Navigating Socio-Spatial Difference,Constructing Counter-Space: Insights from Transnational Feminist Praxis

Abstract

In recent years, feminist activists have increasingly transnationalized their struggle against local forms of oppression. Our study explores the contentious nature of feminist transnationalism, asking how transnational feminist networks (TFNs) navigate socio-spatial inequalities within their own practices and as a wider social movement. We argue that: (1) TFNs make socio-spatial differences meaningful in part through their constructions of regional, international, and trans-local imaginaries; and (2) TFNs construct resistant feminist counter-spaces through dialogue and strategies aimed at destabilizing dominant structures. Our findings highlight the central role of spatial praxis within transnational feminism.     

Two stories,one vision: A plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication

This paper calls for a “fifth moment” in the field of intercultural communication that re-examines modern culture’s values, beliefs, and assumptions about human being in the world and the role of such in fomenting today’s ongoing planetary-wide ecological crises. To conduct this re-examination, we turn to ethnoautobiography, a framework rooted in story and in the indigenous paradigm. We raise deep questions regarding the default assumptions of a discipline ensconced almost exclusively within the monocultural logic of modern culture and civilization. We end by posing key problematics that we deem crucial for renewing the discipline toward contemporary relevance, ecological awareness, and responsibility.     

Communication and identity management in a globally-connected classroom: An online international and intercultural learning experience

Though global classrooms are designed to expose students to varied cultural knowledges and experiences, how students consider and display their own identities in cross-cultural exchange has yet to be fully interrogated. This study focuses on U.S. college students who participated in a series of online conversations with learners in Singapore. Grounded in Goffman's sociological work and based on Hecht's communication theory of identity, this article focuses on students’ conceptions of themselves relative to others, and perceptions of identity work in cross-cultural conversations. Limitations tied to this project and avenues for future research on intercultural communication classroom practice are considered.     

Moving beyond the anthropos and reclaiming the geo in intercultural communication: The transculturation of the martial art practice of Aikido

This ethnographic study examines the practice of Aikido, a martial art style originating from Japan, by a community of non-Japanese practitioners in the southwestern region of the United States. This paper recounts the second nature-making of the art's skillful responsiveness as a thing to be explained from the ground, rather than leaving its cultural dynamics and their appropriative relations unchallenged as a relatively homogenous process of globalization and increased contact. In the case of Shining Energy (a pseudonym), the “taking” of another's cultural elements and “making” it a fully habituated and naturalized way of moving and being (second nature) are predicated on geo-making, the production of ontologizing resources (first nature) that enable culturally sanctioned modes of somatic engagements with the world. The process of appropriating Aikido entails an inversion between the figure and ground that foregrounds the geo-making of the ground/field for activity itself.     

Tzu Chi's Organizing for a Compassionate World: Insights into the Communicative Praxis of a Buddhist Organization

Abstract

This paper critically interrogates discursive appeals to linguistic and communicative universality. It does so primarily by way of the analysis of discourses on the global hegemony of English in five American-owned prestige press publications—the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. It also draws parallels between broader contemporary and historical examples of what the author defines as a discourse of universal progress on English. This discourse frames the hegemony of English as a simple and largely unproblematic fact of the global order while celebrating its allegedly intrinsic progressive tendencies and capabilities. Among these are English's superiority as a purveyor of “objective” reality, its ability to facilitate individual and collective (economic) success, its capacity to advance the production and exchange of knowledge and information, and its status as a bestower of universal (global) voice and unity. The author challenges some of the assumptions that underlie this discourse, contending that, at the highest levels of abstraction, the discourse of universal progress strips English and language of their rootedness in culture and various forms of social identity and struggle.     

Restoring fragmented marble epistyles: Some critical points

The mechanical behavior of fragmented marble epistyles restored with titanium reinforcing bars is studied numerically using the Finite Element Method. The study is focused to the behavior of restored epistyles subjected to bending under uniform load along the free span of the structural element. The restoration method simulated is the one introduced a few years ago by the scientists working for the conservation of the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis of Athens and is still under development. Attention is focused to the influence of the geometric features of the reinforcing bars as well as to the role of the cementitious material interposed between the marble and the bar. In addition, the contact properties of the marble-titanium, marble-cement and cement-titanium interfaces are also examined. To achieve the goals of the study, six numerical models are constructed considering centrally fractured prismatic marble epistyles of rectangular cross section restored with a single titanium bar, either cylindrical or threaded. The analysis reveals the critical regions, where the maximum stresses and the strain discontinuities appear and makes clear the influence of the geometrical characteristics of the reinforcing bar. Also, the crucial role of the constitutive law governing the mechanical behavior of the intermediate layer of cementitious material is enlightened.     

Three sump concepts: an exhortation to critical social scientists

Do we not find that the repetitive deployment of certain phrases and words in academic language entails a conceptualisation of meaning into objects that are thereafter encountered daily not as thoughts or ideas but merely as a socio-cultural force? Is it not necessary to identify and illuminate them, and to contrive some sort of resistance to their potent, though unrecognised, illocutionary effects? This article concerns the everyday cultural practices of academic life. It is an attempted intervention into the mundane language use of academics in order to impact critically upon the ongoing and constant articulation of certain culturally latent assumptions into political effects. I argue that within the social and human sciences ‘sump concepts’ are those extremely common concepts that recur in analysis and explanation due to their easy accessibility and to the function that they serve in reproducing certain discourses of social power. In particular, they constitute territorialisations of language, linguistic creations that close off polyvocity, contingency and possibility through identity-thinking into sutured and reactionary conceptualisations. I present a selection of three sump concepts that have become thoroughly imbricated into the discursive culture of academic life – Bottom-Up, Evolution, and Concrete – and that are complacently resorted to on a daily basis in social science research and in social discourse. By exploring their potencies, purposes and pitfalls, I demand a more cautious and considered deployment of these concepts in our academic discourses, and advocate for a critical practice of negative dialectics.     

Winning hearts and minds: A critical analysis of independent media development in Afghanistan

ABSTRACT

Utilizing a political economic framework, this study investigates the development and expansion of independent media in Afghanistan, focusing on one of the largest private media companies in the country, Moby Group. The company's approach to producing media is tied to its complex location as a translocal/transnational media entity. The company serves a unique population and navigates complex relationships locally and globally (operating in an emerging democratic state negotiating neoliberal market imperatives). This paper argues American-backed development of state-independent media and the rise of private companies such as Moby Group are part of larger geopolitical practices that further U.S. interests and the neoliberal agenda globally.     

Yellowing effect and discoloration of pigments: experimental and theoretical studies

Two issues of great interest in the field of lasers in artwork conservation are the so-called yellowing effect and the discoloration of pigments. We have viewed these issues from a comprehensive point of view, considering all our present experimental results as well as ongoing modeling and theoretical calculations. The first concern to be discussed is the yellowing effect in laser cleaning of marble or stone artifacts. Although, in most cases, a yellowish layer exists underneath the black encrustation, the so-called ‘patina’, it has become clear that there are situations where yellowing cannot be attributed to an existing layer. In the present study, a light scattering model that may account for the yellowing is presented. This model considers a thin absorbent layer and the surface roughness and/or created voids and accounts for the reflectance spectra measured by (i) hyper-spectral imaging and (ii) integrating sphere. Additional experimental data, such as the absence of yellowing when the third harmonic of a Q-swihed Nd:YAG laser is used, support this model. A thorough understanding of the quantitative characteristics of pigment discoloration, on the other hand, has been attempted by means of X-ray diffraction and theoretical studies. The model developed suggests a nucleation process for cinnabar resulting in a structural modification within the volume of a pigment’s crystal or particle close to the ‘ablation front’, which extends for a few nanometers from its surface.     

经典的确认与学科的自觉--中国古代文学理论批评研究的现代展开

本文关注于中国古代文学理论批评怎样进入二十世纪的现代学术视野 ,在具体联系二十世纪初文化学术形势及大学讲坛体派的基础上 ,确认古代文学理论批评之研究的现代展开方式 ,兼综向来有彼此对立之势的新旧文学文化体系来作辨析 ,亦兼综向来视为分异的“文选”“桐城”体派来作辨析 ,并通过比照姚永朴《文学研究法》与黄侃《文心雕龙札记》的理论思路 ,揭示出以美学哲学为基础的现代文学理念和以篇章语言学为基础的传统文学理念在现代学术发轫期的特殊关系。