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After the conflict in Afghanistan, some part of Uzbek Turks who firstly moved to Pakistan and then Turkey were located to Hatay province by the state of the Republic of Turkey in 1982. Uzbek Turks who came to Hatay province reside in Ovakent which is 20 km away from the central city Antakya. Leaving their own social and cultural environment in Afghanistan and obliged to reside in a new location, Uzbek Turks still try to keep their traditions just after 37 years of migration. Uzbek rice which plays a crucial role in nearly all social and cultural activities of Uzbek society - wedding, funeral ceremony, send off to military service - that reside in Ovakent seems to be the signifier of identity for Uzbeks. Uzbek rice is considered to be a material culture instrument that functions to keep and construct Uzbek identity in this ethnographic study which includes field study and participant observation. Rituals in the process of cooking and consuming are dealt with in the context of food anthropology and consumption.
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Symbols are one of the four dimensions that define a culture, according to Geert Hofstede. They can be represented by words, gestures, pictures or objects that carry a particular meaning and are recognized as such by those who share a certain culture (e.g. language,traditional clothes, flags and status symbols). As a millennial culture, which has received a lot of foreign influences throughout time, the Romanian culture is rich in symbols of any kind. Since symbols are the outer layer of a culture, they are the first elements to be noticed by a foreigner who comes to a specific country. In our case, the foreigners who deal with the Romanian symbols and marvel at their richness are the students who take the courses of the Preparatory Year of Romanian for Foreign Citizens at the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest. The way they perceive and then relate to our symbols is interesting to study as a subject of cultural research, and this is the reason why I have chosen it as the topic of my article.
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The following article focuses on gender roles during World War II in the Slovenian lands. It outlines a number of identities and motives, both revolutionary and traditional. The revolutionary period was profoundly influenced by the centuries-old anthropological situation – Christianity. World War II transformed gender roles and allowed women to enter the male sphere. They achieved this by resorting to traditional mechanisms with their own rules, laws, and history. The study shows that women gave legitimacy to the National Liberation Movement, which, in turn, provided them with a new social status – one that was much more aligned with tradition than the socialist movement claimed. The stories of female fighters, activists, family members, and undecided bystanders reveal how the occupation shaped the wartime years and how the new Socialist Yugoslavia rose to power.
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Review of: Nirha Efendić - Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape by Safet HadžiMuhamedović (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018)
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Turkish culture has thousands of years of accumulation due to the breadth of the geographies its spreads and the antiquity of its historical origins. One of the most important reflections of this accumulation is Turkish mythology. Turkish mythology developed within the framework of the common and unique identities of all Turkish communities from Central Asia to the Balkans, Siberia to Anatolia, and has continued its life since the archaic/ancient periods of history by being passed down from generation to generation. The kam/shaman and the universe depictions in Siberian (Baikal/Altay) cave/rock paintings dated to 10.000 BC (Paleolithic period) are a manifestation of the Turks aim to understand and explain the universe. In this respect, it contains rich narratives with archaism, geographical breadth, tribal/tribal diversity and power of imagination. Turkish mythology still has its influence on society in terms of containing the genetic codes of culture and shaping Turkish thought from the past to the present. This influence is found in works of art such as architecture, painting, music and cinema, as well as in the everyday life of society. As technology has become a natural and integral part of today's human life, companies that produce technology use mythological elements that are part of human lives from the past to the present in the production-marketing processes of their products. Turkish mythology also attracts the attention of technology companies based in Turkey and plays a role directly or indirectly in the process of creating the brand/model identity of the products produced. In this study, the impact of Turkish mythology on the products of Monster, a high-performance computer manufacturer based in Turkey, will be examined. Monster computer's creating a brand/model identity and using the elements of Turkish mythology in the sales policy will be discussed through "Abra, Semruk, Markut, Tulpar, Huma” models. The place of the mentioned assets in Turkish mythology and the reasons for choosing these names and the effect of Turkish mythology on the character of the brand will be discussed.
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In the article I focus on six numbers of the Polish edition of "Vogue" magazine. The analysis concerns the opening issue and September issue. I link interpretations of selected fragments of the magazine, covers, the most popular models, influencers and so-called "interesting people" quite experimentally. Thinking of the hermeneutical way of reading texts of culture, I use a method from qualitative sociology: auto-ethnography. I read the texts (articles, interviews, photos, signatures of advertisements) without scientific distance, connecting conclusions with the beginnings of Polish capitalism and the lack of a clear, self-aware, educated middle class. The story of "Vogue" is a story about the generation of today's forty-year-olds. The magazine enabled them to think about a sentimental journey to the beginnings of the free market economy and democracy after 1989.
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Review of: Marcin Kafar, W świecie wygnańców, wdów i sierot. O pewnym wariancie antropologii zaangażowanej, Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego 2013, ss. 154, ISBN: 978-83-7969-075-6. Review by: Filip Wróblewski
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Generally known as New Museology, the museological methods which appeared in the 1980s in response to the epistemological crisis of the museum sometimes borrow from the tools of contemporary art (conceptual art, institutional critique, performanceetc.) in order to “disenchant” the museum, to turn it into space for public debate and cultural interactions, to use it as a tool for social critique. The article attempts at offering an original typology of the contemporary art interventions in the museum space from the point of view of the different critical reflexivity which they show: to the mechanisms of the museum institution; to the “museum’s perspective” – the means of looking and producing knowledge in the museum; to the museum narrative and its interpretations; to the museum object, its meanings and representations; to the collection and collecting as specific and basic museum practice; and last but not least, to the museum experience. Using various examples of artistic interventions in the museum space, the possible new transformations of the museum and its socio-critical potential are illustrated.
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This research is inspired by the practice of U.S. based museums, whose main mission is to interpret the cultural heritage and living traditions of various cultural communities for different types of audiences. The author studies different methods and forms of museum interpretation as well as possible strategies for their applications in the museum practice. Modifications of interpretative methods are considered integral part of the gradually transformed perceptions of the museums’ role in the contemporary societies, their orientation towards more meaningful communication with their partners, local communities, artists and visitors as well as their strive for a more comprehensive presentation of the museum content in context. The article is structured around several main topics: 1. Interpretation in the museum Dialogue, 2. Principles and Forms of the Museum Interpretation, and3. Polyphony of the Museum Interpretation. The last topic provides an opportunity fora further discussion on the co-existence of “voices“ that are heard in the museum and that contribute in various ways to the specific nature of the museum communication: a. the voice of the museum experts, b. the voice of the cultural communities, c. the voice of artists, and d. the voice of visitors. The author examines certain changes in the characteristics of the museum dialogue when one or the other of these voices dominates, when they are in harmony as part of an enhanced interpretation of museum exhibitions and programs or when they are in dissonance – as part of alternative, even conflicting interpretations of objects or activities. The article also offers arguments clarifying the leading role of the exhibition themes and narratives in shaping the museum dialogue. It also provides considerations for the need of more active engagement of artists, visitors, cultural communities and institutional partners in the creation of unique museum experiences and for the establishment of the museum as an institution that is relevant to the people who enter its halls.
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As we hear increasing demands to include more diverse voices in our institutions can find inspiration in museums that were made by and for the communities they serve. This article presents two such museums in the United States, the National GreatBlacks In Wax Museum and the Burlesque Hall of Fame, where the founders built their own venues for cultural representation. These sites rely on emic interpretation as visitors are given tours by members of the communities whose culture is on display, providing representation, education, and visitor engagement.
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The article attempts to propose a reflexive approach towards the communist legacy in museums. By comparing the trend of decolonization in museums of Western Europe with particular attention to the practices in the Netherlands the author draws attention to the potential solutions and mechanisms for reassessing the traumatic institutional past. The search for new museum identity in the 21st century in Europe reflects the social turbulence and follows an academic critique to reform the institution profoundly. The lack of visitor flow and problematic interaction between Bulgarian state-funded museums and their local audiences are perceived as a signal for the institutional struggle with communist legacies in museological theory and practice. The article pretends to examine the main areas affected by the legacies and to outline the need for post-communist museum studies in Bulgaria, as well as the need for a critical approach towards Bulgarian museums’ identity.
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Since the time of Homer, “Pygmies” have been a literary motif in scientific disputes as short stature peoples that no one has ever seen. It wasn’t until 1870 that, in search of the sources of the Nile, G.A. Schweinfurth combined the Homer name “Pygmies” with specific people he met on the edge of the forests of Africa. Since then they have become the subject of scientific research. There are two policies regarding the “Pygmies”. One demands keeping them “in the natural state”, the other requires settling and learning agriculture. Each group has its name, history, language, etc. Unfortunately, they remain a construct – everyone has heard of them, but no one really knows them. The aim of the article is to present the complexity of the “Pygmy” case and show how much the fate of given populations depends on the state of knowledge, awareness of the problem and adopted strategies.
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The aim of this paper is to examine the complex relational dynamics between tourism (both as a global phenomenon and a set of specific practices), space and economy in selected literary texts whose narratives are set in two different economic and political periods: socialism, and capitalism and democracy. Since these concepts cannot be easily understood through disciplinary knowledge, this paper will view the chosen literary texts as pre-disciplinary cultural products that generate specific “social knowledge” (Felski) which presents the fullness of the social world more successfully than other forms of culture or knowledge. The authors whose literary texts were included in this analysis are contemporary Croatian writers: Antun Šoljan, Zoran Ferić, Boris Dežulović and Jurica Pavičić. The first two authors wrote texts in which the relationships between tourists and locals are prevalently of symbolic and exchange value, and they mostly belong to the sphere of libidinal economy. Dežulović and Pavičić deal with contemporary tourism practices which change the identity of towns and people forever.
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The dimension achievement vs. ascription asks whether status is acquired by a person through individual performance or whether the status is more attributed to it by origin or affiliation. In achievement-oriented cultures, personal commitment and hard work are rewarded and are crucial for the social standing of the individual. A person’s worth is determined on the basis of their performances and how well they perform their tasks. Ascription-oriented cultures emphasize the social circumstances in which an individual was born. Characteristics such as origin, age, gender, social connections, education, and work determine this status. When someone from an achievement-oriented culture does business with people from an ascription-oriented culture, it is advisable to deploy older, more experienced people who are familiar with formal customs and manners and who respect established titles. Achievement vs. ascription can also be recognized in the execution of advertisements, the interactions between the characters and the type of persons represented, as well as in the way the message is conveyed and how the target group is influenced and reached in the different cultures.
More...A FOCUS ON THE INTERCULTURAL DIMENSION OF THE TRANSLATION COMPETENCE
In the context of today’s globalized market, the success of a translator depends, to a large extent, on a number of skills which make up what is generally described as (inter)cultural competence. The present paper focuses on the complex nature of the translator’s intercultural competence, examining it from various perspectives: theoretical, sociolinguistic, textual and interpersonal. The author relies on both theoretical and research evidence, with the ultimate goal of arriving at conclusions of relevance for the field of translator training.
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Non-territorial autonomy (NTA) incorporates a mixture of different arrangements such as consociationalism and national-cultural autonomy (NCA), and forms of representation that de-territorialize self-determination. The paper analyses NTA possibilities in reaching indigenous self-governance and reveals the dilemmas in the applicability of NTA for securing the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples. Although the practice points towards some positive examples and successes of NTA institutions related to ingenious peoples (e.g. Sámi Parliaments), the question remains whether NTA holds sufficient potential for addressing indigenous needs upheld by the international principle “right to land, territories and traditionally owned resources.”
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