Showing papers on "Cultural analysis published in 2008"

Cultural Intelligence Domain and Assessment

Abstract: The construct of cultural intelligence, recently introduced to the management literature, has enormous potential in helping to explain effectiveness in cross cultural interactions. However, at present, no generally accepted definition or operationalization of this nascent construct exists. In this article, we develop a conceptualization of cultural intelligence that addresses a number of important limitations of previous definitions. We present a concise definition of cultural intelligence as a system of interacting abilities, describe how these elements interact to produce culturally intelligent behavior, and then identify measurement implications.

Measuring Culture Outside the Head: A Meta-Analysis of Individualism—Collectivism in Cultural Products

Abstract: Although cultural psychology is the study of how sociocultural environments and psychological processes coconstruct each other, the field has traditionally emphasized measures of the psychological over the sociocultural. Here, the authors call attention to a growing trend of measuring the sociocultural environment. They present a quantitative review of studies that measure cultural differences in "cultural products": tangible, public representations of culture such as advertising or popular texts. They found that cultural products that come from Western cultures (mostly the United States) are more individualistic, and less collectivistic, than cultural products that come from collectivistic cultures (including Korea, Japan, China, and Mexico). The effect sizes for cultural products were larger than self-report effect sizes for this dimension (reported in Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). In addition to presenting this evidence, the authors highlight the importance of studying the dynamic relationships between sociocultural environments and psyches.

The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution

Abstract: In this paper, we explore how experimental studies of cultural transmission in adult humans can address general questions regarding the 'who, what, when and how' of human cultural transmission, and consequently inform a theory of human cultural evolution. Three methods are discussed. The transmission chain method, in which information is passed along linear chains of participants, has been used to identify content biases in cultural transmission. These concern the kind of information that is transmitted. Several such candidate content biases have now emerged from the experimental literature. The replacement method, in which participants in groups are gradually replaced or moved across groups, has been used to study phenomena such as cumulative cultural evolution, cultural group selection and cultural innovation. The closed-group method, in which participants learn in groups with no replacement, has been used to explore issues such as who people choose to learn from and when they learn culturally as opposed to individually. A number of the studies reviewed here have received relatively little attention within their own disciplines, but we suggest that these, and future experimental studies of cultural transmission that build on them, can play an important role in a broader science of cultural evolution.

Women and suicidal behavior: a cultural analysis.

Abstract: Around the world girls and women have higher rates of suicidal ideation and behavior but lower rates of suicide than boys and men. There is, however, significant variability in gender patterns and meanings suicidal behavior within and across cultures. For example, in the United States, suicide is most common among older "White" men, and is typically considered masculine behavior. Women who kill themselves are viewed as acting like men, and therefore deviant. By contrast, in other societies, including China, suicide is viewed as an act of the powerless, and is most frequent in young women. In these societies, men who kill themselves are considered weak and effeminate. The cultural diversity in gender patterns and interpretations of suicidal behavior challenges essentialist perspectives on gender and suicidal behavior. It also challenges the assumption, common in industrialized countries, that women are protected from suicide as long as they stay "feminine" and subsumed within the family. This cultural diversity also points to the pitfalls of theorizing about clinical phenomena as if they were culture-free, and calls for culturally grounded theory, research, and practice.

Cultural Discontinuity: Toward a Quantitative Investigation of a Major Hypothesis in Education:

Abstract: Education researchers have suggested that the academic challenges faced by many ethnic minority students are linked to perceived cultural discontinuity between students’ home- and school-based experiences. However, there has been very little empirical inquiry into the existence and effects of cultural discontinuity for these students. The purpose of this article is to offer a definition and methodology to be used in the quantitative investigation of cultural discontinuity. A description of the cultural values and corresponding behaviors of African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American students, along with those values and behaviors salient in most public schools, is offered. Next, a method for investigating cultural discontinuity is proposed. Finally, future research directions to further examine cultural discontinuity are offered.

Beyond Research on Cultural Minorities: Challenges and Implications of Research as Situated Cultural Practice

Abstract: This article examines the cultural nature of research. This is a consequential idea as research knowledge is expected to inform professional practices for our increasingly multicultural society. We highlight theoretical and methodological limits of the traditional practice of research on cultural groups and outline research as situated cultural practice. This notion challenges researchers to widen the analytic spotlight from a focus on certain groups to shed light on two additional aspects, namely, the sociocultural location of the researcher as a cultural being and member of a scientific field, and the cultural presuppositions in a field's habitual practices. We outline a model of culture that underlies the idea of research as situated cultural practice. We illustrate this notion with quantitative and qualitative research examples and reflect on implications for future research.

A concept analysis of cultural sensitivity.

Abstract: Cultural sensitivity is used ubiquitously, yet different meanings are constructed. An improved understanding of the term as described within health care and in general would enhance nurses' understanding and communication with professionals and clients. To uncover the current meaning of cultural sensitivity, a concept analysis was performed. Findings included the attributes of knowledge, consideration, understanding, respect, and tailoring. Necessary antecedents were diversity, awareness, and an encounter. The consequences were effective communication, effective intervention, and satisfaction. A definition of cultural sensitivity was proposed. Providers may benefit from recognizing and addressing the identified antecedents and attributes to obtain the positive consequences of employing cultural sensitivity.

Wellness for all: the possibilities of cultural safety and cultural competence in New Zealand

Abstract: Responses to cultural diversity in nursing need to consider the theory and practice developments of the profession, whilst also responding to broader social and historical process that prev...

Lost in translation? Language, culture and the roles of translator in cross‐cultural management research

Abstract: Purpose – To promote more open discussion on translating data, this paper aims to provide a critical and reflexive evaluation of the problems and issues that the author experienced with regard to qualitative data translation.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on personal experiences of translating Chinese women's narratives into English, the author demonstrates that qualitative data translation may have linguistic, cultural and methodological problems.Findings – Researchers and translators should recognize the linguistic and cultural differences that data translation must negotiate. It is argued here that researchers and translators should preserve and highlight cultural differences rather than resembling the dominant values of the target culture by translation. A translator is an integral part of the knowledge producing system. The roles of the translator as both an inter‐cultural communicator and a data interpreter must be acknowledged in the research process.Originality/value – This paper challenges...

The role of cultural practices in the emergence of modern human intelligence

Abstract: Innate cognitive capacities are orchestrated by cultural practices to produce high-level cognitive processes. In human activities, examples of this phenomenon range from everyday inferences about space and time to the most sophisticated reasoning in scientific laboratories. A case is examined in which chimpanzees enter into cultural practices with humans (in experiments) in ways that appear to enable them to engage in symbol-mediated thought. Combining the cultural practices perspective with the theories of embodied cognition and enactment suggests that the chimpanzees' behaviour is actually mediated by non-symbolic representations. The possibility that non-human primates can engage in cultural practices that give them the appearance of symbol-mediated thought opens new avenues for thinking about the coevolution of human culture and human brains.

Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse : A cultural analysis of a physicist "trio" supporting the backlash against global warming

Abstract: This paper identifies cultural and historical dimensions that structure US climate science politics. It explores why a key subset of scientists—the physicist founders and leaders of the influential George C. Marshall Institute—chose to lend their scientific authority to this movement which continues to powerfully shape US climate policy. The paper suggests that these physicists joined the environmental backlash to stem changing tides in science and society, and to defend their preferred understandings of science, modernity, and of themselves as a physicist elite—understandings challenged by on-going transformations encapsulated by the widespread concern about human-induced climate change.

Cultural and Creative Industries

Abstract: Addressed to academics and advanced students in all fields of the social sciences and humanities, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis is at once a synthesis of advances in the field, with a comprehensive coverage of the scholarly literature, and a collection of original and provocative essays by some of the brightest intellectuals of our time.

THE END(S) OF ETHNOGRAPHY: Social/Cultural Anthropology's Signature Form of Producing Knowledge in Transition

Abstract: Today's investment in and calls for public anthropology are one symptom of the profound rupture and reorganization of the research agendas of social/cultural anthropology as it moved away from the four-field organization of anthropology into an alignment with certain humanities-driven, energetically interdisciplinary appropriations of the concerns of the social sciences in the name of “theory.” In anthropology, this story can most cogently be told by focusing on what happened to its central professional culture of method: what ethnography looks like today and the conditions of research, encompassing fieldwork, that produce it. This article is an examination of this reorganization of social/cultural anthropology, which has left the center of the discipline intellectually weak relative to the vitality of its diverse interdisciplinary and even nonacademic engagements. It asks whether this post-1980s reorganized social/cultural anthropology might rediscover and reunite with some of its historic core associations (four-field as well as topical) in the new terrains of research and partnerships on the peripheries of its old disciplinary center.

Cultural Capital, Cultural Knowledge and Ability:

Abstract: Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction has been interpreted in various ways, and several authors have criticised an overly narrow interpretation of cultural capital as simply consisting of 'beaux arts' participation. For researchers, this raises the challenge of developing a broader interpretation of cultural capital which is still specific enough to be operationalised. This paper discusses the ways in which parents may transmit educational advantage to their children through cultural rather than economic means, and the forms of knowledge and skill which may be considered as 'cultural capital'. An operationalisation of cultural knowledge is discussed, and empirical evidence is presented on differences in levels of cultural knowledge between the children of graduates and non-graduates.

A Social Psychology of Cultural Dynamics: Examining How Cultures Are Formed, Maintained, and Transformed

Abstract: Social psychological research on culture has mainly focused on differences in psychological processes between cultural groups. However, in the globalizing world today, a complementary approach to culture, a social psychology of cultural dynamics, is emerging as a critical research program. Adopting a neo-diffusionist meta-theory of culture, it regards culture as emerging from the processes of cultural transmission in situated social activities, and examines the dynamics involved in the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. The paper reviews recent research on culture in this perspective and makes suggestions about future directions.

Nordic cultural policies: a critical view.

Abstract: I introduce my discussion on cultural policies in the Nordic countries with a brief summary of Jurgen Habermas’ views on different forms of rationality and communication in the modern world, as put forward in his seminal works The Theory of Communicative Action (1987 [1981]) and Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1996 [1992]). Based on a previous study, Nordic Cultural Policy in Transition, I then suggest a model for analysing cultural policy, with special attention to the changes in Nordic attitudes in the period from 1960 to 2003. Finally, I discuss the above model in a critical light and attempt an assessment of its relevance in academic cultural policy research.

Strategies for Strengthening Causal Inferences in Cross Cultural Research : The Consilience Approach

Abstract: True experiments cannot be conducted in cross cultural research because it is impossible to assign participants to different cultures randomly. Cross cultural studies are therefore regarded as quasi-experimental research, and threats that jeopardize the validity of causal inferences in cross cultural research are reviewed. Borrowing from evolutionary biology and epidemiology, the consilience approach is advocated for strengthening the validity of cross cultural causal inferences. This approach holds that causal inferences in cross cultural research are most convincing when supported by diverse evidence based on a sound theoretical basis, multiple sources of data, different research methods, and explicit refutation of alternative interpretations. Three broad strategies for strengthening cross cultural causal inferences are proposed under the consilience framework, including the systematic contrast of cultural groups, the inclusion of covariates to rule out alternative explanations, and the use of multiple ...

The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis

Abstract: '.. a genuine one-stop reference point for the many, many differing strands of cultural analysis. This isn't just one contender among many for the title of 'best multidisciplinary overview'; this is a true heavyweight' Matt Hills, Cardiff University. '..an achievement and a delight both compelling and useful' Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmith's College, University of London. With the 'cultural turn', the concept of culture has assumed enormous importance in our understanding of the interrelations between social, political and economic structures, patterns of everyday interaction, and systems of meaning-making. In The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis , the leading figures in their fields explore the implications of this paradigm shift. Part I looks at the major disciplines of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, asking how they have been reshaped by the cultural turn and how they have elaborated distinctive new objects of knowledge. Parts II and III examine the questions arising from a practice of analysis in which the researcher is drawn reflexively into the object of study and in which methodological frameworks are rarely given in advance. Addressed to academics and advanced students in all fields of the social sciences and humanities, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis is at once a synthesis of advances in the field, with a comprehensive coverage of the scholarly literature, and a collection of original and provocative essays by some of the brightest intellectuals of our time.

Autoethnography as a Tool for Transformative Learning About White Privilege

Abstract: In this article, the author shares a personal experience using autoethnography as a tool for transformative learning about the impact of whiteness on his actions, words, and attitudes. Autoethnography is an emerging qualitative research method that uses the autobiographical materials of the researcher as the primary data and emphasizes cultural analysis and interpretation of one's behaviors, thoughts, and experiences in relationship to others in society. After reviewing the basic tenets of the autoethnographic method, the author tells a story of a personal experience in an interracial dialogue group and the transformative insights gained through autoethnographic analysis.

Joutia: street vendor entrepreneurship and the informal economy of information and communication technologies in Morocco1

Abstract: This paper provides an ethnographic and cultural analysis of the ‘informal sector’ in Morocco. In this age of globalisation, no firm can afford to ignore the vibrant informal sector that makes up the bulk of GDP in many developing economies. And yet, the informal sector is routinely misunderstood and mythologised as ‘pimps, drug dealers, counterfeiters and pirates’, and is particularly despised by the high tech industry. Based on fieldwork, the authors' goal is to examine this dynamic economic phenomenon and to dispel a few myths by providing an ethnographic description of one exemplary case. While the study focuses on the experience of an articulate entrepreneur, who happens to operate in the highly dynamic underground economy in new, used and black market information and communications technologies, it speaks to such themes as entrepreneurship, global products flows, economic relations, and the implications of the informal sector for global flows of goods and services.

Cultural Psychology and Qualitative Methodology: Scientific and Political Considerations

Abstract: An important feature of cultural psychology is its embrace of qualitative methodology. This methodology distinguishes cultural psychology from cross-cultural psychology, which embraces positivistic methodology. It is important to assess the use of qualitative methodology by cultural psychologists. However, cultural psychology consists of diverse theoretical perspectives which utilize qualitative methods differently. This article articulates a typology of qualitative research methodologies that have been used in conjunction with cultural-psychological approaches. The typology compares macro and micro theories of cultural psychology, and the ways in which they utilize formal and informal qualitative methodology. Examples of research illustrate each approach. Social science approaches are grounded in political assumptions and have political implications. I shall elucidate the politics of cultural-psychological theories and methodologies in order to enrich their description and explanation.

From Shallow to Deep: Toward a Thorough Cultural Analysis of School Achievement Patterns

Abstract: What do anthropologists of education do? Many observers think that we provide quick glosses on what various “cultures”—typically racialized, ethnic, and national-origin groups—“do” in schools. Herve Varenne and I each name an alternative form of analysis that we think should be central to the subfield. Varenne argues that anthropologists of education should expand analysis of teaching and learning beyond (American) schools and classrooms and examine everyday life in various places as containing countless moments of teaching and learning that are worth understanding. Varenne reminds us that teaching and learning occur nonstop in everyday life, not just in classrooms. “Education” is about far more than what we typically call “achievement,” which usually translates into grades, graduation, or test scores.1 This long-standing way of thinking anthropologically about “education” is essential to exploding simplistic notions of what, when, how, and from whom people “learn.” In my essay, I contend that U.S. anthropologists of education also need to analyze thoroughly how U.S. school achievement patterns take shape in real time. I argue that it is our particular responsibility to counteract “shallow” analyses of “culture” in schools, which purport to explain “achievement gaps” by making quick claims about how parents and children from various racial, ethnic, national-origin, or class groups react to schools. Such shallow analyses dangerously oversimplify the social processes, interactions, and practices that create disparate outcomes for children. Shallow cultural analyses are common in both journalism and popular discourse—and in schools of education as well (see Ladson-Billings 2006 for a related critique). They are explanatory claims that name a group as having a “cultural” set of behaviors and then name that “cultural” behavior as the cause of the group's school achievement outcomes. (E.g., some argue that “group x”[e.g., “Asians”] employs a “group x behavior”[e.g., “push their children”] that causes “high” or “low” achievement.) Such claims allow people to explain achievement outcomes too simply as the production of parents and children without ever actually examining the real-life experiences of specific parents and children in specific opportunity contexts. Going deeper requires pressing for actual, accurate information about the everyday interactions among real-life parents, children, and other actors that add up to school achievement patterns (graduation rates, dropout rates, skill-test scores, suspension lists, and the like). When anthropologists of education say that we study culture, we mean that we are studying the organization of people's everyday interactions in concrete contexts. Shallow analyses of “culture” that purport to describe only how a “group's” parents train its children blame a reduced set of actors, behaviors, and processes for educational outcomes, and they include a reduced set of actors and actions in a reduced set of projects for educational improvement. Anthropologists of education should make clear that we examine children's experiences both in context and in appropriate detail; we study interactional processes that other observers might describe too quickly or with insufficient information.2 I think that if anthropologists of education explicitly, publicly, and colloquially name what counts as deep, thorough cultural analysis of American school achievement patterns, we will make ourselves far better prepared to respond to harmfully shallow claims made by journalists, colleagues, and educators alike. We will also support other stakeholders in children's lives (including teachers and teacher educators) to think more thoroughly about which actions, by whom, and in what situations produce children's achievement. This short essay suggests four key ways that anthropologists of education can, do, and should get “deep” in analyzing American achievement patterns. I invite colleagues to edit and extend this list in future editions of AEQ.

The Ethnos in the Polis: Political Ethnography as a Mode of Inquiry

Abstract: In the social sciences, there is renewed attention to political ethnography, a research method that is based on close-up and real-time observation of actors involved in political processes, at times even extending the definition of these processes to move beyond categories of state, civil society, and social movements. This article examines the emergence of political ethnography from a number of disciplinary locations, such as political science, the cultural turn in sociology, and anthropology, and shows the value of this new approach for understanding how politics work in everyday life.

Culture and Race/Ethnicity: Bolder, Deeper, and Broader

Abstract: The role of cultural analysis in the sociology of race, ethnicity, and immigration varies across subject matter. Primarily for political reasons, it has been marginalized in the study of ethnic/racial inequality, though new work is reclaiming culture in this important context. It has an unacknowledged presence in studies of discrimination and domination, but is explicit in macro and historical studies. This article surveys these subfields and makes a call for bolder, deeper, and broader cultural analysis in the field. More work is needed on cultural assimilation, how inequality and discrimination produce racial and ethnic meanings, how ethnic and racial cultures affect interests through variations in conceptions of the meaning of life, how sending state cultures affect immigrant and ethnic cultures in the United States, and how globalization is Americanizing immigrants before they even leave their homelands.

The Cultural Organizing of Youth Ethnographers: Formalizing a Praxis‐Based Pedagogy

Abstract: This article illustrates how elements of praxis within George Spindler's cultural therapy and Paul Willis's cultural production are useful precedents for a praxis-based pedagogy. I argue that combining the praxis elements within cultural therapy and cultural production engenders a third mode of ethnographic praxis that I call “cultural organizing.” The article provides an example of cultural organizing among Latina/o high school students in Tucson, Arizona. [cultural organizing, ethnography, Latina/o students, praxis, pedagogy]

Is Race Still Socially Constructed? The Recent Controversy over Race and Medical Genetics

Abstract: Current controversies in the field of genetics are provoking a reassessment of claims that race is socially constructed. Drawing upon Bruno Latour's model of how to analyse scientific controversy, this article argues that race is ‘gaining in reality’ in such a way that renders claims about its social construction tenuous and uncertain. Such claims can be seen as failing in two key regards. The first relates to changes in the way genetics is practised and promoted, which are undermining the stability of fundamental assertions that there is ‘no biological basis for race’ or that ‘race does not exist’. The second involves the confusion of analytical domains in making assertions about race. This problem stems from investing genetics research with hopes that it would reveal the ‘truth’ about race. This confidence has led to equating the ‘cultural’ with ‘bias’, while ignoring the cultural dynamics which shape race. Subsequently, I argue for making a domain claim for the primacy of cultural analysis tha...