scholarly journals Recognizing the Similar and Thus Accepting the Other: The European and Japanese Traditions of Building With Wood

Author(s):  
Klaus Zwerger

This article shows that building issues have not been tackled fundamentally differently in Europe and Japan despite large cultural differences. Different cultural expressions must not necessarily be equated with different thinking. The paper contrasts two apparently contradictory views. Numerous analyses of Japanese “otherness” in “Western” as well as local perception dominate the literature. But the results of extensive architectural field surveys seem to indicate the contrary. These results show similar and equal backgrounds and conditions resulting in similar and equal building types and techniques. They show that our ways of addressing a task are prompted by pragmatism. Broadly identical solutions were developed worldwide long before globalization. Yet this realization does not allow us to conclude that equal appearances can be taken to be equal in content.

2016 ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Reginaldo Francisco

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-4237.2014n16p91O teórico e crítico de tradução francês Antoine Berman afirma que as traduções literárias em suas formas tradicionais e dominantes representam um ato culturalmente etnocêntrico, isto é, que traz tudo à sua própria cultura, às suas normas e valores, buscando fazer com que se esqueça que se trata de uma tradução. Para se opor a essa prática dominante, o autor propõe uma tradução que não esconda o elemento estrangeiro na obra traduzida, e que para isso seja fiel à “letra” (lettre) do original. Essa oposição é muito conhecida também nos termos utilizados pelo teórico norte-americano Lawrence Venuti, que fala em “domesticação” (domestication) e “estrangeirização” (foreignization) para se referir respectivamente às práticas tradutórias que ocultam as diferenças culturais, adaptando tudo à cultura de chegada, e àquelas que mantêm a estranheza do texto original e da cultura de partida. Interpretações mais radicais das ideias desses autores podem levar a pensar a tradução como dividida nessas duas possibilidades, e muitas vezes à escolha de uma delas como ideal e a outra como condenável. Entretanto, assim como com dicotomias mais antigas (literal x livre, equivalência formal x equivalência dinâmica, etc.), também estas não são duas categorias estanques, podendo haver diferentes combinações de ambas na tradução de um mesmo texto, além de estratégias híbridas ou soluções que não representam nem uma nem outra posição. Neste trabalho discuto a problematização dessa dicotomia, incluindo exemplos de minha tradução do italiano para o português do livro infantojuvenil O diário de Gian Burrasca, de Luigi Bertelli (Vamba).ABSTRACTFrench translation theorist and critic Antoine Berman states that in their traditional and dominant forms literary translations represent a culturally ethnocentric act, which adapts everything to its own culture, standards and values, seeking to make readers forget that they are reading a translation. To oppose this dominant practice, the author suggests a kind of translation that would not hide the foreign element in the translated work, one that is faithful to the “letter” (lettre) of the original text. A similar opposition to that / to Berman’s is also well-known through the terms “domestication” and “foreignization” as defined by American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who uses them to refer to translation practices that on one hand conceal cultural differences, adapting everything to the target culture, and on the other keep the strangeness of both source text and culture in the translation. Radical interpretations of these authors’ ideas may lead to the misconception that translation is divided into those two possibilities, and often to the judgement that one of them is ideal and the other condemnable. Nevertheless, as with other older dichotomies (literal vs. free translation, formal vs. dynamic equivalence, etc.), these are not clearly distinguishable and opposed categories. There may be different combinations of them in the translation of a text, as well as hybrid strategies or solutions that do not represent either one of them. In this paper I discuss the problems of such dichotomy, drawing examples from my translation of Luigi Bertelli’s book Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca from Italian to Portuguese.Keywords: foreignization; domestication; dichotomy.


1994 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 1027-1034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank N. Willis ◽  
Vicki A. Rawdon

Women have been reported to be more positive about same-gender touch, but cross-cultural information about this touch is limited. Male and female students from Chile (n = 26), Spain (n = 61), Malaysia (n = 32), and the US (n = 77) completed a same-gender touch scale. As in past studies, US women had more positive scores than US men. Malaysians had more negative scores than the other three groups. Spanish and US students had more positive scores than Chilean students. National differences in attitudes toward particular types of touch were also noted. The need for new methods for examining cross-cultural differences in touch was discussed.


Finisterra ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (72) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Pinto Correia ◽  
António Cancela Abreu ◽  
Rosário Oliveira

IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERISATION OF LANDSCAPE IN PORTUGAL –This paper presents the concepts and methodology used in the study «Identification and characterisation of landscape in continental Portugal» undertaken by theDepartment of Landscape and Biophysical Planning of the University of Evora for the General Directorate for Spatial Planning and Urban Development (DGOT-DU) at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, between 1999 and 2001. On the one hand, the methodological approach developed is based on the methodologies used recently for the same purpose in different European countries and on the way landscape has been considered in various European documents in the last years. On the other hand, it is also based on the team’s concern to approach the landscape as an holistic entity, and to examine its various components: ecological, cultural, socio-economic and sensorial. The set aim has been to define landscape units and to characterize these units in relation to the present landscape and the recorded trends, related problems and possibilities. Thus, the cartography relative to selected variables has been combined and related to satellite images and field surveys. The results of cross-referencing all this information has than been combined with expert examination of landscape coherence and character within each unit. The assessment was completed after careful bibliographic research and consultation with regional experts. The result is a flexible approach that combines objective analysis with a more subjective assessment, which the team considered fundamental for a true understanding of landscape.


Author(s):  
Emilia Szalkowska-Kim

This article presents the results of comparative research into the collocations of the names of human body parts with dimension adjectives. The aim of the analysis was to indicate the similarities, limitations and differences in the manners of conceptualising the world established in Polish and Korean, or more precisely: how both languages define the elements of the world of human body parts, and how they assign dimensions to the elements depending on the needs and experiences of native users of both. The results of the research could have a practical application in teaching both languages, facilitating students’ absorption of the lexis of the other language, and result in a deeper mutual understanding of linguistic and cultural differences..


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 03
Author(s):  
Babette Babich

Just as animals in general are described as “feeling” nothing like “pain” but “stimuli responses” or “behaviours,” scientific theorists once proposed to reduce the differences between socio-cultural expressions of pain to differences in general between the races: Black, White, Asian, and especially so-called aboriginal peoples and Nazi experiments on human pain extended the same test of pain thresholds from experiments performed on animals for centuries (the same experiments on animals unchecked to this day) to human beings designated as subhuman. Ethological studies by Franz de Waal suggest that animals share this capacity for sympathizing with the other. Schopenhauer’s notion of compassion thus serves as the basis for a new understanding of becoming moral. This essay situates Schopenhauer with respect to Kant as well as Nietszche and develops connections with Levinas and Adorno as well as Isaac Bashevis Singer


Author(s):  
Michael A. Aung-Thwin

The relationship between Ava and Pegu was a symbiotic dualism: of time, space and type. Ava was not only a reformulation of something old, and Pegu, the genesis of something new, but as one was located in the agrarian Dry Zone and the other, on the commercial coasts, each was historically, materially, and in terms of general character, distinct. Whereas the Kingdom of Ava was essentially the resurrection of an old kingdom—Pagan writ small—Pegu was a new kingdom composed of new leaders, people, and cultures. Ava was a familiar, Upper Myanmar polity: the same material environment and demographic base, the same economic, social and political institutions, the same language, writing system, cosmology, and culture. Pegu, on the other hand, was a new, independent kingdom of Lower Myanmar, led by newcomers (the Mon speakers) who had migrated from what later became Thailand. Yet, because both Ava and Pegu were built on the same foundations (Pagan), both had certain common elements. They shared virtually the same religion and thought systems; similar social customs, values, and mores; familiar political and administrative principles; a common, even if contested, history; and certainly the same writing system. Whatever the dissimilarities were, they did not produce a binary situation of two irreconcilably antagonistic ethnic entities—Burman and Mon as convention has it—rather, these dissimilarities created a dualism of geo-political and cultural differences whose energy and dynamism came from the tension created precisely by those differences. In fact, Ava and Pegu’s relationship not only epitomized Southeast Asia’s “upstream-downstream” paradigm common throughout much of its history, it continues today in Naypyidaw and Yangon.


Author(s):  
Jim van Os ◽  
Kwame McKenzie

This chapter discusses the influence of culture on the route an individual takes to access treatment for psychological distress and the treatment received. Culture is difficult to measure. All categories of cultural variables have different meanings and measure different things. Research into them leads to different hypotheses. Given this reality, there is no need to join the cul-de-sac argument of whether one or the other is the most important. In the discussion below, the roles of ethnicity and of socio-economic, political, community, national, and other factors that help to define the culture of an individual or a group are acknowledged. Associations with pathways to care, service use, and outcome will be presented.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
LIANG CHEN ◽  
RUIXIA YAN

This study compares the development and use of evaluative expressions in the English narratives elicited from 80 Chinese–English bilinguals and 80 American monolingual peers at four ages – five, eight, ten, and young adults – using the wordless picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969). Results revealed both similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual groups. On the one hand, regardless of bilingual status, there is a clear age-related growth in the development and use of evaluative expressions. On the other hand, bilingual children in our study differed from monolingual children in the quantity and quality of evaluative clauses used. The results are discussed with respect to linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese.


Author(s):  
Margaret Eisenhart

The traditions of ethnography and participatory action research (PAR) have different roots and different priorities, but their trajectories have become entangled in educational research over the past halfcentury. In many ways, ethnography and PAR are compatible. Both make participants’ perspectives central to the research. Both rely primarily on qualitative methods. Both are ethically committed to appreciating cultural differences and promoting the welfare of the groups they work with. Taken together, each adds something important to the other: PAR offers ethnography a “stance toward research” that is more democratic and action-oriented than traditional ethnography; ethnography lends PAR legitimacy as a research approach. Nonetheless, differences between the two create contradictions and tensions when they are combined. While educational researchers remain enthusiastic about the potential of combining activism with cultural analysis, it is important not to collapse ethnography and participatory action research, or privilege one over the other, but to find productive ways to move forward with the tensions between them.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 191-208
Author(s):  
Ishwari Bhattarai

Nepalese society today is witnessing an unprecedented sharpening of ethnic boundaries. In the last couple of decades or so, there have been growing instances of inter-ethnic conflict and clashes. The clash among the Tharus and Pahadi (Bahun-Chhetri) communities that took place in the month of May, 2012 in the Nawalparasi district is one such example. Borrowing the conceptual idea from Fredreick Barth (1995) who critically engages with the question of culture, ethnicity, and contemporary nature of ethnic mobilization, this paper seeks to explore how such conflicts are an epiphenomena of tactical moves carried out what he calls as ‘middle echelon politicians’. Through the qualitative data collected with the help of open-ended interviews and couple of other illustrations, this paper argues that, the contemporary character of ethnic mobilizations in some way or the other, are manipulated by ethnic entrepreneurs who politicize cultural differences, ethnic sentiments, and collective backwardness which often result in violent confrontations. Despite the Tharus being diverse and sharply divided in terms of political allegiance and electoral behavior, the leaders or activists use politics of cultural difference, and attempt to mitigate internal differences, to present a consolidated picture of ethnic unity. Through such actions ethnic leaders or activists selectively mobilize ethnic sentiments and symbols in order to motivate members of an ethnic group and also assume leadership position at both local and national levels.


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