Showing papers on "Westernization published in 1985"

The Status of Muslim Women in Sport: Conflict between Cultural Tradition and Modernization

Abstract: Published data on Muslim women's participation in sport in 29 predominantly Islamic countries and personal observations in Middle East sport were used. The situation varies from country to country, from rural to urban areas, and depends on impact of Islamic resurgence, secularism, nationalism, Westernization and socialism. Physical education is officially compulsory in schools but, partly due to traditional attitudes and lack of facilities for segregation of the sexes, often neglected in practice. If at all, women are prepared for teaching of rather than for active participation in sport. The original teachings of Islam, actually favoring physical and spiritual development of both sexes, were overshadowed by other restrictive cultural influences. A change is taking place, but very slowly.

Language Reform in Turkey and Iran

Abstract: Of all man's cultural badges, that of language is perhaps the most intimately felt and tenaciously defended. Even chauvinists who are prepared to concede under pressure that language, race, and culture are not the same thing—that their national ethnicity may be mixed, their religion imported, their culture synthetic to a degree—will still cling to the national language as the last bastion of irrational totemic pride. Hence, one of the most controversial features of the programs of westernization and modernization fostered by Kemal Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran was that of state-sponsored language reform, characterized chiefly by attempts to “purify” Turkish and Persian of their centuries-old accretion of Arabic loanwords. A case study of this process also affords some insight into the differing attitudes to national social reforms in Turkey and in Iran, and among the respective regimes, intelligentsia, and masses, which might help to explain why on balance one “succeeded” while the other “failed.”

Westernization of the Asian Eyelid

Abstract: • Westernization of the Asian eyelid has become a topic of considerable interest in the Western world in recent years due to the increasing number of surgeons being consulted to perform this procedure. This demand is attributable to the great influx of Asian immigrants who are influenced by Western culture, design, and esthetics. After performing over 2,000 cases of westernizing Asian eyelids, I have developed a method of surgically creating a "double eyelid" as well as a method for removing the epicanthal web. The techniques result in a marked improvement of the narrow, puffy Asian eye and greater patient satisfaction. With these two separate techniques, improved cosmetic results can be achieved over those techniques that are commonly performed today, either in the Western world or in the Orient. (Arch Otolaryngol1985;111:149-153)

Differential effects of rural and urban upbringing on nigerian adolescents' self-concepts

Abstract: A review of pertinent literature on the effects of westernization/urbanization on traditional African society was made. A self-concept study of 133 urban and 110 rural male and female Nigerian adolescents showed that the younger urban sample had significantly more negative self-concepts than their older rural counterparts. Suggestions were made for enhancing the self-concepts of young urbanites.

The Jamaican hypertensive: characteristics of black patients at the University Hospital of the West Indies

Abstract: Hypertension is the most common chronic disease of adults in the Caribbean today, affecting some 22% of this population (I); as a result, it contributes directly and indirectly to the leading causes of death in most of the English-speaking islands (2). While many epidemiologic surveys (3, 4, 5) have defined the prevalence of this disease in the community, there are very few studies that document the clinical problems associated with hypertension in Jamaica. This article provides some basic data about the clinical characteristics of the black hypertensive Jamaican and supplies information useful for comparison with populations from other parts of the world. Black hypertensives in Africa and the Caribbean and those in the United States and United Kingdom exhibit some interesting similarities; but with increasing “Westernization,” changes in the pattern of the disease can be expected. Comparative studies will help to separate those differences that may properly be attributed to ethnic factors from those which are largely determined by environmental variables.

Christianity and Westernization in Africa

Abstract: Since the maritime explorations of Prince Henry the Navigator in the fifteenth century, Africa has continued to receive foreigners with different motives, interests, wares, languages, and religions. During this first period of Euro-African encounter the primary interest of the Europeans was gold and new markets for trade and commerce. The Portuguese who then championed the rise of the Atlantic countries were fiercely competing with the other Mediterranean powers for control of trade in the Mediterranean Seas. The Muslim powers in and around the Mediterranean were trying to salvage their dwindling sphere of influence in the face of the rising naval might of Europe. At this time, what concerned the Muslims, and in this case the Mamlukes and Turks, was the fear of losing their Mediterranean trade as well as their TransSaharan trade in Africa. For at this time the bulk of gold available to the region originated in Sub-Saharan Africa. As Yves Lacoste puts it [1, p. 16] :

The Lock of the Heart Controversy in Taiwan, 1962–63: A Question of Artistic Freedom and a Writer's Social Responsibility

Abstract: The early 1960s marked a period of intellectual and literary ferment in Taiwan. The East-West Controversy, which had its roots in the debate that took place in the middle of the last century regarding the continued validity of the Chinese tradition in the face of western military and economic superiority and in the controversy regarding westernization as the road to modernization in the 1930s, had broken out afresh. Creative writers, musicians and painters were experimenting with new forms and new techniques. As early as 1954 the writers of modern Chinese poetry had started the search for a more contemporary expression of their art form; and modern poetry societies, each with its own philosophy on how modernization should take place, had come into being. Writers of fiction who up till then had been almost exclusively concerned with the Sino-Japanese War; the mainland before the communist takeover in 1949, or the various aspects of the struggle against communism, were moving away from this kind of “propaganda-motivated writing” towards the production of “pure literature.” However, there were few modern Chinese creative writers of stature on whom either the poet or fiction writer could model himself. This was because of the ban imposed by the government in Taiwan on the works of writers prior to 1949 due to the association of many of them with communism or with ideologies unacceptable to the authorities. This meant that they had to seek for inspiration in the works of western writers which could be found in translation or in pirated versions of the original texts in the major cities of Taiwan. The traditionalists viewed this growing trend with alarm as did those writers who were closely associated with the Kuomintang. The latter had formed themselves during the early 1950s into three writers' associations, the China Association of Literature and Art, the Chinese Youth Writers' Association, and the Taiwan Women Writers' Association.