Beauty and Esthetics. Meanings of an Idea and Concept of the Senses. An Introduction to an Esthetic Communication Concept Facing the Perspectives Of Its Theory, History, and Cultural Traditions of the Beautiful.

When we ask for the definitions and forms of esthetics from a post-modern perspective, we must take into account that the perspective today is a re-constructive one allowing us to trace back historically, but also allowing various forms of research such as empirical research, or quantitative and qualitative research. This book is devided into chapters. Each of them has a different approach towards esthetics according to the definition of esthetics as a theoretical field, esthetics as a phenomenon of beauty, and esthetics as a specific phenomenon in a certain cultural context. We will focus on the contemporary state of research regarding esthetics from branches of the humanities and natural sciences. Our interest here is to join the classical theoretical terminology of esthetics derived from the humanities with contemporary concepts of research also not related to the humanities

What Constitutes the Success or Failure of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in Foreign Markets? A Case Study of Chinese and American MNCs

Scholars have identified multinational corporations (MNCs) as increasingly important and influential actors in international politics. However, mainstream international studies scholarship has failed to explain why MNCs succeed or fail in entering foreign markets. Market entry is a particularly vexing question for U.S. and Chinese firms seeking to compete for each other\u27s consumers. As this study shows, surprising differences in success among U.S. firms in China, as well as Chinese firms in the U.S., suggest that statist and market factors interact with corporate strategies in confounding ways. Through case studies in the internet, automobile and fast food industries, this dissertation builds a theoretical framework that better explains why some MNCs succeed in foreign markets while others fail. Empirical studies show that two contrasting cultures (universalism vs. particularism, individualism vs. collectivism, and rule-based vs. relation-based governance) make it more difficult for Chinese MNCs and American MNCs to adapt to their counterpart\u27s market. Although the study finds some support for the cultural dissimilarity argument, it finds that culture alone is an insufficient explanation. The results suggest that statist and market factors like ownership, sector industry, interest groups, entry mode and choice of location are also determinants of a MNC\u27s success in a foreign market. Based on those findings, the study provides suggestions for both Chinese MNCs and American MNCs seeking to compete in each other\u27s markets

Antisemitic Memes and Naïve Teens: Qualitative and Quantitative Impacts of the Internet on Antisemitism, the Evolution of Antisemitism 2.0, and Developing Adaptable Research Methodologies into Online Hate, Abuse, and Misinformation

This thesis posits that the advent of the internet has resulted in qualitative and quantitative changes to antisemitism, particularly in the period since web 2.0. Comparing online antisemitism with other forms of online abuse, this thesis demonstrates limits in the research on broader manifestations of online discrimination due to inconsistent methodologies and quantities of research. A key consideration is how online antisemitism both differs and intersects with broader manifestations, including cyberbullying, cyber-racism, and abusive conspiracy movements. Through consideration of these intersections, the broader history of antisemitism, and the functions of internet technology, profiles of major online sources for antisemitism are presented. Beyond illustrating how the internet has changed antisemitism alongside other manifestations of abuse and discrimination, this thesis also develops and tests a research model that can be adapted to different fields and disciplines. Simulated online conversations between young adults and a Holocaust denier evaluate how effective young adult web users are at recognising, researching, responding to and refuting antisemitism online, and what tools can be designed to assist them. Antisemitism has undergone significant qualitative and quantitative change due to the internet and now reaches more young people who are ill-equipped to resist its online manifestations. While expertise in the specific nature of antisemitism is needed to tackle this problem, the response can involve adaptable methodologies of benefit to the study of online hate more broadly. There is benefit in collaboration across researchers, fields, and disciplines to provide holistic explanations and solutions to some common aspects of online hate, abuse, and misinformation

Pursuing Taiwanese-ness: the contemporary music practices of Taitung indigenous people

This research is an ethnography exploring the contemporary music practices of the indigenous people of Taitung, a southeastern county in Taiwan. Indigenous people make up a large proportion of the population of Taitung, and their music has in recent years been used in international and local events to potray a unique Taiwanese identity. I discuss how indigenous and other Taiwanese have collaborated to create this identity - the Taiwanese-ness - and how they have done so with tangled webs of concerns for authenticity, hybridisation and Otherness. I examine two opposite approaches in heredity and maintenance of the tradition: first, sticking to locality, and therefore passing down the tradition in a functional way; second, endorsing and appropriating transnational pop practices in order to garner commercial success. I argue that living experience - the familiarity to a musical culture which Mantle Hood (1982) considered the way that enabled ethnic groups to understand and evaluate their own musical traditions - is essential and irreplaceable. Hence, affiliation to a homeland, as depicted through notions of mountain and sea, becomes a key element in the self-identity of musicians as 'indigenous' (yuanzhumin in Mandarin, meaning 'original inhabitants'), and that the homeland, as the place of ancestors, allows indigenous groups to safeguard their traditions. However, indigenous Taiwanese are comfortable with and uphold a shared culture that was brought to the island by Han migrants, and this is evident in the influences of trans-cultural commercial and global Mandopop. Musicians tend to apply elements of their traditions such as indigenous languages, pentatonicism, ancient songs, specific rhythms and the incorporation of non-lexical vocables, wherever they can, using a bricolage approach. At the same time, musicians enrich the music culture, keeping tradition alive by adding to it in reciprocal ways elements from the outside, but also introducing the po­tential for cultural 'grey-out' as elements of traditional music are altered. Keywords: Taitung, indigenous people, music practices, mountain and sea, Taiwanese-ness

Strengthening Christian perspectives on human dignity and human rights : perspectives from an international consultative process

Given renewed conflicts and widening divisions, and with human rights having all too frequently been misused for political purposes or applied unequally, international human rights law—and its foundational principles—has come under increasing attack. At the same time, different perspectives on the relationship between Christian ethics and international human rights law have become increasingly evident in the ecumenical movement. The World Council of Churches, together with the Protestant Church in Germany and the United Evangelical Mission, recognized the need for a process of ecumenical study and reflection on the relationship between human dignity and human rights from biblical, theological, and victims’ perspectives. This two-year process culminated in a Conference on Christian Perspectives on Human Dignity and Humans Rights held in Wuppertal (Germany) and online from 9–12 April 2022. The rich contributions of papers received from theologians, people with different academic backgrounds, experts in ethics and human rights, and human rights defenders—together with the joint message of the participants of the Wuppertal Conference—are made available in this publication

Self-Translation as Method: Modern Sinophone Self-Translators and their Transmediated Afterlives

How do Kenneth Pai, Eileen Chang, Ha Jin, and Regina Kanyu Wang reinvent language and culture in the process of transcreating their own source texts? In this dissertation, I investigate the cultural politics and defamiliarizing aesthetics of (self-) translation and transmediation, two literary and transmedial phenomena that underpin intercultural communication worldwide. This project interrogates the ways in which our hypermediated world is constantly re-mediated and re-circulated in orality, film, theater, television, music, and digital media. I use self-translation and (self-)transmediation as tools for re-examining hybrid identity construction in the context of Sinophone creators who navigate between multiple languages, media, and cultures. This project analyzes (self-) translated texts, their transmediated iterations, and the politics of those texts’ circulation beyond their immediate discourse communities. My project is the first to examine longitudinal case studies of multicultural Sinophone writers who practice self-translation, transwriting, and transmediation as organic forms of artistic transcreation. I posit self-translation and transmediation as reparative forces that fuel self-reflection, trauma reconciliation, and intercultural dialogue worldwide. By situating the practice of self-translation within the circumstances of diasporic subjectivity, this project lends textually situated historicization to Sinophone interventions. By examining the ways in which the émigré Sinophone authors Kenneth Pai (Pai Hsien-yung 白先勇, b. 1937), Ha Jin (哈金, pen name for Xuefei Jin 金雪飞, b. 1956), Eileen Chang (张爱玲, b. 1920), and Regina Kanyu Wang (王侃瑜, b. 1990) defamiliarize their own texts and memories through reader-enabled catharsis, I envision self-translation as a trauma reconciliation technology that (re-)inscribes national trauma narratives under individual affective structures, and vice-versa. These authors’ creative processes of self-transmediation, spanning multiple decades, languages, genres, and mediums, reveal self-translation as a hermeneutic process of cultural transcreation that posit source and translated text as a pair of mutually refracting mirrors.Displaced geographically, temporally, and linguistically from their source material, self-translators are uniquely positioned to ferry meanings across diverse languages, mediums, and cultural contexts. I reconceptualize Sinophone literature as encompassing Chinese (Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, and so forth) and Chinglish renderings in oral, written, translated, and transmedial forms, thus positing the Sinophone as a translingual epistemology that rewrites Chineseness from the margins. I propose the Shadow Sinophone framework as encompassing hybrid, multilingual, and transmedial literature, especially countercanonical literature deliberately created in a subversive, deviant, queer, and jarring style. The works I examine democratize language and culture by creating a liminal “transwriting zone” bridging heterogeneous cultures and temporalities. Ultimately, Sinophone self-translators and transcreators enrich and challenge the literary canon from the periphery, forging transwriting zones that intervene in the monoliths of homogenized English and Mandarin globalese

The Music Sound

A guide for music: compositions, events, forms, genres, groups, history, industry, instruments, language, live music, musicians, songs, musicology, techniques, terminology , theory, music video. Music is a human activity which involves structured and audible sounds, which is used for artistic or aesthetic, entertainment, or ceremonial purposes. The traditional or classical European aspects of music often listed are those elements given primacy in European-influenced classical music: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color/timbre, and form. A more comprehensive list is given by stating the aspects of sound: pitch, timbre, loudness, and duration. Common terms used to discuss particular pieces include melody, which is a succession of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord, which is a simultaneity of notes heard as some sort of unit; chord progression, which is a succession of chords (simultaneity succession); harmony, which is the relationship between two or more pitches; counterpoint, which is the simultaneity and organization of different melodies; and rhythm, which is the organization of the durational aspects of music

Cascades of Violence

War and crime are cascade phenomena. War cascades across space and time to more war; crime to more crime; crime cascades to war; and war to crime. As a result, war and crime become complex phenomena. That does not mean we cannot understand how to prevent crime and war simultaneously. This book shows, for example, how a cascade analysis leads to an understanding of how refugee camps are nodes of both targeted attack and targeted recruitment into violence. Hence, humanitarian prevention also must target such nodes of risk. This book shows how nonviolence and nondomination can also be made to cascade, shunting cascades of violence into reverse. Complexity theory implies a conclusion that the pursuit of strategies for preventing crime and war is less important than understanding meta strategies. These are meta strategies for how to sequence and escalate many redundant prevention strategies. These themes were explored across seven South Asian societies during eight years of fieldwork