The cultural semiotics of African encounters: Eighteenth-Century images of the Other

This a contribution to the cultural semiotics of African cultural encounters seen through the eyes of Swedish naturalists at the end of the eighteenth century. European travellers faced severe problems in understanding the alien African cultures they encountered; they even had difficulty understanding the other culture as a culture. They were not just other cultures that they could relate to, but often something completely different, belonging to the natural history of the human species. The Khoikhoi and other groups were believed by Europeans to be, from their perspective, the most distant culture. The Linnaean disciple Anders Sparrman and others, however, tried to transcend this cultural gap, and used their cognitive resources, such as empathy and intersubjectivity, in order to understand the alien culture they encountered.The aim of this paper is to unearth the cultural semiosis of African encounters and the intersubjective challenges that human interactions provoke. These encounters not only changed the view the travellers had of the Other, but also changed themselves and their self-perception. The encounter between the Ego and the Other is, however, not static, something predestined by the differences in their cultures, but dynamic, changing according to individual encounters and the actual intersubjective interplay that transform and change the perception of the Other. There are in particular four meaning-making processes and challenges within cultural encounters that are in focus: recognizing cultural complexity; invoking intersubjectivity; determining similarities and dissimilarities; and identifying the Other as a mirror of oneself.The triad of cultures – Ego, Alter, and Alius – can be understood as gradual and changing aspects depending on the actual situation of the encounter and the personal perspectives, interpretations, and behaviour of the thinking subjects involved. Using concrete examples from Southern and Western Africa in the 1770s and 1780s, this study aims to explore this dynamic semiosis. One of the conclusions is that the relation between the Ego and the Alter/Alius is not something only predetermined by the cultures involved and their ideologies, but also depends on the individual thinking subjects and how they use their specific cognitive and semiotic resources, not least their intersubjective abilities, within specific temporal and spatial contexts.

Servant Leadership: A Taxonomic Approach towards Systematic Literature Review

Connection between inferior leadership and massive business meltdown and inadequacy of seasoned leadership models create an urge to seek leadership equipped with ethical behavior, concern for subordinates, all the stakeholders and the society as a whole. This literature survey examines existing literature addressing servant leadership theory. Servant leadership theory has not yet been legitimized as a mainstream leadership theory therefore, it is worthy to examine its antecedents, outcomes and different mediating and moderating mechanisms to have in-depth knowledge of servant leadership concept and to understand how it differs from other mainstream leadership theories. This study analyzed the literature using descriptive approach as proposed by Turnnidge & Côté (2016). The study has been carried out in three phases. First phase is concerned with screening of abstracts and citations related to variable of interests, in second phase, peer discussion was made to retain valuable literature and exclusion of literature which does not fall in set criterion. In the third phase, full text of articles and relevant literature were reviewed which were potentially related to and are of interest. It was found that servant leadership is a different concept which is more comprehensive and predicts more positive outcomes than its predecessor leadership models. Systematic literature review provided detailed insight with respect to servant leadership theory and its outcomes which led to the development of taxonomy which was further used to develop integrated model of causal fl ow through mediating and moderating mechanisms; and then was further refined to identify servant leadership interaction with different organization and behavioral variables. Findings of this research suggest possible impact of servant leadership in power distant culture which is inconsistent in contemporary research and needs to be investigated for validation of servant leadership’s concept in Third World countries.

Perceived Parental Remote Acculturation Gaps Among Divorced Coparents and Children’s Adjustment in Turkey

The possibility of differential remote acculturation to a distant culture is yet another chasm that divorced coparents must bridge as they raise their children in globalizing urban settings. This study explored the association between parental remote acculturation and perceived parental remote acculturation gaps in two acculturation domains (behavior, identity), in relation to children’s adjustment in Turkish divorced families. Altogether, 177 urban divorced mothers in Turkey reported their own and their ex-partners’ remote acculturation to U.S. and Turkish cultures, and their joint children’s internalizing (social withdrawal, anxiety) and externalizing (aggression) behaviors. Perceived remote acculturation gaps were operationalized with match:mismatch and interaction methods. Sequential regression analyses accounting for parental conflict resolution revealed that mothers’ perceptions of fathers’ American identity was positively associated with children’s social withdrawal. Regarding perceived acculturation gaps, one particular cross-dimension pairing—strongly U.S.-identified “AmeriTurk” mothers paired with strongly Turkish-identified fathers—predicted lower internalizing problems. Although having an Americanized father might confer some risk for children in divorced families in Turkey, having an “AmeriTurk” mother and traditional Turkish father may be protective, suggesting the benefit of integration as a family-level remote acculturation strategy. Taken together, parental remote acculturation and perceived remote acculturation gaps in identity (not behavior) predicted the socioemotional (not behavioral) adjustment of children above and beyond parental discord. Findings highlight the family repercussions of remote acculturation in Eurasia, underscore the importance of multidomain acculturation measurement, confirm the superior sensitivity of the interaction method, and extend its application to assessing cross-dimension pairings as a new type of acculturation gap.