Home  About us  Contact
 

Cultural Concerns (cultural + concern)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences80%

Selected Abstracts

GARDENS AND DWELLING: PEOPLE IN VERNACULAR GARDENS,

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
CLARISSA T. KIMBER
ABSTRACT. Investigations of dooryard gardens, kitchen gardens, home gardens, and houselot gardens fall unequally into one of three groupings. The first are those that treat the plants in the gardens as biological entities and define a space considered a culturally controlled biological community or habitat. The second are those that consider plants cultural traits and the space defined by their positions a setting for household activities. The third conceives of plants as design elements within a garden or a landscape that frames a house or provides a setting for formal human performances. Recent decades have witnessed a broadening focus in the study of gardens, from spatial characteristics and biological content to social and cultural concerns such as reciprocity networks, contested spaces, and the concept of "dwelling." [source]

Modern Britain and the New Imperial History

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2007
James Thompson
This article reviews recent trends in British studies, particularly the impact of ,four nations' perspectives, and the rise of the new imperial history. It offers a close examination of debates about the relationship between ,nation' and ,empire' in modern British history, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches. The article identifies the need to integrate accounts of empire's impact upon Britain with a broader comparative perspective that embraces mainland Europe, and to combine more cultural concerns with greater attention to political and economic history. [source]

Making Order Out of Trouble: Jurisdictional Politics in the Spanish Colonial Borderlands

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2001
Lauren Benton
Jurisdictional fluidity was a central feature of early modem Iberian law, and jurisdictional tensions were exacerbated by overseas conquest and colonization. Contests over the legal status of conquered peoples featured both jurisdictional jockeying among colonial factions and widespread preoccupation with the symbols and rituals marking cultural and legal difference. This article examines the dynamics of jurisdictional politics in seventeenth-century New Mexico, where church and state officials carried on a bitter feud over legal authority during most of the century. Rather than viewing this contest as either transparently political or a mask for deeper processes defining hegemony, the article argues that seemingly dry legal distinctions were the focus of passionate and persistent struggle precisely because they merged institutional and cultural concerns of missionaries, settler elites, and Indians. The analysis leads to broader, more speculative claims about the role of jurisdictional fluidity in creating an "orderly disorder" that spanned diverse regions within Spanish America and, more broadly, across colonial regimes in the early modern world. [source]

Islam and the politics of enchantment

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 2009
Gregory Starrett
The North American public sphere is suffused with claims and counter-claims about the relationship between Islam and violence. Schools and publishers have responded with training programmes for teachers and curriculum units for students introducing them to the Middle East and its dominant religious tradition. Such programmes are often accused by local parents and national intellectuals of pandering to Muslim sensitivities by whitewashing distasteful historical events and even proselytizing young people. Focusing on a 2002 lawsuit filed against California's Byron Union School District, by parents upset by a classroom role-playing exercise on Islam, this paper argues that political fears about terrorist infiltration into US society are building on powerful emotional and cultural concerns about the nature of ritual and the spiritual safety of children exposed to information about other religions. By encouraging public education as a response to political and cultural tensions, educators may in fact be heightening the public's concerns about Islam as a comprehensive threat. Résumé Dans la sphère publique nord-américaine, on entend dire tout et son contraire à propos de la relation entre l'islam et la violence. En réponse, les écoles et les éditeurs ont produit des programmes de formation des enseignants et des unités d'enseignement présentant le Moyen Orient et sa tradition religieuse dominante. Les parents, au niveau local, et les intellectuels au niveau national accusent souvent ces programmes de flatter la susceptibilité musulmane en occultant les événements historiques déplaisants, et même de faire du prosélytisme auprès des jeunes. En se concentrant sur un procès intenté en 2002 au district scolaire de Byron Union en Californie par des parents troublés par un jeu de rôles en classe sur le thème de l'islam, l'auteur affirme que les craintes politiques d'infiltration terroriste dans la société américaine s'enracinent dans de puissantes inquiétudes émotionnelles et culturelles relatives à la nature du rituel et à la sécurité spirituelle des enfants exposés à des informations sur d'autres religions. En encourageant la sensibilisation publique en réponse aux tensions politiques et culturelles, les éducateurs pourraient en réalité attiser les craintes d'une opinion publique qui perçoit dans l'islam une menace omniprésente. [source]

The Seed of Freedom: Regional Security and the Colombo Plan

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 1 2000
Daniel Oakman
Established in 1950, the Colombo Plan was a comprehensive program of foreign aid provided to South East Asian nations. In this article I argue that the Colombo Plan had a much broader political and cultural agenda, and cannot be understood from a humanitarian perspective alone. By exploring some of the cultural, ideological and political underpinnings of the scheme I illustrate that, as part of a comprehensive foreign policy, it is best understood as being motivated by international security priorities and the need to ally domestic cultural concerns. Although the Colombo Plan was inherently defensive, it also proved to be something of a progressive force which prepared the ground for a much closer relationship with (and within) the Southeast Asian region. [source]