Paradigm Shifts (Asynchronous Session)
Featured A Feminist Critique of the Portrayals of Sexual Harassment in Bollywood Indian Cinema: Discussion and Implications View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Meghna Bhat
Cinema has a profound effect on its audiences across the globe especially when social constructions of gender through cinema play an instrumental role in shaping public perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and reactions. But when cinematic portrayals and audience interpretations may contribute to a hostile environment condoning gender violence, it becomes a universal social problem that needs to be investigated. This qualitative paper addresses a gap in literature by examining how sexual harassment in public spaces including street harassment is depicted in one widely viewed and successfully commercial form of popular culture from India, Bollywood cinema. How is street harassment and sexual harassment defined, constructed and represented in selected Hindi films (released between 2019-2021)? How do gender roles and relations show up through these portrayals and protagonists? What are the possible implications of these images on the public perceptions of sexual violence in the South Asian diaspora? Using a feminist lens, these questions are addressed and emerging key themes are first critiqued and analyzed. Second, this interdisciplinary research paper challenges the traditional and mainstream narratives and perceptions about dangerously accepting and romanticizing of street and sexual harassment in reality and its implications of these media representations on South Asian diaspora communities. This study contributes to the fields of criminology, sociology, gender and women's studies, film, media and cultural studies, and global studies.
The Contradictory Social Value of Engaged Withdrawal: Towards an Un-bias Theory of Movements that Choose Exit, Escape, Exodus, Etc. View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ryan Sporer
It is heterodox to suggest liberation can come from any other form than sharpening or dulling contradictions—through revolution or reform. I suggest there is a third form and the historical record has preponderance of it. In this paper I explore theoretical approaches of “engaged withdrawal”. That is individuals and groups that pursue lines of flight rather than direct conflict or negotiation. A suggestive list of examples includes the nomadic practices of fission-fusion, self-barbarianization in ancient world, escaped slaves of marron societies, religious forms of exodus i.e. Anabaptists, colonial subjects self-absconding, 170 years of reoccurring back-to-the-land movements, and 1960s communes. Despite diverse historical cases, little serious attention has been paid to this form of liberational struggle. In fact, the assumption is that but not engaging in the structures of authority, one is not a rebelling but is surrendering. Those who do not engage are weakening the movements that do by siphoning off resources and allowing the oppressive situation to linger. Never are these conclusions empirically tested. Opposite this position are ways of understanding self-removal in more nuanced ways. This is articulated in the following. Hirschman’s exit as organizational maintenance. Resistant exit such as exiles. ‘Weapons of the weak’ seen in peasant flight. Incorporation of interstitial projects into Marxian frameworks seen from Erik Olin Wright to Hardt and Negri. As counter intuitive as it may seem withdrawals are not, as Virno wrote ‘negative gesture that exempts one responsibility’ but rather ‘modify the conditions of conflict’ and may provide social value.
Indigenous Writing Workshops: A Tool for Decolonization or Colonization? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cynthia Grace Suguitan Sanguyu
Writing workshops have truly established their niche as a method of enhancing written language skills and promoting culture. In 2019, the University of the Philippines Diliman Extension Programs in Pampanga and Olongapo (UPDEPPO) implemented such a project for post-secondary school and young professional Aytas (also spelled Aetas), a Philippine Indigenous people group. Pictured as a venue for expression and reflection and a way of preserving Ayta language and culture, the workshop aimed to help Ayta youth retain their Indigenous identity. As I reflected on the program, however, I started asking: Did UPDEPPO inadvertently do more harm than good by introducing colonial literary methods? Can writing workshops truly recognize, protect, and promote Indigenous culture or are they just another tool for colonization? Writing workshops held specifically for Indigenous cultural communities are indeed meant to enable them to safeguard, revitalize, and promote their language and culture through the written word, but when the methods used in these trainings espouse literary ideals that disenfranchise Indigenous ways of knowing and thinking, such workshops can turn into instruments of colonization, fortifying foreign influence instead of demolishing Western hegemony. Limited to analyzing writing workshops conducted in local languages, this paper first details the benefits of implementing such projects among Indigenous people. It then discusses how certain literary methods may delegitimize Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices (IKSPs). Finally, it proposes recommendations for designing writing workshops that do not nullify Indigenous beliefs and experiences.
Complex Thinking As A New Inter And Transdisciplinary Domain for Theory, Research, and Practice: A Complex Knowledge Organisation View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Teixeira De Melo, Letícia Renault
The shift towards a Paradigm of Complexity has been expressed in the “Complexity Turn”. However, more attention has been given to the contents of thinking (e.g. complexity themes) than to the processes (how we think in and through Complexity, and how relatively complex is this complexity). We outline the foundations of a new Inter and Transdisciplinarity domain for research and practice targeting Complex Thinking. This domain will depend on the “Dissolution” of different disciplines, knowledges and modes of thinking and on a creative exploration of their interactions, propelled by key questions such as: how, when and which modes of thinking need to be coordinated to best address a particular nature of questions, in particular contexts and times? What is the nature of the relations between different modes of thinking and knowledges that most congruently matches the (evolving) complexity of the world in order to guide effective and positive actions? What kind of processes and strategies enact Complex Thinking towards emergence? How and which individual, social, cultural, biological, material, informational and technological processes constrain the human potential (individual and collective) for more complex modes of thinking? How to recognise and evaluate (relatively more) complex modes of thinking? We identify key questions, contributing disciplines and domains, discussing how investigating Complex Thinking requires a complex process which recursively increases its own complexity. We position this proposal within the Social Sciences, reaching and expanding beyond them to instigate new Heterodoxies inside, outside and in the interface of science(s) and modes of knowing.
The Community Engagement Strategies of Dark Heritage to Stimulate Social Communication View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chen Hsing Yang, Hui Wen Lin
There are considerable chances where dark heritage contains disputes over such human rights and political regimes. This kind of heritage just not only needs to be focused on the physical structure conservation, but even the meaning behind the structure also plays an essential role to let the public clearly understand the controversial history. To face this issue, this study aims to take the concept of community engagement to investigate the strategies of stakeholders to shape the collective memory of the dark heritage and convey the spirit and value of human rights. This study takes the National Human Rights Museum in Taiwan as a case study, which used to be a Detention Center of the Military Law for political prisoners during Taiwan's White Terror period (1949-1992) and it is one of the representative dark heritage in Taiwan. Although it is known to be a symbol of state violence, it has now converted to be an influential museum for all human rights education and reconciles multiple opinions in Taiwan. In recent years, the National Human Rights Museum has been involved in "representing" history through various activities, encouraging community engagement to bring hidden history and life stories to communicate with the public. Based on the concept of community engagement, this study emphasizes the sustainability of intangible memories of the heritage. Fieldwork, participatory observation, and case studies were adopted as the methods to investigate how the dark heritage establish a public platform for communication that assists society gradually moving towards harmony.
