Indigenous African Leadership: Key differences from Anglo-centric thinking and writings

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article draws on historical explorers’ accounts, ethnography and organisational approaches to examine practices, discourses and perceptions of leadership in 12 prototypical indigenous communities in West and Central Africa. By so doing, it highlights how leadership meanings from this context differ from Anglo-centric thinking and writings. Key to this contribution is an unravelling of ways in which historical cultural hegemonies impose particular discursive formations, constructed practices and mind-programming in a non-Anglo-Saxon socio-cultural context. Dramaturgical power arrangement, lucid role substitution and the notion of leadership as nonhuman emerge as dominant themes in the analysis. Also, featuring significantly are representations of leadership in symbols, mythology and as transcendental and metaphysical. These conceptualisations are different from predominant Anglo-Saxon writings that frequently present leadership as linear hierarchies, dyadic (leader-follower) relationship, acts and behaviours of heroic figures and as an essentially human action. An Afro-centric indigenous concept of leadership reflecting the context is proposed which challenges heroism, linearity, individualism and objectivism

Data-Driven Accountability: Examining and Reorienting the Mythologies of Data

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)In this work, I examine and design sociotechnical interventions for addressing limitations around data-driven accountability, particularly focusing on politically contentious and systemic social issues (i.e., police accountability). While organizations across sectors of society are scrambling to adopt data-driven technologies and practices, there are epistemological and ethical concerns around how data use influences decisionmaking and actionability. My work explores how stakeholders adopt and handle the challenges around being data-driven, advocating for ways HCI can mitigate such challenges. In this dissertation, I highlight three case studies that focus on data-driven, human-services organizations, which work with at-risk and marginalized populations. First, I examine the tools and practices of nonprofit workers and how they experience the mythologies associated with data use in their work. Second, I investigate how police officers are adopting data-driven technologies and practices, which highlights the challenges police contend with in addressing social criticisms around police accountability and marginalization. Finally, I conducted a case study with multiple stakeholders around police accountability to understand how systemic biases and politically charged spaces perceive and utilize data, as well as to develop the design space around how alternative futures of being data-driven could support more robust and inclusive accountability. I examine how participants situate the concepts of power, bias, and truth in the data-driven practices and technologies used by and around the police. With this empirical work, I present insights that inform the HCI community at the intersection of data design, practice, and policies in addressing systemic social issues

The Metanarratives of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Collective Cognitive Dissonance of Metamodernist Discursive Formation

My artworks explore the impacts of the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which began in the early 21st Century, upon global society and the human psyche. My works are instantiated by multi-year research in the areas of social psychology, cognitive dissonance, computer evolution and artificial intelligence. My body of work portrays a cautionary sensibility regards new technologies such as robotics, quantum supercomputing, Artificial Intelligence, commercial space travel and nanotechnology. In addition, my artwork attempts to increase awareness of the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. The perceptions and cognitions of artistic viewers relate directly to the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. Beyond that, a population over several generations may be influenced by the fine artworks of their social moment in a social psychology phenomenon known as collective cognitive dissonance. In this paper, I will review these two cognitive phenomena and how the phenomenon of collective cognitive dissonance is ubiquitous in the current social moment of the early 21st century and in metamodern artworks. After reviewing the historical examples of USSR and Nazi Germany socialist realism, I will focus on what is now called the metamodern era. I use arguments from past and current examples to show how this phenomenon of collective cognitive dissonance is made active in fine artworks. I believe intentional and unintentional ubiquitous metanarratives, as portrayed in artworks, capture the worldviews of large subpopulations (beyond nation-states) within the internetworked globalized nanotechnology community we inhabit

Louvre Museum - Paintings

The Louvre Museum is the largest of the world's art museums by its exhibition surface. These represent the Western art of the Middle Ages in 1848, those of the ancient civilizations that preceded and influenced it (Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman), and the arts of early Christians and Islam. At the origin of the Louvre existed a castle, built by King Philip Augustus in 1190, and occupying the southwest quarter of the current Cour Carrée. In 1594, Henri IV decided to unite the palace of the Louvre with the palace of the Tuileries built by Catherine de Medicis. The Cour Carrée was built by the architects Lemercier and then Le Vau, under the reign of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The Department of Paintings currently has about 7,500 paintings (of which 3,400 are exposed), covering a period that goes from the Middle Ages to 1848 (date of the beginning of the Second Republic). By including the deposits, the collection is, with 12,660 works, the largest collection of ancient paintings in the world. With rare exceptions, the works after 1848 were transferred to the Musée d'Orsay when it was created in 1986. CONTENTS: Louvre Museum - Variety of exhibited works - The Royal Palace - The collections - - Eastern antiquities - - Arts of Islam - - Egyptian Antiquities - - Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - - Paintings - - - French school - - - Northern Schools (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany) - - - Italian School - - - Other schools Painting - Definitions - Painting genres - - The landscape - - Still life Paintings - FRANCOIS BOUCHER - - Vulcan presenting arms to Venus for Aeneas - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione - RUBENS - - Helena Fourment with children - LOUIS DAVID - - Madame Récamier - REMBRANDT - - Portrait of Heindrickje Stoffels - VELAZQUEZ - - Portrait of the Infanta Margarita - SIMONE MEMMI - - Jesus Christ walking on Calvary - JAN STEEN - - The Bad Company - HANS HOLBEIN - - Erasmus - CORREGGIO - - Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine - LANCRET - - Conversation - JAN VAN DER MEER (VERMEER) - - The Lacemaker - VAN DYCK - - Charles I at the Hunt - FRANÇOIS CLOUET - - Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592), Wife of Charles IX and Queen of France (1570 - 1574) - DELACROIX - - The Barque of Dante - EL GRECO - - Saint Louis, King of France, and a page - REMBRANDT - - Pilgrims at Emmaus (The Supper at Emmaus) - GERARD DAVID - - Marriage at Cana - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Dona Isabel de Requesens, Vice-Queen of Naples - RUBENS - - La Kermesse (The Village Fête, or Noce de village) - FRANS HALS - - The Gypsy Girl - DECAMPS - - The Sonneurs - HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER - - Anne of Cleves - P. PRUD’HON - - Psyche transported to Heaven - PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE - - Portrait of Richelieu - LANCRET - - The Autumn - L. DAVID - - Madame Seriziat - COROT - - Recollection of Mortefontaine - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - La belle ferronnière - CORREGGIO - - Venus and Cupid with a Satyr - WATTEAU - - Pilgrimage to Cythera (The Embarkation for Cythera) - NICOLAS POUSSIN - - The Inspiration of the Poet - PRUD’HON - - The Empress Josephine (1763-1814) - FRAGONARD - - The Bathers - H. RIGAUD - - Louis XIV (1638–1715) - TERBURG - - The Concert - LEOPOLD ROBERT - - The Pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Arch - LARGILLIERE - - Family Portrait - MANTEGNA - - Parnassus - MEMLING - - The Virgin and Child between St James and St Dominic - FRAGONARD - - The Music Lesson - JEAN VAN EYCK - - The Virgin of chancellor Rolin - PAOLO VERONESE - - Susannah and the Elders - FRANÇOIS BOUCHER - - Diana leaving her bath - GÉRICAULT - - The Raft of the Medusa - MURILLO - - Assumption of the Virgin - CLAUDE GELLEE (LORRAIN) - - Ulysses returning Chryseis to her father (Marine, setting sun) - INGRES - - Madame Riviere - E. MURILLO - - The Young Beggar - GREUZE - - The Broken Pitcher - PIETER DE HOOCH - - Card players in an opulent interior - POUSSIN - - Et in Arcadia ego - QUENTIN MATSYS - - The moneylender and his wife - ANDREA SOLARIO - - Madonna with the Green Cushion - TITIEN - - Woman with a Mirror - DAVID TENIERS (the Younger) - - The Works of Mercy - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) - Armand Dayo

African Art: What and to Whom? Anxieties, Certainties, Mythologies

It has taken nearly a whole century to publish two books on African art that recognize the continent as a complex cultural unit within which there is diversity, A History of Art in Africa (Blackmun Visona, M et al, 2001) and Africa, The Art of a Continent (Phillips, T. 1995). Why it taken so long far North and East Africa past and present to be included in texts labeled African art? Why were they not recognized as African? India, also a place of diversity of race and ethnicity, has not similarly treated. The assumptions underlying the norms a representation of Africa were deeply rooted, their influence scholarship related to African art and culture was profound and, even if attenuated at present, persistent. They have impacted on the organization of information related to Africa, influencing from cataloging, the content of texts and videos, to museum layout exhibitions. Only by becoming conscious of the pervasive power of this hidden curriculum can we take steps to counter its influence. Those underlying assumptions are symptomatic of European fear5aJlII desires related to African identity

Looking For Black Religions In 20th Century Comics: 1931-1993

Relationships between religion and comics are generally unexplored in the academic literature. This article provides a brief history of Black religions in comic books, cartoons, animation, and newspaper strips, looking at African American Christianity, Islam, Africana (African diaspora) religions, and folk traditions such as Hoodoo and Conjure in the 20th century. Even though the treatment of Black religions in the comics was informed by stereotypical depictions of race and religion in United States (US) popular culture, African American comics creators contested these by offering alternatives in their treatment of Black religion themes

Online mythology content platform: Mythos Zone

The dissertation being presented here has the format of a business plan and analyses the feasibility of the formation of a new product company. The company is called Mythos Zone and its goal is to become the world leader in the niche segment of online mythology content, by providing a comprehensive platform that encompasses easy to understand online content, not only in different formats but in as many online platforms as well. In this study, different aspects of the business were carefully analyzed and reviewed, from the business opportunity, micro and macro environment analysis, industry characterization, market potential, internal capabilities and the analysis of the competitive scene in the space. All of these assessments allow then the elaboration of an establishment strategy for the brand Mythos Zone, which encompasses not only the overall company strategy and organizational structure, but also the creation of specific marketing activities to drive the brand’s value in the eyes of its consumers, ultimately allowing for their conversion into ecommerce customers. Taking into account all of the strategy that was developed, a financial analysis is then performed considering the expected growth of the brand during a period of six years, which allowed to conclude that Mythos Zone is a financially viable project to be started in the provided period of time.A dissertação apresentada aqui segue o formato de um plano de negócios e analisa a viabilidade de formação de uma nova empresa de produtos. A empresa terá o nome de Mythos Zone e o seu objetivo é tornar-se o líder mundial no segmento de nicho de conteúdo online sobre mitologia, ao disponibilizar uma plataforma compreensiva que engloba conteúdo online de fácil compreensão, não apenas em diferentes formatos, mas também no maior número de plataformas online possível. Neste estudo, diferentes aspetos do negócio foram cautelosamente analisados e revistos, desde a oportunidade de negócio, os meios envolventes transacional e contextual, a caracterização da indústria, o potencial de mercado, as capacidades internas e a análise do espaço competitivo do mercado. Todas estas estas análises permitem então a elaboração de uma estratégia de estabelecimento da marca Mythos Zone, que inclui não apenas a estratégia geral da empresa e estrutura organizacional, mas também a criação de atividades de marketing específicas para elevar o valor da marca nos olhos dos consumidores, por fim permitindo a sua conversão para clientes de comércio digital. Tendo em conta toda a estratégia desenvolvida, de seguida procedeu-se ao desenvolvimento de uma análise financeira, considerando um crescimento esperado da marca durante um período de seis anos, que permitiu então concluir que Mythos Zone é um projeto financeiramente viável a ser desenvolvido durante o período demonstrado