Marketable religion: How game company Ubisoft commodified religion for a global audience

Videogame companies are selling religion to an overwhelmingly secular demographic. Ubisoft, the biggest company in the world’s biggest cultural industry, created a best-selling franchise about a conflict over Biblical artefacts between Muslim Assassins and Christian Templars. Who decides to put religion into those games? How? And why? To find out, we interviewed 22 developers on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, including directors and writers. Based on those, we show that the “who” of Ubisoft is not a person but an industry: a de-personalized and codified process. How? Marketing, editorial and production teams curb creative teams into reproducing a formula: a depoliticized, universalized, and science-fictionalized “marketable religion.” Why? Because this marketable form of religious heritage can be consumed by everyone—regardless of cultural background or conviction. As such, this paper adds an empirically grounded perspective on the “who,” “why,” and “how” of cultural industries’ successful commodification of religious and cultural heritage.

Anti-American Expressions: The 1957 Taipei Incident and Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong

Although scholars have investigated the intricacies of anti-Americanism, few have examined the factors that affected the abilities of minorities or colonized people to protest U.S. policies. This article compares and contrasts the responses of Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong to the May 24th Incident of 1957, when 25,000 Chinese attacked the U.S. embassy and ransacked the U.S. Information Service Office in Taipei, Taiwan, due to the acquittal of a U.S. soldier for killing a Chinese. While U.S. military and economic aid motivated recipients to rally behind the anti-Communist banner, geopolitics, domestic conditions, and anti-Chinese racism also played pivotal roles in determining whether the Chinese could voice or act upon their anti-American sentiment. The Philippines’ heavy dependence on U.S. military and economic aid, coupled with long-lasting anti-Chinese racism, limited the potential for Philippine Chinese to critique U.S. policies. By contrast, tenuous U.S.-Thai relations and domestic anti-Americanism emboldened Thai Chinese to lambaste U.S. military injustice. Although the largest U.S. aid recipient, Britain adhered to neutrality in its Cold War politics and permitted a vibrant cultural industry in Hong Kong, resulting in strong criticism of U.S. policies among the city’s Chinese.

Analyzing the Sustainability of Water-Cultural Industry and Their Influencing Factors in China

This study is an empirical analysis of China’s “sustainable development ability of water cultural industry” based on the attributes of water cultural industry (economic attribute and cultural ideology). First, using “factor analysis” and “grey relational analysis theory,” establish an indicator-system for the level of sustainable development of the cultural industry, then quantify the relationships between the water cultural industry and its influencing factors, and finally, propose some solutions for enhancing the sustainable development of the water cultural industry from the perspective of “improving resiliency.”

Estimation of the chemical resistance of polyurethane compounds used in the manufacture of diaphragms of diaphragm-piston pumps

This study presents chemical resistance tests for three different grades of polyurethane bicomponent compounds: PolyFlex 80A, Silagerm 6080 and Advaform Mark 80. Samples of polyurethane bicomponent compounds were prepared in the form of squares, with a thickness not exceeding 3 mm. They were placed in previously prepared containers with aggressive technical me-dia: Lazurit herbicide, Rakurs fungicide and MAXCUT HD SAE 30 mineral motor oil. These technical media were selected taking into account the processing of agricultural legumes, and the concentration of preparations was calculated specifically for soybeans. The selected mineral motor oil MAXCUT HD SAE 30 is used in many pumping equipment used in the agri-cultural industry. According to the results of the study, it was proved that the greatest effect on the samples is exerted by the herbicide “Lazurit”, in which they swell and increase in weight. The experiment carried out to evaluate the chemical resistance of polyurethane compounds showed that the best materi-al for the manufacture of diaphragms used in piston diaphragms is Adva-form Mark 80. This type of two-component polyurethane compound has the best chemical resistance to the investigated chemically active substances.

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE GROWTH OF CRAFT BUSINESS IN BOGOR CITY

Bogor City has been the tourist destination for a long time, making this sector as the leading sector for the city. Tourism activities in Bogor City encourage the growth of creative industry especially craft business that reap the benefit through direct sales to the tourists as souvenirs. Many argue that unlike other industry in the economy, there are factors that influence the growth of creative industry beside factors of production. This study aims to identify factors that are significantly influencing the growth of craft business in Bogor City. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze data collected through interviews with 35 owners of craft business which randomly selected from the sample framework. The data obtained including (1) number of workers, (2) capital, (3) raw materials, (4) showroom ownership, (5) participation in exhibitions, (6) business permit ownership, (7) market orientation, and (8) production quantity. The first three data correspond with factors of production in classical economy, while the rest are related to the characteristics of creative-cultural industry. The result shows that none of the variables related to the classical economy factors of production are statistically significant in this model, instead the variables that are related to characteristics of creative-cultural industry are significant. Among other significant variables, participation in exhibition is the most significant variable in affecting the growth of craft business in Bogor City.

Implementing Multi-Criteria Analysis in the Selection of AUCHS for the Integration of Digital Technologies into the Tourism Offering: The Case of MeDryDive

Focusing on both physical and virtual accessibility, this paper presents the methodology developed by MeDryDive for the selection of AUCHS (Accessible Underwater Cultural Heritage Sites) in Greece, Italy, Croatia, and Montenegro. MeDryDive is a project that aims at the promotion of AUCHS in the Mediterranean as distinctive tourism destinations through personalized dry dive experiences. The candidate sites are assessed in order to be included in the transnational thematic tourism product “Dive in the Past” and promoted through Creative and Cultural Industry (CCI) applications, including a Serious Game, Augmented and Virtual Reality applications, and promotional videos, all developed in the context of the project. The main goal of the methodology is to meet the requirements for both the sustainability of the thematic tourism product and the digital applications’ development. The assessment of AUCHS is based on specific criteria that result from setting weighing factors and classifying indicators as either critical or non-critical. The criteria are categorized into core (feasibility) criteria and complementary (appropriateness) criteria for determining the total level of readiness. This set of criteria enables site selection through an elimination method, identifying the suitable pilot and follow-on sites for the integration of digital technologies into the tourism offering.

Employment in Tourism Industries: Are There Subsectors with a Potentially Higher Level of Income?

This work analyzes the tourist sector, the employment generated by the tourism industries, and its relationship with tourism receipts. The hypothesis is that there are tourist subsectors with a potentially higher level of income. The article studies the impact of the distribution of the employed population in the different subsectors of the tourism industry, controlling for the most important economic variables, on the level of income per arrival in 24 OECD countries, using panel data for the period 2008–2018. As its main result, the model indicates that the labor force that increases most the receipts per arrival is the ‘travel agencies and other reservation services’, followed by the ‘sports and recreation industry’ labor force, while having a large labor force in the ‘food and beverage’ or ‘cultural industry’ operates in the opposite direction.