Reflecting on the cultural assumptions we bring to teaching

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-183
Author(s):  
Jane G. Bell ◽  
Jane Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Assumptions

Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy: Politics in the Vernaculars

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernice Schrank
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Great Variability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Autobiographical Fiction ◽  
Literature And Language

This essay examines the political uses to which Behan puts language in his autobiographical fiction, Borstal Boy, both as an instrument of domination and a means of liberation. Identifying Standard English language and literature as important components of the British imperial project, Behan creates, as a linguistic alternative, ‘englishes’, a composite language in which differences of geography, class, age, education, and occupation create a demotic speech of great variability and expressive force. In so doing, Behan sabotages the cultural assumptions and justifications for colonial exploitation embedded and validated in Standard English literature and language.

Understanding and translating Confucian philosophy in the Analects: a sociosemiotic perspective

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fan Min
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Intercultural Understanding ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
The Analects

Abstract As the representative of Chinese classical works, the Analects represents a source of difficulty in both understanding and interpretation of Confucian philosophy. Confucian philosophy as a philosophy of creativity and otherness is closely related with the social and cultural values in society. Therefore, the study of Confucian philosophy in the Analects cannot be separated from the descriptive study of the effects of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, contexts, language use, and the effects of language use on society. This article attempts to explore how the meaning of Confucian philosophy in the Analects is interpreted and accepted by Western readers through complex social semiotic interactions. The article focuses on the interpretation of Confucian philosophy as a reflection of cultural assumptions, values and prohibitions, and the manipulation of the social semiotic resources in the process of understanding, translation, and acceptance of Confucian philosophy in the Analects through a discussion of its original text, different versions and the reasons behind the social semiotic activities. The article concludes with a consideration of significant social semiotic interactions that influence the translator’s interpretation and reader’s acceptance of Confucian philosophy so as to facilitate intercultural understanding.

Paul’s Defense: Masculinity and Authority in 2 Corinthians 10–13

2021 ◽  
pp. 0142064X2110248
Author(s):  
Kyung Min Kim
Keyword(s):  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
2 Corinthians ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Paternal Control ◽  
And Control

In 2 Cor. 10–13, Paul tries to prove his authority as a reliable leader by using two different masculinity standards. Paul manifests his power and control over the Corinthian church members by using an image of paterfamilias (11.2-3; 12.14). Paternal control of others was an essential element of hegemonic masculinity in the Greco-Roman world. Moreover, Paul proves his manliness by revealing his endurance and submission to divine authority (11.21b–12.10) according to the Hellenistic Jewish masculinity. I argue that Paul is embedded in these different cultural assumptions regarding masculinity and that he refers to these assumptions to persuade Gentile and Jewish groups in the Corinthian church.

Toward a Theology of Infertility and the Role of Donum Vitae

Horizons ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Lilla Cox
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reproductive Technologies ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Cultural Assumptions

A theology of infertility is needed to help couples and the broader ecclesial community understand the theological implications of infertility. Infertility raises questions about human freedom, finitude, embodiment, childlessness, and parenthood. In this article, dominant cultural assumptions surrounding each of these areas when considering reproductive technologies are sketched. Official Roman Catholic teaching on reproductive technologies (Donum Vitae), while rejecting most forms of such technologies, does provide a viable response to the presupposition that reproductive technologies resolve infertility. Given the dominant cultural assumptions and insights from Roman Catholic teaching, this article advocates for several ecclesial changes when considering infertility. Finally, theological resources for developing a theology of infertility are offered. Specifically, insights from Karl Rahner's theology of concupiscence are examined with an eye toward how they provide a framework for rethinking the cultural assumptions about freedom and finitude when considering reproductive technologies.

Using Old Photographs in Interviews: Some Cautionary Notes About Silences in Fieldwork

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 327-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Bravman
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
The People ◽  
Taita Hills ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Photo Collection ◽  
Image Production ◽  
To Come

In September 1987, early in my research at the Kenya National Archives, I came across a collection of photographs taken by a British missionary during the 1920s and early 1930s. The collection contained nearly 250 photos of the terrain and people of Kenya's Taita Hills, where I would soon be going for my fieldwork. I pored over the photo collection for a long time, and had reproductions made of twenty-five shots. The names of those pictured had been recorded in the photo album's captions. Many of the names were new to me, though a few WaTaita of the day who had figured prominently in the archival records were also captured on film. When I moved on to Taita in early 1988,1 took the photographs with me. Since I would be interviewing men and women old enough either to remember or be contemporaries of the people in the pictures, I planned to show the photos during the interviews. At first I was simply curious about who some of the people pictured were, but my curiosity quickly evolved into a more ambitious plan. I decided to try using the photographs as visual prompts to get people to speak more expansively than they otherwise might about their lives and their experiences.In the event, I learned that using the photographs in interviews involved many more complexities than I had envisaged in my initial enthusiasm. I found that I had to alter the expectations and techniques I took to Taita, and feel out some of the limitations of working with the photographic medium. I had to recognize the power relations embedded in my presence as a researcher in Taita, in my position as bearer of images from peoples' pasts, and in the photos themselves. I found, too, that I needed to come to grips with a number of issues about the politics of image production, and the historical product of those politics: the bounded, selected images that are photographs. Finally, I had to address some of my own cultural assumptions about photography and how people respond to pictures, assumptions that my informants did not necessarily share.

scholarly journals ‘The body says it’: the difficulty of measuring and communicating sensations of breathlessness

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2019-011816
Author(s):  
Alice Malpass ◽  
Coreen Mcguire ◽  
Jane Macnaughton
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Research ◽  
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ◽  
Chronic Respiratory Disease ◽  
The Body ◽  
Clinical Expertise ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Sensory Qualities ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Uk

Breathlessness is a sensation affecting those living with chronic respiratory disease, obesity, heart disease and anxiety disorders. The Multidimensional Dyspnoea Profile is a respiratory questionnaire which attempts to measure the incommunicable different sensory qualities (and emotional responses) of breathlessness. Drawing on sensorial anthropology we take as our object of study the process of turning sensations into symptoms. We consider how shared cultural templates of ‘what counts as a symptom’ evolve, mediate and feed into the process of bodily sensations becoming a symptom. Our contribution to the field of sensorial anthropology, as an interdisciplinary collaboration between history, anthropology and the medical humanities, is to provide a critique of how biomedicine and cultures of clinical research have measured the multidimensional sensorial aspects of breathlessness. Using cognitive interviews of respiratory questionnaires with participants from the Breathe Easy groups in the UK, we give examples of how the wording used to describe sensations is often at odds with the language those living with breathlessness understand or use. They struggle to comprehend and map their bodily experience of sensations associated with breathlessness to the words on the respiratory questionnaire. We reflect on the alignment between cognitive interviewing as a method and anthropology as a disciplinary approach. We argue biomedicine brings with it a set of cultural assumptions about what it means to measure (and know) the sensorial breathless body in the context of the respiratory clinic (clinical research). We suggest the mismatch between the descriptions (and confusion) of those responding to the respiratory questionnaire items and those selecting the vocabularies in designing it may be symptomatic of a type of historical testimonial epistemic injustice, founded on the prioritisation of clinical expertise over expertise by experience.

Making children’s ‘agency’ visible: Towards the localisation of a concept in theory and practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 200-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Analytic Tool ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Children’S Agency ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
New Directions ◽  
New Research

The concept of ‘agency’ is regularly put forward as an analytic tool to help understand, evaluate and act upon places around the world, through social development policies and programmes ostensibly designed to support or increase children’s agency. This article reflects on empirical research into children’s agency spanning a range of international contexts over two decades and offers new insights through critical engagement with a growing body of work on the ‘localisation’ of social development and humanitarian responses in international settings. It suggests that the largely normative ways in which the concept of agency is invoked as an analytic tool for understanding human experience universally effectively renders children’s agency invisible to us. This is because it is more a description of a particular discourse than something which actually helps us to understand and make visible children’s socio-culturally grounded ‘agentic practice’ from place to place. This article argues for new directions in research and practice to localise agency that are critical to the central commitments of interpretive social science. These new directions include (a) a new research agenda which can go beyond children’s ‘own perspectives’ to the discovery, description and analysis of agency in socio-cultural terms, to ensure it can function as an analytic tool for learning about socio-cultural phenomena which help animate local concepts of agency; and (b) the development of agency-related policies and programmes that are grounded in such locally situated concepts of agency developed through understanding local socio-cultural systems rather than externally derived socio-cultural assumptions about childhood and children’s agency.

Teaching and Practice

1992 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Ballenger
Keyword(s):  
Child Development ◽  
North American ◽  
Teacher Reflection ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Daycare Center ◽  
Culturally Based ◽  
Teacher Researcher ◽  
American Teacher ◽  
Teachers And Parents

Teachers often learn techniques to manage the behaviors of the children in their classrooms with the assumption that those techniques are universal, rather than culturally based. In this article,Cynthia Ballenger shares her process of coming to understand the cultural assumptions that lie at the heart of effectively managing her class of four-year-old Haitian children. Through multiple"conversations" with a teacher-researcher group, with Haitian teachers and parents in a daycare center, and through her work with Haitian teachers in a child development class, Ballenger learns about Haitian cultural ways and queries the assumptions that shape her own experience as a North American teacher. Her story demonstrates a model of teacher reflection on both theory and practice that can illuminate the practices of other teachers who encounter children of differing cultural, racial, or class backgrounds.

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