Expanding Ideas
How Hong Kong and Mainland China Journalism Students Prioritize Values: A Comparative Study View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tianlun Zhou, Anyi Liao
In 2019, Hong Kong saw its largest social movement in recent years, triggered by the Extradition Bill. This chronic, grand, even violent wave of protests shocked the whole world, and received mountains of exposure in media coverage. For news reports centered on the protests from Mainland China and Hong Kong, even they differ in reporting frames, one thing, they reached consensus- the representation of conflicts between young people originated from Mainland China and local Hong Kong. That said, the inharmonious, nonnegotiable, and unreasonable dilemmas for young people have been all too familiar in two areas’ media, which raised questions-is this true- young generations coming from these two areas have such distressingly gaps, and if this is truly indeed, what reasons contributing to their varies? To address the above-mentioned questions, this study used the Rokeach Value Survey, combined with in-depth interviews, to compare the values of college students in Mainland China and Hong Kong who majored in journalism. Overall, their values differed more than being similar, yet the gap is relatively small. Both of these students prioritized the value of “just,” “fair,” and “honest” in their top five values, which further showed that they shared some basic principles of journalism. The difference lied in their ideas about the functions of news media. Students from Mainland China emphasized the function of conveying information, whereas another group highlighted the role of supervising governments. Culture, education, social environment, and media landscape have collectively influenced students’ value systems. Theoretical and practical implications are further discussed.
Cultural Reparation Ecology: A New Hybrid Methodology for Climate Adaptation and Cultural Resilience View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session William Shivers
Climate change has been ubiquitously defined as a global issue and must be tackled as such. But how do these strategies land on the ground we know, in the cultures where we live? Antiquated definitions of conservation and ecology stand disconnected and rigid in the face of how climate mitigation can work to address centuries of systemic and widespread cultural issues. In many ways, how can the work of climate resilience help to fix the environmental and social violence and destruction that helped create it? By looking at the potential of a cultural reparation ecology, climate resilience and mitigation can be understood and communicated as a cross-disciplinary method towards simultaneously addressing issues of cultural, ecological, and social change. This paper examines American peripheral lands including Hawaii and the US Virgin Islands to offer examples of how ecological thinking and practice can further evolve and work towards climate mitigation. This work can not be done alone by landscape architects and the design professions at large. Cultural reparation ecology necessitates an approach that pulls from multiple disciplines ranging from cultural anthropology, to art and literature, and the science and design professions in order to successfully be integrated into how we work together to address the issues of the climate crisis. Here, the paper looks towards building a new method of ecology where multiple disciplines can actively and equally engage and contribute towards robust and forward-thinking solutions that maintain ecological resilience and cultural vibrance.
Sociological Aspects of Studying the Stand-Up Comedians: The Case of Splicka Scena in Croatia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Renata Relja
The purpose of this paper is to explore the work of comedians and such a way of living. It presents the research results on stand-up comedy as a quite new practice in the city of Split and Croatia. By utilizing qualitative and quantitative research methodology, the authors focus on the comedians gathered around the stand-up community of Splicka scena. The research timeframe was the period from 2018 to 2020. The fieldwork consisted of two phases. The first included the primary ethnographic methods (observation and semi-structured interviews). The focus was on the aspects of the comedians' work and the audiences' reactions to specific humorous content. In the second phase, however, the survey was conducted to explore audiences' motivations, humorous preferences, and satisfaction with the Splicka Scena. The results underline the sphere of humor as a contextual fact. It is a reflection of society, i.e. clear and justified criticism as an important element of comedians' popularity. Additionally, social circumstances essentially determine the work of comedians. In the case of Split and Croatia as the rather small markets, it is mostly a combination of additional income and the important hobby, well organized and supported by the comedians' primary social ties (family and friends).
Death and its Social Life: Women and the Culture of Death in 19th Century Bengal View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sohini Mukhopadhyay
What is death? This is a question that has plagued diverse cultures for centuries and an answer is still yet to be found. Death becomes an inordinately significant tool for analysing social constructions. While the nature of death might still be incomprehensible to the human mind, one can focus on the historical and social meanings attached to death for they hold up a mirror reflecting the society, its social distinctions, notions of the ‘self’ and ‘identity’, the perceptions surrounding the body and its culture of remembrance. The rituals that various cultures across time and space have whipped up, when confronted with death’s dark shroud may even involve a certain degree of performance which may in turn be a part of the commemorative tradition a particular culture follows, for it is through performance and repetition that memories and death and life persists. The culture of death comprises the whole assemblage of norms surrounding bereavement, representation of death in literature, art and the like and even the means by which death often becomes political. This research paper focuses on the notions surrounding death and women’s experience of death in nineteenth century Bengal. The primary sources consulted include autobiographies of women and literary texts belonging to the nineteenth century in Bengal, India.
Chinese Philosophy in the South China Sea View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Scott Mc Donald
As demonstrated in the public handwringing begun by Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner in 2018, western analysts have been ineffective at understanding and predicting the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This paper supports efforts to improve understanding of PRC security policy by applying the ideas of classical Chinese philosophy. It begins by reviewing China’s philosophical legacy and deriving four principles affecting how its adherents will understand the world: potential, emptiness, names, and hierarchy. Working from the premise that the philosophy held by individuals shapes their views on the nature of the international system, how individuals understand it, and proper action for a state within it, the paper then explores the impact of these principles on foreign policy decision-making. Finally, PRC policy towards the South China Sea is used as a case study to examine whether this philosophical orientation provides a useful lens for understanding the security policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The successful application of the philosophical perspective to foreign policy decision-making has the potential to shed light on the foreign policy of non-western intellectual traditions, open new paths to understanding international relations, and provide a means of explaining why existing theories built on western philosophy may or may not apply to a given polity.
Featured Political Transnationalism in Mexico: The Importance of Mexican Communities in the United States and the External Vote View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Zorrilla-Velazquez
The external vote is a recent right that encourages new ways of transnational political participation among Mexican immigrants. Since 2006, and until the last presidential elections, the number of Mexicans voting abroad has increased significantly. Along with this participation, Mexican immigrants have demonstrated a further interest in political activities that eventually will have an impact on their communities of origin. However, the mechanisms implemented by the Mexican government have not been enough to provide its citizens abroad the proper tools to exert their rights and to participate in the decision-making process. This paper analyzes the specific characteristics of the Mexican diaspora and their historical, social, and political background that has paved the way for the implementation of the external vote, everything from a transnational theory perspective. The study was conducted using a descriptive method of the external vote evolution and the changes that occurred after the political alternance until now. To sum up, we conclude that it is necessary to consider in-person and internet voting as new possible solutions.
“Promised Landscapes” into the Normative Visual Experience of the Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1905-1930) View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session María Eugenia Pizzul
We consider the teaching and learning style of the Spanish philosopher, which was forged in the visual experience of the landscape. Such a pedagogy sought the regeneration and education of people through its national topography, involving issues of nature, history, pedagogy, morality, and art. Although José Ortega y Gasset adopted the educational ideal of Francisco Giner de los Ríos, founder of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza in 1876, he displayed a broader understanding of landscape as we will show. Focusing on this image - and its Spanish, German, and Argentine visual experience-, this case study evidences the "pictorial or iconic turn" framework. We aim to reconstruct and describe the historicity of the visual experience of the university pedagogical landscape, and analyze the act of seeing and the modes of "observer" as part of scopic regimes or general systems of visuality. From a biographical approach, which uses tools of heuristics and discursive analysis, this research contributes to Visual and Cultural Studies, Histories of Pedagogy, Law, and Art, and GeoHumanities. It will be seen how the dynamic nature of Ortega y Gasset's pedagogical style, which legitimizes visual experience as a form of production of normative knowledge, is the result of the coexistence of various scopic regimes joined theoretically in Mission of the University of 1930: the promised landscape of university pedagogy.
