scholarly journals ‘Art for a New Understanding’: An Interview with Valerie Keenan, Manager of Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Sally Butler

A network of Indigenous art and culture centres across Australia play a significant role in promoting cross-cultural understanding. These centres represent specific Indigenous cultures of the local country, and help sustain local Indigenous languages, traditional knowledge, storytelling and other customs, as well as visual arts. They are the principle point of contact for information about the art, and broker the need to sustain cultural heritage at the same time as supporting new generations of cultural expression. This interview with Dr Valerie Keenan, Manager of Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre in northern Australia, provides rare insight into the strategies, challenges, and aspirations of Indigenous art centres and how the reception of the art impacts on artists themselves. It provides a first-hand account of how Indigenous artists strive to generate a new understanding of their culture and how they participate in a global world.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-52
Author(s):  
Sam Harper ◽  
Ian Waina ◽  
Ambrose Chalarimeri ◽  
Sven Ouzman ◽  
Martin Porr ◽  
...  

This paper explores identity and the recursive impacts of cross-cultural colonial encounters on individuals, cultural materials, and cultural practices in 20th-century northern Australia. We focus on an assemblage of cached metal objects and associated cultural materials that embody both Aboriginal tradition and innovation. These cultural materials were wrapped in paperbark and placed within a ring of stones, a bundling practice also seen in human burials in this region. This ‘cache' is located in close proximity to rockshelters with rich, superimposed Aboriginal rock art compositions. However, the cache shelter has no visible art, despite available wall space. The site shows the utilisation of metal objects as new raw materials that use traditional techniques to manufacture a ground edge metal axe and to sharpen metal rods into spears. We contextualise these objects and their hypothesised owner(s) within narratives of invasion/contact and the ensuing pastoral history of this region. Assemblage theory affords us an appropriate theoretical lens through which to bring people, places, objects, and time into conversation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sang Hwang ◽  
Betty Coneway

<p>Changes in the nation’s demographics, a current focus on immigration, and the world’s refugee crisis require educators to explore positive ways to assist students and families in transition. This article suggests using refugee literature to help ease children into the new school environment. Books associated with the refugee theme are organized using the literature focus unit framework. Four specific children’s literature titles are highlighted within the piece; however, the suggested books and activities are provided as a model to assist teachers in gaining new insight into how they can use cross-cultural communication to explore the refugee experience. We propose that through this exemplar unit, teachers can learn about authentic instructional approaches that may help them meet the multicultural needs of a variety of diverse student groups.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 01008
Author(s):  
Irina N. Kabanova ◽  
Anna M. Gorokhova ◽  
Elena G. Nozhevnikova ◽  
Ekaterina V. Vaseneva

The article under consideration is aimed at cross-cultural quantified associative mapping of the universal concept “happiness” and shaping the hierarchy of its cornerstone axiological constituents as perceived by Russian, French and English linguosocieties within the framework of the global pandemic reality. “Happiness” has been subject to transdisciplinary investigation since ancient times due to its dynamic character and ambiguity. The concept of “happiness”, although psychologically ingrained and biologically predetermined, can change significantly based on different outer and inner factors. It demonstrates an undeniable potential for multiple perceptions, various patterns of ethnic-specific and highly personalized verbalization, requiring unification and analysis of different sociocultural stimuli that trigger off this or that row of associations. The authors provide keen insight into the semantics of the concept and its static lexicographic axiological paradigm in the Russian, French and English languages. Three associative surveys were carried out through Google-forms to estimate the degree at which the “static projection” of “happiness” is relevant nowadays in pandemic-shaken societies as well as collect free associations, manually contrast the data and establish parallels and peculiarities within up-to-date Russian, French and English (American) visions of “happiness”. The survey results testify to the fact that “health”, “family”, “peace” and “freedom” are universally recognized constituents of “happiness” while certain elements prove to be ethnic-specific and arise due to concrete social circumstances.


10.28945/3116 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Jones ◽  
Irit Alony

With the increasing levels of multiculturalism in today’s business and the proliferation and essentiality of information systems, development and management of IS needs to be considered in light of the cultural factors which impact upon its utility. Hofstede’s work on culture is the most widely cited in existence. His observations and analysis provide scholars and practitioners a valuable insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural relationships. However, such a groundbreaking body of work does not escape criticism. Hofstede has been dogged by academics discrediting his work in part or whole. Nonetheless, far more scholars exist who support Hofstede than those that don’t. Most quote Hofstede’s work with unabashed confidence, many including his findings as absolute assumptions. This paper takes a critical look at Hofstede’s work and applies his findings to the practical needs of information systems. The paper finds support for the dimensions promoted by Hofstede in regard to information systems, but recommends continued research to provide greater clarity and continued applicability of his espoused dimensions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Mohamad Kamal Abd Aziz ◽  

This paperwork discusses some theories between modernist and post-modernist thinking that have been evolved in society. The presence of post-modernist thought is said to be anti-modernist. Thus, the question is whether it emerges as anticipation or the occurrence of a transformation shift at its pace in driving the development of art and culture. The objective of this study is to discuss the changing trends of art practitioners in the context of visual art and culture phenomenon today since the era of modernism. However. to what extent is the presence of post-modernist thinking that is said to be anti-modernism put into practice or is modernist thinking dead? The statement also dissects various notions or is it true that there is no precise and clear interpretation or understanding between "modern art" and "postmodern art"? This is also marked by the emergence of various interpretations and the existence of polemics or discussions among scholars, especially in the discourse of art and culture. This study is using secondary research based on various theories of disciplines and conducting an interview with art critics and art historians in resolving this question. Although there are various doubts in the separation between "modernism" and "postmodernism" but it provides an interesting input that is often associated with the emergence of some characteristics of the postmodern era thought and style that differs in terms of ideas, concepts, approaches, materials, appearance, presentation, ideas, interpretation and it is meaning that leads to the transformation of visual arts in the current socio-cultural context.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Cook

This chapter discusses the relationship of music to colonization and globalization. In the colonies music contributed to the legitimizing of hegemony, while at home it functioned as a means of representing foreign cultures, generally portraying them as both different and inferior. This illustrates how music can serve the ends of cultural and political ideologies, but it can equally be a means to neutralize, resist, or interrogate power. It can also be an instrument of modernization and nation building, as illustrated by the example of China. The chapter then considers examples of cross-cultural interaction and hybridization, ranging from classical and modernist music to the development and globalization of popular musics; it outlines a number of alternative conceptions of ‘world music’ that range from the commercial to the speculative. A concluding section returns to the Prudential commercial with which the book opened, assessing the value of music in contemporary society.


1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Thomas Lawson ◽  
Robert N. McCauley

AbstractNo one owns the concept 'culture'. Anthropology's long-standing proprietary claim on the concept rests on three sorts of contentions - none of which are convincing. Anthropology's overwhelmingly interpretive approaches to cultural materials have led to a preoccupation with the details of cultural materials at the expense of formulating explanatory theories. This has, among other things, rendered fieldwork experience sufficient for professional credentials. However, if the details are all that matter, then comparative and cross-cultural research, as well as most of the social sciences, make no sense. Contrary to this view, it is proposed here that theories reveal which details matter. Cognitive accounts of the sort we advanced in Rethinking Religion (1990) offer a firm theoretical basis for cross-cultural study of religious materials. Other types of research concerning non-human primates, early childhood development, and various social and cognitive impairments also offer insight into culture (without relying on fieldwork studies).


Author(s):  
Susan Kellogg

From a geographically, environmentally, linguistically, and ethnically highly variable Mesoamerica, Spain created a core region within her American territories. But for New Spain’s indigenous inhabitants (Mexica or Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Maya), despite experiencing demographic catastrophe, political and religious subjugation, and labor exploitation during and after conquest, native cultural patterns and agency influenced the reshaping of governance and community (the latter into pueblos de indios), economy, and spiritual and social life during the period of colonial rule. Because environments, indigenous languages, patterns of political, economic, and spiritual organization, ways of structuring family life, varieties of cultural expression, and forms of interrelationships with Spaniards varied so much, indigenous people did not experience a single New Spain. Instead, a multiplicity of New Spains emerged. These indigenous New Spains would play different roles during the independence period, which led to a protracted struggle, further impoverishment, and growing isolation in the new nations of Mesoamerica but cultural survival as well.


2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun Ge Liu

The themes of adult learning, cross-cultural learning, and transformative learning are common to many continuing educators working at universities across Canada. In this essay, I narrate my experiences as a mature, adult learner returning to university. Following a literature review and discussion of methodology, I begin this autobiographical portrait with a description of my initial education and life experiences in China. From this foundation, I describe and interpret my cross-cultural sojourn as a graduate student in Canada. This sojourn was both happy and sad, both empowering and disempowering. My story is one of learning—learning as an adult, learning in a cross-cultural setting, and learning that ultimately had a transformative impact on how I view myself and my world. Through exploring my own experiences with learning and change, I hope to offer readers of the Canadian Journal of Continuing Education a unique opportunity for insight into personal processes that are difficult to truly understand at a theoretical level alone.


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