And matrices of Domains vs Places...
Here the team explains a bit more...
"Black dolls are more than just playthings -- they are powerful cultural artifacts that represent the history of the people they depict."This reminds me of the still-shocking experiment on race by Drs Kenneth and Mamie Clark where in young African American kids were shown black and white dolls and asked their opinions, here replicated by Good Morning America... Filmmaker Kiri Davis earlier recreated the doll study in her A Girl Like Me documentary...
"Mixed-race people are no longer that rare, and Japan has become more open about the whole thing. But have things really improved? Megumi Nishikura and Lara Perez Takagi’s documentary “Hafu” takes the bull by the horns and the results are intriguing. [...] Thoughtful and kindhearted, “Hafu” is never an indictment of Japanese mores and society. But you sense the subjects wishing, in some corner of their minds, that they were a little less 'different'..."
"It is a matter of principle that women are free and equal'. This means zero tolerance of cultural practices such as honour violence, forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM). In her talk, Hirsi Ali challenges the audience with questions such as whether multiculturalism is indifference disguised as tolerance, and what do Western feminists have to offer to the life and death problems of women from the developing world?"
"For Chinese children and their devoted parents, education has long been seen as the key to getting ahead in a highly competitive society. But just as money and power grease business deals and civil servant promotions, the academic race here is increasingly rigged in favor of the wealthy and well connected, who pay large sums and use connections to give their children an edge at government-run schools. Nearly everything has a price, parents and educators say, from school admissions and placement in top classes to leadership positions in Communist youth groups. [...] Corruption is pervasive in every part of Chinese society, and education is no exception."
"The early chemistry sets for children played on the idea of impressing school friends with a magic performance. By the 1920s and 30s children had access to substances which would raise eyebrows in today's more safety-conscious times. [...] In the 1950s, booklets offered lists of instructions like "how to make an explosive mixture". Now, even mildly explosive chemicals have been removed. [Today's] kits are not capable of the experiments of old. "What used to be in chemistry sets that are not in there anymore are actual chemicals," [...] "Given the right instruction booklet, the older set would allow the user to create all sorts of experiments -- blow things up, create smoke bombs, create stink bombs."
"...there is another critical discussion that must be had, and that is the belief that the lighter skinned you are, the better your life will be. The effects of this mindset are examined in the documentary "Dark Girls," produced by actor/director Bill Duke and directed by Chan Berry. "Dark Girls" explores the pain that is associated with having dark skin, even re-creating the white doll-black doll studies made famous by Dr. Kenneth Clark"
"...minerals are powering Australia's economy to record highs. And as demand from China for more resources grows, new mines continue to open across the country. But critics say there is a dark side to this success story. Mining regions attract transient workers [FIFO's] keen to make a quick buck, creating social and environmental problems and a rising crime rate. Mines are also draining Australia's pool of skilled labour from other industries and driving up wages. 101 East asks: What is the cost of Australia's mining boom?"
MIT CMS & Civic Media together with MIT Cool Japan Research Project are hosting UC Irvine cultural anthropology Professor Mimi Ito to speak about Fandom Unbound -- how a marginalized popular culture comes to play a major role in Japan’s identity at home and abroad... "Otaku culture represents a newly participatory fan culture in which fans not only organizearound niche interests but produce and distribute their own media content. How did this once stigmatized Japanese youth culture create its own alternative markets and cultural products such as fan fiction, comics, costumes, and remixes, becoming a major international force that can challenge the dominance of commercial media? By exploring the rich variety of otaku culture from multiple perspectives, Prof. Ito will provide fascinating insights into the present and future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age."
Stephen Walt writes in FP that Nationalism Rules about The State... "What's the most powerful political force in the world? Some of you might say it's the bond market. Others might nominate the resurgence of religion or the advance of democracy or human rights. Or maybe it's digital technology, as symbolized by the Internet and all that comes with it. Or perhaps you think it's nuclear weapons [But] the Strongest Force in the World would be Nationalism. The belief that humanity is comprised of many different cultures -- i.e., groups that share a common language, symbols, and a narrative about their past (invariably self-serving and full of myths) -- and that those groups ought to have their own state has been an overwhelmingly powerful force in the world over the past two centuries. [...] Nations -- because they operate in a competitive and sometimes dangerous world -- seek to preserve their identities and cultural values. In many cases, the best way for them to do that is to have their own state, because ethnic or national groups that lack their own state are usually more vulnerable to conquest, absorption, and assimilation. [...] Modern states also have a powerful incentive to promote national unity -- in other words, to foster nationalism -- because having a loyal and united population that is willing to sacrifice (and in extreme cases, to fight and die) for the state increases its power and thus its ability to deal with external threats. [...} Once established, a nation-state is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. [...] Unless we fully appreciate the power of nationalism, in short, we are going to get a lot of things wrong about the contemporary political life. It is the most powerful political force in the world, and we ignore it at our peril."What's so especially distasteful to me about Nationalism is, alas, not explicitly spelled out in this piece -- but it's inexorably implied -- namely that those who support The State will do anything to keep it in power, to reinforce its position, to inculcate its importance, to endow it with mystical powers and mythological qualities. In short, to create the Cult of The State, something as poisonous to the planet and hurtful to humanity as organized religion.
Excellent to see the NatGeo Enduring Voices project dial things up... "By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth -- many of them not yet recorded -- may disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and the human brain. National Geographic's Enduring Voices Project (conducted in collaboration with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) strives to preserve endangered languages by identifying language hotspots -- the places on our planet with the most unique, poorly understood, or threatened indigenous languages -- and documenting the languages and cultures within them. Each year the Enduring Voices Project sends teams to language hotspots around the globe to interview speakers and document vanishing cultures and languages. When invited, the Enduring Voices Project assists indigenous communities in their efforts to revitalize and maintain their threatened languages."Check out their Enduring Voices channel...
Thanks to Karen Weintraub for her Globe interview Religion Meets Science with Patrick McNamara, BU associate professor and co-founder of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion. Among the tasty discussion morsels... "Q. What do you think science can learn from religion?Fascinating stuff!
A. If we can uncover the essential nature and functions of religiousness, we’re going to learn something really deep and interesting about human nature.
Q. Is this a feedback loop -- does religion offer anything to the brain?
A. I think one of the things that religion does when it’s working properly is it strengthens the prefrontal lobes. All those practices that the religious people tell their adherents to do -- like prayer, ritual, abstaining from alcohol, controlling your impulses -- strengthen the ability of frontal lobes to control primitive impulses.
Q. Does that help explain why religion has had such staying power?
A. If you’ve got a cultural system that produces people who are reliable, who cooperate, who are relatively honest and trustworthy, who can control their impulses, who are good parents, who abstain from ingesting addictive substances -- if a cultural system does that on a consistent basis over the centuries, that’s a pretty valuable system."
"American Community Survey data released last month revealed a striking metamorphosis during the last decade. Traditional ethnic enclaves sprawled amoeba-like into adjacent communities. Once monolithic tracts of white and black and native-born residents have become bespeckled with newcomers."
As a complete outsider looking at Brazil, I've been impressed so far with the blending of Euro, Afro, Asio, and native cultures and peoples. And the Brazilian expats I've known here in the US come from many backgrounds. Nevertheless, this Wide Angle doco on Brazil in Black & White regarding university educational quotas is eye-opening...
Excellent excerpt from Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's new book The Grand Design in the WSJournal this weekend on Why God Did Not Create The Universe, despite mountains of myths and seemingly fragile cosmological and terrestrial systems mysteriously "fine-tuned" just for us... "Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design." That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."Further reason for recognizing that God is but a fraud and organized religions are too often sick cults, societal pathologies akin to cultural cancers, some thankfully benign but others shockingly malignant. Of course, you'll no doubt have ample chance to read the tsunami of outraged backlash against Hawking specifically and science and reason generally. See, for instance, the Telegraph's piece by Graham Farmello asking Has Stephen Hawking ended the God debate? for a classical mealy-mouthed, hodge-podge of a pseudo-rebuttal. But at least this is still civilized discourse and not some mad mullah's terrorist fatwa.
Tyler Brûlé in his FT Fast Lane column entices with Behold Brilliant Beirut about his investment in Lebanon's capital city and that country's aesthetic and economic virtues. From home-grown carrier MEA -- Middle East Airlines -- and plans to double airport size to Lebanon's..."...winning sense of hospitality and an anything-goes lifestyle (elements that should be at the cornerstone of its tourism campaign), it’s the rich culture of craft that makes it a potentially interesting case-study for a country at the cross-roads of Europe and Asia."
