1997-1998 Bulletin

Volume 108, Number 4. Scanned from the copy held in the Registrar\u27s Office.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/bulletin/1039/thumbnail.jp

Things in Culture, Culture in Things

This volume addresses the dynamics of materiality over time and space. In cross-cultural, multi-temporal and interdisciplinary studies the authors examine how things gain meaning and status, generate a multitude of emotions, and feed into the propagation of myths, narratives and discourses. The book is divided according to four themes: soft objects, stoic stories, consuming and the collectable, and waste and technologies. The first section discusses the meanings of the lived environment on the individual and national levels. The second section provides specific examples on the role of things in identity construction. The third section focuses on historical and contemporary aspects of consumption and collecting. The phenomena under scrutiny in the fourth section are moral dilemmas associated with and representations of dirt/waste and advancements in science and technology. Presenting diverse case studies of material culture, the volume points to rich interdisciplinary approaches in cultural theory

Assuming Data Integrity and Empirical Evidence to The Contrary

Background: Not all respondents to surveys apply their minds or understand the posed questions, and as such provide answers which lack coherence, and this threatens the integrity of the research. Casual inspection and limited research of the 10-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10), included in the dataset of the World Values Survey (WVS), suggested that random responses may be common. Objective: To specify the percentage of cases in the BRI-10 which include incoherent or contradictory responses and to test the extent to which the removal of these cases will improve the quality of the dataset. Method: The WVS data on the BFI-10, measuring the Big Five Personality (B5P), in South Africa (N=3 531), was used. Incoherent or contradictory responses were removed. Then the cases from the cleaned-up dataset were analysed for their theoretical validity. Results: Only 1 612 (45.7%) cases were identified as not including incoherent or contradictory responses. The cleaned-up data did not mirror the B5P- structure, as was envisaged. The test for common method bias was negative. Conclusion: In most cases the responses were incoherent. Cleaning up the data did not improve the psychometric properties of the BFI-10. This raises concerns about the quality of the WVS data, the BFI-10, and the universality of B5P-theory. Given these results, it would be unwise to use the BFI-10 in South Africa. Researchers are alerted to do a proper assessment of the psychometric properties of instruments before they use it, particularly in a cross-cultural setting

The architecture of cultural enterprise: a study of design reflexivity in action

The cultural industries have an increasingly important role to play in policies addressing the UK's present and future economic competitiveness. Researching how entrepreneurial activity leads to the creation and maintenance of cultural enterprises is central to understanding the value added by such organisations. The present research contributes to our understanding of these important issues. An ethnographic approach, which is defined here as a set of methods for conducting field work (e.g., participant observation and semi-structured interviews) and a methodology for textual representations of social activity, is adopted to explore design thinking in action. The study aims at developing existing analyses which claim that contemporary production is becoming more design intensive and therefore reliant upon individuals and organisations supplying knowledge about design. This heightened awareness about the value of design for business is defined as design reflexivity, although the term is not used to indicate an epochal shift in capitalist production. Instead, design thinking is represented as central to the modem institutionalisation of knowledge. By adopting the concept of identity work, the research addresses the importance of the role of the cultural entrepreneur to the contemporary organisation of work. Empirical material, comprised of interview transcripts and field notes, is examined to understand how research participants engaged with the role of owner-founder of a design business. By 'limiting' the research to individuals located in an inner-city area and the design sub-field of the cultural industries, the research presents localised interpretations of the typical process of cultural enterprise. The metaphor of architecture is adopted to describe the act of arranging the voices of research participants through the application of an analytical model comprised of three phases. This phased analysis is not over-privileged above the participants' accounts, but to organise empirical materials which show how research participants accounted for their engagement with contemporary role of the designer (articulation); the limitations and opportunities of place and time (emplacement) and the accumulation of economic wealth comprised of tangible and intangible property (entanglement). The research connects the research participant's entrepreneurial organisation of design reflexivity together with analyses of the centrality of reflexive knowledge to study one area of knowledge intensive contemporary production

The architecture of cultural enterprise: a study of design reflexivity in action

The cultural industries have an increasingly important role to play in policies addressing the UK's present and future economic competitiveness. Researching how entrepreneurial activity leads to the creation and maintenance of cultural enterprises is central to understanding the value added by such organisations. The present research contributes to our understanding of these important issues. An ethnographic approach, which is defined here as a set of methods for conducting field work (e.g., participant observation and semi-structured interviews) and a methodology for textual representations of social activity, is adopted to explore design thinking in action. The study aims at developing existing analyses which claim that contemporary production is becoming more design intensive and therefore reliant upon individuals and organisations supplying knowledge about design. This heightened awareness about the value of design for business is defined as design reflexivity, although the term is not used to indicate an epochal shift in capitalist production. Instead, design thinking is represented as central to the modem institutionalisation of knowledge. By adopting the concept of identity work, the research addresses the importance of the role of the cultural entrepreneur to the contemporary organisation of work. Empirical material, comprised of interview transcripts and field notes, is examined to understand how research participants engaged with the role of owner-founder of a design business. By 'limiting' the research to individuals located in an inner-city area and the design sub-field of the cultural industries, the research presents localised interpretations of the typical process of cultural enterprise. The metaphor of architecture is adopted to describe the act of arranging the voices of research participants through the application of an analytical model comprised of three phases. This phased analysis is not over-privileged above the participants' accounts, but to organise empirical materials which show how research participants accounted for their engagement with contemporary role of the designer (articulation); the limitations and opportunities of place and time (emplacement) and the accumulation of economic wealth comprised of tangible and intangible property (entanglement). The research connects the research participant's entrepreneurial organisation of design reflexivity together with analyses of the centrality of reflexive knowledge to study one area of knowledge intensive contemporary production