The Writing Lesson: Imaginary Inscriptions in Cultural Encounters

Abstract

This article takes a moment of intercultural exchange, first reported as "The Writing Lesson" by Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques and later explored by Jacques Derrida in Of Grammatology, as the occasion for further reflection on the role played by the aesthetic in what it terms intercultural transference. Transference occurs whenever unconscious desires, fantasies or patterns of being and relating are enacted in an interpersonal or intercultural encounter, including the indirect encounters between literary or artistic objects and their recipients. It emerges as a largely unconscious operation designed to bridge, close, fill or deny the inevitable gaps in knowing another person or another culture, and to manage the affects such gaps bring forth. Intercultural transference provides a framework to read "The Writing Lesson" differently and suggests a theoretical model able to account for the complex performances of intercultural transference that enter any exchange or translation between cultures.     

Towards a Critical Theory of Cultural Pragmatics: The Márkus Road

ABSTRACT

At the time of his death in 2016 György Márkus’s magnum opus on the culture of modernity that he laboured on throughout his post-Budapest period remained unfinished. This paper attempts to reconstruct the theory of Cultural Pragmatics that lay at the core of this immense project. The intention is to retrieve the key ideas of Márkus’s understanding of modern cultural relations by reviewing the terms of his critique of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on the issue of authorship. A distinctive Márkus road in the study of cultural modernity offers itself as a rich contemporary research programme for the future.     

村落文化景观保护利用的原则及制度思考

当前村落文化景观的保护与利用是一个热点问题。文章在分析贵州村落文化景观保护与利用的现状及存在问题的基础上,提出了贵州村落文化景观保护与利用应该遵循可持续发展、整体保护、以人为本等原则,并从法律层面设计了贵州村落文化景观保护与利用的一些制度。     

文化和谐论纲

文化和谐讲的是不同文化要相互尊重,取长补短、相互促进,共同发展。文化和谐既是和谐文化的重要内容,也是和谐社会研究的一个必不可少的领域。文化和谐包括文化形态的和谐和文化因素的和谐。实现文化和谐的具体途径要正确认识和处理五对矛盾关系:传统文化与现代文化、本土文化与外来文化、不同民族文化、不同宗教文化、主流文化与非主流文化。     

以提升文化自觉来抵制西方文化殖民主义

结束了东西方冷战之后,文化殖民主义成为当代殖民主义的重要体现。中国要抵制西方的文化殖民主义,必须提高自身文化自觉的力量,做到对内强化民族意识,重构社会主义核心价值观的话语体系;对外强化文化安全战略,有效地抵制西方的文化霸权。     

着力推进中国特色公共文化服务体系建设

中国特色公共文化服务体系,是指以政府为主体的公共部门向公民提供公共文化产品与服务的制度和系统的总称。中国特色公共文化服务姓"公",它以服务全体公民为对象,主要任务是保障公民的文化权利、满足公民的文化需求、促进公民的文化消费。中国特色公共文化服务主体是政府,主要职能是指政府为满足公民的基本文化需求所提供的基本文化服务,包括明确公共文化服务目标、增加公共文化服务供给、完善公共文化服务制度。这里的公共文化服务制度,不是指顶层设计和具体政策,而是指如何规范和制约政府行为的制度安排。推进中国特色公共文化服务体系建设的举措,包括用科学理论指导实践、以核心价值凝聚共识、靠道德建设规范行为,以及全面整合文化资源、加快文化事业发展、扶持文化产业发展等。     

BRICS corporates: In collaboration or in competition in Africa? Case studies from the South African mining industry

Framed by the 5th BRICS Summit in South Africa in March 2013, this analysis examines economic ‘South-South’ linkages on a company level. A qualitative case study focuses on a small number of private corporations operating in the South African mining and minerals sector. It looks at their reactions to increasingly competitive markets in the regions of Southern and West Africa, thus on their agency, defined as the ability to act in complex uncertainty. Findings present how the South African cases' engagements with strategically selected partner companies from the other BRICS economies can succeed. This contribution attempts to examine entrepreneurial rationale that can be taken as anecdotal evidence of a new ‘economic diplomacy’ at corporate level. The examples illustrate how agency enables certain adaptations of strategies for creating competitive synergies from collaboration with new actors from the other BRICS economies in Africa.     

Russian Constitutional Crisis: Law and Politics Under Yel'tsin

This article is a foray into the understudied issue of environmental protest politics in Central Asia. Specifically, it uses Kyrgyzstan as a case study to test the argument that environmental concerns mobilized people to engage in protest and in ways different from other kinds of protest. This essay presents the first systematic study of public opinion about the environment in Kyrgyzstan. It includes results from a 2009 nationwide survey, over 100 expert and elite interviews, and newspaper content analysis. Furthermore, it spatially analyzes these results to identify geographical variation in public perception and political event occurrence patterns. Protest engagement is a complex process determined by the interaction of several factors, and is not explained solely by affluence, rationality, or grievances. Eco-mobilization – collective political action about the environment – represents a class of protest events that offers a different view into mass discontent in the former Soviet Union and neo-patrimonial societies. The study finds that these political actions about the environment are not necessarily elite driven; there is a basic foundation of national concern and salience of these issues, and demonstrated environmental beliefs do help to explain protest behavior.     

Cultural heritage and development: UNESCO’s new paradigm in a changing geopolitical context

In the 1980s, the process of convergence between culture and development began to emerge in the context of post-colonialism and changing geopolitical realities. Later on, along with increasing multilateralism, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) eventually became the main actor in promoting culture as a fourth pillar of sustainable development. The paradigm shift in the heritage-development agenda is examined in the context of growing aspirations of non-Western states to play an active role in the global heritage regime, and the interests and strategies of UNESCO’s secretariat and the member states. At first, heritage and development were perceived as separate or opposed fields. Recently, a sustainable development framework emerged as a new global development model. UNESCO has engaged in the shaping of the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda, and advocated a pragmatic approach to heritage. This paper examines the evolution of ideas and concepts linking ‘development’ and ‘heritage’ forged at the forum of UNESCO as part of its Culture and Development framework. The role of the Global South in the paradigm change is highlighted.     

Death is in the eye of the beholder: a study of casualty count framing in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

The 2014 Israel–Gaza war was the third of a string of conflicts to erupt between the State of Israel and Hamas in neighbouring Gaza and quickly became the deadliest for both sides. Even with the extensive media attention this crisis received, calls for more objective reporting were widespread, as locating sources that were not clearly influenced or reflective of political biases seemed near impossible. This paper seeks to explore the role “cultural proximity” plays in informing casualty count reporting in times of conflict. Qualitative content analysis is conducted on news coverage of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict in the American daily newspaper, The New York Times, and the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, to assess whether significant differences exist in the way casualty figures are addressed across varying degrees of political and cultural involvement. This research reveals that variations in casualty count reporting do indeed exist across cultural and national contexts, and deems this subject worthy of further research.