Cultural Identity

After the Second World War, government-level public information agencies in the U.S., such as the U.S. Information Service (USIS), resided in allied nations, such as South Korea, to engage in long-term propaganda activities.  This study focuses on the negotiation of identity of South Korean filmmakers and audiences in making and consuming cultural films, devoting particular attention to the role of the American ‘foreign’ authorities. 
The idea of cultural film (Kulturfilm), which had been imported by the Japanese colonial rulers and was succeeded by the U.S. and ROK public information agencies, created a useful foundation for South Koreans’ perception of the Self in this context.  It was a vaguely defined category of films mainly distributed by governmental-level agencies for educational and propaganda purposes.  The category of cultural film included public information documentaries, occasional newsmagazine films, ethnographic films, and educational feature films.  Cultural films were not only a means of publicizing governmental policies, but also a window through which to learn about the world with an ethnographic element.  Under the name of cultural film, U.S. public information agencies imported American-made documentary films which depicted the American way of life and produced ‘localized films’ dealing with local issues by hiring Korean filmmakers. 
For Koreans who were situated in the postcolonial state formation, the new conditions fostered through the emergence of the Cold War system were crucial to their identity formation.  They were citizens of a newly built state, but their nation was divided between the Cold War Power blocs which defined South Koreans as citizens of the “Free World.”  Cultural films created an interesting foundation for South Koreans’ perception of the Self in this context.  As a window to learn the world, cultural films of U.S. public information agencies made a condition for the Self/Other opposition, as conventional ethnographic films usually did.
However, in the geopolitical and historical particularity of South Korea, those cultural films created a unique type of spectatorship that mediated the perceptions of the Self and the Other in an intricate web of different ethnographic gazes.  Imported documentaries showed the American life as an idealized model of civilization, but there is little probability that Koreans fully identified themselves with Americans in these films.  (Re)presentations of idealized American urban life were rather a means of entertainment to see the exotic Other.  At the same time, locally made cultural films depicted South Koreans who constructed their lives and rehabilitated from social and personal damages.  Despite the aim to facilitate self-recognition of Korean audiences as citizens of the “Free World,” such films also presented the complexity in identification since their self-recognition was organized by the foreign agencies like USIS-Korea.  Thus, it is highly probable that the reception of those films was a process of intense negotiation to define the Self and the Other.
This outcome was partly an inevitable consequence of the localization project of U.S. public information activities; however, use of local manpower was not the only cause of such an uneven screen.  The appearance of translated and modified ‘ideal citizens’ in P‘aldogangsan (1967), one of the representative films of NFPC also made under the profound impact of USIS, and an enthusiastic response from the Korean public to that film show how an original project on the cultural cold war could be transformed into a vernacular one in the more local context.
In the case of Korean filmmakers who were affiliated with U.S. public information agencies, the negotiation of identity appears more clearly.  They were hired by the U.S. governmental agencies and served as messengers of the “Free World” screen, but, at the same time, they recognized themselves as builders of the nation.  Further, they also regarded themselves as individual artists who did not merely deliver rhetoric of their hirers but also expressed their own artistic sensibility.  These contested self-identities led the filmmakers to adopt certain compromising positions.  As one can see in the distinction between the routes of the two symbolic documentarists, Robert Flaherty and John Grierson, government-sponsored documentary filmmaking would drive filmmakers to a crossroads between romanticism facilitating humanist impulse and enlightenment seeking social engineering.  Similar inner conflict of USIS- and UNKRA-affiliated filmmakers was joined together with the geopolitical conditions of South Korea and concluded with unique auteurism in film making.
The routes of these alumni of the American film training camps indicate several different choices in the intense negotiations on identity: leaving the camp and devoting oneself to auteurism in filmmaking; leaving the camp and keeping auteurist impulse in mind, but giving it up in commercial filmmaking with deep skepticism; and remaining in the camp with auteurism in cultural film making.  They also show double-sidedness of those Korean filmmakers who did receive benefits from U.S.-led agencies, as the successor and criticizer of the Western culture.  They constantly had to seek compromises between the Griersonian missions and artistic self-realization and between nation-building and “Free World” bloc building, in an all too “expert” system created by a hegemonic foreign agency.

RESUMO
No ano em que se comemora o centenário do início da Primeira Guerra Mundial, na altura conhecida como a Grande Guerra, parece oportuno salientar o papel e a missão da Sérvia nesse conflito e impõe-se a necessidade de refletir como a participação da Sérvia na I Guerra Mundial influenciou a sua identidade nacional e as representações dos sérvios no mundo antes, durante e depois deste acontecimento histórico (heróis, ignorados e esquecidos, culpados, envergonhados). Para este efeito, utilizaremos fontes históricas nacionais e estrangeiras, pretendendo ser quanto mais imparciais possível.
Neste sentido, o nosso objetivo é mostrar e apresentar ao público português o heroísmo dos militares sérvios, tal como alguns erros, a nosso ver, inevitáveis dos líderes sérvios no contexto da guerra.
Palavras chave: Sérvia, Primeira Guerra Mundial, heroísmo, missão
ABSTRACT
In the year when we commemorate a centenary of the beginning of the First World War, at that time known as the Great War, it seems opportune to highlight the role and the mission of Serbia in this conflict and the need to reflect how the participation of Serbia in the Firs World War influenced its national identity and the representations of the Serbs before, during and after this historical event is imposed to us (heroes, the ignored, the forgotten, the guilty, the ashamed). For this purpose, we will use the national and foreign historical sources, intending to be as impartial as possible.
In this sense, our objective is to present to the Portuguese public, the heroism of the Serbian warriors, as well as some mistakes, from our point of view inevitable, made by the Serbian leaders in the context of the war.
Keywords: Serbia, First World War, heroism, mission

Resumo:
Este trabalho tem como base a análise da ideia dos estereótipos culturais e a sua influência na identidade nacional. Também o nosso objectivo é termos também em consideração dos conceitos da diferença e do outro,  de suma importância para o multiculturalismo e para a vida numa comunidade. É observado também se os estereótipos implicam preconceitos, quer positivos, quer negativos, sobre si e os outros e dá-se a visão destes símbolos nacionais desde a perspectiva de um português, que é o Professor Doutor João Medina, e desde uma perspectiva estrangeira, desde a perspectiva da autora deste trabalho, que neste caso é “o outro” em relação a Portugal. Finalmente, são observados o peso e as consequências que os estereótipos portugueses têm hoje em dia na cultura nacional.


Palavras-chave: Portuguesismo(s), identidade, estereótipos, preconceitos, o mito o outro, a diferença, a cultura,  Portugal e os outros, a visão de Portugal da perspectiva estrangeira

Does the interaction between context and individual-level features affect political attitudes? By using the case of Catalonia, a receiver municipality of international and national migration since the fifties, this paper intersects a classic acculturation model and a newly reemerging literature in political science on contextual determinants of political behaviour to analyze how context affects subjective national identity. Results reveal that environment matters. The Percentage of Spain-born population in the municipality is statistically significant to account for variance in the subjective national identity, even after controlling for age, sex, origin, language and left–right orientation and other contextual factors. This conclusion suggests that researchers should not underestimate the direct effect of the environment on feelings of belonging in contexts of rival identities.

Reference is made to the cultural and historical relevance of Costa Rican literature and the fact that it is not well known in Europe. With the analysis of the German translation of Los Peor by Fernando Contreras, two aspects are addressed: the essential place of the literary discourse of the original text and the respective operations which take place from that same perspective in the translation . One outstanding feature mentioned is the effect of estrangement that this novel conveys; this is considered positive by the European reader and
promotes interest from the perspective of literature, translation and publishers.

Se señala la pertinencia, cultural e histórica de las letras costarricenses, y el escaso conocimiento en e l entorno europeo. A partir del análisis de la traducción al alemán de la novela Los Peor, de Fernando Contreras, se estudian dos aspectos: la l ocalidad esencial en la discursividad literaria del texto original, y las operaciones respectivas que desde ese mismo punto de vista se ejerce en la traducción . Se comenta como rasgo destacado el efecto de extrañamiento que emite la obra, favorable como expectativa estética en el lector europeo; ello propicia interés literario, traductológico y editorial.

Archaeologists have tended to overemphasize spatial and temporal boundaries between social groups at the expense of
crosscutting and historical links. This bias is rooted in ethnographic conceptions of cultural identity and fails to make use
of the time depth that is archaeology's primary advantage in the study of human behavior. An emphasis on synchronic,
bounded spatial units like culture areas has obscured diachronic dimensions of identity, especially linear and historical
constructs that are common among many indigenous groups. Incorporating these indigenous perspectives into archaeological
research is a productive means of advancing archaeological theory and practice regarding identity. A case study
from the American Southwest illustrates this approach.

Abstract: Could a cultural memory and identity constructed around traumatic events in the historical past interpreted as the result of pollution of the sacred center give a group an evolutionary advantage under the right conditions? The paper below assesses this question by examining three different waves of religious entrepreneurship that drove the evolution of the ancient Israelite religion between the late eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Bringing Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology, specifically his theory of trauma and of pollution-purification rituals, into dialogue with evolutionary sociology, a robust theory of religious evolution is offered. Typical explanations focus on the evolution of monotheism or on the portability of the texts, whereas this essay argues that it was (1) the specific historical and sociocultural conditions that (2) shaped the specific content of the texts and (3) the criteria employed in selecting some traditions and not others. Of equal importance, (4) normative innovations related to interpreting and editing the texts that paradoxically made the word of god fixed and rigid, yet malleable across a wide swath of milieus and (5) annual, weekly, and daily rituals meant to inscribe the pollution-purification narrative contributed to the adaptive success of the Israelite cultural assemblage over the course of two millennia.

This book approaches the matter of food from the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, cultural and literary studies. Its strong interdisciplinary focus provides new insights into symbolic and material food practices beyond eating, drinking, cooking, or etiquette. The contributors discuss culinary aesthetics and neo/colonial gazes on the Caribbean in literary documents, audiovisual media, and popular images. They investigate the negotiation of communities and identities through the preparation, consumption, and commodification of "authentic" food. Furthermore, the authors emphasize the influence of underlying socioeconomic power relations for the reinvention of Caribbean and Western identities in the wake of migration and transnationalism. The anthology features contributions by renowned scholars such as Rita De Maeseneer and Fabio Parasecoli who read Hispano-Caribbean literatures and popular culture through the lens of food studies.

As a recently designated 'national' museum, the Canadian Museum of Immigration Pier 21 located in Halifax, NS offers a narrative of how Canada as a nation evolved in the 20th century through immigration practices and policies. Yet, how the exhibition addresses the relationship between immigration and collective identity, pluralism, and belonging is lost in the 'suitcase' and 'saviour' trope even as more current temporary exhibitions deal more explicitly with issues of racial identity.  NOTE: This paper is currently in press and is on an embargo as set out by the University of British Columbia Press.

When a stranger asks “what do you do”, as he fishes for the right stereotype to pin on my chest as a mark of admiration or secret contempt, I am at a loss to answer. That is, I am a man of my age, a chameleon creature accustomed to slipping amongst a kaleidoscope of roles. This plurality of role plays does not mean that I am "values free". I don't care if you wear a hijab or burn incense in a Buddhist temple. I do care for a marker such as "above all, do no harm" - not always achievable perhaps, but at least a navigation beacon. It is of central importance to the discussion in this article that my way is not everyone’s way. We all make sense of the world as best we can, then have a habit of projecting our understanding as universal truths. The article attempts is explicit about the writer's own experience, but tries also to establish a context for other, more various ways in which multicultures have been interpreted, especially in Australia.