La donna in Africa e il suo ruolo educativo in seno alla famiglia: un possibile baluardo contro la radicalizzazione dei più giovani? Il caso della regione sahelo-sahariana

Starting from the relationship, conjugated to the feminine, “family education-prevention of youth radicalism” and based on the research I have been conducting for ten years in countries such as Mali, Senegal and the Republic of Guinea, I intend to proceed with a speech of an anthropological nature with the aim of offering some paths of comparison for those who work at a pedagogical level, within realities marked by cultural hybridization and immigration.

Zambra, Codes of Honor, and Moorish Dress: Transculturation in Calderón’s Love after Death

This paper will offer a reading of Calderón’s Love after Death (Amar después de la muerte) that is removed from the binary opposition between Christianity versus Islam, which premise readings of the text as a pro-morisco play, and focuses on teasing out nuances of transculturation inherent in the text. At pivotal moments in the play, the morisco and the “pure” Christian are simultaneously presented in opposition and equality to one another in their shared adherence to a strict moral code of honor, which is arguably a Christian contribution to Spain’s hybrid culture. The cultural hybridization of clothing and costume points to the unreliability of visible signifiers that distinguished the morisco from the “pure” Spaniard and as a result, brings forth the difficulties Spain had in self-identification in opposition to the morisco. The only real signifier – the Arabic language – is linguistic, although it is clear many words from Arabic made their way into Spanish. Read in the context of a text produced in a Spain that was located at the border between purity and hybridity and between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe, it can be argued that the representations of cultural practices in Calderón’s re-imagination of the rebellion of Alpujarras, bring forth evidence of a gradual process of transculturation between the moriscos and Christians and shed light on Spain’s almost desperate attempt to fight that process. Through this lens, the conflict between the moriscos and the Christians appears to have been conceived in the struggle against external forces that relegated Spain to the periphery of Europe. As a result of anti-Spanish prejudices of the leyenda negra that identified “Spanishness” with “Moorishness,” Spain was at once the colonial center in relation to the Americas and the New World, and simultaneously, Europe’s very own morisco “other.”

Cultural Hybridization in Christian China: The Art of Cloisonné at The Service of God

The usual conception of traditional Chinese art tends to forget the existence of a rich cultural legacy of Christian origin that has been reflected in the manufacture of ritual objects for the convert communities and European missionaries in China. Among the most used techniques, cloisonné stands out, with important liturgical or decorative pieces treasured by missionaries and collectors, many of them in Western museums today. This work tries to make an approximation to some of those ritual objects used by the Christian Chinese communities that reflect the great influence that the Western artistic models had in the conception of art as a result of the cultural hybridization between both worlds.

Exploring Cath Maige Tuired through the Concept of Hybridity

This chapter examines the contemporary Irish identity and social reactions to the process of cultural hybridization, as they are depicted in the late Viking-Age narrative Cath Maige Tuired. The tale is a product of a transitional era whose preoccupations and prejudices are reflected in the narrative representations of the Fomoiri and the Tuatha Dé Danann. This chapter considers Cath Maige Tuired within its historical context as a narrative of hybridity in which the pivotal cultural identities are built on an ongoing comparison between the tale’s representations of the Self and the Other. At the same time the narrative illustrates a number of other cultural concerns at the forefront of the collective intellectual consciousness.

Talking about cultural differences in an age of globalization and hybridization: Between Obelix and Stephen Colbert

The concept of culture has long been central to mission theory and practice. However, current understandings of culture can easily fall into one of two extremes: on the one hand, essentialist views of culture can easily lead to stereotyping, and on the other hand, extreme postcolonial cultural hybridization theories reject typologies of cultural differences altogether and tend to disregard empirical research on cultural differences. This article describes how to speak of cultural differences, including the use of typologies of cultural differences, without falling into these extremes. Five myths and seven recommendations regarding research and description of cultural differences are put forth.

The Three Epochs of Hong Kong Lolita Subculture: Cultural Hybridization and Identity Construction

Lolita is identified as a female oriented subculture phenomenon which came about in the 1990s in Harajuku, Japan. Youths in Hong Kong, because culturally and geographically in close proximity to Japan, will usually adapt their neighboring city Tokyo’s cultural movements. This paper explores the development, meaning, significance of Lolita phenomena in Hong Kong from the postmodern historical and socio-cultural points of view. By assembling and examining the ethnographic data from face-to-face interviewees and materials from online resources between 2014 and 2017, we reviewed and proposed that there are three major epochs of Lolita subculture development in Hong Kong. The study concludes that the changes in online practices over the past two decades lead to the transformation of Lolita identity within the group. It also indicates that the development of Hong Kong Lolita subculture shows a positive impact of cultural hybridization. Moreover, through the active practice on virtual platforms, the group creates an imagined community for the participants to share their beliefs and dreams freely.

Receiving and resisting: Toward a market-driven cultural hybridity

This study proposes an approach to cultural hybridity that centers the market, not geopolitical borders or regions, as the driving force of cultural hybridization. In this model, cultural hybridity manifests on a continuum between market-receptive hybridity, which incorporates cultural characteristics of the dominant market, and market-resistant hybridity, which limits the influence of cultural characteristics of the dominant market. To illustrate, this study identifies market strategies and examines how Colombian musician Shakira and Mexican musician Lila Downs employ various practices to create market-receptive and market-resistant cultural hybridity across their careers. This market-driven approach to hybridity decenters the countries of the Global North, contributes to ongoing efforts to undo the historical homogenization of the Global South, and works to explain cultural hybridity as the result of markets, not countries, allowing the framework to be applied within or across regions.

Review of the Book “Cultural Hybridization in the Contemporary Novel” By Diana-Eugenia Panait-Ioncică

The book “Cultural Hybridization in the Contemporary Novel” attempts a bold feat: to present, out of a diversity of works in contemporary English language literature, some books that are truly valuable for the reader. It invites us to ponder on some of the hottest topics the world is currently facing, including the mixture of cultures, migration and its consequences on today’s culture and literature, the longing for home and its spiritual meaning.

Immigrant believers from Muslim backgrounds and factors that facilitate a positive Christian identity

Ministry to Muslims has increasingly focused attention on the retention and discipleship of believers from Muslim backgrounds within the Christian community, and is often framed as issues pertaining to identity formation. This article is based on a dissertation completed in 2015 where 20 immigrant believers from Muslim backgrounds in North America were interviewed, and their experiences were interpreted according to Henri Tajfel and John Turner’s social identity theory and self-categorization theory. Interpreted as “walking out of Islam and walking Christianity out,” this article sheds light on believers from Muslim backgrounds’ post-conversion processes as they seek to find the ideal Christian community to walk their faith out, with implications for ministries reaching out to the diaspora and issues pertaining to globalization and cultural hybridization.