15 research outputs found
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Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing) conceptual boundaries
Consumer acculturation theorists have developed an insightful body of literature about the ways in which migrants adapt to foreign cultures via consumption. The present paper revisits 14 key studies from this field to highlight its most important contributions, critique its conceptual boundaries, and present cases of conceptual border crossings that indicate an emerging need for a broader conceptualization of the phenomenon. The paper closes by introducing a model that frames consumer acculturation as a complex system of recursive socio-cultural adaptation, and discusses its implications for future research
An analysis of material consumption culture in the Muslim world
In this paper, we examine the notion of material consumption culture in Islamic societies. We differentiate between institutionalised religion and religion as culture. We contest the Orientalist portrayal of Islam as a fanatic ideology opposed to Western Modernityâs features of secularism, individualism, and pluralism. With reference to the Qurâanic text, we discuss that such qualities are embedded with Islam. We do not interpret the Qurâan from a theological perspective; rather, we seek to demonstrate the possibilities of its multiple interpretations. We argue that, in their everyday life consumption practices, Muslims (re)interpret religious guidelines in different ways and refer to Islam, as a transcendental set of guidelines, to make better sense of their cultural practices in different ways. We summarise our discussion by highlighting the importance of analysing the culture of consumption from the lens of insiders and offer directions for future research
Against the epistemicide. : Itinerant curriculum theory and the reiteration of an epistemology of liberation
Echoing Ettore Scola metaphor âBruti, Sporchi & Cativiâ, this chapter challenges how hegemonic and specific (or so called) counter hegemonic curriculum platforms â so connected with Western Eurocentric Modernity â have been able to colonize the field without any prudency to âfabricateâ and impose a classed, raced and gendered philosophy of praxis, as unique, that drives the field to an ideological surrealism and collective suicide. Such collective suicide framed by a theoretical timesharing unleashed by both dominant and specific counter dominant platforms that tenaciously controlled the circuits of cultural production grooms the field as a ghetto, flooded with rudeness, and miserable ambitions, a theoretical caliphate that wipes out any episteme beyond the Western Eurocentric Modern terrain, insolently droving to sewage of society the needs and desires of students, teachers and the community. Drawing from key decolonial thinkers, this chapter examines the way Western eugenic curriculum of modernity created an abyssal thinking in which âthis sideâ of the line is legitimate and âthe other sideâ has been produced as ânon-existentâ (Sousa Santos B, Another knowledge is possible. Verso, London, 2007). The paper suggests the need to move a post-abyssal curriculum that challenges dominant and counter dominant traditions within âthis sideâ of the line, and respects âthe otherâ side of the line. The paper challenges curriculum studies to assume a non-abyssal position one that respects epistemological diversity. This requires an Itinerant Curriculum Theory (Paraskeva JM, Conflicts in curriculum theory: Challenging hegemonic epistemologies. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011), which is a commitment and a ruthless epistemological critique of every existing epistemology
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âTrauma workâ as hindrance to political praxis during democratisation movements
AbstractThis paper examines the impact of a shift in focus from political praxis to trauma work in the context of a failed democratisation movement. It investigates the various phenomena which emerge when intellectuals, under the traumatic impact of violence and atrocities, place trauma narration at the core of their interventions. Drawing on document analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with twenty nine exiled Syrian intellectuals in Paris and Berlin who had participated in the revolutionary movement of 2011, the paper suggests that an inversion of the normative power structures pertaining to how intellectuals relate to their publics occurs when they adopt, under conditions of extreme violence and trauma, what we call a radically embedded positionality vis-Ă -vis âthe peopleâ. This results in the dismantling of previous figurations of the âmilitant intellectualâ along with praxis-focused notions of the âresponsibility of intellectualsâ, ultimately undermining their ideational influence upon domestic publics and weakening their political impact and critical role within a revolutionary movement.</jats:p
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Correction to: Authorial Power, Authoritarianism, and Exiled Intellectuals: Syria and Turkey (International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, (2024), 37, 1, (1-27), 10.1007/s10767-023-09455-0)
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Authorial Power, Authoritarianism, and Exiled Intellectuals: Syria and Turkey
Acknowledgements: We wish to acknowledge the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for funding the Turkish research outlined in this paper (ESRC number ES/T015519/1).AbstractHow does a crisis of the state and its âemergency politicsâ lead to a crisis of the intellectual, or what does it mean to be an intellectual in our contemporary conjuncture beyond Western clichĂ©s and the universalistic bias of their declinist arguments? In responding to these questions, we draw upon data collected from Turkish and Syrian academics living in exile to argue that the critical commitments exiled intellectuals presume are under threat as rising authoritarianisms take hold globally and advanced neo-liberal practices tighten their grip on universities. The promise of Saidâs figuration of the âintellectual in exileâ and its political potential is also under threat as displaced scholars navigate democratic backsliding and structural precarity in the contemporary university and in the nation-states to which they have found themselves tied, eroding even further the conceptual idea of the critical intellectual and the potential power of the âpost-colonial intellectualâ. In our research, this crisis of the intellectual is recounted by exilics paradoxically in both the autocratic and the ânominally democraticâ higher education (HE) context where in some cases the very idea of the intellectual can represent, at least in part, a banal political figuration epitomised in what Nancy Fraser refers to as progressive neo-liberalism. This is largely so because both authoritarian and nominally democratic states, whilst different in political charge, are simultaneously invoking âstates of emergencyâ and culture wars that are eroding their own intellectual constituenciesâ ability to disturb existing institutional norms and the taken for granted problems that emerge in everyday HE practices.</jats:p
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Cultural trauma and the politics of access to higher education in Syria
This paper takes interest in the relationship between the politics of HE access pertaining to longstanding practices of patrimonial authoritarian politics and between the narration of collective trauma. Building on an empirical study of Syrian HE during war, we suggest that a narrative disjuncture within HEIs has a damaging impact not only upon the educational process, HE reconstruction and reform but also upon the very possibility of social reconciliation. This is especially true when access to education and post-graduation opportunities are directly linked with patrimonial favouritism; widespread social inequalities in access and retention; a violent turn in the purging of oppositional academics; a severely exacerbated brain drain linked to political views; and significantly sparser employment opportunities. Building on the study findings we show how these challenges are linked to ethico-political positioning vis-Ă -vis the mass movement of 2011 and related cultural trauma narratives. In closing we suggest that understanding the relationship between HE access and cultural trauma, and the mechanisms of power and narrative reproduction resultant from the politicisation of HE access in such contexts, can inform decision-making on HE reconstruction and future reform, as well as further research on HE under dictatorship and conflict, in important ways.British Council and SOROS foundation to Council for At Risk Academic