Suʻifefiloi: A Samoan Methodology for Transdisciplinary Theorising in Cosmopolitan Worlds

As universities make moves toward transdisciplinary research, suʻifefiloi, the Samoan practice of sewing different parts together, offers a culturally grounded research methodology for transdisciplinary theorising by Pacific scholars. Pacific transdisciplinary actors working on theory within the cosmopolitan context requires, as Gordon writes, a willingness to go beyond discipline areas to produce knowledge. Theory work, as this paper argues, requires transdisciplinarity and a willingness to go beyond one’s discipline area to extend knowledge. Working with Tuhiwai Smith’s assertion on the importance of theory, this paper discusses the usefulness of suʻifefiloi in recent turns to transdisciplinarity.

Pot Song as a Novel Cancer Communication Intervention: Lessons Learned from Developing, Implementing, and Evaluating a Culturally Grounded Intervention for Breast Cancer Education in Rural Bangladesh

Targeted public education may offer an approach to achieving more effective treatment in countries like Bangladesh, where breast cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in women. Effective cancer education interventions address the target population’s cultural and contextual needs. However, there is little published literature to guide the development of educational cancer interventions in a region where lack of resources combined with cultural stigma about cancer contribute to poor breast health outcomes for women. The goal of the current study was to design, test, and evaluate a culturally grounded intervention to promote breast problem care among women in rural Bangladesh. The current manuscript first describes the process of formative evaluation that led to the development of the intervention, including decisions about the audience, message construction, and mode of intervention delivery. Second, we describe the testing process, including process and outcome evaluation. Finally, we describe the lessons learned from the process. We conclude with recommendations related to cultural grounding for message development, questionnaire design, data collection procedures, and analysis.

Diné (Navajo) female perspectives on mother–daughter communication and cultural assets around the transition to womanhood: a cross-sectional survey

Background The inclusion of protective factors (“assets”) are increasingly supported in developing culturally grounded interventions for American Indian (AI) populations. This study sought to explore AI women’s cultural assets, perspectives, and teachings to inform the development of a culturally grounded, intergenerational intervention to prevent substance abuse and teenage pregnancy among AI females. Methods Adult self-identified AI women (N = 201) who reside on the Navajo Nation completed a cross-sectional survey between May and October 2018. The 21-question survey explored health communication around the transition to womanhood, cultural assets, perceptions of mother–daughter reproductive health communication, and intervention health topics. Univariate descriptive analyses, chi squared, and fisher’s exact tests were conducted. Results Respondents ranged in age from 18 to 82 years, with a mean age of 44 ± 15.5 years. Women self-identified as mothers (95; 48%), aunts (59; 30%), older sisters (55; 28%), grandmothers (37; 19%), and/or all of the aforementioned (50; 25%). 66% (N = 95) of women admired their mother/grandmother most during puberty; 29% (N = 58) of women were 10–11 years old when someone first spoke to them about menarche; and 86% (N=172) felt their culture was a source of strength. 70% (N = 139) would have liked to learn more about reproductive health when they were a teenager; 67% (N = 134) felt Diné mothers are able to provide reproductive health education; 51% (N = 101) reported having a rite of passage event, with younger women desiring an event significantly more than older women. Responses also indicate a disruption of cultural practices due to government assimilation policies, as well as the support of male relatives during puberty. Conclusions Results informed intervention content and delivery, including target age group, expanded caregiver eligibility criteria, lesson delivery structure and format, and protective cultural teachings. Other implications include the development of a complementary fatherhood and/or family-based intervention to prevent Native girls’ substance use and teen pregnancy.

“Double Critique” and the Sufi Praxis of Travel in Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage and Fatema Mernissi’s Scheherazade Goes West

This article focuses on two twentieth-century Anglophone Arab women writers’ accounts of their travels to “the West”: Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman’s Journey (1999), and Fatema Mernissi’s Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems (2001). While their engagement with orientalist conceptions of the harem has received some attention, how and why they deploy Sufi texts, concepts, and cosmologies to advance their “double critique” of local and colonial patriarchies has not been subject to a sustained analysis, despite its salience in their travelogues. This article establishes that the Sufi praxis of travel ( safar ) becomes a facilitating framework, and ultimately a methodology derived from culturally grounded ways of knowing and being, for their overdetermined journeys toward what has been called “Islamic feminism.”

Bio-culturally grounded: why separation and connection may not be the same around the world

Central to the account of grounded procedures is the premise that mental experiences are grounded in physical actions. We complement this account by incorporating frameworks in cultural psychology and developmental neuroscience, with new predictions. Through the examples of vicarious experiences and demerit transfer, we discuss why, and how, separation and connection may operate somewhat differently across cultures.