Digital Commons Network^™

Increasing Opportunity And Value In The Cultural Industries: A Comparative Analysis Of The Successful Clusters And Implications For Hallyu, Hwy-Chang Moon

Kritika Kultura

Despite the growing digitalization and globalization, the industrial map of the world remains to display high-level concentration of resources and productivity in certain geographical locations called clusters. These locations such as Silicon Valley and Hollywood continue to attract entrepreneurs and large firms, enjoying strong sustainability and competitiveness. As the agglomerate of diverse entities and institutions, clusters play a significant role for improving the overall growth of the industry. This is more evident in the cultural industries where the relatively high unpredictability, expanding scale of investments, and the importance of physical location for consuming cultural contents require firms and participants to …

Strategy For The Cultural Contents Industry To Secure Competitive Advantage Using Fourth Industrial Revolution Technology, Jin Sup Jung, Min Jae Lee

Kritika Kultura

With the coming of the fourth industrial revolution, cultural contents industry requires a new strategy to enhance its competitive advantages. As a result, governments and companies have been focusing their efforts on finding new business models and expanding the value chain in order to respond to the paradigm shift in a timely manner. This study aims to suggest new business model frameworks and strategies to create a paradigm shift by converging the characteristics of the fourth industrial revolution and cultural contents industry such as publishing, game, broadcasting, and character industry. First, we discuss how to upgrade cultural contents industry with …

A New Model For Globalization In The Film Industry: Lessons From Sino-Us Film Co-Productions, Wenyan Yin

Kritika Kultura

International co-productions have become a dominant practice in the film industry. Within this emerging trend, China has become a major participant and is using it as an important method to enter the global market. Despite the enhanced globalization of the film industry, many preceding studies consider it as a national industry and investigate it from this context. Therefore, this paper uses the concept of the global value chain in order to understand more effectively the fragmentation of the film value chain. This framework helps examine how filmmakers denationalize the film value chain by collaborating with foreign partners on a global …

Critical Crossings: Hybridity's Fissures And Ruptures, Maria Luisa Torres Reyes

Kritika Kultura

The papers in this special section at once undertake and undermine the discourse of hybridity, at once to recognize the strength of its rhetorical force and critique the limits of its explanatory power. Rather than viewing hybridity as a kind of floating signifier in all its ambivalence as many postcolonial studies have been noted to have undertaken, the papers explore its conditions of possibility in the context of the materiality of the historical situation and specifically in the concreteness of the authors’ inscription in history and the worldly particularity of literature, literary form, and criticism. As a category, for a …

Transforming Theater For The Oppressed: Community Theater As Urban Poor Discourse In Sining Kadamay's Gapok, Michael D. Pante, Leo Angelo Nery

Kritika Kultura

In March 2017, the issue of urban poor housing was exposed on a national scale when thousands of members of the urban poor group Kadamay forcibly occupied nearly 6,000 abandoned housing units meant for members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police in Pandi, Bulacan. Kadamay members were accused of being mendicant anarchists by their critics, while their supporters lauded their determination in demanding, and winning, their rights to housing. While the issue polarized Philippine society, it is evident that the Occupy Pandi movement revitalized urban poor discourse, and brought back to the fore the …

Juan Mencarini And Amateur Photography In Fin-De-Siècle China, Xavier Ortells-Nicolau

Kritika Kultura

Juan Mencarini Pierotti (1860 – 1939) was a Spanish employee of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service of China from 1881 to 1912 and later a businessman in the import-export sector with base in Shanghai. Parallel to his professional career, Mencarini pioneered in the history of postage stamps in East Asia, contributed to learned societies with articles and lectures, and was reputed among the foreign community of the treaty ports as an accomplished amateur pictorialist photographer. Based on previously unexamined repositories, contemporary press records, and the cataloguing and analysis of over two hundred photographs, this paper analyzes Mencarini’s preserved corpus of …

Christianity As A Culture Of Mobility: A Case Study Of Asian Transient Migrants In Singapore, Catherine Gomes, Jonathan Y. Tan

Kritika Kultura

More than ever before, the global and transnational movements of young people for work and study have become part of everyday life. Yet there is very little research on this phenomenon in relation to how actors in transience create strategies to cope with being away from home nation (place of birth and/or citizenship) and from family. As part of the findings of a larger international study on the identities, social networks and media/ communication use of transient migrants, researchers found that Christianity featured prominently during life in transience for Asian respondents. This paper thus puts forward the notion that Christianity …

“Not Here To Steal Sheep”: A Reading Of The History And Politics Of Catholicism In Thailand, Coeli Barry

Kritika Kultura

This article investigates how Catholicism has had to evolve and adapt in order to sustain itself in Thailand. As Siam/Thailand developed through economic, political and cultural interactions with Western powers, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular served as a site on which Thai national identity was forged in response to these interactions. Christianity was an ‘other’ against which Thai Buddhist identity coalesced yet the appeal of first Catholic and later Protestant missionary education was very strong. This article combines interpretive historical method and analysis of contemporary shifts that reflect a more assertive Thai Catholic Church. In so doing, the …

Kidlat Tahimik And The Determination Of A Native Filmmaker, Patrick F. Campos

Kritika Kultura

Using field notes drawn from participative research in the context of his home life in Hapao, Ifugao and Baguio City, Benguet, as well as information gathered through interviews with his family, confidantes, and mentees, the article revaluates the oeuvre of pioneering independent filmmaker, Kidlat Tahimik. It is written self-reflexively, approximating the critic’s process of understanding Kidlat’s work through the lenses of a personal encounter. It critiques Kidlat’s cinema, with special focus on Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? (1994), and reads it as his determination to author himself as “native” and “Third World” filmmaker, the same determination that …

"The Pinoy Invasion", Jov Almero

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

Global Aestheticscapes: Re-Imag(In)Ing The Global Experiences Of Selected Filipino Artists Through Their Installation Artworks, Clod Marlan Krister V. Yambao

Kritika Kultura

This paper attempts to look at the contemporary global condition of Filipino art production by using the term “aestheticscapes”1 as a critical category of analysis. The confluence of the terms “aesthetics” and “-scapes” allows us to stretch the language of aesthetic production in a global scale of interactions, exchanges, contacts, circulations, negotiations, and amalgamations of geo and ethnoaesthetic positions. Significantly, “aestheticscapes” magnify the conditions of epistemic relations between global powers and discourses of the agencies of the artists via history, geography, aesthetic epistemes, and other social narratives. By looking at the installation artworks of selected Filipino diasporic, migrant, and mobile …

“We Were War Surplus, Too”: Nick Joaquin And The Im/Possibilities Of Filipino Historical Becoming, Josen Masangkay Diaz

Kritika Kultura

This article reads Nick Joaquin’s 1983 novel Cave and Shadows alongside his persistent engagement with Filipino identity and history to argue that an investigation of Philippine historiography reveals the colonial entrapments of Filipino subjectivity. A mystery novel set in the period immediately preceding Ferdinand Marcos’s 1972 declaration of martial law, it contextualizes Marcos authoritarianism within the scope of post-World War II concerns about national politics in the wake of independence. It also simultaneously grapples with overarching ideas about the legacies of colonial conquest and their effects on the Filipino common sense. Jack Henson’s traversals through Manila find him grappling with …

Carlos Bulosan And A Collective Outline For Critical Filipina And Filipino Studies, Michael Viola, Valerie Francisco, Amanda Solomon Amorao

Kritika Kultura

As an activist-scholar formation called the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective (CFFSC) we take the position that Carlos Bulosan is indispensable for an emerging multidisciplinary field that is equipped in defying the neoliberal onslaught against ethnic studies in the United States and the unbridled racism most evident in the ongoing US “wars of terrorism” that haunt people of color throughout the world. We take seriously Bulosan’s insight that “[I]f the writer has any significance, [s]he should write about the world in which [s]he lives: interpret his [her] time and envision the future through his [her] knowledge of historical reality” …

Excavating The Bulosan Ruins: What Is At Stake In Re-Discovering The Anti-Imperialist Writing In The Age Of Us Global Terrorism?, E. San Juan Jr.

Kritika Kultura

Based on research in the unpublished papers of Sanora Babb at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, this essay uncovers new information about Bulosan’s relations with Sanora and her sister Dorothy Babb, the two American women who virtually “made” him into a writer. Given his intimacy with both women, active in leftwing and Communist Party activities in Los Angeles during the formative years of Bulosan’s life, as well as his association with leftist union leaders in Seattle, Bulosan’s radical affiliations are no longer in doubt, even without FBI documentation. Apocryphal Bulosan manuscripts such as All the Conspirators are bound …

Performing Global At Intelstar: Figuring The Call Center On Manila Stage, Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco

Kritika Kultura

Set in Makati, the central business district of the National Capital Region, Welcome to IntelStar is a monodrama satirizing the call center industry in the Philippines. The performance is an exemplar in positioning a diasporic consequence of globalization vis-à-vis nationalism because it calls on a national sentiment to the extent that the play illustrates resistance to globalization’s economic and neoliberal attachments, often perceived as the destructive force of cultural diversity and uniqueness. In relation, the performance used a recurring trope in Philippine culture, which is called in the essay as the Americanization issue: the conception of the Filipino/a as a …

Escape, Glenn Diaz

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

Heroes With Their Hands In The Air: Memory And Commemoration In The Contemporary Documentary Theater, Sheila Mccormick

Kritika Kultura

Documentary theatre has the capacity to confront and challenge its audience; however, there are occasions when examples from the genre avoid confrontation. These examples might not promote ideas consistent with the political status quo; neither, however, do they challenge it. This paper examines the ability of documentary theatre to move between two extremes: of challenging dominant power structures, or reinforcing the political or social status quo. It contrasts two documentary theatre performances that both took place on the fringes of mainstream theatre production, and which both explore the same social event: Bloody Sunday and the Saville Inquiry. In doing so, …

Marking "Austerity": Critique, Purpose And Perfromance, Victor Merriman

Kritika Kultura

This essay attempts to mark the current phase of capitalist neoliberalism, in order to create a space for articulation, in both senses of the word: there is a need both to articulate, as in to connect together ideas, events and their consequences, and to articulate, as in to voice the dynamics, contradictions, and injustices to which they give rise. As Shock Doctrine (Klein 2007), draped in Austerity’s mantle, enters the Common European Home, articulation as voice is an attempt to shatter, not silence, but the white noise generated by the mantra, “There Is No Alternative” (TINA). “Marking ‘Austerity’” sets out …

Quality Interpretation, Quality Interpretation Assessment, Back Translation, Communication Breakdown, Sense-Based Theory, Liyenja Mwinuka

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This study assesses the quality of English-Kiswahili Sermon interpretation in church settings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with a specific focus on the accuracy of vocabulary interpretation and its impact on effective communication between preachers and audiences. Conducted in two purposively selected Pentecostal churches, the study employed the Sense-Based Theory as its guiding framework. Data were gathered through interviews, non-participant observation, and video recordings; and were analysed qualitatively. The findings reveal frequent misinterpretation of preachers’ English vocabulary by Sermon interpreters, leading to significant communication breakdowns between preachers and their audiences. The incorrect interpretations of vocabulary were primarily attributed to the …

Memories Of Resistance To Slavery In South-Eastern Tanzania, Nancy Rushohora

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper examines the historical representation and memory of slavery in Tanzania, arguing that the current curriculum predominantly employs a Marxist lens that emphasizes the economic dimensions of slavery while overlooking the complexity of resistance. The study’s objective is to present a more comprehensive understanding of Tanzanian slavery, focusing on forms of resistance at Mgao, a 12th–18th century Swahili site. Methodologically, this study draws on ethnographic accounts, documentary sources, and archaeological findings to uncover diverse acts of defiance, including seeking refuge, negotiating relocation, and engaging in violent confrontations. The results reveal that resistance was a widespread, multi-dimensional phenomenon in Tanzanian …

An Assessment Of Macroeconomic Effects Of Financial Liberalization In Tanzania: 1990-2022, Cornel Joseph

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the effects of financial liberalization on key macroeconomic indicators in Tanzania, specifically focusing on savings, investment, and economic growth. Utilizing extensive annual time series data from 1990 to 2022, the research employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method and incorporates bound testing procedures to ensure robust results. The analysis reveals several significant findings: financial liberalization has a positive impact on savings and promotes economic growth in the long-run, demonstrating its role as a catalyst for economic advancement in Tanzania. However, the study also uncovers a concerning trend: while savings and growth benefit from …

Evaluations Of Digital Public Health Interventions In The Who Southeast Asia Region: A Systematic Literature Review, Nachiket Gudi, Elstin Anbu Raj, Beate Jahn, Uwe Siebert

Open Access archive

Introduction Digital health technologies have been enhancing the capacity of healthcare providers and, thereby, the delivery of targeted health services. The Southeast Asia Region (SEAR) has invested in strengthening digital public health. Many digital health interventions have been implemented in public health settings but are rarely assessed using the holistic health technology assessment (HTA) approach. Methods A systematic literature review was performed to provide an overview of evaluations of digital public health interventions in the World Health Organization (WHO) SEAR. Searches were conducted on four electronic databases. Screening title abstracts and full texts was independently conducted by two reviewers, followed …

Reversing Chronic Disease Through Functional Medicine: Acknowledging Privilege And Seeking Justice, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications

This piece is based on twenty-eight months of digital-auto-ethnographic research. While my research methods included traditional ethnographic research in face-to-face settings and digital ethnography, my personal experience is also embedded in the work. In this piece, you will find “interludes” that provide glimpses into my healing journey. When writing in this autoethnographic register, I provide “thick descriptions” (Geertz 3) of how I experienced illness and recovery. By including my own story, I am acknowledging that the observed and the observer are inextricably intertwined. All ethnography is relational. Ethnographic data results from a trusting relationship between ethnographer and participant. Furthermore, in …

Long-Term Measurements Of Seasonal Snowpacks Indicate Increases In Mid-Winter Snowmelt And Earlier Snowpack Disappearance In The Northeastern U.S., Geoff Wilson, Mark Green, John Campbell, Alexandra R. Contosta, Nina Lany, Amey Bailey

Faculty Publications

Snowpacks are changing in northeastern North America as the regional climate warms, yet the relative influence of changes in precipitation compared to changes in ablation on snowpacks is poorly understood. We use 56 years of weekly snow water equivalent (SWE) measurements from three locations within a study site which vary in elevation and aspect, paired with adjacent daily climate measurements, to investigate relationships between climate and snowpack onset, maximum, and disappearance. Maximum snowpack size and snowpack duration are shrinking at all sites, at rates ranging from 4.3 days/decade at the coldest site to 9.6 days/decade at the warmest site. The …

Long-Term Measurements Of Seasonal Snowpacks Indicate Increases In Mid-Winter Snowmelt And Earlier Snowpack Disappearance In The Northeastern U.S., Geoff Wilson, Mark Green, John Campbell, Alexandra R. Contosta, Nina Lany, Amey Bailey

Faculty Publications

Snowpacks are changing in northeastern North America as the regional climate warms, yet the relative influence of changes in precipitation compared to changes in ablation on snowpacks is poorly understood. We use 56 years of weekly snow water equivalent (SWE) measurements from three locations within a study site which vary in elevation and aspect, paired with adjacent daily climate measurements, to investigate relationships between climate and snowpack onset, maximum, and disappearance. Maximum snowpack size and snowpack duration are shrinking at all sites, at rates ranging from 4.3 days/decade at the coldest site to 9.6 days/decade at the warmest site. The …

Terrestrial Evidence For Volcanogenic Sulfate-Driven Cooling Event ~30 Ka Before The Cretaceous–Paleogene Mass Extinction: Volcanism-Induced Cooling ~30 Ka Pre-K–Pg Boundary, Lauren O'Connor, Rhodri Jerrett, Gregory Price, Tyler Lyson, Sabine Lengger, Francien Peterse, Bart Van Dongen

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Alongside the Chicxulub meteorite impact, Deccan volcanism is considered a primary trigger for the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) mass extinction. Models suggest that volcanic outgassing of carbon and sulfur—potent environmental stressors—drove global temperature change, but the relative timing, duration, and magnitude of such change remains uncertain. Here, we use the organic paleothermometer MBT′5me and the carbon-isotope composition of two K–Pg-spanning lignites from the western Unites States, to test models of volcanogenic air temperature change in the ~100 kyr before the mass extinction. Our records show long-term warming of ~3°C, probably driven by Deccan CO2 emissions, and reveal a transient (<10 kyr) ~5°C cooling event, coinciding with the peak of the Poladpur “pulse” of Deccan eruption ~30 kyr before the K–Pg boundary. This cooling was likely caused by the aerosolization of volcanogenic sulfur. Temperatures returned to pre-event values before the mass extinction, suggesting that, from the terrestrial perspective, volcanogenic climate change was not the primary cause of K–Pg extinction.

Deceased Donor Renal Allograft Utility In Adult Single And Multi-Organ Transplantation In The United States, Peter J. Altshuler, Adam S. Bodzin, Kenneth A. Andreoni, Pooja Singh, Anju Yadav, Jaime M. Glorioso, Ashesh P. Shah, Carlo B. Ramirez, Warren R. Maley, Adam M. Frank

Department of Surgery Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Deceased donor multiorgan transplants utilizing kidneys (MOTs) can improve outcomes for multiorgan recipients but reduces kidneys for chronic renal failure patients.

METHODS: We reviewed the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network database from 2015 through 2019, for adult deceased donor kidney transplants. Recipients were classified as kidney transplant alone (KTA) (n = 62,252) or MOTs pancreas-kidney, simultaneous pancreas-kidney (n = 3,976), liver-kidney, simultaneous liver-kidney (n = 3,212), heart-kidney, simultaneous heart-kidney (n = 808), and "other"-kidney, simultaneous "other" kidney (n = 73).

RESULTS: Liver, heart, and lung-alone transplants were at least 7 times more frequent than their MOT correlate, whereas the …

Assessing Spatial Patterns And Drivers Of Tree Species Richness And Functional Group Diversity In The Eastern United States Forest, Samiksha Banjara

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This study aims to investigate the spatial distribution of tree diversity in the forests of eastern 31 states of US, primiarily focusing on tree species richness (TSR) and the functional group diversity (FD), and how their patterns are shaped by climatic variables, soil properties, and topographic factors. Assessing both SR and FD is necessary as it provides a better understanding of the biodiversity and the ecosystem functionality. In the presented study, species richness is defined as “the number of different species present in a particular ecological community or region,” while functional diversity is defined as “the variety of traits possessed …

Social Media Intelligence: Responding To Crime And Violence In The Digital World, Chloe Lynn Sitton

Theses

The integration of social media into everyday life has transformed how crime is committed, communicated, and investigated. This capstone project examines the emerging field of social media intelligence and its growing influence on modern policing, surveillance, and the community. Drawing from sociological theory, law enforcement practice, legal analysis, and community-based research, this project offers a far-reaching interdisciplinary view of how social media is shaping crime and justice in the United States.

Networked To Work?: An Analysis Of A Community College Workforce Development Program, Cynthia Finley, Kim E. Bullington, Mitchell Williams, David Ayers

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

Barriers to education and training can have a generational impact on socioeconomic status and economic development. Post-traditional students have been shown to experience a variety of barriers to education and family sustaining employment. Social capital has been shown to help alleviate some of the barriers for students resulting in stronger economic outcomes, such job retention, and higher wages.

The purpose of this case study was to determine if the Network2Work model at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) can affect outcomes for students from low socio-economic backgrounds by comparing Network2Work outcomes to non-Network2Work noncredit industry training outcomes. The research compared outcome …