Gender,race and global modernity: A perspective from Thailand

Abstract

This paper draws from cultural studies, postcolonial studies and political economy to track the trafficking in racism and sexism in the cultural economy of contemporary globalization. It approaches this by looking at how global modernity is enacted by Thais and Westerners in Thailand. The author argues that the pursuit of global modernity in Thailand leads Thais to invite and embrace global modernity's racist and sexist core, thereby constituting their self-orientalization. Globalization's racist and sexist economy of desire is shown to be manufactured and retailed by both global and local corporations and to operate in international education, public health, the mass media and public culture. The paper is based on a decade of participant observation and field research.     

"They're Worse Off Than Us"- The Social Construction of European Space and Boundaries in the German/Polish Twin-City Guben-Gubin

In the context of globalization and European integration, the interplay between social boundaries and territorially defined political borders becomes more complex in that they become increasingly delinked. In some regional settings, this might imply that while the political border is softened, the socio-cultural closure between the border communities becomes even tighter. This article investigates this issue in relation to the German-Polish border region. Looking at the German-Polish twin-city, Guben-Gubin, the first section describes the ways in which cultural closure materializes. Emphasis is given to the link between cultural closure and an increasing alienation of local people from the Europeanized symbolic cross-border politics pursued by the local and regional political elite(s). The second section, however, argues that the "cultural closure" thesis is perhaps too simplistic to grasp the complexity of cross-border interaction of local people. Investigating the cross-border strategies of three milieux, the article concludes that what can be found in a setting like Guben-Gubin is in fact a complex configuration of openings and closures at various spatial and symbolic levels, sometimes taking place simultaneously in one and the same milieu.     

Impact of Culture on Lactation Policies: The Case of United States and Liberia

ABSTRACT

Programs or policies that are effective in reducing social problems have several things in common: They acknowledge the realities of culture, respect the sociocultural underpinnings of the community, and are often built on an innovative understanding of the issues. Policies that are created without regard for the culture in which they are to operate are destined to fail. This study discusses cultural attributes of different motivations, benefits, and approaches to breast-feeding, depending on the development of their infrastructure, scientific understanding, reliance on myths to understand their environment, and social norms. It argues that in some cases ignorance and lack of scientific information result in policies (both formal and informal) that negatively impact breast-feeding, whereas in other cases cultural or social norms drive policy decisions. Three examples of policies that impact breast-feeding negatively are discussed in this article. Two of them relate to developing nations and the third occurred in the United States, although it could also occur anywhere people lack basic information about the impact of hormones on normal human physiology and human sexual response.     

Applying an Ecological Framework to Understanding Drug Addiction and Recovery

ABSTRACT

A new conceptual model of drug addiction and recovery, the Acculturation Model, is presented, with “addiction” and “recovery” understood as distinct sociocultural phenomena with their unique prescribed behaviors, rituals, symbols, and language that serve to construct and consolidate a cultural identity. The model suggests that individuals in recovery from drug addiction will need to make a cultural transformation in order to maintain sobriety. Examples of specific rituals that may help facilitate movement from addiction to recovery are detailed.     

Hygiene Wars on the Mercosur Border: Local and National Agency in Uruguaiana (Brazil) and Paso de los Libres (Argentina)

Scholarly attention to the processes of globalization and the construction of regional blocs such as the European Union, NAFTA, and Mercosur has resulted in the relatively widespread belief that borders are in the process of disappearing. Yet, ethnographic studies on political borders have for several years been evincing various redefinitions of border areas comprising new conflicts and mechanisms for strengthening certain barriers between countries. This article attempts to contribute to the discussion of the interplay between nation, state, and border in the Mercosur by analyzing transformations on the Argentinian-Brazilian border. My particular interest is in examining how sociocultural conflicts and negotiations at borders in this region are affecting the construction of new meanings of nationality, and conversely, how new policies (especially "hygienic" barriers) being defined from the politico-economic centers are transforming local populations' everyday lives and experiences. Border populations can be as important in the construction of state and nation as are areas deemed to be central.     

Beyond unities of identity in high modernity

This paper explores contemporary approaches to identity within modernity with reference to the influential recent work of Anthony Giddens (1991, 1994) and recent debates on hybridity and diaspora developed within what may be termed a postmodern framework. Unlike Giddens’ focus on the unitary self of high modernity, whose political project is self‐actualization, and unlike the focus on cultural social forms found in debates on diaspora and hybridity, I argue that social divisions lie at the heart of modern societies. The social divisions of gender, ethnicity, “race,” and class must therefore be prime concerns in sociology because they lie at the very heart of the modern social order. They are central in terms of constructions of identity and otherness and in terms of producing differentiated and complex social outcomes for individuals and groups (Anthias 1998a).     

Crafting places through mobility: Chinese American “roots‐searching” in China

A cultural heritage tour to China that is jointly sponsored by Chinese American organizations and the People's Republic of China government represents the “forging” (Schein 1998) of a transnational relationship between Chinese Americans and China through which Chinese Americans re‐assess their identities. Multicultural discourses in the United States and mainland Chinese government narratives of modernity produce racialized and territorialized ideas of Chineseness that forcibly attach Chinese American identities to their places of ancestral origin in China. In contrast, the Chinese American participants in this program draw from cultural and historical references formed through their experiences in the United States and use their privileges of mobility to experience their ancestral places in China in ways that draw upon multiple understandings of their relationships to China as a place. Their visits reflect transnational processes that are built upon yet qualitatively differ from those of previous generations.     

Martial arts and the globalization of US and Asian film industries

Abstract

This article investigates how globalization is affecting film industries in the USA and Asia. It argues that these industries are becoming more closely integrated with one another both materially and aesthetically, and that this in turn is leading to the denationalization of individual films and film industries on both sides of the Pacific. The article explores how globalization is experienced differently by different film industries – and by different sectors within individual industries – and how it entails both losses and opportunities for Asian film makers. Taking the contemporary Hollywood and East Asian martial arts film as an exemplary cultural style of globalization, it also looks at how integration involves both cultural homogenization and the production of difference. Specific topics discussed include the growth of Hollywood's Asian markets, Jackie Chan and the flow of Hong Kong talent into Hollywood, Hollywood remakes of South Korean movies, the resurgence of Asian film industries, Hollywood's local-language film production and Zhang Yimou's Hero.     

Structural Discontinuity and the Development of Anorexia Nervosa

Abstract

Anorexia nervosa is a complex disorder in which emotional, physiological, and interpersonal processes are altered. Various studies have indicated that the disorder occurs disproportionately among females, with adolescents and young women particularly vulnerable. While explanations for this distribution have traditionally focused on medical or psychological phenomena, it is my contention that anorexia nervosa can only be understood in a sociocultural context. It is suggested that the following conditions are necessary for the disorder to occur: (1) individuals must be biologically predisposed; (2) they must be exposed to cultural pressures for slimness; (3) they must lack meaningful peer attachments; and (4) they must be embedded in a social structure regulated by universalism and achievement. The position taken here is that the co-occurrence of these variables is a relatively recent historical development and may account for the disorder's apparent increase during the past 15 to 20 years.     

Modernity’s dirt: carbon emissions and the technique of life

ABSTRACT

Under colonialism, the concept of dirt was frequently employed ideologically to make judgements about relative worth. In Africa, a particular European cultural idiom or “technique of life” was presented as superior because of its “cleanliness.” This paper is concerned with modernity’s “technique of life” at a particular historical moment when, as a result of environmental crisis, it is suddenly called upon to give an account of itself. I undercut modernity’s claim to cleanliness by suggesting that what it introduces alongside regimes of order and sanitation is a much more globally destructive form of dirt in the form of increasing carbon dioxide levels. The CAIT Climate Data Explorer is a website that compares carbon dioxide emissions across a range of categories. This paper reads three graphs generated by this website as incomplete figures for making visible modernity’s “technique of life.” Realist fiction, read as a supplement to the climate graph records, is able to reinvest some of the abstract categories employed by the climate data tool – transport, fugitive emissions and electricity use – with the details that characterise particular techniques of life and to reveal the way they continue to be defined, at this historical moment, by narratives of development and consumption.     

Differentiating,Collaborating, Outdoing: Nordic Identity and Marginality in the Contemporary World

This article compares the interplay between Europe and Scandinavian countries with interactions at other margins, and speculates on the prospects for Nordic identity. It uses an idea of the possibilities inherent in the "marginality" of a society, applying that conception to situations past and present. A summary exposition indicates how Scandinavian countries have negotiated their marginality in a "Nordic posture" of political independence and economic and cultural ties to "more advanced" societies. These interactions with Europe are then compared with other contemporary margins (i.e., ex-colonized societies, ex-soviet bloc countries, EU states, countries experiencing globalization). While similar, Nordic societies are distinctly more successful in exploiting marginality: practiced in cooperating or emulating "Europe" while sometimes finding space to outdo it. This article thus suggests continuing vigor in some version of Nordic distinctiveness. The late 20th century decline of confidence in a separate Nordic identity need not therefore end Scandinavia's advantageous position on the margins.     

Nations Rebound?: Crossing Borders in a Gated Globe

This article engages critically with the proposal that flow, fluidity, and mobility are the central and organizing features of globalization. By focusing on the growing obstacles that people- most of them from poorer nations- encounter as they attempt to cross national borders, I explore global interconnection and mobility as stratified and highly regulated. My adoption of crossing borders as a central analytic grows out of a broader discussion within border studies about the problematic way in which "crossings" have been used, namely in cultural studies and Border Theory. This article therefore explores crossing borders as moments in which differences can be powerfully reinforced and opportunities for transnationality systematically denied. Here, I attempt to look at the transnational as occurring within established structures of power (a militarized border) and probe the politics of "border crossings" by focusing on a group of social movement actors as they contest the state's authority to organize and manage movement across its southern border. In this analysis I attempt to frame the United States-Mexico border as a "diagnostic" site where anthropologists can study the dynamics of power and flows across global landscapes in the context of specific political fields and histories. Consequently, this line of analysis leads to a different set of metaphors for globalization-one rooted not so much in an iconography of a world in ceaseless motion, but in an image of a "gated globe."     

Insurrectional Politics in Colonial Southeast Asia: Colonial Modernity,Islamic ‘Counterplots’, and Translocal (Anti-colonial) Connectivity

Abstract

This article focuses on the idea of ‘colonial modernity’ to pursue a dual theoretical purpose: to interrogate the givenness of ‘modernity’ as an overarching and over-determining epistemological framework; and, secondly, to indicate how movements against colonial modernity were part of a ‘deep, global infrastructure of anti-colonial connectivity’. By examining a number of Islamic movements in the Dutch Indies and in British Malaya, this article seeks to map out some of the translocal spaces created and occupied by these movements, which linked North Africa to Saudi Arabia and to South East Asia. The focus on translocality speaks also to the existence and enactment of exteriorities to modernity. My deployment of ‘exteriority’ signals here certain historical, political, and cultural lateral relations among colonial spaces, through which the colonized generate and activate what June Nash calls ‘counterplots’ to colonial modernity.     

Globalization,multiculturalism and brain drain

Abstract

The cultural turn is nowadays simultaneous to the greatest market enlargement, the globalization, which confronts institutions and leaders with new situations, characterized by the meeting of multiple cultures and by the need of intercultural understanding. As a consequence, among many others, the globalization obliges us to elucidate the multiculturalism, the interculturality and the leadership, as well as their connection.     

Childrearing,Social Stress,and Child Abuse: Clinical Considerations with Hispanic Families

Child abuse in our multicultural society is a national emergency. As a nation, our approach to managing this societal crisis has been one of indifference to cultural variations among families and children, under the prevailing belief that cultural diversity does not playa part when serving a single society. Experience, however, shows that consideration of ethnocultural factors is warranted if we are to effectively treat and prevent child maltreatment. In this paper, a sociocultural perspective on child maltreatment in the United States Hispanic population is presented. Social stresses experienced by Hispanics along a continuum from emigration and migration, to arrivaland adjustment to a new culture, and to the sociocultural and economic conditions they face in the United States are linked to factors of individual psychology. Traditional childrearing values and practices and factors of assessment and intervention are discussed with an emphasis on the changing characteristics of Hispanics.     

An Interplay of Individual Motivations and Sociocultural Factors Predisposing Men to Acts of Rape in Kenya

ABSTRACT

There is a general public perception in Kenya that rapists are “sick” people who deserve to be put far away from the society. Consequently, rape perpetrators are left to be dealt with by the criminal justice system while most of the research has focused on the rape survivors without taking into consideration the need to explore and understand the motivations and sociocultural factors that could predispose men to rape. This paper examines this form of “deviant” sexuality characteristic of some men. The paper is based on findings of a study conducted in three main prisons in Kenya between January and March 2008. The study sample was drawn from the Kamiti, Naivasha, and Nyeri main prisons. Respondents were convicted rapists serving their jail terms. The findings suggest that a number of factors may predispose a man to rape. These factors could be either individual motivational factors, sociocultural factors, or a combination of both. The individual motivational factors identified included drug consumption, marital problems as an excuse for rape, inability to negotiate for consensual sex due to being shy or afraid of women, rape as a form of sexual access, psychological factors like pornographic influence and rape hallucinations, impersonal sex and power, and use of rape as a “tool” for punishment. On the other hand, the sociocultural factors identified included the view of rape as a sexual act rather than an act of violence, social attitude that the woman “invited” the rape, early childhood environment, cultural practices, peer influence, and a lack of parental advice on sexual activities.     

Childrearing,social stress,and child abuse: Clinical considerations with Hispanic families

Child abuse in our multicultural society is a national emergency. As a nation, our approach to managing this societal crisis has been one of indifference to cultural variations among families and children, under the prevailing belief that cultural diversity does not play a part when serving a single society. Experience, however, shows that consideration of ethnocultural factors is warranted if we are to effectively treat and prevent child maltreatment. In this paper, a sociocultural perspective on child maltreatment in the United States Hispanic population is presented. Social stresses experienced by Hispanics along a continuum from emigration and migration, to arrival and adjustment to a new culture, and to the sociocultural and economic conditions they face in the United States are linked to factors of individual psychology. Traditional childrearing values and practices and factors of assessment and intervention are discussed with an emphasis on the changing characteristics of Hispanics.     

Factors Influencing the Sexual Relationships of Lesbians and Gay Men

ABSTRACT

This study examined the rewards and costs that lesbians and gay men experience in their sexual relationships. Participants were 23 lesbians and 15 gay men who completed questionnaires and participated in a semi-structured interview. Frequently identified sexual rewards included emotional and physical intimacy, feeling accepted and supported, communication, and a positive view of self. Sexual costs included feeling vulnerable and negative social and cultural attitudes toward same-sex relationships. Sexual rewards and costs tended to cluster into three main categories: relationship factors, sexual factors, and factors related to being a sexual minority. The participants' responses illustrate the limitations of applying conventional (biomedical) models of sexual response to men as well as to women. Moreover, they strengthen calls for theories of sexual functioning that are based on diverse experiences and that consider sociocultural, political, economic, relational, psychological, and medical factors.     

Renaissance beauty = Today’s ugly: What appearance factors determine attractiveness judgments?

ABSTRACT

By comparing photos of portraits of the faces of Renaissance courtesans to photos of attractive contemporary women’s faces this study estimates the importance of sociocultural factors in the personal perception of faces. Physical attractiveness is an important causal factor in choosing a sex partner, so the difference between averaged attractiveness judgments, a focus of attractiveness research, and individual attractiveness judgment, most relevant to choosing a sex partner, is important. Except for modesty and faithfulness, 13 normally attractive contemporary models were rated much more positively by college student participants (N = 189) than were eight celebrated Renaissance courtesans, both in attractiveness (contemporary stimuli 63%; Renaissance courtesans 31%) and in personality traits. All of the Renaissance courtesan trait ratings showed more variability than the contemporary stimuli. This study supports the view that once a relatively low baseline level of biological attractiveness is surpassed, latent and explicit sociocultural factors, culturally relative gender role appearance expectations, culturally relative aesthetic judgment factors, individual differences, and interpersonal dynamics are major determining factors of judgments of pretty and/or beautiful showing large subcultural and cultural individual differences. Pretty and beautiful may be discrete concepts, with beautiful strongly culturally determined. These data suggest that sociocultural and subcultural factors are important determiners of attractiveness.     

Incentives Programs for Girl Children in India: Global Experiences,Local Reflections

ABSTRACT

Success of incentive transfers programs in South America has encouraged policymakers in India to adopt similar demand-driven approaches to reward behaviors that invest in girls and eventually change negative cultural attitudes toward them. Embrace of this approach, however, needs to be nuanced by a closer scrutiny of the gendered impact of such programs; an understanding of the differential sociocultural and public policy contexts; and a questioning of the design of the incentive transfer programs in India. Despite their political uptake, such programs address the practical needs of girls and women while neglecting their strategic interests. Furthermore, without adequate critical engagement, the programs can have unintended consequence of reinforcing gender stereotypes. Rather than importing developmental shortcuts, India should turn its gaze inward to supply-side interventions and homegrown mobilization experiences of the women’s movement.