Subalternity and Entrepreneurship

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 251-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virgil Henry Storr ◽  
Bridget Butkevich

Entrepreneurs are cultural creatures and culture affects how they conceive their opportunities and how they determine and pursue their interests. Understanding entrepreneurship in any particular context thus requires attention to be paid to prevailing cultural beliefs as well as the formal and informal institutions that affect economic behaviour. This paper adopts the important but seldom used approach of focusing upon the tales of entrepreneurship prevalent in a given culture. The authors argue that to get a sense of the economic culture in a particular context, it is crucial to focus on what a culture's success and failure stories tell about how to get ahead. Arguably, this approach is particularly important if the goal is to understand entrepreneurship amongst subaltern/marginalized groups. Using fiction from the former Soviet bloc, where a one-dimensional form of entrepreneurship flourished even within the command economy, and literature from anglophone Africa and the British Caribbean where black entrepreneurship had to contend with brutal colonial rule and post-colonial corruption, this paper highlights how entrepreneurs were influenced by culture in these contexts, and explores the origins of these cultural factors.

Slavic Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 638-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr H. Kosicki

In the 1960s, the Catholic Church underwent a revolution in the teaching and practice of its faith, known as aggiornamento. Catholics responded by pioneering new forms of agency in world affairs in the Global Sixties. This was a cross-Iron Curtain story, affecting communist and non-communist countries in Europe, as well as developing countries across the world – a story of transfers and encounters unfolding simultaneously along multiple geographical axes: “East-West,” “North-South,” and “East-South.” The narrative anchor for this story is the year 1968. This article explores the seminal role of east European Catholics in this story, focusing on Polish Catholic intellectuals as they wrote and rewrote global narratives of political economy and sexual politics. A global Catholic conversation on international development stalled as sexual politics reinforced Cold War and post-colonial divisions, with the Second and Third Worlds joining forces against First World critics of a new papal teaching on contraception, Humanae Vitae. Paradoxically, the Soviet Bloc became the prism through which the Catholic Church refracted a new vision of international development for the Third World.


1998 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Stockwell

It is a commonplace that European rule contributed both to the consolidation of the nation-states of Southeast Asia and to the aggravation of disputes within them. Since their independence, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have all faced the upheavals of secessionism or irredentism or communalism. Governments have responded to threats of fragmentation by appeals to national ideologies like Sukarno's pancasila (five principles) or Ne Win's ‘Burmese way to socialism’. In attempting to realise unity in diversity, they have paraded a common experience of the struggle for independence from colonial rule as well as a shared commitment to post-colonial modernisation. They have also ruthlessly repressed internal opposition or blamed their problems upon the foreign forces of neocolonialism, world communism, western materialism, and other threats to Asian values. Yet, because its effects were uneven and inconsistent while the reactions to it were varied and frequently equivocal, the part played by colonialism in shaping the affiliations and identities of Southeast Asian peoples was by no means clear-cut.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 117957272093664
Author(s):  
Mahdieh Ghanbari-Firoozabadi ◽  
Masoud Mirzaei ◽  
Khadijeh Nasiriani ◽  
Mozhgan Hemati ◽  
Jamal Entezari ◽  
...  

Background: Cardiac specialists are arguably the most influential providers in ensuring patients access cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Physician barriers to referral have been scantly investigated outside of high-income settings, and not qualitatively. Aim: This study investigated cardiac specialists’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators to patient CR participation in a low-resource setting, with a focus on referral. Methods: In this qualitative study, focus groups were conducted with conventional content analysis. Thirteen of 14 eligible cardiac specialists working in Yazd, Iran, participated in 1 or both focus groups (n = 9 and n = 10, respectively). The recording of the first focus group was transcribed into a word file verbatim, and the accuracy of the content of all field notes and the transcripts was approved by the research team, which was then analyzed inductively. Following a similar process, saturation was achieved with the second focus group. Results: Four themes emerged: “physician factors,” “center factors,” “patient factors,” and “cultural factors.” Regarding “physician factors,” most participants mentioned shortage of time. Regarding “center factors,” most participants mentioned poor physician-patient-center coordination. In “patient factors,” the subcategories that arose were socioeconomic challenges and clinical condition of the patients. “Cultural factors” related to lack of belief in behavioral/preventive medicine. Conclusions: Barriers to CR referral and participation were multilevel, as in high-resource settings. However, relative recency of the introduction of CR in these settings seemed to cause great lack of awareness. Cultural beliefs may differ, and communication from CR programs to referring providers was a particular challenge in this setting.


2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henley

Historians of Indonesia often think of states, and especially colonial states, as predatory institutions encroaching aggressively on the territory and autonomy of freedom-loving stateless peoples. For Barbara and Leonard Andaya, early European expansion in Sumatra and the Moluccas was synonymous with the distortion or destruction of decentralized indigenous political systems based on cooperation, alliance, economic complementarity, and myths of common ancestry (B. W. Andaya 1993; L. Y. Andaya 1993). Anthony Reid (1997: 81) has described tribal societies like those of the Batak and Minangkabau in highland Sumatra as ‘miracles of statelessness’ which ‘defended their autonomy by a mixture of guerilla warfare, diplomatic flexibility, and deliberate exaggeration of myths about their savagery’ until ultimately overwhelmed by Dutch military power. Before colonialism, in this view, most Indonesians relied for security not on the protection of a powerful king, but on a ‘complex web of contractual mutualities’ embodying a ‘robust pluralism’ (Reid 1998: 29, 32). ‘So persistently’, concludes Reid (1997: 80-1), ‘has each step towards stronger states in the archipelago arisen from trading ports, with external aid and inspiration, that one is inclined to seek the indigenous political dynamic in a genius for managing without states’. Henk Schulte Nordholt (2002: 54), for his part, cautions against any tendency to downplay the violent, repressive aspects of colonial and post-colonial government in Indonesia, expressing the hope that ‘a new Indonesian historiography will succeed in liberating itself from the interests, perspective, and conceptual framework of the state’. An even more systematic attempt to demonize the (modern) state in Indonesia and elsewhere can be found in the work of James Scott (1998a, 1998b).


1986 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pat McGowan ◽  
Thomas H. Johnson

Decolonisation in sub-Saharan Africa began in January 1956 when the Sudan joined long-independent Ethiopia and Liberia as a new, post-colonial state. Although the process is not yet complete because of the disputed status of Namibia and South Africa's continued rule by a white minority, over the past 30 years as many as 43 new states have achieved independence from colonial rule, the most recent being Zimbabwe in April 1980.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Simon Ameh Ejembi ◽  
Hephzibah Onyeje Obekpa

Most agricultural innovations were not sustainably adopted due to incompatibility to social and cultural practices. Based on this proposition, this study was designed to analyze the effects of socio-cultural factors on agricultural training programs for farmers by the Benue State Agricultural and Rural Development Authorities (BNARDA) for farmers in Zone C. Seven communities were purposively selected due to their unique cultural practices and a total of 118 respondents were randomly selected for the study. Questionnaire was used as tool for data collection.  Descriptive statistics and logit regression were used for data analysis. The results show that there were 22 % of respondents aged between 50-60 years, 72 % of them were married and about 60 % had at least secondary educational attainment.  Annual income of respondents was between ₦80,000.00 - ₦100,000.00. About 72 % had farming experience of less than 10 years, and 31 % were cosmopolites. The result further shows that fear of ostracization was among the major reasons that inhibit training program participations. The results of logit analysis show that education (-3.3987), gender (2.268), rivers/streams (-.732) and leadership (2.150) were significantly affect training program. It was concluded that farmer who have strong cultural beliefs were responsible for non- participation in the training program. It was recommended that aggressive advocacy program be embarked by BNARDA before packaging a training program for the farmers.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Néstor Nuňo ◽  
Jordyn Wallenborn ◽  
Daniel Mäusezahl ◽  
Stella Marìa Hartinger ◽  
Joan Muela

Background: In some parts of the world, breast milk is seen as a potential source of child diarrhoea. While this belief has been explored in African and Southeast Asian countries, it remains vastly understudied in Latin American contexts. We investigate cultural factors contributing to breastfeeding cessation in rural high-altitude populations of the Peruvian Andes. The role of cultural factors in the local explanatory model of child diarrhoea, and whether these perceptions are integrated in the local healthcare system were assessed. Methods: We carried out semi-structured interviews with mothers (n=40) from 29 communities participating in a large community-randomised controlled trial and health personnel (n=15). We used trial's baseline information to describe characteristics of women participants. Results: Cultural beliefs for breastfeeding cessation included the perception that breast milk turned into 'blood' after six months and that breastfeeding caused child diarrhoea. We identified eight local types of child diarrhoea, and women associated six of them with breastfeeding practices. 'Infection' was the only diarrhoea mothers linked to hygiene and the germ disease concept and perceived as treatable through drug therapy. Women believed that other types of diarrhoea could not be treated within the formal healthcare sector. Interviews with health personnel revealed no protocol for, or consensus about, the integration of the local explanatory model for child diarrhoea in local healthcare and service provision. Conclusion: The local explanatory model in rural Andean Peru associated breastfeeding with child diarrhoeas. Cultural beliefs regarding diarrhoea management may increase home treatments, even in cases of severe diarrhoeal episodes. Future breastfeeding interventions should promote peer-counselling approaches to reduce negative attitudes towards breastfeeding and health practitioners. Local explanatory models should be incorporated into provincial and regional strategies for child diarrhoea management to promote equity in health and improve provider-patient relationships.


Aethiopica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 163-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Braukämper

The present focus on “postcolonial studies” in cultural anthropology is attributing a growing interest to the Italian occupation in Ethiopia (1935–1941). Whereas a considerable amount of “mainstream” information has been collected about the war of conquest and colonial rule by Fascist Italy, the indigenous views and attitudes at the grassroots of Ethiopian people have largely remained outside consideration. Because of the harsh exploitation by the ruling elites of the empire, large parts of the inhabitants in the south readily collaborated with the foreign occupants. Resistance against the Italians could most efficiently be counteracted by a policy of “divide and rule”. Although the effects of Italian occupation are a sensitive issue of research involving highly controversial views and emotions, it seems to be due time now to approach it in an unbiased scholarly discourse.


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