4,695 research outputs found

    Some Observations on the Study of the History of Cultural Interactions in East Asia

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    This paper attempts to incorporate the history of East Asian cultural interactions into the field of regional history, and toward that end proposes that certain subjects to be explored. The paper consists of five sections. Section 1 draws attention to the newer fields of regional history and global history, as distinct from national history, which occupied great academic interest in the twentieth century. Section 2 suggests a new way to study regional history: shifting our focus from the results of cultural interactions to the process, thus bringing about a paradigm shift in the study of the history of East Asian cultural interactions. Section 3 raises two problematiques in the proposed field of regional history: the mutual influence between self and other, and that between culture and the power structure. Section 4 proposes three types of exchange for further research: (1) exchanges of persons (especially professional intermediate agents), (2) exchanges of goods (especially books), and (3) exchanges of thought. The last section concludes that, with the rising of East Asian countries on the world stage in the twenty-first century, the state-centered style of historical study will be redirected to a broader East Asian perspective. By redefining the history of East Asian cultural interactions as regional history, we will be able to undertake the important task of revisiting and reconsidering on our traditional cultures

    ‘CROSSING BORDERS': CULTURAL-GEO-POLITICS OF RAPPROCHEMENT TOURISM BETWEEN CHINA AND TAIWAN

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    This thesis is concerned with the cultural-geo-politics of rapprochement tourism between China and Taiwan in the era of warming cross-strait relations. By moving away from state-centric approaches to the study of cross-strait tourism, it interrogates themes surrounding the concepts of ‘border’, ‘identity’ and ‘materiality’, in an attempt to offer a more nuanced understanding of the everyday micro-politics at play. More specifically, the thesis considers different taming strategies engaged by the authorities on both sides in dealing with sensitive histories and difficult heritages, and how their practices are materialised in the tourism landscape. In doing so, this study probes the often assumed processes of rapprochement that result from and animate the cross-border exchanges by providing powerful examples of how tourists respond to attempts to manipulate their opinions, how they interpret ideologically loaded materials on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but also of the genuine curiosity and good will that can result. This showcases the everyday experiences of tourists and the various bordering practices they enact and encounter during their travel. Discussions on tourists’ subjectivities show that far from being passive ‘numbers’ or ‘flows’ as often assumed by economic-centric studies, cross-strait tourists are actively shaping the rapprochement landscape. Furthermore, inquiries into the material cultures of memory and identity provide novel insights that go well beyond the state-led ‘peace through tourism’ initiatives to look at how commercial culture is shaping and responding to memories and cross-strait movements. Empirical findings are able to unpack how the border is experienced through a range of artefacts – from border controls to travel documents and cross-border purchases that extend beyond the literal border. Additionally, this research also broadens the sensorium by looking beyond ‘sight’ seeing to incorporate the olfactory, tactile, auditory and gustatory senses in discussing knives made from artillery shells, music events in a defunct military tunnel, and foods offered by local entrepreneurs. Finally, in acknowledging that tourists are not the only subjects of tourism, the thesis examines the roles played by ghosts and deities in their participation of cross-strait rapprochement tourism. In doing this, it demonstrates that rapprochement tourism is more about ‘interactions along the side’ rather than state-level diplomatic exchanges. Forays into consumption practices, identity construction (both national and self), and border (un)making could prove to be significant in the advent of unprecedented tourist exchanges between China and Taiwan

    'Thinking of Spain in a flat way:' visiting Spain and Spanish cultural heritage through contemporary Japanese anime

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    This article contextualizes the representation of Spain and Spanish culture among Japanese cultural producers, particularly through the production of Japanese commercial animation (commonly named anime). Toward that goal, it provides a historical background of Japan-Spain relations within the context of the tourism industry, as well as some examples of the diverse forms of representation within several creative industries. Subsequently, the article reviews the ways in which popular culture has been contributed to national branding. There is special attention to the Spanish case and the proliferation of such images sometimes resulting in the (mis)representation of Spain's tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Internationally-distributed anime productions will be examined as a reflection of Spanish national branding on Japanese audiences and this global industry. Three cases among contemporary anime productions have been selected due to the combination of fictional and misrepresented Spanish cultural features in their narratives

    Buddhism in South Africa : from textual imagination to contextual innovation

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    Bibliography: leaves [384]-441.This thesis provides the first narrative of a history of Buddhism in South Africa. In the absence of any coherent analysis, it thus seeks to expose an historical lacuna in the study of religions in the region and to redress an academic aphasia that appears preeminent in recent "authoritative" pronouncements. It suggests, in fact, that Buddhism was both present in the histories of religious pluralism and pervasive among the contours of a geography of religious diversity in South Africa since at least the 1680s. In so doing, the thesis further attempts to make the apparent "strangeness" of Buddhism in South Africa appear more familiar, and the familiar, quotidian history of religions in the region appear unconventional or exceptional. Consequently, the thesis also asks how the presence of Buddhism outside of a "normative" Asian origin can help to redefine the meaning of Buddhism and how the presence of Buddhism in South Africa, can help to refine the meaning of religion. However, in drawing on published materials, travelogues, archives, correspondence, interviews, and fieldwork, the primary assertion of the thesis is one that traces how, in that history, Buddhism was initially inscribed according to a textual imagination that was conditioned by articles and artifacts, and how that tradition was subsequently reinvented in the context of innovative, localized practice to create a living religion in the region

    The Image Bank: Reflections on an Incomplete Archive

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    This thesis examines the development of a digital archive for The Image Bank at GSU as a process of excavation and reconstruction. It defines the digital archive as a medium for the institutionalization of knowledge, its reproduction, and preservation. In addition, this thesis examines the digital archive as it operates on a continuum of materiality and immateriality, encompassing fractured distinctions between its possibilities and impossibilities in an increasingly dematerialized digitized landscape

    The Cultivation of Therapeutic Landscapes: A Medical Anthropological Approach to Understanding the Health and Wellbeing Qualities of the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas

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    Medical anthropology researchers have just begun exploring therapeutic landscapes as the benefits of location are just now being understood in the field as potentially promoting a sense of healing and wellbeing. Some cultural heritage sites are translocated sites that are important to disseminate traditional cultural knowledge. While some of these cultural heritage landscapes become formal cultural resources, others also add a level of therapeutic quality to their existence. The Garden of 1,000 Buddhas was such a location. Discerning how these sites develop and are mitigated through affective responses, messaging symbols and personal beliefs was an important part of the process. How these were linked to the social and symbolic environments of the therapeutic landscape was not well known. For this reason, it became important to explore the central questions: How do affective responses, personal beliefs, and messaging symbols at the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas impact visitors’ social and symbolic environments? Are affective responses, personal beliefs, and messaging symbols integral in therapeutic landscape development? To fully explore this question, three subquestions should be explored which will then provide adequate responses to the central question. These three subquestions will be as follows: 1) How do affective responses emerging from interacting with a cultural heritage site influence the visitors’ health and wellbeing outcomes from visiting the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas?, 2) How are visitors’ personal health and wellbeing beliefs formative in the construction of a therapeutic landscape where no official health and wellbeing attributes are articulated by the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas site management?; 3) How does visitor placement of health and wellbeing messaging symbols throughout the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas impact the social environment of the therapeutic landscape at the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas? Answering these questions will demonstrate how they are related and the impact they have on the social and symbolic environments. The answers to these questions will also facilitate an understanding of how therapeutic landscapes develop and their relationship with cultural heritage sites

    Conference Digest and Conference Abstracts

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    "Wild worship of a lost and buried past" : enchanted archaeologies and the cult of Kata, 1908–1924

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    Histories of archaeology traditionally traced the progress of the modern discipline as the triumph of secular disenchanted science over pre-modern, enchanted, world-views. In this article I complicate and qualify the themes of disenchantment and enchantment in archaeological histories, presenting an analysis of how both contributed to the development of scienti c theory and method in the earliest decades of the twentieth century. I examine the interlinked biographies of a group who created a joke religion called “The Cult of Kata”. The self-described “Kataric Circle” included notable archaeologists Harold Peake, O.G.S. Crawford and Richard Lowe Thompson, alongside classicists, musicians, writers and performing artists. The cult highlights the connections between archaeology, theories of performance and the performing arts – in particular theatre, music, folk dance and song. “Wild worship” was linked to the consolidation of collectivities facilitating a wide variety of scienti c and artistic projects whose objectives were all connected to dreams of a future utopia. The cult parodied archaeological ideas and methodologies, but also supported and expanded the development of eld survey, mapping and the interpretation of archaeological distribution maps. The history of the Cult of Kata shows how taking account of the unorthodox and the interdisciplinary, the humorous and the recreational, is important within generously framed approaches to histories of the archaeological imagination. The work of the Kataric Circle is not best understood as the relentless progress of disenchanted modern science. It suggests a more complicated picture in which dynamics of enchantment and disenchantment stimulate and discipline the imagination simultaneously. I conclude with a reexamination of the politics of an emphasis on playfulness and enchantment

    The Mutability of Meaning: Contextualising the Cumbrian coin-tree

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    This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Folklore on 4 April 2014, available online:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.2013.837316.This paper examines the mutability of the ‘meaning’ of folklore, as articulated by Lauri Honko. It aims to illustrate the amorphous and ambiguous nature of customs and traditions by considering the multiple ‘meanings’ ascribed to a contemporary British folkloric custom: the Cumbrian coin-tree.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
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