What is the Shortest Russian Joke? Communism. Russian Cultural Consciousness Expressed Through Soviet Humor

In an environment like Soviet Russia where it was difficult, if not impossible, to make assertions that contradicted the official Communist Party word, political humor can be used to challenge, subvert, or uphold official “truths.” The Russian Soviet anekdot—a politically subversive joke—provides an intimate view into the perspective of the Russian people living under Soviet rule. The anekdot serves as a discourse of “cultural consciousness,” connecting otherwise atomized people to a homeland, collective culture, and memory. In conducting a paired content and critical discourse analysis of 1,290 anekdoty collected from Russian archives, I explore how this oral folklore served to construct a Russian collective consciousness that (1) resists Party rhetoric, social policy, and ideology, but also (2) adopts and reifies social boundaries established by Soviet discourse by constructing particular groups as “other.” Those who are familiar with cultural folklore—and the historical context to which it refers—are taught who are the perpetrators responsible for injustices, who are the victims, and how we should feel about these different people; folklore also gives insight into the perspectives of those from the hegemonic '"center."     

Identity Dilemmas: Toward a More Situated Understanding

When are identity dilemmas—when people possess identities that conflict with one another and both are potentially stigmatizing—most likely to occur? Are they the result of generic social processes? A review of some of the extant research on “identity work” suggests that historical “misalignments” of culture and stratification, which we refer to as “lag,” create the greatest potential for stigma and the reproduction of inequalities. Lag is exacerbated by complex, intersecting axes of hierarchy, and amplified as symbolic environments globalize and subcultures multiply. Articulating culture and structure reveals how power plays out in interaction, and highlights the omnipresence of struggles for treatment as “fully human.” We consider whether “alignment” is even possible when multiple dimensions of social location intertwine, compete, and collide. Following Schwalbe and Mason‐Schrock (1996), we argue that “subcultural” or collective identity work that brings new meanings into dominant cultural narratives may offer the greatest hope, but in the interim all coping strategies are costly.     

“Us” versus “Them”: communication barriers in post‐socialist Russia

The paper addresses the general socio‐cultural consequences of economic and political globalisation. With regard to the dispute between “universalists” and “culturalists” it holds the view that—contrary to expectations of cultural convergence and the emergence of universal values and institutions‐‐the “universal grip” of globalisation has produced a mirror effect of “localisation”; it has strengthened old boundaries and created new ones between religions, ethnic groups, regions or nations. This is the background against which the present communication between East and West Europeans is explored in the paper.

For Europe, globalisation has some additional effects, such as the collapse of the Soviet system in Eastern Europe. There, (a) globalisation coincides with the painful process of political and economic transformation and (b) revitalises the pre‐socialist context of the West‐East dichotomy. It shows that the East European variety of the opposition global‐local acquires additional drama due to being superceded by the opposition West‐East: the defensive reactions against globalisation are sharper and more powerful—and they are largely perceived and experienced as an East‐West controversy.

The paper explores the new mental barriers between West and East, the “wall in the heads”, and presents them as a major obstacle to the effective interpersonal communication in post‐socialist Europe. It is based on field research in Russia and Germany and uses the concept of “otherness” (Fremdheit) and the related ingroup‐outgroup category as key instruments for the interpretation and understanding of intercultural situations. The strengthening of the “us vs. them” boundary largely determines the communication process: it creates potential for conflict and has a negative effect on the motivation for cross‐cultural learning. Some implications for cross‐cultural educators and trainers are pointed out.     

Information, information systems, information society: interpretations and implications

The term “information” has become a universal and omnipresent keyword in almost all areas of our modern world—be it in science or society in general. This is not only obvious from the naming of whole scientific branches like Information Theory, Information Science or Informatics but even more from common speaking—characterising our present time and society as information age viz. information society. However, what “information” might mean, is by no means clear and there is a wide range of interpretations covering, among others, its technical, communicational, educational, mental, and scientific aspects. But is the use of the same term justified when adopted in Biology, Physics, Archaeology, Law, Communication Technology, and Informatics (to list just a few of the involved scientific branches) or do its different uses at least have some common characteristics—some sort of common denominator? Is information natural, e.g. manifesting itself as a material phenomenon residing in organisms, stars, atoms, or genes, or is it just a cultural product of human communication, thinking, and interpretation? In this article, we try to clarify some of the most important interpretations, discuss and contrast them with the Informatics point of view. Interpretations range from taking information as material, transferable signals (following Shannon’s Information Theory or the genetic approaches), treating it as a sign (following a semiotic approach), as a commercial product (now common in Web-based Information Business) to considering it a pure mental phenomenon bound to humans or human-like individuals or even to groups and societies. Based on these interpretations, we shall throw a critical glance on current trends in human science and society—focusing on the now popular concept of “information society”—and then derive some theses and guidelines for further research escorting the growth and dispersal of information technology. As it will turn out, an information society which defines itself through the number of computers, internet connections and network links is based on a very narrow, techno-centric concept of information. However, a reflection on the educational and cultural aspects of information might lead to a better-qualified society consisting of responsible and critical citizens.     

Abstract

Abstract

Edmunds M W: Structure and nurse practitioner performance. The Nurse Practitioner 4: (3)42, May/June 1979

Are you a “new” nurse practitioner (NP) returning to your “old” practice setting? Are you a staff nurse, physician, receptionist in the “old” setting, wondering how to cope with this “new” nurse? This article is a MUST.

Simply and clearly, Ms. Edmunds illustrates the ingredients necessary to facilitate successful role transition.

Structural aspects requiring consideration are drawn from A. Donabedian and include:

1. adequacy of physical structure, facilities and equipment—office, exam room and equipment, telephone;

2. staff qualifications and organization-different mixes and levels of staff and/or reallocation of functions may be required;

3. fiscal arrangements—economic contributions to the practice should be recognized financially;

4. administrative, organization and/or programatic structures need to be reevaluated. Daily routine, patient assignment, collaboration-consultation time, development of new modes of health care delivery are examples.

Problems that may prove to be barriers to the role transition must be assessed and defined. Solutions potentiated should include attending to the structural aspects of the practice milieu. Ms. Edmunds offers valuable suggestions to avert or resolve “reentry” problems.     

The development of Maisha,a video-assisted counseling intervention to address HIV stigma at entry into antenatal care in Tanzania

HIV stigma has a profound impact on clinical outcomes and undermines the quality of life of people living with HIV (PLWH). Among HIV-negative individuals, misinformation and prejudicial attitudes about HIV can fuel stigma and contribute to discrimination against PLWH. Antenatal care (ANC), with its focus on universal HIV testing, provides a unique entry point to address HIV stigma. This study describes the development of a counseling intervention to address HIV stigma among women and their partners attending a first ANC appointment in Tanzania. Formative work to inform the intervention consisted of qualitative interviews with 32 pregnant and postpartum women (both women living with HIV and HIV-negative women) and 20 healthcare workers. Data were analyzed iteratively, using a thematic analysis approach, to identify intervention targets. The resulting intervention, Maisha (Swahili for “Life”), includes three sessions informed by the HIV Stigma Framework and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: a video and brief counseling session prior to HIV testing and, for those who test seropositive for HIV, two additional sessions building on the video content. A pilot test of the intervention is in process. Addressing HIV stigma at the first ANC visit can help individuals living with HIV to overcome stigma-related barriers to the initiation and maintenance of HIV care, and can reduce stigmatizing attitudes among those who test negative for HIV.     

Becoming a Communicative Partner: Infant Contingent Responsiveness to Maternal Language and Gestures

Infant contingent responsiveness to maternal language and gestures was examined in 190 Mexican American, Dominican American, and African American infant–mother dyads when infants were 14 and 24 months. Dyads were video‐recorded during book‐sharing and play. Videos were coded for the timing of infants’ vocalizations and gestures and mothers’ referential language (i.e., statements that inform infants about objects and events in the world; e.g., “That's a big doggy!”), regulatory language (i.e., statements that regulate infants’ attention or actions; e.g., “Look at that”, “Put it down!”), and gestures. Infants of all three ethnicities responded within 3 sec of mothers’ language and gestures, increased their responsiveness over development, and displayed specificity in their responses: They vocalized and gestured following mothers’ referential language and gestures, but were less likely than chance to communicate following mothers’ regulatory language. At an individual level, responsive infants had responsive mothers.     

Cultural constraints on rising income inequality: A U.S.–Japan comparison

Prior research has identified fundamental cultural and normative concepts—including wa, enryo, giri, and amae—that are typically argued to be integral to Japanese society. We advance this line of research by discussing how these traditional cultural concepts may influence labor market relations and thereby constrain the degree of income inequality in Japan relative to the U.S. Collectivist cultural attitudes are embedded in Japanese work organization, and are naturally inherited social constraints when compared to more unbridled labor market relations of the “New Economy” in the U.S. While studies of rising inequality in the U.S. and Europe consider how governmental policies impinge upon market forces in order to moderate labor market outcomes, our analysis suggests how culture may sometimes directly constrain income inequality without imposing legal regulations or instituting official programs.     

Tensions of Marriage: Love, Cooperation, Capitulation, Annihilation

This paper addresses the inevitable conflicts endemic to couple relationships. These conflicts are a manifestation of the mutual subjugation experienced by all couples engaged in an ongoing intimate relationship. The author describes this universal dimension of the life of a couple, applying what Ogden (1994a) calls “the subjugating intersubjective third”—a third subject co-created through mutual projective identification, binding them together as a couple. The unconscious and conscious relationship between each partner and “the third” generates a spectrum of primitive emotions from bliss to entrapment. Consequently, an identical situation in a relationship can evoke feelings of love and cooperation or capitulation and annihilation in one or both partners, depending on what is occurring in “the third,” of which the members are both creators and captives. A clinical case illustrates this dynamic.     

Moments in Laplanche's Theory of Sexuality

This paper is a brief introduction to some of Laplanche's thinking, as well as a commentary on his essay that is published here. Some salient issues in Laplanche's theory are introduced, such as the decentering of the subject and the prioritizing of the other, the postulation of the “reality of the message,” in which gestures from the other both signify and excite/seduce, and an enlarged meaning of seduction. The child's translation of the enigmatic messages conveyed by the adult is a process of being seduced into building interiority and subjectivity. In effect, the present paper proposes not only that “otherness” constitutes the subject, but that an “asymmetrical intersubjectivity” is what enables the transition from instinct to drive and the creation of paradoxical human sexuality. In a meditation that illuminates significant issues in American feminist and psychoanalytic theory, Laplanche's essay analyzes and distinguishes three interrelated terms, gender, sex, and “the sexual” (“le sexual”), or so-called “infantile sexuality”, the latter documenting a Freudian and French emphasis on an additional, counter-realistic, counter-adaptational, and counter-social conception of sexuality. What stands out in this paper no less than “le sexual” is the use of the term “gender” by a French psychoanalyst, who is at once nodding in acknowledgment to contemporary American thinking, and enlisting the concept of gender to reaffirm its “intimate enemy,” infantile sexuality, “le sexual.” Laplanche sees the American-conceived couple sex/gender as a “formidable tool against the Freudian discovery.” Formidableness is what is common to gender and to infantile sexuality, in that both concepts resist and destroy the clear-cut biological/anatomical “destiny” of sex. Both pertain to cultural/acquired/constructed aspects of sexuality; both are phantasmatic and both subvert sexual role divisions. But gender is organized by, hence possibly subordinate to, sex. Laplanche acknowledges gender yet at the same time he makes it dependent on sexuality and thereby “downgrades” it in favor of the inarticulate, perverse, subversive, untameable aspect of human sexuality—“le sexual”, infantile sexuality—which remains outside and in excess of gender.     

Cultural heritage as multi-dimensional,multi-value and multi-attribute economic good: toward a new framework for economic analysis and valuation

The purpose of the paper is to review critical issues concerning the economic dimensions of cultural heritage, in order to show that—tangible and intangible—“cultural economic” goods and services, as provided by cultural institutions, may be analysed and valued in a multi-dimensional, multi-attribute and multi-value socio-economic environment. On this multi-dimensional and multi-attribute setting, a conceptual framework for analysing cultural services and cultural capital is established. The paper is speculative in nature, suggesting new prospective for evaluation and empirical inquiry. The work is divided in three parts. The first part begins by surveying the literature on merit goods, re-examining how different paradigms, neo-classic and more unconventional, have dealt with the issue, and assessing why, and to what extent, merit good is a proper economic notion. The second part focuses on the role merit good theory should play in cultural economics, and specifically how it is possible to integrate the merit good and the mixed good theoretical and conceptual framework. Cultural resources are to be defined ideally as joint merit-mixed good, on a multi-dimensional scenario. Cultural capital offers and “produces” services and functions, providing private, public and merit good elements of benefit (value). The multi-dimensional framework also entails a multi-paradigmatic perspective, bringing together neo-classic and non-neo-classic elements. The last section summarises and concludes that such an established conceptual framework indicates and supports new routes for economic valuation and policy making concerning the cultural field and cultural institutions. Disaggregating cultural activities into many services and functions allows the analysis to focus on single components of “benefit” supplied by cultural institutions and demanded by users. Valuing culture as a non-holistic resource might help economic analysis and decision-making processes. The main emerging results are: (i) the notion of merit good is relevant for cultural economics and cultural policy, and it represents a relevant ideal “metaphor” and an important dimension of value associated to “cultural functions”; (ii) the inclusion of merit good theory gives the possibility to define cultural stock and services as a compelling case of multi-dimensional categorisation of private, public, mixed and collective services, where different theoretical perspectives are integrated with each other as far as possible; (iii) being intrinsically placed in a dynamic and uncertain setting, merit good theory demonstrates to be, in theoretical and policy term, the necessary a priori for the theory and policy of mixed good provision, both at macro and microeconomic level. Policies motivated by the merit good issue should aim at providing the necessary collective tangible and intangible investments on which long run effects of cultural policies rely; (iv) special effort should be devoted to the study of “demands” associated to cultural goods, emphasising the role of valuation analysis, supported by the conceptual framework here developed. The work intends to constitute a point of reference for future research, generating some controversy and stimulating further contributions.     

The Phenomenon Of The Public Wife: An Exercise In Goffman's Impression Management*

Approaching the topic of American leader-image from the perspective of politics-as-theater (political communication as exchange of symbols), this paper examines a taken-for-granted visual symbol which a national political leader is invariably expected to present: a wife. Her contributions to her husband's “impression management” techniques (Goffman, 1959) are studied in Goffman's “defensive” categories of dramaturgical loyalty, dramaturgical discipline, and dramaturgical circumspection. This analysis suggests that the visible presence of a wife in public leadership rituals offers the public voter or viewer important reassurances or symbolic guarantees about her husband's “morality”—and, therefore, his appropriateness for public trust. She has become a necessary partof his public performance because of our everyday need for “cultural absolutes” (Furay, 1977) in the image of our leadership figures.     

The individual in economic analysis: toward psychology of economic behavior

“… Economics is supposed to be concerned with real people. It is hard to believe that real people could be completely unaffected by the reach of the self-examination induced by the Socratic question, ‘How should one live?’—a question that is, also a central motivating one for ethics. Can people whom economics studies really be so unaffected by this resilient question and stick exclusively to the rudimentary hard-headedness attributed to them by modern economics?” Amartya Sen, On Ethics & Economics.“… Apart from a few exceptions, the international consensus view within sociology, anthropology, political science and psychology seems to be that agents are not irrational in the way that neoclassical economists presume. The orthodox economic canons of rationality are thus widely rejected elsewhere,” Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Economics and Institutions.“Once we realize that the human mind is everywhere active and imaginative, then we need to understand the routes of this activity if we are to grasp how the human mind works. This is true whether the mind is trying to come to grips with painful reality, reacting to trauma, coping with the everyday or just making things up. Freud called this imaginative activity phantasy, and he argued both that it functions unconsciously and that it plays a powerful role in the organization of a person’s experience. This surely, contains the seeds of a profound insight into the human condition; it is the central insight of psychoanalysis … a pervasive aspect of mental life …. Are we to see humans as having depth—as complex psychological organisms who generate layers of meaning which lie beneath the surface of their own understanding? Or are we to take ourselves as transparent to ourselves?” Jonathan Lear, Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul.     

The positive science of ethics in France: German influences onDe la division du travail social

What was Durkheim doing—in the sense of an intended social action—in writing De la Division du travail social? At least a part of the answer is that Durkheim's project was linguistic—i.e., he was attempting to replace an outworn vocabulary of Cartesian metaphysics with a more Germanic lexicon—one in which simplicity gave way to complexity, the abstract to the concrete, the ideal to the real, deduction to induction, rationalism to empiricism, and so on. To some extent, this was motivated by the superiority—widely acknowledged among intellectuals of the Third Republic—of German science and Protestant scientific education. But an additional motivation was Durkheim's belief that only a real, concrete entity—society as a “thing” (chose)—could provide an object worthy of the veneration of the “new man” of the Republic. Durkheim's attempt to construct a science of social facts was therefore itself subsidiary to another, “higher” purpose—i.e., the construction of a moral authority (real, concrete, complex) adequate to the needs of the Third French Republic. Rather than an end in itself, Durkheim's sociology should thus be seen as a means to other ends—i.e., the “construction” of a particular kind of “fact”—within a specific social and historical context.     

Saving the Savior

This article begins with an autobiographical reflection about what sociology has meant to me as an Iranian intellectual. Sociology has enabled me to think critically about my country's politics and culture, appreciating its strengths without overlooking its unjust and injurious aspects. That experience shapes my answer to the question “Saving Sociology?” If there is anything in sociology that I would like to save–in both senses “to keep” and “to rescue”—it is sociology as a critical, reflective discipline, a discipline that not only studies society but also contributes to its change. As the contemporary world moves toward a “global” society, we are increasingly facing the dilemmas of multiculturalism. Sociologists often investigate other societies or (like myself) look back at their own from a spatial and cultural distance. This situation has created a dilemma for many scholars: Should we criticize problems stemming from “indigenous” beliefs and practices of other societies? Cultural relativism argues that different cultures provide indigenous answers to their social problems that should be judged in their own context. While this approach correctly encourages us to avoid ethnocentrism, it has led to inaction towards the suffering of oppressed groups. Reflecting on the relativist approach to sexual dominance, I question some cultural relativist assumptions. Discussing how “indigenous” responses to male domination in many cases disguise and protect that domination, I will challenge the “localist” approach of relativism and argue for a universalist approach.     

Signifyin' Cinema: Rudy Ray Moore and the Quality of Badness

This article engages the limits of both film and race studies in their approach to heterogeneous and “low” forms of African American cultural production through an analysis of the films of Rudy Ray Moore. While Moore’s films have been almost entirely overlooked in both film studies and black studies, they were extremely popular among black youth of the 1970s and have exerted a powerful influence on today’s hardcore hip hop artists (and their understanding of how to turn black market entrepreneurship into global enterprise). The theory of “signifying”, advanced most rigorously by black literary theorist Henry Louis Gates Jr, helps explain how and why Moore has slipped through various critical nets — and grounds a claim for why we should take “bad” black film seriously. Close film and context analysis illustrates how Moore’s low‐budget films “signify” on Hollywood and the system of expectancies that go with putatively “good” filmmaking and reveals the extent to which they constitute a hybrid cultural and multimedia practice. As vehicles designed to elaborate on the badman of black folklore, Moore’s films contribute to the long history and rich language of “toasting” in African American oral culture and music. As such, far from being emblematic of black filmmaking’s impoverished relationship to mainstream cinema (as a cinema manqué), these films constitute vital precursors to the hip hop music video.     

Regulated freedoms: the market and the state,agriculture and the environment

We argue that a “free” market — that is, a market in which the state does not intervene — is a theoretical impossibility in a state society. In place of the natural economy view of a market apart from the state, we offer a social economy view of the inescapable social structuring of markets through state regulation. Even when states institute policies which prevent “interference” in a market, the enforcement power of the state is no less required. We thus distinguish between two forms of regulation: negative regulation — regulation which prevents interference — and positive regulation — regulation which enables interference. These two forms of regulation make possible two different conceptions of freedom, what Isaiah Berlin once termed “negative freedom” from agency and “positive freedom” to have agency. We argue that positive and negative freedom and positive and negative regulation are inseparable; freedom is always contextual. Through a discussion of the debate between industrial agriculture and environmentalists, we show that both supporters and critics of the “free” market are alike in their advocacy, often unacknowledged, of both negative and positive forms of regulation. Rather then a lessening of regulation, this debate represents the institution of a new regulatory regime out of the contest of interests. We conclude by considering the implications for democracy of the contextual character of freedom.     

Sense‐making in Taiwan's tea art ritual

This paper analyzes Taiwan's contemporary public tea gatherings from the perspective of “sense-scape,” the cultural world of sensory experiences. Performing elegance by way of tea brewing, bodily gestures and movements, costumes, utensil arrangements, and spatial design represents what is innovative about Taiwan's tea art culture, often referred to as “literati tea.” As the fragrance and flavors of tea, light and shadows, sounds and music, visual presentations of utensils, and space, as well as the general atmosphere of these events are captured by the senses and organized by the emotions, they inform us about who we are and who the other is. Despite its Japanese cultural infusion and Chinese cultural legacy, which have always complicated claims of a truly Taiwanese origin, Taiwan's tea art has been eagerly adopted by mainland Chinese tea communities since the late 2000s. That a local practice and invented tradition strongly identified with Taiwan has been embraced as “traditional” cultural practice in contemporary China presents a paradox that deserves our attention.     

Conspiracies beyond Fake News. Produsing Reinformation on Presidential Elections in the Transnational Hybrid Media System

As presidential elections carry the promise of distilling the contested and elusive “will of the people,” the protracted media event intensifies the public demand for exposing the transgressions of the aspiring political elite. This expectation provides fertile ground for investigative journalism, ultrapartisan smear campaigns, fake news, and full-fledged conspiracy theories that are sometimes difficult to differentiate from one another in a hybridized media space. We compare three unique conspiracy stories—Macronleaks, Pizzagate, and Voter fraud—emerging during the previous French and American elections. We assess the divergent strategies of social action that contribute to the stories’ dissimilar patterns for intervening the political news cycle with the “reinformative toolkit” and deconstruct the common conspiratorial “masterplot” for “reinforming” the public. Focusing on online “produsers”—media users functioning as (dis)information producers—we analyze how the grassroots level participated in shaping the conspiracy stories’ synopses and channeling news-framed, conspiratory content between mainstream and “countermedia” outlets.