Signature Scents

ABSTRACT

Perfume critique is an underdeveloped academic field, and this includes considerations of perfume as a theme within other art forms such as literature. In this article, Angela Carter's Wise Children and Monika Fagerholm's Wonderful Women by the Sea are read alongside perfume blogs in order to analyze the significance of perfume references in the novels. It is demonstrated that the authors' choice of perfumes for their characters plays a crucial part in their characterization, especially in relation to the theme of identity change. Using Alfred Gell's analysis of perfume use as bound up with “the transcendence of the sweet life,” it is argued that female characters use perfume to become someone else, sometimes a past self. Furthermore, the use of perfume as a literary device in these novels is shown serve as the vehicle for a feminist critique of the division between “masculine” “high” and “feminine” “low” culture.     

清代《西湖十景图》的“圣境”展现与空间政治

清代《西湖十景图》呈现与重塑了江山一统下的西湖景观风物，承载着对西湖十景文化意象的传承与认同，昭显了皇权印迹下的景观政治，与帝王的江山统驭密不可分。《西湖十景图》结合传统文人绘画和舆图标识，借明晰的景观呈现融入帝王品味及政治意涵，成为权力展现的另一有效途径。作为各景观文化地标的御书碑亭被置于画面中心显要位置，通过空间展示突出强化风景所具有的权力表征与圣境意义。西湖十景作为一种重要文化意象不仅是文化的“圣境”，更是体现皇权圣意的“圣境”，带有鲜明的皇权统治色彩。     

Towards a sonic ecology of urban life: ethnography of sound perception in Cairo

ABSTRACT

This study on sound perception in Cairo uses a methodological procedure described in a previous issue of this journal [11(3)]. The procedure involves equipping inhabitants of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, with binaural microphones that record the surrounding urban sounds during one of their daily journeys (without the researcher). Participants later describe and comment on the sounds while listening to the recording. Analysis of this material allowed us first to establish an organized lexicon in categories. We identified a structured “natural language of sounds”. The data obtained reveal covert categories that describe three key domains of urban life: the active city, the city in movement, and the relational city. A principal finding is that sound perception systematically relates sounds to their origin, i.e. both the source and its social situation. This socialization of sound led us to the notion of “sound constructs” as products of an immediate socialization of the perception of sound. Experiment clarifies how perception operates in Cairo, notably through territory differentiation using sonic saliences and soundmarks. Finally, we propose a “sonic ecology” of the city: how residents collectively experience the sound dimensions of their urban territory, navigate between very different territories, recognize them and respond to them.     

Sing … Then Think: Musical Interventions and Nondeliberative Forms of Practice in Social Work Groups

ABSTRACT

The positive effects of music have been demonstrated worldwide in many fields including social work, psychology, medicine, and education. Musical interventions including music listening, lyric analysis, and singing have also been found effective in group work. This article, guided by Norma Lang’s nondeliberative theory, aims to provide the “why,” “when,” and “how” of incorporating music into social work groups. It also provides the reader with a toolbox of musical interventions and the encouragement to utilize these “artful, actional, and analogic” activities in group work.     

Coming of age in Samoa…in 1997

Abstract

A psychodynamically trained clinical social worker living in Samoa since 1995 examines some of the questions that the situation of rapid cultural change exposes. What effects does culture have on individual adolescent development? How are “healthy"/"adaptive” developmental outcomes shaped by the historical moment in which an adolescent lives? What does it mean for a clinician to be an “outsider” in a dominant culture of “insiders”? This paper attempts to address some of these questions from a very personal perspective.     

Acoustic Cocooning

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, car manufacturers increasingly underline their cars' interior tranquility. Both this acoustic condition and the availability of car audio sets enable drivers to transform their car into a highly personal, controlled and relaxing sonic bubble.

Yet how could the car, once a noisy contraction, evolve into such a space for acoustic cocooning? This article studies the introduction of car radio and interior car sound design in Europe between the 1920s and the 1990s. The car radio's meaning shifted from an artifact that brought companionship to lonely drivers, to an instrument that helped drivers to mentally block out their fellows on the road. At the same time, listening to engine sounds changed from a drivers' skill to a practice drivers had to de-learn. Moreover, car sound construction shifted from reducing noise to creating target sounds for specific consumer groups.

This article employs three forms of cultural analysis to understand these shifts: an “archeology of corporate culturology,” the symbolism of sound, and Gerhard schulze's theory on the experience society. Finally, by analyzing the rise of acoustic cocooning in the car, it aims to contribute to the study of “techno-cocooning”: the use of technology for creating sensory privacy.     

Sensuous stories in the Indian Ocean islands*

Abstract

Providing examples from the islands of the Indian Ocean Region, this article focuses on the multisensory nature of storytelling and listening. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in the region (1998–2016), the author proposes a sensuous epistemology that turns on listening to “sense”. She reveals that storytelling can be a profoundly sensuous experience that elicits emotional and physical responses in both the teller and listener. The sensuous quality of stories enable the listener to fully encounter politically inscribed, complex social experiences. Ultimately, the article advances a notion of listening as sense-work, thereby deepening sensory scholarship’s recent, politically reflexive analysis on listening to hear.     

To Know Beyond Listening

ABSTRACT

In music production, “monitoring” refers traditionally to audile strategies intended to reveal the “true” sound of mediated audio. Here, it is expanded to include new, digital technologies intended to better know and control the record-object beyond what listening and listening technologies allow. Surveying traditional, contemporary, and emerging tools of record production and distribution, this essay addresses three types of monitoring: audio, visual, and data.

In sum, monitoring entails the supplementation and subversion of the ear through protocols promising to surmount the biases and distortions of audio media. Key technologies include reference speakers, room correction systems, digital audio workstations, open mixes, pre-sets, social networking sites, and automatic music information retrieval. Situating these within a “techoustemology” of monitoring, the central argument is that many innovations in digital audio are non-auditory and, therefore, displace sound and listening as the central means of producing relevant knowledge about music mediated in the digital age.     

Sensing Cittàslow: Slow Living and the Constitution of the Sensory City

ABSTRACT

In 2004 Aylsham, Norfolk, became Britain's second Cittàslow Town (Slow City). Embedded within the slow living ideology of Cittàslow is the assumption that the “better” life it advocates involves heightened sensory experience and concomitant pleasure. In contrast to contemporary fast life, it wishes that “suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment [may] preserve us from the contagion of the multitude who mistake frenzy for efficiency” (The Slow Food Companion 2005: 6). In the first part of the paper I analyze how the sensory elements of slow living are represented in the Cittàslow and related Slow Food movement's literature. Then, based on my ethnographic fieldwork centered on Aylsham's Cittàslow events and projects, I examine how the routine and creative sensory practices of the individuals who produce and participate in Cittàslow policies and activities are constitutive of a “sensory city.”     

A Study of the Development of Alcohol Use Disorder in Muslim Immigrant Workers in Korea

Abstract

This study examines the process by which Muslim immigrant workers, prohibited by their religion from drinking, develop alcohol use disorder when working in Korea. Participants were seven male immigrant workers who have lived in Korea for 6–10?years and all experienced a change in immigrant status, shifting from registered to unregistered. Utilizing grounded theory devised by Strauss and Corbin, 87 concepts, 24 subcategories, and 10 categories were derived as a result. By converting these categories into a paradigm model, participants moved through stages of “self-monitoring,” “confusion,” “self-despair,” and “daily collapse” as they developed alcohol use disorder, and began to take on an existence as drifters, not settling into life in Korea. Their “learning experiences of drinking to survive turning into experiences of causing social death” is considered a core category. The study’s results suggest that a rehabilitation program for immigrant workers needs to be developed wherein the program not only enables them to reflect on their current existence but also allows them to develop specific coping skills. Future research should be broadened to consider social support mechanisms and viewpoints of other people, including female immigrant workers, and local community members in close contact with Muslim immigrant workers.     

A touch of luck and a “real taste of Vegas”: a sensory ethnography of the Montreal Casino

ABSTRACT

In recent years, there has been an explosion of “experiential design” in casinos, driven in part by research suggesting that curating gambling sensescapes can lure patrons to spend more time – and money – inside the casino. Building on the promise of existing casino ethnographies, this paper argues that a sensory ethnographic approach to the study of gambling environments can offer valuable insight into the experiential design and mood management of the casino. We use sensory ethnography to explore the ambiance of the Montreal Casino, particularly during the casino’s “Vegas Nights” promotion. How does the casino feel (and how does it touch back)? What rhythms flow through its neon labyrinth? What does “getting a real taste of Vegas,” well … taste like? Moreover, we position this ambiance at the center of the casino’s “push-and-pull” approach to problem gambling – where this government-affiliated sensory extravaganza must toe a tenuous line between attraction and responsibilisation. In addition, we examine how the ambiance of the casino is co-produced by patrons and employees. Ultimately, we argue that the casino floor is unlike a sensory research laboratory – for here, sensations mix and mingle, and it takes a sensory ethnographer to quite literally “make sense” of the casino ambiance and its impact on visitor experience.     

Revisiting demand,politicization and externalization in authoritarian political regimes: policy advisory system in Russian practices

ABSTRACT

This study contributes to debate on three related questions in Policy Advisory System research. Is the Policy Advisory System concept applicable in countries other than developed democracies? How does it function in a state-centred authoritarian regime? How does the authoritarian environment affect tendencies such as “politicization” and “externalization”? These questions are addressed using materials on the current Russian governance structure and advisory practices, focusing on two broadly defined “governance subsystems” in the Presidential Administration of Russia, “Political Bloc” and “Economic Bloc”, both acting as regular customers for advisory communities. One finding is the phenomenon of “Dual Demand” from the same centre of power—“stability” for “Political Bloc” and “innovation” for “Economic Bloc”—which contributed to creation of two different clusters of policy advisory agencies with different statuses. Other findings include transformation of “politicization” to policy control mechanisms and attempted “externalization” turning into the reverse—“internalization”—bringing independent advisory organizations under the supervision of government structures.     

The Role of the Social Worker in Long-Term Care

Abstract

Making use of a formulation by Rosalie Kane of the ingredients necessary to “a good life” for residents of homes for the aged and other long term care facilities, the role of the social worker in insuring the presence of these ingredients is discussed. Included is an analysis of the responsibilities and tasks of the social worker which must be carried and fulfilled in order that social workers make appropriate contributions to “the good life.”     

Calligraphy and Modern Chinese Writers

迄今为止，中国现代文学研究已取得了举世瞩目的成就，但趋于“饱和”的状态 也使其陷入了举步维艰的境地。因此，寻找新的学术增长点就变得异常重要和紧迫。 “书法文化”与“中国现代作家”的关系，几近是一个研究空白，以往很少引人注 意，这是令人遗憾的。事实上，许多中国现代作家都与书法文化有着不解之缘，他们 在书法收藏、书法创作、书学探讨上都做出了重要贡献；反过来，书法文化也对现代 文学的存在方式、文本形式、情感表达、思维方式以及审美趣味等产生了深刻的影 响。另外，通过对书法文化与中国现代作家关系的考察，还可引发我们进一步深入思 考文学、书法、文化、教育等相关问题，以便有助于新世纪的中国文学和文化获得更 大的发展空间。

关键词: 书法文化?中国现代作家?学术创新?第三种文本?书学

Research on modern Chinese literature has achieved results that have attracted wide attention. However, its state of near “saturation” has placed it in a dilemma with no clear way forward. Finding new academic growth points has become exceptionally important and urgent. The relationship between the “culture of calligraphy” and “modern Chinese writers” is virtually a research blank and has so far attracted regrettably little attention. In fact, many modern Chinese writers have had close ties with calligraphy, making important contributions to its collection, creation and scholarly exploration. Conversely, the culture of calligraphy has exerted a profound influence on such things as the mode of existence, textual forms, emotional expression, ways of thought and aesthetic tastes of modern literature. Moreover, an examination of this relationship may stimulate us to reflect more deeply on literature, calligraphy, culture, education and related issues, which may help us gain a larger space for the development of Chinese culture and literature in the new century.     

The Canadian Agency for the Oversight of Research Involving Humans: A Reform Proposal

In this paper, I propose the creation of a Canadian agency for the oversight of research involving humans. I describe first a series of significant problems with Canada’s current system of oversight. I then argue for the creation of a national-level agency, covering all research involving humans, with three branches (policy and standards, education, and compliance). Of particular note, the proposed compliance branch consists of a number of independent national and regional Research Ethics Boards (i.e., REBs no longer reside within institutions). There is also an Audit Committee and a Non-compliance Committee (with supporting staff of auditors and compliance officers) to ensure compliance with the policies and standards set by the Policy and Standards Branch. Finally, I answer a series of “frequently asked questions” about the proposed agency design such as “What about ‘local context’?” and “Why not have a system of accreditation of institutional REBs instead?” In sum, radical reform is needed and, in this paper, I present a proposal for such reform.     

The Intrinsic Influence of the Poetics of Yanzhi on Modern Chinese Literature

否定与批判“言志”诗学, 曾是中国现代文学转型的标志。但从五四新文学开 始, “言志”诗学不仅没有被剔出中国现代文学的审美范畴, 相反, 却借助于西方 话语得到合理的传承。“言”救亡图存的启蒙之“志”, 与“抒”忧国忧民的个人 之“情”, 中国现代文学都未摆脱“志”者“大情”、“情”者“小志”的传统思 维, 具体表现在: 主“思”派提倡文学创作的功利意识, 进而以“志”代“情”回归 “道”统; 主“情”派则提倡文学创作的真情实感, 进而以“情”传“志”, 回归 “道”统。中国现代文学的理论与实践, 虽然涂抹着光怪陆离的“西化”色彩, 但 其重新“释道”与巧妙“言志”的本质特征, 恰恰表明了它对传统文化的价值认同, 而不是简单地抛弃“传统”后走向了“西方”。

关键词: “言志”诗学 “志”与“道” “志”与“情” 古典主义

Rejection and denunciation of the poetics of “yanzhi” (literally “expressing one’s thought or ideals”) was once a marker of Chinese literature’s modern transformation. However, right from the beginning of May Fourth new literature, the poetics of “yanzhi” was not only not cast out of the aesthetic canon of modern Chinese literature but was, on the contrary, legitimately transmitted via Western discourse. Whether modern Chinese writers were expressing enlightenment ideas of saving the nation or voicing their personal feelings for their country and their people, they remained convinced that “zhi” was “feelings” writ large and “feelings” were a lesser form of “zhi.” Specifically, the school stressing the idea that “literature expresses thought” advocated utilitarian literary creation and returned to the traditional Chinese poetics of “yanzhi” by replacing “feelings” with “zhi.” Those stressing the idea that “literature expresses feelings” advocated writing with genuine emotion; they went on to express “zhi” via “feelings,” thus returning to the traditional Chinese way of thought. Both the theory and practice of modern Chinese literature have a strange “Western” tint. Nevertheless, this literature’s essential character of “reinterpreting the ‘dao’ (way)” and sophisticated “expression of thought” or “yanzhi” indicate its value identification with traditional culture rather than the simple abandonment of “tradition” in pursuit of “the West.”     

Revival and Development of the Criminal Reconciliation System in China

Abstract

随着和谐社会治国方针的提出与宽严相济刑事政策的深化, 中国刑事和解制度呈 现出不断拓展的态势。2012年新?刑事诉讼法?以“特别程序”编的形式, 专章规定 了“刑事和解”, 第一次在?刑事诉讼法?中全面确立了中国式的刑事和解制度。但就 目前立法来看, 刑事和解程序设置还相对粗放, 也存在诸多争议。刑事和解未来发展 方向应当强化规则性完善与制度性建设。

With the adoption of the governance policy of a harmonious society and with the further strengthening of the criminal policy of mitigating severity with leniency, China’s criminal reconciliation system is undergoing rapid development. In the 2012 Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, criminal reconciliation is stipulated in a separate chapter under “Special Procedures,” thereby comprehensively establishing for the first time a criminal reconciliation system with Chinese characteristics in the Criminal Procedure Law. However, China’s legislation on criminal reconciliation remains relatively broad-brush and controversial. Improved regulation and system construction now point the way for future development.     

Guanxilization or categorization: psychological mechanisms contributing to the formation of the Chinese concept of “us”

中国社会心理学在面对急速的社会变迁中，需要以变迁与文化的视角来选择研究 问题，而中国社会文化中群己关系的社会心理机制，即“我们”概念的形成机制及其 转换的可能与条件，正是一个体现着双重视角的基本问题。对这一问题的探讨不仅有 助于解释社会凝聚力、群体行动的逻辑，讨论国家与个人、社会与个人、类别与个人 的关系；也有助于培植社会转型时期的社会心理资源和社会支持系统，从而促进社会 合作。与以往单一机制的分析框架不同，通过对两个个案的讨论，研究提出了一个 新的分析框架，即：中国人“我们”概念是在社会情境的启动和价值取向等因素影响之 下，经由相互交织的“关系化”与“类别化”双重过程形成的。

关键词: “我们”?概念?群己关系?关系?关系化?类别化

Faced with rapid social transformation, the discipline of social psychology in China needs to choose its research topics from the perspective of both change and culture. A basic issue reflecting precisely these two perspectives is that of the formation of the social psychology mechanism of individual‐group relations, namely the formation of the concept of “us” in Chinese society and culture, as well as the possibility and conditions for the transformation of this mechanism. Exploring this issue will not only help us to understand social cohesion and the logic of group behavior and to discuss the relationship between the state and the individual, society and the individual, and the category and the individual; it will also help cultivate social psychology resources and support systems at a time of social transition, and thus promote social cooperation.. Unlike previous analytical studies that focused on a unitary mechanism, this study uses the discussion of two cases to put forward a new framework for analysis: that is, the Chinese concept of “us” comes into being through the mingling of “guanxilization” and “categorization” under the influence of social context priming, value orientation and other factors.