scholarly journals THE NEW SELFIE STANDARD: FACETUNE AND THE SHIFT TOWARD EAST ASIAN SELFIE AESTHETICS

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
JD Swerzenski ◽  
Dasol Kim
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Image Editing ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
Technical Functions ◽  
Combination Of Methods

Since its release in 2013, Facetune has risen to become the top paid photo and video app in the US. In this study, we document that the types of retouching tools Facetune make available mark a more significant shift in the American cultural practice of image editing, signaling an adoption of East Asian attitudes toward beauty standards and the plasticity of the image. Working within the Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) framework, we track this shift by undertaking a Walkthrough Analysis of the Facetune app. This combination of methods allowed us to examine not only cultural beliefs around the self-image but also the affordances and materiality of the app by directly engaging the interface and technical functions of the app. We found evidence of Facetune pushing certain East Asian beauty ideals that may fall outside of American standards such as the Face resizing features that allow users to adjust nose, eyes, forehead, and lips by size and position. Furthermore, Facetune uses the photo not in its traditional role as a vessel for depicting a certain scene in time, but as a blank canvas on which to produce an ideal digital self. These findings offer a significant contribution in understanding shifting image editing practices online, particularly by highlighting the new technological tools and cultural beliefs that are leading this shift.

Consigned to hedge: south-east Asia and America's ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
See Seng Tan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Pressure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face

Abstract This article assesses how south-east Asian countries and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have responded to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategies promoted by the United States and the other countries in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the ‘Quad’: US, Japan, Australia and India). Their nuanced ripostes imply a persistent commitment to hedging and shifting limited alignments in the face of growing great rivalry and the lack of a clear FOIP vision among Quad members. In the face of external pressure to take sides, the ASEAN states are likely to keep hedging through working selectively with China and the United States. Given the United States' apparent preference to balance China and Trump's disregard for multilateralism, ASEAN's ability to maintain its centrality in the evolving regional architecture is in doubt—despite the Quad countries' (belated) accommodation of ASEAN in their FOIP strategies. However, the success of the US strategy depends on Washington's ability to build and sustain the requisite coalition to balance Beijing. ASEAN has undertaken efforts to enhance bilateral security collaboration with China and the United States respectively. In doing so, ASEAN is arguably seeking to informally redefine its centrality in an era of Great Power discord and its ramifications for multilateralism.

Russian Banking System under Conditions of Global Crisis

2009 ◽  
pp. 4-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Gref ◽  
K. Yudaeva
Keyword(s):  
Banking System ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Financial Sector ◽  
Banking Crises ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Balance Sheets ◽  
Current Economic Crisis ◽  
Risk Appetite ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face

Problems in the financial sector were at the core of the current economic crisis. Therefore, economic recovery will only become sustainable after taking care of the major weaknesses in the financial sector. This conclusion is relevant both for the US and UK - the two countries where crisis has started, and for other economies which financial institutions turned out to be fragile in the face of the swings in the risk appetite. Russia is one of the countries where the crisis has revealed serious deficiency in the financial sector. Our study of 11 banking crises during the last 25-30 years shows that sustainable economic recovery and decrease in the dependence on commodity prices will be virtually impossible without cleaning of balance sheets and capitalization of the financial sector.

VIRGINITY TESTING PRACTICES: THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Mokoboto-Zwane
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
Sexually Transmitted ◽  
Young Females ◽  
Unwanted Pregnancies ◽  
The Right ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
Virginity Testing

Controversy continues to surround the age-old practice of virginity testing, which in South Africa made a visible comeback around the time of the country’s first democratic elections when most South Africans began to feel free to practise their cultural beliefs without fear. It coincided with the period when the HIV pandemic began to take hold. It is practised mainly in some countries of Asia and Africa, and in South Africa it is practised mainly amongst amaZulu. It is believed that this practice prevents unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially HIV/AIDS, as well as engendering a sense of pride in teenage and young females, in particular. However, some individuals, organisations and sectors of the community frown upon the practice because it violates constitutional laws that protect the right to equality, privacy, bodily integrity and sexual autonomy. The purpose of this article is to present current discourse on the cultural practice of virginity testing and the controversies surrounding this discourse. This article draws its arguments from the existing literature on virginity testing.

FAITH–BASED COMMUNITIES AND POLITICS IN DULLSTROOM-EMNOTWENI: LOCAL STORIES OF IDENTITY

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Landman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Cultural Conflicts ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Local Municipality ◽  
The Face

A majority of the black community of Dullstroom-Emnotweni in the Mpumalanga highveld in the east of South Africa trace their descent back to the southern Ndebele of the so-called ‘Mapoch Gronden’, who lost their land in the 1880s to become farm workers on their own land. A hundred years later, in 1980, descendants of the ‘Mapoggers’ settled in the newly built ‘township’ of Dullstroom, called Sakhelwe, finding jobs on the railways or as domestic workers. Oral interviews with the inhabitants of Sakhelwe – a name eventually abandoned in favour of Dullstroom- Emnotweni – testify to histories of transition from landowner to farmworker to unskilled labourer. The stories also highlight cultural conflicts between people of Ndebele, Pedi and Swazi descent and the influence of decades of subordination on local identities. Research projects conducted in this and the wider area of the eMakhazeni Local Municipality reveal the struggle to maintain religious, gender and youth identities in the face of competing political interests. Service delivery, higher education, space for women and the role of faith-based organisations in particular seem to be sites of contestation. Churches and their role in development and transformation, where they compete with political parties and state institutions, are the special focus of this study. They attempt to remain free from party politics, but are nevertheless co-opted into contra-culturing the lack of service delivery, poor standards of higher education and inadequate space for women, which are outside their traditional role of sustaining an oppressed community.

Too WEIRD, Too Fast: Preprints about COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arathy Puthillam
Keyword(s):  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Psychological Studies

That American and European participants are overrepresented in psychological studies has been previously established. In addition, researchers also often tend to be similarly homogenous. This continues to be alarming, especially given that this research is being used to inform policies across the world. In the face of a global pandemic where behavioral scientists propose solutions, we ask who is conducting research and on what samples. Forty papers on COVID-19 published in PsyArxiV were analyzed; the nationalities of the authors and the samples they recruited were assessed. Findings suggest that an overwhelming majority of the samples recruited were from the US and the authors were based in US and German institutions. Next, men constituted a large proportion of primary and sole authors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The Sino-Japanese War and the Collapse of the Qing and Confucian World Order in the Face of Japanese Imperialism and European Acquiescence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Sze-lok Leung ◽  
Bijun Xu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
East Asian ◽  
World Order ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
The Face ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) has been perceived as a sign of a new East Asian power order, but the legitimacy of the war has yet to be clarified. The Japanese foreign minister Mutsu’s Kenkenroku shows that the reasons claimed by Japan were only pretexts for its ambition to put Korea under its control. The 1885 Convention of Tianjin, which was used to justify the Japanese behaviour, needs to be reinterpreted. The Chinese reaction can be understood by exploration into Confucianism, which opposed wars between equal peers. Meanwhile, the Western powers which invented and developed international law were self-interested and did little to prevent the war. The incident shows that international law, empowered by the strong states, failed to maintain peace efficiently in the late nineteenth century.

Innovationsmotor Medientechnik – Von der Schreibmaschine zur «Mittleren Datentechnik» bei der Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (1950 bis 1969)

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-117
Author(s):  
Christian Henrich-Franke
Keyword(s):  
Data Processing ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
Adverse Conditions ◽  
Family Enterprise ◽  
The Us ◽  
Innovative Products ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract The second half of the 20th century is commonly considered to be a time in which German companies lost their innovative strength, while promising new technologies presented an enormous potential for innovation in the US. The fact that German companies were quite successful in the production of medium data technology and had considerable influence on the development of electronic data processing was neglected by business and media historians alike until now. The article analyses the Siemag Feinmechanische Werke (Eiserfeld) as one of the most important producers of the predecessors to said medium data technologies in the 1950s and 1960s. Two transformation processes regarding the media – from mechanic to semiconductor and from semiconductor to all-electronic technology – are highlighted in particular. It poses the question of how and why a middling family enterprise such as Siemag was able to rise to being the leading provider for medium data processing office computers despite lacking expertise in the field of electrical engineering while also facing difficult location conditions. The article shows that Siemag successfully turned from its roots in heavy industry towards the production of innovative high technology devices. This development stems from the company’s strategic decisions. As long as their products were not mass-produced, a medium-sized family business like Siemag could hold its own on the market through clever decision-making which relied on flexible specialization, targeted license and patent cooperation as well as innovative products, even in the face of adverse conditions. Only in the second half of the 1960s, as profit margins dropped due to increasing sales figures and office machines had finally transformed into office computers, Siemag was forced to enter cooperation with Philips in order to broaden its spectrum and merge the production site in Eiserfeld into a larger business complex.

scholarly journals Development of a theory-based HPV vaccine promotion comic book for East African adolescents in the US

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Celentano ◽  
Rachel L. Winer ◽  
Sou Hyun Jang ◽  
Anisa Ibrahim ◽  
Farah Bille Mohamed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Hpv Vaccine ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
East African ◽  
Step Process ◽  
Group Data ◽  
The Us ◽  
Focus Group Data

Abstract Background Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine uptake is low among East African adolescents in the US. Adolescents’ preferences influence HPV vaccine decisions, yet few interventions exist that address East African adolescents’ beliefs about HPV vaccines. We describe a multi-step process on how to create a theory-based comic book by integrating empirical findings, theory and focus group data from East African parents in the US. Methods Our multi-methods process included conducting focus groups with Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean mothers (n = 30) to understand mothers and adolescents socio-cultural beliefs and information needs about the HPV vaccine, creating comic book messages integrating the focus group findings, and assessing the acceptability of the finalized comic book among Somali, Ethiopian, and Eritrean adolescents (n = 134). Results We identified categories around socio-cultural beliefs (such ethnic representation and concerns about pork gelatin in vaccines), HPV vaccine information needs, and diffusion of information. We then mapped the categories to theoretical constructs and operationalized them into the comic book. Finally, we describe the overall acceptability of the comic book and specifics on comic book structure, appeal of characters, and message relevance. Conclusions A rigorous multi-step process that integrates theory and focus group data can help create culturally appropriate health messages that can educate and appeal to the community.

Denaturalizing the Monroe Doctrine: The rise of Latin American legal anti-imperialism in the face of the modern US and hemispheric redefinition of the Monroe Doctrine

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-555
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Scarfi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Elastic Behaviour ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pan Americanism

AbstractThe Monroe Doctrine was originally formulated as a US foreign policy principle, but in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it began to be redefined in relation to both the hemispheric policy of Pan-Americanism and the interventionist policies of the US in Central America and the Caribbean. Although historians and social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to Latin American anti-imperialist ideologies, there was a distinct legal tradition within the broader Latin American anti-imperialist traditions especially concerned with the nature and application of the Monroe Doctrine, which has been overlooked by international law scholars and the scholarship focusing on Latin America. In recent years, a new revisionist body of research has emerged exploring the complicity between the history of modern international law and imperialism, as well as Third World perspectives on international law, but this scholarship has begun only recently to explore legal anti-imperialist contributions and their legacy. The purpose of this article is to trace the rise of this Latin American anti-imperialist legal tradition, assessing its legal critique of the Monroe Doctrine and its implications for current debates about US exceptionalism and elastic behaviour in international law and organizations, especially since 2001.

scholarly journals External Leveraging and Technological Upgrading Among East Asian Firms in the US

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinn-Yuh Hsu ◽  
Jessie P. Poon ◽  
Henry Wai-Chung Yeung
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
The Us
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