Navigating Extinction: Zen Buddhism and Eco-Anarchism

What can esoteric knowledge and spiritual practices from the East teach us about the deep psychological roots of domination and hierarchy? In what ways have ancient Buddhist sages acted as anarchist exemplars and deep ecologists long before these traditions began in the West? How might these anarchistic spiritual traditions inform our approaches to work in education, expand our notions of community, help us navigate ecological collapse, and contribute to our efforts to sustain living systems and rekindle our connection to the myriad sentient inhabitants of the places we live beyond the reaches of capital and the State? This paper will examine the anti-doctrine doctrine of Zen Buddhism as a concrete and embodied system of thought and practice for seeing through the delusions of the ego and the psychological and cultural conditioning these delusions engender. What will also be acknowledged is the general lack of attention this spiritual tradition has given to the capitalistic, authoritarian, and anti-ecological systems that tap into and flow from these delusions. It will be argued that these experiential approaches to overcoming the tyranny of the ego have significant implications for loosening the grip of hierarchical thinking, capitalist hyper-consumption, centralized systems of obedience and command, and human destruction of the biosphere.

ASPECTS DE LA TECHNIQUE DE TRADUCTION DANS UN TEXTE BILINGUE DE PANAÏT ISTRATI

It is a challenge for an author to translate his or her own works, be it from mother tongue to adopted language, or from adopted language to mother tongue. The aim here is to examine the devices used by Panaït Istrati in his rewriting of the novel Codine (1926), written in French, into a Romanian novel, Codin (1935). We will be attentive, in particular, to his strategies of adaptation, to the introduction of marks of subjective reservation, as well as to the semantic and structural modifications due to the socio-cultural conditioning peculiar to each language.

Towards a Sustainable News Business: Understanding Readers’ Perceptions of Algorithm-Generated News Based on Cultural Conditioning

The use of algorithms is beginning to replace human activities in the news business, and the presence of this technique will only continue to grow. The ways in which public news readers perceive the quality of news articles written by algorithms and how this perception differs based on cultural conditioning remain issues of debate. Informed by the heuristic-systematic model (HSM) and the similarity-attraction theory, we attempted to answer these questions by conducting a three-way one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test with a 2 (author: algorithm vs. human journalist) × 2 (media: traditional media vs. online media) × 2 (cultural background: the US vs. South Korea) between-subjects experiment (N = 360). Our findings revealed that participants perceived the quality of news articles written by algorithms to be higher than those written by human journalists. We also found that when news consumption occurs online, algorithm-generated news tends to be rated higher than human-written news in terms of quality perception. Further, we identified a three-way interaction effect of media types, authors, and cultural backgrounds on the quality perception of news articles. As, to the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to theoretically examine how news readers perceive algorithm-generated news from a cultural point of view, our research findings may hold important theoretical and practical implications.

The Hidden Contributions of Local Staff When Hosting International Development Volunteers

This exploratory study identifies what additional work-roles local staff take on when their organization hosts a long-term international development volunteer, and explains why they do this. Analyzing interview data from a sample of local employees in Vietnamese organizations, the study identifies five work-roles: two that buttressed “volunteer and organization readiness” (preparing and orienting) and three that facilitated “volunteer performance” (translating, advocating, and mediating). These roles, often outside the formal work-role and expertise of the local employees, added to their cognitive and emotional loads and to a large extent went unrecognized by their employers. They were motivated by a combination of personal benefit (notably, opportunities to learn) and reciprocity norms that appear influenced, in part, by respondents’ cultural conditioning. The implications of this for volunteer-involved organizations, volunteers, and locals are discussed.

Analysis of the motivational features of the choice of the teaching profession by students

The relevance of the present study is determined by the demand of the state and society for training pedagogical personnel who are highly motivated for professional activity and chose their profession consciously. Thus, the first premise of the conducted study lies in the need to improve the quality of pedagogical training in the Moscow metropolis. The second premise is the need for the scientific study of the structure of personality and the interrelation of its components presented by personal values and the motives behind the choice of profession. The study aims to identify the correlation of personal value orientations and motives for choosing a future profession in students of the pedagogical faculty of the Moscow City University. The study methods include projective methods (a survey and essays) and standardized methods (Rokeach’s Personal Values Survey, Schwartz’s Value Survey, and “Test of life-meaning orientations” by D.A. Leontiev). The study confirms that personal values correlate with the motives for the choice of profession in pedagogical faculty students. A high correlation between the motive behind choosing the teaching profession and personal values is found in the orientation on interaction with people and on oneself, awareness of one’s professional choice, and social and cultural conditioning. In the categories of gender and financial status, the motives for choosing a profession do not correlate with students’ personal values. The novelty of the study lies in the identification and empirical verification of the scientific method for determining students’ involvement in the future teaching profession. The significance of the study is found in the fact that it reveals a new technology for vocational guidance of applicants of pedagogical university training programs. Moreover, implementation of the study results may increase the effectiveness of the design of students’ education in improving their professional motivation. The presented research makes a scientific contribution to the study of a person’s activity and independence in self-realization in life, the freedom of choice and responsibility for it, for one’s decisions and actions, as well as in the study of the values of future teachers.

Sense of Place and Gender Perceptions

Cultural conditioning aligns with gendered preconceptions permeating all aspects of life, including the tourists' experiences. However, the literature on gendered gazes to destinations is limited. The purpose of this research is to find the gendered characteristics of the destinations. The theoretical context that the research is set within the context of the sense of place and the gender conceptions attributed to a certain destination. The qualitative method was adopted to identify the part of the participants' experience of Bangkok destination as the search area via interviews. The content analysis was used for the data analysis and codes were grouped into themes according to the masculine, feminine, and/or neutral categories. Elucidating the relevant literature in tourism on gendered experiences, the findings have given ideas for the gendered characteristic of a destination within the classification of masculine, feminine, and neutral. Furthermore, three dimensions have been determined within the context of the sense of place, namely “visual, psychological, and spiritual.”

NORMATIVE VALUE OF APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF PROCREATION

The article analyzes the approaches and methods used when studying procreation, which is understood to mean human reproduction in the value-based aspects. The latest trends in childbearing are becoming the subject of not only demography but also various studies in social sciences and humanities. In scientific and mundane discourses, the term «reproduction» prevails in the designation of procreation. The concept of «procreation» is appropriate to use in the axiological approach since it contains an indication of the ways of understanding (description, cognition, designation in language and discourse) human reproduction included in the process of creation, not production, of man. The emphasis on the value-semantic determinism of procreation allows us to note the correlation what and how is studied about childbearing and the way the obtained knowledge affects reproductive aspirations and intentions. There are distinguished pronatal and antenatal orientations in the methodological approaches to the study of modern procreative processes. Procreative understanding is associated with a pronatal position in the motivation and social regulation of childbearing. The author concludes about normative value of different approaches and methods in research for procreation. Scientific discourse normalizes the perception of the latest trends in the childbearing area. The article indicates that qualitative methods in the study of procreation are in demand since they allow one to describe the dynamic and subjective moments in its phenomena and do not lay claim to the universality of the established patterns, which corresponds to the recognition of cultural conditioning and value-based dependence in demographic processes. The paper critically assesses the idea of universality of rationalization criteria in the study of childbirth, which is widespread among demographers. When proceeding from the idea of a value-based determination of procreation, it is necessary to take into account and normalize irrational factors in the motivation of childbearing.

Creating a Stereotype of a Race as Dangerous, Unintelligent, and Lazy

The cultural conditioning and the indoctrination of negative stereotypes about racial groups has a long-damaged history in America. Unfortunately, this history continues to keep racial groups divided and missed opportunities to trust one another and grow closer socio-economically, educationally and politically. Individual, institutional and structural racism has kept people in this nation torn and divided socially and psychologically. Understanding the root of this problem requires an honest and open historical and philosophical discussion about the similarities of our human origins before the destructive lies told continue to sustain deep divisions among one group against another. While America was created to support an idea that “all men are created equal”, this has not been a social experience practiced by all men and all women. This chapter examines some of the issues that continue to support the stereotypes of racial differences juxtaposed to our cultural similarities.

Cultural Determinants of Creative Activity: The Problem of Freedom and Determinacy

Рассмотрена культурная определенность творческой деятельности в аспекте отношения между творчеством как созданием чего-то принципиально нового и воспроизводством культуры, основанным на экспликации заложенных в нее смыслов. Материалами послужили результаты исследований философов и культурологов, изучавших проблемы социокультурной обусловленности творчества. Проводится аналитическое рассмотрение основных концепций, связанных с трактовкой творчества, изучены подходы к определению творческого статуса отдельных продуктов культуры, затронуты проблемы соотношения содержания и формы в творческой деятельности, охарактеризованы современные условия ее осуществления. Выделены варианты творческой деятельности по критерию характера выражаемых смыслов. Сделан вывод, что в настоящее время присутствуют социальные и технологические предпосылки как для множественной проработки уже известных мейнстримовых направлений, так и для формирования уникальных по форме и содержанию смысловых конструкций. The main problem of the study is to identify the relationship between the individual and culturally predetermined aspects of creative activity with the subsequent extension of the findings to the modern sociocultural situation. The sources were materials and research results of philosophers and culturologists studying the problem of the sociocultural conditioning of creativity. The authors proceed from a methodological premise that implies that, in the creative sphere, there are mechanisms for the “elaboration” of individual ideas, similar in their principles to the development of paradigms in the meaning that Thomas Kuhn attached to this term. The authors ask themselves the question of what the status of creativity is in modern research thought and determine the general points that are characteristic of almost all philosophical systems when considering creativity. The contradictions inherent in the problem of the cultural conditioning of creativity are analyzed. On the one hand, creativity is conditioned by the influence of culture and its development; on the other, it is the product of the free activity of an individual. The authors argue that a simple explication of culture is impossible, but one cannot reject the presence of direct objective factors that, to one degree or another, affect the creative process. Trying to determine the degree of conditionality of the creative process, the authors turn to the analysis of musical notation as a universal language of music. The conclusion is made about the limited (albeit calculated in huge numbers) options for expressing sound combinations. At the same time, this limitation acts simultaneously as determinacy, the so-called “field for maneuver”. Abstracting from this observation, the authors argue that the novelty of creative activity is not absolute: when faced with its product, we observe “the unknown in the known”. It is this aspect that determines the connection between creative individuals when they are forming cultural heritage. Four variants of creative activity are distinguished according to the criterion of the nature of the meanings expressed and the means used for this. The authors argue that the degree of variability of creative activity largely depends on how much society considers it permissible to introduce something new into the existing. They conclude that at present there are social and technological prerequisites both for the multiple elaboration of already known, mainstream areas and for the formation of semantic structures that are unique in their form and content.

Culture and Criminalisation: Interdependence and Mutual Influence

Introduction. The relationship between criminal law and culture does not often attract the attention of domestic specialists. Few of the available studies are devoted primarily to the protection of cultural values. Much less often we find works devoted to the socio-cultural conditioning of the criminal law prohibition. However, the integral complex of issues of the relationship between the criminalisation of socially dangerous acts and culture has not yet been presented as an independent object of study, although it is an important research field of criminal-political research. Theoretical Basis. Methods. The research is based on two basic theoretical concepts. Firstly the concept of criminalisation of socially dangerous acts as developed in criminal law science and secondly, the normative theory of culture. Research methods used were analytical, axiological, and systemic. Results. Criminalisation, being a cultural phenomenon in itself, is closely related to other cultural phenomena and processes, which makes it possible to consider criminal law as one of the means of supporting cultural norms. Processes of criminalisation are not only directly influenced by cultural stereotypes and political culture in terms of determining the content of a criminal law prohibition. Criminalisation also has the opposite effect on culture. In particular, it can be used to supplant cultural norms that do not correspond to modern ideas about an ideal society, to preserve the norms and rules that it needs at the moment, to establish cultural norms, conceivable as promising models of social structure, to block individual cultural innovations. Discussion and Conclusion. The study of the relationship between criminalisation and culture opens up broad prospects for discussing the quality of criminal law and normative modeling of socially approved behavior. It serves as additional evidence that crime is a social and cultural construct, that is, an act with relative danger. This is an assessment that can vary with the dynamics of cultural norms. It also proves the inadmissibility of the gross use of legal means (secondary elements of culture) for the formation and imposition of cultural standards.