens potential for erroneous interpretations.  Second, implicit background assumptions of the dietetics profession become more apparent, enabling a more critical appraisal of its underlying epistemology.  Third, new forms of post-colonial intercultural inquiry can begin to develop over time as dietetics professionals develop capacities to reframe food and health issues from different cultural perspectives.  CCE scholarship offers dietetics professionals a means to more fully appreciate knowledge assets that lie beyond professionally maintained parameters of truth, and a practice for challenging and moving boundaries of credibility.


Medieval Europe was a meeting place for the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic civilizations, and the fertile intellectual exchange of these cultures can be seen in the mathematical developments of the time. This book presents original Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic sources of medieval mathematics, and shows their cross-cultural influences. Most of the Hebrew and Arabic sources appear here in translation for the first time. Readers will discover key mathematical revelations, foundational texts, and sophisticated writings by Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic-speaking mathematicians, including Abner of Burgos's elegant arguments proving results on the conchoid—a curve previously unknown in medieval Europe; Levi ben Gershon's use of mathematical induction in combinatorial proofs; Al-Muʾtaman Ibn Hūd's extensive survey of mathematics, which included proofs of Heron's Theorem and Ceva's Theorem; and Muhyī al-Dīn al-Maghribī's interesting proof of Euclid's parallel postulate. The book includes a general introduction, section introductions, footnotes, and references.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110213
Author(s):  
Phan Anh Quang

The popularization of online gaming in Vietnam, including PC and mobile gaming, has witnessed the contribution of wuxia fictions as an essential aspect of digital content production. This article shows an attempt in tracing the cultural history of wuxia works in Vietnam. East-West differences have also been taken into consideration as a way to explain reading and playing preferences. By using life course approach along with the concepts of nostalgia and cultural proximity, this study tries to historically portray the wuxia readership in Vietnam and its vestige found in wuxia online games. The findings indicate that wuxia novels serve as a crucial factor representing the literary relationship between the Sinosphere and Vietnam. Its presence has enriched the content of Vietnamese literature, adding a new genre that has been widely accepted by many generations of Vietnamese readers. Because wuxia online games could be seen as the digital continuation of wuxia fictions, the author argues that prior experience drawn from interacting with wuxia novels affects the game selection-making process of players, and gaming companies in Vietnam also acknowledge that and deploy appropriate business strategies.


2020 ◽  

A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance covers the period 1400 to 1650, a time of change, conflict, and transformation. Innovations in color production transformed the material world of the Renaissance, especially in ceramics, cloth, and paint. Collectors across Europe prized colorful objects such as feathers and gemstones as material illustrations of foreign lands. The advances in technology and the increasing global circulation of colors led to new color terms enriching language. Color shapes an individual’s experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf


Traditio ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 257-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza

There are many still unstudied aspects of the cultural history of early Quattrocento Rome, especially if we consider the years before 1443, the date of the more or less permanent re-entry into the civitas aeterna of Pope Eugenius IV. The nexus between the still ephemeral papacy and the emerging intellectual movement of Italian Renaissance humanism is one of these aspects. It is hoped that this study will shed some light on this problem by presenting a document that has hitherto not been completely edited: the original will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini. As we shall see, this important witness to the fifteenth century provides valuable information on many fronts, even on the structure of the old basilica of Saint Peter. The short introduction is in three parts. The first has a discussion of the cardinal's cultural milieu with a focus on the only contemporary treatise specifically about curial culture, Lapo da Castiglionchio's De curiae commodis. The second part addresses the textual history of the will as well as some misconceptions which have surrounded it. The third part contains a discussion of the will itself, along with some preliminary observations about what can be learned from the critical edition of the text here presented for the first time.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robert Dunaetz

The choice of music, an essential element of worship and church life, mustbe addressed in cross-cultural church planting contexts. As culturesevolve, church planters are faced with choices about musical styles thatmay lead to interpersonal conflicts within the church. The purpose of thisstudy is to empirically examine factors that may enable cross-culturalchurch planters to constructively manage music-related conflicts when theyarise. Members of church plants, like all people, have various goals whenentering into such conflicts. They are concerned about the content of theconflict (i.e., the musical style) and thus have content goals. They arealso concerned about social elements of the conflict (e.g., theirrelationships, their identity and values, and the process used to resolvethe conflict) and thus have social goals. The results of this study of 276evangelical Christians indicate that achieving both content goals andsocial goals contributes to overall satisfaction across various conflictoutcomes. Moreover, the evidence indicates that achieving only a socialgoal leads to greater satisfaction with the conflict outcome than achievingonly the content goal in music related conflict. This implies that churchplanters, when faced with music-related conflict, should strive to meet thegospel-congruent social goals of people with whom they are in conflict inorder to maximize satisfaction with the conflict outcome._______________________David R. Dunaetz, PhDAssistant Professor, Leadership and Organizational PsychologyAzusa Pacific University


2019 ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
B. E. Nosenok

Cultural studies as a humanities researcher takes the place of an expert. The relevance of this topic is due to the lack of development of the issues of “culture-based studies” in Ukrainian culturology. There is a lack of translated into French or Ukrainian languages of French sources published since 1975. French culturological science, which developed after 1975, is almost not represented in Ukrainian culturology. The present stage of the development of French historiography, which lies at the heart of cultural history, and cultural studies, is associated with increased attention to social knowledge. This stage is characterized by the deployment of a “critical turn”, which proceeds from the following principles: the interdisciplinary approach, the significance of cultural expertise, the severity of publications and the multiplicity of their forms, multidisciplinarity. The “critical turn” affects the following spheres of knowledge: la Culturologie, les Études culturelles, les Sciences de la Culture. The article substantiates the relevance of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” to the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanities and are associated exclusively with the theoretical formations in the context of the social sciences. The purpose of the article is to outline a map of culture-based studies in the field of French humanitaristics. The methodology of the article is based on the application of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to research in the field of culturology. Also, methodological developments in the field of “critical turn” and the achievements of the sociological circle and the interdisciplinary discussion club “Eranos” were applied. The scientific novelty of the article is to substantiate the appropriateness of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” on the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanitaristics and relate exclusively to theoretical formations in the context of social sciences. This concept to the field of Ukrainian culturology is introduced for the first time. Also, for the first time, the place and forms of culturology in French humanities were clarified. Conclusions. Working with a source base and methodology is one of the points that are compulsory on the way to the solution of the tasks, the main of which is the formation of the body of fundamental works for French history (including the history of culture) and historiography of the period since 1975 year to the present day. On the basis of this building, there is the prospect of building an alternative national cultural history project addressed to the vector of the French historiographical, historical-anthropological and cultural-related issues in the field of social knowledge. The article presents the arguments why it is appropriate to use the concept of “culture-based studies” in the context of conducting research in relation to French humanitaristics, in particular, the modern period of its development.


2021 ◽  

Volume 5 A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Industry covers the period 1800 to 1920, when the world embraced color like never before. Inventions, such as steam power, lithography, photography, electricity, motor cars, aviation, and cheaper color printing, all contributed to a new exuberance about color. Available pigments and colored products – made possible by new technologies, industrial manufacturing, commercialization, and urbanization – also greatly increased, as did illustrated printed literature for the mass market. Color, both literally and metaphorically, was splashed around, and became an expressive tool for artists, designers, and writers. Color shapes an individual’s experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Volume 5 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf


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