• Title/Summary/Keyword: Cultural Anthropology

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Entertainment in a Changing World: Vietnam and Video Gaming

  • Anh, Phan Quang
    • SUVANNABHUMI
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    • v.11 no.2
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    • pp.107-124
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    • 2019
  • The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the development timeline of video gaming in Vietnam. This paper would examine how Southeast Asia has become a key component in constructing the facade of the global gaming industry, focusing on Vietnam. As a communist country, Vietnam showed a distinctive pattern of video gaming reception. Video gaming has become a popular amusement among Vietnamese youth and has also helped Vietnam integrate into the modern world after the Vietnam War.

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Korean Immigrant Women's Meanings of Breast, Breast Cancer, and Breast Cancer Screenings

  • Suh Eun-Young Eunice
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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    • v.36 no.4
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    • pp.604-611
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    • 2006
  • Purpose. Koreans are one of the fastest growing Asian populations in the U.S. since 1960s. In Korean immigrant women (KIW), breast cancer was reported as the most frequently diagnosed cancer. However, their screening rates for breast cancer are lower than national guidelines; it is assumed that underlying cultural schemas of breast, breast cancer, and its screening modalities exist and need to be studied. This study was aimed to investigate cultural meanings of breast, breast cancer, and breast cancer screenings in KIW. Methods. Using cultural models theory from cognitive anthropology, naturalistic qualitative methodology was utilized. Three focus group interviews with fifteen KIW were conducted. Thematic analysis with constant comparison technique was performed eliciting units of meaning, categories, and themes. Results. The cultural schema of the meaning of breast is 'mother who is breast-feeding her baby,' with two themes of 'balance in size,' and 'shyness.' Regarding breast cancer, three themes, i.e., 'indifference,' 'fear,' and 'uncertainty' are emerged. 'Lack of information about screening modalities' is the overarching schema with reference to breast cancer screenings. Conclusions. The findings of this study demonstrate unique cultural models of KIW related to breast cancer and its screenings, which are critical to understand and penetrate their barriers to breast cancer screening.

Anthropology of power and passion, active nihilism: theme analysis on Sung, Suk-je's novel

  • Lee, Chan
    • Cross-Cultural Studies
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    • v.28
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    • pp.37-53
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    • 2012
  • This paper examines 'an active nihilism' in Suk-je Sung's novels in detail. The focus of this study is formed from the critical mind in a critical perspective that in Korean novels before and after 2000s, characters who embody 'problematic individuals' of $Luk{\acute{a}}cs$ have disappeared and those close to 'active nihilists' has become the mainstream. The most representative example of this phenomenon is Suk-je Sung's novels. 'Active nihilists' in his novels are described as 'ascetics' who mastered various spheres such as 'billiard', 'baduk gambling', 'alcohol', 'dance', and 'book collecting', and so on. In the sense that they reject the transcendental conditions of the modern world and live in the space and time of play in which they can display their passion and potentiality to the maximum, they beings jumping over the 'reality principle'. Also, what they want to repeat is not the endless exchange of labor and capital according to the capitalist system of exchange but rather the repeated existence of their power and passion. This 'anthropology of power and passion' is 'active nihilism' which could be expressed as the 'subject of creating new value' and 'Dionysian affirmation' by Nietzsche. Suk-je Sung's novels sharply prove the stylistic essence of 'a novel' which has to create its own form every time, constantly renewing the narrative style of the past ideal model. In this respect, they are very problematic and his innovation of a form draws the attention. Further, this will certainly be the important object of research in the diachronic dimension of contemporary Korean novel.

Ethnography on the Adaptation Processes of Japanese Marriage Immigrant Women to Community in Rural Areas (농촌거주 일본인 결혼이주여성의 지역사회 적응과정에 대한 문화기술)

  • An, Hyo-Ja
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing
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    • v.27 no.4
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    • pp.394-405
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    • 2018
  • Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify and describe cultural meanings for married Japanese immigrant women in rural Korean communities. Methods: The informants were 10 women in rural areas. Data were collected from August 2017 to June 2018 through in-depth interviews and participant observations and analyzed using text analysis and taxonomic methods developed by Spradley. Results: The meanings of adaptation were classified into five cultural domains: Practicing the doctrine, accepting the difference, redemption, true home, and confronting reality. The subthemes according to meanings of adaptation were comprised of international marriage with a sense of calling, bearing with sense of duty, and making a living substantively. The subthemes in this study reflect the process of adaptation. The cultural themes in the process of adaptation were overcoming differences and conflicts between Korea and Japan to achieve true family. Conclusion: The adaptation processes of married Japanese immigrant women included making their living reality known and recognizing the times when exchanges between Koreans and Japanese cannot exist within a hostile composition.

Archaeogenetic Research of Excavated Human Bones from the Ancient Tombs (분묘 유적지 출토 인골에 대한 고고유전학 연구)

  • Jee, Sang Hyun;Chung, Yong Jae;Seo, Min Seok
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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    • v.41 no.1
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    • pp.99-108
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    • 2008
  • The paleogenetic analysis has become an increasingly important subject of archaeological, anthropological, biological as well as public interest. Recently, scientific research for human skeletal remains was more activated because of increasing awareness of the valuable archaeological information by the ancient DNA analysis. State of preservation of organic remains vary in different soil and burying environmental condition. Almost all available tissue disappear to analysis ancient DNA of bone in acidic soil caused by climate and geological features in Korea. Many preserved human remains excavated in the 'Heogwakmyo'(limelayered tomb of Chosun Dynasty Period) is able to explain through the relationship between burial conditions and bone survival form the burial method and ceremony. Ancient DNA analysis of excavated human bone form ancient tomb requires to remove contaminants such as microorganism's DNA and soil components that affect authentic results. Particularly, contamination control of contemporary human DNA is major serious problem and should verified by criteria of authenticity. In order to understand migration and culture of ancient population, when possible, ancient DNA studies needs to go abreast both radiocarbon and stable isotope studies because the dietary inferences will suggest ancient subsistence and settlement patterns. Also when the paleogenetic research supported with the arts and humanities research such as physical anthropology and archaeology, more valuable ancient genetic information is providing a unique results about evolutionary and population genetics studies to reconstruct the past.

Understanding Ancient Human Subsistence through the Application of Organic Residue Analysis on Prehistoric Pottery Vessels from the Korean Peninsula

  • Kwak, Seungki;Kim, Gyeongtaek
    • Journal of Conservation Science
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    • v.36 no.4
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    • pp.244-254
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    • 2020
  • This study investigates prehistoric human subsistence and pottery use on the Korean peninsula through the organic residue analysis of archaeological potsherds. Ancient human subsistence is one of the core topics in Korean archaeology. However, due to the high acidity of sediments, which prevents the long-term preservation of organic remains, archaeologists have been short of critical information on how these early prehistoric dwellers lived. Ceramic vessels can contain well-preserved lipids originating from past culinary practices. For a better understanding of human subsistence on the prehistoric Korean peninsula, food-processing behaviors were reconstructed by analyzing ancient lipids extracted from a pottery matrix. The potsherd samples used in the analysis in this paper were collected from major prehistoric habitation sites. The results show that subsistence strategies differed according to both location and time period and reveal how organic residue analysis can contribute to a better understanding of prehistoric human subsistence strategies.

The Task of the Translator: Walter Benjamin and Cultural Translation (번역자의 책무-발터 벤야민과 문화번역)

  • Yoon, Joewon
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.57 no.2
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    • pp.217-235
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    • 2011
  • On recognizing the significance of Walter Benjamin's "The Task of a Translator" in recent discourses of postcolonial cultural translation, this essay examines the creative postcolonialist appropriations of Benjamin's theory of translation and their political implications. In an effort to dismantle the imperialist political hierarchy between the West and the non-West, modernity and its "primitive" others, which has been the operative premise of the traditional translation studies and anthropology, newly emergent discourses of cultural translation actively adopts Benjamin's notion of translation that does not prioritize the original text's claim on authenticity. Benjamin theorizes each text-translation as well as the original-as an incomplete representation of the pure language. Eschewing formalistic views propounded by deconstructionist critics like Paul de Man, who tend to regard Benjamin's notion of the untranslatable purely in terms of the failure inherent in the language system per se, such postcolonialist critics as Tejaswini Niranjana, Rey Chow, and Homi Bhabha, each in his/her unique way, recuperate the significatory potential of historicity embedded in Benjamin's text. Their further appropriation of the concept of the "untranslatable" depends on a radically political turn that, instead of focusing on the failure of translation, salvages historical as well as cultural potentiality that lies between disparate cultural entities, signifying differences, or disjunctures, that do not easily render themselves to existing systems of representation. It may therefore be concluded that postcolonial discourses on cultural translation of Niranhana, Chow, and Bhabha, inspired by Benjamin, each translate the latter's theory into highly politicized understandings of translation, and this leads to an extensive rethinking of the act of translation itself to include all forms of cultural exchange and communicative activities between cultures. The disjunctures between these discourses and Benjamin's text, in that sense, enable them to form a sort of theoretical constellation, which aspires to an impossible yet necessary utopian ideal of critical thinking.

″Traditional Authenticity″ and It′s Relationship to ″Indigenous Identity″

  • Tamburro, Paul-Rene
    • Lingua Humanitatis
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.43-74
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    • 2002
  • This paper examines the concept of "tradition" for Indigenous Peoples as a construct of reality developed through the lens of Western scholarship and American Indian perspectives. The resulting notions of American Indian tradition constructed by a Western point of view, has been incorporated into the thinking of Western peoples as well as those of American Indians. Possible reasons for this include the lasting effects of colonialism and current mass media and the description of cultural "others" through the Western sciences of Anthropology and Musicology. A definition of what is valid or important in defining "traditional culture" for members of an Indigenous community may utilize significantly different measures than those of Western scholars. In order to illustrate this, the author uses two treatises focusing on the Indigenous American Indian cultures of communities in Eastern North America incorporating Indigenous points of view. One of these two books provides a focus on connections between language and culture and the other on ethnomusicology. From both of these perspectives, traditional identity is seen as continuing in the present day through persistent perceptions of reality, linked to community social performance. These perceptions and their accompanying indexes to tradition are still present despite the disappearance of or frequent changes in the surface forms of both language and manufactured cultural items. The emphasis on "legitimate" or "real" tradition is tied to performance within an ongoing cultural community rather than to Western constructions of what is real found in past descriptions of cultures. An alternative view of "valid" tradition and its relationship to Indigenous identity, needs to incorporate Indigenous perspectives rather than depend on constructions developed using non-Indigenous Western frameworks.

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Evidence of Sexual Selection for Evening Orientation in Human Males: A Cross Cultural Study in Italy and Sri Lanka

  • Gunawardane, K.G. Chandrika;Custance, Deborah M.;Piffer, Davide
    • Interdisciplinary Bio Central
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    • v.3 no.4
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    • pp.13.1-13.8
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    • 2011
  • Previous research has established the existence of individual differences with regards to individuals' optimum time of well-functioning; specifically in terms of being either morning or evening oriented. An association has also emerged between being more evening, as opposed to morning, oriented and having a greater number of sexual partners. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether "eveningness" in males is an evolved sexually dimorphic trait consistent across different cultures. A sample of 179 male Sri Lankan men residing in two different cultural and economic settings, Italy and Sri Lanka, were administered the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) followed by assessing their sexual behavior history. The results robustly portrayed a highly significant main effect of MEQ types highlighting the twofold sexual success enjoyed by the evening individuals in both regional locations. Morning oriented individuals, showed a stronger preference for going out and partying than evening-types, suggesting that the higher mating success of evening types is not due to their different lifestyles allowing more opportunities to encounter females. However, evening types exhibited a preference for flirtatious behaviors in the later part of the day. Shoulder-to-hip and handgrip strength, as measures of testosterone levels, were not significantly associated with eveningness. The results are discussed in terms of sexual selection and its interplay with human cultural variation.

A study on the current status and improvement suggestions of cultural heritage education in primary school Focused on curriculum analysis and teachers' cultural heritage education experiences (초등학교 문화유산 교육 현황과 방향 제언 - 교육 과정 분석 및 교사의 문화유산 교육 경험을 중심으로 -)

  • HAN, Geonsoo;KIM, Dawon
    • Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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    • v.54 no.4
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    • pp.132-151
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    • 2021
  • The purpose of this study is to analyze the current status of and suggest future improvement practices for cultural heritage education in primary school. We analyzed a primary school textbook for each of five subjects (Korean, social studies, music, art, physical education), surveyed ten teachers with cultural heritage education experience, and analyzed the results. Based on the results, we made the following five suggestions: First, the goal of cultural heritage education should be expanded to foster citizenship. Second, in cultural heritage education, it is necessary to discuss what should be included in the educational content and to organize the content systematically in connection with the student environment, local community environment, and subject content. Third, cultural heritage education should be linked with sustainable development so that cultural heritage can be passed on from the present generation to future generations. Cultural heritage has characteristics, such as universal values of humanity, that transcend national boundaries, regional identities, dialogue and understanding between civilizations, and sources of creativity, and thus serves as the foundation for sustainable development. Fourth, for the effective implementation of cultural heritage education in schools, it is necessary to develop step-by-step teacher training programs. The success or failure of cultural heritage education in schools depends on teacher training. Fifth, the degree to which cultural heritage education is integrated into the curriculum should be strengthened, allowing learners to be educated so that they can cultivate knowledge and critical thinking about cultural heritage, enjoy and protect it, and connect with a sustainable society.