Focused Discussions (Asynchronous Session)
Spiritual Investments in Latin America: Understanding a Christian Temple as a Place of Consumption View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Fabio Andrés Medina Ostos
We only need to do an observation exercise to see that Christian churches are obvious places of consumption. In this area, the erroneous conception of equating the concepts of consumption and consumerism, has made both, congregation and the institution itself, try to distance themselves completely from this act; In fact, the episode of Jesus expelling the merchants from the temple (Mt 21: 12-16), has made that the link between these two dimensions of social interaction (sacred place and consumption) limits with blasphemy and heresy. For Colombia, since 1991, the number of Pentecostal temples rose 6,347 according to the report of the Ministry of the Interior. It must be said: a large part of these congregations not only restrict their activity to the repetition of a divine act that deserves to be commemorated in the form of a ritual act (Eliade, 1981), but they have also generated a whole “package of services” to transfer and consolidate knowledge, highlighting the bases of their faith: training schools, book sales, artistic and sports groups and pilgrimage trips. For many parishioners, these services are seen as "spiritual investments" because through them they can access more sophisticated forms of self-realization, and liturgical experiences. In this way, the Pentecostal Christian temple will be approached as a space where consumption can not only coexist with the sacred but also allows everything the sacred conserves its divine and metaphysical character so that the parishioners continue to see in them the religious repositories of their daily lives.
Cognizance and Investigation of Criminal Offences and Quasi-judicial Powers Exercised by Police: The Thin Line Between Administrative and Judicial Functions in Law Enforcement View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Aaditya Gore, Anuradha Parasar
The police take cognizance of criminal offences so as to investigate them and bring the offenders to justice. While investigation is a purely administrative activity, many decisions taken by the police before and during investigation have definite quasi-judicial undertones. The decision to treat a person as a suspect carries implications on that individual's personal liberty. In matters where an offence has not occurred in the immediate presence of a law enforcement officer, such a decision is based on yet to be tested evidence. The operational requirement of investigation requires the investigator to act upon probable cause and credible leads. The investigator must satisfy himself/herself of the factual tenability of such facts and leads. The nature of discretion exercised at this stage is purely subjective but it has to be based on objective facts and is bound to be fair and just in its approach and functioning. Law enforcement especially in democratic countries requires adherence to a high standard of functional probity. Administrative and functional caprice is proscribed both by statute as well as precedent. The criminal investigation process is therefore quasi-judicial in nature. It possesses elements of pure administrative practice as well as those of the judicial process. This paper seeks to study the degrees of similarities, differences, convergence and divergence between the quasi-judicial nature of the criminal investigative process that starts with taking cognizance of criminal offences and leads to their investigation.
Telling Stories with Pictures: A Visual Ethnography of Educator Sex Offenders from Local and National News View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Amy Grau
Crime has been a common feature of media coverage within the U.S. for many years. While the mechanisms by which people get their news has become increasingly online, this affords the opportunity for people to learn about instances of crime on a larger scale, including through listservs. This research examines two years of news media coverage from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020 of 41 female educator sex offenders sent by the People True Crime listserv in comparison with coverage of those same offenders by their local ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC news affiliates. Prior qualitative research on media coverage of crime typically focuses on framing of offenders through the language used to describe them but less research has focused on the photographs of offenders included in news media coverage. Using visual ethnography through examining pre-existing visual representations, this project examines the types of photos included in local and national news media coverage as devices that shape responses to humanize and de-humanize educator sex offenders.
Mental Illness and Netflix Series BoJack Horseman View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Jenny Ortega
This research work identifies and suggests relationships between mental illness and adult animated TV series produced by television streaming platforms, specifically I address mental illness in the original Netflix series BoJack Horseman. The methodological approach is carried out from the field of cultural studies. Autoethnography, visual research, and seriality studies are mixed to account for the coexistence, which could be said to be necessary, of mental illness as a lived experience - in this case, of a woman and her family - with that of mental illness as an animated experience - of fiction, starring a horse- a coexistence in which the presence of women is, in my opinion, a key part in explaining what the critics, specialists, and followers consider one of the achievements of the TV series: treating mental illness avoiding common stigmas and doing it in a transmedia and transnational media environment. The inclusion of mental illness in the television productions of Netflix, HBO, and Amazon has increased in the last ten years, along with mental illness as an institutionalized and medical experience in companies and universities, beyond the family context. BoJack Horseman is one of the productions that treats mental illness as an experience in which numerous people who are diagnosed with mental disorders, to varying degrees, are recognized. In the series, most of the characters that are diagnosed are women, of the same genealogical line who share genetic inheritance and question the meaning of life, motherhood, abortion, success, and happiness.
Cultural Pride and Its Impediment to Cross and Multicultural Workspaces : Cultural Competence in Globalized Settings View Digital Media
Focused Discussion Catherine Enoredia Odorige
The search for cultural expertise for the purpose of exposing cultural biases that impede smooth results in cross-cultural and multicultural workspaces has yielded theories such cultural humility, cultural intelligence, cultural competence, and cultural reflexivity. These theories tend to propose new ways of interaction between individuals and groups where culturally institutionalized banality in us resulting from our learned culture can be reduced in cross and multicultural settings. Using historical-analytics method this research x-rays the opposites of these theories in ways they are shaped in our culture with a focus on cultural humility whose opposite is pride according to dictionary clarity. Pride is embedded in the way culture is viewed taught and expressed. In the sense of what we have been handed over in our social communities and institutionalized is cultural pride which is an impediment to meaningful maneuver through and in multi or cross-cultural situations. Research has distinguished authentic and hubristic pride. Regardless of this distinction with authentic pride expressive of positive characteristics, of effort driven achievements. Such authentic pride from monolithic cultural achievements can be a challenge to cultural humility competences. According to advertisement–recalibration theory of pride,” pride is an evolved human-universal neurocomputational program designed by natural selection to orchestrate cognition, physiology, and, behavior. However, with results showing actions, traits, and situations eliciting valuation in some cultures but not others present an inevitable challenge which then drives the need for cultural humility, competence and reflexivity to tapper situations of cultural diversity where settings run in opposite direction.
