Topic
Westernization
About: Westernization is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1154 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15791 citations. The topic is also known as: occidentalization.
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TL;DR: This article explored the social reception of the stars' off-screen images, based on letters published in two popular cinema magazines of the period, and observed that audience members attempted to bring stars to their own world and back into the traditionalistic and moralistic universe of melodrama.
Abstract: Melodrama, the most popular genre of Yesilcam cinema (1960s Turkish popular cinema), provides a useful source for unravelling the social contradictions and anxieties caused by the Turkish modernization/westernization process, in that the films both construct modernity as a desired state and criticize it as cosmetic westernization. Against this background, this article considers the images of Yesilcam stars both as agents of the ambivalent discourse on modernity in films and as embodiments of truly modern/western lifestyles outside cinema. The article explores the social reception of the stars' off-screen images, based on letters published in two popular cinema magazines of the period. It is observed that rather than fully identifying with the stars' off-screen images and trying to escape to the ‘modern' attractive world of the stars, many audience members attempted to bring stars to their own world and back into the traditionalistic and moralistic universe of melodrama. The article interprets these attemp...
11 citations
Book•
27 Oct 2017
11 citations
20 Dec 2018
TL;DR: The need to de-westernize and decolonize communication and media studies is based on criticisms on a dominant elitist "Western" axiology and epistemology of universal validity, leaving aside indigenous and localized philosophical traditions originating in non-Western settings.
Abstract: The need to de-Westernize and decolonize communication and media studies is based on criticisms on a dominant elitist “Western” axiology and epistemology of universal validity, leaving aside indigenous and localized philosophical traditions originating in non-Western settings. Scholars of the Global South continue to question a dominant inherent Eurocentric bias that was—and continuous to be—underlying many Anglo-American and European research projects. Scholars warn against a persistent influence of foreign-imposed concepts such as modernity and development, as well as universal assumptions regarding the use of certain categories and ontologies to deconstruct and understand the media around the globe.While the West is understood more as a center of power than as a fixed geographical entity, de-Westernization asks for a revision of the power relations in global academic knowledge production and dissemination. The most prominent call for de-Westernizing media studies goes back to Curran and Park who, in the early 2000s, encouraged a Western academic community to revise and re-evaluate their theories, epistemologies, methods, and empirical research approaches, especially in research targeting the Global South.In a similar way, the call for decolonization asks to investigate and question continuing colonial power imbalances, power dependencies, and colonial legacies. It challenges the uncritical adoption of research epistemologies and methods of former colonial powers in solving local problems, as they fail to explain the complexities of non-Western societies and communities, asking for practicing “decolonial epistemic disobedience.” Contrary to de-Westernization aimed at a Western research community, scholars from the Global South have struggled for decades for international recognition of their voices and intellectual contributions to a global academic community. Their ideas draw on post-colonialism, subaltern studies, or a critical-reflective sociology.Different efforts have been made to address the global imbalance in media studies knowledge generation. However, neither replacing theories with indigenous concepts alone nor being relegated to cases studies that deliver raw data will gain ground in favor of countries of the Global South, as research efforts need to incorporate both local realities and wider contextualization, or the call for a research with a region, not just about or from it. More successful are cooperative South-South efforts, as the thriving scholar networks in Latin America, Africa, or Asia demonstrate.The de-Westernization and decolonization project is ongoing. Where inequalities appear most pressing are in resource access and allocation, in conference participation, or in publishing opportunities. In this sense, journalism and media studies curricula still reflect largely an Anglophone centrism and a lack of understanding of local issues and expectations. Here, more reflective de-Westernizing approaches can help to lessen the gaps. However, as de-Westernization relies on vague geographical categorizations, the term cannot be the final path to re-balance the academic knowledge exchange between powerful and less powerful actors.
11 citations
Book•
13 Jun 2007
TL;DR: The authors explored the first encounter in the mid-fifteenth century between Western Europe and the West African Coast, arguing that it did not produce hostility, but rather a climate of beneficial mutual exchange.
Abstract: This book explores the first encounter in the mid-fifteenth century between Western Europe and the West African Coast, arguing that it did not produce hostility, but rather a climate of beneficial mutual exchange. It examines West African pre-colonial social history and asserts that around the year 1500 West Africa became a safe haven for those fleeing political or religious persecution in Europe. Among them were mercantile settlers, Tangomaos or Lancados, known to have arrived on the West African Coast after the Portuguese explorers in 1446. They exchanged commodities, culture, religious ideas and practices with West African people. These events raise searching questions on the nature of identity and space. Contents: West Africa: The Portuguese Agenda-West African Kingship - The Beginnings of Westernisation - The Emergence of an Afro-European Merchant Class - Religion, Ritual and Sacrifice: A Portuguese Encounter.
11 citations
TL;DR: Salmon et al. as discussed by the authors presented a detailed study of the Chinese community of Surabaya whose historical development appears to be specific to East Java, and discussed the sources concerning the beginnings of the community and briefly allude to an early Islamisation process which allowed the settlers to intermingle with local society.
Abstract: Claudine Salmon Although a large body of literature has been produced on the Chinese of Java, there are very few studies of the history of their various settlements. We present here a detailed study of the Chinese community of Surabaya whose historical development appears to be specific to East Java. In the first part, we discuss the sources concerning the beginnings of the community and briefly allude to an early Islamisation process which allowed the settlers to intermingle with local society. In the second part, we single out three big Peranakan families (the Han, the Tjoa and the The), whose history (which lasts from the end of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th century to the early 1930s) may be regarded as representative of the different ways the Chinese and their descendants adapted themselves to the host society. In the third part, we put the attempts of the community to re-establish its Chinese roots into relation with political issues on the Mainland and in Java. The first attempt started in Surabaya in 1864 with the foundation of the Hokkien Kong Tik Soe or "Temple of the Merits of Fujian", which was aimed at reviving Chinese funeral and marriage customs and curbing the process of Islamisation. The second attempt, much broader in scope, was aimed at promoting Chinese education by the foundation of various private schools (one of them, the Hoo Tjiong Hak Tong, 1903, was closely linked with Mainland revolutionnaries), reviving Confucianism as a reaction against Westernization (foundation of a temple dedicated to Confucius in 1898), establishment of a Chinese Chamber of Commerce (1906) intended to help the local Chinese merchants to promote their enterprises both in the South Seas and in China. Since the last decades of the 19th century there has been a continuous stream of migrations from the Mainland that gradually modified the social and economic structure of the Chinese community and finally caused it to split up. In the fourth part we deal with the Totok (or newcomers) who started to organise themselves into a great number of smaller associations (on the basis of geography, profession or lineal descent) ; we also pay attention to the Peranakan who resented the competition of the newcomers decided to struggle separately. This restructuration was disrupted by the recession of the 1920s, the depression of 1930, which affected the Chinese of Java and especially of Surabaya, and was finally stopped with the occupation of the Dutch Indies by the Japanese. The conclusion suggests that since Independence, the history of the Indonesians of Chinese descent in Surabaya cannot be dissociated from that of the city as a whole.
11 citations