DANCESCAPE IN SAYAW BARONG PERFORMANCE OF BAJAU SAMA

Sayaw barong is one of the traditional performances for the Bajau Sama ethnic in Kota Belud, Sabah. With parang barong itself as a primarily customised weapon, this symbolic performance represents the war dance in Bajau martial arts locally and used as an offensive and defensive technique (buah/jurus silat) that merges in different streams (aliran) of silat such as silat kuntau, silat sping/sprint, silat betawi, and silat Nusantara. Through participants’ observation and performance ethnography, this particular style and technique encompasses the identity of Bajau Sama martial art through artistic movement as a representation that is also performed during other traditions such as wedding ceremonies, traditional healing, or funeral as their own cultural value. By referring to The Fan Theory suggested by Schechner, it shows how this tradition links and connects to other elements in sacred space such as ritualization, shamanism, rites and ceremonies. This paper also discusses the use of parang barong as a material culture and how its appearance helps the efficacy of the performance. The concept of sacred-scapes, death-scapes and kinetic-scapes take shape as tangible and intangible in order to understand this particular custom and how it fits in the Bajau identity as their own art of defence traditions. It also shows the Bajau Sama belief system that creates space in ritual including initiations, customs and celebrations.

Leadership In Time of Crisis: The COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan and Reflections for Malaysia

The 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was one of the most massive pandemics in history, with over 29.6 million people infected, including over 400,000 cases in Japan. This article describes the leadership tasks in a time of crisis during the different stages of Japan’s COVID-19 strategy under Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga's leadership. Our aim is to formulate lessons from Japan for Malaysia. Shallow assessments of leadership performance often accompany the deeply rooted belief in the importance of political leadership. Such reviews never arrive more quickly than in the wake of crises - dramatic disasters of COVID-19 cases and Abe's resignation from the prime minister post. While symbolic performance is necessary (if only because it can arouse the public), it is one of the plausible avenues for the public to express their political judgements upon leadership in a time of crisis. In this article, we adopted a qualitative method of library research and highlights the many expected tasks of Japanese prime ministers to perform, and we offer a lesson for Malaysia in times of crisis

Forgetting and Symbolic Insight: Delay Improves Children’s Use of a Novel Symbol

To use a symbol, children must understand that the symbol stands for something in the world. This development has often been investigated in the model-room task (DeLoache, 1987, 2000) in which children use a scale model to try to find a toy that is hidden in the room that the model represents. To succeed, children must acquire dual representation: they must put aside their understanding of the model as an object and focus more on what the model represents (Hartstein & Berthier, 2017). Here we suggest that forgetting irrelevant details or misleading information may be an important part of acquiring and maintaining dual representation. Based on prior research showing that forgetting can promote insight in children and adults (e.g., Sio & Ormerod, 2009; Vlach et al., 2014) and that a small sample of 3-year-olds could improve on the model-room task with a delay (Marzolf & DeLoache, 1994), we hypothesized that taking a break during the model-room task would facilitate forgetting and hence symbolic insight. Eighty-eight 3-year-olds performed 8 trials of the model-room task. Half of the children received a 24-hour delay after trial 4 and half performed the 8 trials consecutively. Children who received a 24-hour delay had better symbolic performance on the last 4 trials compared to children whose testing sessions occurred consecutively on one day, even when statistically controlling for the effects of learning over trials and memory on children’s performance. This study provides strong initial evidence that a delay can promote symbolic insight in 3-year-old children.

The Effects of Social Capital on Firm Substantive and Symbolic Performance

This study examines the effects of social capital in the context of e-business and investigates how each of the three dimensions of social capital (structural, relational and cognitive) differentially influences a firm's substantive and symbolic performance. The study explores how structural capital and cognitive capital indirectly affect firm performance through relational capital. The research model is generally supported by data collected from a survey of 205 firms in China. The results suggest that structural and relational capital positively influence substantive and symbolic performance, respectively. However, cognitive capital does not have significant effects on substantive performance, though it positively affects symbolic performance. Also, the study found that structural capital and relational capital have stronger effects on substantive performance than symbolic performance. In contrast, cognitive capital has stronger effects on symbolic performance than substantive performance. Further, both structural capital and cognitive capital positively affect relational capital.

Supremacy

This chapter examines the nature and extent of royal supremacy during the reign of Henry VIII. If Henry's supremacy was innate and divinely ordained, the question that arises is why it required an act of Parliament. The King's own view was that Parliament merely expressed the nation's assent, but Thomas Cromwell may have thought differently. The legal theorist Christopher St German, an inspiration for the parliamentary assault against the clergy in 1531–1532, certainly believed that royal supremacy rested in the King in Parliament. The chapter considers the rise of a new religious phenomenon — dissident, oppositional Roman Catholicism — and issues regarding the King's divorce and supremacy before discussing visitation, which was intended for both symbolic performance and practical enforcement of the royal supremacy. It also looks at the death of Catherine of Aragon and the first formal statement of doctrine for the independent Church of England, known as Ten Articles.

Inhaling the Nation: The Cultural Translation and Symbolic Performance of the Cigar in Cuba

The following article uses a mixture of poetry and text to trace the cigar through various stages of Cuban history and highlights how the cigar has been translated and as a symbol useful to the construction of Cuban nationalism. In what ways does the cultural representation of the cigar throughout Cuban history create a performance of cultural values, identities, and heritage? As this paper reveals, such a question require us to translate the cigar smoke, to breathe in Cuban history, and to exhale the performance of metaphors.

The Idolatry of Force: How Israel Embraced Targeted Killing

Not until the Second Intifada did assassination emerge as an explicit, legally codified, and publicly announced doctrine of so-called targeted killing in Israel. This study, the first of a two-part series, explores the doctrine's historical roots and ideological lineage and tracks its rise under the premiership of Ariel Sharon. Targeted killing became institutionalized not just to reduce direct and imminent threats against Israelis but also to mobilize electoral support, field-test weapons and tactics, and eliminate key figures in order to sow chaos and stunt the development of an effective Palestinian national movement. The study frames the analysis within a wider meditation on Israel's idolatry of force. As much symbolic performance as military technique, targeted killing reenacts and ritualizes Palestinian humiliation and helplessness in the face of the Zionist state's irresistible power, making this dynamic appear a fact of life, ordained and immutable.

The Effects of Social Capital on Firm Substantive and Symbolic Performance

This study examines the effects of social capital in the context of e-business and investigates how each of the three dimensions of social capital (structural, relational and cognitive) differentially influences a firm's substantive and symbolic performance. The study explores how structural capital and cognitive capital indirectly affect firm performance through relational capital. The research model is generally supported by data collected from a survey of 205 firms in China. The results suggest that structural and relational capital positively influence substantive and symbolic performance, respectively. However, cognitive capital does not have significant effects on substantive performance, though it positively affects symbolic performance. Also, the study found that structural capital and relational capital have stronger effects on substantive performance than symbolic performance. In contrast, cognitive capital has stronger effects on symbolic performance than substantive performance. Further, both structural capital and cognitive capital positively affect relational capital.