Exploring Cultural Factors Impacting Female Digital Entrepreneurs in Underdeveloped Countries

This chapter aims at understanding the cultural influence on female digital entrepreneurs in underdeveloped countries and the possible effects of cyberostracism by integrating the significance of culture and its influence on females providing a holistic view of how women with entrepreneurial desires experience challenges due to the identified existing gaps in underdeveloped countries. Besides sociocultural dynamics, education is a factor observed to be extremely impactful. Basic and digital literacy are considered essential to progress in conducting businesses across borders. From a digital perspective, “cyberostracism” is identified as a potential issue women could encounter due to lack of education. In this study, a comparative analysis on female digital entrepreneurs of the Asian and European region is conducted based on the view of a collectivistic and individualistic society concluded by providing a framework to minimize gaps and establish an environment for women to pursue digital entrepreneurship in their societies, mitigating the possible effects of cyberostracism.

Other Considerations

This chapter examines further considerations derived from the research.Institutional factors related to religion exert a stronger structural and long-term influence on prosperity (competitiveness and corruption) than the cultural influence of religion (adherents).Prosperity and educational differences between Protestants (higher) and Roman Catholics (lower) are still evident in Germany and Switzerland. Such differences are even more prominent comparing national levels (cross-country) throughout Europe and the Americas.Thousands of years of hegemony characterise the Roman Catholic Church as a global political-religious institution. The associated corruption in all the countries under its influence may well be related to the corrupt fruits for which “we shall know them” in the parable of Jesus (King James Bible, 1769, Matthew 7:15–23). Among others, these fruits have also been the abuse scandals, maintenance of ignorance, and persecution of God’s Word, in the name of Jesus Christ.The results of this study open up various avenues for future research. The QCA evidence generated here allows further analysis of every country in Europe and the Americas. Future research might also continue to apply the vast amount of information collected and already codified in this study.

Prosperity and Religion (A), (B), (1)

This chapter discusses the prosperity–religion link and reviews some prominent empirical studies refuting and confirming Weber’s thesis and balancing the evidence gathered. It also emphasises the importance of seriously considering the institutional (and hegemonic) influence of religion in addition to the cultural influence (of religious adherents). The historical institutional influence of religion has been the crucial factor with regard to prosperity/transparency (more than the current proportion of adherents).The relationships of prosperity vis-à-vis religion as a predictor (independent) variable (e.g. Weber) or as a criterion (dependent) variable (e.g. Marx) reinforce each other and produced a vast body of theories and empirical studies. In the first causal arrow, Weber’s explanations and findings in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has attracted much criticism over the last century. The debate remains polarised.The second causal arrow (religion as a dependent variable vis-à-vis prosperity) resulted in, among others, secularisation theories focusing on either the supply or demand-side of religion. The theory of existential security is an influential model that empirically focuses on the variations of the demand-side and revises the secularisation theory.

Քրւստափոր Քուշնարյան-արևելագետը

The renowned scholar, composer and pedagogue Qristofor Qushnaryan paid particular attention to the genres of traditional classical music of the peoples of the Middle East – namely, mughams and dastgahs, the art of ashughs and sazandars. The proposed in his monograph “Issues of the History and Theory of Armenian Monodic Music” ideas and principal starting concepts regarding the mutual cultural influence, genetic foundations of the phenomena, generally accepted in the East and deeply rooted and highly widespread among the Armenian populace, the commonality in the modal systems, the historical mission of Armenian musicians in this field, as well as the analytical outlines of a large number of other problems are indicative of the scholar’s undeniable merits in musical Oriental Studies, and serve as a worthwhile guidance for musicians-orientalists in their research work.

旅行，為了轉瞬即逝的希望：試析錢鍾書《圍城》中的旅行書寫

<p>錢鍾書的《圍城》因其獨具一格的行文、諷刺和暗喻而聞名於世，該小說對中日戰爭初期的中國文人進行了辛辣且幽默的嘲諷及批評。然而，截至目前，學界鮮少討論錢鍾書在《圍城》中的旅行書寫。傳統上，旅行往往被視為是一個文化影響、發現他者及自我的過程；極端情形下，旅行甚至是征服的開始。本文認為，錢鍾書通過旅行的情節，揭露了人性的黑暗面，例如自大、虛偽、貪婪和算計，而這些陰暗面的存在無關種族、性別、階級、教育或地區。《圍城》的男主角方鴻漸本就是一個自卑且悲觀的人，經過數次旅行之後&mdash;&mdash;從歐洲到上海、從上海到湖南、從湖南回到上海，他的這些性格特徵愈發明顯。他的一生是由一個接一個的圍城所構成，而從此圍城到彼圍城的旅途給了他短暫的可以喘息的時間和空間，這些旅行也給了他轉瞬即逝的虛假希望，那便是，他在下一站將迎來更好的機遇。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Famous for its masterful diction, satire, and metaphor, Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged is a sharp, humorous, and sarcastic criticism of Chinese intellectuals at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Until recently, scant attention was paid to Qian’s travel writing in this novel. Travel is traditionally considered a process of cultural influence, the discovery of the other and the self or, radically, the beginning of conquest. This essay argues that Qian adopts the plot of travel to display a bleak picture of humanity, filled with pretentiousness, hypocrisy, greed, and manipulation, the existence of which is not impacted by race, gender, class, education, or region. For the novel’s protagonist Fang Hongjian, his habitual low-esteem and pessimism become more explicit after his several trips from Europe to Shanghai, from Shanghai to Hunan, and from Hunan back to Shanghai. His life consists of besieged fortresses one after another. The journey from here to there gives him temporary space and time for breathing, as well as a false and fleeting hope that he will have better chances in the next stop.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

The “Winnetou Kitsch” and Other Traces of “Americanization”

The starting point for this article is the observation that American cultural influence never waned in socialist Czechoslovakia despite all attempts of the Communist Party to eliminate it and the Communist Party’s seemingly omnipotent position. The study focuses on the relationship between state policies, producers’ interests, and consumers’ demands, a triad more complex than the dichotomy of an “omnipotent” totalitarian regime versus an oppressed society. It describes the distinct phases in managing American cultural influence and illuminates the various interests and factors that contributed to the popularity and spread of “American” cultural goods. As the article shows, the approach of the Communist Party in prioritizing the political function of culture over entertainment or aesthetics facilitated consumers’ interest in cultural imports from abroad, mainly from the US. This interest in American cultural goods, in turn, exerted pressure on producers of culture and intermediaries to satisfy the demand. As a result, the American cultural influence not only survived in Czechoslovakia during the forty years of the Communist rule, but rather intensified and eventually took on a subversive force.

García Márquez and His Precursors

This article is interested in writers and literary traditions that have influenced García Márquez, whether stylistically or structurally, culturally or historically, or all of these. The article pays attention to the author’s comments and his appropriations of specific precursors, especially as he acknowledges them in his autobiography Living to Tell the Tale (2002). It takes Jorge Luis Borges’s tack and suggests that the process of influence moves back as well as forward in time, that influence is reciprocal and precursors may be influenced by García Márquez as well as influencing him. Among the dozens of authors who both influence and are influenced by García Márquez are Faulkner, Kafka, Garcilaso de la Vega, and Spanish baroque poets and playwrights. The article also discusses the influence of his grandmother’s storytelling and the deeply embedded cultural influence of Catholicism in Colombia. By attending to García Márquez’s complex relation with his precursors, the article shows that one may justifiably speak of una tradición gabrielina.

Hegemonic Mimicry

In Hegemonic Mimicry, Kyung Hyun Kim considers the recent global success of Korean popular culture—the Korean wave of pop music, cinema, and television, which is also known as hallyu—from a transnational and transcultural perspective. Using the concept of mimicry to think through hallyu's adaptation of American sensibilities and genres, he shows how the commercialization of Korean popular culture has upended the familiar dynamic of major-to-minor cultural influence, enabling hallyu to become a dominant global cultural phenomenon. At the same time, its worldwide popularity has rendered its Koreanness opaque. Kim argues that Korean cultural subjectivity over the past two decades is one steeped in ethnic rather than national identity. Explaining how South Korea leaped over the linguistic and cultural walls surrounding a supposedly “minor” culture to achieve global ascendance, Kim positions K-pop, Korean cinema and television serials, and even electronics as transformative acts of reappropriation that have created a hegemonic global ethnic identity.