Legacies of Cultural Philanthropy in Asia

During the second half of the 20th century the Ford Foundation - at the time the world's largest private philanthropy - made a significant commitment to issues of cultural heritage as part of its international work in Asia. Across countries in South and Southeast Asia, in particular, foundation grants were made to governments, private institutions, and individuals engaged in a wide range of fields in the arts, humanities, and applied sciences such as archaeology. The Foundation's culture programs embraced tangible heritage as well as a range of living traditions and cultural expression. Such rubrics served as important labels locating culture within the broad portfolio of the Foundation's grant-making, as well as touchstones employed to justify philanthropy's attention to culture in contrast to the dominant emphasis of international aid on economic development and modernization. This paper will look at how one of the world's most important international philanthropies built a rationale for activism in cultural fields in Asia, how a decentralized format for local decision-making enabled sustained support for building capacity and knowledge in the arts and humanities, and, ultimately, how the 'culture lens' has gradually been displaced– or perhaps redefined - in the Foundation’s current international work

Linking Higher Education and Social Change

More than four thousand stories could be told about the remarkable individuals who received fellowships under the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) between 2001 and 2010. Over the decade, the program enabled 4,314 emerging social justice leaders from Asia, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America to pursue advanced degrees at more than 600 universities in almost 50 countries. By April 2013, nearly 4,000 Fellows had completed their fellowships, receiving degrees in development-related fields ranging from social and environmental science to the arts. A survey done in early 2012 showed that 82 percent of more than 3,300 former Fellows were working in their home countries to improve the lives and livelihoods of those around them, while many of the rest were studying for additional advanced degrees or working in international organizations. The final group of Fellows enrolled in universities around the world will complete their fellowships by the end of 2013.In 2001, the Ford Foundation funded IFP with a $280 million grant, the largest single donation in the Foundation's history. The program was intended to provide graduate fellowships to individuals in countries outside the United States where the Foundation had grant-making programs. In 2006, the Foundation pledged up to$75 million in additional funds, allowing IFP to award more than 800 fellowships beyond its original projections. As extraordinary as the level and duration of funding, though, was IFP's singular premise: that extending higher education opportunities to leaders from marginalized communities would help further social justice in some of the world's poorest and most unequal countries. If successful, IFP would advance the Ford Foundation's mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement. It would decisively demonstrate that an international scholarship program could help build leadership for social justice and thus contribute to broader social change.In striving toward its ambitious goals, the program would transform a traditional mechanism -- an individual fellowship program for graduate degree study -- into a powerful tool for reversing discrimination and reducing long-standing inequalities in higher education and in societies at large. This report is the story of that transformation

Where Dead Language Lives: The Case of the Balinese Shadow Theater

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Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature

The oldest and most extensive written language of Southeast Asia is Old Javanese, or Kawi. It is the oldest language in terms of written records, and the most extensive in the number and variety of its texts. Javanese literature has taken many forms. At various times, prose stories, sung poetry or other metrical types, chronicles, scientific, legal, and philosophical treatises, prayers, chants, songs, and folklore were all written down. Yet relatively few texts are available in English. The unstudied texts remaining are an unexplored record of Javanese culture as well as a language still alive as a literary medium in Bali. Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature represents a first step toward remedying the dearth of Old Javanese texts available to English-speaking students. The ideal teaching companion, this anthology offers transliterated original texts with facing-page English translations. Theanthology focuses on prose selections, since their straightforward style and syntax offer the beginning student the most rewarding experience. Four sections make up the collection. Part I offers several short readings as the most accessible entry point into Old Javanese. Part II contains two moralistic fables from an Old Javanese retelling of the Hindu Pañcatantra cycle. Part III takes up the epic, providing excerpts from one of the books of the Old Javanese retelling of the Mahabharata. Part IV offers excerpts from two chronicles, the generic conventions of which challenge received notions of history writing because of their supernaturalism and folkloric elements. Includes introduction, glossary, and notes

Recognition of Audified Data in Untrained Listeners

Presented at the 18th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2012) on June 18-21, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia.Reprinted by permission of the International Community for Auditory Display, http://www.icad.org.The effective navigation and analysis of large data sets is a persistent challenge within the scientific community. The objective of this experiment was to determine whether participants who received no training were able to identify audified data sets at a rate above chance in a forced-choice listening task. Nineteen participants with various levels of musical and scientific expertise were asked to place audio examples into one of the five following categories: Digitally Generated Sound - White Noise, Solar Wind Data, Neuron Firing Data from a Human Brain, Seismic Data (Earthquake Activity), and Digitally Generated Sound - Sinusoidal Waveform. At no time were participants made aware of the accuracy of their responses during the experiment. Participants who had never been exposed to audified data sets were able to recognize audification examples at a rate that was 23 percentage points above chance performance; however, the sample size of individuals with no previous exposure to audified data was not large enough to determine statistical significance. When controlling for previous exposure to any of the provided listening examples, all participants performed well above the statistical likelihood of chance responses in the recognition of digitally generated white noise and sinusoidal waveforms. This indicates that participants with no previous exposure to audified data were able to discriminate between audified data and digitally generated sounds.NASA Jenkins Pre-doctoral Fellowship Projec

Legacies of Cultural Philanthropy in Asia

During the second half of the 20th century the Ford Foundation – at the time the world’s largest private philanthropy – made a significant commitment to issues of cultural heritage as part of its international work in Asia. Across countries in South and Southeast Asia, in particular, foundation grants were made to governments, private institutions, and individuals engaged in a wide range of fields in the arts, humanities, and applied sciences such as archaeology. The Foundation’s culture programs embraced tangible heritage as well as a range of living traditions and cultural expression. Such rubrics served as important labels locating culture within the broad portfolio of the Foundation’s grant-making, as well as touchstones employed to justify philanthropy’s attention to culture in contrast to the dominant emphasis of international aid on economic development and modernization. This paper will look at how one of the world’s most important international philanthropies built a rationale for activism in cultural fields in Asia, how a decentralized format for local decision-making enabled sustained support for building capacity and knowledge in the arts and humanities, and, ultimately, how the ‘culture lens’ has gradually been displaced– or perhaps redefined – in the Foundation’s current international work

The Shadow Theater of Bali: Explorations in Language and Text.

This study explores the Balinese verbal art of the shadow theater against a background of cultural beliefs and behavior regarding both sounded and written language. Its aim is to clarify the linguistic and textual features of wayang parwa within the context of Bali's particular "noetic economy"--that is, the ways in which culturally-valued information is processed and communicated. Part I of the thesis considers several aspects of languages and literatures in Bali. In Chapter One both diachronic influences and synchronic patterns of multiple code usage are discussed, as well as ideas from the realms of linguistic and literary studies. Chapter Two raises the question of the meanings of language in Bali. The place of both inscribed and sounded language on the cosmological map associates linguistic form and language activity with other fundamental elements in the conceptual system. Language forms and behavior have non-trivial consequences in both esoteric and social realms. Chapter Three takes up the basic pattern of literary consumption in Bali, which joins the medium for the written word with oral performance and paraphrase of the text. The subject of Part II is the language of wayang parwa and the text-building strategies used by the puppet master (dalang) in shadow theater performance. Chapters Four and Five consider the basic verbal structure of dramas (lampahan) formed by Kawi (Old Javanese) and Balinese languages, as the performer uses both processes of oral composition and the conventions of written tradition. Chapter Six treats dramatic structure as well as the selection and staging of the play in the immediate setting of the performance. Chapter Seven includes final commentary on the resonance of sight and sound, voice and written letter, repetition and spontaneity, represented by the language of the shadow theater. Contemporary processes of change, both in language and the media through which knowledge is shaped and stored, are adding new dimensions to the verbal arts of Bali, as they are interwoven with the entire fabric of Balinese modes of discourse.Ph.D.LinguisticsUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158550/1/8125226.pd

Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature

The oldest and most extensive written language of Southeast Asia is Old Javanese, or Kawi. It is the oldest language in terms of written records, and the most extensive in the number and variety of its texts. Javanese literature has taken many forms. At various times, prose stories, sung poetry or other metrical types, chronicles, scientific, legal, and philosophical treatises, prayers, chants, songs, and folklore were all written down. Yet relatively few texts are available in English. The unstudied texts remaining are an unexplored record of Javanese culture as well as a language still alive as a literary medium in Bali. Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature represents a first step toward remedying the dearth of Old Javanese texts available to English-speaking students. The ideal teaching companion, this anthology offers transliterated original texts with facing-page English translations. Theanthology focuses on prose selections, since their straightforward style and syntax offer the beginning student the most rewarding experience. Four sections make up the collection. Part I offers several short readings as the most accessible entry point into Old Javanese. Part II contains two moralistic fables from an Old Javanese retelling of the Hindu Pañcatantra cycle. Part III takes up the epic, providing excerpts from one of the books of the Old Javanese retelling of the Mahabharata. Part IV offers excerpts from two chronicles, the generic conventions of which challenge received notions of history writing because of their supernaturalism and folkloric elements. Includes introduction, glossary, and notes