Sociology of Culture Commons^™

Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In The Theory of Peasant Cooperatives, Chayanov develops the theories of differential optima and vertical integration, which stress the vulnerability of peasant farming in capitalist markets, and argues that cooperatives can support smallholders only if they operate as ‘a cooperative movement’, are buttressed by a strong ‘cooperative culture’, and achieve ‘vertical integration’. Based on extensive fieldwork in China, we identify six major obstacles that explain the failure of most cooperatives. Chayanov’s arguments caution us to not only the vital importance of cooperatives to the resilience of peasant farming, but also the apparently insurmountable obstacles that cooperatives face in market economies.

Componiendo El Núcleo: Una Exploración De La Bomba Y La Identidad Afroecuatoriana En El Valle De Chota, Ethan Guok

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto se centra en la bomba, una tradición musical y de danza afroecuatoriana que se practica en el valle del Chota, situado entre las provincias de Imbabura y Carchi, pero también más ampliamente en el Territorio Ancestral que comprende el valle del Chota, La Concepción, Salinas y Guallupe. Históricamente y en la actualidad, la bomba ha desempeñado un papel importante en la creación de comunidad y la preservación de la identidad cultural afrochoteña, y el conocimiento de cómo tocar la bomba se ha transmitido intergeneracionalmente a través de la tradición oral. Sin embargo, como tradición negra y oral, la …

The Role Of Moroccan Street Art In Decolonial Discourse And Binary Deconstruction, Taylor Rokala

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As a country historically subjected to French colonialism and currently the site of a burgeoning street art scene, Morocco is a locus for street art that contributes to the decolonial project and deconstruction of remaining colonial structures left by the French. Drawing from Edward Said’s concept of orientalism, the idea of gaze, and bell hooks’s counter concept of oppositional gaze, this paper seeks to understand how Moroccan street artists use their art to challenge the binary opposition between tradition and modernity constructed during the French Protectorate. I will discuss the theme of temporality, because of street art’s ephemeral nature and …

Costumbre Y Carnavales; El Rol De Alcohol En La Comunidad Aymara De Putre, Billy White

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo evaluar el impacto del alcohol en la comunidad aymara de Putre, localidad rural del norte de Chile. Se realizaron 17 entrevistas semiformales en Putre y sus alrededores con profesionales de la salud de la comunidad, pacientes adultos del CESFAM local, curanderos tradicionales aymaras y líderes comunitarios. El estudio encontró que el consumo de alcohol en Putre está intrínsecamente relacionado con las costumbres y la cultura aymara, ya que su perspectiva sobre el alcohol informa su consumo. El alcohol tiene un papel importante en la religión aymara, la medicina y las fiestas locales. Los hábitos de …

The Archetype Of The Ocean In Balinese Culture, Ava Hull

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

An archetype is essential for expressing an understanding of symbols and adding depth to the meaning derived from everyday life. It is a connection of source and meaning through the lens of the human experience. In the case of the ocean, people all over the world turn to the sea as a source of healing and a symbol of the murkiness of the unconscious mind. This holds true for the people of Bali as their beautiful Island is in deep connection with the force of the ocean. From the everyday contact like fishing and relaxing at the beach, to the …

Local Traditions, Global Influences, National Belonging: Conditional Acceptance Of Cross-Gender Dance In Central Java, Indonesia, Calla Rhodes

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Indonesia has a long and rich history of cross-gender performance in which males embody femininity onstage. Until recently, these diverse, locally-specific traditions were a widely accepted cultural practice. However, modern negative associations with the LGBTQ+ community and, by extension, the West, threaten the survival of traditional Indonesian cross-gender dance. By investigating feminine male gender performance in Java, I will uncover how Indonesians draw from localized cultural traditions, as well as globalized practices like Western-style drag, to destabilize restrictive national constructions of gender. I posit that traditional cross-gender dance serves as a culturally- sanctioned outlet for male expressions of femininity that …

Global Issues In A Globalized World: The Unescapable Dialogue Between SharīʿA And The Constitution, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

In an increasingly globalized world, a world in flux, which is constantly subject to rapid circulation of information, change is a dimension that we all experience in our lives with ever increasing frequency. Change, be it that of customs and fashion or that of laws and systems of government, is something which now seems impossible to escape. Change is an integral part of our unstable contemporaneity.

This is not only a continuous change but also a rapid one. In such a social and political environment, at a global and local level, it is more and more difficult to find a …

Looking Beyond The 'Middle Class' For Other Chinas, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There are high hopes for China’s middle class. Thanks to their rising disposable income, this group of Chinese is expected to unleash a consumer revolution in the domestic market. However, I argue that the ‘middle class’ as a concept provides at best a partial understanding of the Chinese consumer population; at worst, it can even provide a misleading perspective that brings us to erroneous conclusions about its profile and size. Instead, I propose the notion of ‘three Chinas’ as an alternative way to make sense of China’s consumers. ‘First China’ comprises residents in medium and large-sized cities, ‘Second China’ consists …

Contemporary Legacies Of Morocco’S Gnawa Music Communities, Luke Sheppard

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite existing literature about Gnawa music and culture, there remains many discrepancies and holes a part of current understandings about the subject. This paper examines the existing literature in comparison with two site visits to different Gnawa music houses in Tangier and Khamlia Morocco. These visits including three interviews with musicians inform an understanding of the history, tourism, spirituality, performance aspects, and changing culture among the two distinct communities. The paper will draw upon these findings to evaluate what it currently means to be Gnawa, perform Gnawa, and spectate Gnawa performance in Morocco. Additionally, Gnawa music within the black Moroccan …

Riding On Giants: Elephant Tourism In Chitwan National Park, Joshua Jacoves

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For the nearly 100 Asian Elephants (elephas maximus) in and around Chitwan National Park, life revolves and often depends around their interactions with humans. Since the advent of elephant tourism for the masses in around the 1980s, the elephants in and around the park have had a dramatic shift in their ways of life. This shift has also affected those who work intimately with these animals, the mahouts, or elephant keepers / riders, have also seen a complete shift in their role and livelihood. For those involved with this industry elephants are seen through different lenses; as an investment, as …

Property In Whose Name? Intrahousehold Bargaining Over Homeownership In China, Jia Yu, Cheng Cheng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Previous research typically examined homeownership inequality across individuals or households, overlooking the intrahousehold allocation of homeownership. Using couple-level data of the 2016 China Family Panel Studies, our study addresses the gap by examining the bargaining over homeownership between husbands and wives in China. Descriptive results reveal a large gender gap in homeownership: only about one-quarter of couples listed the wife as an owner on the Housing Ownership Certificate, whereas about 92% listed the husband. The gender gap in ownership, however, has narrowed among couples married after 2000. Multivariate analyses show that economic autonomy, relative resources, housing purchase conditions, and modernization …

Help-Seeking Tendencies And Subjective Well-Being: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of The United States And Japan, Verity Yu Qing Lua, Nadyanna Binte Mohamed Majeed, Andree Hartanto, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Help-seeking is commonly conceived as an instrumental behavior that improves people’s subjective well-being. However, most findings supporting a positive association between help-seeking and subjective well-being are observed in independence-preferring countries. Drawing from research demonstrating that the pathways to subjective well-being are culturally divergent, we posit that help-seeking tendencies may be detrimental to subjective well-being for members in interdependence-preferring countries where norms for preserving relational harmony and face concerns are prevalent. This study tested the moderating role of country in the relationship between help-seeking tendencies and subjective well-being using data from 5,068 American and Japanese participants. Results revealed that although help-seeking …

Tejer Una Red De Apoyo: Tejemujeres: Una Cooperativa De Artesanas En Gualaceo, Ecuador, Emma Floyd

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Esta monografía trata sobre la historia de superación de la Cooperativa Tejemujeres en Gualaceo. La Organización Tejemujeres ha dado apoyo social y financiero a las mujeres que habitan en la zona rural de esta región de Ecuador a través del arte de tejer. Hablaré sobre cómo la costumbre de tejer en los Andes del Ecuador permite la preservación de la tradición, la ganancia de ingresos para las mujeres y la creación de un sistema de apoyo entre ellas. Comenzando con una introducción a la historia del arte de tejer y la propia historia de Tejemujeres, explicaré las complejidades de esta …

La Capital Marica De Chile: Un Mapa Queer/Kuir/Marica De Valparaíso Y Una Investigación Sobre La Construcción Publica De Una Comunidad Visible En Valparaíso, Steven Powell

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In Valparaíso, Chile, there is a teeming queer presence in the streets and public spaces. Expressions of queerness can be seen in Plaza Anabel Pinto in the way in which people dress or style their hair, can be heard from the small plaza in front of the Severin Library with the voguing/kiki music blasting at nights, and is grafittied on the walls all around the city. This presence and visibility is met with violence and accompanied by precarious life situations. It was my goal through this investigation to explore this relationship between violence and visibility as it is contradicted and …

“Yo También Puedo” - Una Investigación De Pensamientos Y Opiniones Sobre Redes De Apoyo Y Historia De Violencia Intrafamiliar Contra Mujeres Mapuches Rurales, Shira A. Lyss-Loren

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper is an exploration of the rural Mapuche women’s opinions and history of intrafamilial violence. Through small group personal interviews this study seeks to consider the multiple lived experiences and opinions of rural Mapuche women as it relates to intrafamilial violence against women and the social and government support systems available to both prevent it and support victims. Intention of this investigation was not to seek out personal stories of violence, instead focusing on community-wide held perceptions, opinions, and beliefs about where violence in their community comes from, how its perpetrated, and how it is responded to or prevented. …

Step By Step: Understanding Perceptions Of Time And Space In Nepal, Lillian Norton-Brainerd

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Time and space are part of everyone’s daily life; however, these concepts are rarely explicitly discussed. Hegemonic interpretations of time and space are part of capitalist, colonialist structures, thus understanding alternative perceptions is important to resisting these structures. To understand perceptions of time in Nepal, I spent a month in Gre, a small village near Langtang National Park. I interviewed villagers and spent time observing how people spend their time, talk about time, and give directions to physical places. While there is not one perception of time and space, I learned how time and space influence each other. Geography and …

If These Walls Could Talk: Restoring 15th Century Paintings In Upper Mustang, Ellie Penner

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Thupchen monastery, or gompa, in Lomanthang is a site that hosts monumental 15th century Buddhist artworks, which reflect an abundant history from the key trade region of Upper Mustang, Nepal. This site, after neglect and use as a storage space until the 1990s, has seen radical change in the past two decades through an ongoing painting restoration project. Since these restorations began, there have been discrepancies between how scholars and restoration artists believe the work should be done, and how the local community of Lomanthang wants their monastery to be restored. This study aims to examine why the temple …

War Over Measure: Latin American Cultural Policy And The Pedagogy Of Neoliberal States, D. Bret Leraul

Faculty Journal Articles

This article recovers the link between cultural and educational policy in Latin America to understand the neoliberal state’s discursive institution of culture as capital. It does so by studying the form and function of Mexican and Chilean cultural bureaucracies. The calculability and accountability of culture in Chilean cultural policy and the incalculability of Mexico’s culture of favor cultural policy are but two sides of one coin issued by the same neoliberal state form. Both depend on the discursive institution (from above) of culture as cultural capital and labor as human capital reflected (from below) in the formation of Latin American …

A Call For The Library Community To Deploy Best Practices Toward A Database For Biocultural Knowledge Relating To Climate Change, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Abstract

Purpose – In this paper, a call to the library and information science community to support documentation and conservation of cultural and biocultural heritage has been presented.

Design/methodology/approach – Based in existing Literature, this proposal is generative and descriptive— rather than prescriptive—regarding precisely how libraries should collaborate to employ technical and ethical best practices to provide access to vital data, research and cultural narratives relating to climate.

Findings – COVID-19 and climate destruction signal urgent global challenges. Library best practices are positioned to respond to climate change. Literature indicates how libraries preserve, share and cross-link cultural and scientific knowledge. …

Cultural Diplomacy And Co-Operation In Asean: The Role Of Arts And Culture Festivals, David Ocon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Beyond their traditional role as entertainment, form of expression and meeting spaces within local communities, arts and culture festivals can perform various functions. They can serve as showcases of artistic pride, signal openness towards cultural diversity, support the local economy, contribute to reducing political tension and provide grounds to consolidate international relationships. On occasion, such festivals function as tools to support the vision of a multilateral co-operation institution, as is the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Through a comprehensive review of the arts and culture festivals curated in ASEAN, this article investigates the festivals’ ulterior motivations. …

The Hands That Weave Stories, Elanna Hawkins

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

There is a narrative encoded in carpets of Morocco, and I set out with the initial intention to learn how to “read” them—thinking that a Western sense of language is present from the symbols and patterns in the rug. As I progressed in my research and met the skilled women artisans, I realized that I needed to rethink how a story that doesn’t necessarily require a written format can be told to relate to these cultural totems of Morocco. Through in-person experience and online research, I discovered many designs and backgrounds unique to specific regions and areas. Rugs can tell …

Constructed Memories: A Study Of How The Arts And The National Museum Operate Within Power Structures And State Interests In Postcolonial Morocco, Evan Antonakes

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Moroccan national museum as an institution has a long and complicated history. A product of colonialism, the state has historically used the museum, and the art housed within it, to construct narratives of progress and images of modernization. Doing so is largely at the expense of contemporary artists who have long been neglected by the state and failed by the museum. This paper will communicate how museums, art, and the state intersect in postcolonial Morocco. The paper will examine the inner workings of the Mohammed VI National Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat, attempting to contextualize the …

Discontinuity Between Religion, Law, And Society Through Animal Treatment In Morocco, Michael Altman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Animal treatment is a topic which is covered by many facets of what helps create the guiding principles for humans, yet all in different ways; there is some overlap, and there is some distinction. From my three months of study in Rabat, Morocco, seeing how each person approaches the homeless animal differently, I write on how three important overarching areas: religious, legal, and societal, discuss how animals should be treated.

In this paper, I will be analyzing religious texts, legal writings both in place and in draft, and will rely on external works written animal markets and on the school …

(Un)Tethered Masculinities, (Mis)Placed Modernities: Queering Futurity In Contemporary Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper considers how socio-political prescriptions can bring about the queering of futurity in Singapore. In Singapore, state-sponsored narratives of progress view futurity in terms that are bound to place, and reproduced through the heteronormative family unit. These factors have caused constructions of masculinity to be tethered to the family, and placed within public housing. Recently, this narrative has become an increasingly inflexible and marginalizing construct that can cause straight males to be queered by their prescribed futures. In contrast, gay males are more likely to be untethered from their families, and thus occupy “unplaced” positions in Singapore’s social structure.

Sephardi Identity & Legitimacy In The Age Of Direct-To-Consumer Dna Tests, Caitlyn Rose Campana

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, individuals may purchase genetic tests that promise to “reveal” one’s “true self” through ancestry composition reports, health reports, and lists of DNA relatives. Such tests add another dimension to the ongoing debate about what it means to be Jewish, but also what it means to be “legitimately” Sephardi. Through qualitative interviews, this thesis illuminates the experiences of Sephardim who received identity-affirming DNA test results and Sephardim who received identity non-affirming DNA test results. Findings suggest that contemporary Sephardim consider a link to the Iberian Peninsula as indicative of Sephardi identity, despite expanding definitions of the label. They also suggest …

Haptic Heritage And The Paradox Of Provenance Within Singapore's Cottage Food Businesses, Orlando Woods, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper offers a “more-than-representational” understanding of how heritage value is reproduced by cottage food businesses in Singapore. It advances the notion of haptic heritage to highlight the importance of touch and feel in inculcating food with a sense of heritage value. Haptic heritage is reproduced through the physical handling of ingredients in ways that contribute to more “authentic” products. However, it also foregrounds food production processes that are more tactile, time-consuming and thus unscalable than their automated counterparts. Accordingly, the reproduction of haptic heritage is becoming increasingly unviable in Singapore’s competitive economic landscape. These ideas are explored through a …

Affective Cosmopolitanisms In Singapore: Dancehall And The Decolonisation Of The Self, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper advances a new understanding of cosmopolitanism; one that is rooted in the affective potential of the body. It argues that whilst the self is often projected onto the body, so too can the body play an important role in (re)imagining the self. As such, the body can decolonise the self from the mind, from the expectations of society and culture, and from the normative epistemological underpinnings of academic knowledge production. I validate these theoretical arguments through an empirical focus on the practice of dancehall in Singapore. Dancehall is an emancipatory cultural movement that emerged in Jamaica in the …

Mulan: An Exploration Of Culture And Representation In Hollywood, Annie Okuhara, Bernadine Cortina, Hung Le, Ryan Nakahara, Jerry Zou

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

'Mulan: An Exploration of Culture and Representation in Hollywood' is a presentation and detailed analysis of various representational, cultural, and minority-related issues in the context of Hollywood and western media. The presentation will focalize specifically around the recent live-action remake of the 1998 film "Mulan". The remake, premiered in March 2020, received critical backlash from various audiences (mostly from the BIPOC community), bashing the film for its misrepresentation of Ancient China and Ancient Chinese culture. Through this misrepresentation, the Hollywood film ultimately reflects views of cultural appropriation, misogyny, and overall minority underrepresentation in the United States. The research presents the …

Place-Making/Management: The Policy And Practice Of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Singapore has won numerous accolades and garnered global attention for its physical infrastructure and iconic architecture. Despite these achievements, its government has recognized that certain parts of the city still lack a certain human vitality and buzz. Additionally, like other post-industrial cities, the production of a positive urban experience has been identified as that critical competitive advantage that would differentiate Singapore from other cities. Consequently, the Singapore government adopted a strategy called ‘place management’ in 2008 to inject ‘heart and soul’ into the city, and deliver a liveable, globally competitive and amenity-rich urban environment for its increasingly educated and upper …

Free Bodies, Segmented Selves: Paradoxical Spaces Of Dancehall Culture In Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper contributes to the ongoing expansion of the geographies of encounter by considering how cultural encounters can lead to the realisation, and the segmentation, of the self. As much as cultural differences can be manifested, negotiated and managed externally, so too can these differences be internal states that are realised through engagements with the embodied self. Accordingly, segmented selves are an outcome of the desire for individuals to compartmentalise diverse and disaggregated lives, and to retain a sense of cohesion and harmony within the various socio-cultural communities to which they belong. I bring these ideas to life through an …