Multi-dimensional Peace Education Initiative for Cultural Homogenisation and Nurturing Multiculturalism in Post-conflict Nepal

In a multicultural society, education can both foster the value of ‘celebrating diversity’ and thereby the social harmony but it can also foster social tensions and fuel conflicts by promoting cultural homogenisation. Using content analysis of education policies, curriculum and textbooks this study examined the way Nepal’s historical education system shifted from monocultural education towards a multicultural peace education approach. This study revealed that, by including the contents that promote multicultural values, the critical peace education initiative contributes to redressing the socio-political tensions that the monocultural education system fuelled historically. However, the local ownership, longer term commitment of the stakeholders, and regular consultations with the representatives of different cultural groups in curricular reform are essential for a successful peace education initiative.

Indigenous response to state colonization in southern Chile

The invasion of indigenous territories by national states in the 19th century produced a forced social and physical re-accommodation of Pehuenche groups, inhabitants of the southern Andes. In a context of cultural homogenisation policies and justifying the territorial appropriation, the 19th century written sources shaped a stereotyped image of Pehuenche. I go beyond the stereotypes by comparing historical and ethnographic information, recognising how Pehuenche responded to and shaped changes

The Polemics of Real and Imagined Childhood(s) in India

This essay attempts to map historical, literary and social constructions of childhood in India and to explore ways in which these differ from Western-dominated, globalised attitudes to childhood. Evidence about Indian childhood is drawn from across a narrative spectrum including children's books and films and some adult writing and media. Notions of childhood are different within and across the cultures of the world; while there is no ‘correct’ version of childhood, many have common features and sometimes the influences of one culture can be strongly felt in another. In India, for example, a dominant construction of childhood was imported through Western education.1After Independence (1947), Indian children's literature in English became caught up in the mass postcolonial project of nation-building. As part of becoming emancipated from colonial rule, a dominant image of the child in fiction based on Western childhood had to be replaced by one that is hybrid and multicultural. This construction of Indian childhood is now itself being buffeted by forces of cultural homogenisation.2

Educación para la carrera y globalización: ¿Atrapados en las contradicciones sociolaborales neoliberales?

RESUMENLos jóvenes están viviendo en una sociedad en la que tenemos planteadas algunas incongruencias difíciles de explicar desde una perspectiva humanista —aumento de las desigualdades en la época de mayor potencialidad productiva, presión hacia la homogeneización cultural en entornos claramente multiculturales, impulso de los nacionalismos paralelamente a la mundialización, etc.— En este contexto, los orientadores y orientadoras han de repensar su trabajo; no obstante, las presiones económicas, sociales y familiares, les impulsan hacia planteamientos más enfocados al mercado que a la persona. En este artículo, a través del análisis de estas contradicciones y de su reflejo en la OP, se plantean una serie de principios y estrategias para diseñar y poner en práctica proyectos de educación para la carrera que ayuden al estudiantado en su incorporación al marco socioeconómico transnacional en el que le ha tocado vivir desde una concepción de ciudadanía.ABSTRACTYoung students live in a society in which we adults present a number of inconsistencies which are difficult to explain, at least from a humanistic point of view —an increase in inequality at a time of higher production potential, pressure towards cultural homogenisation in clearly multicultural environments, the impulse of nationalism running parallel with globalisation, the pessimism of youth in a society full of opportunities, etc. In this context, careers advisers must try to match their work to the needs of the individual, however, economic, social and family pressures push them and direct them towards approaches which are focused on the market rather than on the person, showing that more and more career advice methods are coming onto the scene with a remarkably consumerist dimensionin their notion and in their practice. In this article, the author sets a series of principles and strategies through the analysis of these contradictions and their reflection on careers advice to design and put into practice education projects for studies which contribute to the training of students so that they can take their place, from the concept of citizenship, in the socio-economic transnational framework inwhich they have to live.

Off the Map?

This article examines the place of Sonic Art in the current cultural landscape. It deconstructs some of the preconceptions often associated with this field, and postulates that because work of this nature does not necessarily fit commonly recognised categories and hierarchies, it becomes effectively invisible (and therefore inaudible). While not attempting to propose a solution, the article looks at various pointers towards an alternative cultural 'placing' of sonic art; along the way looking at other genres such as hip-hop, techno and electronica, and the dichotomies of so-called 'high' and low' culture, media convergence and divergence and cultural homogenisation and fragmentation.

Building a Roman Funeral Pyre

Until the second century A.D., the bodies of most people who died at Rome and in the western provinces of the Empire ended up on a funeral pyre, to be reduced to ashes which would be placed in a grave. The practical arrangements for this process have attracted some attention from archaeologists but virtually none from ancient historians. In this paper I shall try to combine literary and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the pyre was prepared. I hope that this will provide a fuller background than currently exists for understanding the numerous brief references which can be found in Roman literature and the two surviving representations of a pyre (other than an emperor's) in Roman art. Cremation had different traditions in different areas, e.g. as an elite practice in parts of Gaul, even if ultimately it ‘may have been thought of as a sign of allegiance to Rome.’ There clearly were local differences, not just between provinces but between places quite close together, as well as changes over time, but many of the rites of cremation appear to have been similar throughout the Western Roman Empire, illustrating what Morris calls ‘a massive cultural homogenisation of the Roman world at a time when political and economic regionalism was increasing’.