Cultural Ideals in Chinese Malaysians’ Discourse of Dissatisfaction - Ee Lin Lee and Bradford J. Hall 365

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Ideals

Visual body processing’s associations to Body Mass Index and internalization of societal beauty ideals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Cazzato ◽  
Elizabeth Walters ◽  
Cosimo Urgesi
Keyword(s):  
Body Mass Index ◽  
Body Mass ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Configural Processing ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Beauty Ideals ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
Attention To Detail

We examined whether visual processing mechanisms of the body of conspecifics are different in women and men and whether these rely on westernised socio-cultural ideals and body image concerns. Twenty-four women and 24 men performed a visual discrimination task of upright or inverted images of female or male bodies and faces (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both groups of women and men showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of upright and inverted bodies and faces. However, the genders of the human stimuli yielded different effects on participants’ performance, so that male bodies and female faces appeared to be processed less configurally than female bodies and male faces, respectively. Interestingly, altered configural processing for male bodies was significantly predicted by participants’ Body Mass Index (BMI) and their level of internalization of muscularity. Our findings suggest that configural visual processing of bodies and faces in women and men may be linked to a selective attention to detail needed for discriminating salient physical (perhaps sexual) cues of conspecifics. Importantly, BMI and muscularity internalization of beauty ideals may also play a crucial role in this mechanism.

An Ethnoarchaeological Interpretation of the Salt Life, A.D. 1200

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley A. Dumas
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Salt Production ◽  
Mississippian Period ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethnographic Data

This chapter narratively reconstructs the salt-making process in the Mississippian period using archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data and information. The author proposes that salt was an everyday substance for many prehistoric southeastern peoples. Her claim is grounded in biological, archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence from cultures around the world who maintain that salt was important to many ancient peoples for their physical, spiritual, and social well-being. The author argues that her narrative approach, as with any useful interpretive tool, is based on data from excavations and analysis of artifacts, and that it unites cultural ideals about family, religion, housing, subsistence, reproduction, and other elements of daily life that are embedded within not only salt production and consumption but also many other practices.

The grieving killjoy: Bereavement, alienation and cultural critique

2020 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2092213
Author(s):  
Ester H Kofod
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Emotional Pain ◽  
Gradual Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Bereaved Parents ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
Bereavement Research ◽  
Shed Light

In recent years, a range of scholars have put forth critical analyses of the consequences of the ideals of happiness, future-orientedness, and productivity which dominate contemporary Western cultures. The experience of grief—with its sadness, preoccupation with the past, and lack of initiative—is inherently at odds with such ideals. This conflict between grief and cultural ideals of happiness is reflected in the recent efforts within bereavement research to delineate pathological mourning from uncomplicated, normative mourning. While the latter is characterized by a gradual decline in emotional pain, sadness, lack of initiative, etc., complicated mourning is marked by a failure to meet normative standards for recovery. In this article, I will draw on loss experiences among bereaved parents in contemporary Danish society in order to shed light on how profound losses may catalyze estrangement from and opposition toward what has been termed the happiness imperative of contemporary Western societies. More specifically, I borrow the figure of the feminist killjoy, paraphrased as the grieving killjoy, as a lens through which bereavement experiences may be theorized and understood as a starting point for experientially driven cultural critique.

Paideia, Prejudice and the Promise of the Practical

1998 ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
Padraig Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Educational Aspirations ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Educational Practices ◽  
Cultural Inheritance ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Radical Pluralism ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Face ◽  
Key Features

In an age of radical pluralism it is increasingly difficult to affirm and sustain the educational aspirations of Greek paideia (Latin humanitas). The most challenging attacks on these aspirations come from standpoints which share a postmodern attitude of opposition towards inherited cultural ideals, especially those which claim universality. This paper first examines optimistic and pessimistic prospects for the educational heritage of humanitas, concluding that, in the face of cultural disparateness which is increasingly evident in post-Enlightenment cultures, the pessimistic case seems to be more convincing. Recognizing that this gives added impetus to postmodernist standpoints, the second section examines some key features of these, taking as its examples arguments of Lyotard, Foucault and Rorty. I show that the prejudices of the postmodernist arguments are as invidious as the discriminatory assumptions and the neglect of the quality of educational practice in the Western cultural inheritance. Recalling some insights which can be gleaned from the educational practices of Socrates, the last section joins these with findings of contemporary philosophers on the pre-judgements and partiality which are inescapable features of human understanding. This is a reclamation and elucidation of a practical and promising humanitas which does justice to the claims of diversity and universality.

Reconfiguring Intergenerational Reciprocity

2021 ◽  
pp. 48-78
Author(s):  
Ken Chih-Yan Sun
Keyword(s):  
Elder Care ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Intergenerational Relations ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Migrant Populations ◽  
Older Immigrants ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Intergenerational Reciprocity

This chapter traces the trajectories through which aging migrant populations navigate temporalities of migration as they reconstruct intergenerational intimacy. It argues that aging immigrants transform cultural ideals of aging and family in response to changes in their social worlds across life stages. It also offers the concept of reconfigured reciprocity to analyze the processes through which aging immigrants fashion cultural logics of intergenerational relations to sustain connections with their children and their children's families. The chapter focuses on older immigrants that embraced ethnic traditions regarding elder care and transformed reciprocal relationships with their immediate kin. It highlights the aging immigrants' assessment of family relations that is undoubtedly biased or selective and their understanding of receiving and transnational contexts that are stereotypical or oversimplified.

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