CULTURAL AND CIVILIZATIONAL INTERACTIONS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS THEORY

An essential feature of the contemporary globalized world is the emergence and active development of a network of interactions between the representatives of the different cultural and civilizational communities that was not typical during the previous historical epochs. Under these conditions, there is a process of restructuring of every culture, every civilization system. If earlier the processes of civilizational and cultural renewal had lasted for centuries and millennia, today they have been taking place over years and decades. Nowadays, there is a conglomeration of cultural-civilizational communities that are different in history, traditions, languages, and religions. They develop, interact and mutually influence each other through cultural and civilizational dialogue. These relatively independent societies have to coexist within common information space, in which intercultural and intercivilizational communication is an important factor in regulating both internal life and relations between countries. G. Hofstede made a great contribution to the development of cultural dimensions theory. The works of G. Hofstede gave rise to an influential research tradition in the field of intercultural interactions. They are actively used by the researchers and consultants in the field of international business and communication. They continue to be a major resource in intercultural research and inspire the study of both cultural values and other aspects of culture. The article aims to highlight Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. The author used an anthropological integrative approach, comparative analysis and interpretive research paradigm.

Renewing the coal mining past

This article examines how inhabitants of Heerlen, a town in the province of Limburg in the southeast of the Netherlands, renew the cultural memory of coal mining in the area through parodic linguistic and cultural practices linked to the (re)articulation of collective local and social identities. Heerlen became a center for the coal mining industry in the Netherlands in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The closure of the mines between 1965 and 1974 had devastating consequences for the economic, social, and cultural developments of the area. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the region’s mining past, creating new momentum for Heerlen in its transition from a struggling former mining area to a city focusing on long-term socio-economic development and cultural innovation. In this context, new practices of cultural memory are emerging through local performances of language and culture that operate to reconstruct Heerlen’s coal mining past through parodic repetition. By discussing two case studies exemplifying the creative ways in which dominant accounts of the mining past are being rearticulated, we explain how the use of parody may serve to undermine the interacting social norms, identities, and hierarchies that have come to shape cultural memories of mining in communities historically defined by working-class and male-dominated labor. The article integrates linguistic and sociolinguistic research, studies of regional history, and theories of parody rooted in contemporary literary criticism and gender studies, to demonstrate the importance of place-bound practices of languageculture as a compelling force of linguistic and socio-cultural renewal.

“A Book for Those Who Were Also Concerned”

The support of prominent theologians for the First World War made Barth understand that their premises were false. How instead could a pastor rightly speak of God? Barth returned anew to the biblical text, becoming convinced that it can still speak to people today. The result was Barth’s first Epistle to the Romans (1919), a commentary to Paul’s letter. Barth stresses that the kingdom of God comes about solely through God, while all human activities, including religion, belong to the world. Barth’s cultural critique reflects the spiritual situation of the wartime and postwar period, yet without any hope on cultural renewal. In his 1919 Tambach lecture, Barth further developed his insights of the difference between God and religion. For God one can only wait. Jesus Christ’s resurrection is the wholly other. Therefore theology needs to think dialectically. Barth’s new ideas found great resonance, but he was also accused of arbitrary exegesis.

Presencing with Soul

In his outline of Theory U, an awareness-based social change methodology, Scharmer (2018) depicts seven stages of presencing which he suggests can enable deeper modes of perception and knowing, to help us actualise our highest potential for social, economic, and cultural renewal. In this paper I attempt to shine a deeper light into the seven stages of presencing, by drawing from the fields of transpersonal psychology, quantum physics, and consciousness studies. In doing so, my objective is to operationalise in psychological terms key processes in presencing, such as “letting go”, letting come”, “connecting to source”, and “dialoguing with the universe”. I explore what such processes may involve and what they may demand of presencing practitioners. In the first half of the paper, I map Scharmer’s (2018) seven stages onto three core streams of consciousness which inform the human experience, reflecting on the features and qualities of each stream, and considering what psychosomatic dynamics may be at play as we enact the trajectory of the U. In depicting the three streams of consciousness, I highlight some of the challenges which presencing presents, suggesting that it is, in essence, a depth-psychological and spiritual approach. In the second half of the paper, I explore the practical and ethical implications of presencing, considering what capacities and attitudes may need to be nurtured in practitioners to support skilful facilitation and enactment of the U process. I also consider what frameworks could be deployed to facilitate safe and effective practice.

Reflexive Reflection Co-created with Kehte-ayak (Old Ones) as an Indigenous Qualitative Methodological Data Contemplation Tool

The aim of this paper is to propose a new way of understanding data contemplation for Indigenous methodologies. There is a need for Indigenous methods that allow us to explore and organize findings that are steeped in the contextualized story and grounded in the research relationship. A study that asked Cree Kehte-ayak (Old Ones) about the relevance in harmonizing Indigenous and Western ways of knowing in healing from addiction shows that Reflexive Reflection (RR) offers a respectful way for discovery. RR offers epistemological underpinnings for data consideration when engaging Indigenous methodologies. Culturally rooted addictions research can contribute to Indigenous wellness and cultural renewal by bringing awareness to the link between colonialism and addiction and by actively re-centring an Indigenous worldview and governance in the research process (Hall et al., 2015). While challenging colonialism is vital, the strength of Indigenous culture must be central to the overall project, with relational accountability that implies all parts of the research process are related, and that the researcher is responsible for nurturing and maintaining this relationship with the research process and with “all relations.” Indigenous research inquiry involves moments of contemplation that explore dreams, intuition, teachings, and connection to land. It also involves spending intimate hours listening to stories of the “old ones” that are rooted in a sense of kinshipresponsibility that relay culture, identity, and a sense of belonging that are essential to the life of the researcher. Reframing the language around aftercare services for Indigenous Peoples can take place through reflexive investigation and knowledge creation.

When a Coterie Becomes a Generation: Intellectual Sociability and the Narrative of Generational Change in Sayyid Qutb’s Egypt

Departing from the case study of Egyptian intellectuals, focusing particularly on Sayyid Qutb, this chapter explores the relationship between narratives of generational change and cultural renewal. It argues that the observation of intellectual sociability is a productive angle from which to understand the conditions under which generational claims result in the effective reshuffling of the intellectual leadership, aesthetic norms, and principles of intellectual authority. The biography of Qutb (1906–1966), a poet and literary critic who abandoned his literary activity in the mid-1950s to pursue a career in Islamic activism—allows us to observe how the generational narrative articulates with his shifting intellectual networks. As a public intellectual, Qutb was at the forefront of two literary confrontations in early- to mid-twentieth century Egypt in which he made generational claims in order to place himself in the literary tradition that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and later to cut himself off from that tradition by announcing the emergence of a new generation dedicated to political Islam. At the core of these competing uses of generational rhetoric, this chapter argues, is Qutb’s shifting relationship with the senior literary generation, some of whom he had considered his mentors. Departing from the case study, the chapter then argues that collectives defined as generational tend to emerge in tandem with the reshuffling of social bonds that a writer maintains with his seniors, switching from a bond of transmission to one of confrontation. The change announced in the generational narrative is effective when followed by the concrete action of shifting one’s intellectual solidarities from masters to peers, as this is the moment when the masters are abandoned to history and peers are promoted as the new literary generation. Depending on the particular set of relationships in which a writer finds himself, the notion of generation may act as a narrative of either change or tradition.

Repensando a Espinosa: su papel en los debates sobre la reivindicación estética del cubismo y la producción plástica de Picasso en el contexto cultural canario (1920-1930)

This study aims to reflect on the role Agustín Espinosa played in the vindication of both Cubism and the figure of Pablo Ruiz Picasso during the first third of the Spanish 20th century. To this end, it starts from a philological and historiographical analysis of Tenerife Gaceta de Arte, vehicle of dissemination of the artistic and cultural renewal in Spain. In this sense, the Picassian discourse of the Tenerife magazine is based on the Parisian surrealist group, headed by André Breton, as well as on a series of literary precedents present in the Canary Islands in the 1920s. When deepening into Espinosa’s work, it is possible to formulate new relational approaches between the literary images of the Canary poet and the Cubist dynamics, together with the defence of the movement.