Cultural Tariffs: Appropriation and the Right to Cross Cultural Boundaries

Why are some acts of cultural boundary-crossing seen as legitimate whereas others are repudiated as cultural appropriation? We argue that perceptions of cultural appropriation have formed in response to the emergence of cultural omnivorousness as a dominant form of high-statusconsumption. Boundary-crossing has become a source of cultural capital. Consequently, the right to adopt a practice from a culture that is not one's own is determined on the basis of the cost one is presumed to have paid. Cultural boundary-crossing is seen as legitimate only if the actor crossing has paid a sufficient cultural tariff. We test our theory in a between-subject (preregistered) experimental design, demonstrating that those who enjoy a privileged social position, as inferred from their social identity or socioeconomic status, have less normative latitude to cross cultural boundaries. This is explained by perceptions that these actors are either devaluing or exploiting the target culture. While symbolic boundaries and cultural distinctiontheories are inconsistent with our results, we find that Americans who are disenchanted about group-based social mobility are the ones most likely to be outraged by cultural boundary crossing. The imposition of a cultural tariff, we argue, is a form of symbolic redistribution.

Breaching Boundaries in Muslim and Christian Tourism from Indonesia to Israel and Palestine

Studies on tourism and pilgrimage show that spatial mobility, including transregional travel, mostly confirms and strengthens tourists’ and pilgrims’ social identities and symbolic boundaries between Self and Other. However, in guided religious package tours from Indonesia to Israel and Palestine, experiences with spatial boundaries do affect the Muslim and Christian pilgrims, adding more nuances to socio-cultural boundary-making. This complex making and breaching of boundaries relates to inner-Indonesian religious dynamics. Among both Muslim and Christian Indonesians, references to the Middle East express not only transregional solidarity but also multifarious orientations in inter and intra-religious relations within Indonesia. Among Indonesian Muslims, some orthodox Muslims’ orientations towards the Middle East as the birthplace of Islam are contested but also combined with indigenous Islamic traditions. Similar to these intra-Muslim frictions, members of Indonesia's Christian minority experience fissures in the expressions of local and global Christian identities. This article analyses how symbolic, social, and spatial boundaries are maintained and breached in transregional tourism from Indonesia to the Middle East.

Leveraging interorganizational governance for bridging responses to supply chain disruptions: a polynomial regression analysis

PurposeDrawing on the transactional cost economics (TCE) perspective, we aim to investigate the effects of the balance and imbalance between contractual and relational governance on a firm's bridging responses to supply chain disruptions. By adopting the institutionally contingent perspective, we further examine the moderating effect of cultural distance on the relationship between governance mechanisms and bridging responses.Design/methodology/approachBased on data collected from 183 firms in China, we use polynomial regression and response surface analyses to test our research model.FindingsThe bridging responses increase along with an increasing balance level between contractual and relational governance and decrease along with an increasing imbalance level between contractual and relational governance. Moreover, the positive effect of balance between contractual and relational governance is strengthened by a large cultural distance. We also find that a large cultural distance amplifies the negative effect of the combination of high relational governance and low contractual governance yet weakens that of the combination of high contractual governance and low relational governance.Originality/valueOur study provides nuanced insights into the effects of the balance and imbalance between contractual and relational governance on bridging responses and into the cultural boundary conditions under which these effects vary.

I – “miesjcova“, You – “przyjiezny”: Drawing the Boundary of Identity in Šalčininkai District

In this article, I seek to investigate how people living in the Šalčininkai district perceive the cultural boundary between locals and newcomers. Based on biographical interviews collected during the ethnographic field research, I argue that historical circumstances and frequent changes in state affiliation have influenced the drawing of the cultural boundary between locals and newcomers. In the article, I present how this division is understood by people of different generations living in the Šalčininkai district. The cultural boundary between locals and newcomers is very important to the oldest generation (born before World War II). People who grew up during Soviet times understand this boundary and its significance, but pay less attention to it. The youngest generation (people born around 1990) perceive this cultural boundary as a useless remnant of the past and want to distance themselves from it.

Through a Black Hole into Parallel Universes

The Anglo-Saxon immigration of the 5th-6th centuries AD led to a dual contact situation in the British Isles: with the native inhabitants of the settlement areas in south-eastern England (internal contact zone), and with the Celtic polities outside the Anglo-Saxon areas (external contact zone). In the internal contact zone, social and ethnogenetic processes resulted in a complete acculturation of the natives by the 9th century. By contrast, the external contact zone between Anglo-Saxon and Celtic polities resulted in a cultural and linguistic split right across the British Isles up to the 7th century, and arguably well beyond. The cultural boundary between these two domains became permeable in the 7th century as a consequence of Anglo-Saxon Christianization which created a northern communication zone characterized by a distinct art style (Insular Art). In the early medieval British Isles, contact resulting from migration did not lead to cultural exchange for about two centuries, and it took profound ideological and social changes to establish a basis for communication.

Cultural Boundary Work when Inviting Constructivist Pedagogy into Polytechnic Schools

In this study, we focus on a process of change in a polytechnic school in Denmark where the school management team decided to promote a non-traditional pedagogical approach. We examine teachers’ moral evaluation of their own teaching, of students, and of learning during this transition in order to grasp the degree to which teachers needed to reconceptualize or reorient their traditional instructional roles and identities in order to meet the functional demands of the new forms of PBL-based teaching and learning. Based on qualitative interviews with teachers and heads of schools, we found that the process of change mobilized competing definitions of the legitimate teacher, the legitimate student, and legitimate knowledge in this organizational context.

Clashing Values: Supranational Identities, Geopolitical Rivalry and Europe’s Growing Cultural Divide

Soon after the collapse of Soviet-type communism in Central and Eastern Europe, a new geopolitical division began to reshape the continent. Our study demonstrates that this newly emerging geopolitical divide has been underpinned by a corresponding cultural divergence, of which “emancipative values” are the most powerful marker. Using the European Values Study/World Values Survey 1990 to 2014, we find that the former Iron Curtain no longer constitutes a cultural boundary because the ex-communist states that joined the European Union have been converging with the West’s strong emphasis on emancipative values. Instead, a new and steeply growing cultural gap has emerged between the European Union and its Eastern neighbors. The two competing geopolitical formations in the West and East—the European and Eurasian Unions, respectively—have diverged culturally in recent decades. The divergence goes back to contrasting supranational identities that originate in different religious traditions, which rulers have increasingly accentuated to strengthen their nations’ endorsement or dismissal of emancipative values. Through this sorting-out process, emancipative values became an increasingly significant marker of a Western-vs-Eastern cultural identity. Our study is the first to link this groundbreaking cultural transformation to civilizational identities and geopolitical rivalry.

RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF MIGRANTS FROM TRANSCAUCASIA AND CENTRAL ASIA STATES

The article was prepared on the base of the of sociological research materials. The research program included criteria and indicators on the basis of which the author determines a vector of development of diaspora communities and the results of socio-cultural integration of culturally different migrants. The author examines religious practices as an indicator of the socio-psychological criterion. The results of the research indicate a generally high level of religiosity and active use of cult practices by the majority of the respondents. However, religious practices which in some cases mark the cultural boundary are not clearly isolationist in their character.