scholarly journals Understanding the Culture of Ahiska Turks in Wheaton, Illinois: A Case Study

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omer Avci
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Multicase Study ◽  
Shed Light

This study focuses on the cultural characteristics of Ahiska Turks in Wheaton, Illinois in the United States. By trying to understand the culture of the participants, I sought to shed light on how the Ahiska Turks managed to cope with the hardship they experienced and yet preserved their ethnic identities. In this multicase study, I interviewed six male Ahiska Turks. As a result of my analyses, eight themes emerged: family, religion (i.e., Islam), language (i.e., Turkish), communal life, endogamy, authoritarianism, oppression against the preservation of culture and identity, and education for upward mobility. The Ahiska Turks’ agrarian way of life, the preservation of their language, and their preference of integration to the larger society for acculturation make them who they are today.

scholarly journals The European Union and Image Resilience during Times of Crisis: The Role of Public Diplomacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 257-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai’a K. Davis Cross ◽  
Teresa La Porte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
Exogenous Factors ◽  
Shed Light

A resilient actor is one with the capacity to recover from setbacks and obstacles, whether stemming from endogenous or exogenous factors. Beyond actual recovery, this article argues that there is also an important perceptional dimension. Image resilience is the capacity on the part of actors to overcome and deal with the widespread negative perceptions that often follow on the heels of these setbacks. The article argues that the ability to cultivate image resilience rests significantly on the power of public diplomacy. Through establishing a strong image for an actor over the longer term, public diplomacy enables that actor to be more resilient during times of crisis. The European Union is a particularly good case study to shed light on this. Using original interview evidence, this article examines a specific example of how the European Union was ultimately able to strengthen its image resilience in the United States through public diplomacy.

Consensus and Crisis in American Classical Music Historiography from 1890 to 1950

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-231
Author(s):  
David C. Paul
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gustav Mahler ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Shed Light

In the late nineteenth century American publishers began to answer a burgeoning demand for histories of classical music. Although some of the authors they contracted are well-known to scholars of music in the United States—most notably Edward MacDowell and John Knowles Paine—the books themselves have been neglected. The reason is that these histories are almost exclusively concerned with the European musical past; the United States is a marginal presence in their narratives. But much can be learned about American musical culture by looking more closely at the historiographical practices employed in these histories and the changes that took place in the books that succeeded them in the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, they shed light on the shifting transatlantic connections that shaped American attitudes toward classical music. Marked at first by an Anglo-American consensus bolstered by the social evolutionary theory of prominent Victorians, American classical music histories came to be variegated, a result of the influence of Central European émigrés who fled Hitler’s Germany and settled in North America. The most dramatic part of this transformation pertains to American attitudes toward the link between music and modernity. A case study, the American reception of Gustav Mahler, reveals why Americans began to see signs of cultural decline in classical music only in the 1930s, despite the precedent set by many pessimistic fin-de-siècle European writers.

scholarly journals Vivir y pensar la construcción de la sociedad anarquista desde la realidad mesoamericana, ayer y hoy

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
Benjamín Maldonado Alvarado
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish Colonialism ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Alive Today ◽  
Historical Basis

The communal life of the Mesoamerican communities has been the historical basis of indigenous resistance against Spanish colonialism and then against Mexican colonialism. This way of life and mentality was considered by the magonistas in the 1910s as the powerful historical experience that would be the basis for the free reconstruction of society after the triumph of the anarchist sector in the Mexican revolution that they organized in exile from the United States. But they did not value communality as a form of resistance to achieve the liberation of capitalist colonialism, because they supposed dead a way of life that is still alive today in communities of places like Oaxaca.

scholarly journals Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Cultures Revisited: A Case Study of South Korea’s Culture

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Buja
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Span ◽  
The Other ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
The World

Abstract In about thirty-five years since the first publication of Hofstede’s (1991) study on the dimensions of national cultures, people all over the world have evolved in various directions and to various extents due to the phenomenon known as globalization. The present paper aims to investigate whether within this time span South Korea, a technically and economically developed country, whose way of life is strongly influenced by Confucianism, has complied with or resisted this phenomenon. The data that will be discussed have been collected from a Korean best seller (Shin’s Please Look After Mom, 2012) that approximately covers the period in which Hofstede conducted his investigations on national cultures. Hopefully the findings will indicate that the deeply rooted values have remained almost the same, while the outer layers of culture (such as the symbols or rituals, also known as ‘practices’) have changed due to the influences exerted by the other important economic and cultural powers of the world (such as Japan, the United States or some of the European countries) Korea has come in touch with.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

Liberating Afghan Women

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Afghan Women ◽  
The Media ◽  
Policy Priority

Public opinion in the United States and elsewhere celebrated the liberation of Afghan women following the defeat of the Taliban government. The United States promised to stay in Afghanistan and foster security, economic development, and human rights for all, especially women. After years of funding various anti- Soviet Mujahidin warlords, the United States had agreed to help reconstruct the country once before in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government fell, but had lost interest when the warlords began to fight among themselves. This time, however, it was going to be different. To date, however, conditions have not improved for most Afghan women and reconstruction has barely begun. How did this happen? This article explores media presentations of Afghan women and then compares them with recent reports from human rights organizations and other eyewitness accounts. It argues that the media depictions were built on earlier conceptions of Muslim societies and allowed us to adopt a romantic view that disguised or covered up the more complex historical context of Afghan history and American involvement in it. We allowed ourselves to believe that Afghans were exotic characters who were modernizing or progressing toward a western way of life, despite the temporary setback imposed by the Taliban government. In Afghanistan, however, there was a new trope: the feminist Afghan woman activist. Images of prominent Afghan women sans burqa were much favored by the mass media and American policymakers. The result, however, was not a new focus on funding feminist political organizations or making women’s rights a foreign policy priority; rather, it was an unwillingness to fulfill obligations incurred during decades of American-funded mujahidin warfare, to face the existence of deteriorating conditions for women, resumed opium cultivation, and a resurgent Taliban, or to commit to a multilateral approach that would bring in the funds and expertise needed to sustain a long-term process of reconstruction.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document