Cultural Otherness

Cultural Encounters examines how 'otherness' has been constituted, communicated and transformed in cultural representation. Covering a diverse range of media including film, TV, advertisements, video, photographs, painting, novels, poetry, newspapers and material objects, the contributors, who include Ludmilla Jordanova and Ivan Karp, explore the cultural politics of Europe's encounters with Brazil, India, Israel, Australia and Africa, examining the ways in which visual and textual art forms operate in their treatment of cultural difference.

This collection of essays deals with some pressing social, cultural and moral concerns. It addresses problems of trans-cultural and intro-cultural understanding due to diverse perceptions of various themes. Moving beyond "Cultural Otherness" its aim is to evolve linkages between alternative visions of convergent character avoiding the extremes of hegemonic globalization and radical relativism. Themes included are: alternative perceptions of 1. history and historiography; 2. flux; 3. satisfactions, and obstacles in cross-cultural understanding; 4. A-self and other; 5. cultural objects; 6. world crisis; 7. democracy and development; 8. bias against women in India; 9. gender justice; 10. women's freedom; 11. culture, theory and practice. Each subject in its specific area signals the turn towards shared visions of the human condition. The book has relevance for an interdisciplinary audience interested in cross-cultural dialogue that signals the turn from divergences to convergence, fragmentation to non-hegemonic globalization

The cultural phenomenon of exhibiting non-European people in front of the European audiences in the 19th and 20th century was concentrated in the metropolises in the western part of the continent. Nevertheless, traveling ethnic troupes and temporary exhibitions of non-European humans took place also in territories located to the east of the Oder river and Austria. The contributors to this edited volume present practices of ethnographic shows in Russia, Poland, Czechia, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Romania, and Austria and discuss the reactions of local audiences. The essays offer critical arguments to rethink narratives of cultural encounters in the context of ethnic shows. By demonstrating the many ways in which the western models and customs were reshaped, developed, and contested in Central and Eastern European contexts, the authors argue that the dominant way of characterizing these performances as “human zoos” is too narrow. The contributors had to tackle the difficult task of finding traces other than faint copies of official press releases by the tour organizers. The original source material was drawn from local archives, museums, and newspapers of the discussed period. A unique feature of the volume is the rich amount of images that complement every single case study of ethnic shows.

In the sociological literature, Otherness is conceptualized as a condition of difference that is imposed upon a group by another more powerful group. In this qualitative, phenomenological study, it was determined that Americans of Korean descent do, in fa

This book critically examines multiple ways in which cultural diversity is, and has been represented and handled. It questions the construction of differences in doing culture while emphasizing the fluidity of cultural entanglements. It is an invitation to re-think norms, practices and negotiations of diversity and otherness, to distinguish emancipatory from standardizing approaches and to “transculturalize” the study and the politics of culture.

Cultural Encounters examines how 'otherness' has been constituted, communicated and transformed in cultural representation. Covering a diverse range of media including film, TV, advertisements, video, photographs, painting, novels, poetry, newspapers and material objects, the contributors, who include Ludmilla Jordanova and Ivan Karp, explore the cultural politics of Europe's encounters with Brazil, India, Israel, Australia and Africa, examining the ways in which visual and textual art forms operate in their treatment of cultural difference.

This book explores contemporary club and dance cultures as a manifestation of aesthetic and prosthetic forms of life. Rief addresses the questions of how practices of clubbing help cultivate particular forms of reflexivity and modes of experience, and how these shape new devices for reconfiguring the boundaries around youth cultural and other social identities. She contributes empirical analyses of how such forms of experience are mediated by the particular structures of night-clubbing economies, the organizational regulation and the local organization of experience in club spaces, the media discourses and imageries, the technologies intervening into the sense system of the body (e.g. music, visuals, drugs) and the academic discourses on dance culture. Although the book draws from local club scenes in London and elsewhere in the UK, it also reflects on similarities and differences between nightclubbing cultures across geographical contexts.