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Internet culture

Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet (also known as netizens) who primarily communicate with one another as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and information communication technology, specifically the Internet. Internet culture arises from the frequent interactions between members within various online communities and the use of these communities for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. The earliest online communities of this kind were centered around the interests and hobbies of anonymous and pseudonymous early adopters, typically those with academic, technological, niche, criminal, or even subversive interests. Studied aspects of Internet culture include anonymity/pseudonymity, social media, gaming and specific communities, such as fandoms, and has also raised questions about online identity and Internet privacy. The impact of Internet culture on predominately offline societies and cultures has been extensive, and elements of Internet culture increasingly impact everyday life. Likewise, increasingly widespread Internet adoption has influenced Internet culture; frequently provoking enforcing norms via shaming, censuring and censorship while pressuring other cultural expressions underground. Elements While Internet subcultures differ, subcultures those emerged in the environment of the early Internet maintain noticeably similar values. Values Enlightenment principles are prominent in Internet culture, from which many other elements of the culture derive.. These principles can be attributed to the Internet's origins in Western, and specifically American, cultural contexts and the significant influence of academic culture, the hacker ethic and gamer culture, which to varying degrees embrace and amplify cultural values such as curious playfulness, competitiveness and collaborative self-actualization commonly pursued through community application of empirical rationalism via debate, competition and creative expression. Concern for privacy is another discernable value. Internet culture reifies the right to privacy in order to protect freedom of expression, personal liberty and social equality, thus making anonymity or pseudonymity a valued feature of online services for netizens. This is especially the case for freethinkers, social deviants, political dissidents, journalists, hacktivists/activists and members of hacker, (cyber)punk or other underground subcultures, where an absence of privacy may put an individual in danger. Originally the result of technical limitations, the prevalence of anonymity or pseudonymity is an integral part of Internet culture. Playful curiosity is an additional value derived from the Internet's roots in both creative hacker culture and gamer culture, where a desire to understand complex problems and systems for their own sake, or to exploit for trivial, amusing or irrelevant ends, flourishes. Disregard of authority mostly came by way of hackers who routinely broke/ignored laws and regulations in their Internet pursuits. It may have originated with hackers who discovered how to defeat telecom dialtone-based security in the 1970s to make phone calls without paying. The value of competence was a fundamental requirement in the Internet's early days when many tasks were less than user-friendly and technical skill was required to accomplish anything. This was reinforced by Otaku and gaming cultures, where obsessive commitment and sometimes technical/mental skills are essential in order to excel in such hobbies. Freedom of information (i.e. sharing and unlimited information access) was declared early to be a fundamental aspect of the Internet, underlined by the phrase "Information wants to be free". Coffee Coffee is more common than tea in Internet culture, especially within hacking subculture and technical communities. Coffee's higher caffeine content is attracted those in technical who spend long hours on high-focus tasks. A coffee pot was the subject of the first webcam stream on the Internet and the stream was used to monitor when it was time to make more coffee for the computer science lab that hosted the stream. Automating office coffee production was the subject of an April Fool's Day Internet standard called the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. Preoccupations Provocative humor that is witty, dry, dark, macabre, self-deprecating, misanthropic and/or politically incorrect is arguably the most recognizable manifestation of Internet culture and its subcultures. Copypasta, Dank Memes, and Shitposting showcase this emphasis. This humor often includes heavy satire and/or parody of mainstream culture, and the "playful, irreverent attitude" which it inherits from its parent subcultures. Trolling is another preoccupation on the Internet. Starting with the presumption that nothing online should be taken seriously, a recipient's response to trolling (and not the act) functions as a shibboleth. Otaku (sometimes Weeaboo) sensibilities became popular via anonymous imageboards modelled after Japanese imageboards that hosted anime, manga and other Japanese popular culture materials.. Dissemination and spread Over the years, Internet users have interacted via a host of different online and offline protocols. Earlier ones such as Usenet and bulletin boards were later superseded by others such as social media. These include: Blog Bulletin board systems Chatrooms Cybersex E-Commerce Games Internet forums Internet memes Microblogs Online videos Peer-to-peer file sharing Social networks Usenet Virtual worlds Wikis Internet subcultures As with other cultures, the Internet quickly fragmented into numerous subcultures, which continued to spawn descendants thereafter. Early Academic culture Hacker culture Military and Intelligence culture Anonymous culture Hacker culture Hacktivist/Cyberhacker culture Meme culture Gamer and video game culture Otaku culture Newer Content creator/influencer culture Incel culture Manosphere Dirtbag left Cancel culture Fediverse Rationality community Effective altruism Battleboarders Brogrammer History The cultural history of the Internet is a story of rapid change. The Internet developed in parallel with rapid and sustained technological advances in computing and data communication. Widespread access to the Internet emerged as the cost of infrastructure dropped by several orders of magnitude with consecutive technological improvements. Though Internet culture originated during the creation and development of early online communities – such as those found on bulletin board systems before the Internet reached mainstream adoption in developed countries – many cultural elements have roots in other previously existing offline cultures and subcultures which predate the Internet. Specifically, Internet culture includes many elements of telegraphy culture (especially amateur radio culture), gaming culture and hacker culture. Initially, digital culture tilted toward the Anglosphere. As a consequence of computer technology's early reliance on textual coding systems that were mainly adapted to the English language, Anglophone societies—followed by other societies with languages based on Latin script—enjoyed privileged access to digital culture. However, other languages have gradually increased in prominence. In specific, the proportion of content on the Internet that is in English has dropped from roughly 80% in the 1990s to around 52.9% in 2018. As technology advances, Internet Culture continues to change. The introduction of smartphones and tablet computers and the growing computer network infrastructure around the world have increased the number of Internet users and have likewise resulted in the proliferation and expansion of online communities. While Internet culture continues to evolve among active and frequent Internet users, it remains distinct from other previously offline cultures and subcultures which now have a presence online, even those cultures and subcultures from which Internet Culture borrows many elements. One cultural antecedent of Internet culture was amateur radio (commonly known as ham radio). By connecting over great distances, ham operators were able to form a distinct cultural community with a strong technocratic foundation, as the radio gear involved was finicky and prone to failure. The area that later became Silicon Valley, where much of modern Internet technology originates, had been an early locus of radio engineering. Alongside the original mandate for robustness and resiliency, the renegade spirit of the early ham radio community later infused the cultural value of decentralization and near-total rejection of regulation and political control that characterized the Internet's original growth era, with strong undercurrents of the Wild West spirit of the American frontier. At its inception in the early 1970s as part of ARPANET, digital networks were small, institutional, arcane, and slow, which confined the majority of use to the exchange of textual information, such as interpersonal messages and source code. Access to these networks was largely limited to a technological elite based at a small number of prestigious universities; the original American network connected one computer in Utah with three in California. Text on these digital networks usually encoded in the ASCII character set, which was minimalistic even for established English typography, barely suited to other European languages sharing a Latin script (but with an additional requirement to support accented characters), and entirely unsuitable to any language not based on a Latin script, such as Mandarin, Arabic, or Hindi. Interactive use was discouraged except for high value activities. Hence a store and forward architecture was employed for many message systems, functioning more like a post office than modern instant messaging; however, by the standards of postal mail, the system (when it worked) was stunningly fast and cheap. Among the heaviest users were those actively involved in advancing the technology, most of whom implicitly shared much the same base of arcane knowledge, effectively forming a technological priesthood. The origins of social media predate the Internet proper. The first bulletin board system was created in 1978, GEnie was created by General Electric in 1985, the mailing list Listserv appeared in 1986, and Internet Relay Chat was created in 1988. The first official social media site, SixDegrees launched in 1997. In the 1980s, the network grew to encompass most universities and many corporations, especially those involved with technology, including heavy but segregated participation within the American military–industrial complex. Use of interactivity grew, and the user base became less dominated by programmers, computer scientists and hawkish industrialists, but it remained largely an academic culture centered around institutions of higher learning. It was observed that each September, with an intake of new students, standards of productive discourse would plummet until the established user base brought the influx up to speed on cultural etiquette. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia, opening the door for public participation. Soon the network was no longer dominated by academic culture, and the term eternal September, initially referring to September 1993, was coined as Internet slang for the endless intake of cultural newbies. Commercial use became established alongside academic and professional use, beginning with a sharp rise in unsolicited commercial e-mail commonly called spam. Around this same time, the network transitioned to support the burgeoning World Wide Web. Multimedia formats such as audio, graphics, and video become commonplace and began to displace plain text, but multimedia remained painfully slow for dial-up users. Also around this time the Internet also began to internationalize, supporting most of the world's major languages, but support for many languages remained patchy and incomplete into the 2010s. On the arrival of broadband access, file sharing services grew rapidly, especially of digital audio (with a prevalence of bootlegged commercial music) with the arrival of Napster in 1999 and similar projects which effectively catered to music enthusiasts, especially teenagers and young adults, soon becoming established as a prototype for rapid evolution into modern social media. Alongside ongoing challenges to traditional norms of intellectual property, business models of many of the largest Internet corporations evolved into what Shoshana Zuboff terms surveillance capitalism. Not only is social media a novel form of social culture, but also a novel form of economic culture where sharing is frictionless, but personal privacy has become a scarce good. In 1998, there was Hampster Dance, the first successful Internet meme. In 1999, Aaron Peckham created Urban Dictionary, an online, crowdsourced dictionary of slang. He had kept the server for Urban Dictionary under his bed. In 2000, there was great demand for images of a dress that Jennifer Lopez wore. As a result, Google's co-founders created Google Images. In 2001, Wikipedia was created. In 2004, Encyclopedia Dramatica, a wiki archive of Internet culture, was founded. In 2005, YouTube was created because people wanted to find videos of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl in 2004. YouTube was later acquired by Google in 2006. In 2009, Bitcoin was created. Since 2020, Internet culture has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2021, there has been an unprecedented surge of interest in the concept of the metaverse. In particular, Facebook Inc. renamed itself to Meta Platforms in October 2021, amid the crisis of the Facebook Papers. Criticism One dark aspect of Internet culture is that it has allowed promoters of unhealthy behaviors such as cutting, anorexia, pedophilia, and even organized theft to gain prominence and establish online subcultures. As people spend more time on social media, this could lead to acting excessively and neglecting behaviors. This action may result in the perpetration of cyberbullying, social anxiety, depression, and exposure to inappropriate content that is not suitable for one's age. Rude comments on posts can lower an individual's self-esteem, making them feel unworthy and may lead to depression. Social interaction online may also substitute face-to-face interactions for some people instead of acting as a supplement. This can negatively impact people's social skills and cause one to have feelings of loneliness. People may also face the chance of being cyberbullied when using online applications. Cyberbullying may include harassment, video shaming, impersonating, and much more. A concept described as "cyberbullying theory" is now being used to suggest that children who use social networking more frequently are more likely to become victims of cyberbullying. Additionally, some evidence shows that too much Internet use can stunt memory and attention development in children. The ease of access to information which the Internet provides discourages information retention. However, the cognitive consequences are not yet fully known. The staggering amount of available information online can lead to feelings of information overload. Some effects of this phenomenon include reduced comprehension, decision making, and behavior control. Identity – "architectures of credibility" One early study, conducted from 1998 to 1999, found that the participants view information obtained online as slightly more credible than information from magazines, radio, and television, information obtained from newspapers was the most credible. Credibility online is established in much the same way that it is established in the offline world. Lawrence Lessig claimed that the architecture of a given online community may be the most important factor in establishing credibility. Factors include:, anonymity, connection to physical identity, comment rating system, feedback type (positve vs positive/negative), moderation. Anonymity Many sites allow anonymous commentary, where the user-id attached to the comment is something like "guest". In an architecture that allows anonymous commentary, credibility attaches only to the object of the comment. Sites that require some link to an identity may require only a nickname that is sufficient to allow comment readers to rate the commenter, either explicitly, or by informal reputation. Connection to physical identity Architectures can require that physical identity be associated with commentary, as in Lessig's example of Counsel Connect. However, to require linkage to a physical identity, sensitive information about a user must be collected and safeguards for that collected information must be established – users must place sufficient trust in the site. Irrespective of safeguards, as with Counsel Connect, use of physical identities links credibility across the frames of the Internet and real space, influencing the behaviors of those who contribute in those spaces. However, even purely online identities can establish credibility. Even though nothing inherently links a person or group to their Internet-based persona, credibility can be earned, because of the time required. Comment rating system In some architectures, commenters can, in turn, be rated by other users, potentially encouraging more responsible commentary, although the profusion of popular sh*tposters belies this. Feedback type Architectures can be oriented around positive feedback or allow both positive and negative feedback. While a particular user may be able to equate fewer stars with a "negative" rating, the semantic difference is potentially important. The ability to actively downrate an identify may violate laws or norms. Moderation Architectures can give editorial control to a group or individual not employed by the site (e.g., Reddit), termed moderators. Moderation may take be either proactive (previewing contents) or reactive (punishing violators). The moderator's credibility can be damaged by overly aggressive behavior. Digital culture Memes Internet culture is full of memes and other content that spreads rapidly. Memes (humorous images) . Communities Internet culture thrives on online communities. These communities can be found on specialized forums, social media, or proprietary applications (e.g., Slack, Salesforce). They cater to specific hobbies, fandoms, or professions, creating spaces where individuals with similar interests can connect. Examples of such communities include the passionate "K-pop fandom" or tech enthusiasts. Jargon Internet culture has a rapidly changing set of slang, acronyms, and jargon. These terms serve as recognizable ways to identify members and foster solidarity. Successful jargon often spreads beyond the initiating community. Examples of internet slang and jargon include "LOL" (laugh out loud) and "FTW" (for the win). Gaming Gaming is a distinct facet of internet culture, with dedicated communities and supportive platforms such as Twitch. Competitive gaming and live streaming encompasses various subcultures is the basis of this community. Social media Social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have become fundamental support systems for Internet culture. These platforms support influencers, content creators, and celebrities. Influencers play a crucial role in shaping trends, promoting products, and engaging with their audiences. Other content creators cover every subject: eating, war, fitness, politics, etc. Activism Internet culture is an important ecosystem for activism and social movements. Hashtags, petitions, and organizing have built and exploited online communities. Movements such as BlackLivesMatter and MeToo built strong online presences that increased their impact. See also Anonymous Cicada 3301 Cyber law Cyberdelic Cyberpunk Digitalism Information ethics Infosphere Internet trolls Netnography Postliterate society Rules of the Internet r/wallstreetbets Technology and society Techno-progressivism Technocriticism Technolibertarianism Technorealism References Further reading David Gunkel (2001) Hacking Cyberspace, Westview Press, Clemens Apprich (2017) Technotopia: A Media Genealogy of Net Cultures, Rowman & Littlefield International, London Sandrine Baranski (2010) La musique en réseau, une musique de la complexité ?, Éditions universitaires européennes La musique en réseau David J. Bell, Brian D Loader, Nicholas Pleace, Douglas Schuler (2004) Cyberculture: The Key Concepts, Routledge: London. Donna Haraway (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York, NY Donna Haraway (1997) Modest Witness Second Millennium FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse, Routledge, New York, NY N. Katherine Hayles (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL Jarzombek, Mark (2016) Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN Sherry Turkle (1997) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, NY Cyberspace Computer folklore Subcultures

Modernism

Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and social issues were all aspects of this movement. Modernism centered around beliefs in a "growing alienation" from prevailing "morality, optimism, and convention" and a desire to change how "human beings in a society interact and live together". The modernist movement emerged during the late 19th century in response to significant changes in Western culture, including secularization and the growing influence of science. It is characterized by a self-conscious rejection of tradition and the search for newer means of cultural expression. Modernism was influenced by widespread technological innovation, industrialization, and urbanization, as well as the cultural and geopolitical shifts that occurred after World War I. Artistic movements and techniques associated with modernism include abstract art, literary stream-of-consciousness, cinematic montage, musical atonality and twelve-tonality, modernist architecture, and urban planning. Modernism took a critical stance towards the Enlightenment concept of rationalism. The movement also rejected the concept of absolute originality — the idea of "creation from nothingness" — upheld in the 19th century by both realism and Romanticism, replacing it with techniques of collage, reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, and parody. Another feature of modernism was reflexivity about artistic and social convention, which led to experimentation highlighting how works of art are made as well as the material from which they are created. Debate about the timeline of modernism continues, with some scholars arguing that it evolved into late modernism or high modernism. Postmodernism, meanwhile, rejects many of the principles of modernism. Overview and definition Modernism was a cultural movement that impacted the arts as well as the broader Zeitgeist. It is commonly described as a system of thought and behavior marked by self-consciousness or self-reference, prevalent within the avant-garde of various arts and disciplines. It is also often perceived, especially in the West, as a socially progressive movement that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology. From this perspective, modernism encourages the re-examination of every aspect of existence. Modernists analyze topics to find the ones they believe to be holding back progress, replacing them with new ways of reaching the same end. According to historian Roger Griffin, modernism can be defined as a broad cultural, social, or political initiative sustained by the ethos of "the temporality of the new". Griffin believed that modernism aspired to restore a "sense of sublime order and purpose to the contemporary world, thereby counteracting the (perceived) erosion of an overarching 'nomos', or 'sacred canopy', under the fragmenting and secularizing impact of modernity". Therefore, phenomena apparently unrelated to each other such as "Expressionism, Futurism, Vitalism, Theosophy, Psychoanalysis, Nudism, Eugenics, Utopian town planning and architecture, modern dance, Bolshevism, Organic Nationalism — and even the cult of self-sacrifice that sustained the Hecatomb of the First World War — disclose a common cause and psychological matrix in the fight against (perceived) decadence." All of them embody bids to access a "supra-personal experience of reality" in which individuals believed they could transcend their mortality and eventually that they would cease to be victims of history to instead become its creators. Modernism, Romanticism, Philosophy and Symbol Literary modernism is often summed up in a line from W. B. Yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" (in 'The Second Coming'). Modernists often search for a metaphysical 'centre' but experience its collapse. (Postmodernism, by way of contrast, celebrates that collapse, exposing the failure of metaphysics, such as Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysical claims.) Philosophically, the collapse of metaphysics can be traced back to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776), who argued that we never actually perceive one event causing another. We only experience the 'constant conjunction' of events, and do not perceive a metaphysical 'cause'. Similarly, Hume argued that we never know the self as object, only the self as subject, and we are thus blind to our true natures. Moreover, if we only 'know' through sensory experience—such as sight, touch and feeling—then we cannot 'know' and neither can we make metaphysical claims. Thus, modernism can be driven emotionally by the desire for metaphysical truths, while understanding their impossibility. Some modernist novels, for instance, feature characters like Marlow in Heart of Darkness or Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby who believe that they have encountered some great truth about nature or character, truths that the novels themselves treat ironically while offering more mundane explanations. Similarly, many poems of Wallace Stevens convey a struggle with the sense of nature's significance, falling under two headings: poems in which the speaker denies that nature has meaning, only for nature to loom up by the end of the poem; and poems in which the speaker claims nature has meaning, only for that meaning to collapse by the end of the poem. Modernism often rejects nineteenth century realism, if the latter is understood as focusing on the embodiment of meaning within a naturalistic representation. At the same time, some modernists aim at a more 'real' realism, one that is uncentered. Picasso's proto-cubist painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907 (see picture above), does not present its subjects from a single point of view (that of a single viewer), but instead presents a flat, two-dimensional picture plane. 'The Poet' of 1911 is similarly decentred, presenting the body from multiple points of view. As the Peggy Guggenheim Collection website puts it, 'Picasso presents multiple views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and synthesizes them into a single compound image'. Modernism, with its sense that 'things fall apart,' can be seen as the apotheosis of romanticism, if romanticism is the (often frustrated) quest for metaphysical truths about character, nature, a higher power and meaning in the world. Modernism often yearns for a romantic or metaphysical centre, but later finds its collapse. This distinction between modernism and romanticism extends to their respective treatments of 'symbol'. The romantics at times see an essential relation (the 'ground') between the symbol (or the 'vehicle', in I.A. Richards's terms) and its 'tenor' (its meaning)—for example in Coleridge's description of nature as 'that eternal language which thy God / Utters'. But while some romantics may have perceived nature and its symbols as God's language, for other romantic theorists it remains inscrutable. As Goethe (not himself a romantic) said, ‘the idea [or meaning] remains eternally and infinitely active and inaccessible in the image’. This was extended in modernist theory which, drawing on its symbolist precursors, often emphasizes the inscrutability and failure of symbol and metaphor. For example, Wallace Stevens seeks and fails to find meaning in nature, even if he at times seems to sense such a meaning. As such, symbolists and modernists at times adopt a mystical approach to suggest a non-rational sense of meaning. For these reasons, modernist metaphors may be unnatural, as for instance in T.S. Eliot's description of an evening 'spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table'. Similarly, for many later modernist poets nature is unnaturalized and at times mechanized, as for example in Stephen Oliver's image of the moon busily 'hoisting' itself into consciousness. Origins and early history Romanticism and realism Modernism developed out of Romanticism's revolt against the effects of the Industrial Revolution and bourgeois values. Literary scholar Gerald Graff, argues that, "The ground motive of modernism was criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and its world view; the modernists, carrying the torch of Romanticism." While J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), one of the most notable landscape painters of the 19th century, was a member of the Romantic movement, his pioneering work in the study of light, color, and atmosphere "anticipated the French Impressionists" and therefore modernism "in breaking down conventional formulas of representation; though unlike them, he believed that his works should always express significant historical, mythological, literary, or other narrative themes." However, the modernists were critical of the Romantics' belief that art serves as a window into the nature of reality. They argued that since each viewer interprets art through their own subjective perspective, it can never convey the ultimate metaphysical truth that the Romantics sought. Nonetheless, the modernists did not completely reject the idea of art as a means of understanding the world. To them, it was a tool for challenging and disrupting the viewer's point of view, rather than as a direct means of accessing a higher reality. Modernism often rejects 19th-century realism when the latter is understood as focusing on the embodiment of meaning within a naturalistic representation. Instead, some modernists aim at a more 'real' realism, one that is uncentered. For instance, Picasso's 1907 Proto-Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon does not present its subjects from a single point of view, instead presenting a flat, two-dimensional picture plane. The Poet of 1911 is similarly decentered, presenting the body from multiple points of view. As the Peggy Guggenheim Collection comments, "Picasso presents multiple views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and synthesizes them into a single compound image." Modernism, with its sense that "things fall apart," is often seen as the apotheosis of Romanticism. As August Wilhelm Schlegel, an early German Romantic, described it, while Romanticism searches for metaphysical truths about character, nature, higher power, and meaning in the world, modernism, although yearning for such a metaphysical center, only finds its collapse. The early 19th century In the context of the Industrial Revolution (~1760–1840), influential innovations included steam-powered industrialization, especially the development of railways starting in Britain in the 1830s, and the subsequent advancements in physics, engineering, and architecture they led to. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was the Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron and plate-glass exhibition hall built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals throughout the city, including King's Cross station (1852) and Paddington Station (1854). These technological advances spread abroad, leading to later structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge (1883) and the Eiffel Tower (1889), the latter of which broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be. While such engineering feats radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people, the human experience of time itself was altered with the development of the electric telegraph in 1837, as well as the adoption of "standard time" by British railway companies from 1845, a concept which would be adopted throughout the rest of the world over the next fifty years. Despite continuing technological advances, the ideas that history and civilization were inherently progressive and that such advances were always good came under increasing attack in the 19th century. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but in fact oftentimes opposed, and that society's current values were antithetical to further progress; therefore, civilization could not move forward in its present form. Early in the century, the philosopher Schopenhauer (1788–1860) (The World as Will and Representation, 1819/20) called into question previous optimism. His ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Similarly, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Nietzsche both later rejected the idea that reality could be understood through a purely objective lens, a rejection that had a significant influence on the development of existentialism and nihilism. Around 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (a group of English poets, painters, and art critics) began to challenge the dominant trends of industrial Victorian England in "opposition to technical skill without inspiration." They were influenced by the writings of the art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who had strong feelings about the role of art in helping to improve the lives of the urban working classes in the rapidly expanding industrial cities of Britain. Art critic Clement Greenberg described the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-modernists: "There the proto-modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites (and even before them, as proto-proto-modernists, the German Nazarenes). The Pre-Raphaelites foreshadowed Manet (1832–1883), with whom modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, holding that its realism wasn't truthful enough." Two of the most significant thinkers of the mid-19th century were biologist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), author of On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection (1859), and political scientist Karl Marx (1818–1883), author of Das Kapital (1867). Despite coming from different fields, both of their theories threatened the established order. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness; in particular, the notion that human beings are driven by the same impulses as "lower animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Meanwhile, Marx's arguments that there are fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system and that workers are anything but free led to the formulation of Marxist theory. The late 19th century Art historians have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Historian William Everdell argued that modernism began in the 1870s when metaphorical (or ontological) continuity began to yield to the discrete with mathematician Richard Dedekind's (1831–1916) Dedekind cut and Ludwig Boltzmann's (1844–1906) statistical thermodynamics. Everdell also believed modernism in painting began in 1885–1886 with post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat's development of Divisionism, the "dots" used to paint A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. On the other hand, visual art critic Clement Greenberg called German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) "the first real modernist", although he also wrote, "What can be safely called modernism emerged in the middle of the last century—and rather locally, in France, with Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) in literature and Manet in painting, and perhaps with Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), too, in prose fiction. (It was a while later, and not so locally, that modernism appeared in music and architecture)." The poet Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) and the author Flaubert's Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. Baudelaire's essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1863) inspired young artists to break away from tradition and innovate new ways of portraying their world in art. Beginning in the 1860s, two approaches in the arts and letters developed separately in France. The first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done not in studios, but outdoors (en plein air). Impressionist paintings attempted to convey that human beings do not see objects, but instead see light itself. The school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners and became increasingly influential. Initially rejected from the most important commercial show of the time, the government-sponsored Paris Salon, the Impressionists organized yearly group exhibitions in commercial venues during the 1870s and 1880s, timing them to coincide with the official Salon. In 1863, the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III, displayed all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by inferior artists, the work of Manet attracted attention and opened commercial doors to the movement. The second French school was symbolism, which literary historians see beginning with Charles Baudelaire and including the later poets Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) with Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell, 1873), Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), and Paul Valéry (1871–1945). The symbolists "stressed the priority of suggestion and evocation over direct description and explicit analogy," and were especially interested in "the musical properties of language." Cabaret, which gave birth to so many of the arts of modernism, including the immediate precursors of film, may be said to have begun in France in 1881 with the opening of the Black Cat in Montmartre, the beginning of the ironic monologue, and the founding of the Society of Incoherent Arts. The theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Krafft-Ebing and other sexologists were influential in the early days of modernism. Freud's first major work was Studies on Hysteria (with Josef Breuer, 1895). Central to Freud's thinking is the idea "of the primacy of the unconscious mind in mental life", so that all subjective reality was based on the interactions between basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. Freud's description of subjective states involved an unconscious mind full of primal impulses, and counterbalancing self-imposed restrictions derived from social values. The works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) were another major precursor of modernism, with a philosophy in which psychological drives, specifically the "will to power" (Wille zur macht), were of central importance: "Nietzsche often identified life itself with 'will to power', that is, with an instinct for growth and durability." Henri Bergson (1859–1941), on the other hand, emphasized the difference between scientific, clock time and the direct, subjective human experience of time. His work on time and consciousness "had a great influence on 20th-century novelists" especially those modernists who used the "stream of consciousness" technique, such as Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941). Also important in Bergson's philosophy was the idea of élan vital, the life force, which "brings about the creative evolution of everything." His philosophy also placed a high value on intuition, though without rejecting the importance of the intellect. Important literary precursors of modernism included esteemed writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), whose novels include Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880); Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who published the poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855–1891); and August Strindberg (1849–1912), especially his later plays, including the trilogy To Damascus 1898–1901,A Dream Play (1902) and The Ghost Sonata (1907). Henry James has also been suggested as a significant precursor to modernism in works as early as The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Modernism emerges 1901 to 1930 Out of the collision of ideals derived from Romanticism and an attempt to find a way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown, came the first wave of modernist works in the opening decade of the 20th century. Although their authors considered them to be extensions of existing trends in art, these works broke the implicit understanding the general public had of art: that artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture and ideas. These "modernist" landmarks include the atonal ending of Arnold Schoenberg's Second String Quartet in 1908, the Expressionist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903, and culminating with his first abstract painting and the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich in 1911, and the rise of fauvism and the inventions of Cubism from the studios of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and others, in the years between 1900 and 1910. An important aspect of modernism is how it relates to tradition through its adoption of techniques like reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, and parody in new forms. T. S. Eliot made significant comments on the relation of the artist to tradition, including: "[W]e shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [a poet's] work, may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." However, the relationship of modernism with tradition was complex, as literary scholar Peter Child's indicates: "There were paradoxical if not opposed trends towards revolutionary and reactionary positions, fear of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old, nihilism and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity, and despair." An example of how modernist art can apply older traditions while also incorporating new techniques can be found within the music of the composer Arnold Schoenberg. On the one hand, he rejected traditional tonal harmony, the hierarchical system of organizing works of music that had guided musical composition for at least a century and a half. Schoenberg believed he had discovered a wholly new way of organizing sound based on the use of twelve-note rows. Yet, while this was indeed a wholly new technique, its origins can be traced back to the work of earlier composers such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Max Reger. In the world of art, in the first decade of the 20th century, young painters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse caused much controversy and attracted great criticism with their rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring paintings, though the Impressionist Claude Monet had already been innovative in his use of perspective. In 1907, as Picasso was painting , Oskar Kokoschka was writing Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women), the first Expressionist play (produced with scandal in 1909), and Arnold Schoenberg was composing his String Quartet No.2 in F sharp minor (1908), his first composition without a tonal center. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne, which were displayed in a retrospective at the 1907 Salon d'Automne. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstract form; instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Cubism was brought to the attention of the general public for the first time in 1911 at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris (held 21 April – 13 June). Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger and Roger de La Fresnaye were shown together in Room 41, provoking a 'scandal' out of which Cubism emerged and spread throughout Paris and beyond. Also in 1911, Kandinsky painted Bild mit Kreis (Picture with a Circle), which he later called the first abstract painting. In 1912, Metzinger and Gleizes wrote the first (and only) major Cubist manifesto, Du "Cubisme", published in time for the Salon de la Section d'Or, the largest Cubist exhibition to date. In 1912 Metzinger painted and exhibited his enchanting La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a Horse) and Danseuse au Café (Dancer in a Café). Albert Gleizes painted and exhibited his Les Baigneuses (The Bathers) and his monumental Le Dépiquage des Moissons (Harvest Threshing). This work, along with La Ville de Paris (City of Paris) by Robert Delaunay, was the largest and most ambitious Cubist painting undertaken during the pre-war Cubist period. In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke (The Bridge) in the city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinsky's Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and August Macke. However, the term "Expressionism" did not firmly establish itself until 1913. Though initially mainly a German artistic movement, most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been Expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German speaking Expressionist writers, and, while the movement had declined in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, there were subsequent Expressionist works. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it "overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period: with Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism and Dada." Richard Murphy also comments: "[The] search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging Expressionists," such as the novelist Franz Kafka, poet Gottfried Benn, and novelist Alfred Döblin were simultaneously the most vociferous anti-Expressionists. What, however, can be said, is that it was a movement that developed in the early 20th century mainly in Germany in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that "one of the central means by which Expressionism identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and the cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to realism and the dominant conventions of representation." More explicitly: the Expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. There was a concentrated Expressionist movement in early 20th-century German theater, of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard Sorge, Walter Hasenclever, Hans Henny Jahnn, and Arnolt Bronnen. They looked back to Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind as precursors of their dramaturgical experiments. Oskar Kokoschka's Murderer, the Hope of Women was the first fully Expressionist work for the theater, which opened on 4 July 1909 in Vienna. The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity would become characteristic of later Expressionist plays. The first full-length Expressionist play was The Son by Walter Hasenclever, which was published in 1914 and first performed in 1916. Futurism is another modernist movement. In 1909, the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro published F. T. Marinetti's first manifesto. Soon afterward, a group of painters (Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini) co-signed the Futurist Manifesto. Modeled on Marx and Engels' famous "Communist Manifesto" (1848), such manifestos put forward ideas that were meant to provoke and to gather followers. However, arguments in favor of geometric or purely abstract painting were, at this time, largely confined to "little magazines" which had only tiny circulations. Modernist primitivism and pessimism were controversial, and the mainstream in the first decade of the 20th century was still inclined towards a faith in progress and liberal optimism. Abstract artists, taking as their examples the Impressionists, as well as Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944), began with the assumption that color and shape, not the depiction of the natural world, formed the essential characteristics of art. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. The arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century, many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art that encompassed the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time. Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Kazimir Malevich all believed in redefining art as the arrangement of pure color. The use of photography, which had rendered much of the representational function of visual art obsolete, strongly affected this aspect of modernism. Modernist architects and designers, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, believed that new technology rendered old styles of building obsolete. Le Corbusier thought that buildings should function as "machines for living in", analogous to cars, which he saw as machines for traveling in. Just as cars had replaced the horse, so modernist design should reject the old styles and structures inherited from Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages. Following this machine aesthetic, modernist designers typically rejected decorative motifs in design, preferring to emphasize the materials used and pure geometrical forms. The skyscraper is the archetypal modernist building, and the Wainwright Building, a 10-story office building completed in 1891 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, is among the first skyscrapers in the world. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York (1956–1958) is often regarded as the pinnacle of this modernist high-rise architecture. Many aspects of modernist design persist within the mainstream of contemporary architecture, though previous dogmatism has given way to a more playful use of decoration, historical quotation, and spatial drama. In 1913—which was the year of philosopher Edmund Husserl's Ideas, physicist Niels Bohr's quantized atom, Ezra Pound's founding of imagism, the Armory Show in New York, and in Saint Petersburg the "first futurist opera", Mikhail Matyushin's Victory over the Sun—another Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, composed The Rite of Spring, a ballet that depicts human sacrifice and has a musical score full of dissonance and primitive rhythm. This caused an uproar on its first performance in Paris. At this time, though modernism was still "progressive", it increasingly saw traditional forms and social arrangements as hindering progress and recast the artist as a revolutionary, engaged in overthrowing rather than enlightening society. Also in 1913, a less violent event occurred in France with the publication of the first volume of Marcel Proust's important novel sequence À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) (In Search of Lost Time). This is often presented as an early example of a writer using the stream-of-consciousness technique, but Robert Humphrey comments that Proust "is concerned only with the reminiscent aspect of consciousness" and that he "was deliberately recapturing the past for the purpose of communicating; hence he did not write a stream-of-consciousness novel." Stream of consciousness was an important modernist literary innovation, and it has been suggested that Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) was the first to make full use of it in his short story "Leutnant Gustl" ("None but the brave") (1900). Dorothy Richardson was the first English writer to use it, in the early volumes of her novel sequence Pilgrimage (1915–1967). Other modernist novelists that are associated with the use of this narrative technique include James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) and Italo Svevo in La coscienza di Zeno (1923). However, with the coming of the Great War of 1914–1918 (World War I) and the Russian Revolution of 1917, the world was drastically changed, and doubt was cast on the beliefs and institutions of the past. The failure of the previous status quo seemed self-evident to a generation that had seen millions die fighting over scraps of earth: before 1914, it had been argued that no one would fight such a war, since the cost was too high. The birth of a machine age, which had made major changes in the conditions of daily life in the 19th century had now radically changed the nature of warfare. The traumatic nature of recent experience altered basic assumptions, and a realistic depiction of life in the arts seemed inadequate when faced with the fantastically surreal nature of trench warfare. The view that mankind was making steady moral progress now seemed ridiculous in the face of the senseless slaughter, described in works such as Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). Therefore, modernism's view of reality, which had been a minority taste before the war, became more generally accepted in the 1920s. In literature and visual art, some modernists sought to defy expectations mainly to make their art more vivid or to force the audience to take the trouble to question their own preconceptions. This aspect of modernism has often seemed a reaction to consumer culture, which developed in Europe and North America in the late 19th century. Whereas most manufacturers try to make products that will be marketable by appealing to preferences and prejudices, high modernists reject such consumerist attitudes to undermine conventional thinking. The art critic Clement Greenberg expounded this theory of modernism in his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Greenberg labeled the products of consumer culture "kitsch", because their design aimed simply to have maximum appeal, with any difficult features removed. For Greenberg, modernism thus formed a reaction against the development of such examples of modern consumer culture as commercial popular music, Hollywood, and advertising. Greenberg associated this with the revolutionary rejection of capitalism. Some modernists saw themselves as part of a revolutionary culture that included political revolution. In Russia after the 1917 Revolution, there was indeed initially a burgeoning of avant-garde cultural activity, which included Russian Futurism. However, others rejected conventional politics as well as artistic conventions, believing that a revolution of political consciousness had greater importance than a change in political structures. But many modernists saw themselves as apolitical. Others, such as T. S. Eliot, rejected mass popular culture from a conservative position. Some even argue that Modernism in literature and art functioned to sustain an elite culture that excluded the majority of the population. Surrealism, which originated in the early 1920s, came to be regarded by the public as the most extreme form of modernism, or "the avant-garde of modernism". The word "surrealist" was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. Major surrealists include Paul Éluard, Robert Desnos, Max Ernst, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, Raymond Queneau, Joan Miró, and Marcel Duchamp. By 1930, modernism had won a place in the political and artistic establishment, although by this time modernism itself had changed. Modernism continues: 1930–1945 Modernism continued to evolve during the 1930s. Between 1930 and 1932 composer Arnold Schoenberg worked on Moses und Aron, one of the first operas to make use of the twelve-tone technique, Pablo Picasso painted in 1937 Guernica, his cubist condemnation of fascism, while in 1939 James Joyce pushed the boundaries of the modern novel further with Finnegans Wake. Also by 1930 modernism began to influence mainstream culture, so that, for example, The New Yorker magazine began publishing work, influenced by modernism, by young writers and humorists like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, E. B. White, S. J. Perelman, and James Thurber, amongst others. Perelman is highly regarded for his humorous short stories that he published in magazines in the 1930s and 1940s, most often in The New Yorker, which are considered to be the first examples of surrealist humor in America. Modern ideas in art also began to appear more frequently in commercials and logos, an early example of which, from 1916, is the famous London Underground logo designed by Edward Johnston. One of the most visible changes of this period was the adoption of new technologies into the daily lives of ordinary people in Western Europe and North America. Electricity, the telephone, the radio, the automobile—and the need to work with them, repair them and live with them—created social change. The kind of disruptive moment that only a few knew in the 1880s became a common occurrence. For example, the speed of communication reserved for the stock brokers of 1890 became part of family life, at least in middle class North America. Associated with urbanization and changing social mores also came smaller families and changed relationships between parents and their children. Another strong influence at this time was Marxism. After the generally primitivistic/irrationalism aspect of pre-World War I modernism (which for many modernists precluded any attachment to merely political solutions) and the neoclassicism of the 1920s (as represented most famously by T. S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky—which rejected popular solutions to modern problems), the rise of fascism, the Great Depression, and the march to war helped to radicalize a generation. Bertolt Brecht, W. H. Auden, André Breton, Louis Aragon, and the philosophers Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin are perhaps the most famous exemplars of this modernist form of Marxism. There were, however, also modernists explicitly of 'the right', including Salvador Dalí, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, the Dutch author Menno ter Braak and others. Significant modernist literary works continued to be created in the 1920s and 1930s, including further novels by Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Robert Musil, and Dorothy Richardson. The American modernist dramatist Eugene O'Neill's career began in 1914, but his major works appeared in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s. Two other significant modernist dramatists writing in the 1920s and 1930s were Bertolt Brecht and Federico García Lorca. D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was privately published in 1928, while another important landmark for the history of the modern novel came with the publication of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury in 1929. In the 1930s, in addition to further major works by Faulkner, Samuel Beckett published his first major work, the novel Murphy (1938). Then in 1939 James Joyce's Finnegans Wake appeared. This is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. In poetry T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, and Wallace Stevens were writing from the 1920s until the 1950s. While modernist poetry in English is often viewed as an American phenomenon, with leading exponents including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Louis Zukofsky, there were important British modernist poets, including David Jones, Hugh MacDiarmid, Basil Bunting, and W. H. Auden. European modernist poets include Federico García Lorca, Anna Akhmatova, Constantine Cavafy, and Paul Valéry. The modernist movement continued during this period in Soviet Russia. In 1930 composer Dimitri Shostakovich's (1906–1975) opera The Nose was premiered, in which he uses a montage of different styles, including folk music, popular song and atonality. Among his influences was Alban Berg's (1885–1935) opera Wozzeck (1925), which "had made a tremendous impression on Shostakovich when it was staged in Leningrad." However, from 1932 socialist realism began to oust modernism in the Soviet Union, and in 1936 Shostakovich was attacked and forced to withdraw his 4th Symphony. Alban Berg wrote another significant, though incomplete, modernist opera, Lulu, which premiered in 1937. Berg's Violin Concerto was first performed in 1935. Like Shostakovich, other composers faced difficulties in this period. In Germany Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) was forced to flee to the U.S. when Hitler came to power in 1933, because of his modernist atonal style as well as his Jewish ancestry. His major works from this period are a Violin Concerto, Op. 36 (1934/36), and a Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942). Schoenberg also wrote tonal music in this period with the Suite for Strings in G major (1935) and the Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 38 (begun in 1906, completed in 1939). During this time Hungarian modernist Béla Bartók (1881–1945) produced a number of major works, including Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) and the Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939), String Quartet No. 5 (1934), and No. 6 (his last, 1939). But he too left for the US in 1940, because of the rise of fascism in Hungary. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) continued writing in his neoclassical style during the 1930s and 1940s, writing works like the Symphony of Psalms (1930), Symphony in C (1940), and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). He also emigrated to the US because of World War II. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), however, served in the French army during the war and was imprisoned at Stalag VIII-A by the Germans, where he composed his famous Quatuor pour la fin du temps ("Quartet for the End of Time"). The quartet was first performed in January 1941 to an audience of prisoners and prison guards. In painting, during the 1920s and 1930s and the Great Depression, modernism was defined by Surrealism, late Cubism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, German Expressionism, and modernist and masterful color painters like Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard as well as the abstractions of artists like Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky which characterized the European art scene. In Germany, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz and others politicized their paintings, foreshadowing the coming of World War II, while in America, modernism is seen in the form of American Scene painting and the social realism and Regionalism movements that contained both political and social commentary dominated the art world. Artists like Ben Shahn, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, George Tooker, John Steuart Curry, Reginald Marsh, and others became prominent. Modernism is defined in Latin America by painters Joaquín Torres-García from Uruguay and Rufino Tamayo from Mexico, while the muralist movement with Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Pedro Nel Gómez and Santiago Martínez Delgado, and Symbolist paintings by Frida Kahlo, began a renaissance of the arts for the region, characterized by a freer use of color and an emphasis on political messages. Diego Rivera is perhaps best known by the public world for his 1933 mural, Man at the Crossroads, in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center. When his patron Nelson Rockefeller discovered that the mural included a portrait of Vladimir Lenin and other communist imagery, he fired Rivera, and the unfinished work was eventually destroyed by Rockefeller's staff. Frida Kahlo's works are often characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Kahlo was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her paintings' bright colors and dramatic symbolism. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work as well; she combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition, which were often bloody and violent. Frida Kahlo's Symbolist works relate strongly to surrealism and to the magic realism movement in literature. Political activism was an important piece of David Siqueiros' life, and frequently inspired him to set aside his artistic career. His art was deeply rooted in the Mexican Revolution. The period from the 1920s to the 1950s is known as the Mexican Renaissance, and Siqueiros was active in the attempt to create an art that was at once Mexican and universal. The young Jackson Pollock attended the workshop and helped build floats for the parade. During the 1930s, radical leftist politics characterized many of the artists connected to surrealism, including Pablo Picasso. On 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Gernika was bombed by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. The Germans were attacking to support the efforts of Francisco Franco to overthrow the Basque government and the Spanish Republican government. Pablo Picasso painted his mural-sized Guernica to commemorate the horrors of the bombing. During the Great Depression of the 1930s and through the years of World War II, American art was characterized by social realism and American Scene painting, in the work of Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, Ben Shahn, Thomas Hart Benton, and several others. Nighthawks (1942) is a painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is not only Hopper's most famous painting, but one of the most recognizable in American art. The scene was inspired by a diner in Greenwich Village. Hopper began painting it immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After this event there was a large feeling of gloominess over the country, a feeling that is portrayed in the painting. The urban street is empty outside the diner, and inside none of the three patrons is apparently looking or talking to the others but instead is lost in their own thoughts. This portrayal of modern urban life as empty or lonely is a common theme throughout Hopper's work. American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930 portraying a pitchfork-holding farmer and a younger woman in front of a house of Carpenter Gothic style, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th-century American art. Art critics had favorable opinions about the painting; like Gertrude Stein and Christopher Morley, they assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of rural small-town life. It was thus seen as part of the trend towards increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of Sherwood Anderson's 1919 Winesburg, Ohio, Sinclair Lewis's 1920 Main Street, and Carl Van Vechten's The Tattooed Countess in literature. However, with the onset of the Great Depression, the painting came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit. The situation for artists in Europe during the 1930s deteriorated rapidly as the Nazis' power in Germany and across Eastern Europe increased. Degenerate art was a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany for virtually all modern art. Such art was banned because it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely. Degenerate Art was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937. The climate became so hostile for artists and art associated with modernism and abstraction that many left for the Americas. German artist Max Beckmann and scores of others fled Europe for New York. In New York City a new generation of young and exciting modernist painters led by Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and others were just beginning to come of age. Arshile Gorky's portrait of someone who might be Willem de Kooning is an example of the evolution of Abstract Expressionism from the context of figure painting, Cubism and Surrealism. Along with his friends de Kooning and John D. Graham, Gorky created bio morphically shaped and abstracted figurative compositions that by the 1940s evolved into totally abstract paintings. Gorky's work seems to be a careful analysis of memory, emotion and shape, using line and color to express feeling and nature. Attacks on early modernism Modernism's stress on freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism, and primitivism disregards conventional expectations. In many art forms this often meant startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects, as in the strange and disturbing combinations of motifs in Surrealism or the use of extreme dissonance and atonality in modernist music. In literature this often involved the rejection of intelligible plots or characterization in novels, or the creation of poetry that defied clear interpretation. Within the Catholic Church, the specter of Protestantism and Martin Luther was at play in anxieties over modernism and the notion that doctrine develops and changes over time. From 1932, socialist realism began to oust modernism in the Soviet Union, where it had previously endorsed Russian Futurism and Constructivism, primarily under the homegrown philosophy of Suprematism. The Nazi government of Germany deemed modernism narcissistic and nonsensical, as well as "Jewish" (see Antisemitism) and "Negro". The Nazis exhibited modernist paintings alongside works by the mentally ill in an exhibition entitled "Degenerate Art". Accusations of "formalism" could lead to the end of a career, or worse. For this reason, many modernists of the post-war generation felt that they were the most important bulwark against totalitarianism, the "canary in the coal mine", whose repression by a government or other group with supposed authority represented a warning that individual liberties were being threatened. Louis A. Sass compared madness, specifically schizophrenia, and modernism in a less fascist manner by noting their shared disjunctive narratives, surreal images, and incoherence. After 1945 While The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature states that modernism ended by c. 1939 with regard to British and American literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism occurred." Clement Greenberg sees modernism ending in the 1930s, with the exception of the visual and performing arts, but with regard to music, Paul Griffiths notes that, while modernism "seemed to be a spent force" by the late 1920s, after World War II, "a new generation of composers—Boulez, Barraqué, Babbitt, Nono, Stockhausen, Xenakis" revived modernism". In fact, many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, though generally they were no longer producing major works. The term "late modernism" is also sometimes applied to modernist works published after 1930. Among the modernists (or late modernists) still publishing after 1945 were Wallace Stevens, Gottfried Benn, T. S. Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, William Faulkner, Dorothy Richardson, John Cowper Powys, and Ezra Pound. Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem, Briggflatts in 1965. In addition, Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil was published in 1945 and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus in 1947. Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, has been described as a "later modernist". Beckett is a writer with roots in the Expressionist tradition of modernism, who produced works from the 1930s until the 1980s, including Molloy (1951), Waiting for Godot (1953), Happy Days (1961), and Rockaby (1981). The terms "minimalist" and "post-modernist" have also been applied to his later works. The poets Charles Olson (1910–1970) and J. H. Prynne (born 1936) are among the writers in the second half of the 20th century who have been described as late modernists. More recently, the term "late modernism" has been redefined by at least one critic and used to refer to works written after 1945, rather than 1930. With this usage goes the idea that the ideology of modernism was significantly re-shaped by the events of World War II, especially the Holocaust and the dropping of the atom bomb. The post-war period left the capitals of Europe in upheaval, with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris (the former center of European culture and the former capital of the art world), the climate for art was a disaster. Important collectors, dealers, and modernist artists, writers, and poets fled Europe for New York and America. The surrealists and modern artists from every cultural center of Europe had fled the onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who did not flee perished. A few artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Pierre Bonnard, remained in France and survived. The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American Abstract Expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Miró, Cubism, Fauvism, and early modernism via great teachers in America like Hans Hofmann and John D. Graham. American artists benefited from the presence of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst and the André Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery, and Peggy Guggenheim's gallery The Art of This Century, as well as other factors. Paris, moreover, recaptured much of its luster in the 1950s and 1960s as the center of a machine art florescence, with both of the leading machine art sculptors Jean Tinguely and Nicolas Schöffer having moved there to launch their careers—and which florescence, in light of the technocentric character of modern life, may well have a particularly long-lasting influence. Theatre of the Absurd The term "Theatre of the Absurd" is applied to plays, written primarily by Europeans, that express the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence. While there are significant precursors, including Alfred Jarry (1873–1907), the Theatre of the Absurd is generally seen as beginning in the 1950s with the plays of Samuel Beckett. Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd". He related these plays based on a broad theme of the absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play". Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994), Jean Genet (1910–1986), Harold Pinter (1930–2008), Tom Stoppard (born 1937), Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941), Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990), Alejandro Jodorowsky (born 1929), Fernando Arrabal (born 1932), Václav Havel (1936–2011) and Edward Albee (1928–2016). Pollock and abstract influences During the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all contemporary art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making a work of art was as important as the work of art itself. Like Pablo Picasso's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture in the early 20th century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, Pollock redefined the way art is made. His move away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all who came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—placing unstretched raw canvas on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artistic and industrial materials; dripping and throwing linear skeins of paint; drawing, staining, and brushing; using imagery and non-imagery—essentially blasted art-making beyond any prior boundary. Abstract Expressionism generally expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities available to artists for the creation of new works of art. The other Abstract Expressionists followed Pollock's breakthrough with new breakthroughs of their own. In a sense the innovations of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Motherwell, Peter Voulkos and others opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them. Re-readings into abstract art by art historians such as Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock and Catherine de Zegher critically show, however, that pioneering women artists who produced major innovations in modern art had been ignored by official accounts of its history. International figures from British art Henry Moore (1898–1986) emerged after World War II as Britain's leading sculptor. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures, usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. In the 1950s, Moore began to receive increasingly significant commissions, including a reclining figure for the UNESCO building in Paris in 1958. With many more public works of art, the scale of Moore's sculptures grew significantly. The last three decades of Moore's life continued in a similar vein, with several major retrospectives taking place around the world, notably a prominent exhibition in the summer of 1972 in the grounds of the Forte di Belvedere overlooking Florence. By the end of the 1970s, there were some 40 exhibitions a year featuring his work. On the campus of the University of Chicago in December 1967, 25 years to the minute after the team of physicists led by Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, Moore's Nuclear Energy was unveiled. Also in Chicago, Moore commemorated science with a large bronze sundial, locally named Man Enters the Cosmos (1980), which was commissioned to recognize the space exploration program. The "London School" of figurative painters, including Francis Bacon (1909–1992), Lucian Freud (1922–2011), Frank Auerbach (born 1931), Leon Kossoff (born 1926), and Michael Andrews (1928–1995), have received widespread international recognition. Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. His painterly but abstracted figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon began painting during his early 20s but worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion which sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition. His output can be crudely described as consisting of sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms, the early 1950s screaming popes, and mid to late 1950s animals and lone figures suspended in geometric structures. These were followed by his early 1960s modern variations of the crucifixion in the triptych format. From the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Bacon mainly produced strikingly compassionate portraits of friends. Following the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971, his art became more personal, inward-looking, and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death. During his lifetime, Bacon was equally reviled and acclaimed. Lucian Freud was a German-born British painter, known chiefly for his thickly impastoed portrait and figure paintings, who was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time. His works are noted for their psychological penetration, and for their often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. According to William Grimes of The New York Times, "Lucien Freud and his contemporaries transformed figure painting in the 20th century. In paintings like Girl with a White Dog (1951–1952), Freud put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter's social facade. Ordinary people—many of them his friends—stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist's ruthless inspection." After Abstract Expressionism In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s, several new directions like hard-edge painting and other forms of geometric abstraction began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract Expressionism. Clement Greenberg became the voice of post-painterly abstraction when he curated an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting, hard-edge painting, and lyrical abstraction emerged as radical new directions. By the late 1960s however, postminimalism, process art and Arte Povera also emerged as revolutionary concepts and movements that encompassed both painting and sculpture, via lyrical abstraction and the post-minimalist movement, and in early conceptual art. Process art, as inspired by Pollock enabled artists to experiment with and make use of a diverse encyclopaedia of style, content, material, placement, sense of time, aplastic, and real space. Nancy Graves, Ronald Davis, Howard Hodgkin, Larry Poons, Jannis Kounellis, Brice Marden, Colin McCahon, Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Alan Saret, Walter Darby Bannard, Lynda Benglis, Dan Christensen, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Pat Lipsky, Sam Gilliam, Mario Merz and Peter Reginato were some of the younger artists who emerged during the era of late modernism that spawned the heyday of the art of the late 1960s. Pop art In 1962, the Sidney Janis Gallery mounted The New Realists, the first major pop art group exhibition in an uptown art gallery in New York City. Janis mounted the exhibition in a 57th Street storefront near his gallery. The show had a great impact on the New York School as well as the greater worldwide art scene. Earlier in England in 1958 the term "Pop Art" was used by Lawrence Alloway to describe paintings associated with the consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected Abstract Expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior in favor of art that depicted material consumer culture, advertising, and the iconography of the mass production age. The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi (who created the ground-breaking I was a Rich Man's Plaything, 1947) are considered seminal examples in the movement. Meanwhile, in the downtown scene in New York's East Village 10th Street galleries, artists were formulating an American version of pop art. Claes Oldenburg had his storefront, and the Green Gallery on 57th Street began to show the works of Tom Wesselmann and James Rosenquist. Later Leo Castelli exhibited the works of other American artists, including those of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein for most of their careers. There is a connection between the radical works of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, the rebellious Dadaists with a sense of humor, and pop artists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein, whose paintings reproduce the look of Ben-Day dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction . Minimalism Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, wherein artists intend to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all nonessential forms, features, or concepts. Minimalism is any design or style wherein the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect. As a specific movement in the arts, it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Ronald Bladen, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It derives from the reductive aspects of modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism and a bridge to Post minimal art practices. By the early 1960s, minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in the geometric abstraction of Kazimir Malevich, the Bauhaus and Piet Mondrian) that rejected the idea of relational and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract Expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of action painting. Minimalism argued that extreme simplicity could capture all of the sublime representation needed in art. Minimalism is variously construed either as a precursor to postmodernism, or as a postmodern movement itself. In the latter perspective, early Minimalism yielded advanced modernist works, but the movement partially abandoned this direction when some artists like Robert Morris changed direction in favor of the anti-form movement. Hal Foster, in his essay The Crux of Minimalism, examines the extent to which Donald Judd and Robert Morris both acknowledge and exceed Greenbergian modernism in their published definitions of minimalism. He argues that minimalism is not a "dead end" of modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today." Minimal music The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music that features such repetition and iteration as those of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as systems music. The term 'minimal music' is generally used to describe a style of music that developed in America in the late 1960s and 1970s; and that was initially connected with the composers. The minimalism movement originally involved some composers, and other lesser known pioneers included Pauline Oliveros, Phill Niblock, and Richard Maxfield. In Europe, the music of Louis Andriessen, Karel Goeyvaerts, Michael Nyman, Howard Skempton, Eliane Radigue, Gavin Bryars, Steve Martland, Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt and John Tavener. Postminimalism In the late 1960s, Robert Pincus-Witten coined the term "postminimalism" to describe minimalist-derived art which had content and contextual overtones that minimalism rejected. The term was applied by Pincus-Witten to the work of Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra and new work by former minimalists Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Barry Le Va, and others. Other minimalists, including Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Agnes Martin, John McCracken and others, continued to produce late modernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers. Since then, many artists have embraced minimal or post-minimal styles, and the label "postmodern" has been attached to them. Collage, assemblage, installations Related to Abstract Expressionism was the emergence of combining manufactured items with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. The work of Robert Rauschenberg exemplifies this trend. His "combines" of the 1950s were forerunners of pop art and installation art, and used assemblages of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and commercial photographs. Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Jim Dine, and Edward Kienholz were among important pioneers of both abstraction and pop art. Creating new conventions of art-making, they made acceptable in serious contemporary art circles the radical inclusion in their works of unlikely materials. Another pioneer of collage was Joseph Cornell, whose more intimately scaled works were seen as radical because of both his personal iconography and his use of found objects. Neo-Dada In 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal as a sculpture for the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, which was to be staged at the Grand Central Palace in New York. He professed his intent that people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art because he said it was a work of art. This urinal, named Fountain was signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt". It is also an example of what Duchamp would later call "readymades". This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art, other famous examples being John Cage's 4′33″, which is four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence, and Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing. Many conceptual works take the position that art is the result of the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not of the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. In choosing "an ordinary article of life" and creating "a new thought for that object", Duchamp invited onlookers to view Fountain as a sculpture. Marcel Duchamp famously gave up "art" in favor of chess. Avant-garde composer David Tudor created a piece, Reunion (1968), written jointly with Lowell Cross, that features a chess game in which each move triggers a lighting effect or projection. Duchamp and Cage played the game at the work's premier. Steven Best and Douglas Kellner identify Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as part of the transitional phase, influenced by Duchamp, between modernism and postmodernism. Both used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism. Performance and happenings During the late 1950s and 1960s artists with a wide range of interests began to push the boundaries of contemporary art. Yves Klein in France, Carolee Schneemann, Yayoi Kusama, Charlotte Moorman and Yoko Ono in New York City, and Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik in Germany were pioneers of performance-based works of art. Groups like The Living Theatre with Julian Beck and Judith Malina collaborated with sculptors and painters to create environments, radically changing the relationship between audience and performer, especially in their piece Paradise Now. The Judson Dance Theater, located at the Judson Memorial Church, New York; and the Judson dancers, notably Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Elaine Summers, Sally Gross, Simonne Forti, Deborah Hay, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton and others; collaborated with artists Robert Morris, Robert Whitman, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and engineers like Billy Klüver. Park Place Gallery was a center for musical performances by electronic composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and other notable performance artists, including Joan Jonas. These performances were intended as works of a new art form combining sculpture, dance, and music or sound, often with audience participation. They were characterized by the reductive philosophies of Minimalism and the spontaneous improvisation and expressivity of Abstract Expressionism. Images of Schneemann's performances of pieces meant to create shock within the audience are occasionally used to illustrate these kinds of art, and she is often photographed while performing her piece Interior Scroll. However, according to modernist philosophy surrounding performance art, it is cross-purposes to publish images of her performing this piece, for performance artists reject publication entirely: the performance itself is the medium. Thus, other media cannot illustrate performance art; performance is momentary, evanescent, and personal, not for capturing; representations of performance art in other media, whether by image, video, narrative or, otherwise, select certain points of view in space or time or otherwise involve the inherent limitations of each medium. The artists deny that recordings illustrate the medium of performance as art. During the same period, various avant-garde artists created Happenings, mysterious and often spontaneous and unscripted gatherings of artists and their friends and relatives in various specified locations, often incorporating exercises in absurdity, physicality, costuming, spontaneous nudity, and various random or seemingly disconnected acts. Notable creators of happenings included Allan Kaprow—who first used the term in 1958, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Robert Whitman. Intermedia, multi-media Another trend in art which has been associated with the term postmodern is the use of a number of different media together. Intermedia is a term coined by Dick Higgins and meant to convey new art forms along the lines of Fluxus, concrete poetry, found objects, performance art, and computer art. Higgins was the publisher of the Something Else Press, a concrete poet married to artist Alison Knowles and an admirer of Marcel Duchamp. Ihab Hassan includes "Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms," in his list of the characteristics of postmodern art. One of the most common forms of "multi-media art" is the use of video-tape and CRT monitors, termed video art. While the theory of combining multiple arts into one art is quite old, and has been revived periodically, the postmodern manifestation is often in combination with performance art, where the dramatic subtext is removed, and what is left is the specific statements of the artist in question or the conceptual statement of their action. Fluxus Fluxus was named and loosely organized in 1962 by George Maciunas (1931–1978), a Lithuanian-born American artist. Fluxus traces its beginnings to John Cage's 1957 to 1959 Experimental Composition classes at The New School for Social Research in New York City. Many of his students were artists working in other media with little or no background in music. Cage's students included Fluxus founding members Jackson Mac Low, Al Hansen, George Brecht and Dick Higgins. Fluxus encouraged a do-it-yourself aesthetic and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Andreas Huyssen criticizes attempts to claim Fluxus for postmodernism as "either the master-code of postmodernism or the ultimately unrepresentable art movement—as it were, postmodernism's sublime." Instead he sees Fluxus as a major Neo-Dadaist phenomenon within the avant-garde tradition. It did not represent a major advance in the development of artistic strategies, though it did express a rebellion against "the administered culture of the 1950s, in which a moderate, domesticated modernism served as ideological prop to the Cold War." Avant-garde popular music Modernism had an uneasy relationship with popular forms of music (both in form and aesthetic) while rejecting popular culture. Despite this, Stravinsky used jazz idioms on his pieces like "Ragtime" from his 1918 theatrical work Histoire du Soldat and 1945's Ebony Concerto. In the 1960s, as popular music began to gain cultural importance and question its status as commercial entertainment, musicians began to look to the post-war avant-garde for inspiration. In 1959, music producer Joe Meek recorded I Hear a New World (1960), which Tiny Mix Tapes Jonathan Patrick calls a "seminal moment in both electronic music and avant-pop history [...] a collection of dreamy pop vignettes, adorned with dubby echoes and tape-warped sonic tendrils" which would be largely ignored at the time. Other early Avant-pop productions included the Beatles's 1966 song "Tomorrow Never Knows", which incorporated techniques from musique concrète, avant-garde composition, Indian music, and electro-acoustic sound manipulation into a 3-minute pop format, and the Velvet Underground's integration of La Monte Young's minimalist and drone music ideas, beat poetry, and 1960s pop art. Late period The continuation of Abstract Expressionism, color field painting, lyrical abstraction, geometric abstraction, minimalism, abstract illusionism, process art, pop art, postminimalism, and other late 20th-century modernist movements in both painting and sculpture continued through the first decade of the 21st century and constitute radical new directions in those mediums. At the turn of the 21st century, well-established artists such as Sir Anthony Caro, Lucian Freud, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, James Rosenquist, Alex Katz, Philip Pearlstein, and younger artists including Brice Marden, Chuck Close, Sam Gilliam, Isaac Witkin, Sean Scully, Mahirwan Mamtani, Joseph Nechvatal, Elizabeth Murray, Larry Poons, Richard Serra, Walter Darby Bannard, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Ronald Davis, Dan Christensen, Pat Lipsky, Joel Shapiro, Tom Otterness, Joan Snyder, Ross Bleckner, Archie Rand, Susan Crile, and others continued to produce vital and influential paintings and sculpture. Modern architecture Many skyscrapers in Hong Kong and Frankfurt have been inspired by Le Corbusier and modernist architecture, and his style is still used as influence for buildings worldwide. Modernism in Asia The terms "modernism" and "modernist", according to scholar William J. Tyler, "have only recently become part of the standard discourse in English on modern Japanese literature and doubts concerning their authenticity vis-à-vis Western European modernism remain". Tyler finds this odd, given "the decidedly modern prose" of such "well-known Japanese writers as Kawabata Yasunari, Nagai Kafu, and Jun'ichirō Tanizaki". However, "scholars in the visual and fine arts, architecture, and poetry readily embraced "modanizumu" as a key concept for describing and analysing Japanese culture in the 1920s and 1930s". In 1924, various young Japanese writers, including Kawabata and Riichi Yokomitsu started a literary journal Bungei Jidai ("The Artistic Age"). This journal was "part of an 'art for art's sake' movement, influenced by European Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, and other modernist styles". Japanese modernist architect Kenzō Tange (1913–2005) was one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, combining traditional Japanese styles with modernism, and designing major buildings on five continents. Tange was also an influential patron of the Metabolist movement. He said: "It was, I believe, around 1959 or at the beginning of the sixties that I began to think about what I was later to call structuralism", He was influenced from an early age by the Swiss modernist, Le Corbusier, Tange gained international recognition in 1949 when he won the competition for the design of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. In China, the "New Sensationists" (新感觉派, Xīn Gǎnjué Pài) were a group of writers based in Shanghai who in the 1930s and 1940s, were influenced, to varying degrees, by Western and Japanese modernism. They wrote fiction that was more concerned with the unconscious and with aesthetics than with politics or social problems. Among these writers were Mu Shiying and Shi Zhecun. In India, the Progressive Artists' Group was a group of modern artists, mainly based in Mumbai, India formed in 1947. Though it lacked any particular style, it synthesized Indian art with European and North America influences from the first half of the 20th century, including Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Expressionism. Modernism in Africa Peter Kalliney suggests that "Modernist concepts, especially aesthetic autonomy, were fundamental to the literature of decolonization in anglophone Africa." In his opinion, Rajat Neogy, Christopher Okigbo, and Wole Soyinka, were among the writers who "repurposed modernist versions of aesthetic autonomy to declare their freedom from colonial bondage, from systems of racial discrimination, and even from the new postcolonial state". Relationship with postmodernism By the early 1980s, the postmodern movement in art and architecture began to establish its position through various conceptual and intermedia formats. Postmodernism in music and literature began to take hold earlier. In music, postmodernism is described in one reference work as a "term introduced in the 1970s", while in British literature, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of British Literature sees modernism "ceding its predominance to postmodernism" as early as 1939. However, dates are highly debatable, especially as, according to Andreas Huyssen: "one critic's postmodernism is another critic's modernism." This includes those who are critical of the division between the two, see them as two aspects of the same movement, and believe that late modernism continues. Modernism is an all-encompassing label for a wide variety of cultural movements. Postmodernism is essentially a centralized movement that named itself, based on socio-political theory, although the term is now used in a wider sense to refer to activities from the 20th century onwards which exhibit awareness of and reinterpret the modern. Postmodern theory asserts that the attempt to canonize modernism "after the fact" is doomed to unresolvable contradictions. And since the crux of postmodernism critiques any claim to a single discernible truth, postmodernism and modernism conflict on the existence of truth. Where modernists approach the issue of 'truth' with different theories (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, semantic, etc.), postmodernists approach the issue of truth negatively by disproving the very existence of an accessible truth. In a narrower sense, what was modernist was not necessarily also postmodernist. Those elements of modernism which accentuated the benefits of rationality and socio-technological progress were only modernist. Modernist reactions against postmodernism include remodernism, which rejects the cynicism and deconstruction of postmodern art in favor of reviving early modernist aesthetic currents. Criticism of late modernity Although artistic modernism tended to reject capitalist values such as consumerism, 20th century civil society embraced global mass production and the proliferation of cheap and accessible commodities. This period of social development is known as "late or high modernity" and originates in advanced in Western societies. The German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, in The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), developed the first substantive critique of the culture of late modernity. Another important early critique of late modernity is the American sociologist George Ritzer's The McDonaldization of Society (1993). Ritzer describes how late modernity became saturated with fast food consumer culture. Other authors have demonstrated how modernist devices appeared in popular cinema, and later on in music videos. Modernist design has entered the mainstream of popular culture, as simplified and stylized forms became popular, often associated with dreams of a space age high-tech future. In 2008, Janet Bennett published Modernity and Its Critics through The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. Merging of consumer and high -end versions of modernist culture led to a radical transformation of the meaning of "modernism". First, it implied that a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition of its own. Second, it demonstrated that the distinction between elite modernist and mass consumerist culture had lost its precision. Modernism had become so institutionalized that it was now "post avant-garde", indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary movement. Many have interpreted this transformation as the beginning of the phase that became known as postmodernism. For others, such as art critic Robert Hughes, postmodernism represents an extension of modernism. "Anti-Modern" or "Counter-Modern" movements seek to emphasize holism, connection and spirituality as remedies or antidotes to modernism. Such movements see modernism as reductionist, and therefore subject to an inability to see systemic and emergent effects. Some traditionalist artists like Alexander Stoddart reject modernism generally as the product of "an epoch of false money allied with false culture". In some fields, the effects of modernism have remained stronger and more persistent than in others. Visual art has made the most complete break with its past. Most major capital cities have museums devoted to modern art as distinct from post-Renaissance art ( to ). Examples include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. These galleries make no distinction between modernist and postmodernist phases, seeing both as developments within modern art. See also Footnotes References Sources John Barth (1979) The Literature of Replenishment, later republished in The Friday Book (1984). Eco, Umberto (1990) Interpreting Serials in The limits of interpretation, pp. 83–100, excerpt Everdell, William R. (1997) The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth Century Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Orton, Fred and Pollock, Griselda (1996) Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed, Manchester University. Steiner, George (1998) After Babel, ch.6 Topologies of culture, 3rd revised edition Art Berman (1994) Preface to Modernism, University of Illinois Press. Further reading Robert Archambeau. "The Avant-Garde in Babel. Two or Three Notes on Four or Five Words", Action-Yes vol. 1, issue 8 Autumn 2008. Armstrong, Carol and de Zegher, Catherine (eds.), Women Artists as the Millennium, Cambridge, MA: October Books, MIT Press, 2006. . Aspray, William & Philip Kitcher, eds., History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. XI, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988 Bäckström, Per (ed.), Centre-Periphery. The Avant-Garde and the Other , Nordlit. University of Tromsø, no. 21, 2007. Bäckström, Per. "One Earth, Four or Five Words. The Peripheral Concept of 'Avant-Garde'" , Action-Yes vol. 1, issue 12 Winter 2010 Bäckström, Per & Bodil Børset (eds.), Norsk avantgarde (Norwegian Avant-Garde), Oslo: Novus, 2011. Bäckström, Per & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Decentring the Avant-Garde , Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical Studies, 2014. Bäckström, Per and Benedikt Hjartarson. "Rethinking the Topography of the International Avant-Garde", in Decentring the Avant-Garde , Per Bäckström & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical Studies, 2014. Baker, Houston A. Jr., Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. Second ed. London: Penguin, 1982. . Bradbury, Malcolm, & James McFarlane (eds.), Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930 (Penguin "Penguin Literary Criticism" series, 1978, ). Brush, Stephen G., The History of Modern Science: A Guide to the Second Scientific Revolution, 1800–1950, Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1988 Centre Georges Pompidou, Face a l'Histoire, 1933–1996. Flammarion, 1996. . Crouch, Christopher, Modernism in art design and architecture, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000 Eysteinsson, Astradur, The Concept of Modernism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992 Friedman, Julia . Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism: Alexei Remizov's Synthetic Art, Northwestern University Press, 2010. (Trade Cloth) Frascina, Francis, and Charles Harrison (eds.). Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. Published in association with The Open University. London: Harper and Row, Ltd. Reprinted, London: Paul Chapman Publishing, Ltd., 1982. Gates, Henry Louis. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004. Hughes, Robert, The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change (Gardners Books, 1991, ). Kenner, Hugh, The Pound Era (1971), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973 Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983 Klein, Jürgen, On Modernism, Berlin, Bruxelles, Lausanne, New York Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022 ISBN 978-3-631-87869-9. Kolocotroni, Vassiliki et al., ed.,Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998). Levenson, Michael, (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (Cambridge University Press, "Cambridge Companions to Literature" series, 1999, ). Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Nicholls, Peter, Modernisms: A Literary Guide (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1995). Pevsner, Nikolaus, Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005, ). The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design (Thames & Hudson, "World of Art" series, 1985, ). Pollock, Griselda, Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts. (Routledge, London, 1996. ). Pollock, Griselda, and Florence, Penny, Looking Back to the Future: Essays by Griselda Pollock from the 1990s. (New York: G&B New Arts Press, 2001. ) Sass, Louis A. (1992). Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought. New York: Basic Books. Cited in Bauer, Amy (2004). "Cognition, Constraints, and Conceptual Blends in Modernist Music", in The Pleasure of Modernist Music. . Schorske, Carl. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Vintage, 1980. . Schwartz, Sanford, The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Early Twentieth Century Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985 Tyler, William J., ed. Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913–1938. University of Hawai'i Press, 2008. Van Loo, Sofie (ed.), Gorge(l). Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, 2006. . Weir, David, Decadence and the Making of Modernism, 1995, University of Massachusetts Press, . Weston, Richard, Modernism (Phaidon Press, 2001, ). de Zegher, Catherine, Inside the Visible. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). External links Ballard, J. G., on Modernism. Denzer, Anthony S., PhD, Masters of Modernism. Hoppé, E. O., photographer, Edwardian Modernists. Malady of Writing. Modernism you can dance to An online radio show that presents a humorous version of Modernism Modernism Lab @ Yale University Modernism/Modernity , official publication of the Modernist Studies Association Modernism vs. Postmodernism Aesthetics Architectural styles Art movements Modernism Theories of aesthetics

Cultural identity

Cultural identity is a part of a person's identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality, gender, or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. In this way, cultural identity is both characteristic of the individual but also of the culturally identical group of members sharing the same cultural identity or upbringing. Cultural identity is an unfixed process that is continually evolving within the discourses of social, cultural, and historical experiences. Some people undergo more cultural identity changes as opposed to others, those who change less often have a clear cultural identity. This means that they have a dynamic yet stable integration of their culture. There are three pieces that make up a person's cultural identity: cultural knowledge, category label, and social connections. Cultural knowledge refers to a person's connection to their identity through understanding their culture's core characteristics. Category label refers to a person's connection to their identity through indirect membership of said culture. Social connections refers to a person's connection to their identity through their social relationships. Cultural identity is developed through a series of steps. First, a person comes to understand a culture through being immersed in those values, beliefs, and practices. Second, the person then identifies as a member of that culture dependent on their rank within that community. Third, they develop relationships such as immediate family, close friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Culture is a term that is highly complex and often contested with academics recording about 160 variations in meaning. Underpinning the notion of culture is that it is dynamic and changes over time and in different contexts resulting in many people today identifying with one or more cultures and many different ways. It is a defining feature of a person's identity, contributing to how they see themselves and the groups with which they identify. A person's understanding of their own and other's identities develops from birth and is shaped by the values and attitudes prevalent at home and in the surrounding community. Description Various modern cultural studies and social theories have investigated cultural identity and understanding. In recent decades, a new form of identification has emerged that breaks down the understanding of the individual as a coherent whole subject into a collection of various cultural identifiers. These cultural identifiers may be the result of various conditions including: location, sex, race, history, nationality, language, sexuality, religious beliefs, ethnicity, aesthetics, and food. As one author writes: When talking about identity, we generally define this word as the series of physical features that differentiate a person. Thus at birth, our parents declare us and give us a name with which they will identify us based on whether we are a boy or a girl. Identity is not only a right that declares the name, sex, time, and place that one is born; the word identity goes beyond what we define it. Identity is a function of elements that portrays one in a dynamic way, in constant evolution, throughout the stages of life identity develops based on personal experiences, tastes, and choices of a sexual and religious nature, as well as the social environment, these being some of the main parameters that influence and transform the day to day and allow us to discover a new part of ourselves. The divisions between cultures can be very fine in some parts of the world, especially in rapidly changing cities where the population is ethnically diverse and social unity is based primarily on locational contiguity. As a "historical reservoir," culture is an important factor in shaping identity. Since one of the main characteristics of a culture is its "historical reservoir," many if not all groups entertain revisions, either consciously or unconsciously, in their historical record in order to either bolster the strength of their cultural identity or to forge one which gives them precedent for actual reform or change. Some critics of cultural identity argue that the preservation of cultural identity, being based upon difference, is a divisive force in society and that cosmopolitanism gives individuals a greater sense of shared citizenship. When considering practical association in international society, states may share an inherent part of their 'make up' that gives common ground and an alternative means of identifying with each other. Nations provide the framework for cultural identities called external cultural reality, which influences the unique internal cultural realities of the individuals within the nation. There is a relationship between cultural identity and new media. Rather than necessarily representing an individual's interaction within a certain group, cultural identity may be defined by the social network of people imitating and following the social norms as presented by the media. Accordingly, instead of learning behavior and knowledge from cultural/religious groups, individuals may be learning these social norms from the media to build on their cultural identity. A range of cultural complexities structures the way individuals operate with the cultural realities in their lives. Nation is a large factor of the cultural complexity, as it constructs the foundation for an individual's identity, but it may contrast with one's cultural reality. Cultural identities are influenced by several different factors such as ones religion, ancestry, skin color, language, class, education, profession, skill, family and political attitudes. These factors contribute to the development of one's identity. History The history of cultural identity develops out of the observations of a number of social scientists. A history of cultural identity is important because it outlines the understanding of how our identities provide a way to see ourselves in relation to the world in which we live. "Cultural identities...are the natural, and most fundamental, constitutive elements of individual and collective identity." Franz Boas is an important figure in the creation of the idea of cultural identity. Boas is known for challenging ideas about culture. Boas promoted the importance of viewing a culture from within its own perspective and understanding, not from the outsider's view point. This was a somewhat radical perspective at the time. Additionally, Myron Lustig is credited with contributing the concept of cultural identity theory. A number of contemporary theorists continue to contribute to the concept of cultural identity. For instance, contemporary work completed by Stuart Hall is considered essential to understand cultural identity. According to Hall, identity is defined by at least two specific actions, which are similarity and difference. Specifically, in settings of slavery and colonization, identity provides a connection to the past as well as disintegration from a shared origination. Theorists' questions about identity include “whether identity is to be understood as something internal that persists through change or as something ascribed from without that changes according to circumstance." Whatever the case may be, Gleason advocates for “sensitivity to the intrinsic complexities of the subject matter with which it deals, and careful attention to the need for precision and consistency in its application. Cultural identity can also become a marker of difference that requires sensitivity. Kuper presents concepts on cultural identity within the framework of a power dynamic. He writes, "The privileged lie and mislead, but the oppressed come gradually to appreciate their objective circumstances and formulate a new consciousness that will ultimately liberate them." The consciousness is a facet of their identity. Similarly, identity plays a role in mediating between a human being and the environment in which they exist. The identity of a person is “a result of socialization and customs” that promotes the maintenance of distinct cultural identities from generation to generation. Additionally, identity can be considered that which forms cultures and results in “dictated appropriate behavior." Put another way, identity may dictate behavior that results in the reification of identity with the individual as a “replicate in miniature of the larger social and cultural entity. Another way to consider cultural identity is that it is “the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the practice of social history." Globalization is connected to influences in economics, politics, and society. Accordingly, globalization has an impact on cultural identity. As societies become even more connected, there are concerns that cultural identities will become homogenized through the increased level of connection and communication. However, there are alternative perspectives on this issue. For instance, Wright theorizes that "The spread of global culture and globalised ideas has led to many movements designed to embrace the uniqueness and diversity of an individual’s particular culture." Cultural arena It is also noted that an individual's "cultural arena," or place where one lives, impacts the culture that person abides by. The surroundings, environment, and people in these places play a role in how one feels about the culture they wish to adopt. Many immigrants find the need to change their culture in order to fit into the culture of most citizens in the country. This can conflict with an immigrant's current belief in their culture and might pose a problem, as the immigrant feels compelled to choose between the two presenting cultures. Some might be able to adjust to the various cultures in the world by committing to two or more cultures. It is not required to stick to one culture. Many people socialize and interact with people in one culture in addition to another group of people in another culture. Thus, cultural identity is able to take many forms and can change depending on the cultural area. The impact of the cultural arena has changed with the advent of the Internet, bringing together groups of people with shared cultural interests who before would have been more likely to integrate into their real-world cultural arena. This adaptability is what allows people to feel a part of society and culture wherever they go. Language Language allows for people in a group to communicate their values, beliefs, and customs, all of which contribute to creating a cultural identity. It was for a long time believed that if children lose their languages, they lose part or all of their cultural identity. When students who are non-native English speakers, go to classes where they are required to speak only English, they feel that their native language has no value. Some studies found, that this leads to loss of their culture and language altogether and this can lead to either a massive change in cultural identity, or they find themselves struggling to understand who they are. Language also includes the way people speak with peers, family members, authority figures, and strangers, including the tone and familiarity that is included in the language. The learning process can also be affected by cultural identity via the understanding of specific words, and the preference for specific words when learning and using a second language. Since many aspects of a person's cultural identity can be changed, such as citizenship or influence from outside cultures, language is a major component of cultural identity. However, more recent research could show, that language may be not a crucial part of a person's identity or cultural identity. Education Cultural identity is often not discussed in the classroom or learning environment where an instructor presides over the class. This often happens when the instructor attempts to discuss cultural identity and the issues that come with it in the classroom and is met with disagreement and cannot make forward progress in the conversation. Moreover, not talking about cultural identity can lead to issues such as prohibiting growth of education, development of a sense of self, and social competency. In these environments there are often many different cultures and problems can occur due to different worldviews that prevent others from being able to think outwardly about their peers' values and differing backgrounds. If students are able to think outwardly, then they can not only better connect with their peers, but also further develop their own worldview. In addition to this, instructors should take into account the needs of different students' backgrounds in order to best relay the material in a way that engages the student. When students learn that knowledge and truth are relevant to each person, that instructors do not know everything, and that their own personal experiences dictate what they believe they can better contextualize new information using their own experiences as well as taking into account the different cultural experiences of others. This in turn increases the ability to critically think and challenge new information which benefits all students learning in a classroom setting. There are two ways instructors can better elicit this response from their students through active communication of cultural identity. The first is by having students engage in class discussion with their peers. Doing so creates community and allows for students to share their knowledge as well as question their peers and instructors, thereby, learning about each other's cultural identity and creating acceptance of differing worldviews in the classroom. The second way is by using active learning methods such as "forming small groups and analyzing case studies". Through engaging in active learning students learn that their cultural identity is welcomed and accepted. Cultural identity and immigrant experience Identity development among immigrant groups has been studied across a multi-dimensional view of acculturation. Acculturation is the phenomenon that results when groups or individuals from different cultures come into continuous contact with one another and adopt certain values and practices that were not originally their own. Acculturation is unique from assimilation. Dina Birman and Edison Trickett (2001) conducted a qualitative study through informal interviews with first-generation Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents looking at the process of acculturation through three different dimensions: language competence, behavioral acculturation, and cultural identity. The results indicated that "acculturation appears to occur in a linear pattern over time for most dimensions of acculturation, with acculturation to the American culture increasing and acculturation to the Russian culture decreasing. However, Russian language competence for the parents did not diminish with length of residence in the country" (Birman & Trickett, 2001). In a similar study, Phinney, Horencyzk, Liebkind, and Vedder (2001) focused on a model, which concentrates on the interaction between immigrant characteristics and the responses of the majority society to understand the psychological effects of immigration. The researchers concluded that most studies find that being bicultural, the combination of a strong ethnic and a strong national identity, yields the best adaptation in the new country of residence. An article by LaFromboise, L. K. Colemna, and Gerton, reviews the literature on the impact of being bicultural. It showed that it is possible to have the ability to obtain competence within two cultures without losing one's sense of identity or having to identity with one culture over the other. (LaFromboise Et Al. 1993) The importance of ethnic and national identity in the educational adaptation of immigrants indicates that a bicultural orientation is advantageous for school performance (Portes & Rumbaut, 1990). Educators can assume their positions of power in beneficially impactful ways for immigrant students, by providing them with access to their native cultural support groups, language classes, after-school activities, and clubs in order to help them feel more connected to both native and national cultures. It is clear that the new country of residence can impact immigrants' identity development across multiple dimensions. Biculturalism can allow for a healthy adaptation to life and school. With many new immigrant youth, a school district in Alberta, Canada, has gone as far as to partner with various agencies and professionals in an effort to aid the cultural adjustment of new Filipino immigrant youths. In the study cited, a combination of family workshops and teacher professional development aimed to improve the language learning and emotional development of these youths and families. School Transitions How great is "Achievement Loss Associated with the Transition to Middle School and High School"? John W. Alspaugh's research is in the September/October 1998 Journal of Educational Research (vol. 92, no. 1), 2026. Comparing three groups of 16 school districts, the loss was greater where the transition was from sixth grade than from a K-8 system. It was also greater when students from multiple elementary schools merged into a single middle school. Students from both K-8 and middle schools lost achievement in transition to high school, though this was greater for middle school students, and high school dropout rates were higher for districts with grades 6-8 middle schools than for those with K-8 elementary schools. The Jean S. Phinney Three-Stage Model of Ethnic Identity Development is a widely accepted view of the formation of cultural identity. In this model cultural Identity is often developed through a three-stage process: unexamined cultural identity, cultural identity search, and cultural identity achievement. Unexamined cultural identity: "a stage where one's cultural characteristics are taken for granted, and consequently there is little interest in exploring cultural issues." This for example is the stage one is in throughout their childhood when one doesn't distinguish between cultural characteristics of their household and others. Usually, a person in this stage accepts the ideas they find on culture from their parents, the media, community, and others. An example of thought in this stage: "I don't have a culture I'm just an American." "My parents tell me about where they lived, but what do I care? I've never lived there." Cultural identity search: "is the process of exploration and questioning about one's culture in order to learn more about it and to understand the implications of membership in that culture." During this stage a person will begin to question why they hold their beliefs and compare it to the beliefs of other cultures. For some this stage may arise from a turning point in their life or from a growing awareness of other cultures. This stage is characterized by growing awareness in social and political forums and a desire to learn more about culture. This can be expressed by asking family members questions about heritage, visiting museums, reading of relevant cultural sources, enrolling in school courses, or attendance at cultural events. This stage might have an emotional component as well. An example of thought in this stage: "I want to know what we do and how our culture is different from others." "There are a lot of non-Japanese people around me, and it gets pretty confusing to try and decide who I am." Cultural identity achievement: "is characterized by a clear, confident acceptance of oneself and an internalization of one's cultural identity." In this stage people often allow the acceptance of their cultural identity play a role in their future choices such as how to raise children, how to deal with stereotypes and any discrimination and approach negative perceptions. This usually leads to an increase in self-confidence and positive psychological adjustment The role of the internet There is a set of phenomena that occur in conjunction between virtual culture – understood as the modes and norms of behavior associated with the internet and the online world – and youth culture. While we can speak of a duality between the virtual (online) and real sphere (face-to-face relations), for youth, this frontier is implicit and permeable. On occasions – to the annoyance of parents and teachers – these spheres are even superposed, meaning that young people may be in the real world without ceasing to be connected. In the present techno-cultural context, the relationship between the real world and the virtual world cannot be understood as a link between two independent and separate worlds, possibly coinciding at a point, but as a Moebius strip where there exists no inside and outside and where it is impossible to identify limits between both. For new generations, to an ever-greater extent, digital life merges with their home life as yet another element of nature. In this naturalizing of digital life, the learning processes from that environment are frequently mentioned not just since they are explicitly asked but because the subject of the internet comes up spontaneously among those polled. The ideas of active learning, of googling 'when you don't know', of recourse to tutorials for learning a program or a game, or the expression 'I learnt English better and in a more entertaining way by playing' are examples often cited as to why the internet is the place most frequented by the young people polled. The internet is becoming an extension of the expressive dimension of the youth condition. There, youth talk about their lives and concerns, design the content that they make available to others and assess others' reactions to it in the form of optimized and electronically mediated social approval. Many of today's youth go through processes of affirmation procedures and is often the case for how youth today grow dependent on peer approval. When connected, youth speak of their daily routines and lives. With each post, image or video they upload, they have the possibility of asking themselves who they are and to try out profiles differing from those they assume in the 'real' world. The connections they feel in more recent times have become much less interactive through personal means compared to past generations. The influx of new technology and access has created new fields of research on effects on teens and young adults. They thus negotiate their identity and create senses of belonging, putting the acceptance and censure of others to the test, an essential mark of the process of identity construction. Youth ask themselves about what they think of themselves, how they see themselves personally and, especially, how others see them. On the basis of these questions, youth make decisions which, through a long process of trial and error, shape their identity. This experimentation is also a form through which they can think about their insertion, membership and sociability in the 'real' world. From other perspectives, the question arises on what impact the internet has had on youth through accessing this sort of 'identity laboratory' and what role it plays in the shaping of youth identity. On the one hand, the internet enables young people to explore and perform various roles and personifications while on the other, the virtual forums – some of them highly attractive, vivid and absorbing (e.g. video games or virtual games of personification) – could present a risk to the construction of a stable and viable personal identity. See also Sources References Sources Gad Barzilai, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities University of Michigan Press, 2003. Tan, S.-h. (2005). Challenging citizenship: group membership and cultural identity in a global age. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate. Bunschoten, R., Binet, H., & Hoshino, T. (2001). Urban flotsam: stirring the city : Chora. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Mandelbaum, M. (2000). The new European diasporas: national minorities and conflict in Eastern Europe. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press Houtman, G. (1999). Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. (library.cornell.edu). Sagasti, F. R., & Alcalde, G. (1999). Development cooperation in a fractured global order: an arduous transition. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. Crahan, M. E., & Vourvoulias-Bush, A. (1997). The city and the world: New York's global future. New York: Council on Foreign relations. Hall, S., & Du Gay, P. (1996). Questions of cultural identity. London: Sage. Cable, V. (1994). The world's new fissures: identities in crisis. London: Demos. Berkson, I. B. (1920).Theories of Americanization a critical study, with special reference to the Jewish group. New York City: Teachers College, Columbia University. Mora, Necha. (2008). Further reading Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Balibar, Renée & Laporte, Dominique (1974). Le français national: Politique et pratique de la langue nationale sous la Révolution. Paris: Hachette. (full-text IDENTITIES: how Governed, Who Pays?) de Certeau, Michel; Julia, Dominique; & Revel, Jacques (1975). Une politique de la langue: La Révolution française et les patois. Paris: Gallimard. Evangelista, M. (2003). "Culture, Identity, and Conflict: The Influence of Gender," in Conflict and Reconstruction in Multiethnic Societies, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press Fishman, Joshua A. (1973). Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Gellner, Ernest (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gordon, David C. (1978). The French Language and National Identity (1930–1975). The Hague: Mouton. Milstein, T. & Castro-Sotomayor, J. (2020). "Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity". London, UK: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840 Robyns, Clem (1995). "Defending the national identity". In Andreas Poltermann (Ed.), Literaturkanon, Medienereignis, Kultureller Text. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag . Sparrow, Lise M. (2014). Beyond multicultural man: Complexities of identity. In Molefi Kete Asante, Yoshitaka Miike, & Jing Yin (Eds.), The global intercultural communication reader (2nd ed., pp. 393–414). New York, NY: Routledge. Stewart, Edward C., & Bennet, Milton J. (1991). American cultural patterns: A cross-cultural perspective (Rev. ed.). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Woolf, Stuart. "Europe and the Nation-State". EUI Working Papers in History 91/11. Florence: European University Institute. Anthropology Cultural geography Identity Identity Cross-cultural psychology

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more precise meaning even within narrow contexts. The term began to acquire its current range of meanings in literary criticism and architectural theory during the 1950s–1960s. In opposition to modernism's alleged self-seriousness, postmodernism is characterized by its playful use of eclectic styles and performative irony, among other features. Critics claim it supplants moral, political, and aesthetic ideals with mere style and spectacle. In the 1990s, "postmodernism" came to denote a general – and, in general, celebratory – response to cultural pluralism. Proponents align themselves with feminism, multiculturalism, and postcolonialism. Building upon poststructural theory, postmodern thought defined itself by the rejection of any single, foundational historical narrative. This called into question the legitimacy of the Enlightenment account of progress and rationality. Critics allege that its premises lead to a nihilistic form of relativism. In this sense, it has become a term of abuse in popular culture. Definitions "Postmodernism" is "a highly contested term", referring to "a particularly unstable concept", that "names many different kinds of cultural objects and phenomena in many different ways". It is "diffuse, fragmentary, [and] multi-dimensional". Critics have described it as "an exasperating term" and claim that its indefinability is "a truism". Put otherwise, postmodernism is "several things at once". It has no single definition, and the term does not name any single unified phenomenon, but rather many diverse phenomena: "postmodernisms rather than one postmodernism". Although postmodernisms are generally united in their effort to transcend the perceived limits of modernism, "modernism" also means different things to different critics in various arts. Further, there are outliers on even this basic stance; for instance, literary critic William Spanos conceives postmodernism, not in period terms, but in terms of a certain kind of literary imagination so that pre-modern texts such as Euripides' Orestes or Cervantes' Don Quixote count as postmodern. All this notwithstanding, scholar Hans Bertens offers the following: If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense. No matter whether they are aesthestic [sic], epistemological, moral, or political in nature, the representations that we used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted.In practice, across its many manifestations, postmodernism shares an attitude of skepticism towards grand explanations and established ways of doing things. In art, literature, and architecture, it blurs boundaries between styles and genres, and encourages freely mixing elements, challenging traditional distinctions like high art versus "popular art". In science, it emphasizes multiple ways of seeing things, and how our cultural and personal backgrounds shape our realities, making it impossible to be completely neutral and "objective". In philosophy, education, history, politics, and many other fields, it encourages critical re-examination of established institutions and social norms, embracing diversity and breaking down disciplinary boundaries. Though these ideas weren't strictly new, postmodernism amplified them, using an often playful, at times deeply critical, attitude of pervasive skepticism to turn them into defining features. Historical overview The term first appeared in print in 1870, but it only began to enter circulation with its current range of meanings in the 1950s—60s. Early appearances The term "postmodern" was first used in 1870 by the artist John Watkins Chapman, who described "a Postmodern style of painting" as a departure from French Impressionism. Similarly, the first citation given by the Oxford English Dictionary is dated to 1916, describing Gus Mager as "one of the few 'post' modern painters whose style is convincing". Episcopal priest and cultural commentator J. M. Thompson, in a 1914 article, uses the term to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion, writing, "the raison d'être of Post-Modernism is to escape from the double-mindedness of modernism by being thorough in its criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic tradition". In 1926, Bernard Iddings Bell, president of St. Stephen's College and also an Episcopal priest, published Postmodernism and Other Essays, which marks the first use of the term to describe an historical period following modernity. The essay criticizes lingering socio-cultural norms, attitudes, and practices of the Enlightenment. It is also critical of a purported cultural shift away from traditional Christian beliefs. The term "postmodernity" was first used in an academic historical context as a general concept for a movement by Arnold J. Toynbee in a 1939 essay, which states that "Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general war of 1914–1918". In 1942, the literary critic and author H. R. Hays describes postmodernism as a new literary form. Also in the arts, the term was first used in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style. Although these early uses anticipate some of the concerns of the debate in the second part of the 20th century, there is little direct continuity in the discussion. Just when the new discussion begins, however, is also a matter of dispute. Various authors place its beginnings in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Theoretical development In the mid-1970s, the American sociologist Daniel Bell provided a general account of the postmodern as an effectively nihilistic response to modernism's alleged assault on the Protestant work ethic and its rejection of what he upheld as traditional values. The ideals of modernity, per his diagnosis, were degraded to the level of consumer choice. This research project, however, was not taken up in a significant way by others until the mid-1980s when the work of Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson, building upon art and literary criticism, reintroduced the term to sociology. Discussion about the postmodern in the second part of the 20th century was most articulate in areas with a large body of critical discourse around the modernist movement. Even here, however, there continued to be disagreement about such basic issues as whether postmodernism is a break with modernism, a renewal and intensification of modernism, or even, both at once, a rejection and a radicalization of its historical predecessor. According to scholar Steven Connor, discussions of the 1970s were dominated by literary criticism, to be supplanted by architectural theory in the 1980s. Some of these conversations made use of French poststructuralist thought, but only after these innovations and critical discourse in the arts did postmodernism emerge as a philosophical term in its own right. In literary and architectural theory According to Hans Bertens and Perry Anderson, the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson and Robert Creeley first introduced the term "postmodern" in its current sense during the 1950s. Their stance against modernist poetry – and Olson's Heideggerian orientation – were influential in the identification of postmodernism as a polemical position opposed to the rationalist values championed by the Enlightenment project. During the 1960s, this affirmative use gave way to a pejorative use by the New Left, who used it to describe a waning commitment among youth to the political ideals socialism and communism. The literary critic Irving Howe, for instance, denounced postmodern literature for being content to merely reflect, rather than actively attempt to refashion, what he saw as the "increasingly shapeless" character of contemporary society. In the 1970s, this changed again, largely under the influence of the literary critic Ihab Hassan's large-scale survey of works that he said could no longer be called modern. Taking the Black Mountain poets an exemplary instance of the new postmodern type, Hassan celebrates its Nietzschean playfulness and cheerfully anarchic spirit, which he sets off against the high seriousness of modernism. (Yet, from another perspective, Friedrich Nietzsche's attack on Western philosophy and Martin Heidegger's critique of metaphysics posed deep theoretical problems not necessarily a cause for aesthetic celebration. Their further influence on the conversation about postmodernism, however, would be largely mediated by French poststructuralism.) If literature was at the center of the discussion in the 1970s, architecture is at the center in the 1980s. The architectural theorist Charles Jencks, in particular, connects the artistic avant-garde to social change in a way that captures attention outside of academia. Jenckes, much influenced by the American architect Robert Venturi, celebrates a plurality of forms and encourages participation and active engagement with the local context of the built environment. He presents this as in opposition to the "authoritarian style" of International Modernism. The influence of poststructuralism In the 1970s, postmodern criticism increasingly came to incorporate poststructuralist theory, particularly the deconstructive approach to texts most strongly associated with Jacques Derrida. Derrida attempted to demonstrate that the whole foundationalist approach to language and knowledge was untenable and misguided. He was also critical of what he claimed to expose as the artificial binary oppositions (e.g., subject/object, speech/writing) that he claims are at the heart of Western culture and philosophy. It is during this period that postmodernism comes to be particularly equated with a kind of anti-representational self-reflexivity. In the 1980s, some critics begin to take an interest in the work of Michel Foucault. This introduces a political concern about social power-relations into discussions about postmodernism. Much of Foucault's project is, against the Enlightenment tradition, to expose modern social institutions and forms of knowledge as historically contingent forces of domination. He aims to detotalize or decenter historical narratives to display modern consciousness as it is constituted by specific discourses and institutions that shape individuals into the docile subjects of social systems. This is also the beginning of the affiliation of postmodernism with feminism and multiculturalism. The art critic Craig Owens, in particular, not only made the connection to feminism explicit, but went so far as to claim feminism for postmodernism wholesale, a broad claim resisted by even many sympathetic feminists such as Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson. In social theory Although postmodern criticism and thought drew on philosophical ideas from early on, "postmodernism" was only introduced to the expressly philosophical lexicon by Jean-François Lyotard in his 1979 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In this influential work, Lyotard offers the following definition: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives [such as Enlightenment progress or Marxist revolution]". In a society with no unifying narrative, he argues, we are left with heterogeneous, group-specific narratives (or "language games", as adopted from Ludwig Wittgenstein) with no universal perspective from which to adjudicate among them. According to Lyotard, this introduces a general crisis of legitimacy, a theme he adopts from the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, whose theory of communicative rationality Lyotard rejects. While he was particularly concerned with the way that this insight undermines claims of scientific objectivity, Lyotard's argument undermines the entire principle of transcendent legitimization. Instead, proponents of a language game must make the case for their legitimacy with reference to such considerations as efficiency or practicality. Far from celebrating the apparently relativistic consequences of this argument, however, Lyotard focused much of his subsequent work on how links among games could be established, particularly with respect to ethics and politics. Nevertheless, the appearance of linguistic relativism inspired an extensive rebuttal by the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson. Building upon the theoretical foundations laid out by the Marxist economist Ernst Mandel and observations in the early work of the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, Jameson develops his own conception of the postmodern as "the cultural logic of late capitalism" in the form of an enormous cultural expansion into an economy of spectacle and style, rather than the production of goods. Baudrillard himself broke with Marxism, but continued to theorize the postmodern as the condition in which the domain of reality has become so heavily mediated by signs as to become inaccessible in itself, leaving us entirely in the domain of the simulacrum, an image that bears no relation to anything outside of itself. Scholars, however, disagree about whether his later works are intended as science fiction or truthful theoretical claims. In the 1990s, postmodernism became increasingly identified with critical and philosophical discourse directly about postmodernity or the postmodern idiom itself. No longer centered on any particular art or even the arts in general, it instead turns to address the more general problems posed to society in general by a new proliferation of cultures and forms. It is during this period that it also comes to be associated with postcolonialism and identity politics. Around this time, postmodernism also begins to be conceived in popular culture as a general "philosophical disposition" associated with a loose sort of relativism. In this sense, the term also starts to appear as a "casual term of abuse" in non-academic contexts. Others identify it as an aesthetic "lifestyle" of eclecticism and playful self-irony. Others argue that postmodernism utilizes compositional and semantic practices such as inclusivity, intentional indiscrimination, nonselection, and "logical impossibility." In various arts Architecture Scholarship regarding postmodernism and architecture is closely linked with the writings of critic-turned-architect Charles Jencks, beginning with lectures in the early 1970s and his essay "The Rise of Post-Modern Architecture" from 1975. His magnum opus, however, is the book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, first published in 1977, and since running to seven editions (in which he famously wrote: "Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on 15 July 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt–Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite."). Jencks makes the point that postmodernism (like modernism) varies for each field of art, and that for architecture it is not just a reaction to modernism but what he terms double coding: "Double Coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a concerned minority, usually other architects." In their book, "Revisiting Postmodernism", Terry Farrell and Adam Furman argue that postmodernism brought a more joyous and sensual experience to the culture, particularly in architecture. For instance, in response to the modernist slogan of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe that "less is more", the postmodernist Robert Venturi rejoined that "less is a bore". Dance The term "postmodern dance" is most strongly associated with the Judson Dance Theater located in New York's Greenwich Village during the 1960s and 1970s. Arguably its most important principle is taken from the composer John Cage's efforts to break down the distinction between art and life. The Judson dancers "[stripped] dance of its theatrical conventions such as virtuoso technique, fanciful costumes, complex storylines, and the traditional stage [and] drew on everyday movements (sitting, walking, kneeling, and other gestures) to create their pieces, often performing them in ordinary spaces." This was developed in particular by the American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, Cage's partner. In the 1980s and 1990s, dance began to incorporate other typically postmodern features such as the mixing of genres, challenging high–low cultural distinctions, and incorporating a political dimension. Fashion One manifestation of postmodernism in fashion explored alternatives to conventional concepts of elegance. Rei Kawakubo’s Spring/Summer 1997 collection featured "dresses asymmetrically padded with goose down, creating bumps in unexpected areas of the body". Issey Miyake’s 1985 dreadlocks hat "offered an immediate, yet impermanent, 'multi-culti' fashion experience". Vivienne Westwood took "an extremely polyglot approach", from early work with copies of 1950s clothes, to exploration of historic modes and ethnic influences: her first runway show, "Pirate", merged British history, 18th- and 19th-century dress, and African textile design. Film Postmodern film aims to subvert the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization, and to test the audience's suspension of disbelief. Typically, such films also break down the cultural divide between high and low art and often upend typical portrayals of gender, race, class, genre, and time with the goal of creating something that does not abide by traditional narrative expression. Postmodern film is often separated from modernist cinema and traditional narrative film by three key characteristics. One is an extensive use of homage or pastiche. The second is meta-reference or self-reflexivity, highlighting the construction and relation of the image to other images in media and not to any kind of external reality. A self-referential film reminds the viewer – either through characters' knowledge of their own fictional nature, or through visuals – that the film itself is only a film. One technique used to achieve meta-reference is the use of intertextuality, in which the film's characters reference or discuss other works of fiction. A third characteristic is stories that unfold out of chronological order, deconstructing or fragmenting time to highlight that what is appearing on screen is constructed. Another common element is a bridging of the gap between highbrow and lowbrow activities and artistic styles, for example, a parody of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in which Adam is reaching for a McDonald's burger rather than the hand of God. Contradictions of all sorts – whether it be in visual technique, characters' morals, etc. – are crucial to postmodernism. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) might be the best-known postmodernist film, about a future dystopia where "replicants", androids with enhanced abilities and all but indistinguishable from humans, have been invented and are deemed dangerous enough to hunt down when they escape. There is extensive blurring of boundaries between genres and cultures, and styles that are generally more separate, along with the fusion of disparate styles and times, a common trope in postmodern cinema. In particular, the blending of film noir and science-fiction into tech noir is an example of the film deconstructing cinema and genre. Graphic design Early mention of postmodernism as an element of graphic design appeared in the British magazine, "Design". A characteristic of postmodern graphic design is that "retro, techno, punk, grunge, beach, parody, and pastiche were all conspicuous trends. Each had its own sites and venues, detractors and advocates." Literature In 1971, the American scholar Ihab Hassan made the term popular in literary studies as a description of the new art emerging in the 1960s. According to scholar David Herwitz, writers such as John Barth and Donald Barthelme (and, later, Thomas Pynchon) responded in various ways to the aesthetic innovations of Finnegans Wake and the late work of Samuel Beckett. Postmodern literature often calls attention to issues regarding its own complicated connection to reality. The French critic Roland Barthes declared the novel to be an exhaustive form and explored what it means to continue to write novels under such a condition. In Postmodernist Fiction (1987), Brian McHale details the shift from modernism to postmodernism, arguing that the former is characterized by an epistemological dominant and that postmodern works have developed out of modernism and are primarily concerned with questions of ontology. McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007) follows Raymond Federman's lead in now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism. Music Music critic Andy Cush described Talking Heads as "New York art-punks" whose "blend of nervy postmodernism and undeniable groove made them one of the defining rock bands of the late 1970s and ’80s." Media theorist Dick Hebdige, examining the "Road to Nowhere" (1985) music video, said the group "draw eclectically on a wide range of visual and aural sources to create a distinctive pastiche or hybrid 'house style' which they have used since their formation in the mid-1970s deliberately to stretch received (industrial) definitions of what rock/pop/video/Art/ performance/audience are", calling them "a properly postmodernist band." According to lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter David Byrne, commenting for a 2011 museum exhibition, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990: "Anything could be mixed and matched – or mashed up, as is said today – and anything was fair game for inspiration.” The composer Jonathan Kramer has written that avant-garde musical compositions (which some would consider modernist rather than postmodernist) "defy more than seduce the listener, and they extend by potentially unsettling means the very idea of what music is." In the 1960s, composers such as Terry Riley, Henryk Górecki, Bradley Joseph, John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Lou Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies, whilst others, most notably John Cage challenged the prevailing narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism. Author on postmodernism, Dominic Strinati, has noted, it is also important "to include in this category the so-called 'art rock' musical innovations and mixing of styles associated with groups like Talking Heads, and performers like Laurie Anderson, together with the self-conscious 'reinvention of disco' by the Pet Shop Boys". In the late-20th century, avant-garde academics labelled American singer Madonna as the "personification of the postmodern" because "the postmodern condition is characterized by fragmentation, de-differentiation, pastiche, retrospection and anti-foundationalism", which they argued Madonna embodied. Christian writer Graham Cray also said that "Madonna is perhaps the most visible example of what is called post-modernism", and Martin Amis described her as "perhaps the most postmodern personage on the planet". She was also suggested by literary critic Olivier Sécardin to epitomise postmodernism. Sculpture Sculptor Claes Oldenberg, at the forefront of the pop art movement, declared in 1961: "I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical … I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap and still comes out on top." That year, he opened The Store in New York's Lower East Side, where he blurred the line between art and commerce by selling brightly painted plaster reliefs and sculptures of commercial and manufactured objects. Oldenburg was one of the most recognizable sculptors identified with postmodernism, a group that included Jeff Koons, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, and Richard Serra. Theater Postmodern theater emerged as a reaction against modernist theater. Most postmodern productions are centered on highlighting the fallibility of definite truth, instead encouraging the audience to reach their own individual understanding. Essentially, thus, postmodern theater raises questions rather than attempting to supply answers. In philosophy In the 1970s, a disparate group of poststructuralists in France developed a critique of modern philosophy with roots discernible in Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger. Although few themselves relied upon the term, they became known to many as postmodern theorists. Notable figures include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and others. By the 1980s, this spread to America in the work of Richard Rorty and others. According to scholar Stuart Sim, one of the best ways to describe a specifically philosophical conception of postmodernism is as an anti-foundational "scepticism about authority, received wisdom, cultural and political norms and so on", which he says places it within a tradition dating back to ancient Greece. Poststructuralism Poststructuralists, like structuralists, start from the assumption that people's identities, values, and economic conditions determine each other rather than having intrinsic properties that can be understood in isolation. While structuralism explores how meaning is produced by a set of essential relationships in an overarching quasi-linguistic system, poststructuralism accepts this premise, but rejects the assumption that such systems can ever be fixed or centered. Deconstruction Deconstruction is a practice of philosophy, literary criticism, and textual analysis developed by Jacques Derrida. Derrida's work has been seen as rooted in a statement found in Of Grammatology: "" ("there is no outside-text"). This statement is part of a critique of "inside" and "outside" metaphors when referring to the text, and is a corollary to the observation that there is no "inside" of a text as well. This attention to a text's unacknowledged reliance on metaphors and figures embedded within its discourse is characteristic of Derrida's approach. Derrida's method sometimes involves demonstrating that a given philosophical discourse depends on binary oppositions or excluding terms that the discourse itself has declared to be irrelevant or inapplicable. Derrida's philosophy inspired a postmodern movement called deconstructivism among architects, characterized by a design that rejects structural "centers" and encourages decentralized play among its elements. Derrida discontinued his involvement with the movement after the publication of his collaborative project with architect Peter Eisenman in Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman. Michel Foucault on power relations French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault argued that power operates according to the logics of social institutions that have become unmoored from the intentions of any actual individuals. Individuals, according to Foucault, are both products and participants in these dynamics. In the 1970s, Foucault employed a Nietzsche-inspired "genealogical method" to analyze power-relations across their historical permutations. Both his political orientation and the consistency of his positions continue to be debated among critics and defenders alike. Nevertheless, Foucault's political works share two common elements: a historical perspective and a discursive methodology. He analyzed social phenomena in historical contexts and focused on how they have evolved over time. Additionally, he employed the study of texts, usually academic texts, as the material for his inquiries. In this way, Foucault sought to understand how the historical formation of discourses has shaped contemporary political thinking and institutions. Gilles Deleuze on productive difference The work of Gilles Deleuze develops a concept of as a productive mechanism, rather than as a merely negative phenomenon. He advocates for a critique of reason that emphasizes sensibility and feeling over rational judgment. Following Nietzsche, Deleuze argues that philosophical critique is an encounter between thought and what forces it into action, and that this requires training, discipline, inventiveness, and even a certain "cruelty". He believes that thought cannot activate itself, but needs external forces to awaken and move it. Art, science, and philosophy can provide such activation through their transformative and experimental nature. The criticisms of Jürgen Habermas The philosopher Jürgen Habermas, a prominent critic of philosophical postmodernism, argues in his 1985 work The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity that postmodern thinkers are caught in a performative contradiction, more specifically, that their critiques of modernism rely on concepts and methods that are themselves products of modern reason. Habermas criticizes these thinkers for their rejection of the subject and their embrace of experimental, avant-garde strategies. He asserts that their critiques of modernism ultimately lead to a longing for the very subject they seek to dismantle. Habermas also takes issue with postmodernists' leveling of the distinction between philosophy and literature. He argues that such rhetorical strategies undermine the importance of argument and communicative reason. Habermas's critique of postmodernism set the stage for much of the subsequent debate by clarifying some of its key underlying issues. Additionally, according to scholar Gary Aylesworth, "that he is able to read postmodernist texts closely and discursively testifies to their intelligibility", against those who would dismiss them as simple nonsense. His engagement with their ideas has led some postmodern philosophers, such as Lyotard, to similarly engage with Habermas's criticisms. The Postmodern Condition Jean-François Lyotard is credited with being the first to use the term "postmodern" in a philosophical context, in his 1979 work . In it, he follows Wittgenstein's language games model and speech act theory, contrasting two different language games, that of the expert, and that of the philosopher. He talks about the transformation of knowledge into information in the computer age and likens the transmission or reception of coded messages (information) to a position within a language game. Lyotard defined philosophical postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition, writing: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives...." where what he means by metanarrative (in French, grands récits) is something like a unified, complete, universal, and epistemically certain story about everything that is. Against totalizing metanarratives, Lyotard and other postmodern philosophers argue that truth is always dependent upon historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal—and that truth is always partial and "at issue" rather than being complete and certain. Jean Baudrillard on hyperreality In postmodernism, hyperreality refers to a state where experiences are mediated by technology, resulting in a network of images and signs without a corresponding external reality. Baudrillard describes hyperreality as the terminal stage of simulation, where signs and images become entirely self-referential. Drawing upon some of the technical vocabulary of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Baudrillard argues that production has shifted from creating real objects to producing signs and symbols. This system of symbolic exchange, detached from the real, constitutes hyperreality. In the words of one commentartor, "the hyperreal is a system of simulation that simulates itself." Richard Rorty's neopragmatism Richard Rorty was an American philosopher known for his linguistic form of neopragmatism. Initially attracted to analytic philosophy, Rorty later rejected its representationalism. His major influences include Charles Darwin, Hans Georg Gadamer, G. W. F. Hegel, and Martin Heidegger. In his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty challenged the notion of a mind-independent, language-independent reality. He argued that language is a tool used to adapt to the environment and achieve desired ends. This naturalistic approach led him to abandon the traditional quest for a privileged mental power that allows direct access to things-in-themselves. Instead, Rorty advocated for a focus on imaginative alternatives to present beliefs rather than the pursuit of well-grounded truths. He believed that creative, secular humanism, free from authoritarian assertions about truth and goodness, is the key to a better future. Rorty saw his neopragmatism as a continuation of the Enlightenment project, aiming to demystify human life and replace traditional power relations with those based on tolerance and freedom. In society Postmodernism has influenced society at large, in such diverse fields as law, education, media, urban planning, science, religious studies, politics and others. Law Postmodern interpretations of the law can involve critically considering legal inequalities connected to gender, class, race and ethnicity by acknowledging "diversity and multiplicity". Critical practices connected to postmodern philosophy, such as critical literacy and deconstruction, can be used as an interpretative tool to ensure that a range of different and diverse values and norms are acknowledged or considered. Marketing Postmodern marketing focuses on customized experiences where broad market generalizations are no-longer applied. According to academic Stephen Brown, from the University of Ulster, "Marketers know about consumers, consumers know about marketers, marketers know consumers know about marketers, and consumers know marketers know consumers know about marketers." Brown, writing in the European Journal of Marketing in 1993, stated that the postmodern approach in many ways rejects attempts to impose order and work in silos. Instead marketers should work collectively with "artistic" attributes of intuition, creativity, spontaneity, speculation, emotion and involvement. A 2020 paper in the Journal of Business Research sought to identify the transition from postmodernism to post-postmodernism, to benefit marketing efforts. Focusing on "the changing social conditions that lead the consumer to consume in a particular manner", the study takes the approach of analyzing and comparing song lyrics. Madonna is identified as postmodern and Taylor Swift as post-postmodern, with Lady Gaga used as a transitional example. Noting that "definitions of postmodernism are notoriously messy, frequently paradoxical and multi-faceted", five themes and characteristics of postmodernism consistently found in marketing literature – anti-foundationalism, de-differentiation, fragmentation, the reversal of production and consumption, and hyper-reality – were employed in the comparative analysis. Urban planning Modernism sought to design and plan cities that followed the logic of the new model of industrial mass production; reverting to large-scale solutions, aesthetic standardisation, and prefabricated design solutions. Modernism eroded urban living by its failure to recognise differences and aim towards homogeneous landscapes (Simonsen 1990, 57). Jane Jacobs' 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was a sustained critique of urban planning as it had developed within modernism and marked a transition from modernity to postmodernity in thinking about urban planning. Postmodernism has involved theories that embrace and aim to create diversity. It exalts uncertainty, flexibility and change and rejects utopianism while embracing a utopian way of thinking and acting. Postmodernity of 'resistance' seeks to deconstruct modernism and is a critique of the origins without necessarily returning to them. As a result of postmodernism, planners are much less inclined to lay a firm or steady claim to there being one single 'right way' of engaging in urban planning and are more open to different styles and ideas of 'how to plan'. Emerging in the mid-1980s, the "Los Angeles School" of urbanism, an academic movement loosely centered around the University of California, Los Angeles' Urban Planning Department, considered contemporary Los Angeles to be the quintessential postmodern city. This was in contrast with what had been the dominant ideas of the Chicago School, formed in the 1920s at the University of Chicago, with its framework of urban ecology and emphasis on functional areas of use within a city, and the concentric circles to understand the sorting of different population groups. Edward Soja of the Los Angeles School combined Marxist and postmodern perspectives and focused on the economic and social changes (globalization, specialization, industrialization/deindustrialization, neo-liberalism, mass migration) that lead to the creation of large city-regions with their patchwork of population groups and economic uses. Legacy Since the late 1990s, there has been a growing sentiment in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion". Others argue that postmodernism is dead in the context of current cultural production. In "White Noise/White Heat, or Why the Postmodern Turn in Rock Music Led to Nothing but Road" (2004), literary critic and professor of English and comparative literature Larry McCaffery reexamined his rock music essay, "White Noise", published in the journal American Book Review in 1990. He noted "the almost casual assurance" of its definition of postmodernism, and the "easy assumption throughout that it is possible to draw analogies about the 'innovative features' of fundamentally different media, such as music and fiction." From his 2004 perspective, he says, "If I were writing such an essay today I would omit 'postmodernism' entirely because I no longer believe that I (or anyone else for that matter) can articulate with any degree of coherence or specificity what 'postmodernism' is, or was, what it's supposed to mean, or, indeed, whether it ever existed at all." In 2011, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 –1990, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, was billed as "the first in-depth survey of art, design and architecture of the 1970s and 1980s". The exhibition was organized in three "broadly chronological" sections. The first focused mainly on architecture, "the discipline in which the ideas of postmodernism first emerged", introducing architects like Aldo Rossi, Charles Moore and James Stirling, also designers like Ron Arad, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo. The second focused on 1980s design, art, music, fashion, performance, and club culture, with artists like Grace Jones, Leigh Bowery, Klaus Nomi, Guy Bourdin, and Helmut Newton, and artifacts employed by Annie Lennox, Devo, Grandmaster Flash, Karole Armitage, Kazuo Ohno, and Michael Clark. The final section examined "the hyper-inflated commodity culture of the 1980s", focusing on money as "a source of endless fascination for artists, designers and authors", including Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, Swatch, MTV and Disney. A review in the journal Design Issues noted the "daunting prospect" of reviewing an exhibition "on what might be considered the most slippery, indefinable 'movement'", and wondered what the curators must have felt: "One reviewer thought it 'a risky curatorial undertaking,' and even the curators themselves admit it could be seen as 'a fool's errand.'" Post-postmodernism The connection between postmodernism, posthumanism, and cyborgism has led to a challenge to postmodernism, for which the terms Post-postmodernism and postpoststructuralism were first coined in 2003: More recently metamodernism, post-postmodernism and the "death of postmodernism" have been widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoberek noted in his introduction to a special issue of the journal Twentieth-Century Literature titled "After Postmodernism" that "declarations of postmodernism's demise have become a critical commonplace". A small group of critics has put forth a range of theories that aim to describe culture or society in the alleged aftermath of postmodernism, most notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism), Gilles Lipovetsky (hypermodernity), Nicolas Bourriaud (altermodern), and Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly called pseudo-modernism). None of these new theories or labels have so far gained very widespread acceptance. Sociocultural anthropologist Nina Müller-Schwarze offers neostructuralism as a possible direction. Criticisms Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse. Since postmodernism criticizes both conservative and modernist values as well as universalist concepts such as objective reality, morality, truth, reason, and social progress, critics of postmodernism often defend such concepts from various angles. Media theorist Dick Hebdige criticized the vagueness of the term, enumerating a long list of otherwise unrelated concepts that people have designated as postmodernism, from "the décor of a room" or "a 'scratch' video", to fear of nuclear armageddon and the "implosion of meaning", and stated that anything that could signify all of those things was "a buzzword". The analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett criticized its impact on the humanities, characterizing it as producing conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster." Criticism of postmodernist movements in the arts include objections to departure from beauty, the reliance on language for the art to have meaning, a lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviation from clear structure, and consistent use of dark and negative themes. See also Theory Culture and politics Religion History Opposed by Notes Citations Bibliography External links Discourses of Postmodernism. Multilingual bibliography by Janusz Przychodzen (PDF file) Modernity, postmodernism and the tradition of dissent, by Lloyd Spencer (1998) Postmodernism and truth by philosopher Daniel Dennett Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on postmodernism 1880s neologisms Criticism of rationalism Metanarratives Modernism Science fiction themes Philosophical schools and traditions Theories of aesthetics Art movements Cultural trends

Culture

Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitude, and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict. In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group. Cultural change, or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies. Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage. Description Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society. In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness. Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies. In the wider social sciences, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions. When used as a count noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. "bro culture"), or a counterculture. Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture. Etymology The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes, where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, "refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human." In 1986, philosopher Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and the same word goes back to Latin colere, 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus, 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly." Culture described by Richard Velkley: ... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in the writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau's criticism of "modern liberalism and Enlightenment." Thus a contrast between "culture" and "civilization" is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor, it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired a larger brain. The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans. However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form. Change Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution, renovation, reconception, reform, innovation, revivalism, revolution, mutation, progress, diffusion, osmosis, borrowing, eclecticism, syncretism, modernization, indigenization, and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and the notion of progress. Rein Raud, building on the work of Umberto Eco, Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander, has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question. Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change. Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing", on the other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation. The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Early modern discourses German Romanticism Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to the concept of : "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: "" ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms, is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of : "For Herder, was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people." In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire—developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview". According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas"; different cultures, or different "folk ideas", are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States. English Romanticism In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world." In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music, and haute cuisine. As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from ). Another facet of the Romantic movement was an interest in folklore, which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture, namely that of the ruling social group, and low culture. In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies. Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of cultural evolution. Just as some critics have argued that the distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects. Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as "noble savages" living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly stratified capitalist systems of the West. In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of religion. Anthropology Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology, where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and in the United States and Canada, archaeology. The term , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas, refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that , which allow a person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately." Sociology The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society. For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture. Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present. Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis. As a result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science. Early researchers and development of cultural sociology The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) with the growing discipline of anthropology, wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in the theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field. Cultural studies In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies. Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food, sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations and the organization of production. In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as a limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism. From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie, created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. Cultural studies is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on a historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice. In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language, but also films, photographs, fashion, or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups) and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies. Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams, and later that of Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy. In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures, such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al.), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism. Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups: The first group covers the variables that represent the "efficiency orientation" of the societies: performance orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. The second covers the variables that represent the "social orientation" of societies, i.e., the attitudes and lifestyles of their members. These variables include gender egalitarianism, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, and human orientation. In 2016, a new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud, who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with the tradition of textual theory. Psychology Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture, and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect the way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures. As different cultures dictate distinctive norms, culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. LGBT culture is displayed with significantly different levels of tolerance within different cultures and nations. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in a culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation. The notion of the anxious, unstable, and rebellious adolescent has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein, who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized this understanding of adolescence, classifying it as a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. According to Robert Epstein and Jennifer, "American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for a full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation." Protection of culture There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of cultural heritage and cultural diversity. UNESCO and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation. The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on the other. In the 21st century, the protection of culture has been the focus of increasing activity by national and international organizations. The UN and UNESCO promote cultural preservation and cultural diversity through declarations and legally-binding conventions or treaties. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in the event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or municipality. Tourism is having an increasing impact on the various forms of culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society. See also Animal culture Anthropology Cultural area Cultural studies Cultural identity Cultural tourism Culture 21 – United Nations plan of action Outline of culture Recombinant culture Semiotics of culture References Sources Further reading Books Bastian, Adolf (2009), Encyclopædia Britannica Online Arnold, Matthew. 1869. Culture and Anarchy. New York: Macmillan. Third edition, 1882, available online. Retrieved: 2006-06-28. Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Press. . Barzilai, Gad (2003). Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities University of Michigan Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press. Carhart. Michael C. (2007). The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany, Cambridge, Harvard University press. Cohen, Anthony P. (1985). The Symbolic Construction of Community. New York: Routledge Dawkins, R. (1999) [1982]. The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. Oxford Paperbacks. Findley & Rothney (1986). Twentieth-Century World, Houghton Mifflin Geertz, Clifford (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York. . Goodall, J. (1986). The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hoult, T.F., ed. (1969). Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co. Jary, D. and J. Jary (1991). The HarperCollins Dictionary of Sociology. New York: HarperCollins. Keiser, R. Lincoln (1969). The Vice Lords: Warriors of the Streets. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. . Kroeber, A.L. and C. Kluckhohn (1952). Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Kim, Uichol (2001). "Culture, science and indigenous psychologies: An integrated analysis." In D. Matsumoto (Ed.), Handbook of culture and psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press McClenon, James. Tylor, Edward B(urnett) (1998) Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Ed. William Swatos and Peter Kivisto. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, pp. 528–529. Middleton, R. (1990). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. . O'Neil, D. (2006). Cultural Anthropology Tutorials , Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marco, California. Retrieved: 2006-07-10. Reagan, Ronald. "Final Radio Address to the Nation" , January 14, 1989. Retrieved June 3, 2006. Reese, W.L. (1980). Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. New Jersey US; Sussex, UK: Humanities Press. UNESCO (2002). Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, issued on International Mother Language Day, White, L. (1949). The Science of Culture: A study of man and civilization. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Wilson, Edward O. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage. . Articles The Meaning of "Culture" (2014-12-27), Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker External links Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology What is Culture? Social concepts Social constructionism Main topic articles

The arts

The arts or creative arts are a vast range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. The arts encompass diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being in an extensive range of media. Both dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life have developed into stylized and intricate forms. This is achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, or theorizing within a particular tradition, generations, and even between civilizations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgements, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space. Prominent examples of the arts include: visual arts (including architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting), literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose), and performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre). They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects and performances, convey insights and experiences, and construct new environments and spaces. The arts can refer to common, popular, or everyday practices as well as more sophisticated, systematic, or institutionalized ones. They can be discrete and self-contained or combine and interweave with other art forms, such as combining artwork with the written word in comics. They can also develop or contribute to some particular aspect of a more complex art form, as in cinematography. By definition, the arts themselves are open to being continually redefined. The practice of modern art, for example, is a testament to the shifting boundaries, improvisation and experimentation, reflexive nature, and self-criticism or questioning that art and its conditions of production, reception, and possibility can undergo. As both a means of developing capacities of attention and sensitivity and ends in themselves, the arts can simultaneously be a form of response to the world. It is a way to transform our responses and what we deem worthwhile goals or pursuits. From prehistoric cave paintings to ancient and contemporary forms of ritual to modern-day films, art has served to register, embody, and preserve our ever-shifting relationships with each other and the world. Definition The arts are considered various practices or objects done by people with skill, creativity, and imagination across cultures and history, viewed as a group. These activities include painting, sculpture, music, theatre, literature, and more. Art refers to the way of doing or applying human creative skills, typically in visual form. History and classifications In Ancient Greece, art and craft were referred to by the word techne. Ancient Greek art brought the veneration of the animal form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty, and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features, e.g. Zeus' thunderbolt. In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominant church insisted on the expression of Christian themes due to the overlap of church and state. Eastern art has generally worked in style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade, and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that local colour is defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident, for example, in the art of India, Tibet, and Japan. Islamic art avoids the representation of living beings, particularly humans and other animals, in religious contexts. It instead expresses religious ideas through calligraphy and geometrical designs. Classifications In the Middle Ages, liberal arts were taught in European universities as part of the Trivium, an introductory curriculum involving grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and of the Quadrivium, a curriculum involving the "mathematical arts" of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. In modern academia, the arts can be grouped with, or as a subset of, the humanities. The arts have been classified as seven: painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, performing, and cinema. Some view literature, painting, sculpture, and music as the central four arts, of which the others are derivative; drama is literature with acting, dance is music expressed through motion, and song is music with literature and voice. Film is sometimes called the "eighth" and comics the "ninth art" in Francophone scholarship, adding to the traditional "Seven Arts". Cultural fields like gastronomy are only sometimes considered as arts. Visual arts Architecture Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. A wider definition would include the design of the built environment, from the macro level of urban planning, urban design, and landscape architecture, to the micro level of creating furniture. The word architecture comes from the Latin , from "master builder, director of works." Architectural design usually must address feasibility and cost for the builder, as well as function and aesthetics for the user. In modern usage, architecture is the art and discipline of creating or inferring an implied or apparent plan for a complex object or system. Some types of architecture manipulate space, volume, texture, light, shadow, or abstract elements, to achieve pleasing aesthetics. Architectural works may be seen as cultural and political symbols, or works of art. The role of the architect, though changing, has been central to the design and implementation of pleasingly built environments, in which people live. Ceramics Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials (including clay), which may take forms such as pottery, tile, figurines, sculpture, and tableware. While some ceramic products are considered fine art, others are considered decorative, industrial, or applied art objects. Ceramics may also be considered artefacts in archaeology. Ceramic art can be made by one person or by a group of people. In a pottery or ceramic factory, a group of people design, manufacture, and decorate the pottery. Some pottery is regarded as art pottery. In a one-person pottery studio, ceramists or potters produce studio pottery. Ceramics excludes glass and mosaics made from glass tesserae. Conceptual art Conceptual art is art wherein the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text. Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, its popular usage, particularly in the United Kingdom, developed as a synonym for all contemporary art that does not practice the traditional skills of painting and sculpture. Drawing Drawing is a means of making an image using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax coloured pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools with similar effects are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are line drawing, hatching, cross-hatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a drafter, draftswoman, or draughtsman. Drawing can be used to create art used in cultural industries such as illustrations, comics, and animation. Comics are often called the "ninth art" in Francophone scholarship, adding to the traditional "Seven Arts". Painting Painting is considered to be a form of self-expression. Drawing, gesture (as in gestural painting), composition, narration (as in narrative art), or abstraction (as in abstract art), among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be a wide variety of topics, such as photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic (Symbolist art), emotive (Expressionism), or political in nature (Artivism). Some modern painters incorporate different materials, such as sand, cement, straw, wood, or strands of hair, for their artwork texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer. Photography Photography as an art form refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer. Art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides a visual account of news events, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services. Sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, such as clay), in stone, metal, ceramics, wood, and other materials, but shifts in sculptural processes have led to almost complete freedom of materials and processes following modernism. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast. Literary arts Literature (also known as literary arts or language arts) is literally "acquaintance with letters", as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary. The noun "literature" comes from the Latin word , meaning "an individual written character (letter)." The term has generally come to identify a collection of writings, which in Western culture are mainly prose (both fiction and non-fiction), drama, and poetry. In much, if not all, of the world, artistic linguistic expression can be oral as well and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and folktales. Comics, the combination of drawings or other visual arts with narrating literature, are called the "ninth art" in Francophone scholarship. Performing arts Performing arts comprise dance, music, theatre, opera, mime, and other art forms in which human performance is the principal product. Performing arts are distinguished by this performance element in contrast with disciplines such as visual and literary arts, where the product is an object that does not require a performance to be observed and experienced. Each discipline in the performing arts is temporal in nature, meaning the product is performed over a period of time. Products are broadly categorized as being either repeatable (for example, by script or score) or improvised for each performance. Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, magicians, comedians, dancers, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by the services of other artists or essential workers, such as songwriting and stagecraft. Performers adapt their appearance with tools such as costumes and stage makeup. Dance Dance generally refers to human movement, either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual, or performance setting. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic, and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to codified virtuoso techniques such as ballet. In sports: gymnastics, figure skating, and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines. In martial arts, "kata" is compared to dances. Music Music is defined as an art form whose medium is a combination of sounds. Though scholars agree that music generally consists of a few core elements, their exact definitions are debated. Commonly identified aspects include pitch (which governs melody and harmony), duration (including rhythm and tempo), intensity (including dynamics), and timbre. Though considered a cultural universal, definitions of music vary wildly throughout the world as they are based on diverse views of nature, the supernatural, and humanity. Music is differentiated into composition and performance, while musical improvisation may be regarded as an intermediary tradition. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between genres are subtle, open to individual interpretation, and controversial. Theatre Theatre or theater (from Greek ; from , "behold") is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound, and spectacle. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, and Chinese opera. Multidisciplinary artistic works Areas exist in which artistic works incorporate multiple artistic fields, such as film, opera, and performance art. While opera is often categorized as the performing arts of music, the word itself is Italian for "works", because opera combines artistic disciplines into a singular artistic experience. In a traditional opera, the work uses the following: the sets, costumes, acting, the libretto, singers and an orchestra. The composer Richard Wagner recognized the fusion of so many disciplines into a single work of opera, exemplified by his cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ("The Ring of the Nibelung"). He did not use the term opera for his works, but instead Gesamtkunstwerk ("synthesis of the arts"), sometimes referred to as "music drama" in English, emphasizing the literary and theatrical components, which were as important as the music. Classical ballet is another form that emerged in the 17th century in which orchestral music is combined with dance. Other works in the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have fused other disciplines in creative ways, such as performance art. Performance art is a performance over time that combines any number of instruments, objects, and art within a predefined or less well-defined structure, some of which can be improvised. Performance art may be scripted, unscripted, random, or carefully organized—even audience participation may occur. John Cage is regarded by many as a performance artist rather than a composer, although he preferred the latter term. He did not compose for traditional ensembles. Cage's composition Living Room Music, composed in 1940, is a quartet for unspecified instruments, really non-melodic objects, that can be found in the living room of a typical house, hence the title. Other arts Applied arts The applied arts are the application of design and decoration to everyday, functional objects to make them aesthetically pleasing. The applied arts include fields such as industrial design, illustration, and commercial art. The term "applied art" is used in distinction to the fine arts, where the latter is defined as arts that aim to produce objects that are beautiful or provide intellectual stimulation but have no primary everyday function. In practice, the two often overlap. Video games Video games are multidisciplinary works that include non-controversially artistic elements such as visuals and sound, as well as an emergent experience from the nature of their interactivity. Within the video game community, debates surround whether video games should be classified as an art form and whether game developers—AAA or indie—should be classified as artists. Hideo Kojima, a video game designer considered a gaming auteur, argued in 2006 that video games are a type of service rather than an art form. In the social sciences, cultural economists show how playing video games is conducive to involvement in more traditional art forms. In 2011, the National Endowment of the Arts included video games in its definition of a "work of art", and the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented an exhibit titled The Art of the Video Game in 2012. Arts critique Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is questionable whether such criticism can transcend prevailing sociopolitical circumstances. The variety of artistic movements has resulted in a division of art criticism into different disciplines, which may each use different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation, a form of art history, and contemporary criticism of work by living artists. Despite perceptions that criticism is a lower-risk activity than making art, opinions of current art are liable to corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past can be ridiculed for dismissing artists now venerated (like the early work of the Impressionists). Some art movements themselves were named disparagingly by critics, with the name later adopted as a badge of honour by the artists of the style with the original negative meaning forgotten, e.g. Impressionism and Cubism. Artists have had an uneasy relationship with their critics. Artists usually need positive opinions from critics for their work to be viewed and purchased. Many variables determine judgement of art such as aesthetics, cognition or perception. Aesthetic, pragmatic, expressive, formalist, relativist, processional, imitation, ritual, cognition, mimetic, and postmodern theories, are some of the many theories to criticize and appreciate art. Art criticism and appreciation can be subjective based on personal preference toward aesthetics and form, or on the elements and principles of design and by social and cultural acceptance. Education Arts in education is a field of educational research and practice informed by investigations into learning through arts experiences. In this context, the arts can include performing arts education (dance, drama, music), literature and poetry, storytelling, visual arts education in film, craft, design, digital art, media and photography. Politics A strong relationship between the arts and politics, particularly between various kinds of art and power, occurs across history and cultures. As they respond to events and politics, the arts take on political as well as social dimensions, becoming themselves a focus of controversy and a force of political and social change. One observation is that an artist has a free spirit. For instance Pushkin, a well-regarded writer, attracted the irritation of Russian officialdom and particularly the Tsar, since he "instead of being a good servant of the state in the rank and file of the administration and extolling conventional virtues in his vocational writings (if write he must), composed extremely arrogant and extremely independent and extremely wicked verse in which dangerous freedom of thought was evident in the novelty of his versification, in the audacity of his sensual fancy, and in his propensity for making fun of major and minor tyrants." Artists use their work to express their political views and promote social change, from influencing negatively in the form of hate speech to influencing positively through artivism. Governments use art, or propaganda, to promote their own agendas. Notes References Bibliography Books Articles Online Further reading External links Topic Dictionaries at Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. Definition of Art by Lexico. Aesthetics Humanities

Cultural globalization

Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures. The idea of cultural globalization emerged in the late 1980s, but was diffused widely by Western academics throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. For some researchers, the idea of cultural globalization is reaction to the claims made by critics of cultural imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s. Basics Extends ideas and cultures across all of the civilizations of the world. Sets up tensions between processes of homogenization that contribute on the one hand to flattening social differences and human experience, while on the other hand enhancing the sense of the local and promoting counter-globalizing movements. Occurs in everyday life, through digital communication, electronic commerce, popular culture, and international trade. Attempts, in some of expressions, to promote Western lifestyles and possibly Americanize the world. Encourages, in other expressions, cosmopolitan engagement across boundaries of difference. Contributing factors New technology and form of communication around the world help to integrate different cultures into each other. Transportation technologies and services along with mass migration and individual travel contribute to this form of globalization allowing for cross-cultural exchanges. Infrastructures and institutionalization embedded change (e.g. teaching languages such as English across the world through educational systems and training of teachers). Benefits Allows for profits to companies and nations. Offers opportunities for development and advancement in economics, technology, and information and usually impacts developed countries. Less stereotypes and misconception about other people and cultures. Capacity to defend one's values and ideas globally. Generates interdependent companies amongst companies. Access to other cultures products. Phases Pre-modern phase: early civilizations to 1500 Early human migration (facilitation of trade and creation of social networks amongst other nations). Emergence of world religions. Development of trans-regional trade networks (long-distance trade, many centered in China and India. Early forms of globalization, especially with the Silk Road). Modern phase European imperialism (rise of the West. European expansionism, especially with Columbus' encounter with the New World which allowed goods and people to cross the Atlantic). Emerging international economy. International migration and developments outside of the West. Spread of modernity. Medical advancement that helped many. Rise of the nation-state (a development of freedom of movement and cultural diffusion). Industrialization (demand for raw materials to supply industries. Science grew immensely with electronic shipping, railways, and new forms of communication, such as cable technology). Contemporary phase Struggle after the cold war led to a slow but steady increase in cultural flows with the immigration of peoples, ideas, goods, symbols, and images. Represented global cultural interconnectedness, which eventually led to developments in transport and transport infrastructures such as jet airlines, construction of road and rail networks. This allowed for more tourism and shifting patterns of global migration. Marshall McLuhan introduced the term "global village" in the 1960s stating that it was the ability to connect and trade ideas instantly amongst the nations of the world. The term "globalization" became popular in the 1980s. Examples Cultural globalization integrates scholars from several disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, communication, cultural studies, geography, political science and international relations. The field is notably broad as there are several concepts which may be perceived as cultural or transnational. A visible aspect of the cultural globalization is the diffusion of certain cuisines such as American fast food chains. The two most successful global food and beverage outlets, McDonald's and Starbucks, are American companies often cited as examples of globalization, with over 36,000 and 24,000 locations operating worldwide respectively as of 2015. The Big Mac Index is an informal measure of purchasing power parity among world currencies. Cultural globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two other being economic globalization and political globalization. However, unlike economic and political globalization, cultural globalization has not been the subject of extensive research. A growing field in cultural globalization research corresponds to the implementation of cross-cultural agility in globally operating businesses as a management tool to ensure operational effectiveness. Measurement There have been numerous attempts to measure globalization, typically using indices that capture quantitative data for trade flows, political integration, and other measures. The two most prominent are the AT Kearney/Foreign Policy Globalization index and the KOF Globalization Index. Cultural globalization, however, is much more difficult to capture using quantitative data, because it is difficult to find easily verifiable data of the flow of ideas, opinions, and fashions. One attempt to do so was the Cultural Globalization Index, proposed by Randolph Kluver and Wayne Fu in 2004, and initially published by Foreign Policy Magazine. This effort measured cultural flow by using global trade in media products (books, periodicals, and newspapers) as a proxy for cultural flow. Kluver and Fu followed up with an extended analysis, using this method to measure cultural globalization in Southeast Asia. Impacts The patterns of cultural globalization is a way of spreading theories and ideas from one place to another. Although globalization has affected us economically and politically, it has also affected us socially on a wider scale. With the inequalities issues, such as race, ethnic and class systems, social inequalities play a part within those categories. The past half-century has witnessed a trend towards globalization. Within the media and pop culture, it has shaped individuals to have certain attitudes that involve race issues thus leading to stereotypes. Technology is an impact that created a bridge that diffused the globalization of culture. It brings together globalization, urbanization and migration and how it has affected today's trends. Before urban centers had developed, the idea of globalization after the Second World War was that globalization took place due to the lifting of state restrictions by different nations. There were national boundaries for the flow of goods and services, concepts and ideas. Perspectives Hybridization Many writers suggest that cultural globalization is a long-term historical process of bringing different cultures into interrelation. Jan Pieterse suggested that cultural globalization involves human integration and hybridization, arguing that it is possible to detect cultural mixing across continents and regions going back many centuries. They refer, for example, to the movement of religious practices, language and culture brought by Spanish colonization of the Americas. The Indian experience, to take another example, reveals both the pluralization of the impact of cultural globalization and its long-term history. Homogenization An alternative perspective on cultural globalization emphasizes the transfiguration of worldwide diversity into a uniformed Westernized consumer culture. Some critics argue that the dominance of American culture influencing the entire world will ultimately result in the end of cultural diversity. Such cultural globalization may lead to a human monoculture. This process, understood as cultural imperialism, is associated with the destruction of cultural identities, dominated by a homogenized and westernized, consumer culture. The global influence of American products, businesses and culture in other countries around the world has been referred to as Americanization. This influence is represented through that of American-based television programs which are rebroadcast throughout the world. Major American companies such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola have played a major role in the spread of American culture around the globe. Terms such as Coca-colonization have been coined to refer to the dominance of American products in foreign countries, which some critics of globalization view as a threat to the cultural identity of these nations. Conflict intensification Another alternative perspective argues that in reaction to the process of cultural globalization, a "Clash of Civilizations" might appear. Indeed, Samuel Huntington emphasizes the fact that while the world is becoming smaller and interconnected, the interactions between peoples of different cultures enhance the civilization consciousness that in turn invigorate differences. Indeed, rather than reaching a global cultural community, the differences in culture sharpened by this very process of cultural globalization will be a source of conflict. While not many commentators agree that this should be characterized as a 'Clash of Civilizations', there is general concurrence that cultural globalization is an ambivalent process bringing an intense sense of local difference and ideological contestation. Alternatively, Benjamin Barber in his book Jihad vs. McWorld argues for a different "cultural division" of the world. In his book the McWorld represents a world of globalization and global connectivity and interdependence, looking to create a "commercially homogeneous global network". This global network is divided into four imperatives; Market, Resource, Information-Technology and the Ecological imperative. On the other hand, "Jihad" represents traditionalism and maintaining one's identity. Whereas "Clash of Civilizations" portrays a world with five coalitions of nation-states, "Jihad vs. McWorld" shows a world where struggles take place on a sub-national level. Although most of the western nations are capitalist and can be seen as "McWorld" countries, societies within these nations might be considered "Jihad" and vice versa. Friction Cultural globalization creates a more efficient society while also limiting how it can operate. Anna Tsing, an American anthropologist, explains that Friction makes global connections between cultures effective while also preventing globalization from being a smooth transition of power. Instead of globalization being about networks or a continuous flow, Tsing argues that we should think about it being created in two parts, the outside world (global) and the local. Globalization is seen as a friction between these two social organizations where globalization relies on the local for its success instead of just consuming it. The rainforests in Indonesia exemplify how globalization is not a straightforward process, but one that is complex and messy. Capitalist interests reshaped the landscape through chains of entrepreneurs and other businesses that came in and extracted its resources to sell to distant markets. In response to these interactions, environmental movements emerged and began to defend the rainforests and the communities. This instance is not limited to just a nation or a village, but to several social organizations all at work. Environmental activists, students, local communities, private interests, and investors all have interacted with one another in regard to globalization. This exemplifies how globalization promotes interconnections between groups who are entirely different from one another into a single place. Friction among social groups present risks of both potential destruction and improvement. Through this idea, globalization is not simply a tool used for networking and worldwide connection, nor is it an authoritarian flow of capital interest looking to take over local communities. Instead, globalization is viewed as a continuous engagement between various different social groups. While the destruction of the rainforest habitats through globalization is seen as a negative result, the emergence of local and national activists in response to these circumstances have led to more support for indigenous and environmental rights. Globalization is often seen as homogenizing the world and includes a diffusion of beliefs that are eventually infused and accepted across time and space. Instead, globalization is about understanding and recognizing that communities are not the same and these differences are what make up the contemporary world. The friction between different groups is what keeps global power in continuous motion. Corruption brought to the rainforest through capital interests highlight the struggle to find distinctions between the locals who are working for domestic development and those who are motivated by foreign investors and corporations. These distinctions add to the confusion globalization brings as it blurs the line between private and public. Outside motivations began to impact some of these reclusive communities who, up until this point, were considered untouchable or unaffected by globalization. See also Military globalization Engaged theory Globalism Globalization Cultural homogenization Cultural imperialism Globalization of sports Dimensions of globalization References Barber, Benjamin R., Jihad vs. McWorld, Hardcover: Crown, 1995, ; Paperback: Ballantine Books, 1996, Further reading Alonso, Paul. Digital Humor as Cultural Globalization in Latin America. Internet, Humor, and Nation in Latin/x America, 2022. Unescoorg. (2016). Unescoorg. Retrieved 12 October 2016. External links The Big Mac Index index page — contains Big Mac Index data dating back to 1997 (Economist.com subscription required for details) Globalization

Modernity

Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the Age of Reason of 17th-century thought and the 18th-century Enlightenment. Commentators variously consider the era of modernity to have ended by 1930, with World War II in 1945, or as late as the period falling between the 1980s and 1990s; the following era is often referred to as "postmodernity". The term "contemporary history" is also used to refer to the post-1945 timeframe, without assigning it to either the modern or postmodern era. (Thus "modern" may be used as a name of a particular era in the past, as opposed to meaning "the current era".) Depending on the field, modernity may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 16th to 18th centuries are usually described as early modern, while the long 19th century corresponds to modern history proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics. As an analytical concept and normative idea, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularization, liberalization, modernization and post-industrial life. By the late 19th and 20th centuries, modernist art, politics, science and culture has come to dominate not only Western Europe and North America, but almost every populated area on the globe, including movements thought of as opposed to the West and globalization. The modern era is closely associated with the development of individualism, capitalism, urbanization and a belief in the possibilities of technological and political progress. Wars and other perceived problems of this era, many of which come from the effects of rapid change, and the connected loss of strength of traditional religious and ethical norms, have led to many reactions against modern development. Optimism and belief in constant progress has been most recently criticized by postmodernism while the dominance of Western Europe and Anglo-America over other continents has been criticized by postcolonial theory. In the context of art history, modernity (Fr. modernité) has a more limited sense, modern art covering the period of  1860–1970. Use of the term in this sense is attributed to Charles Baudelaire, who in his 1863 essay "The Painter of Modern Life", designated the "fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis", and the responsibility art has to capture that experience. In this sense, the term refers to "a particular relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future, and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present". Etymology The Late Latin adjective modernus, a derivation from the adverb modo ("presently, just now", also "method"), is attested from the 5th century CE, at first in the context of distinguishing the Christian era of the Later Roman Empire from the Pagan era of the Greco-Roman world. In the 6th century CE, Roman historian and statesman Cassiodorus appears to have been the first writer to use modernus ("modern") regularly to refer to his own age. The terms antiquus and modernus were used in a chronological sense in the Carolingian era. For example, a magister modernus referred to a contemporary scholar, as opposed to old authorities such as Benedict of Nursia. In its early medieval usage, the term modernus referred to authorities regarded in medieval Europe as younger than the Greco-Roman scholars of Classical antiquity and/or the Church Fathers of the Christian era, but not necessarily to the present day, and could include authors several centuries old, from about the time of Bede, i.e. referring to the time after the foundation of the Order of Saint Benedict and/or the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Latin adjective was adopted in Middle French, as moderne, by the 15th century, and hence, in the early Tudor period, into Early Modern English. The early modern word meant "now existing", or "pertaining to the present times", not necessarily with a positive connotation. English author and playwright William Shakespeare used the term modern in the sense of "every-day, ordinary, commonplace". The word entered wide usage in the context of the late 17th-century quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns within the Académie Française, debating the question of "Is Modern culture superior to Classical (Græco–Roman) culture?" In the context of this debate, the ancients (anciens) and moderns (modernes) were proponents of opposing views, the former believing that contemporary writers could do no better than imitate the genius of Classical antiquity, while the latter, first with Charles Perrault (1687), proposed that more than a mere Renaissance of ancient achievements, the Age of Reason had gone beyond what had been possible in the Classical period of the Greco-Roman civilization. The term modernity, first coined in the 1620s, in this context assumed the implication of a historical epoch following the Renaissance, in which the achievements of antiquity were surpassed. Phases Modernity has been associated with cultural and intellectual movements of 1436–1789 and extending to the 1970s or later. According to Marshall Berman, modernity is periodized into three conventional phases dubbed "Early", "Classical", and "Late" by Peter Osborne: Early modernity: 1500–1789 (or 1453–1789 in traditional historiography) People were beginning to experience a more modern life (Laughey, 31). Classical modernity: 1789–1900 (corresponding to the long 19th century (1789–1914) in Hobsbawm's scheme) Consisted of the rise and growing use of daily newspapers, telegraphs, telephones and other forms of mass media, which influenced the growth of communicating on a broader scale (Laughey, 31). Late modernity: 1900–1989 Consisted of the globalization of modern life (Laughey, 31). In the second phase, Berman draws upon the growth of modern technologies such as the newspaper, telegraph and other forms of mass media. There was a great shift into modernization in the name of industrial capitalism. Finally in the third phase, modernist arts and individual creativity marked the beginning of a new modernist age as it combats oppressive politics, economics as well as other social forces including mass media. Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the mid- or late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely Postmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990s–present). Other theorists, however, regard the period from the late 20th century to the present as merely another phase of modernity; Zygmunt Bauman calls this phase liquid modernity, Giddens labels it high modernity (see High modernism). Definition Political Politically, modernity's earliest phase starts with Niccolò Machiavelli's works which openly rejected the medieval and Aristotelian style of analyzing politics by comparison with ideas about how things should be, in favour of realistic analysis of how things really are. He also proposed that an aim of politics is to control one's own chance or fortune, and that relying upon providence actually leads to evil. Machiavelli argued, for example, that violent divisions within political communities are unavoidable, but can also be a source of strength which lawmakers and leaders should account for and even encourage in some ways. Machiavelli's recommendations were sometimes influential upon kings and princes, but eventually came to be seen as favoring free republics over monarchies. Machiavelli in turn influenced Francis Bacon, Marchamont Needham, James Harrington, John Milton, David Hume, and many others. Important modern political doctrines which stem from the new Machiavellian realism include Mandeville's influential proposal that "Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits" (the last sentence of his Fable of the Bees), and also the doctrine of a constitutional separation of powers in government, first clearly proposed by Montesquieu. Both these principles are enshrined within the constitutions of most modern democracies. It has been observed that while Machiavelli's realism saw a value to war and political violence, his lasting influence has been "tamed" so that useful conflict was deliberately converted as much as possible to formalized political struggles and the economic "conflict" encouraged between free, private enterprises. Starting with Thomas Hobbes, attempts were made to use the methods of the new modern physical sciences, as proposed by Bacon and Descartes, applied to humanity and politics. Notable attempts to improve upon the methodological approach of Hobbes include those of John Locke, Spinoza, Giambattista Vico, and Rousseau. David Hume made what he considered to be the first proper attempt at trying to apply Bacon's scientific method to political subjects, rejecting some aspects of the approach of Hobbes. Modernist republicanism openly influenced the foundation of republics during the Dutch Revolt (1568–1609), English Civil War (1642–1651), American Revolution (1775–1783), the French Revolution (1789–1799), and the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). A second phase of modernist political thinking begins with Rousseau, who questioned the natural rationality and sociality of humanity and proposed that human nature was much more malleable than had been previously thought. By this logic, what makes a good political system or a good man is completely dependent upon the chance path a whole people has taken over history. This thought influenced the political (and aesthetic) thinking of Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke and others and led to a critical review of modernist politics. On the conservative side, Burke argued that this understanding encouraged caution and avoidance of radical change. However more ambitious movements also developed from this insight into human culture, initially Romanticism and Historicism, and eventually both the Communism of Karl Marx, and the modern forms of nationalism inspired by the French Revolution, including, in one extreme, the German Nazi movement. On the other hand, the notion of modernity has been contested also due to its Euro-centric underpinnings. Postcolonial scholars have extensively critiqued the Eurocentric nature of modernity, particularly its portrayal as a linear process originating in Europe and subsequently spreading—or being imposed—on the rest of the world. Dipesh Chakrabarty contends that European historicism positions Europe as the exclusive birthplace of modernity, placing European thinkers and institutions at the center of Enlightenment, progress, and innovation. This narrative marginalizes non-Western thinkers, ideas and achievements, reducing them to either deviations from or delays in an otherwise supposedly universal trajectory of modern development. Frantz Fanon similarly exposes the hypocrisy of European modernity, which promotes ideals of progress and rationality while concealing how much of Europe’s economic growth was built on the exploitation, violence, and dehumanization integral to colonial domination. Similarly, Bhambra argued that beyond economic advancement, Western powers "modernized" through colonialism, demonstrating that developments such as the welfare systems in England were largely enabled by the wealth extracted through colonial exploitation. Sociological In sociology, a discipline that arose in direct response to the social problems of modernity, the term most generally refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses consequent to the Age of Enlightenment. In the most basic terms, British sociologist Anthony Giddens describes modernity as Other writers have criticized such definitions as just being a listing of factors. They argue that modernity, contingently understood as marked by an ontological formation in dominance, needs to be defined much more fundamentally in terms of different ways of being. This means that modernity overlays earlier formations of traditional and customary life without necessarily replacing them. In a 2006 review essay, historian Michael Saler extended and substantiated this premise, noting that scholarship had revealed historical perspectives on modernity that encompassed both enchantment and disenchantment. Late Victorians, for instance, "discussed science in terms of magical influences and vital correspondences, and when vitalism began to be superseded by more mechanistic explanations in the 1830s, magic still remained part of the discourse—now called 'natural magic,' to be sure, but no less 'marvelous' for being the result of determinate and predictable natural processes." Mass culture, despite its "superficialities, irrationalities, prejudices, and problems," became "a vital source of contingent and rational enchantments as well." Occultism could contribute to the conclusions reached by modern psychologists and advanced a "satisfaction" found in this mass culture. In addition, Saler observed that "different accounts of modernity may stress diverse combinations or accentuate some factors more than others...Modernity is defined less by binaries arranged in an implicit hierarchy, or by the dialectical transformation of one term into its opposite, than by unresolved contradictions and oppositions, or antinomies: modernity is Janus-faced." In 2020, Jason Crawford critiqued this recent historiography on enchantment and modernity. The historical evidence of "enchantments" for these studies, particularly in mass and print cultures, "might offer some solace to the citizens of a disenchanted world, but they don't really change the condition of that world." These "enchantments" offered a "troubled kind of unreality" increasingly separate from modernity. Per Osterrgard and James Fitchett advanced a thesis that mass culture, while generating sources for "enchantment", more commonly produced "simulations" of "enchantments" and "disenchantments" for consumers. Cultural and philosophical The era of modernity is characterised socially by industrialisation and the division of labour, and philosophically by "the loss of certainty, and the realization that certainty can never be established, once and for all". With new social and philosophical conditions arose fundamental new challenges. Various 19th-century intellectuals, from Auguste Comte to Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud, attempted to offer scientific and/or political ideologies in the wake of secularisation. Modernity may be described as the "age of ideology". Critical theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Zygmunt Bauman propose that modernity or industrialization represents a departure from the central tenets of the Enlightenment and towards nefarious processes of alienation, such as commodity fetishism and the Holocaust. Contemporary sociological critical theory presents the concept of rationalization in even more negative terms than those Weber originally defined. Processes of rationalization—as progress for the sake of progress—may in many cases have what critical theory says is a negative and dehumanising effect on modern society. Consequent to debate about economic globalization, the comparative analysis of civilizations, and the post-colonial perspective of "alternative modernities", Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of "multiple modernities". Modernity as a "plural condition" is the central concept of this sociologic approach and perspective, which broadens the definition of "modernity" from exclusively denoting Western European culture to a culturally relativistic definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies". Secularization Central to modernity is emancipation from religion, specifically the hegemony of Christianity (mainly Roman Catholicism), and the consequent secularization. According to writers like Fackenheim and Husserl, modern thought repudiates the Judeo-Christian belief in the Biblical God as a mere relic of superstitious ages. It all started with Descartes' revolutionary methodic doubt, which transformed the concept of truth in the concept of certainty, whose only guarantor is no longer God or the Church, but Man's subjective judgement. Theologians have adapted in different ways to the challenge of modernity. Liberal theology, over perhaps the past 200 years or so, has tried, in various iterations, to accommodate, or at least tolerate, modern doubt in expounding Christian revelation, while Traditionalist Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and fundamentalist Protestant thinkers and clerics have tried to fight back, denouncing skepticism of every kind. Modernity aimed towards "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality". Scientific In the 16th and 17th centuries, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and others developed a new approach to physics and astronomy which changed the way people came to think about many things. Copernicus presented new models of the Solar System which no longer placed humanity's home, Earth, in the centre. Kepler used mathematics to discuss physics and described regularities of nature this way. Galileo actually made his famous proof of uniform acceleration in freefall using mathematics. Francis Bacon, especially in his Novum Organum, argued for a new methodological approach. It was an experimental based approach to science, which sought no knowledge of formal or final causes. Yet, he was no materialist. He also talked of the two books of God, God's Word (Scripture) and God's work (nature). But he also added a theme that science should seek to control nature for the sake of humanity, and not seek to understand it just for the sake of understanding. In both these things he was influenced by Machiavelli's earlier criticism of medieval Scholasticism, and his proposal that leaders should aim to control their own fortune. Influenced both by Galileo's new physics and Bacon, René Descartes argued soon afterward that mathematics and geometry provided a model of how scientific knowledge could be built up in small steps. He also argued openly that human beings themselves could be understood as complex machines. Isaac Newton, influenced by Descartes, but also, like Bacon, a proponent of experimentation, provided the archetypal example of how both Cartesian mathematics, geometry and theoretical deduction on the one hand, and Baconian experimental observation and induction on the other hand, together could lead to great advances in the practical understanding of regularities in nature. Technological One common conception of modernity is the condition of Western history since the mid-15th century, or roughly the European development of movable type and the printing press. In this context the modern society is said to develop over many periods, and to be influenced by important events that represent breaks in the continuity. Artistic After modernist political thinking had already become widely known in France, Rousseau's re-examination of human nature led to a new criticism of the value of reasoning itself which in turn led to a new understanding of less rationalistic human activities, especially the arts. The initial influence was upon the movements known as German Idealism and Romanticism in the 18th and 19th century. Modern art therefore belongs only to the later phases of modernity. For this reason art history keeps the term modernity distinct from the terms Modern Age and Modernism – as a discrete "term applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity of innovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought". And modernity in art "is more than merely the state of being modern, or the opposition between old and new". In the essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1863), Charles Baudelaire gives a literary definition: "By modernity I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent". Advancing technological innovation, affecting artistic technique and the means of manufacture, changed rapidly the possibilities of art and its status in a rapidly changing society. Photography challenged the place of the painter and painting. Architecture was transformed by the availability of steel for structures. Theological From conservative Protestant theologian Thomas C. Oden's perspective, modernity is marked by "four fundamental values": "Moral relativism (which says that what is right is dictated by culture, social location, and situation)" "Autonomous individualism (which assumes that moral authority comes essentially from within)" "Narcissistic hedonism (which focuses on egocentric personal pleasure)" "Reductive naturalism (which reduces what is reliably known to what one can see, hear, and empirically investigate)" Modernity rejects anything "old" and makes "novelty ... a criterion for truth." This results in a great "phobic response to anything antiquarian." In contrast, "classical Christian consciousness" resisted "novelty". Within Roman Catholicism, Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius X claim that Modernism (in a particular definition of the Catholic Church) is a danger to the Christian faith. Pope Pius IX compiled a Syllabus of Errors published on December 8, 1864, to describe his objections to Modernism. Pope Pius X further elaborated on the characteristics and consequences of Modernism, from his perspective, in an encyclical entitled "Pascendi dominici gregis" (Feeding the Lord's Flock) on September 8, 1907. Pascendi Dominici Gregis states that the principles of Modernism, taken to a logical conclusion, lead to atheism. The Roman Catholic Church was serious enough about the threat of Modernism that it required all Roman Catholic clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors and seminary professors to swear an Oath against modernism from 1910 until this directive was rescinded in 1967, in keeping with the directives of the Second Vatican Council. Defined Of the available conceptual definitions in sociology, modernity is "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence'," visual culture, and personal visibility. Generally, the large-scale social integration constituting modernity, involves the: increased movement of goods, capital, people, and information among formerly discrete populations, and consequent influence beyond the local area increased formal social organization of mobile populaces, development of "circuits" on which they and their influence travel, and societal standardization conducive to socio-economic mobility increased specialization of the segments of society, i.e., division of labor, and area inter-dependency increased level of excessive stratification in terms of social life of a modern man Increased state of dehumanisation, dehumanity, unionisation, as man became embittered about the negative turn of events which sprouted a growing fear. man became a victim of the underlying circumstances presented by the modern world Increased competitiveness among people in the society (survival of the fittest) as the jungle rule sets in. See also Notes References Bibliography . Further reading Adem, Seifudein. 2004. "Decolonizing Modernity: Ibn-Khaldun and Modern Historiography." In Islam: Past, Present and Future, International Seminar on Islamic Thought Proceedings, edited by Ahmad Sunawari Long, Jaffary Awang, and Kamaruddin Salleh, 570–87. Salangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia: Department of Theology and Philosophy, Faculty of Islamic Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Arendt, Hannah. 1958. "The Origins Of Totalitarianism" Cleavland: World Publishing Co. Buci-Glucksmann, Christine. 1994. Baroque Reason: The Aesthetics of Modernity. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. (cloth) (pbk) Carroll, Michael Thomas. 2000. Popular Modernity in America: Experience, Technology, Mythohistory. SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press. (hc) (pbk) Corchia, Luca. 2008. "Il concetto di modernità in Jürgen Habermas. Un indice ragionato." The Lab's Quarterly/Il Trimestrale del Laboratorio 2:396ff. ISSN 2035-5548. Crouch, Christopher. 2000. "Modernism in Art Design and Architecture," New York: St. Martins Press. (cloth) (pbk) Davidann, Jon Thares. 2019. "The Limits of Westernization: American and East Asians Create Modernity, 1860–1960." Oxford: Routledge. Dipper, Christof: Moderne (modernity), version: 2.0, in: Docupedia Zeitgeschichte, 22. November 2018 Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. 2003. Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, 2 vols. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Everdell, William R. 1997. The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (cloth); (pbk). Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar (ed.). 2001. Alternative Modernities. A Millennial Quartet Book. Durham: Duke University Press. (cloth); (pbk) Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (cloth); (pbk); Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Horváth, Ágnes, 2013. Modernism and Charisma. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (cloth) Jarzombek, Mark. 2000. The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kolakowsi, Leszek. 1990. Modernity on Endless Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kopić, Mario. Sekstant. Belgrade: Službeni glasnik. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern, translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (hb) (pbk.) Perreau-Saussine, Emile. 2005.  . Commentaire no. 109 (Spring): 181–93. Vinje, Victor Condorcet. 2017. The Challenges of Modernity. Nisus Publications. Wagner, Peter. 1993. A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline. Routledge: London. Wagner, Peter. 2001. Theorizing Modernity. Inescapability and Attainability in Social Theory. SAGE: London. Wagner, Peter. 2008. Modernity as Experience and Interpretation: A New Sociology of Modernity. Polity Press: London. External links Historiography Postmodern theory Modernism Historical eras Sociological terminology

High modernism

High modernism (also known as high modernity) is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world. The high modernist movement was particularly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the late 1950s and 1960s. Definition High modernity is distinguished by the following characteristics: Strong confidence in the potential for scientific and technological progress, including a reliance on the expertise of scientists, engineers, bureaucrats and other intellectuals. Attempts to master nature (including human nature) to meet human needs. An emphasis on rendering complex environments or concepts (such as old cities or social dynamics) legible, most often through spatial ordering (for example, city planning on a grid). Disregard for historical, geographical and social context in development. Relation to modernity Modernity relates to the modern era and the aesthetic qualities of modernism; however, modernity refers specifically to the social conditions and relations that arise out of the modern period, usually as a result of capitalism and industrialization. Thus, modernity can be understood as the state of society during and following the process of modernization. Modernity and high modernity are concerned with human progress and the potential of human intervention to bring about positive change in the structure of society; however, high modernity's visions of societal change rely on the expertise of intellectuals and scientific innovation, making high modernity a more elitist project than its predecessor. Both concepts operate on an ambiguous understanding of what the final stage of societal progress will entail. While modernity is retrospective in its prescriptions for the future and promotes organic growth, high modernity advocates a complete transformation of existing conditions and the creation of a blank slate. This break from the historical and geographical contexts of places often results in the application of standardized models to a variety of locations, often with socially disruptive consequences (see examples below). Modernity and modernization are associated with capitalist and industrial development, and emphasize the increased movement of goods, people, capital and information (see Globalization). This emphasis on economic freedom and capitalism is accompanied by the decline of traditional forms of society and the rise of the nation-state. In contrast, high modernism transcends traditional political ideological divisions in its reordering of society towards a utopian ideal as such ideal societies are highly subjective across the political spectrum. Furthermore, projects characteristic of high modernity are best enacted under conditions of authoritarian and technocratic rule, as populations are more easily controlled and changed. Historical precedents Despite its name, high modernism is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. One of the first manifestations of high modernism appeared in urban planning. In the 5th century BC, the Greek philosopher Hippodamus proposed the grid plan in urban planning, and implemented the grid plan in construction of Piraeus (the port of Athens), which has remained largely unchanged to this day. Notably, our main source on Hippodamus is Aristotle, who criticized his grid plan in Politics II.8. Thus, criticism of high modernism also has a long history. The Industrial Revolution was a major impetus of high modernism. In industrial production, standardization is necessary for economies of scale, and standardization necessarily increases legibility and homogenizes local context. The drive to standardization can be seen in Henry Ford's quote concerning consumer choice of Ford Model T: "You can have any color you want so long as it's black." The high modernist method of governance has also been practiced in the East Asian cultural sphere for millennia. It originated in Legalism, which was adopted by the Qin dynasty (221 BC–206 BC). The Qin dynasty undertook massive standardization projects for the entire country, including measurement standards, currency, writing system, institution of a bureaucracy (replacing feudalism of the Zhou dynasty), and more practical details, such as the length of chariot axles. More controversially, the Qin dynasty also unified philosophy, with the promotion of Legalism and suppression of all other philosophies. Although the brutality of the Qin regime contributed to its rapid collapse, the outcomes of its unification projects remained largely intact throughout history. The unification of philosophy remained intact too, but with Confucianism replacing Legalism. The grid plan is a common motif in Chinese and Japanese capitals, which is visible in the maps of Chang'an, Beijing, and Heian-kyō. Modernization and development Standardized legal names Throughout most of human history, the act of naming is a local and informal affair. For example, the local names of geographical features depend critically on how they appear to the local people. The towns of Durham and Guilford in the state of Connecticut are connected by a road, which those who live in Durham call the “Guilford Road,” while those living in Guilford call it the “Durham Road.” The same informality and a focus on use over uniformity characterizes personal naming. For example, around the year 1700 in England, a mere eight given names accounted for nearly ninety percent of the total male population [John, Edward, William, Henry, Charles, James, Richard, Robert]. This did not pose a problem to local people, who would add informal by-names for disambiguation (“John-the-miller,” “John-the shepherd”). Furthermore, a personal name can change over time, as a person takes on new traits and loses old traits. It could also be different in different contexts, such as with nicknames, stage names, etc. With modern state-building, the problem of illegible naming became acute. Consequently, a common naming system of Patronymic surname was promoted at the expense of informal local naming systems. Whereas in Europe, patronymy was the exception in 14th century, it became the norm in 19th century. This process reached its logical conclusion with the national identification number, which allows unique identification of any citizen across their entire lifespan. It is purely a naming system for the state administration, completely devoid of any personal or local meaning. This state-sponsored standardization apparatus is clearly visible in Iceland, where the Icelandic Naming Committee maintains an official list of approved Icelandic given names. Modernist housing Modernist architecture is an architecture style based on modern construction materials, particularly glass, steel, and reinforced concrete, and the idea that form should follow function (functionalism). When applied to architecture intended for human residence, it is called modernist housing. The main proponent of architectural modernism, Le Corbusier, designed the Unité d'habitation residential housing principle, and implemented it first in La Cité Radieuse, Marseille, completed in 1952. With 337 apartments of 23 different layouts, over 12 stories, all suspended on large pilotis, it remains popular and in use to this day. In 2016, it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List for its importance to the development of modernist architecture. Modernist housing has been implemented extensively in the form of high-rise apartment buildings in Asian cities with high urban densities. Two illustrative examples are Hong Kong and Singapore. In Hong Kong in the year 2020, 2.1 million residents were in public housing, which is 28% of the total population. In terms of households, 0.8 million households were in public housing, which is 43% of all households. In Singapore, public housing is administered by the Housing and Development Board, first formed in 1960. While its original mission was to build cheap flats for the poor, it later expanded its mission to plan and develop public housing for all Singapore residents. In the year 2020, 78.7% residents live in public housing, decreasing from a high of 88.0% in 2000. There was a concurrent rise in residents living private condominiums and other kinds of apartments, from 6.5% to 16.0%. The rest 5% live in "landed properties", a proportion that remained stable since 2000. Despite its origin in the west, modernist housing projects have met with far less success in Western countries. The most iconic failure is the Pruitt–Igoe housing project, a housing complex of 33 buildings, of 11 stories each, first occupied in 1954. Living conditions rapidly deteriorated, and it was demolished in 1972. It came to become a symbol of the failures of urban renewal, public-policy planning and public housing. Some, such as the architectural historian Charles Jencks, and journalist Tom Wolfe, argued that it demonstrated the error of architectural modernism itself. These claims are problematized both by the long-term functioning of modernist housing projects outside of the United States, as well as by multiple counter-narratives developed within, such as explaining that the tenant selection process selected people unprepared for urban living, or that the geometry of design precluded the direct surveillance for preventing crime. The legacy of Pruitt–Igoe remains contested, both between architects concerning the benefits and faults of architectural modernism, and between general political observers concerning the benefits and faults of public housing, or high modernism in general. Development in the Soviet Union Despite the strong association of modernization with Western society, high modernism also found purchase in the Soviet Party, under Nikita Khrushchev. Following the death of Joseph Stalin, Khrushchev retooled Soviet policy to include most of the ideas of Western high modernity with socialist undertones, emphasizing the role of science in providing progress without exploitation or social inequity. It social sphere it went further as to aspirations to reconstruct the whole human society and formation of New Soviet Man. Both the Soviet Union and the United States viewed the modernization of the developing world as a way to expand their respective spheres of influence and create new economic markets; however, it was the Soviet Union and other autocratic regimes during this period that adopted high modernism as the optimal vision to bring about modernization. Development in the third world Geographer Peter J. Taylor argues that high modernism is predicated upon a false optimism in the transformative power of science and technology contributed to confusion in the modernization process, especially in the case of third world countries striving to develop according to Western principles of modernization. Following the successes of the Marshall Plan in Europe, economists turned their attention towards development in the Third World in the aftermath of the Second World War. Contemporary development theory stressed the necessity of capital accumulation and modernization in order for underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to 'catch up' to the developed Western nations. Post-World War II development schemes were problematized by a focus on economy (ignoring the political, social and institutional impediments to growth), as well as its assumption that conditions in developing countries were the same as those in Europe that experienced success under the Marshall Plan. Modernization theory built upon previous ideas of sociocultural evolution from the previous century, constructing a global hierarchy based on economic development. In this worldview, Western countries were the most developed, while the rest of the world (particularly countries that had just experienced decolonization) still possessed traditional, pre-modern economies. In order to advance beyond this traditional state, the third world would therefore need to emulate developed Western countries, through optimistic social engineering endeavours. The overwhelming enthusiasm for the power of science and technology to manage the human and natural world encouraged regimes to attempt monumental development projects that would rapidly catapult developing countries into Western-style development. High modernism emphasized spatial order as rational design; by standardizing, simplifying and ordering physical space, otherwise complex concepts or entities could be made legible and more easily controlled, including economies. Brasília During the first half of the twentieth century, Brazil was a primarily agricultural nation that was economically reliant on the United States. Beginning in the 1950s, Brazilian elites sought to reinvent Brazil's economy through import substitution industrialization. The modernization of the Brazilian economy was also accompanied by grand designs to improve education, culture, health care, transportation systems, community organization, property distribution, and administration in order to spark a new sense of national agency in the population. Part of this grand vision for Brazil's future was the relocation of the nation's capital from the coastal Rio de Janeiro to a new inland site named Brasília. Essentially located in the wilderness, Brasília was to be a “single-function, strictly administrative capital,” says political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott. Here, long-considered plans for a new capital were finally able to come to fruition thanks to global enthusiasm for the potential of technology. Brasília's massive scale, rational design and cultural offerings, all built from the ground up in the forests of Brazil made it the ultimate manifestation of high modernity. The project's chief architect, Oscar Niemeyer, was strongly influenced by Soviet high modernism in his prescriptions for the new capital as the Soviet Union began to slowly open up to the rest of the world in a new period of internationalism. Despite the cultural and ideological differences of the two countries, both shared common ground in their determination to modernize, strong state authority and a strong belief in the doctrine of high modernity. The new Brazilian capital was completed in under four years and was presented to the world upon its completion in 1960 as the epitome of urban modernism. The city was planned as a manifestation of Brazil's future as a modern, industrialized power, creating a completely new city that would then create a new society. Based on the master plans of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), Brasília's urban space was oriented around mobility, uniformity and functionality, achieved through the elimination of corridor streets (seen as the source of disease and criminality) and the creation of indistinguishable residence sectors based on occupation, known as ‘’superquadra’’. Total state control of development was critical to the creation of utopian high modernist cities by the CIAM, as it prevented conflict between the planned ideal society and the incoherence of imposing this model on existing conditions. Following the completion of the city, it became apparent that Brasília’s high modernist design had overlooked the complexities of urban space and had overestimated the ability of functional, rational design to improve socio-political order. Planners’ focus on orienting mobility in the city around automobile traffic had eliminated the street as a place for public gathering; the removal of street corners in favour of cul-de-sacs and open space (punctuated by monumental sculptural and architectural forms like the Cathedral of Brasília and the National Congress Building) discouraged pedestrian traffic, traditional social networking and organic growth of public space. The organization of Brasília's settlement similarly restricted social space by collectivizing residents according to their occupation in the ‘’superquadra’’, transforming the private sphere of the home into a space where the individual was ‘symbolically minimized.’ While these ‘’superquadra’’ featured their own educational, entertainment, recreational and retail facilities to meet any perceivable need of the city’s residents, these perceived needs were based on European models from CIAM and architect Le Corbusier. Furthermore, the aesthetic monotony and scale of the city’s built environment created feelings of isolation, forced conformity and disorientation among residents; there also existed a stark contrast between the wealthier residents living in the centre of the city and the poorer residents situated along the city’s margins. Inuit and the Canadian military State reliance on high modernity to control human populations during the Cold War was not limited to the US. In Canada, the construction of the Distant Early Warning Line increased Euro-Canadian activity in the north, disrupting the traditional lifestyle of local Inuit populations and the arctic landscape in the process. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's promise to build "a nation in the [north] ... patterned on our way of life" resulted in towns and houses patterned on southern Canadian models that ignored the cultural and geographical context of the Arctic. The newly constructed towns of Frobisher Bay and Inuvik were ambitiously designed by federal officials to overcome the previously 'uninhabitable' arctic environment and rapidly incorporate the Inuit into the modern age; however, the disregard for the local conditions and opinions of northerners resulted in spatial segregation of Inuit and military personnel in the two towns. In pursuit of a modernized, self-sufficient northern settlement, state-led projects to stabilize the nomadic Inuit in towns disrupted native resource-based economies and contributed to spatial segregation, social inequity, health problems and cultural dislocation. In the arts Visual arts and music Cultural critic Bram Dijkstra criticizes "high modernism" as an austere, abstract, and anti-humanist vision of modernism: Much of the post-WWII high modernism in America and the rest of the western world is antihumanist, hostile to notions of community, of any form of humanism. It becomes about the lack of meaning, the need to create our own significance out of nothing. The highest level of significance, that of the elite, becomes abstraction. So the concept of the evolutionary elite arises again, deliberately excluding those who 'haven't evolved.' High modernism is exemplified in the writings of Clement Greenberg, who described an opposition between "avant-garde" art and "kitsch" in his essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Composer Milton Babbitt's well-known essay "Who Cares if You Listen" describes "efficiency", an increase in "the number of functions associated with each component", "a high degree of contextuality and autonomy", and an "extension of the methods of other musics" as being among the traits possessed by contemporary serious music, though the words "modernism" and "modernist" do not occur in the article, and "modern" occurs only in a quotation with reference to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Literature The term "high modernism" as used in literary criticism generally lacks the pejorative connotations it has in other contexts. High literary modernism, on the contrary, is generally used to describe a subgenre of literary modernism, and generally encompasses works published between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second. Regardless of the specific year it was produced, high modernism is characterized primarily by a complete and unambiguous embrace of what Andreas Huyssen calls the "Great Divide". That is, it believes that there is a clear distinction between capital-A Art and mass culture, and it places itself firmly on the side of Art and in opposition to popular or mass culture. (Postmodernism, according to Huyssen, may be defined precisely by its rejection of this distinction.) See also Chinese economic reform High culture High Middle Ages, a periodization correspondent to high modernity Fordism Manifest Destiny New Frontier Scientism Technocentrism Technological utopianism Techno-progressivism Progress United States in the 1950s References Modernism 1950s in art 1960s in art 1950s in the United States 1960s in the United States

Cultural expressions

Cultural expressions are creative manifestations of the cultural identities of their authors. They are treated in the international legal system in terms of cultural rights, intellectual property law and international trade. Definition The objective of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is, as its title indicates, to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions. The achievement of such objectives requires respect for all cultures, the reaffirmation of the cultural sovereignty of states, the recognition of the dual nature of cultural goods and services (as having both economic and cultural value), and the rebalancing of cultural exchanges through the strengthening of international cooperation and solidarity measures. The concept of cultural expression is central to the 2005 Convention, which provides a definition:Cultural expressions are those expressions which result from the creativity of individuals, groups and societies, and which have a cultural content.The definition of cultural expression emphasizes content over the means and modes of cultural expression. It can be read in conjunction with two other definitions, that of cultural content and that of cultural activities, goods and services:Cultural content refers to the symbolic meaning, artistic dimension and cultural values that originate from or express cultural identities. Cultural activities, goods and services refers to those activities, goods and services that, when considered from the point of view of their specific quality, use or purpose, embody or convey cultural expressions, irrespective of the commercial value they may have. Cultural activities may be an end in themselves, or they may contribute to the production of cultural goods and services.Thus, expressions are cultural to the extent that they carry meaning, value and identity and can be conveyed, expressed, through cultural activities, goods or services. They can come from individuals, groups or societies. Activities, goods or services have a dual economic and cultural value. The cultural and economic aspects are interdependent; they both contribute to the existence, development and preservation of diversity. To identify the scope of what constitutes cultural goods and services, one can refer to the non-exhaustive list annexed to the Preliminary Draft of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, published in 2004. Here are some examples of cultural expressions: Literature, film, music, media and visual arts; Live arts, performing arts (theater); Photography and video games, especially those with narrative content. Video games with narrative content can be included as a form of language, a variation of the term expression. As permitted by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the notion of cultural expressions is further defined by state practice and use of the term. In the context of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, this practice is reflected in the quadrennial reports produced by the parties. In the digital environment, cultural expressions are interpreted in the same way. They are also endowed with cultural content and carry a double value, cultural and economic. The digital environment can serve as a catalyst for dissemination and production, offering new forms of cultural expression, but it also represents a challenge for the diversity of cultural expressions. The cultural covered by the 2005 Convention may be linked to some forms of traditional cultural expressions but the latter are subject to their own rules. More generally, the preservation of cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions is covered by other UNESCO conventions. With respect to the cultural expressions of indigenous peoples, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples specifically mentions the right of indigenous peoples to preserve, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, knowledge and traditional expressions, as well as their right to collective intellectual property. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has established a number of conventions on the protection of traditional cultural expressions. The World Intellectual Property Organization is continuing its work on a convention to recognize intellectual property rights in traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. The emergence of the concept of cultural expressions within UNESCO UNESCO's work on cultural diversity To understand the concept of diversity of cultural expressions, we can look at the concept of cultural diversity. The notion of cultural diversity is multifaceted and has been the subject of UNESCO's work since its inception. The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity elevates the concept of cultural diversity to the status of common heritage of humanity in its very first article:Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the originality and plurality of identities that characterize the groups and societies that make up humanity. As a source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for the living world. In this sense, it constitutes the common heritage of humanity and must be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.Although it is non-binding, the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity has considerable legitimacy and symbolic force because it was adopted unanimously by the member states of UNESCO. The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage adopted in 2003 reiterates the concept of cultural diversity, this time within a binding legal instrument. From cultural diversity to the diversity of cultural expressions The diversity of cultural expressions is one aspect of cultural diversity that UNESCO is addressing. Cultural expression is seen as "[a] mode of communication [that] fills a basic need in every community... a key element in the adaptation of different cultures to the transformations imposed by globalization. The objectives of protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions are part of the organization's mandate. In the context of the negotiations of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the concept of cultural expressions was born from the juxtaposition of the concepts of cultural content and artistic expressions. The original text read:The term cultural expressions encompasses both the notions of cultural content and artistic expression and refers to the various ways in which cultural goods and services, as well as other cultural activities, can carry symbolic meaning or transmit cultural values. The cultural content of these goods, services and activities refers to the meaning or values thus conveyed. The artistic expression of these goods, services and activities refers to the cultural expression that results from aesthetic creativity or creation.Five other options were proposed by the editorial board. Among these, we can mention the one that proceeds by enumeration:OPTION 2: Cultural expressions are defined as the creative product of cultural initiatives intended to be presented to the public and which carry symbolic meanings or cultural values distinct from the commercial value of that product. This includes: (1) the product of individual creativity in the performing arts, visual arts and crafts; (2) sounds, images and texts in films, videos, sound recordings, books, magazines, broadcast programs and other forms of media, including multimedia, whether already in existence or yet to be invented; and (3) collections and exhibits in museums, art galleries and libraries, including the archives of a society's cultural heritage.For the sake of simplicity and clarity, the concepts of cultural contents and artistic expressions were merged into cultural expressions. It was thus agreed that the terms culture and cultural diversity should be understood in their strict sense, i.e. in relation to the term cultural expressions, which should thus refer to a contemporary conception of cultural goods and services. The link between cultural diversity and diversity of cultural expressions is reflected in the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. The convention contains this definition of cultural diversity :cultural diversity refers to the multiplicity of forms in which the cultures of groups and societies find expression. These expressions are transmitted within and between groups and societies. Cultural diversity is manifested not only in the varied forms in which the cultural heritage of humankind is expressed, enriched and transmitted through the variety of cultural expressions, but also in the various modes of artistic creation, production, dissemination, distribution and enjoyment of cultural expressions, whatever the means and technologies used [...]The last sentence refers to cultural expressions, which are a manifestation of cultural diversity. The 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity states that the preservation of cultural diversity requires respect for fundamental human rights, particularly cultural rights. The 2005 Convention also recognizes this close relationship by articulating the principle of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms that "[c]ultural diversity can only be protected and promoted if human rights and fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression, information and communication, as well as the ability of individuals to choose cultural expressions, are guaranteed." To ensure cultural diversity, the 2005 Convention commits parties to adopt and implement measures to promote and protect cultural expressions. These measures take the form primarily of cultural policies. Traditional cultural expressions The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) defines traditional cultural expressions through examples:Traditional cultural expressions, also known as "expressions of folklore," may include music, dance, art, designs, names, signs and symbols, performances, ceremonies, architectural works, handicrafts and stories, as well as many other artistic or cultural expressions. Traditional cultural expressions: can be considered as the forms of expression of the traditional culture; are an integral part of the identity and heritage of a traditional or Aboriginal community; are passed on from generation to generation. Traditional cultural expressions are an integral part of the cultural and social identity of indigenous and local communities, incorporating skills and techniques and conveying fundamental values and beliefs. Their protection relates to the promotion of creativity, the enhancement of cultural diversity and the preservation of cultural heritage.Although the definition is broad, some traditional cultural expressions do not fall within this framework. Traditional cultural expressions fall outside the scope of the 2005 Convention and the definition of cultural expressions set out in its Article 4. It is possible to address the issue of their protection and promotion using the concept of cultural diversity rather than intellectual property. This is a point of contact of the competences of WIPO and UNESCO, which is materialized through other international instruments such as the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, as well as the model provisions adopted by both institutions for the protection of expressions of folklore. Elements often equated with cultural expressions The concept of cultural expressions in the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is limited to a specific aspect of cultural diversity, namely the elements generated by cultural industries, and many elements are mistakenly or misunderstood as such. Considerations of tangible and intangible cultural heritage as well as intellectual property rights are outside the scope of the 2005 Convention because of the specific definition of cultural expressions. Cultural expressions must also be distinguished from the fundamental rights components of freedom of expression, information and communication, and freedom of choice of cultural expressions, although they are, to some extent, interrelated. There is sometimes some confusion about the scope of application of three major UNESCO cultural conventions: the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the 2005 Convention. Performing arts (traditional rites and dances), crafts, and cuisine are more examples of intangible cultural heritage. On the other hand, urban planning and design are part of the world's cultural heritage, but do not qualify as cultural expressions within the meaning of the 2005 Convention. Fashion, advertising and trademarks certainly relate to the creative industries. However, without excluding the possibility that some components could be included in the definition of cultural expressions, they are not covered a priori. Author Rostam J. Neuwirth suggests that the fashion industry, as a creative industry, may be indirectly affected by the 2005 Convention. The archival and library sectors are unique in that they were included in one of the options for defining cultural expressions suggested during the negotiations of the 2005 Convention. These sectors are critical to the preservation of cultural expressions. These sectors are essential to the issues of preservation, dissemination and access, but are considered peripheral to the notion of cultural expression. Moreover, they are more in line with the objectives of sustainability of intangible cultural heritage than of vitality of cultural expressions. Recreational services, sports and games fall under the category of leisure and are not covered by the definition of cultural expressions. Some states qualify narrative video games as cultural expressions. Finally, language does not constitute a cultural expression, but a means of conveying it or, on the contrary, a barrier limiting access to it. Language can therefore be the subject of measures aimed at promoting the circulation and creation of cultural expressions, such as language quotas. References Cultural heritage

Anachronism

An anachronism (from the Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type of anachronism is an object misplaced in time, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a plant or animal, a custom, or anything else associated with a particular period that is placed outside its proper temporal domain. An anachronism may be either intentional or unintentional. Intentional anachronisms may be introduced into a literary or artistic work to help a contemporary audience engage more readily with a historical period. Anachronism can also be used intentionally for purposes of rhetoric, propaganda, comedy, or shock. Unintentional anachronisms may occur when a writer, artist, or performer is unaware of differences in technology, terminology and language, customs and attitudes, or even fashions between different historical periods and eras. Types The metachronism-prochronism contrast is nearly synonymous with parachronism-anachronism, and involves postdating-predating respectively. Parachronism A parachronism (from the Greek , "on the side", and , "time") postdates. It is anything that appears in a time period in which it is not normally found (though not sufficiently out of place as to be impossible). This may be an object, idiomatic expression, technology, philosophical idea, musical style, material, custom, or anything else so closely bound to a particular time period as to seem strange when encountered in a later era. They may be objects or ideas that were once common but are now considered rare or inappropriate. They can take the form of obsolete technology or outdated fashion or idioms. Prochronism A prochronism (from the Greek , "before", and , "time") predates. It is an impossible anachronism which occurs when an object or idea has not yet been invented when the situation takes place, and therefore could not have possibly existed at the time. A prochronism may be an object not yet developed, a verbal expression that had not yet been coined, a philosophy not yet formulated, a breed of animal not yet evolved or bred, or use of a technology that had not yet been created. Metachronism A metachronism (from the Greek , "after", and , "time") postdates. It is the use of older cultural artifacts in modern settings which may seem inappropriate. For example, it could be considered metachronistic for a modern-day person to be depicted wearing a top hat or writing with a quill. Politically motivated anachronism Works of art and literature promoting a political, nationalist or revolutionary cause may use anachronism to depict an institution or custom as being more ancient than it actually is, or otherwise intentionally blur the distinctions between past and present. For example, the 19th-century Romanian painter Constantin Lecca depicts the peace agreement between Ioan Bogdan Voievod and Radu Voievod—two leaders in Romania's 16th-century history—with the flags of Moldavia (blue-red) and of Wallachia (yellow-blue) seen in the background. These flags date only from the 1830s: anachronism promotes legitimacy for the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia into the Kingdom of Romania at the time the painting was made. The Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin, in his painting Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the English, depicts the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when mutineers were executed by being blown from guns. In order to make the argument that the method of execution would again be utilized by the British if another rebellion broke out in India, Vereshchagin depicted the British soldiers conducting the executions in late 19th-century uniforms. Art and literature Anachronism is used especially in works of imagination that rest on a historical basis. Anachronisms may be introduced in many ways: for example, in the disregard of the different modes of life and thought that characterize different periods, or in ignorance of the progress of the arts and sciences and other facts of history. They vary from glaring inconsistencies to scarcely perceptible misrepresentation. Anachronisms may be the unintentional result of ignorance, or may be a deliberate aesthetic choice. Sir Walter Scott justified the use of anachronism in historical literature: "It is necessary, for exciting interest of any kind, that the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners as well as the language of the age we live in." However, as fashions, conventions and technologies move on, such attempts to use anachronisms to engage an audience may have quite the reverse effect, as the details in question are increasingly recognized as belonging neither to the historical era being represented, nor to the present, but to the intervening period in which the artwork was created. "Nothing becomes obsolete like a period vision of an older period", writes Anthony Grafton; "Hearing a mother in a historical movie of the 1940s call out 'Ludwig! Ludwig van Beethoven! Come in and practice your piano now!' we are jerked from our suspension of disbelief by what was intended as a means of reinforcing it, and plunged directly into the American bourgeois world of the filmmaker." It is only since the beginning of the 19th century that anachronistic deviations from historical reality have jarred on a general audience. C. S. Lewis wrote: Anachronisms abound in the works of Raphael and Shakespeare, as well as in those of less celebrated painters and playwrights of earlier times. Carol Meyers says that anachronisms in ancient texts can be used to better understand the stories by asking what the anachronism represents. Repeated anachronisms and historical errors can become an accepted part of popular culture, such as the belief that Roman legionaries wore leather armor. Comical anachronism Comedy fiction set in the past may use anachronism for humorous effect. Comedic anachronism can be used to make serious points about both historical and modern society, such as drawing parallels to political or social conventions. Future anachronism Even with careful research, science fiction writers risk anachronism as their works age because they cannot predict all political, social, and technological change. For example, many books, television shows, radio productions and films nominally set in the mid-21st century or later refer to the Soviet Union, to Saint Petersburg in Russia as Leningrad, to the continuing struggle between the Eastern and Western Blocs and to divided Germany and divided Berlin. Star Trek has suffered from future anachronisms; instead of "retconning" these errors, the 2009 film retained them for consistency with older franchises. Buildings or natural features, such as the World Trade Center in New York City, can become out of place once they disappear, with some works having been edited to remove the World Trade Center to avoid this situation. Futuristic technology may appear alongside technology which would be obsolete by the time in which the story is set. For example, in the stories of Robert A. Heinlein, interplanetary space travel coexists with calculation using slide rules. Language anachronism Language anachronisms in novels and films are quite common, both intentional and unintentional. Intentional anachronisms inform the audience more readily about a film set in the past. In this regard, language and pronunciation change so fast that most modern people (even many scholars) would find it difficult, or even impossible, to understand a film with dialogue in 15th-century English; thus, audiences willingly accept characters speaking an updated language, and modern slang and figures of speech are often used in these films. Unconscious anachronism Unintentional anachronisms may occur even in what are intended as wholly objective and accurate records or representations of historic artifacts and artworks, because the perspectives of historical recorders are conditioned by the assumptions and practices of their own times, in a form of cultural bias. One example is the attribution of historically inaccurate beards to various medieval tomb effigies and figures in stained glass in records made by English antiquaries of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Working in an age in which beards were in fashion and widespread, the antiquaries seem to have unconsciously projected the fashion back into an era in which they were rare. In academia In historical writing, the most common type of anachronism is the adoption of the political, social or cultural concerns and assumptions of one era to interpret or evaluate the events and actions of another. The anachronistic application of present-day perspectives to comment on the historical past is sometimes described as presentism. Empiricist historians, working in the traditions established by Leopold von Ranke in the 19th century, regard this as a great error, and a trap to be avoided. Arthur Marwick has argued that "a grasp of the fact that past societies are very different from our own, and ... very difficult to get to know" is an essential and fundamental skill of the professional historian; and that "anachronism is still one of the most obvious faults when the unqualified (those expert in other disciplines, perhaps) attempt to do history". Detection of forgery The ability to identify anachronisms may be employed as a critical and forensic tool to demonstrate the fraudulence of a document or artifact purporting to be from an earlier time. Anthony Grafton discusses, for example, the work of the 3rd-century philosopher Porphyry, of Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), and of Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931), all of whom succeeded in exposing literary forgeries and plagiarisms, such as those included in the "Hermetic Corpus", through – among other techniques – the recognition of anachronisms. The detection of anachronisms is an important element within the scholarly discipline of diplomatics, the critical analysis of the forms and language of documents, developed by the Maurist scholar Jean Mabillon (1632–1707) and his successors René-Prosper Tassin (1697–1777) and Charles-François Toustain (1700–1754). The philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham wrote at the beginning of the 19th century: Examples are: The exposure by Lorenzo Valla in 1440 of the so-called Donation of Constantine, a decree purportedly issued by the Emperor Constantine the Great in either 315 or 317 AD, as a later forgery, depended to a considerable degree on the identification of anachronisms, such as references to the city of Constantinople (a name not in fact bestowed until 330 AD). A large number of apparent anachronisms in the Book of Mormon have served to convince critics that the book was written in the 19th century, and not, as its adherents claim, in pre-Columbian America. The use of 19th- and 20th-century anti-semitic terminology demonstrates that the purported "Franklin Prophecy" (attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who died in 1790) is a forgery. The "William Lynch speech", an address, supposedly delivered in 1712, on the control of slaves in Virginia, is now considered to be a 20th-century forgery, partly on account of its use of anachronistic terms such as "program" and "refueling". See also Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon Anatopism Evolutionary anachronism Invented traditions List of stories set in a future now past Retrofuturism Skeuomorph Society for Creative Anachronism Steampunk Tiffany Problem Whig history References Bibliography External links

Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture. It has a variety of meanings in different contexts, sometimes applying to cultural products like art works in museums or entertainment available online, and sometimes applying to the variety of human cultures or traditions in a specific region, or in the world as a whole. It can also refer to the inclusion of different cultural perspectives in an organization or society. Cultural diversity can be affected by political factors such as censorship or the protection of the rights of artists, and by economic factors such as free trade or protectionism in the market for cultural goods. Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been a concerted international effort to protect cultural diversity, involving the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and its member states. This involves action at international, national, and local levels. Cultural diversity can also be promoted by individual citizens in the ways they choose to express or experience culture. Characteristics In the context of national and international efforts to promote or preserve cultural diversity, the term applies to five overlapping domains: economic: the availability of diverse cultural goods or services, artistic: the variety of artistic genres and styles that coexist, participatory: the participation of diverse ethnic groups in a nation's culture, heritage: the diversity of cultural traditions that are represented in heritage institutions such as museums, and multicultural: the variety of ethnic groups and their traditions that are visible in a country. Of these five, the economic meaning has come to dominate in international negotiations. Nations have principally looked to protect cultural diversity by strengthening the ability of their domestic cultural industries to sell goods or services. Since the 1990s, UNESCO has mainly used "cultural diversity" for the international aspects of diversity, preferring the term "cultural pluralism" for diversity within a country. Governments and international bodies use "cultural diversity" in both a broad and a narrow sense. The broad meaning takes its inspiration from anthropology. It includes lifestyles, value systems, traditions, and beliefs in addition to creative works. It emphasises an ongoing process of interaction and dialogue between cultures. This meaning has been promoted to the international community by UNESCO, since the 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. In practice, governments use a narrower, more traditional, meaning that focuses on the economic domain mentioned above. In the international legal context, cultural diversity has been described as analogous to biodiversity. The General Conference of UNESCO took this position in 2001, asserting in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity that "cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature." The authors John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander took this analogy further, describing cultural diversity as "a sort of cultural gene pool to spur innovation toward ever higher levels of social, intellectual and spiritual accomplishment." Quantification Cultural diversity is difficult to quantify. One measure of diversity is the number of identifiable cultures. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs reports that, although their numbers are relatively small, indigenous peoples account for 5,000 distinct cultures and thus the majority of the world's cultural diversity. Another aspect of cultural diversity is measured by counting the number of languages spoken in a region or in the world as a whole. By this measure, the world's cultural diversity is rapidly declining. Research carried out in the 1990s by David Crystal suggested that at that time, on average, one language was falling into disuse every two weeks. He calculated that if that rate of the language death were to continue, then by the year 2100, more than 90% of the languages currently spoken in the world will have gone extinct. In 2003, James Fearon of Stanford University published, in the Journal of Economic Growth, a list of countries based on the diversity of ethnicities, languages, and religions. International legal context At the international level, the notion of cultural diversity has been defended by UNESCO since its founding in 1945, through a succession of declarations and legal instruments. Many of the international legal agreements addressing cultural diversity were focused on intellectual property rights, and thus on tangible cultural expressions that can be bought or sold. The World Heritage List, established in 1972 by UNESCO, mainly listed architectural features and monuments. In the late 20th century, the diplomatic community recognised a need to protect intangible cultural heritage: the traditions, social structures, and skills that support creative expression. International efforts to define and protect this aspect of culture began with the 1989 UNESCO Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore. UNESCO's Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity began in 2001, highlighting specific masterpieces to promote the responsibility of nations to protect intangible cultural heritage. Further proclamations were added in 2003 and 2005, bringing the total number of masterpieces to ninety. In 2001, UNESCO also hosted expert meetings to create a definition of intangible cultural heritage and a more legally binding treaty to protect it, resulting in the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This was passed in 2003 and came into force in 2006. One result of this convention was the 2008 creation of UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Heritage, which incorporated the masterpieces from the 2001, 2003, and 2005 proclamations. The first international instrument enshrining the value of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue was the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, adopted unanimously in 2001. It calls on nations and institutions to work together for the preservation of culture in all its forms, and for policies that help to share ideas across cultures and inspire new forms of creativity. UNESCO no longer interpreted "culture" in terms of artistic masterpieces. With the Universal Declaration, it adopted a more expansive understanding based on anthropology. This defined cultural diversity as "the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of society or a social group", including lifestyles, value systems, traditions, and beliefs. The twelve articles of the Universal Declaration were published with an action plan for ways to promote cultural diversity. This action plan connected cultural diversity explicitly to human rights including freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and protection of indigenous knowledge. The declaration identifies cultural diversity as a source of innovation and creativity, as well as a driver of both economic development and personal development. UNESCO made a submission to a 2002 UN report on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, quoting part of the declaration to emphasise that cultural diversity must not be used to infringe the rights of minorities and that cultural diversity requires the protection of individual freedoms. Citing the Universal Declaration, the United Nations General Assembly established the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development in December 2002. This continues to be celebrated on May 21 each year. The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage drew attention to increasing cultural homogenization by economic globalization and motivated UNESCO to negotiate a treaty protecting cultural diversity. The resulting Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (the "2005 Convention") was adopted in October 2005. This was the first international treaty to establish rights and obligations specifically relating to culture. The convention builds on the 2001 declaration by naming linguistic diversity as a fundamental part of cultural diversity and stating that cultural diversity depends on the free flow of ideas. To date, 151 signatory states, as well as the European Union, have registered their ratification of the convention, or a legally equivalent process. The 2005 Convention created an International Fund for Cultural Diversity (IFCD), funded by voluntary contributions. This makes funding available to developing countries that are parties to the convention for specific activities that develop their cultural policies and cultural industries. As of April 2023, UNESCO reports that 140 projects in 69 developing countries have been carried out with funding from the IFCD. Factors Cultural policy scholar Johnathan Vickery has observed that cultural diversity, like biological diversity, is continually under threat from various factors. Cultural diversity, linguistic diversity and species diversity show a partially comparable pattern. These threats often come from other cultural expressions, as when imported entertainment undermines interest in a nation's own culture. Other examples he mentions include religious revivals and modern Western education systems. Factors that promote a country's cultural diversity include migration and a nation's openness to discussing and celebrating cultural differences (which is itself an aspect of culture). The actions of governments, international bodies, and civil society (meaning non-governmental and cultural sector organisations) can promote or restrict cultural diversity. As part of the international effort to promote and preserve cultural diversity, the 2005 Convention established processes to monitor progress towards a favourable environment, including global reports every four years and national reports from individual states. Imperialism and colonialism Colonialism has frequently involved an intentional destruction of cultural diversity, when the colonising powers use education, media, and violence to replace the languages, religions, and cultural values of the colonised people with their own. This process of forced assimilation has been used many times in history, particularly by the European colonial powers from the 18th to 20th centuries, taking the form of forced conversion to the coloniser's religion, privatisation of community property, and replacement of systems of work. The protection of indigenous peoples' rights to maintain their own languages, religions, and culture has been enshrined in treaties including the 1965 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Artistic freedom Artistic freedom, as defined by the 2005 Convention, includes the freedom of artists to work without government interference, and also the freedom of citizens to access diverse cultural content. Governments can repress these freedoms through censorship or surveillance of artists, or can choose to actively protect artists and their free expression. According to the 2017 and 2022 global reports, attacks against artists — including prosecution, imprisonment, or even killing — have increased in recent years. In 2020, 978 cases were reported around the world, compared to 771 in 2019 and 673 in 2018. Musicians are the most threatened group, especially rap musicians, whose lyrics tend to be provocative and politically challenging. While online services have provided new ways for artists to distribute images, music, and video to large audiences, they have brought their own threats to freedom in the form of censorship, surveillance, and trolling. The 2022 global report found that some countries had repealed laws restricting free expression, including blasphemy and defamation laws, but that in practice artistic freedom was not being better monitored or protected. Mobility of artists and cultural professionals Mobility restrictions present challenges to professionals in the cultural and creative industries, specifically to those from the Global South. Artists and cultural professionals need to travel to perform to new audiences or to attend a residency or to engage in networking. Their ability to do so depends on their country of origin; the holder of a German passport can travel to 176 countries without a visa while for an Afghan passport the number of countries is 24. Travel restrictions, including difficulties in obtaining visas, often impede artists from the Global South to participate in art biennales or film festivals, even when invited to receive an award or to promote their works. The 2022 global report found that, despite governments and civil society organisations taking this inequality more seriously, concrete improvements are lacking. Thus, the ability of artists from the Global South to reach audiences in the Global North "remains extremely weak". Governance of culture As well as protecting free expression and free movement, governments can promote cultural diversity by recognising and enforcing the rights of artists. The working conditions of artists are affected by their rights to organise labor unions, to workplace safety, and to social security protections for times when their work does not produce income. These economic and social rights are formally recognised by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights passed by the UN in 1966 and by the 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist adopted by UNESCO in 1980. Social security in particular allows a more diverse range of citizens to take part in artistic activities, because without it, financially insecure people are discouraged from working in a field with unstable income. Gender equality in cultural and creative industries A gender gap persists worldwide concerning equal pay, access to funding and prices charged for creative works. Consequently, women remain under-represented in key creative roles and are outnumbered in decision-making positions. As of 2018, women made up only 34% of Ministers for Culture (compared to 24% in 2005) and only 31% of national arts program directors. Generally, women are better represented in specific cultural fields such as arts education and training (60%), book publishing and press (54%), audiovisual and interactive media (26%), as well as design and creative services (33%). The 2022 global report found that cultural industries were increasingly making gender equality a priority, but that actual progress was slow. Though 48.1% of the work in cultural and entertainment sectors is done by women, the report concluded that they are still under-represented in leadership positions, get less public funding, and get less recognition for their work. Trade and investment in cultural goods and services Between 2015 and 2017, at least eight bilateral and regional free trade agreements have introduced cultural clauses or list of commitments that promote the objectives and principles of the 2005 Convention. Despite the lack of the promotion of the objectives and principles of the 2005 Convention with regard to the negotiation of mega-regional partnership agreements, some parties to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TTP) have succeeded in introducing cultural reservations to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions. The growth of online digital content has increased the diversity of culture that a person can get immediate access to, but also increased the threat to cultural diversity by making it easier for a small number of large companies to flood markets with their cultural products. Digital delivery of culture has also given a great deal of power to companies in the technology sector. Cultural platforms Organisations that promote access to culture can reflect diversity in what they choose to host or to exclude. Google Arts and Culture and Europeana are among the platforms who state a commitment to promoting cultural diversity. For Google Arts and Culture, diversity implies "working with communities that have historically been left out of the mainstream cultural narrative" while Europeana acknowledges that "stories told with/by cultural heritage items have not historically been representative of the population, and so we strive to share lesser-told stories from underrepresented communities." Individual choices Individual citizens can experience and promote cultural diversity through their own choices, including the choice to share their own culture. The "Do One Thing for Diversity and Inclusion" campaign has been run annually since 2011 by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) as a way to commemorate the World Day for Cultural Diversity. It encourages people to explore the music, literature, art, and traditions of unfamiliar cultures and to share their own culture with strangers. The American lawyer Juliette Passer describes the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity as prompting each individual to consider their own and others' diverse identities: "We need social and educational experiences plus reflection on the experience to go beyond reliance on stereotypes. The more we interact with diverse others and mindfully reflect on the experience, the more we can improve our competency with differences." National and local initiatives In September 2002, the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil organized a world meeting for culture, bringing together mayors and technical directors of culture from different cities of the world, with observers from civil society. The cities of Porto Alegre and Barcelona have proposed the drafting of a reference document for the development of local cultural policies, inspired by Agenda 21, created in 1992 for the environment. The Culture 21 was thus designed with the aim of including cultural diversity at the local level. The document was approved on May 8, 2004 during the first edition of the Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona. See also Criticism of multiculturalism Cross-cultural communication Cultural agility Cultural Diversity Award (UNESCO) Cultural safety Foundation for Endangered Languages Heritage Day (South Africa) Intercultural dialogue Intercultural relations Melting pot Mondialogo Multiculturalism Social cohesion Social integration Subculture References Further reading External links UNESCO: Diversity of Cultural Expressions Cultural geography Cultural economics Cultural politics Cultural concepts UNESCO Multiculturalism Majority–minority relations

Art movement

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered a new avant-garde movement. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality (figurative art). By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new style which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy (abstract art). Concept According to theories associated with modernism and also the concept of postmodernism, art movements are especially important during the period of time corresponding to modern art. The period of time called "modern art" is posited to have changed approximately halfway through the 20th century and art made afterward is generally called contemporary art. Postmodernism in visual art begins and functions as a parallel to late modernism and refers to that period after the "modern" period called contemporary art. The postmodern period began during late modernism (which is a contemporary continuation of modernism), and according to some theorists postmodernism ended in the 21st century. During the period of time corresponding to "modern art" each consecutive movement was often considered a new avant-garde. Also during the period of time referred to as "modern art" each movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it, concerning the visual arts. Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works and artists included in an art movement. Verbal expression and explanation of movements has come from the artists themselves, sometimes in the form of an art manifesto, and sometimes from art critics and others who may explain their understanding of the meaning of the new art then being produced. In the visual arts, many artists, theorists, art critics, art collectors, art dealers and others mindful of the unbroken continuation of modernism and the continuation of modern art even into the contemporary era, ascribe to and welcome new philosophies of art as they appear. Postmodernist theorists posit that the idea of art movements are no longer as applicable, or no longer as discernible, as the notion of art movements had been before the postmodern era. There are many theorists however who doubt as to whether or not such an era was actually a fact; or just a passing fad. The term refers to tendencies in visual art, novel ideas and architecture, and sometimes literature. In music it is more common to speak about genres and styles instead. See also cultural movement, a term with a broader connotation. As the names of many art movements use the -ism suffix (for example cubism and futurism), they are sometimes referred to as isms. 19th century Academic, –20th century Aesthetic Movement American Barbizon school American Impressionism Amsterdam Impressionism Art Nouveau, –1910 Arts and Crafts Movement, founded 1860s Barbizon school, –1870s Biedermeier, –1848 Cloisonnism, –1900s (decade) Danish Golden Age -1850s Decadent movement Divisionism, –1910s Düsseldorf School Etching revival Expressionism, s–1930s German Romanticism, –1850s Hague School, –1890s Heidelberg School, –1900s (decade) Hoosier Group Hudson River School, –1900s (decade) Hurufiyya movement mid-20th-century in North Africa and the Middle East Impressionism, –1920s Incoherents, -1890s Jugendstil Les Nabis, s–1900s (decade) Les Vingt Letras y figuras, –1900s Luminism Lyon School Macchiaioli –1900s (decade) Mir iskusstva, founded 1898 Modernism, -ongoing Naturalism Nazarene, –1830 Neo-Classicism, –1900s (decade) Neo-impressionism, –1910s Norwegian romantic nationalism, –1867 Norwich School, founded 1803 Orientalism Peredvizhniki Pointillism, –1910s Pont-Aven School, –1890s Post-Impressionism, –1900s (decade) Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Realism, –1900s (decade) Realism, –1900s (decade) Romanticism, –1890s Secession groups, s–1910s Society of American Artists, –1906 Spanish Eclecticism, -1890s Symbolism Synthetism, –1900s (decade) Tipos del País Tonalism, –1915 Vienna Secession, founded 1897 Volcano School White Mountain art, –1870s Spiritualist art, – 20th century 1900–1921 Academic, (decade)-ongoing American realism, s–1920s Analytic Cubism, –1912 Art Deco, –1939 Ashcan School, s–1920s Australian tonalism, –1930s Berliner Sezession, founded 1898 Bloomsbury Group, (decade)–1960s Brandywine School Camden Town Group, –1913 Constructivism, –1922, 1920s–1940s Cubism, –1919 Cubo-Futurism, –1918 Czech Cubism, –1914 Dada, –1922 Der Blaue Reiter, –1914 De Stijl, –1931 Deutscher Werkbund, founded 1907 Die Brücke, founded 1905 Expressionism, s–1930s Fauvism, –1910 Futurism, –1916 German Expressionism, –1930 Group of Seven (Canada), –1930s Jack of Diamonds, founded 1909 Luminism (Impressionism), (decade)–1930s Modernism, –ongoing Neo-Classicism, (decade)–ongoing Neo-primitivism, from 1913 Neue Künstlervereinigung München Novembergruppe, founded 1918 Objective abstraction, –1936 Orphism, –1913 Photo-Secession, founded Pittura Metafisica, –1920 Proto-Cubism, –1908 Purism, –1930s Rayonism Section d'Or, –1914 Suprematism, formed –1916 Synchromism, founded 1912 Synthetic Cubism, –1919 The Eight, –1918 The Ten, –1920 Vorticism, founded 1914 1920–1945 American Scene painting, –1950s Arbeitsrat für Kunst Art Deco Bauhaus, –1933 Concrete art Der Ring De Stijl, –1931 École de Paris Geometric abstraction Gruppo 7 International Style, –1970s Kapists, Magic Realism Neo-Romanticism Neue Sachlichkeit Novecento Italiano Novembergruppe, founded 1918 Os renovadores, founded 1922 Precisionism, –1940s Regionalism (art), –1940s Return to order, 1918–1922 Scuola Romana, –1945 Social Realism, –1960s Socialist Realism Surrealism, –1960s Universal Constructivism, –1970 1940–1965 Abstract expressionism Action painting Arte Povera Art Informel Assemblage Bay Area Figuration Beatnik art Chicago Imagists CoBrA, c. 1948–1951 Color Field painting Combine painting De-collage Fluxus Happening Hard-Edge Painting Kinetic Art Kitchen Sink School Lettrism Lyrical abstraction Neo-Dada New Brutalism Northwest School Nouveau Réalisme Op Art Organic abstraction Outsider Art Panic Movement Pop Art Post-painterly abstraction Process art Public art Retro art Serial art Shaped canvas Situationist International Tachism Video art 1965–2000 Abstract Illusionism Appropriation Arte Povera Art Photography Body Art Classical Realism Conceptual Art Dogme 95 Earth Art Figuration Libre Funk art Graffiti art Hyperrealism Installation art Internet Art Land art Late modernism Light and Space Lowbrow Lyrical Abstraction Mail art Massurrealism Maximalism Minimalism Neo-Expressionism Neo-figurative Neo-pop Performance Art Postminimalism Postmodernism Photorealism Psychedelic art Relational art Site-specific art Sound Art Transavanguardia Young British Artists 21st century Algorithmic art Altermodernism Artificial intelligence art Biomorphism Computer art Computer graphics Craftivism Digital art Electronic Art Environmental art Excessivism Internet art Intervention art Metamodernism Modern European ink painting Neo-minimalism New Media Art Pixel art Postinternet Post-postmodernism Relational art Remodernism Social practice (art) SoFlo Superflat Stuckism International Superflat Superstroke Transgressive art Toyism Unilalianism Vaporwave See also 20th-century Western painting Art periods List of art movements Post-expressionism Western art history References External links Art Movements since 1900 at the-artists.org 20th-Century Art Compiled by Dr.Witcombe, Sweet Briar College, Virginia. WebMuseum, Paris Themes index and detailed glossary of art periods. Art history Style Visual arts

Cultural studies

Cultural studies is a politically engaged postdisciplinary academic field that explores the dynamics of especially contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields. Cultural studies was initially developed by British Marxist academics in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around the world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as anti-disciplinary. A key concern for cultural studies practitioners is the examination of the forces within and through which socially organized people conduct and participate in the construction of their everyday lives. Cultural studies combines a variety of politically engaged critical approaches drawn including semiotics, Marxism, feminist theory, ethnography, post-structuralism, postcolonialism, social theory, political theory, history, philosophy, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, communication studies, political economy, translation studies, museum studies and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies and historical periods. Cultural studies seeks to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, contested, bound up with systems of power and control, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a particular social formation or conjuncture. The movement has generated important theories of cultural hegemony and agency. Its practitioners attempt to explain and analyze the cultural forces related and processes of globalization. During the rise of neoliberalism in Britain and the US, cultural studies both became a global movement, and attracted the attention of many conservative opponents both within and beyond universities for a variety of reasons. A worldwide movement of students and practitioners with a raft of scholarly associations and programs, annual international conferences and publications carry on work in this field today. Distinct approaches to cultural studies have emerged in different national and regional contexts. Overview Sardar's characteristics In his 1994 book, Introducing Cultural Studies, orientalist scholar Ziauddin Sardar lists the following five main characteristics of cultural studies: The objective of cultural studies is to understand culture in all its complex forms, and analyzing the social and political context in which culture manifests itself. Cultural study is a site of both study/analysis and political criticism. For example, not only would a cultural studies scholar study an object, but they may also connect this study to a larger political project. Cultural studies attempts to expose and reconcile constructed divisions of knowledge that purport to be grounded in nature. Cultural studies has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society. One aim of cultural studies could be to examine cultural practices and their relation to power, following critical theory. For example, a study of a subculture (such as white working-class youth in London) would consider their social practices against those of the dominant culture (in this example, the middle and upper classes in London who control the political and financial sectors that create policies affecting the well-being of white working-class youth in London). British cultural studies Dennis Dworkin writes that "a critical moment" in the beginning of cultural studies as a field was when Richard Hoggart used the term in 1964 in founding the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham. The centre would become home to the development of the intellectual orientation that has become known internationally as the "Birmingham School" of cultural studies, thus becoming the world's first institutional home of cultural studies. Hoggart appointed as his assistant Stuart Hall, who would effectively be directing CCCS by 1968. Hall formally assumed the directorship of CCCS in 1971, when Hoggart left Birmingham to become Assistant Director-General of UNESCO. Thereafter, the field of cultural studies became closely associated with Hall's work. In 1979, Hall left Birmingham to accept a prestigious chair in sociology at the Open University, and Richard Johnson took over the directorship of the centre. In the late 1990s, "restructuring" at the University of Birmingham led to the elimination of CCCS and the creation of a new Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) in 1999. Then, in 2002, the university's senior administration abruptly announced the disestablishment of CSS, provoking a substantial international outcry. The immediate reason for disestablishment of the new department was an unexpectedly low result in the UK's Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, though a dean from the university attributed the decision to "inexperienced 'macho management'." The RAE, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher-led British government of 1986, determines research funding for university programs. To trace the development of British Cultural Studies, see, for example, the work of Richard Hoggart, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy, David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon, Richard Dyer, and others. There are also many published overviews of the historical development of cultural studies, including Graeme Turner's British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd Ed. and John Hartley's A Short History of Cultural Studies Stuart Hall's directorship of CCCS at Birmingham centre Beginning in 1964, after the initial appearance of the founding works of British Cultural Studies in the late 1950s, Stuart Hall's pioneering work at CCCS, along with that of his colleagues and postgraduate students, gave shape and substance to the field of cultural studies. This would include such people as Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, David Morley, Charlotte Brunsdon, John Clarke, Richard Dyer, Judith Williamson, Richard Johnson, Iain Chambers, Dorothy Hobson, Chris Weedon, Tony Jefferson, Michael Green and Angela McRobbie. Many cultural studies scholars employed Marxist methods of analysis, exploring the relationships between cultural forms (i.e., the superstructure) and that of the political economy (i.e., the base). By the 1970s, the work of Louis Althusser radically rethought the Marxist account of base and superstructure in ways that had a significant influence on the "Birmingham School." Much of the work done at CCCS studied youth-subcultural expressions of antagonism toward "respectable" middle-class British culture in the post-WWII period. Also during the 1970s, the politically formidable British working classes were in decline. Britain's manufacturing industries while continuing to grow in output and value, were decreasing in share of GDP and numbers employed, and union rolls were shrinking. Millions of working-class Britons backed the rise of Margaret Thatcher, through the labour losses. For Stuart Hall and his colleagues, this shift in loyalty from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party had to be explained in terms of cultural politics, which they had been tracking even before Thatcher's first victory. Some of this work was presented in the cultural studies classic, Policing the Crisis, and in other later texts such as Hall's The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, and New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s. In 2016, Duke University Press launched a new series of Stuart Hall's collected writings, many of which detail his major and decisive contributions toward the establishment of the field of cultural studies. In 2023, a new Stuart Hall Archive Project was launched at the University of Birmingham to commemorate Hall's contributions in pioneering the field of cultural studies at CCCS. Late-1970s and beyond By the late 1970s, scholars associated with The Birmingham School had firmly placed questions of gender and race on the cultural studies agenda, where they have remained ever since. Also by the late 1970s, cultural studies had begun to attract a great deal of international attention. It spread globally throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As it did so, it both encountered new conditions of knowledge production, and engaged with other major international intellectual currents such as poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism. The wide range of cultural studies journals now located throughout the world, as shown below, is one indication of the globalization of the field. For overviews of and commentaries on developments in cultural studies during the twenty-first century, see Lawrence Grossberg's Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, Gilbert Rodman's Why Cultural Studies? and Graeme Turner's What's Become of Cultural Studies? Developments outside the UK In the US, prior to the emergence of British Cultural Studies, several versions of cultural analysis had emerged largely from pragmatic and liberal-pluralist philosophical traditions. However, in the late 1970s and 1980s, when British Cultural Studies began to spread internationally, and to engage with feminism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and race, critical cultural studies (i.e., Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, etc.) expanded tremendously in American universities in fields such as communication studies, education, sociology, and literature. Cultural Studies, the flagship journal of the field, has been based in the US since its founding editor, John Fiske, brought it there from Australia in 1987. A thriving cultural studies scene has existed in Australia since the late 1970s, when several key CS practitioners emigrated there from the UK, bringing British Cultural Studies with them, after Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979. A school of cultural studies known as cultural policy studies is one of the distinctive Australian contributions to the field, though it is not the only one. Australia also gave birth to the world's first professional cultural studies association (now known as the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia) in 1990. Cultural studies journals based in Australia include International Journal of Cultural Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, and Cultural Studies Review. In Canada, cultural studies has sometimes focused on issues of technology and society, continuing the emphasis in the work of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, and others. Cultural studies journals based in Canada include Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. In Africa, human rights and Third-World issues are among the central topics treated. There is a thriving cultural and media studies scholarship in Southern Africa, with its locus in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Cultural Studies journals based in Africa include the Journal of African Cultural Studies. In Latin America, cultural studies have drawn on thinkers such as José Martí, Ángel Rama, and other Latin-American figures, in addition to the Western theoretical sources associated with cultural studies in other parts of the world. Leading Latin American cultural studies scholars include Néstor García Canclini, Jésus Martín-Barbero, and Beatriz Sarlo. Among the key issues addressed by Latin American cultural studies scholars are decoloniality, urban cultures, and postdevelopment theory. Latin American cultural studies journals include the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Even though cultural studies developed much more rapidly in the UK than in continental Europe, there is significant cultural studies presence in countries such as France, Spain, and Portugal. The field is relatively undeveloped in Germany, probably due to the continued influence of the Frankfurt School, which is now often said to be in its third generation, which includes notable figures such as Axel Honneth. Cultural studies journals based in continental Europe include the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, French Cultural Studies, and Portuguese Cultural Studies. In Germany, the term cultural studies specifically refers to the field in the Anglosphere, especially British Cultural Studies, to differentiate it from the German which developed along different lines and is characterized by its distance from political science. However, and cultural studies are often used interchangeably, particularly by lay people. Throughout Asia, cultural studies have boomed and thrived since at least the beginning of the 1990s. Cultural studies journals based in Asia include Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. In India, the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore and the Department of Cultural Studies at The English and Foreign Languages and the University of Hyderabad are two major institutional spaces for Cultural Studies. Issues, concepts, and approaches Marxism has been an important influence upon cultural studies. Those associated with CCCS initially engaged deeply with the structuralism of Louis Althusser, and later in the 1970s turned decisively toward Antonio Gramsci. Cultural studies has also embraced the examination of race, gender, and other aspects of identity, as is illustrated, for example, by a number of key books published collectively under the name of CCCS in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination (1978), and The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (1982). Gramsci and hegemony To understand the changing political circumstances of class, politics, and culture in the United Kingdom, scholars at The Birmingham School turned to the work of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian thinker, writer, and Communist Party leader. Gramsci had been concerned with similar issues: why would Italian laborers and peasants vote for fascists? What strategic approach is necessary to mobilize popular support in more progressive directions? Gramsci modified classical Marxism, and argued that culture must be understood as a key site of political and social struggle. In his view, capitalists used not only brute force (police, prisons, repression, military) to maintain control, but also penetrated the everyday culture of working people in a variety of ways in their efforts to win popular "consent." It is important to recognize that for Gramsci, historical leadership, or hegemony, involves the formation of alliances between class factions, and struggles within the cultural realm of everyday common sense. Hegemony was always, for Gramsci, an interminable, unstable and contested process. Scott Lash writes: Edgar and Sedgwick write: Structure and agency The development of hegemony theory in cultural studies was in some ways consonant with work in other fields exploring agency, a theoretical concept that insists on the active, critical capacities of subordinated people (e.g. the working classes, colonized peoples, women). As Stuart Hall famously argued in his 1981 essay, "Notes on Deconstructing 'the Popular: "ordinary people are not cultural dopes." Insistence on accounting for the agency of subordinated people run counter to the work of traditional structuralists. Some analysts have however been critical of some work in cultural studies that they feel overstates the significance of or even romanticizes some forms of popular cultural agency. Cultural studies often concerns itself with the agency at the level of the practices of everyday life, and approaches such research from a standpoint of radical contextualism. In other words, cultural studies rejects universal accounts of cultural practices, meanings, and identities. Judith Butler, an American feminist theorist whose work is often associated with cultural studies, wrote that: Globalization In recent decades, as capitalism has spread throughout the world via contemporary forms of globalization, cultural studies has generated important analyses of local sites and practices of negotiation with and resistance to Western hegemony. Cultural consumption Cultural studies criticizes the traditional view of the passive consumer, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive and interpret cultural texts, or appropriate other kinds of cultural products, or otherwise participate in the production and circulation of meanings. On this view, a consumer can appropriate, actively rework, or challenge the meanings circulated through cultural texts. In some of its variants, cultural studies has shifted the analytical focus from traditional understandings of production to consumption – viewed as a form of production (of meanings, of identities, etc.) in its own right. Stuart Hall, John Fiske, and others have been influential in these developments. A special 2008 issue of the field's flagship journal, Cultural Studies, examined "anti-consumerism" from a variety of cultural studies angles. Jeremy Gilbert noted in the issue, cultural studies must grapple with the fact that "we now live in an era when, throughout the capitalist world, the overriding aim of government economic policy is to maintain consumer spending levels. This is an era when 'consumer confidence' is treated as the key indicator and cause of economic effectiveness." The concept of "text" Cultural studies, drawing upon and developing semiotics, uses the concept of text to designate not only written language, but also television programs, films, photographs, fashion, hairstyles, and so forth; the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. This conception of textuality derives especially from the work of the pioneering and influential semiotician, Roland Barthes, but also owes debts to other sources, such as Juri Lotman and his colleagues from Tartu–Moscow School. Similarly, the field widens the concept of culture. Cultural studies approach the sites and spaces of everyday life, such as pubs, living rooms, gardens, and beaches, as "texts." Culture, in this context, includes not only high culture, but also everyday meanings and practices, a central focus of cultural studies. Jeff Lewis summarized much of the work on textuality and textual analysis in his cultural studies textbook and a post-9/11 monograph on media and terrorism. According to Lewis, textual studies use complex and difficult heuristic methods and require both powerful interpretive skills and a subtle conception of politics and contexts. The task of the cultural analyst, for Lewis, is to engage with both knowledge systems and texts and observe and analyze the ways the two interact with one another. This engagement represents the critical dimensions of the analysis, its capacity to illuminate the hierarchies within and surrounding the given text and its discourse. Academic reception Cultural studies has evolved through its uptake across a variety of different disciplines—anthropology, media studies, communication studies, literary studies, education, geography, philosophy, sociology, politics, and others. While some have accused certain areas of cultural studies of meandering into political relativism and a kind of empty version of "postmodern" analysis, others hold that at its core, cultural studies provides a significant conceptual and methodological framework for cultural, social, and economic critique. This critique is designed to "deconstruct" the meanings and assumptions that are inscribed in the institutions, texts, and practices that work with and through, and produce and re-present, culture. Thus, while some scholars and disciplines have dismissed cultural studies for its methodological rejection of disciplinarity, its core strategies of critique and analysis have influenced areas of the social sciences and humanities; for example, cultural studies work on forms of social differentiation, control and inequality, identity, community-building, media, and knowledge production has had a substantial impact. Moreover, the influence of cultural studies has become increasingly evident in areas as diverse as translation studies, health studies, international relations, development studies, computer studies, economics, archaeology, and neurobiology. Cultural studies has also diversified its own interests and methodologies, incorporating a range of studies on media policy, democracy, design, leisure, tourism, warfare, and development. While certain key concepts such as ideology or discourse, class, hegemony, identity, and gender remain significant, cultural studies has long engaged with and integrated new concepts and approaches. The field thus continues to pursue political critique through its engagements with the forces of culture and politics. Literary scholars Many cultural studies practitioners work in departments of English or comparative literature. Nevertheless, some traditional literary scholars such as Yale professor Harold Bloom have been outspoken critics of cultural studies. On the level of methodology, these scholars dispute the theoretical underpinning of the movement's critical framework. Bloom stated his position during the 3 September 2000 episode of C-SPAN's Booknotes, while discussing his book How to Read and Why: Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton is not wholly opposed to cultural studies, but has criticised aspects of it and highlighted what he sees as its strengths and weaknesses in books such as After Theory (2003). For Eagleton, literary and cultural theory have the potential to say important things about the "fundamental questions" in life, but theorists have rarely realized this potential. English departments also host cultural rhetorics scholars. This academic field defines cultural rhetorics as "the study and practice of making meaning and knowledge with the belief that all cultures are rhetorical and all rhetorics are cultural." Cultural rhetorics scholars are interested in investigating topics like climate change, autism, Asian American rhetoric, and more. Sociology Cultural studies have also had a substantial impact on sociology. For example, when Stuart Hall left CCCS at Birmingham, it was to accept a prestigious professorship in Sociology at the Open University in Britain. The subfield of cultural sociology, in particular, is disciplinary home to many cultural studies practitioners. Nevertheless, there are some differences between sociology as a discipline and the field of cultural studies as a whole. While sociology was founded upon various historic works purposefully distinguishing the subject from philosophy or psychology, cultural studies have explicitly interrogated and criticized traditional understandings and practices of disciplinarity. Most CS practitioners think it is best that cultural studies neither emulate disciplines nor aspire to disciplinarity for cultural studies. Rather, they promote a kind of radical interdisciplinarity as the basis for cultural studies. One sociologist whose work has had a major influence on cultural studies is Pierre Bourdieu, whose work makes innovative use of statistics and in-depth interviews. However, although Bourdieu's work has been highly influential within cultural studies, and although Bourdieu regarded his work as a form of science, cultural studies has never embraced the idea that it should aspire toward "scientificity," and has marshalled a wide range of theoretical and methodological arguments against the fetishization of "scientificity" as a basis for cultural studies. Two sociologists who have been critical of cultural studies, Chris Rojek and Bryan S. Turner, argue in their article, "Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn," that cultural studies, particularly the flavor championed by Stuart Hall, lacks a stable research agenda, and privileges the contemporary reading of texts, thus producing an ahistorical theoretical focus. Many, however, would argue, following Hall, that cultural studies have always sought to avoid the establishment of a fixed research agenda; this follows from its critique of disciplinarity. Moreover, Hall and many others have long argued against the misunderstanding that textual analysis is the sole methodology of cultural studies, and have practiced numerous other approaches, as noted above. Rojek and Turner also level the accusation that there is "a sense of moral superiority about the correctness of the political views articulated" in cultural studies. Science wars In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal expressed his opposition to cultural studies by submitting a hoax article to a cultural studies journal, Social Text. The article, which was crafted as a parody of what Sokal referred to as the "fashionable nonsense" of postmodernism, was accepted by the editors of the journal, which did not at the time practice peer review. When the paper appeared in print, Sokal published a second article in a self-described "academic gossip" magazine, Lingua Franca, revealing his hoax on Social Text. Sokal stated that his motivation stemmed from his rejection of contemporary critiques of scientific rationalism: In response to this critique, Jacques Derrida wrote: Founding works Hall and others have identified some core originating texts, or the original "curricula," of the field of cultural studies: Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy Raymond Williams' Culture and Society and The Long Revolution E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. See also Culturology Cultural Studies Association (US) European Communication Research and Education Association (Norway) International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (South Korea) Popular culture studies References Sources Du Gay, Paul, et al. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Culture, Media and Identities. London: SAGE, in association with Open University. Edgar, Andrew, and Peter Sedgwick. 2005. Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Engel, Manfred. 2008. "Cultural and Literary Studies." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 31:460–67. Grossberg, Lawrence (2010). Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. . Hall, Gary & Birchall, Claire, eds. (2006). New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. —— 1980. "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms." Media, Culture, and Society 2. —— 1992. "Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies." Rethinking Marxism 5(1):10–18. Hoggart, Richard. 1957. The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life. Chatto and Windus. Hartley, John (2003). A Short History of Cultural Studies. London: Sage. Johnson, Richard. 1986–87. "What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text 16:38–80. —— 2004. "Multiplying Methods: From Pluralism to Combination." pp. 26–43 in Practice of Cultural Studies. London: SAGE. —— "Post-Hegemony? I Don't Think So" Theory, Culture & Society 24(3):95–110. Lindlof, T. R., and B. C. Taylor. 2002. Qualitative Communication Research Methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Longhurst, Brian, Greg Smith, Gaynor Bagnall, Garry Crawford, and Michael Ogborn. 2008. Introducing Cultural Studies (2nd ed.). London: Pearson. . Pollock, Griselda, ed. 1996. Generations and Geographies: Critical Theories and Critical Practices in Feminism and the Visual Arts. Routledge. —— 2006. Psychoanalysis and the Image. Boston: Blackwell. Sardar, Ziauddin, Van Loon, Borin (1997). Introducing Cultural Studies. New York: Totem Books. Smith, Paul. 1991. "A Course In 'Cultural Studies'." The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 24(1):39–49. —— 2006. "Looking Backwards and Forwards at Cultural Studies." pp. 331–40 in A Companion to Cultural Studies, edited by T. Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. . Rodman, Gil (2015). Why Cultural Studies? Maldon, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Turner, Graeme (2003). British Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Third ed.). London: Routledge. —— 2012. What's Become of Cultural Studies? Los Angeles: SAGE. Williams, Jeffrey, interviewer. 1994. "Questioning Cultural Studies: An Interview with Paul Smith." Hartford, CT: MLG Institute for Culture and Society, Trinity College. Retrieved 1 July 2020. Williams, Raymond. 1985. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (revised ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. —— 1966. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. New York: Harper & Row. External links CCCS publications (Annual Reports and Stencilled Papers) of the University of Birmingham CSAA: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Cultural Studies International Journal of Cultural Studies Stuart Hall Archive Project, University of Birmingham, UK Stuart Hall: Selected Writings, Duke University Press Social sciences

Theories of technology

Theories of technological change and innovation attempt to explain the factors that shape technological innovation as well as the impact of technology on society and culture. Some of the most contemporary theories of technological change reject two of the previous views: the linear model of technological innovation and other, the technological determinism. To challenge the linear model, some of today's theories of technological change and innovation point to the history of technology, where they find evidence that technological innovation often gives rise to new scientific fields, and emphasizes the important role that social networks and cultural values play in creating and shaping technological artifacts. To challenge the so-called "technological determinism", today's theories of technological change emphasize the scope of the need of technical choice, which they find to be greater than most laypeople can realize; as scientists in philosophy of science, and further science and technology often like to say about this "It could have been different." For this reason, theorists who take these positions often argue that a greater public involvement in technological decision-making is desired. Sociological theories Sociological theories and researches of the Society and the Social focus on how human and technology actually interact and may even affect each other. Some theories are about how political decisions are made for both humans and technology, with here humans and technology are seen as an equal field in the political decision, where humans also make, use, and even move ahead with innovations the technology. The interactions that are used in the majority of the theories on this topic look at the individual human interactions with technological equipment, but there is also a sub-group for the group of people interacting with technology. The theories described are, according to some critiques, purposefully made vague and ambiguous, as the circumstances for the theories change with human culture and technological change and innovation. Descriptive approaches Social constructivism and technology argues that technology may not determine the human action, but human action may shape technological use. Key concepts here include: interpretive flexibility: "Technological artifacts are culturally constructed and interpreted ... By this, we mean not only is there flexibility in how people think of or interpret artifacts but also there is flexibility in how artifacts are designed." And so the technological artifacts may determine and shape what that specific technology tool will symbolize and represent in society or in a culture. This is in relation to the Social constructivism and technology theory because it shows how humans symbolize technology, by shaping it. Relevant social group shares a particular set of meanings about a given artifact Economical stabilization is often about when the relevant social group has reached a consensus, according to technological change and innovation criticism Wider context: "the sociocultural and political situation of a social group shapes its norms and values, which in turn influence the meaning given to an artifact" Key authors here include MacKenzie and Wajcman (1985). Actor-network theory (ANT) is about a heterogeneous network of humans and even non-humans as equal interrelated actors. It strives for impartiality in the description of human actors and nonhuman technological gadgets, and the reintegration of the natural world and the society. For example, Latour (1992) argues that instead of worrying whether we are making anthropomorphological the technology, and we should embrace it as inherently anthropomorphic as technology is after all made by humans, and substitutes for the actions of humans, and therefore shapes the human action. What is important is the gradients and the connectivity of actors' actions and their technological competencies, and also the degree to which we choose to have "figurative" representations. Key concepts here include the inscription of beliefs, practices, relations into technology, which is then said to embody them. Key authors include Bruno Latour (1997) and Callon (1999). Structuration theory attempts to define the structures also as resources and their rules that are organized with relevant technological system properties at the social level. The theory employs one recursive notion of actions, constrained and enabled by structures which are produced and reproduced by the action. Consequently, in this theory technology can not be rendered as an artifact, so instead examines people and their interacion with technology at their work practices, that enacts structures which shape their emerging and also situated use of that technology. Here, key authors include DeSanctis and Poole (1990), and Orlikowski (1992). Systems theory considers the historical development of technology and media with an emphasis on inertia and heterogeneity, stressing the connections between the artifact being built and the social, economic, political and cultural factors surrounding it. Key concepts include reverse salients when elements of a system lag in development with respect to others, differentiation, operational closure, and autopoietic autonomy. Key authors include Thomas P. Hughes (1992) and Luhmann (2000). Activity theory is considering that entire work and also activity system (including included members, teams, organizations, etc.) beyond one user or actor. It also may account for the environment, personal history and supposed culture, "the role of the artifacts", emerged motivations, and sought views on complexity of activities in real-life. One of the strengths of AT is that it bridges the gap between the individual subject and the social reality—it studies both through the mediating activity. The unit of analysis in AT is the concept of object-oriented, collective and culturally mediated human activity, or activity system. Approaches of the critical theory Critical theory attempts, according to some, to go beyond the descriptiveness of one account that may show of how things are, the exam and question of why they have come to be that way and how they might otherwise be. Critical theory asks whose interests are being served by the questioned status quo and assesses the potentials of a future, that alternates and propose "to better" both the technological service, and even social justice. Here Geuss's definition is given, where "a critical theory, then, is a reflective theory which gives agents a kind of knowledge inherently productive of enlightenment and emancipation" (1964). Thus Marcuse argued that while technology matters and design are often presented as neutral technical choices, in fact, they manifest political or moral values. Critical theory is seen as a "form of archaeology" that attempt to get beneath common-sense understandings in order to reveal the power relationships and interests determining particular technological configuration and use. Perhaps the most developed contemporary critical theory of technology is contained in the works of Andrew Feenberg included in his book 'Transforming Technology' (2002). Values in Design asks how do we ensure a place for values (alongside technical standards such as speed, efficiency, and reliability) as criteria by which we judge the quality and acceptability of information systems and new media. How do values such as privacy, autonomy, democracy, and social justice become integral to conception, design, and development, not merely retrofitted after completion? Key thinkers include Helen Nissenbaum (2001). Social Group Theories There are also a number of technologically related science and society theories that also address even on how media affects group developments or otherwise processes. Broadly speaking, these technological theories are said to be concerned with the social effects of communication media (e.g., media richness) are concerned with questions of media choice (when to use what medium effectively). Other theories (social presence and "media naturalness") are concerned with the consequences of those media choices (i.e., what are the social effects of using particular communication media). Social presence theory (Short, et al., 1976) is a "seminal theory" of the viewed social effects of communications technology. And its main concern is, naturally, with telephony and telephone, but also even conferencing (and the research here was found among the sponsored by the General Post Office, now British Telecom). It argues that the social impact of a communication medium depend on the social presence it allows communicators to have. Social presence is defined as a property of the medium itself: the degree of acoustic, visual, and physical contact that it allows. The theory assumes that more contact will increase the key components of "presence": greater intimacy, immediacy, warmth and inter-personal rapport. As a consequence of social presence, social influence is expected to increase. In the case of communication technology, the assumption is that more text-based forms of interaction (e-mail, instant messaging) are less social, and therefore less conducive to social influence. Media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986) shares some characteristics with social presence theory. It posits that the amount of information communicated differs with respect to a medium's richness. The theory assumes that resolving ambiguity and reducing uncertainty are the main goals of communication. Because communication media differ in the rate of understanding they can achieve in a specific time (with "rich" media carrying more information), they are not all capable of resolving uncertainty and ambiguity well. The more restricted the medium's capacity, the less uncertainty and equivocality it is able to manage. It follows that the richness of the media should be matched to the task so as to prevent over simplification or complication. Media naturalness theory (Kock, 2001; 2004) builds on human evolution ideas and has been proposed as an alternative to media richness theory. Media naturalness theory argues that since our Stone Age hominid ancestors have communicated primarily face-to-face, evolutionary pressures have led to the development of a brain that is consequently designed for that form of communication. Other forms of communication are too recent and unlikely to have posed evolutionary pressures that could have shaped our brain in their direction. Using communication media that suppress key elements found in face-to-face communication, as many electronic communication media do, thus ends up posing cognitive obstacles to communication. This is particularly the case in the context of complex tasks (e.g., business process redesign, new product development, online learning), because such tasks seem to require more intense communication over extended periods of time than simple tasks. Media synchronicity theory (MST, Dennis & Valacich, 1999) redirects richness theory towards the synchronicity of the communication. The social identity model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) (Postmes, Spears and Lea 1999; Reicher, Spears and Postmes, 1995; Spears & Lea, 1994 ) was developed as a response to the idea that anonymity and reduced presence made communication technology socially impoverished (or "deindividuated"). It provided an alternative explanation for these "deindividuation effects" based on theories of social identity (e.g., Turner et al., 1987). The SIDE model distinguishes cognitive and strategic effects of a communication technology. Cognitive effects occur when communication technologies make "salient" particular aspects of personal or social identity. For example, certain technologies such as email may disguise characteristics of the sender that individually differentiate them (i.e., that convey aspects of their personal identity) and as a result more attention may be given to their social identity. The strategic effects are due to the possibilities, afforded by communication technology, to selectively communicate or enact particular aspects of identity, and disguise others. SIDE therefore sees the social and the technological as mutually determining, and the behavior associated with particular communication forms as the product or interaction of the two. Time, interaction, and performance (TIP; McGrath, 1991) theory describes work groups as time-based, multi-modal, and multi-functional social systems. Groups interact in one of the modes of inception, problem solving, conflict resolution, and execution. The three functions of a group are production (towards a goal), support (affective) and well-being (norms and roles). Other Stances Additionally, many authors have posed technology so as to critique and or emphasize aspects of technology as addressed by the mainline theories. For example, Steve Woolgar (1991) considers technology as text in order to critique the sociology of scientific knowledge as applied to technology and to distinguish between three responses to that notion: the instrumental response (interpretive flexibility), the interpretivist response (environmental/organizational influences), the reflexive response (a double hermeneutic). Pfaffenberger (1992) treats technology as drama to argue that a recursive structuring of technological artifacts and their social structure discursively regulate the technological construction of political power. A technological drama is a discourse of technological "statements" and "counterstatements" within the processes of technological regularization, adjustment, and reconstitution. An important philosophical approach to technology has been taken by Bernard Stiegler, whose work has been influenced by other philosophers and historians of technology including Gilbert Simondon and André Leroi-Gourhan. In the Schumpeterian and Neo-Schumpeterian theories technologies are critical factors of economic growth (Carlota Perez). Analytical theories There are theories of technological change and innovation which are not defined or claimed by a proponent, but are used by authors in describing existing literature, in contrast to their own or as a review of the field. For example, Markus and Robey (1988) propose a general technology theory consisting of the causal structures of agency (technological, organizational, imperative, emergent), its structure (variance, process), and the level (micro, macro) of analysis. Orlikowski (1992) notes that previous conceptualizations of technology typically differ over scope (is technology more than hardware?) and role (is it an external objective force, the interpreted human action, or an impact moderated by humans?) and identifies three models: The technological imperative: focuses on organizational characteristics which can be measured and permits some level of contingency Strategic choices: focuses on how technology is influenced by the context and strategies of decision-makers and users Technology as maker of structural changes:: views technology as a social object DeSanctis and Poole (1994) similarly write of three views of technology's effects: Decision-making: the view of engineers associated with positivist, rational, systems rationalization, and deterministic approaches Institutional school: technology is an opportunity for change, focuses on social evolution, social construction of meaning, interaction and historical processes, interpretive flexibility, and an interplay between technology and power An integrated perspective (social technology): soft-line determinism, with joint social and technological optimization, structural symbolic interaction theory Bimber (1998) addresses the determinacy of technology effects by distinguishing between the: Normative: an autonomous approach where technology is an important influence on history only where societies attached cultural and political meaning to it (e.g., the industrialization of society) Nomological: a naturalistic approach wherein an inevitable technological order arises based on laws of nature (e.g., steam mill had to follow the hand mill). Unintended consequences: a fuzzy approach that is demonstrative that technology is contingent (e.g., a car is faster than a horse, but unbeknownst to its original creators become a significant source of pollution) References Bibliography Bentley, Raymond (2019). Technological Change In The German Democratic Republic, Routledge Denis, A. and Valacich, J. (1999). Rethinking media richness: towards a theory of media synchronicity. Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science. Desanctis, G. and Poole, M. S. (1990). Understanding the use of group decision support systems: the theory of adaptive structuration. In J. Fulk, C. S., editor, Organizations and Communication Technology, pages 173–193. Sage, Newbury Park, CA. MacKensie, D. and Wajcman, J (1985) The Social Shaping of Technology, Milton Keynes, Open University Press. Pinch, T. and Bijker, W. (1992). The social construction of facts and artifacts: or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. In Bijker, W. and Law, J., editors, Shaping Technology/Building Society, pages 17–50. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Science and technology Philosophy of science Philosophy of technology Sociology of science Science and technology studies

Cultural imperialism

Cultural imperialism (also cultural colonialism) comprises the cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture (language, tradition, and ritual, politics, economics) to create and maintain unequal social and economic relationships among social groups. Cultural imperialism often uses wealth, media power and violence to implement the system of cultural hegemony that legitimizes imperialism. Cultural imperialism may take various forms, such as an attitude, a formal policy, or military action—insofar as each of these reinforces the empire's cultural hegemony. Research on the topic occurs in scholarly disciplines, and is especially prevalent in communication and media studies, education, foreign policy, history, international relations, linguistics, literature, post-colonialism, science, sociology, social theory, environmentalism, and sports. Cultural imperialism may be distinguished from the natural process of cultural diffusion. The spread of culture around the world is referred to as cultural globalization. Background and definitions Although the Oxford English Dictionary has a 1921 reference to the "cultural imperialism of the Russians", John Tomlinson, in his book on the subject, writes that the term emerged in the 1960s and has been a focus of research since at least the 1970s. Terms such as "media imperialism", "structural imperialism", "cultural dependency and domination", "cultural synchronization", "electronic colonialism", "ideological imperialism", and "economic imperialism" have all been used to describe the same basic notion of cultural imperialism. The term refers largely to the exercise of power in a cultural relationship in which the principles, ideas, practices, and values of a powerful, invading society are imposed upon indigenous cultures in the occupied areas. The process is often used to describe examples of when the compulsory practices of the cultural traditions of the imperial social group are implemented upon a conquered social group. The process is also present when powerful nations are able to flood the information and media space with their ideas, limiting countries and communities ability to compete and expose people to locally created content. Cultural imperialism has been called a process that intends to transition the "cultural symbols of the invading communities from 'foreign' to 'natural,''domestic, comments Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera. He described the process as being carried out in three phases by merchants, then the military, then politicians. While the third phase continues "in perpetuity", cultural imperialism tends to be "gradual, contested (and continues to be contested), and is by nature incomplete. The partial and imperfect configuration of this ontology takes an implicit conceptualization of reality and attempts—and often fails—to elide other forms of collective existence." In order to achieve that end, cultural engineering projects strive to "isolate residents within constructed spheres of symbols" such that they (eventually, in some cases after several generations) abandon other cultures and identify with the new symbols. "The broader intended outcome of these interventions might be described as a common recognition of possession of the land itself (on behalf of the organizations publishing and financing the images)." For Herbert Schiller, cultural imperialism refers to the American Empire's "coercive and persuasive agencies, and their capacity to promote and universalize an American 'way of life' in other countries without any reciprocation of influence." According to Schiller, cultural imperialism "pressured, forced and bribed" societies to integrate with the U.S.'s expansive capitalist model but also incorporated them with attraction and persuasion by winning "the mutual consent, even solicitation of the indigenous rulers." He continues remarks that it is:the sum processes by which a society is brought into the modern [U.S.-centered] world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centres of the system. The public media are the foremost example of operating enterprises that are used in the penetrative process. For penetration on a significant scale the media themselves must be captured by the dominating/penetrating power. This occurs largely through the commercialization of broadcasting.The historical contexts, iterations, complexities, and politics of Schiller's foundational and substantive theorization of cultural imperialism in international communication and media studies are discussed in detail by political economy of communication researchers Richard Maxwell, Vincent Mosco, Graham Murdock, and Tanner Mirrlees. Downing and Sreberny-Mohammadi state: "Cultural imperialism signifies the dimensions of the process that go beyond economic exploitation or military force. In the history of colonialism, (i.e., the form of imperialism in which the government of the colony is run directly by foreigners), the educational and media systems of many Third World countries have been set up as replicas of those in Britain, France, or the United States and carry their values. Western advertising has made further inroads, as have architectural and fashion styles. Subtly but powerfully, the message has often been insinuated that Western cultures are superior to the cultures of the Third World." Poststructuralism In poststructuralist and postcolonial theory, cultural imperialism is often understood as the cultural legacy of Western colonialism, or forms of social action contributing to the continuation of Western hegemony. To some outside of the realm of this discourse, the term is critiqued as being unclear, unfocused, and/or contradictory in nature. The work of French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault has heavily influenced use of the term cultural imperialism, particularly his philosophical interpretation of power and his concept of governmentality. Following an interpretation of power similar to that of Machiavelli, Foucault defines power as immaterial, as a "certain type of relation between individuals" that has to do with complex strategic social positions that relate to the subject's ability to control its environment and influence those around itself. According to Foucault, power is intimately tied with his conception of truth. "Truth", as he defines it, is a "system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements" which has a "circular relation" with systems of power. Therefore, inherent in systems of power, is always "truth", which is culturally specific, inseparable from ideology which often coincides with various forms of hegemony. Cultural imperialism may be an example of this. Foucault's interpretation of governance is also very important in constructing theories of transnational power structure. In his lectures at the , Foucault often defines governmentality as the broad art of "governing", which goes beyond the traditional conception of governance in terms of state mandates, and into other realms such as governing "a household, souls, children, a province, a convent, a religious order, a family". This relates directly back to Machiavelli's treatise on how to retain political power at any cost, The Prince, and Foucault's aforementioned conceptions of truth and power. (i.e. various subjectivities are created through power relations that are culturally specific, which lead to various forms of culturally specific governmentality such as neoliberal governmentality.) Post-colonialism Edward Saïd is a founding figure of postcolonialism, established with the book Orientalism (1978), a humanist critique of The Enlightenment, which criticises Western knowledge of "The East"—specifically the English and the French constructions of what is and what is not "Oriental". Whereby said "knowledge" then led to cultural tendencies towards a binary opposition of the Orient vs. the Occident, wherein one concept is defined in opposition to the other concept, and from which they emerge as of unequal value. In Culture and Imperialism (1993), the sequel to Orientalism, Saïd proposes that, despite the formal end of the "age of empire" after the Second World War (1939–1945), colonial imperialism left a cultural legacy to the (previously) colonised peoples, which remains in their contemporary civilisations; and that said American cultural imperialism is very influential in the international systems of power. In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak critiques common representations in the West of the Sati, as being controlled by authors other than the participants (specifically English colonizers and Hindu leaders). Because of this, Spivak argues that the subaltern, referring to the communities that participate in the Sati, are not able to represent themselves through their own voice. Spivak says that cultural imperialism has the power to disqualify or erase the knowledge and mode of education of certain populations that are low on the social and economic hierarchy. In A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Spivak argues that Western philosophy has a history of not only exclusion of the subaltern from discourse, but also does not allow them to occupy the space of a fully human subject. Contemporary ideas and debate Cultural imperialism can refer to either the forced acculturation of a subject population, or to the voluntary embracing of a foreign culture by individuals who do so of their own free will. Since these are two very different referents, the validity of the term has been called into question. Cultural influence can be seen by the "receiving" culture as either a threat to or an enrichment of its cultural identity. It seems therefore useful to distinguish between cultural imperialism as an (active or passive) attitude of superiority, and the position of a culture or group that seeks to complement its own cultural production, considered partly deficient, with imported products. The imported products or services can themselves represent, or be associated with, certain values (such as consumerism). According to one argument, the "receiving" culture does not necessarily perceive this link, but instead absorbs the foreign culture passively through the use of the foreign goods and services. Due to its somewhat concealed, but very potent nature, this hypothetical idea is described by some experts as "banal imperialism". For example, it is argued that while "American companies are accused of wanting to control 95 percent of the world's consumers", "cultural imperialism involves much more than simple consumer goods; it involved the dissemination of American principles such as freedom and democracy", a process which "may sound appealing" but which "masks a frightening truth: many cultures around the world are disappearing due to the overwhelming influence of corporate and cultural America". Some believe that the newly globalised economy of the late 20th and early 21st century has facilitated this process through the use of new information technology. This kind of cultural imperialism is derived from what is called "soft power". The theory of electronic colonialism extends the issue to global cultural issues and the impact of major multi-media conglomerates, ranging from Paramount, WarnerMedia, AT&T, Disney, News Corp, to Google and Microsoft with the focus on the hegemonic power of these mainly United States–based communication giants. Cultural diversity One of the reasons often given for opposing any form of cultural imperialism, voluntary or otherwise, is the preservation of cultural diversity, a goal seen by some as analogous to the preservation of ecological diversity. Proponents of this idea argue either that such diversity is valuable in itself, to preserve human historical heritage and knowledge, or instrumentally valuable because it makes available more ways of solving problems and responding to catastrophes, natural or otherwise. African colonisation Of all the areas of the world that scholars have claimed to be adversely affected by imperialism, Africa is probably the most notable. In the expansive "age of imperialism" of the nineteenth century, scholars have argued that European colonisation in Africa has led to the elimination of many various cultures, worldviews, and epistemologies, particularly through neocolonisation of public education. This, arguably has led to uneven development, and further informal forms of social control having to do with culture and imperialism. A variety of factors, scholars argue, lead to the elimination of cultures, worldviews, and epistemologies, such as "de-linguicization" (replacing native African languages with European ones), devaluing ontologies that are not explicitly individualistic, and at times going as far as to not only define Western culture itself as science, but that non-Western approaches to science, the Arts, indigenous culture, etc. are not even knowledge. One scholar, Ali A. Abdi, claims that imperialism inherently "involve[s] extensively interactive regimes and heavy contexts of identity deformation, misrecognition, loss of self-esteem, and individual and social doubt in self-efficacy." Therefore, all imperialism would always, already be cultural. Neoliberalism Neoliberalism is often critiqued by sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars as being culturally imperialistic. Critics of neoliberalism, at times, claim that it is the newly predominant form of imperialism. Other scholars, such as Elizabeth Dunn and Julia Elyachar have claimed that neoliberalism requires and creates its own form of governmentality. In Dunn's work, Privatizing Poland, she argues that the expansion of the multinational corporation, Gerber, into Poland in the 1990s imposed Western, neoliberal governmentality, ideologies, and epistemologies upon the post-soviet persons hired. Cultural conflicts occurred most notably the company's inherent individualistic policies, such as promoting competition among workers rather than cooperation, and in its strong opposition to what the company owners claimed was bribery. In Elyachar's work, Markets of Dispossession, she focuses on ways in which, in Cairo, NGOs along with INGOs and the state promoted neoliberal governmentality through schemas of economic development that relied upon "youth microentrepreneurs". Youth microentrepreneurs would receive small loans to build their own businesses, similar to the way that microfinance supposedly operates. Elyachar argues though, that these programs not only were a failure, but that they shifted cultural opinions of value (personal and cultural) in a way that favoured Western ways of thinking and being. Development studies Often, methods of promoting development and social justice are critiqued as being imperialistic in a cultural sense. For example, Chandra Mohanty has critiqued Western feminism, claiming that it has created a misrepresentation of the "third world woman" as being completely powerless, unable to resist male dominance. Thus, this leads to the often critiqued narrative of the "white man" saving the "brown woman" from the "brown man". Other, more radical critiques of development studies, have to do with the field of study itself. Some scholars even question the intentions of those developing the field of study, claiming that efforts to "develop" the Global South were never about the South itself. Instead, these efforts, it is argued, were made in order to advance Western development and reinforce Western hegemony. Media effects studies The core of cultural imperialism thesis is integrated with the political-economy traditional approach in media effects research. Critics of cultural imperialism commonly claim that non-Western cultures, particularly from the Third World, will forsake their traditional values and lose their cultural identities when they are solely exposed to Western media. Nonetheless, Michael B. Salwen, in his book Critical Studies in Mass Communication (1991), claims that cross-consideration and integration of empirical findings on cultural imperialist influences is very critical in terms of understanding mass media in the international sphere. He recognises both of contradictory contexts on cultural imperialist impacts. The first context is where cultural imperialism imposes socio-political disruptions on developing nations. Western media can distort images of foreign cultures and provoke personal and social conflicts to developing nations in some cases. Another context is that peoples in developing nations resist to foreign media and preserve their cultural attitudes. Although he admits that outward manifestations of Western culture may be adopted, but the fundamental values and behaviours remain still. Furthermore, positive effects might occur when male-dominated cultures adopt the "liberation" of women with exposure to Western media and it stimulates ample exchange of cultural exchange. Criticisms of "cultural imperialism theory" Critics of scholars who discuss cultural imperialism have a number of critiques. Cultural imperialism is a term that is only used in discussions where cultural relativism and constructivism are generally taken as true. (One cannot critique promoting Western values if one believes that said values are good. Similarly, one cannot argue that Western epistemology is unjustly promoted in non-Western societies if one believes that those epistemologies are good.) Therefore, those who disagree with cultural relativism and/or constructivism may critique the employment of the term, cultural imperialism on those terms. John Tomlinson provides a critique of cultural imperialism theory and reveals major problems in the way in which the idea of cultural, as opposed to economic or political, imperialism is formulated. In his book Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction, he delves into the much debated "media imperialism" theory. Summarizing research on the Third World's reception of American television shows, he challenges the cultural imperialism argument, conveying his doubts about the degree to which US shows in developing nations actually carry US values and improve the profits of US companies. Tomlinson suggests that cultural imperialism is growing in some respects, but local transformation and interpretations of imported media products propose that cultural diversification is not at an end in global society. He explains that one of the fundamental conceptual mistakes of cultural imperialism is to take for granted that the distribution of cultural goods can be considered as cultural dominance. He thus supports his argument highly criticising the concept that Americanization is occurring through global overflow of American television products. He points to a myriad of examples of television networks who have managed to dominate their domestic markets and that domestic programs generally top the ratings. He also doubts the concept that cultural agents are passive receivers of information. He states that movement between cultural/geographical areas always involves translation, mutation, adaptation, and the creation of hybridity. Other key critiques are that the term is not defined well, and employs further terms that are not defined well, and therefore lacks explanatory power, that cultural imperialism is hard to measure, and that the theory of a legacy of colonialism is not always true. Dealing with cultural dominance David Rothkopf, managing director of Kissinger Associates and an adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University (who also served as a senior U.S. Commerce Department official in the Clinton Administration), wrote about cultural imperialism in his provocatively titled In Praise of Cultural Imperialism? in the summer 1997 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Rothkopf says that the United States should embrace "cultural imperialism" as in its self-interest. But his definition of cultural imperialism stresses spreading the values of tolerance and openness to cultural change in order to avoid war and conflict between cultures as well as expanding accepted technological and legal standards to provide free traders with enough security to do business with more countries. Rothkopf's definition almost exclusively involves allowing individuals in other nations to accept or reject foreign cultural influences. He also mentions, but only in passing, the use of the English language and consumption of news and popular music and film as cultural dominance that he supports. Rothkopf additionally makes the point that globalisation and the Internet are accelerating the process of cultural influence. Culture is sometimes used by the organisers of society—politicians, theologians, academics, and families—to impose and ensure order, the rudiments of which change over time as need dictates. One need only look at the 20th century's genocides. In each one, leaders used culture as a political front to fuel the passions of their armies and other minions and to justify their actions among their people. Rothkopf then cites genocide and massacres in Armenia, Russia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and East Timor as examples of culture (in some cases expressed in the ideology of "political culture" or religion) being misused to justify violence. He also acknowledges that cultural imperialism in the past has been guilty of forcefully eliminating the cultures of natives in the Americas and in Africa, or through use of the Inquisition, "and during the expansion of virtually every empire." The most important way to deal with cultural influence in any nation, according to Rothkopf, is to promote tolerance and allow, or even promote, cultural diversities that are compatible with tolerance and to eliminate those cultural differences that cause violent conflict: Successful multicultural societies, be they nations, federations, or other conglomerations of closely interrelated states, discern those aspects of culture that do not threaten union, stability, or prosperity (such as food, holidays, rituals, and music) and allow them to flourish. But they counteract or eradicate the more subversive elements of culture (exclusionary aspects of religion, language, and political/ideological beliefs). History shows that bridging cultural gaps successfully and serving as a home to diverse peoples requires certain social structures, laws, and institutions that transcend culture. Furthermore, the history of a number of ongoing experiments in multiculturalism, such as in the European Union, India, South Africa, Canada and the United States, suggests that workable, if not perfected, integrative models exist. Each is built on the idea that tolerance is crucial to social well-being, and each at times has been threatened by both intolerance and a heightened emphasis on cultural distinctions. The greater public good warrants eliminating those cultural characteristics that promote conflict or prevent harmony, even as less-divisive, more personally observed cultural distinctions are celebrated and preserved. Cultural dominance can also be seen in the 1930s in Australia where the Aboriginal Assimilation Policy acted as an attempt to wipe out the Native Australian people. The British settlers tried to biologically alter the skin colour of the Australian Aboriginal people through mixed breeding with white people. The policy also made attempts to forcefully conform the Aborigines to western ideas of dress and education. In history Although the term was popularised in the 1960s, and was used by its original proponents to refer to cultural hegemonies in a post-colonial world, cultural imperialism has also been used to refer to times further in the past. Antiquity The Ancient Greeks are known for spreading their culture around the Mediterranean and Near East through trade and conquest. During the Archaic Period, the burgeoning Greek city-states established settlements and colonies across the Mediterranean Sea, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, influencing the Etruscan and Roman peoples of the region. In the late fourth century BC, Alexander the Great conquered Persian and Indian territories all the way to the Indus River Valley and Punjab, spreading Greek religion, art, and science along the way. This resulted in the rise of Hellenistic kingdoms and cities across Egypt, the Near East, Central Asia, and Northwest India where Greek culture fused with the cultures of the indigenous peoples. The Greek influence prevailed even longer in science and literature, where medieval Muslim scholars in the Middle East studied the writings of Aristotle for scientific learning. The Roman Empire was also an early example of cultural imperialism. Early Rome, in its conquest of Italy, assimilated the people of Etruria by replacing the Etruscan language with Latin, which led to the demise of that language and many aspects of Etruscan civilisation. Cultural Romanization was imposed on many parts of Rome's empire by "many regions receiving Roman culture unwillingly, as a form of cultural imperialism." For example, when Greece was conquered by the Roman armies, Rome set about altering the culture of Greece to conform with Roman ideals. For instance, the Greek habit of stripping naked, in public, for exercise, was looked on askance by Roman writers, who considered the practice to be a cause of the Greeks' effeminacy and enslavement. The Roman example has been linked to modern instances of European imperialism in African countries, bridging the two instances with Slavoj Zizek's discussions of 'empty signifiers'. The Pax Romana was secured in the empire, in part, by the "forced acculturation of the culturally diverse populations that Rome had conquered." British Empire British worldwide expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries was an economic and political phenomenon. However, "there was also a strong social and cultural dimension to it, which Rudyard Kipling termed the 'white man's burden'." One of the ways this was carried out was by religious proselytising, by, amongst others, the London Missionary Society, which was "an agent of British cultural imperialism." Another way, was by the imposition of educational material on the colonies for an "imperial curriculum". Robin A. Butlin writes, "The promotion of empire through books, illustrative materials, and educational syllabuses was widespread, part of an education policy geared to cultural imperialism". This was also true of science and technology in the empire. Douglas M. Peers and Nandini Gooptu note that "Most scholars of colonial science in India now prefer to stress the ways in which science and technology worked in the service of colonialism, as both a 'tool of empire' in the practical sense and as a vehicle for cultural imperialism. In other words, science developed in India in ways that reflected colonial priorities, tending to benefit Europeans at the expense of Indians, while remaining dependent on and subservient to scientific authorities in the colonial metropolis." British sports were spread across the Empire partially as a way of encouraging British values and cultural uniformity, though this was tempered by the fact that colonised peoples gained a sense of nationalistic pride by defeating the British in their own sports. The analysis of cultural imperialism carried out by Edward Said drew principally from a study of the British Empire. According to Danilo Raponi, the cultural imperialism of the British in the 19th century had a much wider effect than only in the British Empire. He writes, "To paraphrase Said, I see cultural imperialism as a complex cultural hegemony of a country, Great Britain, that in the 19th century had no rivals in terms of its ability to project its power across the world and to influence the cultural, political and commercial affairs of most countries. It is the 'cultural hegemony' of a country whose power to export the most fundamental ideas and concepts at the basis of its understanding of 'civilisation' knew practically no bounds." In this, for example, Raponi includes Italy. Other pre-Second World War examples The New Cambridge Modern History writes about the cultural imperialism of Napoleonic France. Napoleon used the Institut de France "as an instrument for transmuting French universalism into cultural imperialism." Members of the institute (who included Napoleon), descended upon Egypt in 1798. "Upon arrival they organised themselves into an Institute of Cairo. The Rosetta Stone is their most famous find. The science of Egyptology is their legacy." After the First World War, Germans were worried about the extent of French influence in the occupied Rhineland, which under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was under Allied control from 1918 to 1930. An early use of the term appeared in an essay by Paul Ruhlmann (as "Peter Hartmann") at that date, entitled French Cultural Imperialism on the Rhine. North American colonisation Keeping in line with the trends of international imperialistic endeavours, the expansion of Canadian and American territory in the 19th century saw cultural imperialism employed as a means of control over indigenous populations. This, when used in conjunction of more traditional forms of ethnic cleansing and genocide in the United States, saw devastating, lasting effects on indigenous communities. In 2017 Canada celebrated its 150-year anniversary of the confederating of three British colonies. As Catherine Murton Stoehr points out in Origins, a publication organised by the history departments of Ohio State University and Miami University, the occasion came with remembrance of Canada's treatment of First Nations people. Numerous policies focused on indigenous persons came into effect shortly thereafter. Most notable is the use of residential schools across Canada as a means to remove indigenous persons from their culture and instill in them the beliefs and values of the majorised colonial hegemony. The policies of these schools, as described by Ward Churchill in his book Kill the Indian, Save the Man, were to forcefully assimilate students who were often removed with force from their families. These schools forbid students from using their native languages and participating in their own cultural practices. Residential schools were largely run by Christian churches, operating in conjunction with Christian missions with minimal government oversight. The book, Stolen Lives: The Indigenous peoples of Canada and the Indian Residentials Schools, describes this form of operation: "The government provided little leadership, and the clergy in charge were left to decide what to teach and how to teach it. Their priority was to impart the teachings of their church or order—not to provide a good education that could help students in their post-graduation lives." In a New York Times op-ed, Gabrielle Scrimshaw describes her grandparents being forced to send her mother to one of these schools or risk imprisonment. After hiding her mother on "school pick up day" so as to avoid sending their daughter to institutions whose abuse was well known at the time (mid-20th century). Scrimshaw's mother was left with limited options for further education she says and is today illiterate as a result. Scrimshaw explains, "Seven generations of my ancestors went through these schools. Each new family member enrolled meant a compounding of abuse and a steady loss of identity, culture and hope. My mother was the last generation. the experience left her broken, and like so many, she turned to substances to numb these pains." A report, republished by CBC News, estimates nearly 6,000 children died in the care of these schools. The colonisation of native peoples in North America remains active today despite the closing of the majority of residential schools. This form of cultural imperialism continues in the use of Native Americans as mascots for schools and athletic teams. Jason Edward Black, a professor and chair in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, describes how the use of Native Americans as mascots furthers the colonial attitudes of the 18th and 19th centuries. In Deciphering Pocahontas, Kent Ono and Derek Buescher wrote: "Euro-American culture has made a habit of appropriating, and redefining what is 'distinctive' and constitutive of Native Americans." Nazi colonialism Cultural imperialism has also been used in connection with the expansion of German influence under the Nazis in the middle of the twentieth century. Alan Steinweis and Daniel Rogers note that even before the Nazis came to power, "Already in the Weimar Republic, German academic specialists on eastern Europe had contributed through their publications and teaching to the legitimization of German territorial revanchism and cultural imperialism. These scholars operated primarily in the disciplines of history, economics, geography, and literature." In the area of music, Michael Kater writes that during the WWII German occupation of France, Hans Rosbaud, a German conductor based by the Nazi regime in Strasbourg, became "at least nominally, a servant of Nazi cultural imperialism directed against the French." In Italy during the war, Germany pursued "a European cultural front that gravitates around German culture". The Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels set up the European Union of Writers, "one of Goebbels's most ambitious projects for Nazi cultural hegemony. Presumably a means of gathering authors from Germany, Italy, and the occupied countries to plan the literary life of the new Europe, the union soon emerged as a vehicle of German cultural imperialism." For other parts of Europe, Robert Gerwarth, writing about cultural imperialism and Reinhard Heydrich, states that the "Nazis' Germanization project was based on a historically unprecedented programme of racial stock-taking, theft, expulsion and murder." Also, "The full integration of the [Czech] Protectorate into this New Order required the complete Germanization of the Protectorate's cultural life and the eradication of indigenous Czech and Jewish culture." The actions by Nazi Germany reflect on the notion of race and culture playing a significant role in imperialism. The idea that there is a distinction between the Germans and the Jews has created the illusion of Germans believing they were superior to the Jewish inferiors, the notion of us/them and self/others. Western imperialism Cultural imperialism manifests in the Western world in the form legal system to include commodification and marketing of indigenous resources (example medicinal, spiritual or artistic) and genetic resources (example human DNA). Americanization The terms "McDonaldization", "Disneyization" and "Cocacolonization" have been coined to describe the spread of Western cultural influence, especially after the end of the Cold War. There are many countries affected by the US and their pop-culture. For example, the film industry in Nigeria referred to as "Nollywood" being the second largest as it produces more films annually than the United States, their films are shown across Africa. Another term that describes the spread of Western cultural influence is "Hollywoodization" it is when American culture is promoted through Hollywood films which can culturally affect the viewers of Hollywood films. See also Related negative concepts Impact Cultural examples Theocultural Processes Examples Notes References External links "In Praise of Cultural Imperialism?", by David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy no. 107, Summer 1997, pp. 38–53, which argues that cultural imperialism is a positive thing. "Reconsidering cultural imperialism theory" by Livingston A. White, Transnational Broadcasting Studies no. 6, Spring/Summer 2001, which argues that the idea of media imperialism is outdated. Academic Web page from 24 February 2000, discussing the idea of cultural imperialism "Cultural Imperialism", BBC Radio 4 discussion with Linda Colley, Phillip Dodd and Mary Beard (In Our Time, 27 June 2002) Cultural geography Cultural hegemony Cultural studies Cultural concepts Imperialism Political science

Postmodernity

Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s – and that it was replaced by postmodernity, and still others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity. The idea of the postmodern condition is sometimes characterized as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state like regressive isolationism, as opposed to the progressive mind state of modernism. Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the state of being that is associated with a postmodern society as well as a historical epoch. In most contexts it should be distinguished from postmodernism, the adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in the arts, culture and society. In fact, today's historical perspectives on the developments of postmodern art (postmodernism) and postmodern society (postmodernity) can be best described as two umbrella terms for processes engaged in an ongoing dialectical relationship like post-postmodernism, the result of which is the evolving culture of the contemporary world. Some commentators deny that modernity ended, and consider the post-WWII era to be a continuation of modernity, which they refer to as late modernity. Uses of the term Postmodernity is the state or condition of being postmodern – after or in reaction to that which is modern, as in postmodern art (see postmodernism). Modernity is defined as a period or condition loosely identified with the Progressive Era, the Industrial Revolution, or the Enlightenment. In philosophy and critical theory postmodernity refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity, a historical condition that marks the reasons for the end of modernity. This usage is ascribed to the philosophers Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard. One "project" of modernity is said by Jürgen Habermas to have been the fostering of progress by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into public and artistic life. (See also post-industrial, Information Age) Lyotard understood modernity as a cultural condition characterized by constant change in the pursuit of progress. Postmodernity then represents the culmination of this process where constant change has become the status quo and the notion of progress obsolete. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge, Lyotard further argued that the various metanarratives of progress such as positivist science, Marxism, and structuralism were defunct as methods of achieving progress. The literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer David Harvey have identified postmodernity with "late capitalism" or "flexible accumulation", a stage of capitalism following finance capitalism, characterised by highly mobile labor and capital and what Harvey called "time and space compression". They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which, they believe, defined the economic order following the Second World War. (See also consumerism, critical theory.) Other academics, such as the archaeologist Artur Ribeiro, also identify postmodernity with late capitalism. Though in the case of Ribeiro, he places the start of modernity at the beginning of the Bretton Woods system. Those who generally view modernity as obsolete or an outright failure, a flaw in humanity's evolution leading to disasters like Auschwitz and Hiroshima, see postmodernity as a positive development. Other philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as within The Modern Project, see the state of postmodernity as a negative consequence of holding postmodernist ideas. For example, Jürgen Habermas and others contend that postmodernity represents a resurgence of long running Counter-Enlightenment ideas, that the modern project is not finished and that universality cannot be so lightly dispensed with. Postmodernity, the consequence of holding postmodern ideas, is generally a negative term in this context. Postmodernism Postmodernity is a condition or a state of being associated with changes to institutions and creations and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the West since the 1950s, whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, the "cultural and intellectual phenomenon", especially since the 1920s' new movements in the arts. Both of these terms are used by philosophers, social scientists and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary culture, economics and society that are the result of features of late 20th century and early 21st century life, including the fragmentation of authority and the commoditization of knowledge (see "Modernity"). The relationship between postmodernity and critical theory, sociology and philosophy is fiercely contested. The terms "postmodernity" and "postmodernism" are often hard to distinguish, the former being often the result of the latter. The period has had diverse political ramifications: its "anti-ideological ideas" appear to have been associated with the feminist movement, racial equality movements, LGBT movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism and even the peace movement as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement. Though none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern movement in its most concentrated definition they all reflect, or borrow from, some of its core ideas. History Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely postmodernity, while others, such as Zygmunt Bauman and Anthony Giddens, would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity. Others still contend that modernity ended with the Victorian Age at the turn of the 20th century. Postmodernity has gone through two relatively distinct phases: the first beginning in the late 1940s and 1950s and ending with the Cold War (when analog media with limited bandwidth encouraged a few, authoritative media channels), and the second beginning at the end of the Cold War (marked by the spread of cable television and "new media" based on digital means of information dissemination and broadcast). The first phase of postmodernity overlaps the end of modernity and is part of the modern period (see lumpers/splitters, periodization). Television became the primary news source, manufacturing decreased in importance in the economies of Western Europe and the United States but trade volumes increased within the developed core. In 1967–1969 a crucial cultural explosion took place within the developed world as the baby boom generation, which had grown up with postmodernity as its fundamental experience of society, demanded entrance into the political, cultural and educational power structure. A series of demonstrations and acts of rebellion – ranging from nonviolent and cultural, through violent acts of terrorism – represented the opposition of the young to the policies and perspectives of the previous age. Opposition to the Algerian War and the Vietnam War, to laws allowing or encouraging racial segregation and to laws which overtly discriminated against women and restricted access to divorce, increased use of marijuana and psychedelics, the emergence of pop cultural styles of music and drama, including rock music and the ubiquity of stereo, television and radio helped make these changes visible in the broader cultural context. This period is associated with the work of Marshall McLuhan, a philosopher who focused on the results of living in a media culture and argued that participation in a mass media culture both overshadows actual content disseminated and is liberating because it loosens the authority of local social normative standards. The second phase of postmodernity is "digitality" – the increasing power of personal and digital means of communication including fax machines, modems, cable and high speed internet, which has altered the condition of postmodernity dramatically: digital production of information allows individuals to manipulate virtually every aspect of the media environment. This has brought producers into conflict with consumers over intellectual capital and intellectual property and led to the creation of a new economy whose supporters argue that the dramatic fall in information costs will alter society fundamentally. Digitality, or what Esther Dyson referred to as "being digital", emerged as a separate condition from postmodernity. The ability to manipulate items of popular culture, the World Wide Web, the use of search engines to index knowledge, and telecommunications were producing a "convergence" marked by the rise of "participatory culture" in the words of Henry Jenkins. One demarcation point of this era is the liberalization of China in the early 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History?" in 1989 in anticipation of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. He predicted that the question of political philosophy had been answered, that large scale wars over fundamental values would no longer arise since "all prior contradictions are resolved and all human needs satisfied." This is a kind of 'endism' also taken up by Arthur Danto who in 1964 acclaimed that Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes asked the right question of art and hence art had ended. Descriptions Distinctions in philosophy and critical theory The debate on postmodernity has two distinct elements that are often confused; (1) the nature of contemporary society and (2) the nature of the critique of contemporary society. The first of these elements is concerned with the nature of changes that took place during the late 20th century. There are three principal analyses. Theorists such as Alex Callinicos and Craig Calhoun offer a conservative position on the nature of contemporary society, downplaying the significance and extent of socio-economic changes and emphasizing a continuity with the past. Second a range of theorists have tried to analyze the present as a development of the "modern" project into a second, distinct phase that is nevertheless still "modernity": this has been termed the "second" or "risk" society by Ulrich Beck, "late" or "high" modernity by Giddens, "liquid" modernity by Bauman, and the "network" society by Manuel Castells. Third are those who argue that contemporary society has moved into a literally post-modern phase distinct from modernity. The most prominent proponents of this position are Lyotard and Baudrillard. Another set of issues concerns the nature of critique, often replaying debates over (what can be crudely termed) universalism and relativism, where modernism is seen to represent the former and postmodernity the latter. Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler pursue this debate in relation to feminist politics, Benhabib arguing that postmodern critique comprises three main elements; an anti-foundationalist concept of the subject and identity, the death of history and of notions of teleology and progress, and the death of metaphysics defined as the search for objective truth. Benhabib argues forcefully against these critical positions, holding that they undermine the bases upon which feminist politics can be founded, removing the possibility of agency, the sense of self-hood and the appropriation of women's history in the name of an emancipated future. The denial of normative ideals removes the possibility for utopia, central for ethical thinking and democratic action. Butler responds to Benhabib by arguing that her use of postmodernism is an expression of a wider paranoia over anti-foundationalist philosophy, in particular, post-structuralism. Butler uses the debate over the nature of the post-modernist critique to demonstrate how philosophy is implicated in power relationships and defends poststructuralist critique by arguing that the critique of the subject itself is the beginning of analysis, not the end, because the first task of enquiry is the questioning of accepted "universal" and "objective" norms. The Benhabib-Butler debate demonstrates that there is no simple definition of a postmodern theorist as the very definition of postmodernity itself is contested. Michel Foucault rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews yet is seen by many, such as Benhabib, as advocating a form of critique that is "postmodern" in that it breaks with utopian and transcendental "modern" critiques by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens rejects this characterisation of "modern critique", pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals was central to philosophers of the modern period, most notably Nietzsche. Postmodern society Jameson views a number of phenomena as distinguishing postmodernity from modernity. He speaks of "a new kind of superficiality" or "depthlessness" in which models that once explained people and things in terms of an "inside" and an "outside" (such as hermeneutics, the dialectic, Freudian repression, the existentialist distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, and the semiotic distinction of signifier and signified) have been rejected. Second is a rejection of the modernist "Utopian gesture", evident in Van Gogh, of the transformation through art of misery into beauty whereas in the postmodernism movement the object world has undergone a "fundamental mutation" so that it has "now become a set of texts or simulacra". Whereas modernist art sought to redeem and sacralize the world, to give life to world (we might say, following Graff, to give the world back the enchantment that science and the decline of religion had taken away from it), postmodernist art bestows upon the world a "deathly quality… whose glacéd X-ray elegance mortifies the reified eye of the viewer in a way that would seem to have nothing to do with death or the death obsession or the death anxiety on the level of content" (ibid.). Graff sees the origins of this transformative mission of art in an attempted substitution of art for religion in giving meaning to the world that the rise of science and Enlightenment rationality had removed – but in the postmodern period this is seen as futile. The third feature of the postmodern age that Jameson identifies is the "waning of affect" – not that all emotion has disappeared from the postmodern age but that it lacks a particular kind of emotion such as that found in "Rimbaud's magical flowers 'that look back at you'". He notes that "pastiche eclipses parody" as "the increasing unavailability of the personal style" leads to pastiche becoming a universal practice. Jameson argues that distance "has been abolished" in postmodernity, that we "are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial co-ordinates". This "new global space" constitutes postmodernity's "moment of truth". The various other features of the postmodern that he identifies "can all now be seen as themselves partial (yet constitutive) aspects of the same general spatial object". The postmodern era has seen a change in the social function of culture. He identifies culture in the modern age as having had a property of "semi-autonomy", with an "existence… above the practical world of the existent" but, in the postmodern age, culture has been deprived of this autonomy, the cultural has expanded to consume the entire social realm so that all becomes "cultural". "Critical distance", the assumption that culture can be positioned outside "the massive Being of capital" upon which left-wing theories of cultural politics are dependent, has become outmoded. The "prodigious new expansion of multinational capital ends up penetrating and colonizing those very pre-capitalist enclaves (Nature and the Unconscious) which offered extraterritorial and Archimedean footholds for critical effectivity". Social sciences Postmodern sociology can be said to focus on conditions of life which became increasingly prevalent in the late 20th century in the most industrialized nations, including the ubiquity of mass media and mass production, the rise of a global economy and a shift from manufacturing to service economies. Jameson and Harvey described it as consumerism, where manufacturing, distribution and dissemination have become exceptionally inexpensive but social connectedness and community have become rarer. Other thinkers assert that postmodernity is the natural reaction to mass broadcasting in a society conditioned to mass production and mass politics. The work of Alasdair MacIntyre informs the versions of postmodernism elaborated by such authors as Murphy (2003) and Bielskis (2005), for whom MacIntyre's postmodern revision of Aristotelianism poses a challenge to the kind of consumerist ideology that now promotes capital accumulation. The sociological view of postmodernity ascribes it to more rapid transportation, wider communication and the ability to abandon standardization of mass production, leading to a system which values a wider range of capital than previously and allows value to be stored in a greater variety of forms. Harvey argues that postmodernity is an escape from "Fordism", a term coined by Antonio Gramsci to describe the mode of industrial regulation and accumulation which prevailed during the Keynesian era of economic policy in OECD countries from the early 1930s to the 1970s. Fordism for Harvey is associated with Keynesianism in that the first concerns methods of production and capital-labor relations while the latter concerns economic policy and regulation. Post-Fordism is therefore one of the basic aspects of postmodernity from Harvey's point of view. Artifacts of postmodernity include the dominance of television and popular culture, the wide accessibility of information and mass telecommunications. Postmodernity also exhibits a greater resistance to making sacrifices in the name of progress discernible in environmentalism and the growing importance of the anti-war movement. Postmodernity in the industrialised core is marked by increasing focus on civil rights and equal opportunity as well as movements such as feminism and multiculturalism and the backlash against these movements. The postmodern political sphere is marked by multiple arenas and possibilities of citizenship and political action concerning various forms of struggle against oppression or alienation (in collectives defined by sex or ethnicity) while the modernist political arena remains restricted to class struggle. Theorists such as Michel Maffesoli believe that postmodernity is corroding the circumstances that provide for its subsistence and will eventually result in a decline of individualism and the birth of a new neo-Tribal era. According to theories of postmodernity, economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society in which ideas are only simulacra, inter-referential representations and copies of each other with no real, original, stable or objective source of communication and meaning. Globalization, brought on by innovations in communication, manufacturing and transportation is often cited as one force which has driven the decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication or intellectual production. The postmodernist view is that intersubjective, not objective, knowledge will be the dominant form of discourse under such conditions and that ubiquity of dissemination fundamentally alters the relationship between reader and that which is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce. Postmodernity as a shift of epistemology Another conception of postmodernity is as an epistemological shift. This perspective suggests that the way people communicate and justify knowledge (i.e. epistemology) changes in conjunction with other societal changes, that the cultural and technological changes of the 1960s and 1970s included such a shift, and that this shift should be denoted as from modernity to postmodernity. [See French (2016), French & Ehrman (2016), or Sørensen (2007)]. Criticisms Criticisms of the postmodern condition can broadly be put into four categories: criticisms of postmodernity from the perspective of those who reject modernism and its offshoots, criticisms from supporters of modernism who believe that postmodernity lacks crucial characteristics of the modern project, critics from within postmodernity who seek reform or change based on their understanding of postmodernism, and those who believe that postmodernity is a passing, and not a growing, phase in social organization. See also Notes References Works cited General sources Anderson, Perry (1998). The Origins of Postmodernity. London: Verso. Deely, John (2001). Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Guénon, René (1927). The Crisis of the Modern World. Hillsdale: Sophia Perennis. Guénon, René (1945). The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times. Hillsdale: Sophia Perennis. Harvey, David (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity. An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Oxford: Blackwell. Ihab Hassan (2000), From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global Context, text online. Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist well known for his embracing of postmodernism after the late 1970s. He published "La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir" (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979) Charles Arthur Willard. Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy. University of Chicago Press. (1996). Further reading Ballesteros, Jesús, 1992. Postmodernity: Decadence or Resistance, Pamplona, Emise. Baudrillard, J. 1984. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). Berman, Marshall. 1982. All That is Solid Melts into Air. The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso. Bielskis, Andrius. 2005. Towards a Postmodern Understanding of the Political. Houndmills, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chan, Evans. 2001. "Against Postmodernism, etcetera – A Conversation with Susan Sontag" in Postmodern Culture, vol. 12 no. 1, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Docherty, Thomas. 1993. (ed.), Postmodernism: A Reader, New York: Harvester Wheatsheat. Docker, John. 1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eagleton, Terry. "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism". Against the Grain: Essays 1975–1985. London: Verso, 1986. pp. 131–47. Foster, H. 1983. The Anti-Aesthetic. USA: Bay Press. Fuery, Patrick and Mansfield, Nick. 2001. Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Graff, Gerald. 1973. "The Myth of the Postmodernist Breakthrough" in Triquarterly, no. 26, Winter 1973, pp. 383–417. Grebowicz, Margret. 2007. Gender After Lyotard. NY: Suny Press. Grenz, Stanley J. 1996. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Habermas, Jürgen "Modernity – An Incomplete Project" (in Docherty ibid) Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. trans. by Seyla Ben-Habib. "Modernity versus Postmodernity". in V Taylor & C Winquist; originally published in New German Critique, no. 22, Winter 1981, pp. 3–14. Jencks, Charles. 1986. What is Postmodernism? New York: St. Martin's Press, and London: Academy Editions. Joyce, James. 1964. Ulysses. London: Bodley Head. Lipovetsky, Gilles. 2005. Hypermodern Times. Cornwall: Polity Press. Lyotard, J. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press Mansfield, N. 2000. Subjectivity: Theories of the self from Freud to Harroway. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. McHale, Brian. 1990. "Constructing (post) modernism: The case of Ulysses" in Style, vol. 24 no. 1, pp. 1–21, DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University English Department. Murphy, Mark C. (ed.) 2003. Alasdair MacIntyre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Palmeri, Frank. 2001. "Other than Postmodern? – Foucault, Pynchon, Hybridity, Ethics" in Postmodern Culture, vol. 12 no. 1, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pinkney, Tony. 1989. "Modernism and Cultural Theory", editor's introduction to Williams, Raymond. The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. London: Verso. Taylor, V & Winquist, (ed). 1998. Postmodernism: Critical concepts (vol. 1–2). London: Routledge. Wheale, N. 1995. The Postmodern Arts: An introductory reader. New York: Routledge. External links Martin Irvine on Postmodernism and Postmodernity in contrast to Modernism and Modernity Postmodern warfare, by Philip Hammond Mikhail Epstein on "postmodernism's position in postmodernity" Extensive list of names related to postmodernism and postmodernity On the distinction of postmodernity from postmodernism, by Egypt-American critic Ihab Hassan David Harvey, The Condition of postmodernity Decadeology Wiki, Postmodern article Postmodern theory Historiography Western culture Historical eras 20th century 21st century Cynicism Relativism Modernity et:Uusim aeg

Cultural liberalism

Cultural liberalism is a social philosophy which expresses the social dimension of liberalism and advocates the freedom of individuals to choose whether to conform to cultural norms. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, it is often expressed as the right to "march to the beat of a different drummer". Also known as social liberalism in the United States and Canada, cultural progressivism is used in a substantially similar context, although it does not mean exactly the same as cultural liberalism. The United States refers to cultural liberalism as social liberalism; however, it is not the same as the broader political ideology known as social liberalism. In the United States, social liberalism describes progressive moral and social values or stances on socio-cultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage as opposed to social conservatism. A social conservative or a social liberal in this sense may hold either more conservative or progressive views on fiscal policy. See also Civil libertarianism Cultural radicalism Permissive society Pink capitalism Secular liberalism Tightness–looseness theory Notes References Willard, Charles Arthur (1996). Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy. University of Chicago Press. . Liberalism Political science terminology

21st century skills

21st century skills comprise skills, abilities, and learning dispositions identified as requirements for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. This is part of an international movement focusing on the skills required for students to prepare for workplace success in a rapidly changing, digital society. Many of these skills are associated with deeper learning, which is based on mastering skills such as analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork, which differ from traditional academic skills as these are not content knowledge-based. During the latter decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century, society evolved through technology advancements at an accelerated pace, impacting economy and the workplace, which impacted the educational system preparing students for the workforce. Beginning in the 1980s, government, educators, and major employers issued a series of reports identifying key skills and implementation strategies to steer students and workers towards meeting these changing societal and workplace demands. Western economies transformed from industrial-based to service-based, with trades and vocations having smaller roles. However, specific hard skills and mastery of particular skill sets, with a focus on digital literacy, are in increasingly high demand. People skills that involve interaction, collaboration, and managing others are increasingly important. Skills that enable flexibility and adaptability in different roles and fields, those that involve processing information and managing people more than manipulating equipment—in an office or a factory—are in greater demand. These are also referred to as "applied skills" or "soft skills", including personal, interpersonal, or learning-based skills, such as life skills (problem-solving behaviors), people skills, and social skills. The skills have been grouped into three main areas: Learning and innovation skills: critical thinking and problem solving, communications and collaboration, creativity and innovation Digital literacy skills: information literacy, media literacy, Information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy Career and life skills: flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural interaction, productivity and accountability Many of these skills are also identified as key qualities of progressive education, a pedagogical movement that began in the late nineteenth century and continues in various forms to the present. Background Since the early 1980s, a variety of governmental, academic, non-profit, and corporate entities have conducted considerable research to identify key personal and academic skills and competencies needed for the current and next generation. Though identification and implementation of 21st century skills into education and workplaces began in the United States, it has spread to Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and through national and international organizations such as APEC and the OECD. In 1981, the US Secretary of Education created the National Commission on Excellence in Education to examine the quality of education in the United States." The commission issued its report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform in 1983. A key finding was that "educational reform should focus on the goal of creating a Learning Society." The report's recommendations included instructional content and skills: Five New Basics: English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Computer Science Other Curriculum Matters: Develop proficiency, rigor, and skills in Foreign Languages, Performing Arts, Fine Arts, Vocational Studies, and the pursuit of higher-level education. Skills and abilities (consolidated): enthusiasm for learning deep understanding application of learning examination, inquiry, critical thinking and reasoning communication – write well, listen effectively, discuss intelligently, be proficient in a foreign language, cultural, social, and environmental – understanding and implications technology – understand the computer as an information, computation, and communication device, and the world of computers, electronics, and related technologies. diverse learning across a broad range – fine arts, performing arts, and vocational Until the dawn of the 21st century, education systems across the world focused on preparing students to accumulate content and knowledge. As a result, schools focused on providing literacy and numeracy skills students, as these were perceived as necessary. However, developments in technology and telecommunication have made information and knowledge easily accessible. Therefore, while skills such as literacy and numeracy remain relevant and necessary, they no longer sufficiently prepare students for 21st century workplace success. In response to technological, demographic and socio-economic changes, education systems began shifting toward curricula and instruction that integrated a range of skills involving, not only on cognition, but interdependencies of cognitive, social, and emotional characteristics. Notable efforts were conducted by the US Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), a national coalition called the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the American Association of college and Universities, researchers at MIT and other institutions of higher learning, and private organizations. Additional research has found that the top skills demanded by U.S. Fortune 500 companies by the year 2000 had shifted from traditional reading, writing and arithmetic to teamwork, problem solving, and interpersonal skills. A 2006 Conference Board survey of some 400 employers revealed that the most important skills for new workforce entrants included oral and written communications and critical thinking/problem solving, ahead of basic knowledge and skills, such as the reading comprehension and mathematics. While the 'three Rs' were still considered foundational to new workforce entrants' abilities, employers emphasized that applied skills like collaboration/teamwork and critical thinking were 'very important' to success at work." A 2006 report from MIT researchers countered the suggestion that students acquire critical skills and competencies independently by interacting with popular culture, noting three continuing trends that "suggest the need for policy and pedagogical interventions:" The Participation Gap – the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow. The Transparency Problem – The challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world. The Ethics Challenge – The breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants." According to labor economists at MIT and Harvard's Graduate School of Education, the economic changes brought about over the past four decades by emerging technology and globalization, employers' demands for people with competencies like complex thinking and communications skills has increased greatly. They argue that the success of the U.S. economy will rely on the nation's ability to give students the "foundational skills in problem-solving and communications that computers don't have." In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, an effort sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), issued the Common Core Standards, calling for the integration of 21st century skills into K-12 curricula across the United States. Teachers and general citizens also played a critical role in its development along with the NGA and CCSSO by commenting during two public forums which helped shape the curriculum and standards. States also convened teams of teachers to assist and provide feedback looking towards the National Education Association (NEA) and many other education organizations to provide constructive feedback. As of December 2018, 45 states have entirely adopted the common core standards, one state has adopted half by only adopting the literacy section (Minnesota), and only four states remain who have not adopted into the common core standards of education (Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia). Skills The skills and competencies considered "21st century skills" share common themes, based on the premise that effective learning, or deeper learning, requires a set of student educational outcomes that include acquisition of robust core academic content, higher-order thinking skills, and learning dispositions. This pedagogy involves creating, working with others, analyzing, and presenting and sharing both the learning experience and the learned knowledge or wisdom with peers, mentors, and teachers. Additionally, these skills foster engagement; seeking, forging, and facilitating connections to knowledge, ideas, peers, instructors, and wider audiences; creating/producing; and presenting/publishing. The classification or grouping has been undertaken to encourage and promote pedagogies that facilitate deeper learning through both traditional instruction as well as active learning, project-based learning, problem based learning, and others. A 2012 survey conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) identified three top skills necessary for their employees: critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Below are some of the more readily identifiable lists of 21st century skills. Common Core The Common Core Standards issued in 2010 intended to support the "application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills." The initiative's stated goals promote the skills and concepts required for college and career readiness in multiple disciplines and life in the global economy. Skills identified for success in the areas of literacy and mathematics: cogent reasoning evidence collection critical-thinking, problem-solving, analytical thinking communication SCANS Following the release of A Nation at Risk, the U.S. Secretary of Labor appointed the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) to determine the skills needed for young people to succeed in the workplace fostering a high-performance economy. SCANS focused on a "learning a living" system. In 1991, an initial report was issued titled, What Work Requires of Schools. The report concluded that a high-performance workplace requires workers who have key fundamental skills: basic skills and knowledge, thinking skills to apply that knowledge, personal skills to manage and perform; and five key workplace competencies. Fundamental skills: Basic skills: reads, writes, performs arithmetic and mathematical operations, listens and speaks. Thinking skills: thinks creatively, makes decisions, solves problems, visualizes, knows how to learn, and reasons Personal qualities: displays responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, and integrity and honesty Workplace competencies: Resources: identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources Interpersonal: works with others (participates as member of a team, teaches others new skills, serves clients/customers, exercises leadership, negotiates, works with diversity) Information: acquires and uses information (acquires and evaluates, organizes and maintains, and interprets and communicates information; uses computers to process information) Systems: understands complex inter-relationships (understands systems, monitors and corrects performance, improves or designs systems) Technology: works with a variety of technologies (selects technology, applies technology to task, maintains and troubleshoots equipment) Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) In 2002, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (then Partnership for 21st Century Learning, or P21.org, now disbanded) was founded as a non-profit organization by a coalition that included members of the national business community, education leaders, and policymakers: the National Education Association (NEA), United States Department of Education, AOL Time Warner Foundation, Apple Computer, Inc., Cable in the Classroom, Cisco Systems, Inc., Dell Computer Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, SAP, Ken Kay (President and co-founder), and Diny Golder-Dardis. To foster a national conversation on "the importance of 21st century skills for all students" and "position 21st century readiness at the center of US K-12 education", P21 identified six key areas: Core subjects 21st century content Learning and thinking skills Information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy Life skills 21st century assessments 7C Skills were identified by P21 senior fellows, Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel: Critical thinking and problem solving Creativity and innovation Cross-cultural understanding Communications, information, and media literacy Computing and ICT literacy Career and life-skills 4 Cs Prompted by many school districts and states requesting a more manageable set of skills as a starting point, P21 conducted research that identified a commonly accepted subset they called the Four Cs of 21st century learning: Collaboration Communication Critical thinking Creativity The University of Southern California's Project New Literacies website list four different "C" skills: Create Circulate Connect Collaborate Participatory culture and new media literacies Researchers at MIT, led by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program, in 2006 issued a white paper ("Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century"), that examined digital media and learning. To address this Digital Divide, they recommended an effort be made to develop the cultural competencies and social skills required to participate fully in modern society instead of merely advocating for installing computers in each classroom. What they term participatory culture shifts this literacy from the individual level to a broader connection and involvement, with the premise that networking and collaboration develop social skills that are vital to new literacies. These in turn build on traditional foundation skills and knowledge taught in school: traditional literacy, research, technical, and critical analysis skills. Participatory culture is defined by this study as having: low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations, informal mentorship, belief that members' own contributions matter, and social connection (caring what other people think about their creations). Forms of participatory culture include: Affiliations – memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as message boards, metagaming, game clans, and other social media). Expressions – producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups. Collaborative Problem-solving – working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling). Circulations – shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging) The skills identified were: Play Simulation Appropriation Multitasking Distributed Cognition Collective Intelligence Judgment Transmedia Navigation Networking Negotiation A 2005 study (Lenhardt & Madden) found that more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one third of teens who use the Internet shared content they produced, indicating a high degree of involvement in participatory cultures. Such digital literacies emphasize the intellectual activities of a person working with sophisticated information communications technology, not on proficiency with the tool. EnGauge 21st century skills In 2003 the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory and the Metiri Group issued a report entitled "enGauge 21st Century Skills: Literacy in the Digital Age" based on two years of research. The report called for policymakers and educators to define 21st century skills, highlight the relationship of those skills to conventional academic standards, and recognize the need for multiple assessments to measure and evaluate these skills within the context of academic standards and the current technological and global society. To provide a common understanding of, and language for discussing, the needs of students, citizens, and workers in a modern digital society, the report identified four "skill clusters": Digital-Age Inventive Thinking Effective Communication High Productivity OECD competencies In 1997, member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development launched the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to monitor "the extent to which students near the end of compulsory schooling have acquired the knowledge and skills essential for full participation in society". In 2005 they identified three "Competency Categories to highlight delivery related, interpersonal, and strategic competencies:" Using Tools Interactively Interacting in Heterogeneous Groups Acting Autonomously American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) The AAC&U conducted several studies and surveys of their members. In 2007 they recommended that graduates of higher education attain four skills—The Essential Learning Outcomes: Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World Intellectual and Practical Skills Personal and Social Responsibility Integrative Learning They found that skills most widely addressed in college and university goals are: writing critical thinking quantitative reasoning oral communication intercultural skills information literacy ethical reasoning A 2015 survey of AAC&U member institutions added the following goals: analytic reasoning research skills and projects integration of learning across disciplines application of learning beyond the classroom civic engagement and competence ISTE / NETS performance standards The ISTE Educational Technology Standards (formerly National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)) are a set of standards published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to leverage the use of technology in K-12 education. These are sometimes intermixed with information and communication technologies (ICT) skills. In 2007 NETS issued a series of six performance indicators (only the first four are on their website as of 2016): Creativity and Innovation Communication and Collaboration Research and Information Fluency Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making Digital Citizenship Technology Operations and Concepts ICT Literacy Panel digital literacy standards (2007) In 2007 the Educational Testing Service (ETS) ICT Literacy Panel released its digital literacy standards: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) proficiencies: Cognitive proficiency Technical proficiency ICT proficiency A person possessing these skills would be expected to perform these tasks for a particular set of information: access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create/publish/present. The emphasis is on proficiency with digital tools. Dede learning styles and categories In 2005, Chris Dede of the Harvard Graduate School of Education developed a framework based on new digital literacies entitled Neomillennial Learning Styles: Fluency in multiple media Active learning based on collectively seeking, sieving, and synthesizing experiences. Expression through non-linear, associational webs of representations. Co-design by teachers and students of personalized learning experiences. Dede category system With the exponential expansion of personal access to Internet resources, including social media, information and content on the Internet has evolved from being created by website providers to communities of contributors and individuals. The 21st century Internet centered on material created by a small number of people, Web 2.0 tools (e.g. Wikipedia) foster online communication, collaboration, and creation of content by large numbers of people (individually or in groups) in online communities. In 2009, Dede created a category system for Web 2.0 tools: Sharing (communal bookmarking, photo/video sharing, social networking, writers' workshops/fanfiction) Thinking (blogs, podcasts, online discussion fora) Co-Creating (wikis/collaborative file creation, mashups/collective media creation, collaborative social change communities) World Economic Forum In 2015, after consultations with Charles Fadel (of P21 and the Center for Curriculum Redesign), the World Economic Forum published a report titled "New Vision for Education: Unlocking the Potential of Technology" that focused on the pressing issue of the 21st-century skills gap and ways to address it through technology. In the report, they defined a set of 16 crucial proficiencies for education in the 21st century. Those skills include six "foundational literacies", four "competencies" and six "character qualities" listed below. Foundation literacies: Literacy and numeracy Scientific literacy ICT literacy Financial literacy Cultural literacy Civic literacy Competencies: Critical thinking/problem solving Communication Collaboration Creativity Character qualities: Initiative Persistence/grit Adaptability Curiosity Leadership Social and cultural awareness National Research Council In a paper titled "Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century" produced by the National Research Council of National Academies, the National Research defines 21st century skills, describes how the skills relate to each other and summaries the evidence regarding these skills. As a first step toward describing "21st century skills", the National Research Council identified three domains of competence: cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal while recognizing that these domains intertwine in human development and learning. More specifically, these three domains represent distinct facets of human thinking, building on previous efforts to identify and organize dimensions of human behavior. The committee produced the following cluster of 21st century skills in the above-mentioned three domains. Cognitive competencies: Cognitive processes and strategies: Critical thinking, problem solving, analysis, reasoning and argumentation, interpretation, decision-making, adaptive learning Knowledge: Information literacy, ICT literacy, oral and written communication, and active listening Creativity: Creativity and innovation Intrapersonal competencies: Intellectual openness: Flexibility, adaptability, artistic and cultural appreciation, personal and social responsibility, appreciation for diversity, adaptability, continuous learning, intellectual interest and curiosity Work ethic/conscientiousness: Initiative, self-direction, responsibility, perseverance, grit, career orientation, ethics, integrity, citizenship Positive core self-evaluation: Self monitoring, self evaluation, self reinforcement, physical and psychological health Interpersonal competencies: Teamwork and collaboration: Communication, collaboration, cooperation, teamwork, coordination, interpersonal skills Leadership: Responsibility, assertive communication, self presentation, social influence with others Center for Curriculum Redesign (“CCR”) After an extensive, 3-year review and synthesis of 111 global frameworks and 861 research papers, and using natural language processing and orthogonality analysis, CCR published in 2019 and updated in 2024 a list of ten competenciesthat concatenate the 250+ different terms used worldwide into: Skills: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration. Character: Curiosity, Courage, Resilience, Ethics. Meta-Learning: Metacognition & Metaemotion Additionally, CCR mapped the various competencies to the academic disciplines most conducive to their development. During its comprehensive research on AI’s present and future capabilities in education, CCR added an analysis of the more critical competencies in the age of AI, adding an “Emphasis” designation on specific facets of these competencies. For instance, since incremental creativity is reachable by AI, the human emphasis should be on imagination. Lastly, CCR introduced the motivational drivers of personalized learning in an age of AI: Identity (& Belonging), Agency (& Growth mindset), and Purpose (& Passion). Implementation Multiple agencies and organizations issued guides and recommendation for implementation of 21st century skills supporting and encouraging change in learning environments and learning spaces. Five separate educational areas impacted include standards, assessment, professional development, curriculum & instruction, and learning environments. The efforts to implement 21st century skills into learning environments and curricula supports the evolution of education systems from traditional practices or factory model school model into a variety of different organizational models. Examples of hands-on learning and project-based learning are observable in programs and spaces such as STEM and makerspaces. Collaborative learning environments fostered flexibility in furniture and classroom layout as well as differentiated spaces, such as small seminar rooms near classrooms. Literacy with, and access to, digital technology also impacted the design of furniture and fixed components as students and teachers use tablets, interactive whiteboards and interactive projectors. Classroom sizes changed to accommodate a variety of furniture arrangements and groupings, as opposed to traditional configurations of desks in rows. In 2016, the Brookings Institution found that more than 100 countries embraced the concept of “21st century skills” in one terminology or another. However, further research by Brookings and CCR in 2018 showed that none of the major jurisdictions provided professional development to teachers, nor assessments of these competencies. See also Applied academics Design-based learning Information literacies Learning environment Learning space Phenomenon-based learning STEM fields References External links Seven Survival Skills Chris Dede, Comparing Frameworks for "21st Century Skills", Harvard Graduate School, July 2009. How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning? Making 21st Century Schools – Creating Learner-Centered Schoolplaces/Workplaces for a New Culture of Students at Work, Bob Pearlman About eSTEM Collaboration Curricula Learning Learning methods Learning programs Pedagogy Skills United States educational programs

Postmodern art

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern. There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of text prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture. Use of the term The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "contemporary art". Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons. Arthur Danto argues "contemporary" is the broader term, and postmodern objects represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement. Some postmodern artists have made more distinctive breaks from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is "late-modern" and what is "post-modern." Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been re-established. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation. Some critics argue much of the current "postmodern" art, the latest avant-gardism, should still classify as modern art. As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase of modern art. Defenders of modernism, such as Clement Greenberg, as well as radical opponents of modernism, such as Félix Guattari, who calls it modernism's "last gasp," have adopted this position. The neo-conservative Hilton Kramer describes postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether." Jean-François Lyotard, in Fredric Jameson's analysis, does not hold there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period of high modernism; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms. In the context of aesthetics and art, Jean-François Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism. Many critics hold postmodern art emerges from modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe, and 1962 or 1968 in America. James Elkins, commenting on discussions about the exact date of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, compares it to the discussion in the 1960s about the exact span of mannerism and whether it should begin directly after the High Renaissance or later in the century. He makes the point these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say they are not important. The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of globalization and new media. Jean Baudrillard has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity. The artist Peter Halley describes his day-glo colours as "hyperrealization of real color", and acknowledges Baudrillard as an influence. Baudrillard himself, since 1984, was fairly consistent in his view that contemporary art, and postmodern art in particular, was inferior to the modernist art of the post World War II period, while Jean-François Lyotard praised Contemporary painting and remarked on its evolution from Modern art. Major women artists in the Twentieth Century are associated with postmodern art since much theoretical articulation of their work emerged from French psychoanalysis and feminist theory that is strongly related to post modern philosophy. American Marxist philosopher Fredric Jameson argues the condition of life and production will be reflected in all activity, including the making of art. As with all uses of the term postmodern, there are critics of its application. Kirk Varnedoe, for instance, stated that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that the possibilities of modernism have not yet been exhausted. Though the usage of the term as a kind of shorthand to designate the work of certain Post-war "schools" employing relatively specific material and generic techniques has become conventional since the early to mid-1980s, the theoretical underpinnings of Postmodernism as an epochal or epistemic division are still very much in controversy. Characteristics Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. General citations for specific trends of modernism are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, which Manet introduced. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality, and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists. The status of the avant-garde is controversial: many institutions argue being visionary, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism rejects the notion of advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of the avant-garde". Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress. Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the avant-garde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same time as redefining postmodern art. One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of industrial materials and pop culture imagery. The use of low forms of art were a part of modernist experimentation as well, as documented in Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik's 1990–91 show High and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art at New York's Museum of Modern Art, an exhibition that was universally panned at the time as the only event that could bring Douglas Crimp and Hilton Kramer together in a chorus of scorn. Postmodern art is noted for the way in which it blurs the distinctions between what is perceived as fine or high art and what is generally seen as low or kitsch art. While this concept of "blurring" or "fusing" high art with low art had been experimented during modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era. Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a general camp aesthetic within its artistic context; postmodernism takes styles from past periods, such as Gothicism, the Renaissance and the Baroque, and mixes them so as to ignore their original use in their corresponding artistic movement. Such elements are common characteristics of what defines postmodern art. Art Spiegelman, when discussing his selection of a specific style for Maus, described a postmodernist's ability to develop a wide "palette" of varying styles that they can draw from at will, where their predecessors would instead focus on improving and maintaining a single "trademark" style. Fredric Jameson suggests postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity. Against this definition, Art and Language's Charles Harrison and Paul Wood maintained pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to modernist art, and are deployed effectively by modern artists such as Manet and Picasso. One compact definition is postmodernism rejects modernism's grand narratives of artistic direction, eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions critique or revision cannot overturn. "Pluralism and diversity" are other defining features. Avant-garde precursors Radical movements and trends regarded as influential and potentially as precursors to postmodernism emerged around World War I and particularly in its aftermath. With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in art and techniques such as collage, avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Dada and Surrealism questioned the nature and value of art. New artforms, such as cinema and the rise of reproduction, influenced these movements as a means of creating artworks. The ignition point for the definition of modernism, Clement Greenberg's essay, Avant-Garde and Kitsch, first published in Partisan Review in 1939, defends the avant-garde in the face of popular culture. Later, Peter Bürger would make a distinction between the historical avant-garde and modernism, and critics such as Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas Crimp, following Bürger, identified the historical avant-garde as a precursor to postmodernism. Krauss, for example, describes Pablo Picasso's use of collage as an avant-garde practice anticipating postmodern art with its emphasis on language at the expense of autobiography. Another point of view is avant-garde and modernist artists used similar strategies and postmodernism repudiates both. Dada In the early 20th century, Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal as a sculpture. His point was to have people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art just because he said it was a work of art. He referred to his work as "Readymades". The Fountain was a urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, which shocked the art world in 1917. This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art. Some critics question calling Duchamp—whose obsession with paradox is well known—postmodernist on the grounds he eschews any specific medium, since paradox is not medium-specific, although it arose first in Manet's paintings. Dadaism can be viewed as part of the modernist propensity to challenge established styles and forms, along with Surrealism, Futurism and Abstract Expressionism. From a chronological point of view, Dada is located solidly within modernism, however a number of critics hold it anticipates postmodernism, while others, such as Ihab Hassan and Steven Connor, consider it a possible changeover point between modernism and postmodernism. For example, according to McEvilly, postmodernism begins with realizing one no longer believes in the myth of progress, and Duchamp sensed this in 1914 when he changed from a modernist practice to a postmodernist one, "abjuring aesthetic delectation, transcendent ambition, and tour de force demonstrations of formal agility in favor of aesthetic indifference, acknowledgement of the ordinary world, and the found object or readymade." Radical movements in modern art In general, Pop Art and Minimalism began as modernist movements: a paradigm shift and philosophical split between formalism and anti-formalism in the early 1970s caused those movements to be viewed by some as precursors or transitional postmodern art. Other modern movements cited as influential to postmodern art are conceptual art and the use of techniques such as assemblage, montage, bricolage, and appropriation. Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all Contemporary art following him. Pollock realized the journey toward making a work of art was as important as the work of art itself. Like Pablo Picasso's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture near the turn of the century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, Pollock redefined artmaking during the mid-century. Pollock's move from easel painting and conventionality liberated his contemporaneous artists and following artists. They realized Pollock's process — working on the floor, unstretched raw canvas, from all four sides, using artist materials, industrial materials, imagery, non-imagery, throwing linear skeins of paint, dripping, drawing, staining, brushing - blasted artmaking beyond prior boundaries. Abstract expressionism expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities artists had available for the creation of new works of art. In a sense, the innovations of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt and others, opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of following artworks. After abstract expressionism In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s several new directions like Hard-edge painting and other forms of Geometric abstraction like the work of Frank Stella popped up, as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract expressionism began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles. Clement Greenberg became the voice of Post-painterly abstraction; by curating an influential exhibition of new painting touring important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as radical new directions. By the late 1960s, Postminimalism, Process Art and Arte Povera also emerged as revolutionary concepts and movements encompassing painting and sculpture, via Lyrical Abstraction and the Postminimalist movement, and in early Conceptual Art. Process art as inspired by Pollock enabled artists to experiment with and make use of a diverse encyclopedia of style, content, material, placement, sense of time, and plastic and real space. Nancy Graves, Ronald Davis, Howard Hodgkin, Larry Poons, Jannis Kounellis, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Alan Saret, Walter Darby Bannard, Lynda Benglis, Dan Christensen, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Sam Gilliam, Mario Merz, Peter Reginato, Lee Lozano, were some of the younger artists emerging during the era of late modernism spawning the heyday of the art of the late 1960s. Performance art and happenings During the late 1950s and 1960s, artists with a wide range of interests began pushing the boundaries of Contemporary art. Yves Klein in France, and Carolee Schneemann, Yayoi Kusama, Charlotte Moorman, and Yoko Ono in New York City were pioneers of performance based works of art. Groups like The Living Theater with Julian Beck and Judith Malina collaborated with sculptors and painters creating environments; radically changing the relationship between audience and performer especially in their piece Paradise Now. The Judson Dance Theater located at the Judson Memorial Church, New York, and the Judson dancers, notably Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Elaine Summers, Sally Gross, Simonne Forti, Deborah Hay, Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton and others collaborated with artists Robert Morris, Robert Whitman, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and engineers like Billy Klüver. These performances were often designed to be the creation of a new art form, combining sculpture, dance, and music or sound, often with audience participation. The reductive philosophies of minimalism, spontaneous improvisation, and expressivity of Abstract expressionism characterized the works. During the same period — the late 1950s through the mid-1960s - various avant-garde artists created Happenings. Happenings were mysterious and often spontaneous and unscripted gatherings of artists and their friends and relatives in varied specified locations. Often incorporating exercises in absurdity, physical exercise, costumes, spontaneous nudity, and various random and seemingly disconnected acts. Allan Kaprow, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Robert Whitman among others were notable creators of Happenings. Assemblage art Related to Abstract expressionism was the emergence of combined manufactured items — with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. The work of Robert Rauschenberg, whose "combines" in the 1950s were forerunners of Pop Art and Installation art, and made use of the assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and commercial photography, exemplified this art trend. Leo Steinberg uses the term postmodernism in 1969 to describe Rauschenberg's "flatbed" picture plane, containing a range of cultural images and artifacts that had not been compatible with the pictorial field of premodernist and modernist painting. Craig Owens goes further, identifying the significance of Rauschenberg's work not as a representation of, in Steinberg's view, "the shift from nature to culture", but as a demonstration of the impossibility of accepting their opposition. Steven Best and Douglas Kellner identify Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as part of the transitional phase, influenced by Marcel Duchamp, between modernism and postmodernism. These artists used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism. Anselm Kiefer also uses elements of assemblage in his works, and on one occasion, featured the bow of a fishing boat in a painting. Pop art Lawrence Alloway used the term "Pop art" to describe paintings celebrating consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected Abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior, in favor of art which depicted, and often celebrated, material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of the mass production age. The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton, John McHale, and Eduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal examples in the movement. While later American examples include the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and his use of Benday dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction. There is a clear connection between the radical works of Duchamp, the rebellious Dadaist — with a sense of humor; and Pop Artists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the others. Thomas McEvilly, agreeing with Dave Hickey, says U.S postmodernism in the visual arts began with the first exhibitions of Pop art in 1962, "though it took about twenty years before postmodernism became a dominant attitude in the visual arts." Fredric Jameson, too, considers pop art to be postmodern. One way Pop art is postmodern is it breaks down what Andreas Huyssen calls the "Great Divide" between high art and popular culture. Postmodernism emerges from a "generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism." Fluxus Fluxus was named and loosely organized in 1962 by George Maciunas (1931–78), a Lithuanian-born American artist. Fluxus traces its beginnings to John Cage's 1957 to 1959 Experimental Composition classes at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Many of his students were artists working in other media with little or no background in music. Cage's students included Fluxus founding members Jackson Mac Low, Al Hansen, George Brecht and Dick Higgins. In 1962 in Germany Fluxus started with the: FLUXUS Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik in Wiesbaden with, George Maciunas, Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik and others. And in 1963 with the: Festum Fluxorum Fluxus in Düsseldorf with George Maciunas, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Ben Patterson, Emmett Williams and others. Fluxus encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Fluxus can be viewed as part of the first phase of postmodernism, along with Rauschenberg, Johns, Warhol and the Situationist International. Andreas Huyssen criticises attempts to claim Fluxus for postmodernism as, "either the master-code of postmodernism or the ultimately unrepresentable art movement – as it were, postmodernism's sublime." Instead he sees Fluxus as a major Neo-Dadaist phenomena within the avant-garde tradition. It did not represent a major advance in the development of artistic strategies, though it did express a rebellion against, "the administered culture of the 1950s, in which a moderate, domesticated modernism served as ideological prop to the Cold War." Minimalism By the early 1960s, Minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in geometric abstraction via Malevich, the Bauhaus and Mondrian) which rejected the idea of relational, and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena of Action painting. Minimalism argued extreme simplicity could capture the sublime representation art requires. Associated with painters such as Frank Stella, minimalism in painting, as opposed to other areas, is a modernist movement and depending on the context can be construed as a precursor to the postmodern movement. Hal Foster, in his essay The Crux of Minimalism, examines the extent to which Donald Judd and Robert Morris both acknowledge and exceed Greenbergian modernism in their published definitions of minimalism. He argues minimalism is not a "dead end" of modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today." Postminimalism Robert Pincus-Witten coined the term Post-minimalism in 1977 to describe minimalist derived art which had content and contextual overtones minimalism rejected. His use of the term covered the period 1966 – 1976 and applied to the work of Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra and new work by former minimalists Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, and Barry Le Va, and others. Process art and anti-form art are other terms describing this work, which the space it occupies and the process by which it is made determines. Rosalind Krauss argues by 1968 artists such as Morris, LeWitt, Smithson and Serra had "entered a situation the logical conditions of which can no longer be described as modernist." The expansion of the category of sculpture to include land art and architecture, "brought about the shift into postmodernism." Minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Agnes Martin, John McCracken and others continued to produce their late modernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers. Movements Conceptual art Conceptual art is sometimes labelled as postmodern because it is expressly involved in deconstruction of what makes a work of art, "art". Conceptual art, because it is often designed to confront, offend or attack notions held by many of the people who view it, is regarded with particular controversy. Precursors to conceptual art include the work of Duchamp, John Cage's 4' 33", in which the music is said to be "the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed," and Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning Drawing. Many conceptual works take the position that art is created by the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not from the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. Thus, because Fountain was exhibited, it was a sculpture. Figurative painting Some currents of post-war figurative painting have been analyzed as postmodern. The Italian painter Carlo Maria Mariani was described as a postmodernist by American critics. According to Charles Jencks, Mariani's group portrait The Constellation of Leo (1980–1981), which depicts people from Italy's art world with references to mythology and art history, came to define a trope of postmodern art: "an ironic comment on a comment on a comment which signals the distance; a new myth thrice removed from its originating ritual". Installation art An important series of movements in art which have consistently been described as postmodern involved installation art and creation of artifacts that are conceptual in nature. One example being the signs of Jenny Holzer which use the devices of art to convey specific messages, such as "Protect Me From What I Want". Installation Art has been important in determining the spaces selected for museums of contemporary art in order to be able to hold the large works which are composed of vast collages of manufactured and found objects. These installations and collages are often electrified, with moving parts and lights. They are often designed to create environmental effects, as Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Iron Curtain, Wall of 240 Oil Barrels, Blocking Rue Visconti, Paris, June 1962 which was a poetic response to the Berlin Wall built in 1961. Lowbrow art Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art highlights a central theme in postmodernism in that the distinction between "high" and "low" art are no longer recognized. Performance art Digital art Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process. The impact of digital technology has transformed activities such as painting, drawing, sculpture and music/sound art, while new forms, such as net art, digital installation art, and virtual reality, have become recognized artistic practices. Leading art theorists and historians in this field include Christiane Paul, Frank Popper, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Dominique Moulon, Robert C. Morgan, Roy Ascott, Catherine Perret, Margot Lovejoy, Edmond Couchot, Fred Forest and Edward A. Shanken. Intermedia and multi-media Another trend in art which has been associated with the term postmodern is the use of a number of different media together. Intermedia, a term coined by Dick Higgins and meant to convey new artforms along the lines of Fluxus, Concrete Poetry, Found objects, Performance art, and Computer art. Higgins was the publisher of the Something Else Press, a Concrete poet, married to artist Alison Knowles and an admirer of Marcel Duchamp. Ihab Hassan includes, "Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms," in his list of the characteristics of postmodern art. One of the most common forms of "multi-media art" is the use of video-tape and CRT monitors, termed Video art. While the theory of combining multiple arts into one art is quite old, and has been revived periodically, the postmodern manifestation is often in combination with performance art, where the dramatic subtext is removed, and what is left is the specific statements of the artist in question or the conceptual statement of their action. Higgin's conception of Intermedia is connected to the growth of multimedia digital practice such as immersive virtual reality, digital art and computer art. Telematic Art Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters. Roy Ascott sees the telematic art form as the transformation of the viewer into an active participator of creating the artwork which remains in process throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of the theory and practice of telematic art since 1978 when he went online for the first time, organizing different collaborative online projects. Appropriation art and neo-conceptual art In his 1980 essay The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism, Craig Owens identifies the re-emergence of an allegorical impulse as characteristic of postmodern art. This impulse can be seen in the appropriation art of artists such as Sherrie Levine and Robert Longo because, "Allegorical imagery is appropriated imagery." Appropriation art debunks modernist notions of artistic genius and originality and is more ambivalent and contradictory than modern art, simultaneously installing and subverting ideologies, "being both critical and complicit." Neo-expressionism and painting The return to the traditional art forms of sculpture and painting in the late 1970s and early 1980s seen in the work of Neo-expressionist artists such as Georg Baselitz and Julian Schnabel has been described as a postmodern tendency, and one of the first coherent movements to emerge in the postmodern era. Its strong links with the commercial art market has raised questions, however, both about its status as a postmodern movement and the definition of postmodernism itself. Hal Foster states that neo-expressionism was complicit with the conservative cultural politics of the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S. Félix Guattari disregards the "large promotional operations dubbed 'neo-expressionism' in Germany," (an example of a "fad that maintains itself by means of publicity") as a too easy way for him "to demonstrate that postmodernism is nothing but the last gasp of modernism." These critiques of neo-expressionism reveal that money and public relations really sustained contemporary art world credibility in America during the same period that conceptual artists, and practices of women artists including painters and feminist theorists like Griselda Pollock, were systematically reevaluating modern art. Brian Massumi claims that Deleuze and Guattari open the horizon of new definitions of Beauty in postmodern art. For Jean-François Lyotard, it was painting of the artists Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha Ettinger, and Barnett Newman that, after the avant-garde's time and the painting of Paul Cézanne and Wassily Kandinsky, was the vehicle for new ideas of the sublime in contemporary art. Institutional critique Critiques on the institutions of art (principally museums and galleries) are made in the work of Andrea Fraser, Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren and Hans Haacke. See also Anti-art Anti-anti-art Classificatory disputes about art Cyborg art Electronic art Experiments in Art and Technology Gaze Late Modernism Modern art Modernist project Neo-minimalism Net.art New European Painting New Media art Post-conceptual Superflat Superstroke Remodernism Irving Sandler Virtual art Sources The Triumph of Modernism: The Art World, 1985–2005, Hilton Kramer, 2006, Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock (A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts), Kirk Varnedoe, 2003 Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s, Irving Sandler Postmodernism (Movements in Modern Art) Eleanor Heartney Sculpture in the Age of Doubt Thomas McEvilley 1999 References External links Art Science fiction themes Contemporary art movements Art by period of creation

Pluriculturalism

Pluriculturalism is an approach to the self and others as complex rich beings which act and react from the perspective of multiple identifications and experiences which combine to make up their pluricultural repertoire. Identity or identities are the by-products of experiences in different cultures and with people with different cultural repertoires. As an effect, multiple identifications create a unique personality instead of or more than a static identity. An individual's pluriculturalism includes their own cultural diversity and their awareness and experience with the cultural diversity of others. It can be influenced by their job or occupational trajectory, geographic location, family history and mobility, leisure or occupational travel, personal interests or experience with media. The term pluricultural competence is a consequence of the idea of plurilingualism. There is a distinction between pluriculturalism and multiculturalism. Spain has been referred to as a pluricultural country, due to its nationalisms and regionalisms. See also Multiculturalism Cultural diversity Interculturalism Intercultural communication Polyethnicity References Identity politics Multiculturalism Social theories Sociology of culture

Homophily

Homophily is a concept in sociology describing the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, as in the proverb "". The presence of homophily has been discovered in a vast array of network studies: over have observed homophily in some form or another, and they establish that similarity is associated with connection. The categories on which homophily occurs include age, gender, class, and organizational role. The opposite of homophily is heterophily or intermingling. Individuals in homophilic relationships share common characteristics (beliefs, values, education, etc.) that make communication and relationship formation easier. Homophily between mated pairs in animals has been extensively studied in the field of evolutionary biology, where it is known as assortative mating. Homophily between mated pairs is common within natural animal mating populations. Homophily has a variety of consequences for social and economic outcomes. Types and dimensions Baseline vs. inbreeding To test the relevance of homophily, researchers have distinguished between two types: Baseline homophily: simply the amount of homophily that would be expected by chance given an existing uneven distribution of people with varying characteristics; and Inbreeding homophily: the amount of homophily over and above this expected value, typically due to personal preferences and choices. Status vs. value In their original formulation of homophily, Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton (1954) distinguished between status homophily and value homophily; individuals with similar social status characteristics were more likely to associate with each other than by chance: Status homophily: includes both society-ascribed characteristics (e.g. race, ethnicity, sex, and age) and acquired characteristics (e.g., religion, occupation, behavior patterns, and education). Value homophily: involves association with others who have similar values, attitudes, and beliefs, regardless of differences in status characteristics. Dimensions Race and ethnicity Social networks in the United States today are strongly divided by race and ethnicity, which account for a large proportion of inbreeding homophily (though classification by these criteria can be problematic in sociology due to fuzzy boundaries and different definitions of race). Smaller groups have lower diversity simply due to the number of members. This tends to give racial and ethnic minority groups a higher baseline homophily. Race and ethnicity also correlates with educational attainment and occupation, which further increase baseline homophily. Sex and gender In terms of sex and gender, the baseline homophily networks were relatively low compared to race and ethnicity. In this form of homophily men and women frequently live together and have large populations that are normally equal in size. It is also common to find higher levels of gender homophily among school students. Most sex homophily are a result of inbreeding homophily. Age Most age homophily is of the baseline type. An interesting pattern of inbreeding age homophily for groups of different ages was found by Marsden (1988). It indicated a strong relationship between someone's age and the social distance to other people with regard to confiding in someone. For example, the larger age gap someone had, the smaller chances that they were confided by others with lower ages to "discuss important matters." Religion Homophily based on religion is due to both baseline and inbreeding homophily. Those that belong in the same religion are more likely to exhibit acts of service and aid to one another, such as loaning money, giving therapeutic counseling, and other forms of help during moments of emergency. Parents have been shown to have higher levels of religious homophily than nonparent, which supports the notion that religious institutions are sought out for the benefit of children. Education, occupation and social class Family of birth accounts for considerable baseline homophily with respect to education, occupation, and social class. In terms of education, there is a divide among those who have a college education and those who do not. Another major distinction can be seen between those with white collar occupations and blue collar occupations. Interests Homophily occurs within groups of people that have similar interests as well. We enjoy interacting more with individuals who share similarities with us, so we tend to actively seek out these connections. Additionally, as more users begin to rely on the Internet to find like minded communities for themselves, many examples of niches within social media sites have begun appearing to account for this need. This response has led to the popularity of sites like Reddit in the 2010s, advertising itself as a "home to thousands of communities... and authentic human interaction." Social media As social networks are largely divided by race, social-networking websites like Facebook also foster homophilic atmospheres. When a Facebook user 'likes' or interacts with an article or post of a certain ideology, Facebook continues to show that user posts of that similar ideology (which Facebook believes they will be drawn to). In a research article, McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook (2003) write that homogeneous personal networks result in limited "social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience." This homophily can foster divides and echo chambers on social networking sites, where people of similar ideologies only interact with each other. Causes and effects Causes Geography: Baseline homophily often arises when the people who are located nearby also have similar characteristics. People are more likely to have contact with those who are geographically closer than those who are distant. Technology such as the telephone, e-mail, and social networks have reduced but not eliminated this effect. Family ties: These ties decay slowly, but familial ties, specifically that of domestic partners, fulfill many requisites that generate homophily. Family relationships are generally close and keep frequent contact though they may be at great geographic distances. Ideas that may get lost in other relational contexts, will often instead lead to actions in this setting. Organizations: School, work, and volunteer activities provide the great majority of non-family ties. Many friendships, confiding relations, and social support ties are formed within voluntary groups. The social homogeneity of most organizations creates a strong baseline homophily in networks that are formed there. Isomorphic sources: The connections between people who occupy equivalent roles will induce homophily in the system of network ties. This is common in three domains: workplace (e.g., all heads of HR departments will tend to associate with other HR heads), family (e.g., mothers tend to associate with other mothers), and informal networks. Cognitive processes: People who have demographic similarity tend to own shared knowledge, and therefore they have a greater ease of communication and share cultural tastes, which can also generate homophily. Effects According to one study, perception of interpersonal similarity improves coordination and increase the expected payoff of interactions, above and beyond the effect of merely "liking others." Another study claims that homophily produces tolerance and cooperation in social spaces. However, homophilic patterns can also restrict access to information or inclusion for minorities. Nowadays, the restrictive patterns of homophily can be widely seen within social media. This selectiveness within social media networks can be traced back to the origins of Facebook and the transition of users from MySpace to Facebook in the early 2000s. One study of this shift in a network's user base from (2011) found that this perception of homophily impacted many individuals' preference of one site over another. Most users chose to be more active on the site their friends were on. However, along with the complexities of belongingness, people of similar ages, economic class, and prospective futures (higher education and/or career plans) shared similar reasons for favoring one social media platform. The different features of homophily affected their outlook of each respective site. The effects of homophily on the diffusion of information and behaviors are also complex. Some studies have claimed that homophily facilitates access information, the diffusion of innovations and behaviors, and the formation of social norms. Other studies, however, highlight mechanisms through which homophily can maintain disagreement, exacerbate polarization of opinions, lead to self segregation between groups, and slow the formation of an overall consensus. As online users have a degree of power to form and dictate the environment, the effects of homophily continue to persist. On Twitter, terms such as "stan Twitter", "Black Twitter", or "local Twitter" have also been created and popularized by users to separate themselves based on specific dimensions. Homophily is a cause of homogamy—marriage between people with similar characteristics. Homophily is a fertility factor; an increased fertility is seen in people with a tendency to seek acquaintance among those with common characteristics. Governmental family policies have a decreased influence on fertility rates in such populations. See also Groupthink Echo chamber (media) References Interpersonal relationships Sociological terminology

Globalization

Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term globalization first appeared in the early 20th century (supplanting an earlier French term mondialisation), developed its current meaning sometime in the second half of the 20th century, and came into popular use in the 1990s to describe the unprecedented international connectivity of the post–Cold War world. Its origins can be traced back to 18th and 19th centuries due to advances in transportation and communications technology. This increase in global interactions has caused a growth in international trade and the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and culture. Globalization is primarily an economic process of interaction and integration that is associated with social and cultural aspects. However, disputes and international diplomacy are also large parts of the history of globalization, and of modern globalization. Economically, globalization involves goods, services, data, technology, and the economic resources of capital. The expansion of global markets liberalizes the economic activities of the exchange of goods and funds. Removal of cross-border trade barriers has made the formation of global markets more feasible. Advances in transportation, like the steam locomotive, steamship, jet engine, and container ships, and developments in telecommunication infrastructure such as the telegraph, the Internet, mobile phones, and smartphones, have been major factors in globalization and have generated further interdependence of economic and cultural activities around the globe. Though many scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history to long before the European Age of Discovery and voyages to the New World, and some even to the third millennium BCE. Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s, and in the late 19th century and early 20th century drove a rapid expansion in the connectivity of the world's economies and cultures. The term global city was subsequently popularized by sociologist Saskia Sassen in her work The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (1991). In 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people, and the dissemination of knowledge. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, sociocultural resources, and the natural environment. Academic literature commonly divides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization. Proponents of globalization point to economic growth and broader societal development as benefits, while opponents claim globalizing processes are detrimental to social well-being due to ethnocentrism, environmental consequences, and other potential drawbacks. Between 1990 and 2010, globalisation progressed rapidly, driven by the information and communication technology revolution that lowered communication costs, along with trade liberalisation and the shift of manufacturing operations to emerging economies (particularly China). Etymology and usage The word globalization was used in the English language as early as the 1930s, but only in the context of education, and the term failed to gain traction. Over the next few decades, the term was occasionally used by other scholars and media, but it was not clearly defined. One of the first usages of the term in the meaning resembling the later, common usage was by French economist François Perroux in his essays from the early 1960s (in his French works he used the term "mondialisation" (literarly worldization in French), also translated as mundialization). Theodore Levitt is often credited with popularizing the term and bringing it into the mainstream business audience in the later in the middle of 1980s. Though often treated as synonyms, in French, globalization is seen as a stage following mondialisation, a stage that implies the dissolution of national identities and the abolishment of borders inside the world network of economic exchanges. Since its inception, the concept of globalization has inspired competing definitions and interpretations. Its antecedents date back to the great movements of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean from the 15th century onward. In 1848, Karl Marx noticed the increasing level of national inter-dependence brought on by capitalism, and predicted the universal character of the modern world society. He states: Sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as "all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society." In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens writes: "Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa." In 1992, Roland Robertson, professor of sociology at the University of Aberdeen and an early writer in the field, described globalization as "the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole." In Global Transformations, David Held and his co-writers state: Held and his co-writers' definition of globalization in that same book as "transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions—assessed in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity and impact—generating transcontinental or inter-regional flows" was called "probably the most widely-cited definition" in the 2014 DHL Global Connectiveness Index. Swedish journalist Thomas Larsson, in his book The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization, states that globalization: Paul James defines globalization with a more direct and historically contextualized emphasis: Globalization is the extension of social relations across world-space, defining that world-space in terms of the historically variable ways that it has been practiced and socially understood through changing world-time. Manfred Steger, professor of global studies and research leader in the Global Cities Institute at RMIT University, identifies four main empirical dimensions of globalization: economic, political, cultural, and ecological. A fifth dimension—the ideological—cutting across the other four. The ideological dimension, according to Steger, is filled with a range of norms, claims, beliefs, and narratives about the phenomenon itself. James and Steger stated that the concept of globalization "emerged from the intersection of four interrelated sets of 'communities of practice' (Wenger, 1998): academics, journalists, publishers/editors, and librarians." They note the term was used "in education to describe the global life of the mind"; in international relations to describe the extension of the European Common Market, and in journalism to describe how the "American Negro and his problem are taking on a global significance". They have also argued that four forms of globalization can be distinguished that complement and cut across the solely empirical dimensions. According to James, the oldest dominant form of globalization is embodied globalization, the movement of people. A second form is agency-extended globalization, the circulation of agents of different institutions, organizations, and polities, including imperial agents. Object-extended globalization, a third form, is the movement of commodities and other objects of exchange. He calls the transmission of ideas, images, knowledge, and information across world-space disembodied globalization, maintaining that it is currently the dominant form of globalization. James holds that this series of distinctions allows for an understanding of how, today, the most embodied forms of globalization such as the movement of refugees and migrants are increasingly restricted, while the most disembodied forms such as the circulation of financial instruments and codes are the most deregulated. The journalist Thomas L. Friedman popularized the term "flat world", arguing that globalized trade, outsourcing, supply-chaining, and political forces had permanently changed the world, for better and worse. He asserted that the pace of globalization was quickening and that its impact on business organization and practice would continue to grow. Economist Takis Fotopoulos defined "economic globalization" as the opening and deregulation of commodity, capital, and labor markets that led toward present neoliberal globalization. He used "political globalization" to refer to the emergence of a transnational élite and a phasing out of the nation-state. Meanwhile, he used "cultural globalization" to reference the worldwide homogenization of culture. Other of his usages included "ideological globalization", "technological globalization", and "social globalization". Lechner and Boli (2012) define globalization as more people across large distances becoming connected in more and different ways. "Globophobia" is used to refer to the fear of globalization, though it can also mean the fear of balloons. History There are both distal and proximate causes which can be traced in the historical factors affecting globalization. Large-scale globalization began in the 19th century. Archaic Archaic globalization conventionally refers to a phase in the history of globalization including globalizing events and developments from the time of the earliest civilizations until roughly the 1600s. This term is used to describe the relationships between communities and states and how they were created by the geographical spread of ideas and social norms at both local and regional levels. In this schema, three main prerequisites are posited for globalization to occur. The first is the idea of Eastern Origins, which shows how Western states have adapted and implemented learned principles from the East. Without the spread of traditional ideas from the East, Western globalization would not have emerged the way it did. The interactions of states were not on a global scale and most often were confined to Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and certain parts of Europe. With early globalization, it was difficult for states to interact with others that were not close. Eventually, technological advances allowed states to learn of others' existence and thus another phase of globalization can occur. The third has to do with inter-dependency, stability, and regularity. If a state is not dependent on another, then there is no way for either state to be mutually affected by the other. This is one of the driving forces behind global connections and trade; without either, globalization would not have emerged the way it did and states would still be dependent on their own production and resources to work. This is one of the arguments surrounding the idea of early globalization. It is argued that archaic globalization did not function in a similar manner to modern globalization because states were not as interdependent on others as they are today. Also posited is a "multi-polar" nature to archaic globalization, which involved the active participation of non-Europeans. Because it predated the Great Divergence in the nineteenth century, where Western Europe pulled ahead of the rest of the world in terms of industrial production and economic output, archaic globalization was a phenomenon that was driven not only by Europe but also by other economically developed Old World centers such as Gujarat, Bengal, coastal China, and Japan. The German historical economist and sociologist Andre Gunder Frank argues that a form of globalization began with the rise of trade links between Sumer and the Indus Valley civilization in the third millennium BCE. This archaic globalization existed during the Hellenistic Age, when commercialized urban centers enveloped the axis of Greek culture that reached from India to Spain, including Alexandria and the other Alexandrine cities. Early on, the geographic position of Greece and the necessity of importing wheat forced the Greeks to engage in maritime trade. Trade in ancient Greece was largely unrestricted: the state controlled only the supply of grain. Trade on the Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of civilizations from China, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, Europe, and Arabia, opening long-distance political and economic interactions between them. Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, common goods such as salt and sugar were traded as well; and religions, syncretic philosophies, and various technologies, as well as diseases, also traveled along the Silk Routes. In addition to economic trade, the Silk Road served as a means of carrying out cultural trade among the civilizations along its network. The movement of people, such as refugees, artists, craftsmen, missionaries, robbers, and envoys, resulted in the exchange of religions, art, languages, and new technologies. Early modern "Early modern" or "proto-globalization" covers a period of the history of globalization roughly spanning the years between 1600 and 1800. The concept of "proto-globalization" was first introduced by historians A. G. Hopkins and Christopher Bayly. The term describes the phase of increasing trade links and cultural exchange that characterized the period immediately preceding the advent of high "modern globalization" in the late 19th century. This phase of globalization was characterized by the rise of maritime European empires, in the 15th and 17th centuries, first the Portuguese Empire (1415) followed by the Spanish Empire (1492), and later the Dutch and British Empires. In the 17th century, world trade developed further when chartered companies like the British East India Company (founded in 1600) and the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602, often described as the first multinational corporation in which stock was offered) were established. An alternative view from historians Dennis Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, postulated that: globalization began with the first circumnavigation of the globe under the Magellan-Elcano expedition which preluded the rise of global silver trade. Early modern globalization is distinguished from modern globalization on the basis of expansionism, the method of managing global trade, and the level of information exchange. The period is marked by the shift of hegemony to Western Europe, the rise of larger-scale conflicts between powerful nations such as the Thirty Years' War, and demand for commodities, most particularly slaves. The triangular trade made it possible for Europe to take advantage of resources within the Western Hemisphere. The transfer of animal stocks, plant crops, and epidemic diseases associated with Alfred W. Crosby's concept of the Columbian exchange also played a central role in this process. European, Middle Eastern, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese merchants were all involved in early modern trade and communications, particularly in the Indian Ocean region. Modern According to economic historians Kevin H. O'Rourke, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, and Guillaume Daudin, several factors promoted globalization in the period 1815–1870: The conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars brought in an era of relative peace in Europe. Innovations in transportation technology reduced trade costs substantially. New industrial military technologies increased the power of European states and the United States, and allowed these powers to forcibly open up markets across the world and extend their empires. A gradual move towards greater liberalization in European countries. During the 19th century, globalization approached its form as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization allowed standardized production of household items using economies of scale while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities. In the 19th century, steamships reduced the cost of international transportation significantly and railroads made inland transportation cheaper. The transportation revolution occurred some time between 1820 and 1850. More nations embraced international trade. Globalization in this period was decisively shaped by nineteenth-century imperialism such as in Africa and Asia. The invention of shipping containers in 1956 helped advance the globalization of commerce. After World War II, work by politicians led to the agreements of the Bretton Woods Conference, in which major governments laid down the framework for international monetary policy, commerce, and finance, and the founding of several international institutions intended to facilitate economic growth by lowering trade barriers. Initially, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) led to a series of agreements to remove trade restrictions. GATT's successor was the World Trade Organization (WTO), which provided a framework for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements and a dispute resolution process. Exports nearly doubled from 8.5% of total gross world product in 1970 to 16.2% in 2001. The approach of using global agreements to advance trade stumbled with the failure of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiation. Many countries then shifted to bilateral or smaller multilateral agreements, such as the 2011 United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement. Since the 1970s, aviation has become increasingly affordable to middle classes in developed countries. Open skies policies and low-cost carriers have helped to bring competition to the market. In the 1990s, the growth of low-cost communication networks cut the cost of communicating between countries. More work can be performed using a computer without regard to location. This included accounting, software development, and engineering design. Student exchange programs became popular after World War II, and are intended to increase the participants' understanding and tolerance of other cultures, as well as improving their language skills and broadening their social horizons. Between 1963 and 2006 the number of students studying in a foreign country increased 9 times. Since the 1980s, modern globalization has spread rapidly through the expansion of capitalism and neoliberal ideologies. The implementation of neoliberal policies has allowed for the privatization of public industry, deregulation of laws or policies that interfered with the free flow of the market, as well as cut-backs to governmental social services. These neoliberal policies were introduced to many developing countries in the form of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that were implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These programs required that the country receiving monetary aid would open its markets to capitalism, privatize public industry, allow free trade, cut social services like healthcare and education and allow the free movement of giant multinational corporations. These programs allowed the World Bank and the IMF to become global financial market regulators that would promote neoliberalism and the creation of free markets for multinational corporations on a global scale. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the connectedness of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly. This slowed down from the 1910s onward due to the World Wars and the Cold War, but picked up again in the 1980s and 1990s. The revolutions of 1989 and subsequent liberalization in many parts of the world resulted in a significant expansion of global interconnectedness. The migration and movement of people can also be highlighted as a prominent feature of the globalization process. In the period between 1965 and 1990, the proportion of the labor force migrating approximately doubled. Most migration occurred between the developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs). As economic integration intensified workers moved to areas with higher wages and most of the developing world oriented toward the international market economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union not only ended the Cold War's division of the world – it also left the United States its sole policeman and an unfettered advocate of free market. It also resulted in the growing prominence of attention focused on the movement of diseases, the proliferation of popular culture and consumer values, the growing prominence of international institutions like the UN, and concerted international action on such issues as the environment and human rights. Other developments as dramatic were the Internet's becoming influential in connecting people across the world; , more than 2.4 billion people—over a third of the world's human population—have used the services of the Internet. Growth of globalization has never been smooth. One influential event was the late 2000s recession, which was associated with lower growth (in areas such as cross-border phone calls and Skype usage) or even temporarily negative growth (in areas such as trade) of global interconnectedness. The China–United States trade war, starting in 2018, negatively affected trade between the two largest national economies. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic included a massive decline in tourism and international business travel as many countries temporarily closed borders. The 2021–2022 global supply chain crisis resulted from temporary shutdowns of manufacturing and transportation facilities, and labor shortages. Supply problems incentivized some switches to domestic production. The economic impact of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine included a blockade of Ukrainian ports and international sanctions on Russia, resulting in some de-coupling of the Russian economy with global trade, especially with the European Union and other Western countries. Modern consensus for the last 15 years regards globalization as having run its course and gone into decline. A common argument for this is that trade has dropped since its peak in 2008, and never recovered since the Great Recession. New opposing views from some economists have argued such trends are a result of price drops and in actuality, trade volume is increasing, especially with agricultural products, natural resources and refined petroleum. Economic globalization Economic globalization is the increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology, and capital. Whereas the globalization of business is centered around the diminution of international trade regulations as well as tariffs, taxes, and other impediments that suppresses global trade, economic globalization is the process of increasing economic integration between countries, leading to the emergence of a global marketplace or a single world market. Depending on the paradigm, economic globalization can be viewed as either a positive or a negative phenomenon. Economic globalization comprises: globalization of production; which refers to the obtainment of goods and services from a particular source from locations around the globe to benefit from difference in cost and quality. Likewise, it also comprises globalization of markets; which is defined as the union of different and separate markets into a massive global marketplace. Economic globalization also includes competition, technology, and corporations and industries. Current globalization trends can be largely accounted for by developed economies integrating with less developed economies by means of foreign direct investment, the reduction of trade barriers as well as other economic reforms, and, in many cases, immigration. International standards have made trade in goods and services more efficient. An example of such standard is the intermodal container. Containerization dramatically reduced the costs of transportation, supported the post-war boom in international trade, and was a major element in globalization. International standards are set by the International Organization for Standardization, which is composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. A multinational corporation, or worldwide enterprise, is an organization that owns or controls the production of goods or services in one or more countries other than their home country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation, a transnational corporation, or a stateless corporation. A free-trade area is the region encompassing a trade bloc whose member countries have signed a free-trade agreement (FTA). Such agreements involve cooperation between at least two countries to reduce trade barriers import quotas and tariffs and to increase trade of goods and services with each other. If people are also free to move between the countries, in addition to a free-trade agreement, it would also be considered an open border. Arguably, the most significant free-trade area in the world is the European Union, a politico-economic union of member states that are primarily located in Europe. The EU has developed European Single Market through a standardized system of laws that apply in all member states. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital within the internal market, Trade facilitation looks at how procedures and controls governing the movement of goods across national borders can be improved to reduce associated cost burdens and maximize efficiency while safeguarding legitimate regulatory objectives. Global trade in services is also significant. For example, in India, business process outsourcing has been described as the "primary engine of the country's development over the next few decades, contributing broadly to GDP growth, employment growth, and poverty alleviation". William I. Robinson's theoretical approach to globalization is a critique of Wallerstein's World Systems Theory. He believes that the global capital experienced today is due to a new and distinct form of globalization which began in the 1980s. Robinson argues not only are economic activities expanded across national boundaries but also there is a transnational fragmentation of these activities. One important aspect of Robinson's globalization theory is that production of goods are increasingly global. This means that one pair of shoes can be produced by six countries, each contributing to a part of the production process. Cultural globalization Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings, and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures. Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communicate across cultures. Intercultural communication is a related field of study. Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, religions, technologies, languages etc. Cultural globalization has increased cross-cultural contacts, but may be accompanied by a decrease in the uniqueness of once-isolated communities. For example, sushi is available in Germany as well as Japan, but Euro-Disney outdraws the city of Paris, potentially reducing demand for "authentic" French pastry. Globalization's contribution to the alienation of individuals from their traditions may be modest compared to the impact of modernity itself, as alleged by existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Globalization has expanded recreational opportunities by spreading pop culture, particularly via the Internet and satellite television. The cultural diffusion can create a homogenizing force, where globalization is seen as synonymous with homogenizing force via connectedness of markets, cultures, politics and the desire for modernizations through imperial countries sphere of influence. Religions were among the earliest cultural elements to globalize, being spread by force, migration, evangelists, imperialists, and traders. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and more recently sects such as Mormonism are among those religions which have taken root and influenced endemic cultures in places far from their origins. Globalization has strongly influenced sports. For example, the modern Olympic Games has athletes from more than 200 nations participating in a variety of competitions. The FIFA World Cup is the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games; a ninth of the entire population of the planet watched the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final. The term globalization implies transformation. Cultural practices including traditional music can be lost or turned into a fusion of traditions. Globalization can trigger a state of emergency for the preservation of musical heritage. Archivists may attempt to collect, record, or transcribe repertoires before melodies are assimilated or modified, while local musicians may struggle for authenticity and to preserve local musical traditions. Globalization can lead performers to discard traditional instruments. Fusion genres can become interesting fields of analysis. Music has an important role in economic and cultural development during globalization. Music genres such as jazz and reggae began locally and later became international phenomena. Globalization gave support to the world music phenomenon by allowing music from developing countries to reach broader audiences. Though the term "World Music" was originally intended for ethnic-specific music, globalization is now expanding its scope such that the term often includes hybrid subgenres such as "world fusion", "global fusion", "ethnic fusion", and worldbeat. Bourdieu claimed that the perception of consumption can be seen as self-identification and the formation of identity. Musically, this translates into each individual having their own musical identity based on likes and tastes. These likes and tastes are greatly influenced by culture, as this is the most basic cause for a person's wants and behavior. The concept of one's own culture is now in a period of change due to globalization. Also, globalization has increased the interdependency of political, personal, cultural, and economic factors. A 2005 UNESCO report showed that cultural exchange is becoming more frequent from Eastern Asia, but that Western countries are still the main exporters of cultural goods. In 2002, China was the third largest exporter of cultural goods, after the UK and US. Between 1994 and 2002, both North America's and the European Union's shares of cultural exports declined while Asia's cultural exports grew to surpass North America. Related factors are the fact that Asia's population and area are several times that of North America. Americanization is related to a period of high political American clout and of significant growth of America's shops, markets and objects being brought into other countries. Some critics of globalization argue that it harms the diversity of cultures. As a dominating country's culture is introduced into a receiving country through globalization, it can become a threat to the diversity of local culture. Some argue that globalization may ultimately lead to Westernization or Americanization of culture, where the dominating cultural concepts of economically and politically powerful Western countries spread and cause harm to local cultures. Globalization is a diverse phenomenon that relates to a multilateral political world and to the increase of cultural objects and markets between countries. The Indian experience particularly reveals the plurality of the impact of cultural globalization. Transculturalism is defined as "seeing oneself in the other". Transcultural is in turn described as "extending through all human cultures" or "involving, encompassing, or combining elements of more than one culture". Children brought up in transcultural backgrounds are sometimes called third-culture kids. Political globalization Political globalization refers to the growth of the worldwide political system, both in size and complexity. That system includes national governments, their governmental and intergovernmental organizations as well as government-independent elements of global civil society such as international non-governmental organizations and social movement organizations. One of the key aspects of the political globalization is the declining importance of the nation-state and the rise of other actors on the political scene. William R. Thompson has defined it as "the expansion of a global political system, and its institutions, in which inter-regional transactions (including, but certainly not limited to trade) are managed". Political globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two other being economic globalization and cultural globalization. Intergovernmentalism is a term in political science with two meanings. The first refers to a theory of regional integration originally proposed by Stanley Hoffmann; the second treats states and the national government as the primary factors for integration. Multi-level governance is an approach in political science and public administration theory that originated from studies on European integration. Multi-level governance gives expression to the idea that there are many interacting authority structures at work in the emergent global political economy. It illuminates the intimate entanglement between the domestic and international levels of authority. Some people are citizens of multiple nation-states. Multiple citizenship, also called dual citizenship or multiple nationality or dual nationality, is a person's citizenship status, in which a person is concurrently regarded as a citizen of more than one state under the laws of those states. Increasingly, non-governmental organizations influence public policy across national boundaries, including humanitarian aid and developmental efforts. Philanthropic organizations with global missions are also coming to the forefront of humanitarian efforts; charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Accion International, the Acumen Fund (now Acumen) and the Echoing Green have combined the business model with philanthropy, giving rise to business organizations such as the Global Philanthropy Group and new associations of philanthropists such as the Global Philanthropy Forum. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation projects include a current multibillion-dollar commitment to funding immunizations in some of the world's more impoverished but rapidly growing countries. The Hudson Institute estimates total private philanthropic flows to developing countries at US$59 billion in 2010. As a response to globalization, some countries have embraced isolationist policies. For example, the North Korean government makes it very difficult for foreigners to enter the country and strictly monitors their activities when they do. Aid workers are subject to considerable scrutiny and excluded from places and regions the government does not wish them to enter. Citizens cannot freely leave the country. Globalization and gender Globalization has been a gendered process where giant multinational corporations have outsourced jobs to low-wage, low skilled, quota free economies like the ready made garment industry in Bangladesh where poor women make up the majority of labor force. Despite a large proportion of women workers in the garment industry, women are still heavily underemployed compared to men. Most women that are employed in the garment industry come from the countryside of Bangladesh triggering migration of women in search of garment work. It is still unclear as to whether or not access to paid work for women where it did not exist before has empowered them. The answers varied depending on whether it is the employers perspective or the workers and how they view their choices. Women workers did not see the garment industry as economically sustainable for them in the long run due to long hours standing and poor working conditions. Although women workers did show significant autonomy over their personal lives including their ability to negotiate with family, more choice in marriage, and being valued as a wage earner in the family. This did not translate into workers being able to collectively organize themselves in order to negotiate a better deal for themselves at work. Another example of outsourcing in manufacturing includes the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico where poor women make up the majority of the labor force. Women in the maquiladora industry have produced high levels of turnover not staying long enough to be trained compared to men. A gendered two tiered system within the maquiladora industry has been created that focuses on training and worker loyalty. Women are seen as being untrainable, placed in un-skilled, low wage jobs, while men are seen as more trainable with less turnover rates, and placed in more high skilled technical jobs. The idea of training has become a tool used against women to blame them for their high turnover rates which also benefit the industry keeping women as temporary workers. Other dimensions Scholars also occasionally discuss other, less common dimensions of globalization, such as environmental globalization (the internationally coordinated practices and regulations, often in the form of international treaties, regarding environmental protection) or military globalization (growth in global extent and scope of security relationships). Those dimensions, however, receive much less attention the three described above, as academic literature commonly subdivides globalization into three major areas: economic globalization, cultural globalization and political globalization. Movement of people An essential aspect of globalization is movement of people, and state-boundary limits on that movement have changed across history. The movement of tourists and business people opened up over the last century. As transportation technology improved, travel time and costs decreased dramatically between the 18th and early 20th century. For example, travel across the Atlantic Ocean used to take up to 5 weeks in the 18th century, but around the time of the 20th century it took a mere 8 days. Today, modern aviation has made long-distance transportation quick and affordable. Tourism is travel for pleasure. The developments in technology and transportation infrastructure, such as jumbo jets, low-cost airlines, and more accessible airports have made many types of tourism more affordable. At any given moment half a million people are in the air. International tourist arrivals surpassed the milestone of 1 billion tourists globally for the first time in 2012. A visa is a conditional authorization granted by a country to a foreigner, allowing them to enter and temporarily remain within, or to leave that country. Some countries – such as those in the Schengen Area – have agreements with other countries allowing each other's citizens to travel between them without visas (for example, Switzerland is part of a Schengen Agreement allowing easy travel for people from countries within the European Union). The World Tourism Organization announced that the number of tourists who require a visa before traveling was at its lowest level ever in 2015. Immigration is the international movement of people into a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residents or naturalized citizens, or to take-up employment as a migrant worker or temporarily as a foreign worker. According to the International Labour Organization, there were an estimated 232 million international migrants in the world (defined as persons outside their country of origin for 12 months or more) and approximately half of them were estimated to be economically active (i.e. being employed or seeking employment). International movement of labor is often seen as important to economic development. For example, freedom of movement for workers in the European Union means that people can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country. Globalization is associated with a dramatic rise in international education. The development of global cross-cultural competence in the workforce through ad-hoc training has deserved increasing attention in recent times. More and more students are seeking higher education in foreign countries and many international students now consider overseas study a stepping-stone to permanent residency within a country. The contributions that foreign students make to host nation economies, both culturally and financially has encouraged major players to implement further initiatives to facilitate the arrival and integration of overseas students, including substantial amendments to immigration and visa policies and procedures. A transnational marriage is a marriage between two people from different countries. A variety of special issues arise in marriages between people from different countries, including those related to citizenship and culture, which add complexity and challenges to these kinds of relationships. In an age of increasing globalization, where a growing number of people have ties to networks of people and places across the globe, rather than to a current geographic location, people are increasingly marrying across national boundaries. Transnational marriage is a by-product of the movement and migration of people. Movement of information Before electronic communications, long-distance communications relied on mail. Speed of global communications was limited by the maximum speed of courier services (especially horses and ships) until the mid-19th century. The electric telegraph was the first method of instant long-distance communication. For example, before the first transatlantic cable, communications between Europe and the Americas took weeks because ships had to carry mail across the ocean. The first transatlantic cable reduced communication time considerably, allowing a message and a response in the same day. Lasting transatlantic telegraph connections were achieved in the 1865–1866. The first wireless telegraphy transmitters were developed in 1895. The Internet has been instrumental in connecting people across geographical boundaries. For example, Facebook is a social networking service which has more than 1.65 billion monthly active users . Globalization can be spread by Global journalism which provides massive information and relies on the internet to interact, "makes it into an everyday routine to investigate how people and their actions, practices, problems, life conditions, etc. in different parts of the world are interrelated. possible to assume that global threats such as climate change precipitate the further establishment of global journalism." Globalization and disease In the current era of globalization, the world is more interdependent than at any other time. Efficient and inexpensive transportation has left few places inaccessible, and increased global trade has brought more and more people into contact with animal diseases that have subsequently jumped species barriers (see zoonosis). Coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated COVID-19, first appeared in Wuhan, China in November 2019. More than 180 countries have reported cases since then. , the U.S. has the most confirmed active cases in the world. More than 3.4 million people from the worst-affected countries entered the U.S. in the first three months since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has caused a detrimental impact on the global economy, particularly for SME's and Microbusinesses with unlimited liability/self-employed, leaving them vulnerable to financial difficulties, increasing the market share for oligopolistic markets as well as increasing the barriers of entry. Measurement One index of globalization is the KOF Index of Globalization, which measures three important dimensions of globalization: economic, social, and political. Another is the A.T. Kearney / Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Index. Measurements of economic globalization typically focus on variables such as trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Gross Domestic Product (GDP), portfolio investment, and income. However, newer indices attempt to measure globalization in more general terms, including variables related to political, social, cultural, and even environmental aspects of globalization. The DHL Global Connectedness Index studies four main types of cross-border flow: trade (in both goods and services), information, people (including tourists, students, and migrants), and capital. It shows that the depth of global integration fell by about one-tenth after 2008, but by 2013 had recovered well above its pre-crash peak. The report also found a shift of economic activity to emerging economies. Support and criticism Reactions to processes contributing to globalization have varied widely with a history as long as extraterritorial contact and trade. Philosophical differences regarding the costs and benefits of such processes give rise to a broad-range of ideologies and social movements. Proponents of economic growth, expansion, and development, in general, view globalizing processes as desirable or necessary to the well-being of human society. Antagonists view one or more globalizing processes as detrimental to social well-being on a global or local scale; this includes those who focus on social or natural sustainability of long-term and continuous economic expansion, the social structural inequality caused by these processes, and the colonial, imperialistic, or hegemonic ethnocentrism, cultural assimilation and cultural appropriation that underlie such processes. Globalization tends to bring people into contact with foreign people and cultures. Xenophobia is the fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. Critiques of globalization generally stem from discussions surrounding the impact of such processes on the planet as well as the human costs. They challenge directly traditional metrics, such as GDP, and look to other measures, such as the Gini coefficient or the Happy Planet Index, and point to a "multitude of interconnected fatal consequences–social disintegration, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment, the spread of new diseases, increasing poverty and alienation" which they claim are the unintended consequences of globalization. Others point out that, while the forces of globalization have led to the spread of western-style democracy, this has been accompanied by an increase in inter-ethnic tension and violence as free market economic policies combine with democratic processes of universal suffrage as well as an escalation in militarization to impose democratic principles and as a means to conflict resolution. On 9 August 2019, Pope Francis denounced isolationism and hinted that the Catholic Church will embrace globalization at the October 2019 Amazonia Synod, stating "the whole is greater than the parts. Globalization and unity should not be conceived as a sphere, but as a polyhedron: each people retains its identity in unity with others" Public opinion As a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, globalization is considered by some as a form of capitalist expansion which entails the integration of local and national economies into a global, unregulated market economy. A 2005 study by Peer Fis and Paul Hirsch found a large increase in articles negative towards globalization in the years prior. In 1998, negative articles outpaced positive articles by two to one. The number of newspaper articles showing negative framing rose from about 10% of the total in 1991 to 55% of the total in 1999. This increase occurred during a period when the total number of articles concerning globalization nearly doubled. A number of international polls have shown that residents of Africa and Asia tend to view globalization more favorably than residents of Europe or North America. In Africa, a Gallup poll found that 70% of the population views globalization favorably. The BBC found that 50% of people believed that economic globalization was proceeding too rapidly, while 35% believed it was proceeding too slowly. In 2004, Philip Gordon stated that "a clear majority of Europeans believe that globalization can enrich their lives, while believing the European Union can help them take advantage of globalization's benefits while shielding them from its negative effects". The main opposition consisted of socialists, environmental groups, and nationalists. Residents of the EU did not appear to feel threatened by globalization in 2004. The EU job market was more stable and workers were less likely to accept wage/benefit cuts. Social spending was much higher than in the US. In a Danish poll in 2007, 76% responded that globalization is a good thing. Fiss, et al., surveyed US opinion in 1993. Their survey showed that, in 1993, more than 40% of respondents were unfamiliar with the concept of globalization. When the survey was repeated in 1998, 89% of the respondents had a polarized view of globalization as being either good or bad. At the same time, discourse on globalization, which began in the financial community before shifting to a heated debate between proponents and disenchanted students and workers. Polarization increased dramatically after the establishment of the WTO in 1995; this event and subsequent protests led to a large-scale anti-globalization movement. Initially, college educated workers were likely to support globalization. Less educated workers, who were more likely to compete with immigrants and workers in developing countries, tended to be opponents. The situation changed after the Great Recession. According to a 1997 poll 58% of college graduates said globalization had been good for the US. By 2008 only 33% thought it was good. Respondents with high school education also became more opposed. According to Takenaka Heizo and Chida Ryokichi, there was a perception in Japan that the economy was "Small and Frail". However, Japan was resource-poor and used exports to pay for its raw materials. Anxiety over their position caused terms such as internationalization and globalization to enter everyday language. However, Japanese tradition was to be as self-sufficient as possible, particularly in agriculture. Many in developing countries see globalization as a positive force that lifts them out of poverty. Those opposing globalization typically combine environmental concerns with nationalism. Opponents consider governments as agents of neo-colonialism that are subservient to multinational corporations. Much of this criticism comes from the middle class; the Brookings Institution suggested this was because the middle class perceived upwardly mobile low-income groups as threatening to their economic security. Economics The literature analyzing the economics of free trade is extremely rich with extensive work having been done on the theoretical and empirical effects. Though it creates winners and losers, the broad consensus among economists is that free trade is a large and unambiguous net gain for society. In a 2006 survey of 83 American economists, "87.5% agree that the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade" and "90.1% disagree with the suggestion that the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries." Quoting Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards." In a survey of leading economists, none disagreed with the notion that "freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment." Most economists would agree that although increasing returns to scale might mean that certain industry could settle in a geographical area without any strong economic reason derived from comparative advantage, this is not a reason to argue against free trade because the absolute level of output enjoyed by both "winner" and "loser" will increase with the "winner" gaining more than the "loser" but both gaining more than before in an absolute level. In the book The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs discusses how many factors can affect a country's ability to enter the world market, including government corruption; legal and social disparities based on gender, ethnicity, or caste; diseases such as AIDS and malaria; lack of infrastructure (including transportation, communications, health, and trade); unstable political landscapes; protectionism; and geographic barriers. Jagdish Bhagwati, a former adviser to the U.N. on globalization, holds that, although there are obvious problems with overly rapid development, globalization is a very positive force that lifts countries out of poverty by causing a virtuous economic cycle associated with faster economic growth. However, economic growth does not necessarily mean a reduction in poverty; in fact, the two can coexist. Economic growth is conventionally measured using indicators such as GDP and GNI that do not accurately reflect the growing disparities in wealth. Additionally, Oxfam International argues that poor people are often excluded from globalization-induced opportunities "by a lack of productive assets, weak infrastructure, poor education and ill-health;" effectively leaving these marginalized groups in a poverty trap. Economist Paul Krugman is another staunch supporter of globalization and free trade with a record of disagreeing with many critics of globalization. He argues that many of them lack a basic understanding of comparative advantage and its importance in today's world. The flow of migrants to advanced economies has been claimed to provide a means through which global wages converge. An IMF study noted a potential for skills to be transferred back to developing countries as wages in those a countries rise. Lastly, the dissemination of knowledge has been an integral aspect of globalization. Technological innovations (or technological transfer) are conjectured to benefit most developing and least developing countries (LDCs), as for example in the adoption of mobile phones. There has been a rapid economic growth in Asia after embracing market orientation-based economic policies that encourage private property rights, free enterprise and competition. In particular, in East Asian developing countries, GDP per head rose at 5.9% a year from 1975 to 2001 (according to 2003 Human Development Report of UNDP). Like this, the British economic journalist Martin Wolf says that incomes of poor developing countries, with more than half the world's population, grew substantially faster than those of the world's richest countries that remained relatively stable in its growth, leading to reduced international inequality and the incidence of poverty. Certain demographic changes in the developing world after active economic liberalization and international integration resulted in rising general welfare and, hence, reduced inequality. According to Wolf, in the developing world as a whole, life expectancy rose by four months each year after 1970 and infant mortality rate declined from 107 per thousand in 1970 to 58 in 2000 due to improvements in standards of living and health conditions. Also, adult literacy in developing countries rose from 53% in 1970 to 74% in 1998 and much lower illiteracy rate among the young guarantees that rates will continue to fall as time passes. Furthermore, the reduction in fertility rate in the developing world as a whole from 4.1 births per woman in 1980 to 2.8 in 2000 indicates improved education level of women on fertility, and control of fewer children with more parental attention and investment. Consequently, more prosperous and educated parents with fewer children have chosen to withdraw their children from the labor force to give them opportunities to be educated at school improving the issue of child labor. Thus, despite seemingly unequal distribution of income within these developing countries, their economic growth and development have brought about improved standards of living and welfare for the population as a whole. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth among post-1980 globalizing countries accelerated from 1.4 percent a year in the 1960s and 2.9 percent a year in the 1970s to 3.5 percent in the 1980s and 5.0 percent in the 1990s. This acceleration in growth seems even more remarkable given that the rich countries saw steady declines in growth from a high of 4.7 percent in the 1960s to 2.2 percent in the 1990s. Also, the non-globalizing developing countries seem to fare worse than the globalizers, with the former's annual growth rates falling from highs of 3.3 percent during the 1970s to only 1.4 percent during the 1990s. This rapid growth among the globalizers is not simply due to the strong performances of China and India in the 1980s and 1990s—18 out of the 24 globalizers experienced increases in growth, many of them quite substantial. The globalization of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has led to the resurfacing of the idea that the growth of economic interdependence promotes peace. This idea had been very powerful during the globalization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was a central doctrine of classical liberals of that era, such as the young John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946). Some opponents of globalization see the phenomenon as a promotion of corporate interests. They also claim that the increasing autonomy and strength of corporate entities shapes the political policy of countries. They advocate global institutions and policies that they believe better address the moral claims of poor and working classes as well as environmental concerns. Economic arguments by fair trade theorists claim that unrestricted free trade benefits those with more financial leverage (i.e. the rich) at the expense of the poor. Globalization allows corporations to outsource manufacturing and service jobs from high-cost locations, creating economic opportunities with the most competitive wages and worker benefits. Critics of globalization say that it disadvantages poorer countries. While it is true that free trade encourages globalization among countries, some countries try to protect their domestic suppliers. The main export of poorer countries is usually agricultural productions. Larger countries often subsidize their farmers (e.g., the EU's Common Agricultural Policy), which lowers the market price for foreign crops. Global democracy Democratic globalization is a movement towards an institutional system of global democracy that would give world citizens a say in political organizations. This would, in their view, bypass nation-states, corporate oligopolies, ideological non-governmental organizations (NGO), political cults and mafias. One of its most prolific proponents is the British political thinker David Held. Advocates of democratic globalization argue that economic expansion and development should be the first phase of democratic globalization, which is to be followed by a phase of building global political institutions. Francesco Stipo, Director of the United States Association of the Club of Rome, advocates unifying nations under a world government, suggesting that it "should reflect the political and economic balances of world nations. A world confederation would not supersede the authority of the State governments but rather complement it, as both the States and the world authority would have power within their sphere of competence". Former Canadian Senator Douglas Roche, O.C., viewed globalization as inevitable and advocated creating institutions such as a directly elected United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to exercise oversight over unelected international bodies. Global civics Global civics suggests that civics can be understood, in a global sense, as a social contract between global citizens in the age of interdependence and interaction. The disseminators of the concept define it as the notion that we have certain rights and responsibilities towards each other by the mere fact of being human on Earth. World citizen has a variety of similar meanings, often referring to a person who disapproves of traditional geopolitical divisions derived from national citizenship. An early incarnation of this sentiment can be found in Socrates, whom Plutarch quoted as saying: "I am not an Athenian, or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." In an increasingly interdependent world, world citizens need a compass to frame their mindsets and create a shared consciousness and sense of global responsibility in world issues such as environmental problems and nuclear proliferation. Baha'i-inspired author Meyjes, while favoring the single world community and emergent global consciousness, warns of globalization as a cloak for an expeditious economic, social, and cultural Anglo-dominance that is insufficiently inclusive to inform the emergence of an optimal world civilization. He proposes a process of "universalization" as an alternative. Cosmopolitanism is the proposal that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. A person who adheres to the idea of cosmopolitanism in any of its forms is called a cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. A cosmopolitan community might be based on an inclusive morality, a shared economic relationship, or a political structure that encompasses different nations. The cosmopolitan community is one in which individuals from different places (e.g. nation-states) form relationships based on mutual respect. For instance, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests the possibility of a cosmopolitan community in which individuals from varying locations (physical, economic, etc.) enter relationships of mutual respect despite their differing beliefs (religious, political, etc.). Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan popularized the term Global Village beginning in 1962. His view suggested that globalization would lead to a world where people from all countries will become more integrated and aware of common interests and shared humanity. International cooperation Military cooperation – Past examples of international cooperation exist. One example is the security cooperation between the United States and the former Soviet Union after the end of the Cold War, which astonished international society. Arms control and disarmament agreements, including the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (see START I, START II, START III, and New START) and the establishment of NATO's Partnership for Peace, the Russia NATO Council, and the G8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, constitute concrete initiatives of arms control and de-nuclearization. The US–Russian cooperation was further strengthened by anti-terrorism agreements enacted in the wake of 9/11. Environmental cooperation – One of the biggest successes of environmental cooperation has been the agreement to reduce chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions, as specified in the Montreal Protocol, in order to stop ozone depletion. The most recent debate around nuclear energy and the non-alternative coal-burning power plants constitutes one more consensus on what not to do. Thirdly, significant achievements in IC can be observed through development studies. Economic cooperation – One of the biggest challenges in 2019 with globalization is that many believe the progress made in the past decades are now back tracking. The back tracking of globalization has coined the term "Slobalization." Slobalization is a new, slower pattern of globalization. Anti-globalization movement Anti-globalization, or counter-globalization, consists of a number of criticisms of globalization but, in general, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or movement against neoliberal globalization. Opponents of globalization argue that power and respect in terms of international trade between the developed and underdeveloped countries of the world are unequally distributed. The diverse subgroups that make up this movement include some of the following: trade unionists, environmentalists, anarchists, land rights and indigenous rights activists, organizations promoting human rights and sustainable development, opponents of privatization, and anti-sweatshop campaigners. In The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Christopher Lasch analyzed the widening gap between the top and bottom of the social composition in the United States. For him, our epoch is determined by a social phenomenon: the revolt of the elites, in reference to The Revolt of the Masses (1929) by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. According to Lasch, the new elites, i.e. those who are in the top 20% in terms of income, through globalization which allows total mobility of capital, no longer live in the same world as their fellow-citizens. In this, they oppose the old bourgeoisie of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which was constrained by its spatial stability to a minimum of rooting and civic obligations. Globalization, according to the sociologist, has turned elites into tourists in their own countries. The denationalization of business enterprise tends to produce a class who see themselves as "world citizens, but without accepting ... any of the obligations that citizenship in a polity normally implies". Their ties to an international culture of work, leisure, information – make many of them deeply indifferent to the prospect of national decline. Instead of financing public services and the public treasury, new elites are investing their money in improving their voluntary ghettos: private schools in their residential neighborhoods, private police, garbage collection systems. They have "withdrawn from common life". Composed of those who control the international flows of capital and information, who preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher education, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus fix the terms of public debate. So, the political debate is limited mainly to the dominant classes and political ideologies lose all contact with the concerns of the ordinary citizen. The result of this is that no one has a likely solution to these problems and that there are furious ideological battles on related issues. However, they remain protected from the problems affecting the working classes: the decline of industrial activity, the resulting loss of employment, the decline of the middle class, increasing the number of the poor, the rising crime rate, growing drug trafficking, the urban crisis. D.A. Snow et al. contend that the anti-globalization movement is an example of a new social movement, which uses tactics that are unique and use different resources than previously used before in other social movements. One of the most infamous tactics of the movement is the Battle of Seattle in 1999, where there were protests against the World Trade Organization's Third Ministerial Meeting. All over the world, the movement has held protests outside meetings of institutions such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the Group of Eight (G8). Within the Seattle demonstrations the protesters that participated used both creative and violent tactics to gain the attention towards the issue of globalization. Opposition to capital market integration Capital markets have to do with raising and investing money in various human enterprises. Increasing integration of these financial markets between countries leads to the emergence of a global capital marketplace or a single world market. In the long run, increased movement of capital between countries tends to favor owners of capital more than any other group; in the short run, owners and workers in specific sectors in capital-exporting countries bear much of the burden of adjusting to increased movement of capital. Those opposed to capital market integration on the basis of human rights issues are especially disturbed by the various abuses which they think are perpetuated by global and international institutions that, they say, promote neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards. Common targets include the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and free trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In light of the economic gap between rich and poor countries, movement adherents claim free trade without measures in place to protect the under-capitalized will contribute only to the strengthening the power of industrialized nations (often termed the "North" in opposition to the developing world's "South"). Anti-corporatism and anti-consumerism Corporatist ideology, which privileges the rights of corporations (artificial or juridical persons) over those of natural persons, is an underlying factor in the recent rapid expansion of global commerce. In recent years, there have been an increasing number of books (Naomi Klein's 2000 No Logo, for example) and films (e.g. The Corporation & Surplus) popularizing an anti-corporate ideology to the public. A related contemporary ideology, consumerism, which encourages the personal acquisition of goods and services, also drives globalization. Anti-consumerism is a social movement against equating personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions. Concern over the treatment of consumers by large corporations has spawned substantial activism, and the incorporation of consumer education into school curricula. Social activists hold materialism is connected to global retail merchandizing and supplier convergence, war, greed, anomie, crime, environmental degradation, and general social malaise and discontent. One variation on this topic is activism by postconsumers, with the strategic emphasis on moving beyond addictive consumerism. Global justice and inequality Global justice The global justice movement is the loose collection of individuals and groups—often referred to as a "movement of movements"—who advocate fair trade rules and perceive current institutions of global economic integration as problems. The movement is often labeled an anti-globalization movement by the mainstream media. Those involved, however, frequently deny that they are anti-globalization, insisting that they support the globalization of communication and people and oppose only the global expansion of corporate power. The movement is based in the idea of social justice, desiring the creation of a society or institution based on the principles of equality and solidarity, the values of human rights, and the dignity of every human being. Social inequality within and between nations, including a growing global digital divide, is a focal point of the movement. Many nongovernmental organizations have now arisen to fight these inequalities that many in Latin America, Africa and Asia face. A few very popular and well known non-governmental organizations (NGOs) include: War Child, Red Cross, Free The Children and CARE International. They often create partnerships where they work towards improving the lives of those who live in developing countries by building schools, fixing infrastructure, cleaning water supplies, purchasing equipment and supplies for hospitals, and other aid efforts. Social inequality The economies of the world have developed unevenly, historically, such that entire geographical regions were left mired in poverty and disease while others began to reduce poverty and disease on a wholesale basis. From around 1980 through at least 2011, the GDP gap, while still wide, appeared to be closing and, in some more rapidly developing countries, life expectancies began to rise. If we look at the Gini coefficient for world income, since the late 1980s, the gap between some regions has markedly narrowed—between Asia and the advanced economies of the West, for example—but huge gaps remain globally. Overall equality across humanity, considered as individuals, has improved very little. Within the decade between 2003 and 2013, income inequality grew even in traditionally egalitarian countries like Germany, Sweden and Denmark. With a few exceptions—France, Japan, Spain—the top 10 percent of earners in most advanced economies raced ahead, while the bottom 10 percent fell further behind. By 2013, 85 multibillionaires had amassed wealth equivalent to all the wealth owned by the poorest half (3.5 billion) of the world's total population of 7 billion. Critics of globalization argue that globalization results in weak labor unions: the surplus in cheap labor coupled with an ever-growing number of companies in transition weakened labor unions in high-cost areas. Unions become less effective and workers their enthusiasm for unions when membership begins to decline. They also cite an increase in the exploitation of child labor: countries with weak protections for children are vulnerable to infestation by rogue companies and criminal gangs who exploit them. Examples include quarrying, salvage, and farm work as well as trafficking, bondage, forced labor, prostitution and pornography. Women often participate in the workforce in precarious work, including export-oriented employment. Evidence suggests that while globalization has expanded women's access to employment, the long-term goal of transforming gender inequalities remains unmet and appears unattainable without regulation of capital and a reorientation and expansion of the state's role in funding public goods and providing a social safety net. Furthermore, the intersectionality of gender, race, class, can be overlooked by scholars and commentators when assessing the impact of globalization. In 2016, a study published by the IMF posited that neoliberalism, the ideological backbone of contemporary globalized capitalism, has been "oversold", with the benefits of neoliberal policies being "fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries" and the costs, most significantly higher income inequality within nations, "hurt the level and sustainability of growth." Anti-global governance Beginning in the 1930s, opposition arose to the idea of a world government, as advocated by organizations such as the World Federalist Movement (WFM). Those who oppose global governance typically do so on objections that the idea is unfeasible, inevitably oppressive, or simply unnecessary. In general, these opponents are wary of the concentration of power or wealth that such governance might represent. Such reasoning dates back to the founding of the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations. Environmentalist opposition Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment. Environmentalist concerns with globalization include issues such as global warming, global water supply and water crises, inequity in energy consumption and energy conservation, transnational air pollution and pollution of the world ocean, overpopulation, world habitat sustainability, deforestation, biodiversity loss and species extinction. One critique of globalization is that natural resources of the poor have been systematically taken over by the rich and the pollution promulgated by the rich is systematically dumped on the poor. Some argue that Northern corporations are increasingly exploiting resources of less wealthy countries for their global activities while it is the South that is disproportionately bearing the environmental burden of the globalized economy. Globalization is thus leading to a type of" environmental apartheid". Helena Norberg-Hodge, the director and founder of Local Futures/International Society for Ecology and Culture, criticizes globalization in many ways. In her book Ancient Futures, Norberg-Hodge claims that "centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are under threat from the pressures of development and globalization." She also criticizes the standardization and rationalization of globalization, as it does not always yield the expected growth outcomes. Although globalization takes similar steps in most countries, scholars such as Hodge claim that it might not be effective to certain countries and that globalization has actually moved some countries backward instead of developing them. A related area of concern is the pollution haven hypothesis, which posits that, when large industrialized nations seek to set up factories or offices abroad, they will often look for the cheapest option in terms of resources and labor that offers the land and material access they require (see Race to the bottom). This often comes at the cost of environmentally sound practices. Developing countries with cheap resources and labor tend to have less stringent environmental regulations, and conversely, nations with stricter environmental regulations become more expensive for companies as a result of the costs associated with meeting these standards. Thus, companies that choose to physically invest in foreign countries tend to (re)locate to the countries with the lowest environmental standards or weakest enforcement. The European Union–Mercosur Free Trade Agreement, which would form one of the world's largest free trade areas, has been denounced by environmental activists and indigenous rights campaigners. The fear is that the deal could lead to more deforestation of the Amazon rainforest as it expands market access to Brazilian beef. See also Civilizing mission Cosmopolitanism Deglobalization Environmental racism Eurasianism Franchising Free trade Global civics Global commons Global mobility Global regionalization Globalism Global public goods List of bilateral free-trade agreements List of globalization-related indices List of multilateral free-trade agreements Middle East and globalization Neorealism (international relations) North–South divide Outline of globalization Postdevelopment theory Technocapitalism The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization Transnational cinema Transnational citizenship Triadization United Nations Millennium Declaration Vermeer's Hat World Englishes References Further reading Ampuja, Marko. Theorizing Globalization: A Critique of the Mediatization of Social Theory (Brill, 2012) Conner, Tom, and Ikuko Torimoto, eds. Globalization Redux: New Name, Same Game (University Press of America, 2004). Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. "Globalization." in Handbook of Political Anthropology (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018). Frey, James W. "The Global Moment: The Emergence of Globality, 1866–1867, and the Origins of Nineteenth-Century Globalization." The Historian 81.1 (2019): 9. online , focus on trade and Suez Canal Gunder Frank, Andre, and Robert A. Denemark. ReOrienting the 19th Century: Global Economy in the Continuing Asian Age (Paradigm Publishers, 2013). Hopkins, A.G., ed. Globalization in World History (Norton, 2003). Lechner, Frank J., and John Boli, eds. The Globalization Reader (4th ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). Leibler, Anat. "The Emergence of a Global Economic Order: From Scientific Internationalism to Infrastructural Globalism." in Science, Numbers and Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019) pp. 121–145 online. Mir, Salam. "Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Globalization, and Arab Culture." Arab Studies Quarterly 41.1 (2019): 33–58. online Olstein, Diego (2015) "Proto-globalization and Proto-glocalizations in the Middle Millennium." In Kedar, Benjamin and Wiesner-Hanks, Merry (Eds.), Cambridge World History. Volume 5: Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conquest, 500–1500 CE. Cambridge University Press, pp. 665–684 Pfister, Ulrich (2012), Globalization, EGO – European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, retrieved: 25 March 2021 (pdf). Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. Globalization and culture: Global mélange (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Rosenberg, Justin. "Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem," International Politics 42:1 (2005), 2–74. Steger, Manfred B. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (4th ed. Oxford University Press, 2017) Van Der Bly, Martha C.E. "Globalization: A Triumph of Ambiguity," Current Sociology 53:6 (November 2005), 875–893 Wallerstein, Immanuel. "Globalization or the Age of Transition? A Long-Term View of the Trajectory of the World System," International Sociology 15:2 (June 2000), 251–267. External links Comprehensive discussion of the term at the Site Global Transformations Globalization Website (Emory University) Links, Debates, Glossary etc. BBC News Special Report – "Globalisation" "Globalization" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Analysis of the idea and its history. OECD Globalization statistics Mapping Globalization, Princeton University List of Global Development Indexes and Rankings Theories of history Economic geography Cultural geography International trade Capitalism Interculturalism World history

American modernism

American modernism, much like the modernism movement in general, is a trend of philosophical thought arising from the widespread changes in culture and society in the age of modernity. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States beginning at the turn of the 20th century, with a core period between World War I and World War II. Like its European counterpart, American modernism stemmed from a rejection of Enlightenment thinking, seeking to better represent reality in a new, more industrialized world. History Characteristically, modernist art has a tendency to abstraction, is innovative, aesthetic, futuristic and self-referential. It includes visual art, literature, music, film, design, architecture as well as life style. It reacts against historicism, artistic conventions and institutionalization of art. Art was not only to be dealt with in academies, theaters or concert halls, but to be included in everyday life and accessible for everybody. Furthermore, cultural institutions concentrated on fine art and scholars paid little attention to the revolutionary styles of modernism. Economic and technological progress in the U.S. during the Roaring Twenties gave rise to widespread utopianism, which influenced some modernist artists, while others were skeptical of the embrace of technology. The victory in World War I confirmed the status of the U.S. as an international player and gave the people self-confidence and a feeling of security. In this context, American modernism marked the beginning of American art as distinct and autonomous from European taste, by breaking artistic conventions that had been shaped after European traditions until then. American modernism benefited from the diversity of immigrant cultures. Artists were inspired by African, Caribbean, Asian and European folk cultures and embedded these exotic styles in their works. The Modernist American movement was a reflection of American life in the 20th century. In the quickly industrializing world and hastened pace of life, it was easy for the individual to be swallowed up by the vastness of things, left wandering, devoid of purpose. Social boundaries in race, class, sex, wealth and religion were being challenged. As the social structure was challenged by new incoming views, the bounds of traditional standards and social structure dissolved, and a loss of identity was what remained, translating eventually into isolation, alienation and an overall feeling of separateness from any kind of "whole". The unity of a war-rallied country was dying, along with it the illusion of the pleasantries it sold to its soldiers and people. The world was left violent, vulgar and spiritually empty. The middle class worker fell into a distinctly unnoticeable position, a cog much too small to hope to find recognition in a much greater machine. Citizens were overcome with their own futility. Youths' dreams shattered with failure and a disillusioning disappointment in recognition of limit and loss. The lives of the disillusioned and outcasts became more focal. Ability to define self through hard work and resourcefulness, to create your own vision of yourself without the help of traditional means, became prized. Some authors endorsed this, while others, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, challenged how alluring but destructively false the values of privilege can be. Modernist America had to find common ground in a world no longer unified in belief. The unity found lay in the common ground of the shared consciousness within all human experience. The importance of the individual was emphasized; the truly limited nature of the human experience formed a bond across all bridges of race, class, sex, wealth or religion. Society, in this way, found shared meaning, even in disarray. Some see modernism in the tradition of 19th century aestheticism and the "art for art's sake" movement. Clement Greenberg argues that modernist art excludes "anything outside itself". Others see modernist art, for example in blues and jazz music, as a medium for emotions and moods, and many works dealt with contemporary issues, like feminism and city life. Some artists and theoreticians even added a political dimension to American modernism. American modernist design and architecture enabled people to lead a modern life. Work and family life changed radically and rapidly due to the economic upswing during the 1920s. In the U.S., the car became popular and affordable for many, leisure time and entertainment gained importance and the job market opened up for women. In order to make life more efficient, designers and architects aimed at the simplification of housework. The Great Depression at the end of the '20s and during the '30s disillusioned people about the economic stability of the country and eroded utopianist thinking. The outbreak and the terrors of World War II caused further changes in mentality. The Post-war period that followed was termed Late Modernism. The Postmodernist era was generally considered characteristic of the art of the late 20th century beginning in the 1980s. Visual arts American modernist painting There is no single date for the beginning of the modern era in America, as dozens of painters were active at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the time when the first cubist landscapes (Precisionism), still-life and portraits appeared; bright colors entered the palettes of painters, and the first non-objective paintings were displayed in the galleries. The modernist movement during the formative years was also becoming popular in New York City by 1913 at the popular Manhattan studio gallery of Wilhelmina Weber Furlong (1878–1962) and through the work of the Whitney Studio Club in 1918. According to Davidson, the beginning of American modernist painting can be dated to the 1910s. The early part of the period lasted 25 years and ended around 1935, when modern art was referred to as, what Greenberg called the avant-garde. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City displayed the contemporary work of European artists, as well as Americans. The Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist paintings startled many American viewers who were accustomed to more conventional art. However, inspired by what they saw, many American artists were influenced by the radical and new ideas. The early 20th century was marked by the exploration of different techniques and ways of artistic expressiveness. Many American artists like Wilhelmina Weber, Man Ray, Patrick Henry Bruce, Gerald Murphy and others went to Europe, notably Paris, to make art. The formation of various artistic assemblies led to the multiplicity of meaning in the visual arts. The Ashcan School gathered around realism (Robert Henri or George Luks); the Stieglitz circle glorified abstract visions of New York City (Max Weber, Abraham Walkowitz); color painters evolved in direction of the colorful, abstract "synchromies" (Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell), whereas precisionism visualized the industrialized landscape of America in the form of sharp and dynamic geometrization (Joseph Stella, Charles Sheeler, Morton Livingston Schamberg, Charles Rosen, and Charles Demuth). Eventually artists like Charles Burchfield, Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe who was thought of as the mother of American Modernism, John Marin, Arthur Beecher Carles, Alfred Henry Maurer, Andrew Dasburg, James Daugherty, John Covert, Henrietta Shore, William Zorach, Marguerite Thompson (Zorach), Manierre Dawson, Arnold Friedman and Oscar Bluemner ushered in the era of Modernism to the New York School. The shift of focus and multiplicity of subjects in the visual arts is also a hallmark of American modernist art. Thus, for example, the group The Eight brought the focus on the modern city, and placed emphasis on the diversity of different classes of citizens. Two of the most significant representatives of The Eight, Robert Henri and John Sloan made paintings about social diversity, often taking as a main subject the slum dwellers of industrialized cities. The late 1920s and the 1930s belonged (among many others) to two movements in American painting, Regionalism and Social Realism. The regionalists focused on the colorfulness of the American landscape and the complexities of country life, whereas the social realists went into the subjects of the Great Depression, poverty, and social injustice. The social realists protested against the government and the establishment that appeared hypocritical, biased, and indifferent to the matters of human inequalities. Abstraction, landscape and music were popular modernist themes during the first half of the 20th century. Artists like Charles Demuth who created his masterpiece I Saw The Figure Five in Gold in 1928, Morton Schamberg (1881–1918) and Charles Sheeler were closely related to the Precisionist movement as well. Sheeler typically painted cityscapes and industrial architecture as exemplified by his painting Amoskeag Canal 1948. Jazz and music were improvisationally represented by Stuart Davis, as exemplified by Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors – 7th Avenue Style, from 1940. Modernism bridged the gap between the art and a socially diverse audience in the United States. A growing number of museums and galleries aimed at bringing modernity to the general public. Despite initial resistance to the celebration of progress, technology, and urban life, the visual arts contributed enormously to the self-consciousness and awareness of the American people. New modernist painting shined a light on the emotional and psychic states of the audience, which was fundamental to the formation of an American identity. Numerous directions of American "modernism" did not result in one coherent style. Main schools and movements of American modernism the Stieglitz group the Arensberg circle color painters Precisionism the Independents the Philadelphia school New York independents Chicago and westward Modernist painting Georgia O'Keeffe, known as the "Mother of American modernism", has been a major figure in American Modernism since the 1920s. She has received widespread recognition, for challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She is chiefly known for paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes in which she synthesized abstraction and representation. Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills, from 1935 is a well known painting by O'Keeffe. Arthur Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes. Me and the Moon from 1937 is a good example of an Arthur Dove abstract landscape and has been referred to as one of the culminating works of his career. Dove did a series of experimental collage works in the 1920s. He also experimented with techniques, combining paints like hand mixed oil or tempera over a wax emulsion. African-American painter Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) is one of the best-known and most influential African-American modernist painters. His works contributed strongly to the development of an aesthetic movement that is closely related to distinct features of African-American heritage and culture. Douglas influenced African-American visual arts especially during the Harlem Renaissance. One of Douglas' most popular paintings is The Crucifixion. It was published in James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones in 1927. The crucifixion scene that is depicted in the painting shows several elements that constitute Douglas' art: clear-cut delineation, change of shadows and light, stylized human bodies and geometric figures as concentric circles in contrast to linear forms. The painting's theme resembles not only the biblical scene but can also be seen as an allusion to African-American religious tradition: the oversized, dark Jesus is bearing his cross, his eyes directed to heaven from which light is cast down onto his followers. Stylized Roman soldiers are flanking the scene with their pointed spears. As a result, the observer is reminded for instance of the African-American gospel tradition but also of a history of suppression. Beauford Delaney, Charles Alston, Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden were also important African-American Modernist painters that inspired generations of artists that followed them. Modernist photography At the beginning of American modernism, photography still struggled to be recognized as a form of art. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz described it as: "Artists who saw my earlier photographs began to tell me that they envied me; that they felt my photographs were superior to their paintings, but that, unfortunately, photography was not an art. I could not understand why the artists should envy me for my work, yet, in the same breath, decry it because it was machine-made." (Stieglitz:8). In 1902, Stieglitz founded the Photo-Secession group with members such as Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier and Clarence Hudson White, which had the objective of raising the standard and increasing the awareness of art photography. At that point, their main style was pictorialist, which was known for modifying photos through soft focus, special filters or exotic printing processes, to imitate the style of paintings and etchings of that time. For means of publication, Stieglitz, as the driving force of the movement, started the magazine Camera Work, in which he published artists he felt represented the movement. He also ran three galleries one after another, namely "291" (1905–1917), "The Intimate Gallery" (1925–1929) and "An American Place" (1929–1947). Especially 291 served as a meeting point for artists and writers and was the first to exhibit the early modernist art works of European artists, such as Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso, in the United States. A further link to the European avant-garde was established by Man Ray. Born in America and inspired by the work he saw in Stieglitz' galleries, Ray emigrated to Paris in 1921 and together with artists of the European Dada and Surrealist movements created new photographic techniques such as rayographs (placing objects directly on photosensitive paper). In the early 1920s, photographers moved towards what they called straight photography. In contrast to the pictorialist style, they now rejected any kind of manipulation in the photographic process (e.g., soft lens, special developing or printing methods) and tried to use the advantages of the camera as a unique medium for capturing reality. Their motifs were supposed to look as objective as possible. Turning the focus away from classic portraiture and the pictorialist style, the photographers started using their pictures as means for representing the harsh realities of everyday life, but at the same time tried to search for the beauty in the detail or the overall aesthetical structure. Machines and factory work, sky scrapers and technical innovations became prominent motifs. In 1932 some younger photographers (e.g. Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston) started Group f/64 based on the ideals of straight photography, which became the most progressive association of its time. American modernist literature American modernist literature was a dominant trend in American literature between World War I and World War II. The modernist era highlighted innovation in the form and language of poetry and prose, as well as addressing numerous contemporary topics, such as race relations, gender and the human condition. Many American modernists became expatriated in Europe during this time, often becoming stalwarts in the European movement, as was the case for T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. These writers were often known as the Lost Generation. As a reaction to this trend, many American authors and poets began a trend of 'nativism', seeking to represent the modern American experience in America. Notable contributors to this trend include William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. These poets were often critical of the works of expatriate writers such as Eliot and Pound, as evidenced by poems like Spring and All. Influenced by the first World War, many American modernist writers explored the psychological wounds and spiritual scars of the war experience. The economic crisis in America at the beginning of the 1930s also left a mark on literature, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. A related issue is the loss of self and need for self-definition, as workers faded into the background of city life, unnoticed cogs within a machine yearning for self-definition. American modernists echoed the mid-19th-century focus on the attempt to "build a self"—a theme illustrated by Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Madness and its manifestations seems to be another favorite modernist theme, as seen in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, Hemingway's The Battler and Faulkner's That Evening Sun. Nevertheless, all these negative aspects led to new hopes and aspirations, and to the search for a new beginning, not only for the contemporary individuals, but also for the fictional characters in American modernist literature. Modernist literature also allowed for the development of regional trends within American literature, including the Harlem Renaissance and southern modernism. The Harlem Renaissance marked a rebirth for African American arts, centralized in the Harlem area of New York. Writers and thinkers such as Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were among the key figures of the movement. The movement was connected to a vogue for African American culture, as seen too in the popularity of Jazz music, with many writers financed by white patrons. Many writers of this movement used modernist techniques to represent African American life, for instance incorporating the rhythms of Jazz music and dialects of African American culture into poetry and prose. Southern modernism similarly represented the life and unique experiences of the South using modernist aesthetics, with celebrated figures including William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. The new criticism in America From the 1930s to the 1960s, New Criticism became a critical force in the United States. It was the most powerful perspective in American literary criticism. The representatives were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren. "The influential critical methods these poet-professors developed emphasized the sharpening of close reading skills. New Criticism privileged the evaluation of poetry as the justification of literary scholarship". Brooks and Warren's Understanding Poetry (1938) became one of the most influential college poetry textbooks of the 1930s and was revised and reprinted well into the 1970s. (Morrisson: 29). New criticism showed itself in such works as Eliot's and Yeats' poems. "Poetry that best fit the aesthetic criteria of the New Critics was emphasized in important classroom teaching anthologies" (Morrisson: 29). T. S. Eliot redefined tradition in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". He formulated such critical concepts as "objective correlative", and rethought the literary canon in his elevation of Jacobean drama and metaphysical poetry. His work had a fundamental influence on New Criticism in America. Architecture and space The United States played a great role in the modernism movement concerning new advanced building and construction technologies. Among construction innovations there are such materials as iron, steel and reinforced concrete. Brooklyn Bridge by John and Washington Roebling (1869–1883) (for more details see John Roebling/Washington Roebling) Louis Henry Sullivan headed the so-called Chicago school of architecture, which was distinct by its development of functional design along with modern materials. Sullivan's follower Frank Lloyd Wright absorbed from his 'lieber Master' (dear master) the German romantic tradition of organic architecture. He developed a new and original approach to residential design before World War I, which became known as the "prairie style." It combined open planning principles with horizontal emphasis, asymmetrical facade elevations, and broad, sheltering roofs. Robie House in Chicago (1909) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (1946–59) are two of his seminal works. In his works Wright moved closer and closer to an earth-bound sense of natural form, using rough-hewn stone and timber and aiming always in his houses to achieve an effect of intimate and protective shelter. Foreign-born architects as Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, and William Lescaze during the 1920s played a great role in development of American architecture performing later a style, which got the name of international style and was reflected in the design of corporate office buildings after World War II. Such buildings as Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's Lever House (1952) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building (1956–58) in New York City are the examples of this new style. When such famous Europeans as Walter Gropius and Mies immigrated to the United States, many American architectural schools went under the influence of the traditions of the Bauhaus in Germany. See also American Modern American realism Beat Generation Mid-Century modern Visual arts of the United States Modernist film References External links American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a fully digitized 3 volume exhibition catalog American modernist painters discussed in Conversations from Penn State interview Modernism American art movements American music history Cultural history of the United States Modern art . 20th century in art 20th century in the United States . 1910s in the United States 1920s in the United States 1930s in the United States 1940s in the United States 1910s in art 1920s in art 1930s in art 1940s in art

Culture change

Culture change is a term used in public policy making and in workplaces that emphasizes the influence of cultural capital on individual and community behavior. It has been sometimes called repositioning of culture, which means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. It places stress on the social and cultural capital determinants of decision making and the manner in which these interact with other factors like the availability of information or the financial incentives facing individuals to drive behavior. These cultural capital influences include the role of parenting, families and close associates; organizations such as schools and workplaces; communities and neighborhoods; and wider social influences such as the media. It is argued that this cultural capital manifests into specific values, attitudes or social norms which in turn guide the behavioral intentions that individuals adopt in regard to particular decisions or courses of action. These behavioral intentions interact with other factors driving behavior such as financial incentives, regulation and legislation, or levels of information, to drive actual behavior and ultimately feed back into underlying cultural capital. In general, cultural stereotypes present great resistance to change and to their own redefinition. Culture, often appears fixed to the observer at any one point in time because cultural mutations occur incrementally. Cultural change is a long-term process. Policymakers need to make a great effort to improve some basics aspects of a society's cultural traits. Culture Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution, renovation, reconception, reform, innovation, revivalism, revolution, mutation, progress, diffusion, osmosis, borrowing, eclecticism, syncretism, modernization, nudging indigenization, and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and the notion of progress. Rein Raud, building on the work of Umberto Eco, Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander, has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question. Cultural invention Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change. (See structuration.) Social conflict Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics. Diffusion Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing," on the other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. Acculturation Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation. The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Achieving culture change The term is used by Knott et al. of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in their 2008 publication Achieving Culture Change: A Policy Framework. The paper sets out how public policy can achieve social and cultural change through 'downstream' interventions including fiscal incentives, legislation, regulation and information provision and also 'upstream' interventions such as parenting, peer and mentoring programs, or development of social and community networks. The key concepts the paper is based on include: Cultural capital - such as the attitudes, values, aspirations and sense of self-efficacy which influence behavior. Cultural capital is itself influenced by behavior over time The shifting social zeitgeist - whereby social norms and values that predominate within the cultural capital in society evolve in over time The process by which political narrative and new ideas and innovations shift the social zeitgeist over time within the constraint of the 'elastic band' of public opinion The process of behavioral normalization - whereby behavior and actions pass through into social and cultural norms (for example, Knott et al. argue that the UK experience of seat belt enforcement established and reinforced this as a social norm) The use of customer insight The importance of tailoring policy programmes around an ecological model of human behavior to account for how policy will interact with cultural capital and affect it over time. Knott et al. use examples from a range of policy areas to demonstrate how the culture change framework can be applied to policymaking. for example: To encourage educational aspiration they recommend more use of early years and parenting interventions, an improved childhood offer, and development of positive narratives on education as well as integrated advisory systems, financial assistance and targeted social marketing approaches. To promote healthy living and personal responsibility they recommend building healthy living into community infrastructure, building partnerships with schools and employers, more one-to-one support for wellbeing alongside use of regulation and legislation on unhealthy products, provision of robust health information and health marketing to promote adaptive forms of behaviour. To develop environmentally sustainable norms they recommend reinforcing sustainability throughout policy narratives, using schools and the voluntary sector to promote environmental messages, development of infrastructure that make sustainable choices easy, together with a wider package of measures on fiscal incentives, regulation, advisory services and coalition movements. See also Behavioural economics Cultural economics Cultural geography Cultural psychology Social psychology Cultural capital Market failure Mediatization (media) Social change Sociocultural evolution Theory of planned behavior Cultural engineering document Notes References Groh, Arnold (2019). Theories of Culture. London: Routledge, . Knott, David; Muers, Stephen; Aldridge, Stephen (2008). GSR Behaviour Change Knowledge Review (2008). Reference Report: An overview of behaviour change models and their uses External links Baconbutty on Culture Change Cut crime with drink tax, Gordon Brown told, Daily Telegraph The naughty nation, New Statesman Winning Hearts and Minds Transformer une culture : un cadre d'action pour les politiques publiques (in French) Leading Teams on Culture Change Policy Change Social psychology Cultural geography Cultural economics

Cultural movement

A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This embodies all art forms, the sciences, and philosophies. Historically, different nations or regions of the world have gone through their own independent sequence of movements in culture; but as world communications have accelerated, this geographical distinction has become less distinct. When cultural movements go through revolutions from one to the next, genres tend to get attacked and mixed up, and often new genres are generated and old ones fade.: These changes are often reactions against the prior cultural form, which typically has grown stale and repetitive. An obsession emerges among the mainstream with the new movement, and the old one falls into neglect – sometimes it dies out entirely, but often it chugs along favored in a few disciplines and occasionally making reappearances (sometimes prefixed with "neo-"). There is continual argument over the precise definition of each of these periods as one historian might group them differently, or choose different names or descriptions. Even though in many cases the popular change from one to the next can be swift and sudden, the beginning and end of movements are somewhat subjective. This is because the movements did not spring out of the blue and into existence then come to an abrupt end and lose total support, as would be suggested by a date range. Thus use of the term "period" is somewhat deceptive. "Period" also suggests a linearity of development, whereas it has not been uncommon for two or more distinctive cultural approaches to be active at the same time. Historians will be able to find distinctive traces of a cultural movement before its accepted beginning, and there will always be new creations in old forms. So it can be more useful to think in terms of broad "movements" that have rough beginnings and endings. Yet for historical perspective, some rough date ranges will be provided for each to indicate the "height" or accepted time span of the movement. This current article covers Western, notably European and American cultural movements. They have, however, been paralleled by cultural movements in East Asia and elsewhere. In the late 20th and early 21st century in Thailand, for example, there has been a cultural shift away from Western social and political values and more toward Japanese and Chinese. As well, Thai culture has reinvigorated monarchical concepts to accommodate state shifts away from Western ideology regarding democracy and monarchies. Cultural movements Graeco-Roman The Greek culture marked a departure from the other Mediterranean cultures that preceded and surrounded it. The Romans adopted Greek and other styles, and spread the result throughout Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Together, Greek and Roman thought in philosophy, religion, science, history, and all forms of thought can be viewed as a central underpinning of Western culture, and is therefore termed the Classical Age by some. Others might divide it into the Hellenistic period and the Roman period, or might choose other finer divisions. See: Classical architecture — Classical sculpture — Greek architecture — Hellenistic architecture — Ionic — Doric — Corinthian — Stoicism — Cynicism — Epicurean — Roman architecture — Early Christian — Neoplatonism Romanesque (11th century & 12th centuries) A style (esp. architectural) similar in form and materials to Roman styles. Romanesque seems to be the first pan-European style since Roman Imperial Architecture and examples are found in every part of the continent. See: Romanesque architecture — Ottonian Art Gothic (mid 12th century until mid 15th century) See: Gothic architecture — Gregorian chant — Neoplatonism Nominalism Rejects Platonic realism as a requirement for thinking and speaking in general terms. Humanism (16th century) Renaissance The use of light, shadow, and perspective to more accurately represent life. Because of how fundamentally these ideas were felt to alter so much of life, some have referred to it as the "Golden Age". In reality it was less an "Age" and more of a movement in popular philosophy, science, and thought that spread over Europe (and probably other parts of the world), over time, and affected different aspects of culture at different points in time. Very roughly, the following periods can be taken as indicative of place/time foci of the Renaissance: Italian Renaissance 1450–1550. Spanish Renaissance 1550–1587. English Renaissance 1588–1629. Protestant Reformation The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation, was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli and other early Protestant Reformers in the 16th century Europe. Mannerism Anti-classicist movement that sought to emphasize the feeling of the artist himself. See: Mannerism/Art Baroque Emphasizes power and authority, characterized by intricate detail and without the "disturbing angst" of Mannerism. Essentially is exaggerated Classicism to promote and glorify the Church and State. Occupied with notions of infinity. See: Baroque art — Baroque music Rococo Neoclassical (17th–19th centuries) Severe, unemotional movement recalling Roman and Greek ("classical") style, reacting against the overbred Rococo style and the emotional Baroque style. It stimulated revival of classical thinking, and had especially profound effects on science and politics. It also had a direct influence on Academic Art in the 19th century. Beginning in the early 17th century with Cartesian thought (see René Descartes), this movement provided philosophical frameworks for the natural sciences, sought to determine the principles of knowledge by rejecting all things previously believed to be known about the world. In Renaissance Classicism attempts are made to recreate the classic art forms — tragedy, comedy, and farce. See also: Weimar Classicism Age of Enlightenment (1688–1789): Reason (rationalism) seen as the ideal. Romanticism (1770–1830) Began in Germany and spread to England and France as a reaction against Neoclassicism and against the Age of Enlightenment.. The notion of "folk genius", or an inborn and intuitive ability to do magnificent things, is a core principle of the Romantic movement. Nostalgia for the primitive past in preference to the scientifically minded present. Romantic heroes, exemplified by Napoleon, are popular. Fascination with the past leads to a resurrection of interest in the Gothic period. It did not really replace the Neoclassical movement so much as provide a counterbalance; many artists sought to join both styles in their works. See: Symbolism Realism (1830–1905) Ushered in by the Industrial Revolution and growing Nationalism in the world. Began in France. Attempts to portray the speech and mannerisms of everyday people in everyday life. Tends to focus on middle class social and domestic problems. Plays by Ibsen are an example. Naturalism evolved from Realism, following it briefly in art and more enduringly in theatre, film, and literature. Impressionism, based on 'scientific' knowledge and discoveries concerns observing nature and reality objectively. See: Post-Impressionism — Neo-impressionism — Pointillism — Pre-Raphaelite Art Nouveau (1880–1905) Decorative, symbolic art See: Transcendentalism Modernism (1880–1965) Also known as the Avant-garde movement. Originating in the 19th century with Symbolism, the Modernist movement composed itself of a wide range of 'isms' that ran in contrast to Realism and that sought out the underlying fundamentals of art and philosophy. The Jazz age and Hollywood emerge and have their hey-days. See: Fauvism — Cubism — Futurism — Suprematism — Dada — Constructivism — Surrealism — Expressionism — Existentialism — Op art — Art Deco — Bauhaus — Neo-Plasticism — Precisionism — Abstract expressionism — New Realism — Color field painting — Happening — Fluxus — Hard-edge painting — Pop art — Photorealism — Minimalism — Postminimalism — Lyrical abstraction — Situationism Postmodernism (since c.1965) A reaction to Modernism, in a way, Postmodernism largely discards the notion that artists should seek pure fundamentals, often questioning whether such fundamentals even exist – or suggestion that if they do exist, they may be irrelevant. It is exemplified by movements such as deconstructivism, conceptual art, etc. See: Postmodern philosophy — Postmodern music — Postmodern art Post-postmodernism (since c.1990) See also Art movement List of art movements Critical theory Cultural imperialism Cultural sensibility History of philosophy Postliterate society Periodization Social movement External links Alphabetical list of some movements, styles, discoveries and facts on the World History Timeline chart Culture Social movements

Cultural assimilation

Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assimilates the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially. The different types of cultural assimilation include full assimilation and forced assimilation. Full assimilation is the more prevalent of the two, as it occurs spontaneously. When used as a political ideology, assimilationism refers to governmental policies of deliberately assimilating ethnic groups into the national culture. During cultural assimilation, minority groups are expected to adapt to the everyday practices of the dominant culture through language and appearance as well as via more significant socioeconomic factors such as absorption into the local cultural and employment communities. Some types of cultural assimilation resemble acculturation in which a minority group or culture completely assimilates into the dominant culture in which defining characteristics of the minority culture are less obverse or outright disappear; while in other types of cultural assimilation such as cultural integration mostly found in multicultural communities, a minority group within a given society adopts aspects of the dominant culture through either cultural diffusion or for practical reason like adapting to another society's social norms while retaining their original culture. A conceptualization describes cultural assimilation as similar to acculturation while another merely considers the former as one of the latter's phases. Throughout history there have been different forms of cultural assimilation examples of types of acculturation include voluntary and involuntary assimilation. Assimilation could also involve the so-called additive acculturation wherein, instead of replacing the ancestral culture, an individual expands their existing cultural repertoire. Overview Cultural assimilation may involve either a quick or a gradual change depending on the circumstances of the group. Full assimilation occurs when members of a society become indistinguishable from those of the dominant group in society. Whether a given group should assimilate is often disputed by both members of the group and others in society. Cultural assimilation does not guarantee social alikeness. Geographical and other natural barriers between cultures, even if created by the predominant culture, may be culturally different. Cultural assimilation can happen either spontaneously or forcibly, the latter when more dominant cultures use various means aimed at forced assimilation. Various types of assimilation, including forced cultural assimilation, are particularly relevant regarding Indigenous groups during colonialism taking place between the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. This type of assimilation included religious conversion, separation of families, changes of gender roles, division of property among foreign power, elimination of local economies, and lack of sustainable food supply. Whether via colonialism or within one nation, methods of forced assimilation are often unsustainable, leading to revolts and collapses of power to maintain control over cultural norms. Often, cultures that are forced into different cultural practices through forced cultural assimilation revert to their native practices and religions that differ from the forced cultural values of other dominant powers. In addition throughout history, voluntary assimilation is often in response to pressure from a more predominant culture, and conformity is a solution for people to remain in safety. An example of voluntary cultural assimilation would be during the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews and Muslims accepted the Roman Catholic Church as their religion, but meanwhile, many people still privately practised their traditional religions. That type of assimilation is used to convince a dominant power that a culture has peacefully assimilated yet often voluntary assimilation does not mean the group fully conforms to the accepted cultural beliefs. The term "assimilation" is often used about not only indigenous groups but also immigrants settled in a new land. A new culture and new attitudes toward the original culture are obtained through contact and communication. Assimilation assumes that a relatively-tenuous culture gets to be united into one unified culture. That process happens through contact and accommodation between each culture. The current definition of assimilation is usually used to refer to immigrants, but in multiculturalism, cultural assimilation can happen all over the world and within varying social contexts and is not limited to specific areas. Immigrant assimilation Social scientists rely on four primary benchmarks to assess immigrant assimilation: socioeconomic status, geographic distribution, second language attainment, and intermarriage. William A.V. Clark defines immigrant assimilation in the United States as "a way of understanding the social dynamics of American society and that it is the process that occurs spontaneously and often unintended in the course of interaction between majority and minority groups." Studies have also noted the positive effects of immigrant assimilation. A study by Bleakley and Chin (2010) found that people who arrived in the US at or before the age of nine from non-English speaking countries tend to speak English at a similar level as those from English speaking countries. Conversely, those who arrived after nine from non–English speaking countries have much lower speaking proficiency and this increases linearly with age at arrival. The study also noted sociocultural impacts such as those with better English skills are less likely to be currently married, more likely to divorce, have fewer children, and have spouses closer to their age. Learning to speak English well is estimated to improve income by over 33 percent. A 2014 study done by Verkuyten found that immigrant children who adapt through integration or assimilation are received more positively by their peers than those who adapt through marginalization or separation. Perspective of dominant culture There has been little to no existing research or evidence that demonstrates whether and how immigrant's mobility gains—assimilating to a dominant country such as language ability, socioeconomic status etc.— causes changes in the perception of those who were born in the dominant country. This essential type of research provides information on how immigrants are accepted into dominant countries. In an article by Ariela Schachter, titled "From "different" to "similar": an experimental approach to understanding assimilation", a survey was taken of white American citizens to view their perception of immigrants who now resided in the United States. The survey indicated the whites tolerated immigrants in their home country. White natives are open to having "structural" relation with the immigrants-origin individuals, for instance, friends and neighbors; however, this was with the exception of black immigrants and natives and undocumented immigrants. However, at the same time, white Americans viewed all non-white Americans, regardless of legal status, as dissimilar. A similar journal by Jens Hainmueller and Daniel J. Hopkins titled "The Hidden American Immigration Consensus: A Conjoint Analysis of Attitudes toward Immigrants" confirmed similar attitudes towards immigrants. The researchers used an experiment to reach their goal which was to test nine theoretical relevant attributes of hypothetical immigrants. Asking a population-based sample of U.S. citizens to decide between pairs of immigrants applying for admission to the United States, the U.S. citizen would see an application with information for two immigrants including notes about their education status, country, origin, and other attributes. The results showed Americans viewed educated immigrants in high-status jobs favourably, whereas they view the following groups unfavourably: those who lack plans to work, those who entered without authorization, those who are not fluent in English and those of Iraqi descent. Adaptation to new country As the number of international students entering the US has increased, so has the number of international students in US colleges and universities. The adaptation of these newcomers is important in cross-cultural research. In the study "Cross-Cultural Adaptation of International College Student in the United States" by Yikang Wang, the goal was to examine how the psychological and socio-cultural adaptation of international college students varied over time. The survey contained a sample of 169 international students attending a coeducational public university. The two subtypes of adaptation: psychological and socio-cultural were examined. Psychological adaptation refers to "feelings of well-being or satisfaction during cross-cultural transitions;" while socio-cultural refers to the ability to fit into the new culture. The results for both graduate and undergraduate students show both satisfaction and socio-cultural skills changed over time. Psychological adaptation had the most significant change for a student who has resided in the US for at least 24 months while socio-cultural adaptation steadily increased over time. It can be concluded that eventually over time, the minority group will shed some of their culture's characteristic when in a new country and incorporate new culture qualities. Also, it was confirmed that more time spent in a new country would result in becoming more accustomed to the dominant countries' characteristics. Figure 2 demonstrates as the length of time resided in the United States increase—the dominant country, the life satisfaction and socio-cultural skill increase as well—positive correlation. In turn, research by Caligiuri's group, published in 2020, shows that one semester of classroom experiential activities designed to foster international and domestic student social interaction serve to foster international students’ sense of belonging and social support. In a study by Viola Angelini, "Life Satisfaction of Immigrant: Does cultural assimilation matter?", the theory of assimilation as having benefits for well-being. The goal of this study was to assess the difference between cultural assimilation and the subjective well-being of immigrants. The journal included a study that examined a "direct measure of assimilation with a host culture and immigrants' subjective well-being." Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, it was concluded that there was a positive correlation between cultural assimilation and an immigrant's life's satisfaction/wellbeing even after discarding factors such as employment status, wages, etc. "Life Satisfaction of Immigrant: Does cultural assimilation matter?" also confirms "association with life satisfaction is stronger for established immigrants than for recent ones." It was found that the more immigrants that identified with the German culture and who spoke the fluent national language—dominant country language, the more they reported to be satisfied with their lives. Life satisfaction rates were higher for those who had assimilated to the dominant country than those who had not assimilated since those who did incorporate the dominant language, religion, psychological aspects, etc. Willingness to assimilate and cultural shock In the study "Examination of cultural shock, intercultural sensitivity and willingness to adopt" by Clare D’Souza, the study uses a diary method to analyze the data collected. The study involved students undergoing a study abroad tour. The results show negative intercultural sensitivity is much greater in participants who experience "culture shock." Those who experience culture shock have emotional expression and responses of hostility, anger, negativity, anxiety frustration, isolation, and regression. Also, for one who has traveled to the country before permanently moving, they would have predetermined beliefs about the culture and their status within the country. The emotional expression for this individual includes excitement, happiness, eagerness, and euphoria. Another article titled "International Students from Melbourne Describing Their Cross-Cultural Transitions Experiences: Culture Shock, Social Interaction, and Friendship Development" by Nish Belford focuses on cultural shock. Belford interviewed international students to explore their experience after living and studying in Melbourne, Australia. The data collected were narratives from the students that focused on variables such as "cultural similarity, intercultural communication competence, intercultural friendship, and relational identity to influence their experiences." United States Between 1880 and 1920, the United States took in roughly 24 million immigrants. This increase in immigration can be attributed to many historical changes. The beginning of the 21st century has also marked a massive era of immigration, and sociologists are once again trying to make sense of the impacts that immigration has on society and on the immigrants themselves. Assimilation had various meanings in American sociology. Henry Pratt Fairchild associates American assimilation with Americanization or the "melting pot" theory. Some scholars also believed that assimilation and acculturation were synonymous. According to a common point of view, assimilation is a "process of interpretation and fusion" from another group or person. That may include memories, behaviors, and sentiments. By sharing their experiences and histories, they blend into the common cultural life. A related theory is structural pluralism proposed by American sociologist Milton Gordon. It describes the American situation wherein despite the cultural assimilation of ethnic groups to mainstream American society, they maintained structural separation. Gordon maintained that there is limited integration of the immigrants into American social institutions such as educational, occupational, political, and social cliques. During The Colonial Period from 1607 to 1776, individuals immigrated to the British colonies on two very different paths—voluntary and forced migration. Those who migrated to the colonies on their own volition were drawn by the allure of cheap land, high wages, and the freedom of conscience in British North America. On the latter half, the largest population of forced migrants to the colonies was African slaves. Slavery was different from the other forced migrations as, unlike in the case of convicts, there was no possibility of earning freedom, although some slaves were manumitted in the centuries before the American Civil War. The long history of immigration in the established gateways means that the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies in the traditional gateways is more structured or established, but on the other hand, the new gateways do not have much immigration history and so the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies are less defined, and immigrants may have more influence to define their position. Secondly, the size of the new gateways may influence immigrant assimilation. Having a smaller gateway may influence the level of racial segregation among immigrants and native-born people. Thirdly, the difference in institutional arrangements may influence immigrant assimilation. Traditional gateways, unlike new gateways, have many institutions set up to help immigrants such as legal aid, bureaus, and social organizations. Finally, Waters and Jimenez have only speculated that those differences may influence immigrant assimilation and the way researchers that should assess immigrant assimilation. Furthermore, the advancement and integration of immigrants into the United States has accounted for 29% of U.S. population growth since 2000. Recent arrival of immigrants to the United States has been examined closely over the last two decades. The results show the driving factors for immigration including citizenship, homeownership, English language proficiency, job status, and earning a better income. Canada Canada's multicultural history dates back to the period European colonization from the 16th to 19th centuries, with waves of ethnic European emigration to the region. In the 20th century, Indian, Chinese and Japanese were the largest immigrant groups. 20th century–present: Shift from assimilation to integration Canada remains one of the largest immigrant populations in the world. The 2016 census recorded 7.5 million documented immigrants, representing a fifth of the country's total population. Focus has shifted from a rhetoric of cultural assimilation to cultural integration. In contrast to assimilationism, integration aims to preserve the roots of a minority society while still allowing for smooth coexistence with the dominant culture. Indigenous assimilation Australia Legislation applying the policy of "protection" over Aboriginal Australians (separating them from white society) was adopted in some states and territories of Australia when they were still colonies, before the federation of Australia: in the Victoria in 1867, Western Australia in 1886, and Queensland in 1897. After federation, New South Wales crafted their policy in 1909, South Australia and the Northern Territory (which was under the control and of South Australia at the time) in 1910–11. Mission stations missions and Government-run Aboriginal reserves were created, and Aboriginal people moved onto them. Legislation restricted their movement, prohibited alcohol use and regulated employment. The policies were reinforced in the first half of the 20th century (when it was realized that Aboriginal people would not die out or be fully absorbed in white society) such as in the provisions of the Welfare Ordinance 1953, in which Aboriginal people were made wards of the state. "Part-Aboriginal" (known as half-caste) children were forcibly removed from their parents in order to educate them in European ways; the girls were often trained to be domestic servants. The protectionist policies were discontinued, and assimilationist policies took over. These proposed that "full-blood" Indigenous Australians should be allowed to “die out”, while "half-castes" were encouraged to assimilate into the white community. Indigenous people were regarded as inferior to white people by these policies, and often experienced discrimination in the predominantly white towns after having to move to seek work. Between 1910 and 1970, several generations of Indigenous children were removed from their parents, and have become known as the Stolen Generations. The policy has done lasting damage to individuals, family and Indigenous culture. At the 1961 Native Welfare Conference in Canberra, Australian federal and state government ministers formulated an official definition of "assimilation" of Indigenous Australians for government contexts. Federal territories minister Paul Hasluck informed the House of Representatives in April 1961 that: The policy of assimilation means in the view of all Australian governments that all aborigines and part-aborigines are expected eventually to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, hopes and loyalties as other Australians. Thus, any special measures taken for aborigines and part-aborigines are regarded as temporary measures not based on colour but intended to meet their need for special care and assistance to protect them from any ill effects of sudden change and to assist them to make the transition from one stage to another in such a way as will be favourable to their future social, economic and political advancement. Brazil In January 2019, the newly elected Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro stripped the Indigenous Affairs Agency FUNAI of the responsibility to identify and demarcate Indigenous lands. He argued that those territories have very tiny isolated populations and proposed to integrate them into the larger Brazilian society. According to the Survival International, "Taking responsibility for Indigenous land demarcation away from FUNAI, the Indian affairs department, and giving it to the Agriculture Ministry is virtually a declaration of open warfare against Brazil’s tribal peoples." Canada 1800s–1990s: Forced assimilation During the 19th and 20th centuries, and continuing until 1996, when the last Canadian Indian residential school was closed, the Canadian government, aided by Christian Churches began an assimilationist campaign to forcibly assimilate Indigenous peoples in Canada. The government consolidated power over Indigenous land through treaties and the use of force, eventually isolating most Indigenous peoples to reserves. Marriage practices and spiritual ceremonies were banned, and spiritual leaders were imprisoned. Additionally, the Canadian government instituted an extensive residential school system to assimilate children. Indigenous children were separated from their families and no longer permitted to express their culture at these new schools. They were not allowed to speak their language or practice their own traditions without receiving punishment. There were many cases of violence and sexual abuse committed by the Christian church. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded that this effort amounted to cultural genocide. The schools actively worked to alienate children from their cultural roots. Students were prohibited from speaking their native languages, were regularly abused, and were arranged marriages by the government after their graduation. The explicit goal of the Canadian government, through the Catholic and Anglican churches, was to completely assimilate Indigenous peoples into broader Canadian society and destroy all traces of their native history. Croatia and Transylvania During Croatia’s personal union with Hungary, ethnic Croatians were pressured to abandon their traditional customs in favor of adopting elements of Hungarian culture, such as Catholicism and the Latin alphabet. Because of this, elements of Hungarian culture were considered part of Croatian culture, and can still be seen in modern Croatian culture. Throughout the Kingdom of Hungary, many citizens, primarily those who belonged to minority groups, were forced to convert to Catholicism. The forced conversion policy was harshest in Croatia and Transylvania, where civilians could be sent to prison for refusing to convert. Romanian cultural anthropologist Ioan Lupaș claims that between 1002, when Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Hungary, to 1300, approximately 200,000 non-Hungarians living in Transylvania were jailed for resisting Catholic conversion, and about 50,000 of them died in prison. Mexico and Peru A major contributor to cultural assimilation in South America began during exploration and colonialism that often is thought by Bartolomé de Las Casas to begin in 1492 when Europeans began to explore the Atlantic in search of "the Indies", leading to the discovery of the Americas. Europe remained dominant over the Americas' Indigenous populations as resources such as labor, natural resources i.e. lumber, copper, gold, silver, and agricultural products flooded into Europe, yet these gains were one-sided, as Indigenous groups did not benefit from trade deals with colonial powers. In addition to this, colonial metropoles such as Portugal and Spain required that colonies in South America assimilate to European customs – such as following the Holy Roman Catholic Church, acceptance of Spanish or Portuguese over Indigenous languages and accepting European-style government. Through forceful assimilationist policies, colonial powers such as Spain used methods of violence to assert cultural dominance over Indigenous populations. One example occurred in 1519 when the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés reached Tenochtitlán – the original capital of the Aztec Empire in Mexico. After discovering that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, Cortés killed high-ranked Aztecs and held Moctezuma II, the Aztec ruler, captive. Shortly after, Cortés began creating alliances to resume power in Tenochtitlán and renamed it Mexico City. Without taking away power through murder and spread of infectious diseases the Spanish conquistadores (relatively small in number) would not have been able to take over Mexico and convert many people to Catholicism and slavery. While Spaniards influenced linguistic and religious cultural assimilation among Indigenous peoples in South America during colonialism, many Indigenous languages such as the Incan language Quechua are still used in places such as Peru to this day by at least 4 million people. New Zealand In the course of the colonization of New Zealand from the late-18th century onwards, assimilation of the indigenous Maori population to the culture of incoming European visitors and settlers at first occurred spontaneously. Genetic assimilation commenced early and continued – the 1961 New Zealand census classified only 62.2% of Māori as "full-blood Maoris". (Compare Pākehā Māori.) Linguistic assimilation also occurred early and ongoingly: European settler populations adopted and adapted Māori words, while European languages affected Māori vocabulary (and possibly phonology). In the 19th century colonial governments de facto encouraged assimilationist policies; by the late-20th century, policies favored bicultural development. Māori readily and early adopted some aspects of European-borne material culture (metals, muskets, potatoes relatively rapidly. Imported ideas – such as writing, Christianity, monarchy, sectarianism, everyday European-style clothing, or disapproval of slavery – spread more slowly. Later developments (socialism, anti-colonialist theory, New Age ideas) have proven more internationally mobile. One long-standing view presents Māori communalism as unassimilated with European-style individualism. See also Acculturation Code-switching Conformity Cultural agility Cultural amalgamation Cultural appropriation Cultural genocide Cultural imperialism Deindividuation Diaspora politics Durham Report Enculturation Ethnic interest group Ethnic relations Ethnocide Forced assimilation Forced conversion Globalization Hegemony Immigrant-host model Immigration and crime Indigenization Intercultural communication Intercultural competence Language death Language shift Leitkultur Melting Pot Nationalism Parallel society Patriotism Political correctness Racial integration Racial segregation Recuperation (politics) Religious assimilation Respectability politics Social integration Sociology of race and ethnic relations Sovietization Culture-specific: Americanization (of Native Americans) Anglicisation Arabization Stolen Generations (of Australian Aborigines) Christianization Croatisation Francization Germanization Hispanicization "More Irish than the Irish themselves" Indianisation Islamification Italianization Japanization Javanisation Jewish assimilation Lithuanization Magyarization Malayisation Norwegianization Polonization Russification Romanianization Romanization Sanskritisation Serbianisation Sinicization Slavicisation Slovakization Swedification Ukrainization Thaification Turkification Vietnamization (cultural) References Bibliography External links Asian-Nation: Asian American Assimilation & Ethnic Identity From Paris to Cairo: Resistance of the Unacculturated Unity and Diversity in Multicultural Societies Assimilation Ethnicity in politics Majority–minority relations

Fad

A fad, trend, or craze is any form of collective behavior that develops within a culture, a generation or social group in which a group of people enthusiastically follow an impulse for a short time period. Fads are objects or behaviors that achieve short-lived popularity but fade away. Fads are often seen as sudden, quick-spreading, and short-lived events. Fads include diets, clothing, hairstyles, toys, and more. Some popular fads throughout history are toys such as yo-yos, hula hoops, and fad dances such as the Macarena, floss and the twist. Similar to habits or customs but less durable, fads often result from an activity or behavior being perceived as popular or exciting within a peer group, or being deemed "cool" as often promoted by social networks. A fad is said to "catch on" when the number of people adopting it begins to increase to the point of being noteworthy or going viral. Fads often fade quickly when the perception of novelty is gone. Overview The specific nature of the behavior associated with a fad can be of any type including unusual language usage, distinctive clothing, fad diets or frauds such as pyramid schemes. Apart from general novelty, mass marketing, emotional blackmail, peer pressure, or the desire to conformity may drive fads. Popular celebrities can also drive fads, for example the highly popularizing effect of Oprah's Book Club. Though some consider the term trend equivalent to fad, a fad is generally considered a quick and short behavior whereas a trend is one that evolves into a long term or even permanent change. Economics In economics, the term is used in a similar way. Fads are mean-reverting deviations from intrinsic value caused by social or psychological forces similar to those that cause fashions in political philosophies or consumerisation. Formation Many contemporary fads share similar patterns of social organization. Several different models serve to examine fads and how they spread. One way of looking at the spread of fads is through the top-down model, which argues that fashion is created for the elite, and from the elite, fashion spreads to lower classes. Early adopters might not necessarily be those of a high status, but they have sufficient resources that allow them to experiment with new innovations. When looking at the top-down model, sociologists like to highlight the role of selection. The elite might be the ones that introduce certain fads, but other people must choose to adopt those fads. Others may argue that not all fads begin with their adopters. Social life already provides people with ideas that can help create a basis for new and innovative fads. Companies can look at what people are already interested in and create something from that information. The ideas behind fads are not always original; they might stem from what is already popular at the time. Recreation and style faddists may try out variations of a basic pattern or idea already in existence. Another way of looking at the spread of fads is through a symbolic interaction view. People learn their behaviors from the people around them. When it comes to collective behavior, the emergence of these shared rules, meanings, and emotions are more dependent on the cues of the situation, rather than physiological arousal. This connection to symbolic interactionism, a theory that explains people's actions as being directed by shared meanings and assumptions, explains that fads are spread because people attach meaning and emotion to objects, and not because the object has practical use, for instance. People might adopt a fad because of the meanings and assumptions they share with the other people who have adopted that fad. People may join other adopters of the fad because they enjoy being a part of a group and what that symbolizes. Some people may join because they want to feel like an insider. When multiple people adopt the same fad, they may feel like they have made the right choice because other people have made that same choice. Termination Primarily, fads end because all innovative possibilities have been exhausted. Fads begin to fade when people no longer see them as new and unique. As more people follow the fad, some might start to see it as "overcrowded", and it no longer holds the same appeal. Many times, those who first adopt the fad also abandon it first. They begin to recognize that their preoccupation with the fad leads them to neglect some of their routine activities, and they realize the negative aspects of their behavior. Once the faddists are no longer producing new variations of the fad, people begin to realize their neglect of other activities, and the dangers of the fad. Not everyone completely abandons the fad, however, and parts may remain. A study examined why certain fads die out quicker than others. A marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Jonah Berger and his colleague, Gael Le Mens, studied baby names in the United States and France to help explore the termination of fads. According to their results, the faster the names became popular, the faster they lost their popularity. They also found that the least successful names overall were those that caught on most quickly. Fads, like baby names, often lose their appeal just as quickly as they gained it. Collective behavior Fads can fit under the broad umbrella of collective behavior, which are behaviors engaged in by a large but loosely connected group of people. Other than fads, collective behavior includes the activities of people in crowds, panics, fashions, crazes, and more. Robert E. Park, the man who created the term collective behavior, defined it as "the behavior of individuals under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction". Fads are seen as impulsive, driven by emotions; however, they can bring together groups of people who may not have much in common other than their investment in the fad. Collective obsession Fads can also fit under the umbrella of "collective obsessions". Collective obsessions have three main features in common. The first, and most obvious sign, is an increase in frequency and intensity of a specific belief or behavior. A fad's popularity increases quickly in frequency and intensity, whereas a trend grows more slowly. The second is that the behavior is seen as ridiculous, irrational, or evil to the people who are not a part of the obsession. Some people might see those who follow certain fads as unreasonable and irrational. To these people, the fad is ridiculous, and people's obsession of it is just as ridiculous. The third is, after it has reached a peak, it drops off abruptly and then it is followed by a counter obsession. A counter obsession means that once the fad is over, if one engages in the fad they will be ridiculed. A fad's popularity often decreases at a rapid rate once its novelty wears off. Some people might start to criticize the fad after pointing out that it is no longer popular, so it must not have been "worth the hype". See also Bandwagon effect :Category:Fads (notable fads through history) Coolhunting Crowd psychology Google Trends Hype List of Internet phenomena Market trend Memetics Peer pressure Retro style Social contagion Social mania Viral phenomenon 15 minutes of fame Bellwether (1996 novel) Notes References Best, Joel (2006). Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads. University of California Press. . Burke, Sarah. "5 Marketing Strategies, 1 Question: Fad or Trend?". Spokal. Conley, Dalton (2015). You may ask yourself: An introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. . (review/summary) Griffith, Benjamin (2013). "College Fads". St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture – via Gale Virtual Reference Library. Heussner, Ki Mae. "7 Fads You Won't Forget". ABC News. Killian, Lewis M.; Smelser, Neil J.; Turner, Ralph H. "Collective behavior". Encyclopædia Britannica. External links Popular culture Crowd psychology Types of IoT Security Devices

Enculturation

Enculturation is the process by which people learn the dynamics of their surrounding culture and acquire values and norms appropriate or necessary to that culture and its worldviews. Definition and history of research The term enculturation was used first by sociologist of science Harry Collins to describe one of the models whereby scientific knowledge is communicated among scientists, and is contrasted with the 'algorithmic' mode of communication. The ingredients discussed by Collins for enculturation are Learning by Immersion: whereby aspiring scientists learn by engaging in the daily activities of the laboratory, interacting with other scientists, and participating in experiments and discussions. Tacit Knowledge: highlighting the importance of tacit knowledge—knowledge that is not easily codified or written down but is acquired through experience and practice. Socialization: where individuals learn the social norms, values, and behaviours expected within the scientific community. Language and Discourse: Scientists must become fluent in the terminology, theoretical frameworks, and modes of argumentation specific to their discipline. Community Membership: recognition of the individual as a legitimate member of the scientific community. The problem tackled in the article of Harry Collins was the early experiments for the detection of gravitational waves. Enculturation is mostly studied in sociology and anthropology. The influences that limit, direct, or shape the individual (whether deliberately or not) include parents, other adults, and peers. If successful, enculturation results in competence in the language, values, and rituals of the culture. Growing up, everyone goes through their own version of enculturation. Enculturation helps form an individual into an acceptable citizen. Culture impacts everything that an individual does, regardless of whether they know about it. Enculturation is a deep-rooted process that binds together individuals. Even as a culture undergoes changes, elements such as central convictions, values, perspectives, and young raising practices remain similar. Enculturation paves way for tolerance which is highly needed for peaceful co-habitance. The process of enculturation, most commonly discussed in the field of anthropology, is closely related to socialization, a concept central to the field of sociology. Both roughly describe the adaptation of an individual into social groups by absorbing the ideas, beliefs and practices surrounding them. In some disciplines, socialization refers to the deliberate shaping of the individual. As such, the term may cover both deliberate and informal enculturation. The process of learning and absorbing culture need not be social, direct or conscious. Cultural transmission can occur in various forms, though the most common social methods include observing other individuals, being taught or being instructed. Less obvious mechanisms include learning one's culture from the media, the information environment and various social technologies, which can lead to cultural transmission and adaptation across societies. A good example of this is the diffusion of hip-hop culture into states and communities beyond its American origins. Enculturation has often been studied in the context of non-immigrant African Americans. Conrad Phillip Kottak (in Window on Humanity) writes: Enculturation is referred to as acculturation in some academic literature. However, more recent literature has signalled a difference in meaning between the two. Whereas enculturation describes the process of learning one's own culture, acculturation denotes learning a different culture, for example, that of a host. The latter can be linked to ideas of a culture shock, which describes an emotionally-jarring disconnect between one's old and new culture cues. Famously, the sociologist Talcott Parsons once described children as "barbarians" of a sort, since they are fundamentally uncultured. How enculturation occurs When minorities come into the U.S., these people might fully associate with their racial legacy prior to taking part in processing enculturation. Enculturation can happen in several ways. Direct education implies that your family, instructors, or different individuals from the general public unequivocally show you certain convictions, esteems, or anticipated standards of conduct. Parents may play a vital role in teaching their children standard behavior for their culture, including table manners and some aspects of polite social interactions. Strict familial and societal teaching, which often uses different forms of positive and negative reinforcement to shape behavior, can lead a person to adhere closely to their religious convictions and customs. Schools also provide a formal setting to learn national values, such as honoring a country's flag, national anthem, and other significant patriotic symbols. Participatory learning occurs as individuals take an active role of interacting with their environment and culture. Through their own engagement in meaningful activities, they learn socio-cultural norms for their area and may adopt related qualities and values. For example, if your school organizes an outing to gather trash at a public park, this action assists with ingraining the upsides of regard for nature and ecological protection. Strict customs frequently stress participatory learning - for example, kids who take part in the singing of psalms during Christmas will assimilate the qualities and practices of the occasion. Observational learning is when knowledge is gained essentially by noticing and emulating others. As much as an individual related to a model accepts that emulating the model will prompt good results and feels that one is fit for mimicking the way of behaving, learning can happen with no unequivocal instruction. For example, a youngster who is sufficiently fortunate to be brought into the world by guardians in a caring relationship will figure out how to be tender and mindful in their future connections. See also Civil society Dual inheritance theory Education Educational anthropology Ethnocentrism Indoctrination Intercultural competence Mores Norm (philosophy) Norm (sociology) Peer pressure Transculturation References Bibliography Further reading External links Enculturation and Acculturation Community empowerment Concepts of moral character, historical and contemporary (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cultural concepts Cultural studies Interculturalism

Youth culture

Youth culture refers to the societal norms of children, adolescents, and young adults. Specifically, it comprises the processes and symbolic systems that are shared by the youth and are distinct from those of adults in the community. An emphasis on clothes, popular music, sports, vocabulary, and dating typically sets youth apart from other age groups. Within youth culture, there are many constantly changing youth subcultures, which may be divided based on race, ethnicity, economic status, public appearance, or a variety of other factors. Existence There is a debate surrounding the presence, existence, and origins of youth culture. Some researchers argue that youth culture is not a separate culture, as their values and morals are not distinct from those of their parents. Additionally, peer influence varies greatly among contexts, gender, age, and social status, making a single "youth culture" difficult to define. which differ from those of their parent's culture. Janssen et al. used the terror management theory (TMT) to argue for the existence of youth culture. They tested the following hypothesis: "If youth culture serves to help adolescents deal with problems of vulnerability and finiteness, then reminders of mortality should lead to increased allegiance to cultural practices and beliefs of the youth." The results supported the hypothesis and the outcome of previous studies, and suggest that youth culture is a culture. Schwartz and Merten used adolescent language to argue that youth culture is distinct from the rest of society. Schwartz argued that high school students used their vocabulary to create meanings that are distinct to adolescents. Specifically, the adolescent status terminology (the words that adolescents use to describe hierarchical social statuses) contains qualities and attributes that are not present in adult status judgments. According to Schwartz, this reflects a difference in social structures and the ways that adults and teens experience social reality. This difference indicates cultural differences between adolescents and adults, which supports the presence of separate youth culture. Movements Throughout the twentieth century, youth have had a strong influence on both lifestyle and culture. The flappers and the Mods are two examples of the impact of youth culture on society. The flappers were young women that were confident about a prosperous future after World War I. This liveliness showed in their new attitudes in life in which they openly drank, smoked, and, in some cases, socialized with gangster-type men. The fashionable dress at the time also reflected the flapper's new lifestyle. Mods emerged during a time of war and political and social troubles, and stemmed from a group called the modernists. They were young men and women who came from all classes who believed that their fashion choices "gave them entrée everywhere" and empowered them. The Mods' style and embrace of modern technology spread from the UK overseas to North America and other countries. Theories The presence of youth culture is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. There are several dominant theories about the emergence of youth culture in the 20th century, which include hypotheses about the historical, economic, and psychological influences on the presence of youth culture. One historical theory credits the emergence of youth culture to the beginning of compulsory schooling. James Coleman argues that age segregation is the root of separate youth culture. Before mandatory education, many children and adolescents interacted primarily with adults. In contrast, modern children associate extensively with others their age. These interactions allow adolescents to develop shared experiences and meanings, which are the root of youth culture. Another theory posits that some cultures facilitate the development of youth culture, while others do not. The basis of this distinction is the presence of universalistic or particularistic norms. Particularistic norms are guidelines for behavior that vary from one individual to another. In contrast, universalistic norms apply to all members of society. Universalistic norms are more likely to be found in industrialized societies. Modernization in the last century has encouraged universalistic norms since interaction in modern societies makes it necessary for everyone to learn the same set of norms. Modernization and universalistic norms have encouraged the growth of youth culture. The need for universalistic norms has made it impractical for young people's socialization to come primarily from immediate family members, which would lead to significant variation in the communicated norms. Therefore, many societies use age grouping, such as in schools, to educate their children on societies' norms and prepare them for adulthood; youth culture is a byproduct of this tactic. Because children spend so much time together and learn the same things as the rest of their age group, they develop their own culture. Psychological theorists have noted the role of youth culture in identity development. Youth culture may be a means of finding identity when one's path in life is not always clear. Erik Erikson theorized that the vital psychological conflict of adolescence is identity versus role confusion. The goal of this stage of life is to answer the question, "Who am I?" In many societies, adolescents are expected to behave like children and take on adult roles. Some psychologists have theorized that forming youth culture is a step to adopt an identity that reconciles these two conflicting expectations. For example, Talcott Parsons posited that adolescence is when young people transition from reliance on parents to autonomy. In this transitory state, dependence on the peer group serves as a stand-in for parents. Burlingame restated this hypothesis in 1970. He wrote that adolescents replace parents with the peer group and that this reliance on the peer group diminishes as youth enter adulthood and take on adult roles. Fasick relates youth culture as a method of identity development to the simultaneous elongation of childhood and the need for independence in adolescence. According to Fasick, adolescents face contradictory pulls from society. Compulsory schooling keeps them socially and economically dependent on their parents, while young people need to achieve some sort of independence to participate in the market economy of modern society. As a means of coping with these contrasting aspects of adolescence, youth create freedom through behavior—specifically, through leisure-oriented activities done with peers. Impact on adolescents For decades, adults have worried that youth subcultures were the root of moral degradation and changing values in younger generations. Researchers have characterized youth culture as embodying values that are "in conflict with those of the adult world". Common concerns about youth culture include a perceived lack of interest in education, involvement in risky behaviors like substance use and sexual activity, and engaging extensively in leisure activities. These perceptions have led many adults to believe that adolescents hold different values than older generations and to perceive youth culture as an attack on the morals of current society. These worries have prompted the creation of parenting websites such as The Youth Culture Report and the Center for Parent Youth Understanding, whose goal is to preserve the values of older generations in young people. There is no consensus among researchers about whether youth subcultures hold different beliefs than adults do. Some researchers have noted the simultaneous rise in age segregation and adolescent adjustment problems such as suicide, delinquency, and premarital pregnancy. However, most evidence suggests that these youth problems are not a reflection of different morals held by younger generations. Multiple studies have found that most adolescents hold views that are similar to their parents. One study challenged the theory that adolescent cohorts had distanced themselves from their parents by finding that between 1976 and 1982, their problems increased, and they became less peer-oriented. A second study's findings that adolescents' values were more similar to their parents in the 1980s than in the 1960s and '70s echoes Sebald's finding. Another study did find differences between adolescents' and parents' attitudes but found that the differences were in the degree of belief, not in the behavior itself. There may also be pluralistic ignorance on the part of youth when comparing their attitudes to peers and parents. A study by Lerner et al. asked college students to compare their attitudes on several issues to their peers and parents. Most students rated their attitudes as falling somewhere between their parents' more conservative attitudes and their peers' more liberal attitudes. The authors suggested that the reason for this is that the students perceived their friends as more liberal than they were. Sports, language, music, clothing, and dating tend to be superficial ways of expressing autonomy—they can be adopted without compromising one's beliefs or values. Some areas in which adolescents assert autonomy can cause long-term consequences, such as substance use and sexual activity. The impact of youth culture on deviance and sexual behavior is debatable. More than 70 percent of American high school students report having drunk alcohol. Similarly, about two-thirds of teenagers have engaged in sexual intercourse by the time they leave high school. As drinking and having sex may be common in adolescence, many researchers include them as aspects of youth culture. While engaging in these activities can have harmful consequences, the majority of adolescents who engage in these risky behaviors do not suffer long-term consequences. The possibilities of addiction, pregnancy, incarceration, and other negative outcomes are some potentially negative effects of participation in youth culture. Research demonstrates that many factors may influence youth to engage in high-risk behaviors, including "a lack of stable role models, heightened family stresses, lowered levels of family investment, weakened emotional bonds between parents and their children, lowered levels of social capital and social control, and a lack of hope in future". Teen culture may also have benefits for adolescents. Peer influence can have a positive effect on adolescents' well-being; for example, most teens report that peer pressure stops them from using drugs or engaging in sexual activity. Impact on society in general Young people can make changes in society, such as through youth-led revolutions. Organizations of young people, which were often based on student identity, were crucial to the American civil rights movement, which included organizations like the Southern Student Organizing Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The Freedom Summer campaign relied heavily on college students; hundreds of students engaged in registering African Americans to vote, teaching in "Freedom Schools", and organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The American protests in the Vietnam War were also student-driven. Many college campuses opposed the war with sit-ins and demonstrations. Organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the Student Libertarian Movement, and the Student Peace Union were based on youth status and contributed to anti-war activities. Some scholars have claimed that the activism during the Vietnam War was symbolic of a youth culture whose values were against mainstream American culture. In the early 2010s, the Arab Spring illustrated how young people played roles in demonstrations and protests. The movement was initiated primarily by young people, mostly college students dissatisfied with the opportunities afforded to them. The participation of young people prompted Time magazine to include several youth members of the movement in its 2011 list of 100 most influential people. Additionally, this movement utilized social media (which is considered an aspect of youth culture) to schedule, coordinate, and publicize events. See also References Social sciences Adolescence

Self-expression values

Self-expression values are part of a core value dimension in the modernization process. Self-expression is a cluster of values that include social tolerance, life satisfaction, public expression and an aspiration to liberty. Ronald Inglehart, the University of Michigan professor who developed the theory of post-materialism, has worked extensively with this concept. The Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map contrasts self-expression values with survival values, illustrating the changes in values across countries and generations. The idea that the world is moving towards self-expression values was discussed at length in an article in the Economist. Expressing one's personality, emotions, or ideas through art, music, or drama, is a way to reveal oneself to others in a way that is special to them. Emergence of self-expression values The emergence of the post-industrial society has instigated significant cultural changes. In the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and a growing proportion of East Asia, the vast majority of the people are no longer employed in factories, but work in the service sector instead. There has been a transition from a mechanical environment to one where more people spend more of their time dealing with other individuals, symbols, and information, thus workers in the knowledge sector need to exercise their own judgment and decision-making abilities. This transition has had significant outcomes: This transition has led to historically high levels of prosperity and welfare states that offer food, clothing, shelter, housing, education, and healthcare to almost everyone. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is relatively limited, the government still significantly redistributes part of the GDP. This creates a scenario where the people in respective societies start taking physical survival, minimum living standards, and nearly 80 years of average life expectancy for granted. This further motivates them to pursue goals beyond mere survival. Contemporary service-oriented occupations demand the use of cognitive skills. Engineers, teachers, lawyers, accountants, counselors, programmers, and analysts all fall under the category of creative class. Despite sometimes working in hierarchical organizations, creative professionals have a considerable degree of autonomy in their work. The demand for cognitive skills is significantly higher than that in societies during the early stages of industrialisation. In order to meet these demands, the workforces in post-industrial societies are increasingly pursuing higher education, with a focus on creativity, imagination, and intellectual independence. Post-industrial societies tend to be more socially liberal than those that preceded them. The centrally controlled, highly regimented workforces of the industrial world have disappeared, along with the strong conformity pressures that came with them. The traditional system, in which children depend on their parents to survive, in return for which they are expected to take care of their parents in old age, has been weakened by the welfare state. As a result, close-knit family structures, once a survival necessity, are now increasingly a matter of choice, replacing 'communities of necessity' with 'elective affinities'. The destandardisation of economic activities and social life reduces social constraints in unprecedented ways. Therefore, the transition in post-industrial societies is largely characterised by liberation from authority. Self-expression values and democracy Different political systems can emerge from industrialization. These include fascism, communism, theocracy and democracy. In contrast, post-industrial societies are associated with socio-cultural changes that strengthen the prospects of genuine and effective democracy. Knowledge societies cannot function effectively without highly educated workers, who become articulate and accustomed to thinking for themselves. Moreover, rising levels of financial stability bring more emphasis to values of self-expression that prioritise personal freedom of choice. There is an increasing likelihood for mass publics to desire democracy, and they are becoming more effective in achieving it. As time goes on, repressing mass demands for liberalization becomes more damaging and expensive to economic effectiveness. Economic development is connected to democracy due to these changes. Empirical measurements of self-expression values The World Values Survey provides the most comprehensive assessment of how values are perceived and expressed. To date, five "waves" have been undertaken, with each including additional countries in the survey. Subsequent data analysis by Inglehart indicated that a significant proportion of the variation in the data could be accounted for by using measures that accessed only two dimensions: a traditional to secular-rational axis and a survival to self-expression axis. Initially, the factor scores were derived from 22 variables, but they were later reduced to only 10 (5 for each dimension) due to data availability constraints. The self-expression axis has the following factor loadings. Although consisting of only five variables, the correlates for this dimension in the WV survey are very strong. Below is a partial list. Positive responses indicate survival values rather than self-expression values. See also Affluenza Consumerism Gross national happiness Abraham Maslow Theory of Basic Human Values References Cultural studies Political science

Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by society. Cultural heritage includes tangible culture (such as buildings, monuments, landscapes, archive materials, books, works of art, and artifacts), intangible culture (such as folklore, traditions, language, and knowledge), and natural heritage (including culturally significant landscapes, and biodiversity). The term is often used in connection with issues relating to the protection of indigenous intellectual property. The deliberate action of keeping cultural heritage from the present for the future is known as preservation (American English) or conservation (British English), which cultural and historical ethnic museums and cultural centers promote, though these terms may have more specific or technical meanings in the same contexts in the other dialect. Preserved heritage has become an anchor of the global tourism industry, a major contributor of economic value to local communities. Legal protection of cultural property comprises a number of international agreements and national laws. United Nations, UNESCO and Blue Shield International deal with the protection of cultural heritage. This also applies to the integration of United Nations peacekeeping. Types of heritage Cultural property Cultural property includes the physical, or "tangible" cultural heritage, such as artworks. These are generally split into two groups of movable and immovable heritage. Immovable heritage includes buildings (which themselves may include installed art such as organs, stained glass windows, and frescos), large industrial installations, residential projects or other historic places and monuments. Moveable heritage includes books, documents, moveable artworks, machines, clothing, and other artifacts, that are considered worthy of preservation for the future. These include objects significant to the archaeology, architecture, science or technology of a specified culture. Aspects and disciplines of the preservation and conservation of tangible culture include: Museology Archival science Conservation (cultural heritage) Art conservation Archaeological conservation Architectural conservation Film preservation Phonograph record preservation Digital preservation Intangible culture "Intangible cultural heritage" consists of non-physical aspects of a particular culture, more often maintained by social customs during a specific period in history. The concept includes the ways and means of behavior in a society, and the often formal rules for operating in a particular cultural climate. These include social values and traditions, customs and practices, aesthetic and spiritual beliefs, artistic expression, language and other aspects of human activity. The significance of physical artifacts can be interpreted as an act against the backdrop of socioeconomic, political, ethnic, religious and philosophical values of a particular group of people. Naturally, intangible cultural heritage is more difficult to preserve than physical objects. Aspects of the preservation and conservation of cultural intangibles include: folklore oral history language preservation Natural heritage "Natural heritage" is also an important part of a society's heritage, encompassing the countryside and natural environment, including flora and fauna, scientifically known as biodiversity, as well as geological elements (including mineralogical, geomorphological, paleontological, etc.), scientifically known as geodiversity. These kind of heritage sites often serve as an important component in a country's tourist industry, attracting many visitors from abroad as well as locally. Heritage can also include cultural landscapes (natural features that may have cultural attributes). Aspects of the preservation and conservation of natural heritage include: Rare breeds conservation Heirloom plants Digital heritage Digital heritage is made up of computer-based materials such as texts, databases, images, sounds and software being retained for future generations. Digital heritage includes physical objects such as documents which have been digitized for retention and artifacts which are "born digital", i.e. originally created digitally and having no physical form. Protection of cultural heritage History There have been examples of respect for the cultural assets of enemies since ancient times. The roots of today's legal situation for the precise protection of cultural heritage also lie in some of the regulations of Austria's ruler Maria Theresa (1717 - 1780) and the demands of the Congress of Vienna (1814/15) not to remove works of art from their place of origin in the war. The 1863 Lieber code, a military legal code governing the wartime conduct of the Union Army also set rules for the protection of cultural heritage. The process continued at the end of the 19th century when, in 1874 (in Brussels), at least a draft international agreement on the laws and customs of war was agreed. 25 years later, in 1899, an international peace conference was held in the Netherlands on the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, with the aim of revising the declaration (which was never ratified) and adopting a convention. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 also significantly advanced international law and laid down the principle of the immunity of cultural property. Three decades later, in 1935, the preamble to the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions (Roerich Pact) was formulated. On the initiative of UNESCO, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was signed in 1954. Protection of cultural heritage or protection of cultural goods refers to all measures aimed to protect cultural property against damage, destruction, theft, embezzlement or other loss. The term "monument protection" is also used for immovable cultural property. Protection of cultural heritage relates in particular to the prevention of robbery digs at archaeological sites, the looting or destruction of cultural sites and the theft of works of art from churches and museums all over the world and basically measures regarding the conservation and general access to our common cultural heritage. Legal protection of cultural heritage comprises a number of international agreements and national laws. There is a close partnership between the UN, United Nations peacekeeping, UNESCO, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Blue Shield International. The protection of cultural heritage should also preserve the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and the economic basis of a state, a municipality or a region. Whereby there is also a connection between cultural user disruption or cultural heritage and the cause of flight. But only through the fundamental cooperation, including the military units and the planning staff, with the locals can the protection of world heritage sites, archaeological finds, exhibits and archaeological sites from destruction, looting and robbery be implemented sustainably. The founding president of Blue Shield International Karl von Habsburg summed it up with the words: "Without the local community and without the local participants, that would be completely impossible". The ethics and rationale of cultural preservation Objects are a part of the study of human history because they provide a concrete basis for ideas, and can validate them. Their preservation demonstrates a recognition of the necessity of the past and of the things that tell its story. In The Past is a Foreign Country, David Lowenthal observes that preserved objects also validate memories. While digital acquisition techniques can provide a technological solution that is able to acquire the shape and the appearance of artifacts with an unprecedented precision in human history, the actuality of the object, as opposed to a reproduction, draws people in and gives them a literal way of touching the past. This poses a danger as places and things are damaged by the hands of tourists, the light required to display them, and other risks of making an object known and available. The reality of this risk reinforces the fact that all artifacts are in a constant state of chemical transformation, so that what is considered to be preserved is actually changing – it is never as it once was. Similarly changing is the value each generation may place on the past and on the artifacts that link it to the past. The equality or inseparability of cultural preservation and the protection of human life has been argued by several agencies and writers, for example former French president François Hollande stated in 2016 Classical civilizations, especially Indian, have attributed supreme importance to the preservation of tradition. Its central idea was that social institutions, scientific knowledge and technological applications need to use a "heritage" as a "resource". Using contemporary language, we could say that ancient Indians considered, as social resources, both economic assets (like natural resources and their exploitation structure) and factors promoting social integration (like institutions for the preservation of knowledge and for the maintenance of civil order). Ethics considered that what had been inherited should not be consumed, but should be handed over, possibly enriched, to successive generations. This was a moral imperative for all, except in the final life stage of sannyasa. What one generation considers "cultural heritage" may be rejected by the next generation, only to be revived by a subsequent generation. World heritage movement Significant was the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage that was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1972. As of 2011, there are 936 World Heritage Sites: 725 cultural, 183 natural, and 28 mixed properties, in 153 countries. Each of these sites is considered important to the international community. The underwater cultural heritage is protected by the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. This convention is a legal instrument helping states parties to improve the protection of their underwater cultural heritage. In addition, UNESCO has begun designating masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights sitting as part of the United Nations Economic and Social Council with article 15 of its Covenant had sought to instill the principles under which cultural heritage is protected as part of a basic human right. Key international documents and bodies include: Athens Charter, 1931 Roerich Pact, 1935 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 1954, (with a definition of cultural heritage item adopted by some national law) Venice Charter, 1964 Barcelona Charter, 2002 (regarding maritime vessel preservation) ICOMOS The Blue Shield, a network of committees of dedicated individuals across the world that is "committed to the protection of the world's cultural property, and is concerned with the protection of cultural and natural heritage, tangible and intangible, in the event of armed conflict, natural- or human-made disaster." International Institute for Conservation The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report describing some of the United States' cultural property protection efforts. National and regional heritage movements Much of heritage preservation work is done at the national, regional, or local levels of society. Various national and regional regimes include: Australia: Burra Charter Heritage Overlay in Victoria, Australia Bosnia KONS Brazil: National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage Canada Heritage conservation in Canada Chile National Monuments Council (Chile) China State Administration of Cultural Heritage Egypt Supreme Council of Antiquities Estonia Ministry of Culture (Estonia) National Heritage Board (Estonia) Ghana Ghana's material cultural heritage Honduras Secretary of State for Culture, Arts and Sports Hong Kong Heritage conservation in Hong Kong India Ministry of Culture (India) National Archives of India Archaeological Survey of India Anthropological Survey of India Culture of India Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage National Museum Institute of the History of Art, Conservation and Museology List of World Heritage Sites in India Indian Heritage Cities Network, Mysore Heritage structures in Hyderabad Iran Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization Japan Cultural Properties of Japan Kenya National Museums of Kenya International Inventories Programme North Macedonia Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments Malaysia The National Heritage Act Namibia National Heritage Council of Namibia National Monuments Council New Zealand New Zealand Historic Places Trust Pakistan Lahore Museum of Art and Cultural History Lok Virsa Heritage Museum National Museum of Pakistan Pakistan Monument and Heritage Museum Philippines National Commission for Culture and the Arts National Historical Commission of the Philippines Poland National Ossoliński Institute Serbia Immovable Cultural Heritage of Exceptional Importance Immovable Cultural Heritage of Great Importance South Africa South African Heritage Resources Agency Provincial heritage resources authorities Amafa aKwaZulu-Natali Heritage Western Cape Northern Cape Heritage Resources Authority National Monuments Council Historical Monuments Commission United Kingdom Conservation in the United Kingdom English Heritage English Heritage Archive National Trust Cadw Northern Ireland Environment Agency Historic Environment Scotland National Trust for Scotland United States of America National Park Service National Register of Historic Places National Historic Site (United States) List of national memorials of the United States National Military Park Zambia National Heritage Conservation Commission National Museums Board Zimbabwe National Monuments of Zimbabwe Issues in cultural heritage Broad philosophical, technical, and political issues and dimensions of cultural heritage include: Cultural heritage repatriation Cultural heritage management Cultural property law Heritage tourism Virtual heritage Sustainable preservation Climate change and World Heritage Management of cultural heritage Issues in cultural heritage management include: Exhibition of cultural heritage objects Radiography of cultural objects Storage of cultural heritage objects Collections maintenance Disaster preparedness Cultural heritage digital preservation Ancient archaeological artefacts and archaeological sites are naturally prone to damage due to their age and environmental conditions. Also, there have been tragic occurrences of unexpected human-made disasters, such as in the cases of a fire that took place in the 200 years old National Museum of Brazil and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Therefore, there is a growing need to digitize cultural heritage in order to preserve them in the face of potential calamities such as climate change, natural disaster, poor policy or inadequate infrastructure. For example, the Library of Congress has started to digitize its collections in a special program called the National Digital Library Program. The Smithsonian has also been actively digitizing its collection with the release of the "Smithsonian X 3D Explorer," allowing anyone to engage with the digitized versions of the museum's millions of artifacts, of which only two percent are on display. 3D scanning devices have become a practical reality in the field of heritage preservation. 3D scanners can produce a high-precision digital reference model that not only digitizes condition but also provides a 3D virtual model for replication. The high cost and relative complexity of 3D scanning technologies have made it quite impractical for many heritage institutions in the past, but this is changing, as technology advances and its relative costs are decreasing to reach a level where even mobile based scanning applications can be used to create a virtual museum. There is still a low level of digital archiving of archaeological data obtained via excavation, even in the UK where the lead digital archive for archaeology, the Archaeology Data Service, was established in the 1990s. Across the globe, countries are at different stages of dealing with digital archaeological archives, all dealing with differences in statutory requirements, legal ownership of archives and infrastructure. See also Antiquarian Architectural Heritage Collecting Heritage film International Council on Monuments and Sites Values (heritage) Digital methods in preservation DigiCULT ERPANET Intellectual property issues in cultural heritage (IPinCH) References Further reading Michael Falser. Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission. From Decay to Recovery. Heidelberg, New York: Springer (2015), . Michael Falser, Monica Juneja (eds.). 'Archaeologizing' Heritage? Transcultural Entanglements between Local Social Practices and Global Virtual Realities. Heidelberg, New York: Springer (2013), . Ann Marie Sullivan, Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future for the Past, 15 J. MARSHALL REV. INTELL. PROP. L. 604 (2016) https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1392&context=ripl Barbara T. Hoffman, Art and cultural heritage: law, policy, and practice, Cambridge University Press, 2006 Leila A. Amineddoleh, "Protecting Cultural Heritage by Strictly Scrutinizing Museum Acquisitions," Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 24, No. 3. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2467100 Paolo Davide Farah, Riccardo Tremolada, Desirability of Commodification of Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Unsatisfying Role of IPRs, in TRANSNATIONAL DISPUTE MANAGEMENT, Special Issues "The New Frontiers of Cultural Law: Intangible Heritage Disputes", Volume 11, Issue 2, March 2014, Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2472339 Paolo Davide Farah, Riccardo Tremolada, Intellectual Property Rights, Human Rights and Intangible Cultural Heritage, Journal of Intellectual Property Law, Issue 2, Part I, June 2014, , Giuffrè, pp. 21–47. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2472388 Nora Lafi, Building and Destroying Authenticity in Aleppo: Heritage between Conservation, Transformation, Destruction, and Re-Invention in Christoph Bernhardt, Martin Sabrow, Achim Saupe. Gebaute Geschichte. Historische Authentizität im Stadtraum, Wallstein, pp.206-228, 2017 Dallen J. Timothy and Gyan P. Nyaupane, Cultural heritage and tourism in the developing world : a regional perspective, Taylor & Francis, 2009 Peter Probst, "Osogbo and the Art of Heritage: Monuments, Deities, and Money", Indiana University Press, 2011 Constantine Sandis (ed.), Cultural Heritage Ethics: Between Theory and Practice, Open Book Publishers, 2014 Zuckermann, Ghil'ad et al., ENGAGING - A Guide to Interacting Respectfully and Reciprocally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their Arts Practices and Intellectual Property, Australian Government: Indigenous Culture Support, 2015 Kocój E., Między mainstremem a undergroundem. Dziedzictwo regionalne w kulturze europejskiej – odkrywanie znaczeń, [w:] Dziedzictwo kulturowe w regionach europejskich. Odkrywanie, ochrona i (re)interpretacja, Seria wydawnicza:, Studia nad dziedzictwem i pamięcią kulturową", tom I, Kraków 2019, red. Ewa Kocój, Tomasz Kosiek, Joanna Szulborska-Łukaszewicz, pp. 10–35. Dziedzictwo kulturowe w regionach europejskich. Odkrywanie, ochrona i (re)interpretacja, Seria wydawnicza:, Studia nad dziedzictwem i pamięcią kulturową", tom I, red. Ewa Kocój, Tomasz Kosiek, Joanna Szulborska-Łukaszewicz, Kraków 2019, p. 300. Hudson-Ward, A., Widholm, J. R., & Scott, W. (Eds.). (2023). Cultural Heritage and the Campus Community: Academic Libraries and Museums in Collaboration. ACRL. External links Cultural heritage policy - history and resources Getty Museum - list of major international cultural heritage documents, charters, and treaties UNESCO World Heritage Centre – Official website of the United Nations organization for cultural heritage International Council on Monuments and Sites International Council of Museums International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property Cultural routes and landscapes, a common heritage of Europe (English and French language) EPOCH – European Research Network on Excellence in Processing Open Cultural Heritage Peace Palace Library - Research Guide National Council for Preservation Education Dédalo Open source management system for Cultural heritage Central European University (CEU) UNESCO UIS_cultural heritage Heritage for Peace Museology Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage Articles containing video clips

Internet aesthetic

An Internet aesthetic, also simply referred to as an aesthetic or microaesthetic, is a visual art style, sometimes accompanied by a fashion style, subculture, or music genre, that usually originates from the Internet or is popularized on it. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, online aesthetics gained increasing popularity, specifically on social media platforms such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok, and often were used by people to express their individuality and creativity. They can also be used to create a sense of community and belonging among people who share the same interests. The term aesthetic has been described as being "totally divorced from its academic origins", and is commonly used as an adjective. Definition Internet aesthetics are characterized and identifiable by their visual style. Sarah Spellings from Vogue stated, Over time, "aesthetic" has evolved from an academic word and something utilized by artists and auteurs to something to categorize our own identities by. It can mean both personal style and a vague stand-in for beauty. Kaitlin Tiffany from The Atlantic stated:At this point, the word aesthetic is totally divorced from its academic origins. While Tumblr users mainstreamed it years ago, many teenagers use aesthetic as an all-purpose adjective—"that's so aesthetic" as a shorthand for "that's so aesthetically pleasing to me." But in broader Internet parlance, it now means a collection of signifiers or, more precisely, a "vibe."There are five primary categories of internet aesthetic: space, core, wave, group/subculture, and academic. Specific aesthetics use suffixes, such as -wave and -core, which, according to The Washington Post, originates from the word hardcore. Other aesthetics come together under a central theme such as Space or Academia. History In 1735, German philosopher Alex Baumgarten derived the term "aesthetics" from the Greek word "aisthetike" or "aisthesis", establishing it as a field of study. The term "aesthetic" has evolved to reflect current trends in digital communication and multimedia art. Many Internet aesthetics have been credited with originating on Tumblr, including Dark academia, Cottagecore, Art Hoe, Coquette/Nymphet, and Weirdcore. With the influence of new social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, however, internet aesthetics are being dominated by micro-trends such as mob wife and tomato girl summer. Aesthetics Wiki, a wiki hosted on Fandom, has frequently been cited for its large database of information on online aesthetics. According to The Atlantic, the wiki gained a 9,974% increase in traffic during the 2020 pandemic due to chronic online participation and desires for self discovery. In 2022, Rebecca Jennings from Vox argued that many trends from TikTok fall under one trend, calling it "TikTok couture" and describing it as a "way to describe the coalescence of trends that materialize on TikTok, whether from teenagers experimenting with clothes they've thrifted from their local charity shop, from older folks revisiting the subcultural styles of their youth, or from professional and amateur trend watchers combining aesthetic clues into a single theory of what's coming next", adding "with the help of the supercharged TikTok algorithm that blasts viral content to millions of users within hours or days, these videos shape what mainstream culture considers stylish, which therefore can affect what we choose to wear ourselves." In July 2022, Sarah Spellings from Vogue stated that there was a "rise of hyper-specific Internet aesthetics". Notable examples Corecore Corecore or CoreCore is an aesthetic and artistic movement aiming to capture post–2020 sensibilities. A product of youth culture in the 2020s, the corecore aesthetic was largely found on TikTok, where it juxtaposes various video clips while emotional music plays. Meant to evoke strong emotions, the corecore aesthetic juxtaposes imagery with its content made up of "seemingly unrelated clips" culled from a variety of sources including news footage, social media, films, livestreams, and memes, often overlaid on usually emotionally rousing, somber, or ambient music. Frutiger Aero Frutiger Aero was an Internet aesthetic and user interface design trend based on Windows Aero, which was popular from roughly 2004 to 2013. This aesthetic was named after Swiss typeface designer Adrian Frutiger, whose font and UI theme developments influenced the design choices of major companies. The term Frutiger Aero was coined in 2017 as an open compound of Aero and the Frutiger typeface. The aesthetic resonates heavily with Y2K, focusing around gloss, CGI renders of scenes with nature and technology together, transparency, nature symbolism, bokeh photography, and elements of skeuomorphic design. It began to decline after 2012, but made a comeback in the 2020s among members of Generation Z. Dark academia Dark academia is an aesthetic that focuses on higher education, specifically during the 19th century and early 20th century, and Collegiate Gothic architecture, along with a dark color palette. It also reportedly "emphasizes inclusivity and gender fluidity" and "has a dedicated LGBTQ+ following". According to The INSIDER, the aesthetic dates back to 2014 on Tumblr, later getting popularized in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically on TikTok and Instagram. Kristen Bateman of The New York Times states, "Though it's unclear how and where, exactly, Dark Academia began, many users discovered it on Tumblr". Light academia Light academia is an aesthetic and subculture often featured in literature and the world of higher education that emphasizes visually light aesthetics and positive themes, including optimism, joy, and friendship. Books such as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan emphasize light academia as it romanticizes the pursuit of knowledge and imagination. Accordingly, light academia is often considered to be the visually and emotionally lighter counterpart of dark academia, which has been described as "cottagecore with some more cosmopolitan elements". This aesthetic takes inspiration from school uniforms and early to mid-20th-century college wear, featuring staple and vintage pieces. It is a broad term and can refer to aspects such as architecture, artwork, and ceramics. The term light academia was coined on Tumblr in 2019 and gained popularity during the early 2020s. Neo-Victorian Neo-Victorianism is an aesthetic movement that features an overt nostalgia for the Victorian period, generally in the context of the broader hipster subculture of the 1990s–2010s. It is also likened to other "neos" (e.g. neoconservatism, neoliberalism), which do not simply look back to the past but also reiterate and replay it in more diverse and complicated ways. This characteristic makes neo-Victorian art difficult to define conclusively. Cottagecore Cottagecore is an aesthetic popularised by teenagers and young adults romanticizing rural life, centering on traditional rural clothing, interior design, and crafts such as drawing, baking, and pottery. The term for the aesthetic was coined in 2018 on Tumblr. The aesthetic gained heavy popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, where economic forces and other challenges facing these young people may have been a significant driver of this trend, along with these generations' emphasis on sustainability, and the recent trend to work from home (initially during the pandemic). VSCO girl VSCO girls or VSCO kids emerged among Gen Z teenagers during the summer of 2019, and are often described as "basic". The American YouTuber Emma Chamberlain is considered as an icon of this aesthetic. Named after the VSCO photography app, VSCO girls live by the statement "pics or didn't happen", using the app to create their social media aesthetic. They are stereotyped as having oversized T-shirts, sweatshirts or sweaters, Fjällräven Kånkens, scrunchies, Hydro Flasks, Crocs, Pura Vida bracelets, instant cameras, Carmex, metal straws, friendship bracelets, Birkenstocks, shell necklaces, and other beach-related fashion. A typical VSCO girl outfit consists of leggings, an oversized and vibrant graphic T-shirt, and Birkenstock shoes. Environmentalism, especially topics relating to sea turtle conservation, are also regarded as part of VSCO culture. VSCO girls have fallen out of fashion since 2019. McBling McBling is a girly aesthetic that was popular from roughly 2003 to 2008, which formed around the growing celebrity culture of the time, reality television and paparazzi. It is best known for the high use of hot pink and purple, low rise jeans, mini skirts, logomania, sequins, rhinestones, halter tops, and monochrome tracksuits, colorful sunglasses, butterfly or flower-shaped hair clips, bags worn over the shoulder, and jelly accessories with glitter (including shoes). It is highly associated with the 2000s reality show The Simple Life, with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, and with Regina George from the 2004 film Mean Girls. Other examples of media that feature this aesthetic are Legally Blonde, Sleepover, and Crossroads. McBling mostly died when the 2007–2008 financial crisis happened, but a resurgence took place on TikTok around 2021, part of the wave of interest for 2000s trends in fashion and design, led by nostalgia. E-Kid The E-Girl and E-Boy aesthetics gained popularity on TikTok in 2019 primarily by members of Generation Z. It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese street fashion (such as anime, cosplay, kawaii and lolita fashion) and Korean street fashion (such as K-pop). The E-Kid aesthetic often features bright hair colors, heavy and dark eye makeup, and accessories such as chain necklaces and beanies. Their wardrobe consists of oversized T-shirts, slim jeans, and checkered Vans shoes. According to Business Insider, the terms are not gender-specific, instead referring to two separate styles of fashion, stating that "While the e-boy is a vulnerable 'softboi' and embraces skate culture, the e-girl is cute and seemingly innocent". Kidcore/indie kid The "kidcore" or "indie kid" look centers around bright colors and nods to the late 1990s and 2000s. The aesthetic was first defined on Tumblr around the mid-2010s. In 2020, TikTok and Instagram contributed to a sharp increase in popularity. The indie kid aesthetic is characterized by overly saturated photos and "crop tops, baggy pants/jeans, tartan tennis skirts, tight-fitting tops, polo shirts, platform boots or sneakers, as well as skate brands in general", along with Monster Energy also being considered "a staple". Unlike the hipster subculture of the 2000s and early 2010s, indie kids of the 2020s favored a more childlike style that took inspiration from the late 1990s and 2000s, Japanese subculture, bedroom pop, skater fashion, energy drink culture, and hyper pop. Clean Girl Popularized in 2022 on TikTok, Clean Girl aesthetic is “[I] just got out of the shower, and I’m effortlessly gorgeous”. According to Bustle, it is "about oversized, sporty basics", and consists of items such as "simple crop tops, loose-fit, high-rise denim, dainty gold jewelry, matching athleisure sets (probably from Aritzia), and the latest Nike drop". Clean Girl takes on a minimalist approach to wardrobe, makeup, and essentially, routine. According to Refinery29, the aesthetic "is basically just minimalist makeup" and "significantly low effort", citing that as the reason for its popularity. Influencers such as Hailey Bieber and Bella Hadid have mastered the Clean Girl aesthetic, contributing to the rise of slicked-back buns, chunky gold hoops, and skin-like makeup. See also 2010s in fashion 2020s in fashion Aesthetics Internet art Internet culture New Aesthetic Youth subculture References 2010s fads and trends 2010s neologisms 2020 in Internet culture 2020s fads and trends 2020s neologisms Art movements Cultural trends Digital art Fashion Internet art Internet culture Internet memes Internet memes introduced in the 2010s Internet memes introduced in the 2020s Social media Style Subcultures Visual arts genres Youth culture

Culture of Europe

The culture of Europe is diverse, and rooted in its art, architecture, traditions, cuisines, music, folklore, embroidery, film, literature, economics, philosophy and religious customs. Definition Whilst there are a great number of perspectives that can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing concept of European culture. Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes: A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism; A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence"; A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual; A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another. Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe. Berting says that these points fit with "Europe's most positive realizations". The concept of European culture is arguably linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic, and philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon. The term has come to apply to countries whose history has been strongly marked by European immigration or settlement during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the Americas, and Australasia, and is not restricted to Europe. The Nobel Prize laureate in Literature Thomas Stearns Eliot, in his 1948 book Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, credited the prominent Christian influence upon the European culture: "It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe have--until recently--been rooted." History In the 5th century BCE, Greek philosopher Herodotus conceptualized what it was that divided Europe and Asia, differentiating Europe, as the West (where the sun sets), from the East (where the sun rises). A later concept of Europe as a cultural sphere emerged during the Carolingian Renaissance of the late 8th and early 9th century, limited to the territories of Europe that practiced Western Christianity at the time. Europe underwent social change and transition from the Middle Ages to modernisation, when the cultural movement Renaissance, from the 15th to 16th century, spread values and art techniques across the continent. Art Prehistoric art Surviving European prehistoric art mainly comprises sculpture and rock art. It includes the oldest known representation of the human body, the Venus of Hohle Fel, dating from 40,000 to 35,000 BC, found in Schelklingen, Germany, and the Löwenmensch figurine, from about 30,000 BC, the oldest undisputed piece of figurative art. The Swimming Reindeer of about 11,000 BCE is among the finest Magdalenian carvings in bone or antler of animals in the art of the Upper Paleolithic. At the beginning of the Mesolithic in Europe, the figurative sculpture was greatly reduced, and remained a less common element in art than relief decoration of practical objects until the Roman period, despite some works such as the Gundestrup cauldron from the European Iron Age and the Bronze Age Trundholm sun chariot. The oldest European cave art dates back to 40,800 and can be found in the El Castillo Cave in Spain, but cave art exists across the continent. Rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those paintings have survived because of erosion. One well-known example is the rock paintings of Astuvansalmi in the Saimaa area of Finland. The Rock Art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin forms a distinct group with the human figure the main focus, often seen in large groups, with battles, dancing, and hunting all represented, as well as other activities and details such as clothing. The figures are generally rather sketchily depicted in thin paint, with the relationships between the groups of humans and animals more carefully depicted than individual figures. Prehistoric Celtic art is another distinct grouping from much of Iron Age Europe and survives mainly in the form of high-status metalwork skillfully decorated with complex, elegant, and mostly abstract designs, often using curving and spiral forms. Full-length human figures of any size are so rare that their absence may represent a religious taboo. As the Romans conquered Celtic territories, the style vanished, except in the British Isles, where it influenced the Insular style of the Early Middle Ages. Classical art Ancient Greek art stands out among that of other ancient cultures for its development of naturalistic but idealized depictions of the human body, in which largely nude male figures were generally the focus of innovation. The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards, and in surviving works is best seen in Ancient Greek sculpture. There were important innovations in painting, which have to be essentially reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality, other than the distinct field of painted pottery. Black-figure pottery and the subsequent red-figure pottery are famous and influential examples of the Ancient Greek decorative arts. Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting and sculpture, but was also strongly influenced by the more local Etruscan art of Italy. The sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also very highly regarded. The Roman sculpture is primarily portraiture derived from the upper classes of society as well as depictions of the gods. However, Roman painting does have important unique characteristics. Among surviving Roman paintings are wall paintings, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy, especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Such painting can be grouped into four main "styles" or periods and may contain the first examples of trompe-l'œil, pseudo-perspective, and pure landscape. Early Christian art grew out of Roman popular, and later Imperial, art and adapted its iconography from these sources. Medieval art Medieval art can be broadly categorized into the Byzantine art of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Gothic art that emerged in Western Europe over the same period. Byzantine art was strongly influenced by its classical heritage but distinguished itself by the development of a new, abstract, aesthetic, marked by anti-naturalism and a favor for symbolism. The subject matter of monumental Byzantine art was primarily religious and imperial: the two themes are often combined, as in the portraits of later Byzantine emperors that decorated the interior of the sixth-century church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. However, the Byzantines inherited the Early Christian distrust of monumental sculpture in religious art, and produced only reliefs, of which very few survivals are anything like life-size, in sharp contrast to the medieval art of the West, where monumental sculpture revived from Carolingian art onwards. Small ivories were also mostly in relief. The so-called "minor arts" were very important in Byzantine art, and luxury items, including ivories carved in relief as formal presentation Consular diptychs or caskets such as the Veroli casket, hardstone carvings, enamels, glass, jewelry, metalwork, and figured silks were produced in large quantities throughout the Byzantine era. Migration Period art includes the art of the Germanic tribes on the continent, as well the start of the distinct Insular art or Hiberno-Saxon art of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic fusion in the British Isles. It covers many different styles of art including the polychrome style and the Scythian and Germanic animal style. After Christianization, Migration Period art developed into various schools of Early Medieval art in Western Europe, which are normally classified by region, such as Anglo-Saxon art and Carolingian art, before the continent-wide styles of Romanesque art and finally Gothic art developed.Romanesque art and Gothic art dominated Western and Central Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Renaissance style in the 15th century or later, depending on the region. The Romanesque style was greatly influenced by Byzantine and Insular art. Religious art, such as church sculpture and decorated manuscripts, was particularly prominent. Art of the period was characterized by a very vigorous style in both sculpture and painting. Colors tended to be very striking and mostly primary. Compositions usually had little depth, and needed to be flexible to be squeezed into the shapes of historiated initials, column capitals, and church tympanums. Figures often varied in size in relation to their importance, and landscape backgrounds, if attempted at all, were closer to abstract decorations than realism. Gothic art developed from Romanesque art in Northern France in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Southern and Central Europe. In the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century. In many areas, especially England and Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th century. Gothic art was often typological in nature, showing the stories of the New Testament and the Old Testament side by side. Saints' lives were often depicted. Images of the Virgin Mary changed from the Byzantine iconic form to a more human and affectionate mother, often showing the refined manners of a courtly lady. Secular art came into its own during the gothic period alongside the creation of a bourgeois class who could afford to patronize the arts and commission works. Increased literacy and a growing body of secular vernacular literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art. With the growth of cities, trade guilds were formed, and artists were often required to be members of a painters' guild—as a result, because of better record-keeping, more artists are known to us by name in this period than any previous. Renaissance art Renaissance art emerged as a distinct style in northern Italy from around 1420, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, and science. It took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, but was also influenced by the art of Northern Europe and contemporary scientific knowledge. Renaissance artists painted a wide variety of themes. Religious altarpieces, fresco cycles, and small works for private devotion were very popular. Painters in both Italy and northern Europe frequently turned to Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (1260), a highly influential sourcebook for the lives of saints that had already had a strong influence on Medieval artists. Interest in classical antiquity and Renaissance humanism also resulted in many Mythological and history paintings. Decorative ornament, often used in painted architectural elements, was especially influenced by classical Roman motifs. Techniques characteristic of Renaissance art include the use of proportion and linear perspective; foreshortening, to create an illusion of depth; sfumato, a technique of softening of sharp outlines by subtle blending of tones to give the illusion of depth or three-dimensionality; and chiaroscuro, the effect of using a strong contrast between light and dark to give the illusion of depth or three-dimensionality. Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo Renaissance Classicism spawned two different movements—Mannerism and the Baroque. Mannerism, a reaction against the idealist perfection of Classicism, employed distortion of light and spatial frameworks in order to emphasize the emotional content of a painting and the emotions of the painter. Where High Renaissance art emphasizes proportion, balance, and ideal beauty, Mannerism exaggerates such qualities, often resulting in compositions that are asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant. The style is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities. It favors compositional tension and instability rather than the balance and clarity of earlier Renaissance paintings. In contrast, Baroque art took the representationalism of the Renaissance to new heights, emphasizing detail, movement, lighting, and drama. Perhaps the best-known Baroque painters are Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, and Diego Velázquez. Baroque art is often seen as part of the Counter-Reformation— the revival of spiritual life in the Roman Catholic Church. Religious and political themes are widely explored within the Baroque artistic context, and both paintings and sculptures are characterized by a strong element of drama, emotion, and theatricality. Baroque art was particularly ornate and elaborate in nature, often using rich, warm colors with dark undertones. Dutch Golden Age painting is a distinct subset of Baroque, leading to the development of secular genres such as still life, genre paintings of everyday scenes, and landscape painting. By the 18th century, Baroque art had developed into Rococo in France. Rococo art was even more elaborate than the Baroque, but it was less serious and more playful. The artistic movement no longer placed emphasis on politics and religion, focusing instead on lighter themes such as romance, celebration, and appreciation of nature. Furthermore, it sought inspiration from the artistic forms and ornamentation of Far Eastern Asia, resulting in the rise in favor of porcelain figurines and chinoiserie in general. Rococo soon fell out of favor, being seen by many as a gaudy and superficial movement emphasizing aesthetics over meaning. Neoclassical, Romanticism, and Realism Neoclassicism began in the 18th century as a counter-movement opposing Rococo. It desired for a return to the simplicity, order, and 'purism' of classical antiquity, especially ancient Greece and Rome. Neoclassicism was the artistic component of the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. Neoclassicism had become widespread in Europe throughout the 18th century, especially in the United Kingdom. In many ways, Neoclassicism can be seen as a political movement as well as an artistic and cultural one. Neoclassical art places emphasis on order, symmetry, and classical simplicity; common themes in Neoclassical art include courage and war, as were commonly explored in ancient Greek and Roman art. Ingres, Canova, and Jacques-Louis David are among the best-known neoclassicists. Just as Mannerism rejected Classicism, Romanticism rejected the aesthetic of the Neoclassicists, specifically the highly objective and ordered nature of Neoclassicism, favoring instead a more individual and emotional approach to the arts. Emphasis was placed on nature, especially when aiming to portray the power and beauty of the natural world, and emotions. Romantic art often used colors in order to express feelings and emotions. Romantic art was inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art and mythology, but also takes much of its aesthetic qualities from medievalism and Gothicism, as well as later mythology and folklore. Among the greatest Romantic artists were Eugène Delacroix, Francisco Goya, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, and William Blake. In response to these changes caused by Industrialisation, the movement of Realism emerged, which sought to accurately portray the conditions and hardships of the poor in the hopes of changing society. In contrast with Romanticism, which was essentially optimistic about mankind, Realism offered a stark vision of poverty and despair. While Romanticism glorified nature, Realism portrayed life in the depths of an urban wasteland. Like Romanticism, Realism was a literary as well as an artistic movement. Other contemporary movements were more Historicist in nature, such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which attempted to return art to its state of "purity" prior to Raphael, and the Arts and Crafts Movement, which reacted against the impersonality of mass-produced goods and advocated a return to medieval craftsmanship. Music Classical music Pre-1600 This broad era encompasses early music, which generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but sometimes includes Baroque music (1600–1760). Post-1600 This era includes the common practice period from approximately 1600 to 1900, as well as the modernist and postmodernist styles that emerged after 1900 and which continue to the present day. Modern music Folk music: Europe has a wide and diverse range of indigenous music, sharing common features in rural, traveling, or maritime communities. Folk music is embedded in an unwritten, oral tradition, but was increasingly transcribed from the nineteenth century onwards. Many classical composers used folk melodies, and folk music continues to influence popular music in Europe, however its prominence varies across countries. See the list of European folk music. Popular music: Europe has imported many different genres of popular music, including Rock, Blues, R&B Soul, Jazz, Hip-Hop and Pop. Various modern genres named after Europe are rooted in Electronic dance music (EDM), and include Europop, Eurodisco, Eurodance and Eurobeat. Popular music can vary considerably across Europe. Styles of music from nations formerly under Ottoman rule enrich this variation, with their native musical traditions having fused with Ottoman musical influences over centuries. Media Television Radio Newspapers Architecture Prehistoric architecture The Neolithic long house was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe beginning at least as early as the period 5000 to 6000 BC. Knap of Howar and Skara Brae, the Orkney Islands, Scotland, are stone-built Neolithic settlements dating from 3,500 BC. Megaliths found in Europe and the Mediterranean were also erected in the Neolithic period. See Neolithic architecture. Ancient classical architecture Ancient Greek architecture was produced by the Greek-speaking people whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland, the Peloponnese, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Anatolia and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD. Ancient Greek architecture is distinguished by its highly formalized characteristics, both of structure and decoration. The formal vocabulary of ancient Greek architecture, in particular the division of architectural style into three defined orders: the Doric Order, the Ionic Order, and the Corinthian Order, was to have a profound effect on the Western architecture of later periods. Ancient Roman architecture adopted the external language of classical Greek architecture for the purposes of the ancient Romans, but differed from Greek buildings, becoming a new architectural style. The two styles are often considered one body of classical architecture. Roman architecture flourished in the Roman Republic and even more so under the Empire, when the great majority of surviving buildings were constructed. It used new materials, particularly concrete, and newer technologies such as the arch and the dome to make buildings that were typically strong and well-engineered. Large numbers remain in some form across the empire, sometimes complete and still in use. Medieval architecture Romanesque architecture combines features of ancient Roman and Byzantine buildings and other local traditions. It is known for its massive quality, thick walls, round arches, sturdy pillars, groin vaults, large towers, and decorative arcading. Each building has clearly defined forms, frequently of a very regular, symmetrical plan; the overall appearance is one of simplicity when compared with the Gothic buildings that were to follow. The style can be identified right across Europe, despite regional characteristics and different materials, and is most frequently seen in churches. Plenty of examples of this architecture are found alongside the Camino de Santiago. Gothic architecture flourished in Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. Originating in 12th century France and lasting into the 16th century, Gothic architecture was known during the period as Opus Francigenum ("French work"), with the term Gothic first appearing during the latter part of the Renaissance. Its characteristics include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault (which evolved from the joint vaulting of Romanesque architecture), and the flying buttress. Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys, and churches of Europe. Renaissance and baroque architecture Renaissance architecture began in the early 14th and lasted until the early 17th century. It demonstrates a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman architectural thought and material culture, particularly the symmetry, proportion, geometry, and the regularity of parts of ancient buildings. Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities. The style was carried to France, Germany, England, Russia, and other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact Palladian architecture was derived from and inspired by the designs of the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). Palladio's work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective, and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. From the 17th century, Palladio's interpretation of this classical architecture was adapted as the style known as Palladianism. It continued to develop until the end of the 18th century, and continued to be popular in Europe throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, where it was frequently employed in the design of public and municipal buildings. Baroque architecture began in 16th-century Italy. It took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion. It was, initially at least, directly linked to the Counter-Reformation, a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself in response to the Protestant Reformation. Baroque was characterized by new explorations of form, light, and shadow, and a freer treatment of classical elements. It reached its extreme form in the Rococo style. 19th-century architecture Revivalism was a hallmark of nineteenth-century European architecture. Revivals of the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles all took place, alongside revivals of the Classical styles. Regional styles, such as English Tudor, were also revived, as well as non-European styles, such as Chinese (Chinoiserie) and Egyptian. These revivals often used elements of the original style in a freer way than original examples, sometimes borrowing from multiple styles at once. At Alnwick Castle, for example, Gothic revival elements were added to the exterior of the original medieval castle, while the interiors were designed in a Renaissance style. Art Nouveau architecture was a reaction against the eclectic styles which dominated European architecture in the second half of the 19th century. It was expressed through decoration. The buildings were covered with ornament in curving forms, based on flowers, plants, or animals: butterflies, peacocks, swans, irises, cyclamens, orchids, and water lilies. Façades were asymmetrical, and often decorated with polychrome ceramic tiles. The decoration usually suggested movement; there was no distinction between the structure and the ornament. 20th-century and modern architecture Art Deco architecture began in Brussels in 1903–04. Early buildings had clean lines, rectangular forms, and no decoration on the facades; they marked a clean break with the Art Nouveau style. After the First World War, art deco buildings of steel and reinforced concrete began to appear in large cities across Europe and the United States. Buildings became more decorated, and interiors were extremely colorful and dynamic, combining sculpture, murals, and ornate geometric design in marble, glass, ceramics, and stainless steel. Modernist architecture is a term applied to a group of styles of architecture that emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II. It was based upon new technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; and upon a rejection of the traditional neoclassical architecture and Beaux-Arts styles that were popular in the 19th century. Modernist architecture continued to be the dominant architectural style for institutional and corporate buildings into the 1980s, when it was challenged by postmodernism. Expressionist architecture is a form of modern architecture that began during the first decades of the 20th century, in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and dominated in Germany. In the 1950s, the second movement of expressionist architecture developed, initiated by the Ronchamp Chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut (1950–1955) by Le Corbusier. The style was individualistic, but tendencies include Distortion of form for an emotional effect, efforts at achieving the new, original, and visionary, and a conception of architecture as a work of art. Postmodern architecture emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Embraced in the USA first, it spread to Europe. In contrast to Modernist buildings, Postmodern buildings have curved forms, decorative elements, asymmetry, bright colors, and features often borrowed from earlier periods. Colors and textures unrelated to the structure or function of the building. While rejecting the "puritanism" of modernism, it called for a return to ornament, and an accumulation of citations and collages borrowed from past styles. It borrowed freely from classical architecture, Rococo, neoclassical architecture, the Viennese secession, the British Arts and Crafts movement, the German Jugendstil. Deconstructivist architecture is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s, which gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building. It is characterized by an absence of harmony, continuity, or symmetry. Its name comes from the idea of "Deconstruction", a form of semiotic analysis developed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Besides fragmentation, Deconstructivism often manipulates the structure's surface skin and creates by non-rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of architecture. The finished visual appearance is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos. Literature Classical literature Medieval literature Renaissance literature Early modern literature Modern literature Film Antoine Lumière realized, on 28 December 1895, the first projection, with the Cinematograph, in Paris. In 1897, Georges Méliès established the first cinema studio on a rooftop property in Montreuil, near Paris. Some notable European film movements include German Expressionism, Italian neorealism, French New Wave, Polish Film School, New German Cinema, Portuguese Cinema Novo, Movida Madrileña, Czechoslovak New Wave, Dogme 95, New French Extremity, and Romanian New Wave. The cinema of Europe has its own awards, the European Film Awards. Main festivals : Cannes Film Festival (France), Berlin International Film Festival (Germany). The Venice Film Festival (Italy) or Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia, is the oldest film festival in the world. Philippe Binant realized, on 2 February 2000, the first digital cinema projection in Europe. Science Classical science See: History of science in classical antiquity Medieval science See: post-classical science Renaissance science See: History of science in the Renaissance Early modern science See: Scientific Revolution, Science in the Age of Enlightenment, and Romanticism in Science Modern science See: Science and Technology in Europe Philosophy European philosophy is a predominant strand of philosophy globally, and is central to philosophical enquiry in the Americas and most other parts of the world which have fallen under its influence. The Greek schools of philosophy in antiquity provide the basis of philosophical discourse that extends to today. Christian thought had a huge influence on many fields of European philosophy (as European philosophy has been on Christian thought too), sometimes as a reaction. Many political ideologies were theorized in Europe, such as capitalism, communism, fascism, socialism, or anarchism. Classical See: Ancient philosophy Medieval See: Medieval philosophy Renaissance See: Renaissance philosophy Modern See: Age of Enlightenment. Contemporary See: 20th-century philosophy and Contemporary philosophy Religion Christianity has been the dominant religion shaping European culture for at least the last 1700 years. Modern philosophical thought has very much been influenced by Christian philosophers such as St Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus. And throughout most of its history, European values have been nearly synonymous with Christian culture. Christian culture is said to have been the predominant force in western civilization, guiding the course of philosophy, art, and science. The notion of "Europe and the Western World" has been intimately connected with the concept of "Christianity and Christendom". Many even attribute Christianity for being the link that created a unified European identity. Christianity Christianity is the largest religion in Europe, with 76.2% of Europeans considering themselves Christian in 2010, As 2010, Catholics were the largest Christian group in Europe, accounting for more than 48% of European Christians. The second-largest Christian group in Europe was the Orthodox, who made up 32% of European Christians. About 19% of European Christians were part of the Protestant tradition. Russia is the largest Christian country in Europe by population, followed by Germany and Italy. In 2012 Europe constituted in absolute terms the world's largest Christian population. Historically, Europe has been the center and cradle of Christian civilization. Christianity played a prominent role in the development of the European culture and identity. According to Scholars, in 2017, Europe's population was 77.8% Christian (up from 74.9% 1970), these changes were largely result of the collapse of Communism and switching to Christianity in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. Catholicism See: Catholic Church in Europe Protestantism See: Protestant Reformation Eastern Orthodoxy See: Eastern Orthodoxy in Europe Islam Judaism Other religions See: Hinduism by country, Buddhism in Europe, Sikhism by country Atheism See: Religion in Europe, History of Atheism, Atheism during the Age of Enlightenment Cuisine The cuisines of European countries are diverse by themselves, although there are common characteristics that distinguish European cooking from cuisines of Asian countries and others. Compared with traditional cooking of Asian countries, for example, meat is more prominent and substantial in serving-size. Dairy products are often utilized in the cooking process. Wheat-flour bread has long been the most common source of starch in this cuisine, along with pasta, dumplings, and pastries, although the potato has become a major starch plant in the diet of Europeans and their diaspora since the European colonization of the Americas. Fashion The earliest definite examples of needles originate from the Solutrean culture, which existed in France and Spain from 19,000 BC to 15,000 BC. The earliest dyed flax fibers have been found in a cave in Georgia and date back to 36,000 BP. See Clothing in ancient Rome, 1100–1200 in fashion, 1200–1300 in fashion, 1300–1400 in fashion, 1400–1500 in fashion, 1500–1550 in fashion, 1550–1600 in fashion, 1600–1650 in fashion, 1650–1700 in fashion, Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution Sport History Olympics See: History of the Olympics Contemporary sports Association football, which has its origins in the United Kingdom. The oldest association is The Football Association of England (1863), and the first international match was between Scotland and England (1872). It is now the world's most popular sport and is played throughout Europe. Cricket has its origins in southeast England. It is popular throughout England and Wales, and parts of the Netherlands. It is also popular in other areas in Northwest Europe. It is however, very popular worldwide, especially in Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the Indian subcontinent. Cycling, which is also immensely popular as a means of transport, has most of its sporting adherents in Europe. Tour de France is the world's most-watched live annual sporting event. The bicycle itself is probably from France (see History of the bicycle). The discus throw, javelin throw, and shot put have their origins in ancient Greece. The Olympics, both ancient and modern, have their origins too in Europe, and have a massive influence globally. Field Hockey, as a modern game, began in 18th century England, with Ireland having the oldest federation. It is popular in Western Europe, the Indian subcontinent, Australia and East Asia. Ice hockey, popular in Europe and North America, may derive from this sport. Golf, one of the most popular sports in Europe, Asia, and North America, has its origins in Scotland, with the oldest course being at Musselburgh. Handball, which is popular in Europe and elsewhere, has its origins in antiquity. The modern game is from Denmark and Germany, with Germany having been involved in both the first women's and men's internationals. Rugby League and Rugby Union were both created in England. They both have similar origins to football. Rugby Union is the older of the two codes and has rules that date from 1845 (see articles: History of rugby league and History of rugby union). They acrimoniously split in the late 19th century over the treatment of injured players. Rugby league gradually changed its laws over the next century with the result that today both sports have little in common, apart from the basics. They have both been carried abroad by colonization, particularly to many former British colonies. American Football and Canadian Football are derivatives of rugby. Tennis which originates from England, and related games such as Table Tennis, derive from the game Real Tennis which is from France. It is popular throughout the world. Regional sports In addition, Europe has numerous national or regional sports which do not command a large international following outside of emigrant groups. These include: Alpine Wrestling in Switzerland. Bandy in Russia, Sweden, and Finland Basque Pelota in parts of Spain and France, and which has been brought to the Americas by emigrants. Bullfighting in Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France near the Spanish Border. Gaelic Football in Ireland, which influenced Australian rules football. Gaelic Handball (Ireland) which was taken to the United States in the form of American Handball. Hurling in Ireland. Korfbal in the Netherlands and Belgium. Pesäpallo (Boboll) in Finland Pétanque, Boules, Irish Road Bowling, Skittles, Bocce, and Bowls and others are variations of bowling games which are popular throughout Europe and have been spread around the world. Rounders from England now popular in northwest Europe from which Baseball derives. Shinty in Scotland, which influenced ice hockey in Canada (see also Shinny). Trotting in southern Europe. Some sports competitions feature a European team gathering athletes from different European countries. These teams use the European flag as an emblem. The most famous of these competitions is the Ryder Cup in golf. Some sporting organizations hold European Championships like European Cricket Council, the European Games, the European Rugby Cup (Club/Regional competition), the European SC Championships, the FIRA - Association of European Rugby, the IIHF, the Mitropa Cup, the Rugby League European Federation - European Championship, the Sport in the European Union and the UEFA. European politics Overview See: History of Europe European Union See: Politics of the European Union Capital of Culture Each year since 1985 one or more cities across Europe are chosen as European Capital of Culture, an EU initiative. Here are the past and future capitals: 1985: Athens 1986: Florence 1987: Amsterdam 1988: Berlin 1989: Paris 1990: Glasgow 1991: Dublin 1992: Madrid 1993: Antwerp 1994: Lisbon 1995: Luxembourg 1996: Copenhagen 1997: Thessaloniki 1998: Stockholm 1999: Weimar 2000: Avignon, Bergen, Bologna, Brussels, Helsinki, Kraków, Prague, Reykjavík, Santiago de Compostela 2001: Rotterdam, Porto 2002: Bruges, Salamanca 2003: Graz 2004: Genoa, Lille 2005: Cork 2006: Patras 2007: Sibiu, Luxembourg, Greater Region 2008: Liverpool, Stavanger 2009: Vilnius, Linz 2010: Essen (representing the Ruhr), Istanbul, Pécs 2011: Turku, Tallinn 2012: Guimarães, Maribor 2013: Marseille, Košice 2014: Umeå, Riga 2015: Mons, Plzeň 2016: San Sebastián, Wrocław 2017: Aarhus, Paphos 2018: Valletta, Malta and Leeuwarden 2019: Plovdiv and Matera 2020: Galway and Rijeka Symbols See also Compendium of cultural policies and trends in Europe Cultural policies of the European Union Europalia European dances European Heritage Day Europeanisation Romano-Germanic culture Western culture Westernization References Bibliography External links Eurolinguistix.com Europe.org.uk - online European culture magazine (EU London Office) TheEuropeanLibrary.org, The European Library, gateway to Europe's national libraries Europeana.eu European Digital Library Europa.eu, EU Culture Portal (archived)

Youth subculture

Youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school. Youth subcultures that show a systematic hostility to the dominant culture are sometimes described as countercultures. Youth music genres are associated with many youth subcultures, such as hip-hop, punks, emos, ravers, juggalos, metalheads, and goths. The study of subcultures often consists of the study of the symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affections by members of the subculture, and also, the ways in which these symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. Socioeconomic class, gender, intelligence, conformity, morality and ethnicity, can be important in relation to youth subcultures. Youth subcultures can be defined as systems, modes of expression or lifestyles, developed by groups in subordinate structural positions in response to dominant systems, which reflect their attempt to solve structural contradictions arising from the wider societal context. The term, scene, can refer to an exclusive subculture or faction. Scenes are distinguished from the broad culture through either fashion; identification with specific (sometimes obscure or experimental) musical genres or political perspectives; and a strong in-group or tribal mentality. The term can be used to describe geographic subsets of a subculture, such as the Detroit drum and bass scene or the London goth scene. Theories Early studies in youth culture were mainly produced by functionalist sociologists, and focus on youth as a single form of culture. In explaining the development of the culture, they utilized the concept of anomie. The generalizations involved in this theory ignore the existence of subcultures. Marxist theories account for some diversity, because they focus on classes and class-fractions rather than youth as a whole. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson describe youth subcultures as symbolic or ritualistic attempts to resist the power of bourgeois hegemony by consciously adopting behavior that appears threatening to the establishment. Conversely, Marxists of the Frankfurt School of social studies argue that youth culture is inherently consumerist and integral to the divide-and-rule strategy of capitalism. They argue that it creates generation gaps and pits groups of youths against each other (e.g. mods and rockers), especially as youth culture is the dominant culture in the west. Interactionist theorist Stan Cohen argues youth subcultures are not coherent social groupings that arise spontaneously as a reaction to social forces, but that mass media labeling results in the creation of youth subcultures by imposing an ideological framework in which people can locate their behavior. Post-structuralist theories of subculture utilize many of the ideas from these other theories, including hegemony and the role of the media. In his book, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige subcultures as a reaction of subordinated groups that challenge the hegemony of the dominant culture. This theory accounts for factors such as gender, ethnicity and age. Youth can be seen as a subordinate group in relation to the dominant, adult society. Historical theorist Steven Mintz claims that until about 1955, youth subculture as such did not exist. Children aspired to (or were pulled into) adulthood as fast as their physical development allowed. Marcel Danesi argues that since then, the media, advertisers and others have made youth the dominant culture of Western societies, to the point that many people retain what others consider to be immature attitudes far into adulthood. This is further supported by P. Lewis, who claims that youth culture did not originate until the 1950s, with the development of rock and roll. However, other historians have said that youth culture may have developed earlier, particularly in the inter-war period. There were examples of new youth subcultures emerging throughout that period, such as the flapper. Subcultures may also be seen as extensions of crowds, subcultures that emerge within a specific school. Certain crowds (jocks, geeks, preppies, druggies, emos) are found in many, even most, high schools across the United States, though the particular terms used by the adolescents in them may vary (nerds instead of geeks, etc.). Most of these can be found in other Western countries as well, with the exception of jocks (the United States is unusual in having athletics specifically affiliated with schools, although similar athletic affiliation groups exist in British public schools.) See also Beat Generation Counterculture of the 1960s Hungry Generation La Sape List of generations List of subcultures Street fashion Trash culture Youth culture Youth voice Notes Subculture Counterculture Teen idols

Post-postmodernism

Post-postmodernism is a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism. Periodization Most scholars would agree that modernism began around 1900 and continued on as the dominant cultural force in the intellectual circles of Western culture well into the mid-twentieth century. Like all eras, modernism encompasses many competing individual directions and is impossible to define as a discrete unity or totality. However, its chief general characteristics are often thought to include an emphasis on "radical aesthetics, technical experimentation, spatial or rhythmic, rather than chronological form, [and] self-conscious reflexiveness" as well as the search for authenticity in human relations, abstraction in art, and utopian striving. These characteristics are normally lacking in postmodernism or are treated as objects of irony. Postmodernism arose after World War II as a reaction to the perceived failings of modernism, whose radical artistic projects had come to be associated with totalitarianism or had been assimilated into mainstream culture. The basic features of what is now called postmodernism can be found as early as the 1940s, most notably in the work of Jorge Luis Borges. However, most scholars today would agree that postmodernism began to compete with modernism in the late 1950s and gained ascendancy over it in the 1960s. Since then, postmodernism has been a dominant, though not undisputed, force in art, literature, film, music, drama, architecture, history, and continental philosophy. Salient features of postmodernism are normally thought to include the ironic play with styles, citations and narrative levels, a metaphysical skepticism or nihilism towards a "grand narrative" of Western culture, a preference for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what "the real" constitutes) and a "waning of affect" on the part of the subject, who is caught up in the free interplay of virtual, endlessly reproducible signs inducing a state of consciousness similar to schizophrenia. Since the late 1990s, there has been a small but growing feeling both in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion." However, there have been few formal attempts to define and name the era succeeding postmodernism, and none of the proposed designations has yet become part of mainstream usage. Definitions Consensus on what constitutes an era can not be easily achieved while that era is still in its early stages. However, a common theme of current attempts to define post-postmodernism is emerging as one where faith, trust, dialogue, performance, and sincerity can work to transcend postmodern irony. The following definitions, which vary widely in depth, focus, and scope, are listed in the chronological order of their appearance. Turner's post-postmodernism In 1995, the landscape architect and urban planner Tom Turner issued a book-length call for a post-postmodern turn in urban planning. Turner criticizes the postmodern credo of "anything goes" and suggests that "the built environment professions are witnessing the gradual dawn of a post-Postmodernism that seeks to temper reason with faith." In particular, Turner argues for the use of timeless organic and geometrical patterns in urban planning. As sources of such patterns he cites, among others, the Taoist-influenced work of the American architect Christopher Alexander, gestalt psychology and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung's concept of archetypes. Regarding terminology, Turner urges people to "embrace post-Postmodernism – and pray for a better name." Epstein's trans-postmodernism In his 1999 book on Russian postmodernism, the Russian-American Slavist Mikhail Epstein suggested that postmodernism "is ... part of a much larger historical formation," which he calls "postmodernity". Epstein believes that postmodernist aesthetics will eventually become entirely conventional and provide the foundation for a new, non-ironic kind of poetry, which he describes using the prefix "trans-": As an example Epstein cites the work of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov. Kirby's pseudo-modernism or digimodernism In his 2006 paper The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, the British scholar Alan Kirby formulated a socio-cultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls "pseudo-modernism". Kirby associates pseudo-modernism with the triteness and shallowness resulting from the instantaneous, direct, and superficial participation in culture made possible by the internet, mobile phones, interactive television and similar means: "In pseudo-modernism one phones, clicks, presses, surfs, chooses, moves, downloads." Pseudo-modernism's "typical intellectual states" are furthermore described as being "ignorance, fanaticism and anxiety" and it is said to produce a "trance-like state" in those participating in it. The net result of this media-induced shallowness and instantaneous participation in trivial events is a "silent autism" superseding "the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism." Kirby sees no aesthetically valuable works coming out of "pseudo-modernism". As examples of its triteness he cites reality TV, interactive news programs, "the drivel found ... on some Wikipedia pages", docu-soaps, and the essayistic cinema of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. In a book published in September 2009 titled Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture, Kirby developed further and nuanced his views on culture and textuality in the aftermath of postmodernism. Vermeulen and van den Akker's metamodernism In 2010, the cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker introduced the term metamodernism as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate. In their article "Notes on Metamodernism" they assert that the 2000s are characterized by the emergence of a sensibility that oscillates between, and must be situated beyond, modern positions and postmodern strategies. As examples of the metamodern sensibility Vermeulen and van den Akker cite the "informed naivety", "pragmatic idealism" and "moderate fanaticism" of the various cultural responses to, among others, climate change, the financial crisis, and (geo)political instability. The prefix 'meta' here refers not to some reflective stance or repeated rumination, but to Plato's metaxy, which intends a movement between opposite poles as well as beyond. See also Altermodern Cold War Dogme 95 Excessivism Integral theory (Ken Wilber) Kitsch movement Maximalism Metamodernism Neo-minimalism New Puritans New Sincerity New Urbanism Post-irony Post-truth Pseudorealism Radical orthodoxy Remodernism Stuckism Transmodernism References External links Essay by Alan Kirby on theories of post-postmodernism Essay by Mikhail Epstein on The Place of Postmodernism in Postmodernity Introduction to "Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture" by Alan Kirby Notes on metamodernism Performatism.de (Resource site for performatism and theories of post-postmodernism) Post-post-modernism known as Authenticism Post-postmodern novel by Patrick J. F. Quere Post-postmodernism known as Hyperhybridism Theories of aesthetics Architectural theory Visual arts genres Contemporary art Postmodern theory Critical theory Criticism of postmodernism Modernism Modernist architecture New Urbanism + + 21st century in the arts

Punk ideologies

Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture and punk rock. It is primarily concerned with concepts such as mutual aid, against selling out, hierarchy, white supremacy, authoritarianism, eugenics, class and classism, while supporting anti-consumerism, anti-corporatism, anti-war, anti-imperialism, leftism, anti-globalization, anti-gentrification, anti-racism, anti-sexism, gender equality, anti-homophobia, racial equality, animal rights, free-thought and non-conformity. One of its main tenets is a rejection of mainstream, corporate mass culture and its values. It continues to evolve its ideology as the movement spreads throughout North America from its origins in England and New York and embraces a range of anti-racist and anti-sexist belief systems. Punk does not necessarily lend itself to any particular political ideology as it is primarily anti-establishment although leftist punk is more common due to the prevalence of liberal and conservative ideologies in the status-quo. Punk ideologies are usually expressed through punk rock music and lyrics, punk literature such as amateur fanzines, spoken word performances or recordings, punk fashion, or punk visual art. Some punks have participated in direct action, such as protest or demonstration disruption, political violence, ecotage, street barricades, squatting, pirate radio, off-grid energy, graffiti, vandalism and public and business property destruction, and indirect action through counter-propaganda, protests or boycotts. They support and squat in urban and rural collective houses, with group funds held in common. Punk fashion was originally an expression of nonconformity, as well as opposition to both mainstream culture and the status quo. Punk fashion often displays aggression, rebellion, and individualism. Some punks wear accessories, clothing or have tattoos that express sociopolitical messages. They stage Punk Rock Food Drives, such as D.O.A's Unity for Freedom. Punk visual art also often includes political messages. Many punks wear secondhand clothing, partly as an anti-consumerist statement. An attitude common in the punk subculture is the opposition to selling out, which refers to abandoning of one's values and/or a change in musical style toward pop (e.g. electropop) and embracing mainstream culture or more radio-friendly rock (e.g. pop rock) in exchange for wealth, status, or power. The issue of authenticity is important in the punk subculture—the pejorative term poseur is applied to those who try to associate with punk and adopt its stylistic attributes but are deemed not to share or understand the underlying core values or philosophy. Because anti-establishment attitudes are such an important part of the punk subculture, a network of independent record labels, venues and distributors has developed. Some punk bands have chosen to break from this independent system and work within the established system of major labels. The do it yourself (DIY) ideal is common in the punk scene, especially in terms of music recording and distribution, concert promotion, and photocopying magazines, posters and flyers. The expression DIY was coined by commentators after the fact. Specific ideologies and philosophies The following include some of the most common ideologies and philosophies within the punk subculture (in alphabetical order). Anarchism There is a complex and worldwide underground of punks committed to anarchism as a serious political ideology, sometimes termed "peace punks" or "anarcho-punks." While some well-known punk bands such as the Sex Pistols and The Exploited had songs about anarchy, notably the Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK", they did not embrace anarchism as a disciplined ideology. As such, these bands are not considered part of the anarcho-punk scene. Anarcho-punks typically believe in direct action. Many anarcho-punks are pacifists (e.g. Crass and Discharge) and therefore believe in using non-violent means of achieving their aims. These include peaceful protest, squatting, legal graffiti, culture jamming, ecotage, freeganism, boycotting, civil disobedience, hacktivism and subvertising. Some anarcho-punks believe that violence or property damage is an acceptable way of achieving social change (e.g. Conflict). This manifests itself as rioting, illegal graffiti, vandalism, wire cutting, hunt sabotage, participation in Class War-style activities, melee weapons and in extreme cases, bombings. Notable anarchist punk artists include: Aus-Rotten, Dave Insurgent, Crass, Subhumans, Colin Jerwood, and Dave Dictor. Animal rights and veganism In the 1980s, both straight edge hardcore punk in the United States and anarcho-punk in the United Kingdom started to become associated with animal rights. This association was made possible through activism by bands such as Napalm Death, Icons of Filth, Conflict, and Electro Hippies. Some musicians in these bands were vegans and vegetarians themselves and publicly advocated for these ideologies. In addition to this, bands at the forefront of this movement included lyrical themes pertaining to animal rights, vegetarianism and veganism. Consequently, these ideas became a feature of the punk subculture and this association continues on into the 21st century. A notable example is Jack McGarry of the band SX-70 citing messages of animal rights in lyrics of music he listened to as an influence in becoming vegan. It is additionally evidenced by the prominence of vegan punk events such as Fluff Fest in Europe. Apoliticism Some punks claim to be adherents to apoliticism, such as the band Charged GBH and the singer GG Allin, although some socio-political ideas have appeared in their lyrics. Some Charged GBH songs have discussed social issues, and a few have expressed anti-war views. Allin expressed a vague desire to kill the United States president and destroy the political system in his song "Violence Now". Punk subgenres that are generally apolitical include glam punk, psychobilly, horror punk, punk pathetique, death rock and pop punk. Many of the bands credited with starting the punk movement were decidedly apolitical, including The Dictators, Ramones (which featured staunch conservative Johnny Ramone alongside liberal activist Joey Ramone), New York Dolls, Television, Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids. Christianity Christian punk is a subgenre of punk rock with some degree of Christian lyrical content. Some Christian punk bands are associated with the Christian music industry, while others reject that association. Ideologies within Christian punk vary, though a number of bands lean towards traditional left-wing politics, most prominently Crashdog, Showbread (band), Ballydowse and The Psalters, the latter three of whom identified as Christian anarchists. Further examples of notable Christian punk bands include Altar Boys, The Crucified, Five Iron Frenzy, Flatfoot 56, Side Walk Slam, and pop-punk band MxPx, who earned a gold record in 1998. Conservatism A small number of punk bands and artists are conservative, rejecting liberalism, communism and socialism in favor of conservatism. Notable conservative punks include Johnny Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone, Forgotten Rebels, Billy Zoom, Joe Escalante, Bobby Steele, Duane Peters, Klamydia, Dave Smalley, and Agnostic Front. John Lydon of the Sex Pistols has also expressed some conservative views. Some Christian punk and hardcore bands have conservative political stances, in particular some of the NYHC bands. Environmentalism Feminism Riot grrrl is an underground subcultural feminist punk movement that combines feminism, punk music and politics. It began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington, and the greater Pacific Northwest. It is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement, and has recently been seen in current fourth-wave feminist punk music. Riot grrrl bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, classism, anarchism, and often contain themes of female empowerment. Primary bands associated with the movement include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, Huggy Bear, Skinned Teen, Emily's Sassy Lime and Sleater-Kinney, small italian band Pankhurst, as well as queercore groups such as Team Dresch and the Third Sex. Hare Krishna The Filipino punk band the Wuds which was formed in the early 1980s is the first known punk band who composed songs dedicated to Hare Krishna movement. In the 1990s, some notable members of the New York hardcore scene, including Ray Cappo (Youth of Today, Shelter and other bands), John Joseph (Cro-Mags) and Harley Flanagan (Cro-Mags) converted to Hare Krishna. This led to trend within the western hardcore scene that became known as Krishnacore. Islam Taqwacore is a punk subgenre, many of whose members are Muslim artists who live in the West. Liberalism Liberal punks were in the punk subculture from the beginning and are mostly on the liberal left. Notable liberal punks (second wave, mid-1990s to 2000s) include: Fat Mike of NOFX, Ted Leo, Green Day, Crashdog, Dropkick Murphys, Hoxton Tom McCourt, Jared Gomes of Hed PE, Tim Armstrong of Rancid and Tim McIlrath of Rise Against. Liberal ideologies in punk music are most notably found in the lyrical content of these songs. While viewpoints typically associated with liberals (such as being anti-war) can be seen within the lyrical content of some punk songs, they are also sometimes endorsed by musicians in public statements and interviews as well. Some liberal punks also participated in the Rock Against Bush movement in the mid-2000s, in support of the Democratic Party candidate John Kerry. Neo-Nazism Nazi punks have a white nationalist ideology that is closely related to that of white power skinheads. Ian Stuart Donaldson and his band Skrewdriver are credited with popularizing white power rock and hatecore (for its hateful lyrical themes), or Rock Against Communism. Nazi punks are different from early punks such as Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux, who are believed to have incorporated Nazi imagery such as swastikas for shock or comedy value. "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" is a song by the Dead Kennedys, an American punk rock band, and is often considered the most famous song regarding nazi punk. The song was released in 1981 and was written in response to the rise of neo-Nazi and far-right punks that had started attending Dead Kennedy shows in response to their satirical song "Kill the Poor". The lyrics of "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" condemn the presence of far-right and fascist punks attending their shows, calling out individuals who espouse racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs. The song's chorus is a direct call to action, urging punk fans to reject and expel these hateful elements from their community. Nihilism Centering on a belief in the abject lack of meaning and value to life, nihilism was a fixture in some early punk rock and protopunk. The Sex Pistols were central to the association of punk and nihilism, with the Trouser Press Record Guide writing that their "confrontational, nihilistic public image and rabidly nihilistic socio-political lyrics set the tone that continues to guide punk bands." However, researcher Neil Eriksen argues that though "much of the critical realism [of punk rock] expresses cynicism and nihilism, it does serve to question existing relations in such a way that listeners are forced to think about what is being said", so that overt rejection of meaning is primarily concerned with challenging existing values. Situationism The Situationist International (SI) was an early influence on punk subculture in the United Kingdom. Started in continental Europe in the 1950s, the SI was an avant-garde political movement that sought to recapture the ideals of surrealist art and use them to construct new and radical social situations. Malcolm McLaren introduced situationist ideas to punk through his management of the band Sex Pistols. Vivienne Westwood, McLaren's partner and the band's designer/stylist, expressed situationist ideals through fashion that was intended to provoke a specific social response. 15% Pus and DUST, subversive 1990s Manchester bands, staged psycho-geographic walks around Hulme and created human collages from road signs as part of what became known as 'psycho-spectre'. Jamie Reid's distinctive album cover artwork was openly situationist. Socialism The Clash were a blatantly political punk rock band, introducing socialism to the punk scene. Clash frontman Joe Strummer said of his socialist views "I believe in socialism because it seems more humanitarian, rather than every man for himself and 'I'm alright jack' and all those asshole businessmen with all the loot. I made up my mind from viewing society from that angle. That's where I'm from and there's where I've made my decisions from. That's why I believe in socialism." Some of the original Oi! bands expressed a rough form of socialist working class populism — often mixed with patriotism. Many Oi! bands sang about unemployment, economic inequality, working class power and police harassment. In the 1980s, several notable British socialist punk musicians were involved with Red Wedge. Notable socialist punks include: Attila the Stockbroker, Billy Bragg, Bruce La Bruce, Garry Bushell (until the late 1980s), Chris Dean, Gary Floyd, Jack Grisham, Stewart Home, Dennis Lyxzén, Thomas Mensforth, Fermin Muguruza, Alberto Pla, Tom Robinson, Seething Wells, Paul Simmonds, Rob Tyner, Joe Strummer, Ian Svenonius, Mark Steel and Paul Weller (guitarist for British powerhouse, new wave band, The Jam). Neil Eriksen wrote in 1980: "... we feel that elements of punk rock fulfill a revolutionary cultural function". Straight edge Straight edge originated in the Washington, D.C. hardcore punk scene with the Minor Threat song "Straight Edge" written by frontman Ian MacKaye and guitarist Brian Baker. Straight edge involves abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drug use. Some who claim the title straight edge also abstain from caffeine, casual sex and meat. Those stricter individuals may be considered part of the hardline subculture. Unlike the shunning of meat and caffeine, refraining from casual sex was without question a practice in the original straight edge lifestyle, but it has been overlooked in many of the later reincarnations of straight edge. For some, straight edge is a simple lifestyle preference, but for others it is a political stance. In many cases, it is a rejection of the perceived self-destructive qualities of punk and hardcore culture. MacKaye has often spoken out against others labeling themselves as being Straight edge, which was never his intentions for it being a label, but it became a movement one which he became annoyed with. Notable straight edgers: Tim McIlrath, CM Punk and Davey Havok. See also Anarchism and animal rights Anarchism and the arts CrimethInc. List of political punk songs Music and politics Protest art Rock and roll and the fall of communism Rock Against Bush Rock Against Communism Rock Against Racism Rock Against Sexism Solarpunk Youth politics Youth subcultures Common sense References Bibliography O'Hara, Craig, The Philosophy of Punk, AK Press, 1999 Garofalo, Rebee, Rockin' The Boat: Music and Mass Movements, South End Press, 1991 Sinker, Daniel, We Owe You Nothing, Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews, Akashic Books, 2001 Taylor, Steven, False Prophet: Fieldnotes from the Punk Underground, Wesleyan University Press, 2003 Punk Ideologies Music and politics Australian youth culture Youth culture in the United States Youth culture in the United Kingdom Youth culture Politics

Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures

Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of people who have shared experiences, backgrounds, or interests due to common sexual or gender identities. Among the first to argue that members of sexual minorities can also constitute cultural minorities were Adolf Brand, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Leontine Sagan in Germany. These pioneers were later followed by the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis in the United States. Not all persons of various gender and sexual orientations self-identify or are affiliated with a particular subculture. Reasons include geographic distance, unawareness of the subculture's existence, fear of social stigma, or personal preference to remain unidentified with sexuality- or gender-based subcultures or communities. Some have suggested that the identities defined by the Western heterosexualized cultures are based on sexuality. They also have serious flaws and often leave no space for the public to discuss these flaws of gender and sexuality. Because there are no safe spaces to discuss these things, many people reject who they are and ignore their own sexual needs. This rejection can lead to these people being classified under sexual identities that they feel do not represent them as a person. These cultures are currently changing. For example, Greece recently legalized gay marriage, taking a huge step for an Orthodox country. LGBT culture LGBT culture is the common culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and communities. It is sometimes referred to as "queer culture" or "gay culture", but the latter term can also be specific to gay men's culture. LGBT culture varies widely by geography and the identity of the participants. Elements often identified as being common to the culture of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people include: The work of famous gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. This may include: Present-day LGBT artists and political figures; Historical figures who have been identified as LGBT. It has often been questioned whether it is appropriate to identify historical figures using modern terms for sexual identity (see History of sexuality). However, many LGBT people feel a kinship towards these people and their work, especially to the extent that it deals with same-sex attraction or gender identity. An understanding of the history of LGBT political movements. An ironic appreciation of things linked by stereotype to LGBT people. Figures and identities that are present in the LGBT community and LGBT culture, this could include the gay village, drag kings and queens, LGBT pride, and the rainbow flag. In some cities, especially in North America, gay men and lesbians tend to live in certain neighbourhoods. LGBT communities organize a number of events to celebrate their culture, such as Pride parades, the Gay Games and Southern Decadence. Polyamory Polyamory is the practice and associated culture of being romantically connected or involved with more than one person simultaneously and consensually, which is distinct yet entwined with polysexuality, the practice of having more than one sexual partner. Polyamory can occur in a social group, culture, or group of people specific to a certain gender-identity or sexual orientation. In some cultures the practice of forming multiple simultaneous romantic relationships is controversial. Polygamy (a practice that overlaps heavily with polyamory) is the practice of legally marrying more than one person. It is against the law to marry more than one person in the United States; however, there are some countries around the world where polygamy and/or polyamorous relationships are not unusual. For example, it is not uncommon in many middle eastern cultures for men to have multiple wives. This type of polyamorous relationship is known as polygyny, whereas the opposite, in which women have multiple husbands, is called polyandry. The illegal status of multiple marriages in many parts of the world has not stopped the formation of communities and sub-cultures that practice polyamory and informal polygamy. There are several accounts of attempted private polygamist communities in Western Europe and North America. However, these communities, for the most part, have eventually disbanded. In Western culture there are few or no examples of widespread acceptance of polyamory. This does not mean that polyamorous relationships in Western culture (and subcultures) do not exist. In the United States it is estimated that polyamory is practiced by 4-5% of the population. Polyamory exists mainly as isolated instances in which those in relationships have made agreements with their significant other(s). Sexual fetish-based cultures The fetish subculture is a subculture that comprises people with a broad range of sexual fetishes and other paraphilias. Alternative terms for the fetish subculture include fetish scene and fetish community. The most common paraphilias seen in the fetish subculture are BDSM, leather fetishism and rubber fetishism. The fetish subculture supports a strong nightclub scene, in the form of fetish clubs. Influence on mainstream culture Sexual minority cultures frequently and consistently influence each other. Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson argues that the tabloid talk show genre, popularized by Oprah Winfrey in the 1980s provided much needed, high impact media visibility for sexual minorities and did more to make gay culture mainstream than any other development of the 20th century. Slang frequently originates in subcultures, including sexual minority subcultures, which becomes part of the larger vernacular including words associated with descriptions specific to sexual minorities or not. Madonna is one of many artists who have borrowed from sexual minority cultures, including her appropriation of vogueing. Recently, the television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy depicts straight men being given fashion make-overs or decorating tips from gay men. Non-Western cultures In 2006, Thai film Rainbow Boys produced by Vitaya Saeng-aroon, depicting a contemporary gay relationship, had a limited-release screening. Vitaya also produced the comedy-drama Club M2, set in a gay sauna. The significance of the film is found in its novelty in a society very similar, if not more traditional, than the West as regards assigned gender roles and attractions. Another 2007 film, Bangkok Love Story, directed by Poj Arnon, was critically hailed as a departure from the stereotyped view of homosexuals as transvestites and transsexuals. Gay Thai independent film producer Vitaya Saeng-aroon praised the film, saying, "Director Poj Arnon was brave enough to shake society up." These people made breakthroughs with their films as other scholars and public authors also began to bring the issue of gender and stereotypes to the forefront as a more over the rug topic in contemporary culture. In many countries, homosexuality and bisexuality are widely accepted and often legal, although often still face discrimination and criticism. In this context, "queer youth are often cast as victims of homophobic violence or heterosexist exclusion in ways that inscribe them within tropes of victimization and risk." Unlike European cultures which are primarily based in Christian religion and held up many anti-LGBT laws until recently, the Chinese culture was much more open about non-exclusively-heterosexual relationships. "For a period of the modern history of both the Republic of China and People's Republic of China in the 20th century, LGBT people received more stringent legal regulations regarding their orientations, with restrictions being gradually eased by the beginning of the 21st century." Though there were still restrictions in the ancient Chinese culture, homosexual relations have been documented since early historical periods. There were recordings of subcultures of prostitute/actors also in existence; however, even in modern-day Chinese culture, there are those who are opposed to outside heterosexual relationships and lifestyles. In the People's Republic of China, "Reportedly, Mao Zedong believed in the sexual castration of "sexual deviants", but little is known about the Communist Chinese governments official policy with regards to homosexuality prior to the 1980s." Many Japanese have adopted wide ranges of sexual identity, and space has always existed for non-exclusively hegemonic gender roles in Japanese society. The modern era, however, has made more room for those openly varied gender roles. Before Western contact, Japan did not have a system of identification in which one's identity was determined by one's biological sexual preference (see Sexual minorities in Japan). Yet, hegemonic notions of how men and women should behave are still strong in the country, as in the Western cultures. Earlier studies on sex roles and gender identities in Asia focused heavily on particular constraints felt by women, for "'[Japanese] models of citizenship implicitly privilege the male, white-collar 'citizen in a suit.'" Constraints are also felt, however, on the males in Asian societies who are held at a higher standard due to the "dominant paradigm" referred to as "hegemonic masculinity". Arguments present ideas that "masculinity" has a history and is actually not only expressed differently in different societies but also differently within societies throughout eras. Masculinity, even in traditional Asian cultures is, so called, plural. Still, certain forms of masculinity (and femininity for that matter) become particularly privileged, the hegemonic masculinity. See also Asexuality Bisexuality Gay community Gay village Sexual diversity Non-westernized concepts of male sexuality LGBT history in China LGBT history LGBT rights in Taiwan LGBT social movements Polyamory Queer Separatism Sexual minorities in Japan Sexual orientation Third gender Travesti (gender identity) References Further reading External links The Androphile Project Extensive resource of gay and bisexual history The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society Identity politics

Sexualization

Sexualization (sexualisation in Commonwealth English) is the emphasis of the sexual nature of a behavior or person. Sexualization is linked to sexual objectification, treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. According to the American Psychological Association, sexualization occurs when "individuals are regarded as sex objects and evaluated in terms of their physical characteristics and sexiness." "In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner (e.g., dressed in revealing clothing, with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness) and are objectified (e.g., used as a decorative object, or as body parts rather than a whole person). In addition, a narrow (and unrealistic) standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate." Culture and media Sexualization has been a subject of debate for academics who work in media and cultural studies. Frederick Attenborough states the term has not been used simply to label what is seen as a social problem, but to indicate the much broader and varied set of ways in which sex has become more visible in media and culture. These include: the widespread discussion of sexual values, practices and identities in the media; the growth of sexual media of all kinds; for example, erotica, slash fiction, sexual self-help books and the many genres of pornography; the emergence of new forms of sexual experience, for example instant message or avatar sex made possible by developments in technology; a public concern with the breakdown of consensus about regulations for defining and dealing with obscenity; the prevalence of scandals, controversies and panics around sex in the media. According to the Media Education Foundation's documentary Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women, the sexualization of girls in media and the ways women are portrayed in the dominant culture are detrimental to the development of young girls as they are developing their identities and understanding themselves as sexual beings. The terms "pornification" and "pornographication" have also been used to describe the way that aesthetics that were previously associated with pornography have become part of popular culture, and that mainstream media texts and other cultural practices "citing pornographic styles, gestures and aesthetics" have become more prominent. This process, which Brian McNair has described as a "pornographication of the mainstream". has developed alongside an expansion of the cultural realm of pornography or "pornosphere" which itself has become more accessible to a much wider variety of audiences. According to McNair, both developments can be set in the context of a wider shift towards a "striptease culture" which has disrupted the boundaries between public and private discourse in late modern Western culture, and which is evident more generally in cultural trends which privilege lifestyle, reality, interactivity, self-revelation and public intimacy. Criticism The Australian writers, Catharine Lumby and Kath Albury (2010) have suggested that sexualization is "a debate that has been simmering for almost a decade" and concerns about sex and the media are far from new. Much of the recent writing on sexualization has been the subject of criticism that because of the way that it draws on "one-sided, selective, overly simplifying, generalizing, and negatively toned" evidence and is "saturated in the languages of concern and regulation". In these writings and the widespread press coverage that they have attracted, critics state that the term is often used as "a non-sequitur causing everything from girls flirting with older men to child sex trafficking" They believe that the arguments often ignore feminist work on media, gender and the body and present a very conservative and negative view of sex in which only monogamous heterosexual sexuality is regarded as normal. They say that the arguments tend to neglect any historical understanding of the way sex has been represented and regulated, and they often ignore both theoretical and empirical work on the relationship between sex and media, culture and technology. The way society shapes ones personal interest is presented in a book review of Girls Gone Skank by Patrice Oppliger, Amanda Mills states that "consequently, girls are socialized to participate in their own abuse by becoming avid consumers of and altering their behavior to reflect sexually exploitative images and goods." The belief that women are powerful and fully capable as men is stated in the text "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power" by Audre Lorde stating that the suppression of the erotic of women has led them feeling superior to men "the superficially, erotic had been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority on the other hand women have been made to suffer and to feel opposed contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence". Effects on children Children and adolescents spend more time engaging with media than any other age group. This is a time in their life that they are more susceptible to information that they receive. Children are getting sex education from the media, little kids are exposed to sexualized images and more information than ever before in human history but are not able to process the information, they are not developmentally ready to process it, and this impacts their development and behavior. Sexualization of young girls in the media and infantilization of women creates an environment where it becomes more acceptable to view children as "seductive and sexy". It makes having healthy sexual relationships more difficult for people and creates sexist attitudes. Some cultural critics have postulated that over recent decades children have evidenced a level of sexual knowledge or sexual behaviour inappropriate for their age group. Australia In 2006, an Australian report called Corporate paedophilia: sexualisation of children in Australia was published. The Australian report summarises its conclusion as follows: Images of sexualised children are becoming increasingly common in advertising and marketing material. Children who appear aged 12 years and under are dressed, posed and made up in the same way as sexy adult models. Children that appear on magazines are seen older than they really are because of the sexualised clothes they are given to pose in. "Corporate paedophilia" is a metaphor used to describe advertising and marketing that sexualises children in these ways. European Union In 2012, a draft report a European Parliament resolution gave the following definition of sexualization: [S]exualisation consists of an instrumental approach to a person by perceiving that person as an object for sexual use disregarding the person's dignity and personality traits, with the person's worth being measured in terms of the level of sexual attractiveness; sexualisation also involves the imposition of the sexuality of adult persons on girls, who are emotionally, psychologically and physically unprepared for this at their particular stage of development; sexualisation not being the normal, healthy, biological development of the sexuality of a person, conditioned by the individual process of development and taking place at the appropriate time for each particular individual Scotland However, in 2010, the Scottish Executive released a report titled External research on sexualised goods aimed at children. The report considers the drawbacks of the United States and Australian reviews, concluding: The Scottish review also notes that: It also notes that previous coverage "rests on moral assumptions … that are not adequately explained or justified." United Kingdom The report 'Letting Children Be Children', also known as the Bailey Review, is a report commissioned by the UK government on the subject of the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood. United States As early as 1997, reports found that sexualization of younger children is becoming more common in advertisements. The causes of this premature sexualization include portrayals in the media of sex and related issues, especially in media aimed at children; the lack of parental oversight and discipline; access to adult culture via the internet; and the lack of comprehensive school sex education programs. In 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA) first published Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, which has had periodic updates. The report looked at the cognitive and emotional consequences of sexualization and the consequences for mental and physical health, and impact on development of a healthy sexual self-image. The report considers that a person is sexualized in the following situations: A person's value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or sexual behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics; A person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy; A person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others' sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or Sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. Research has linked the sexualization of young girls to negative consequences for girls and society as a whole, finding that the viewing of sexually objectifying material can contribute to body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression, and depressive affect. Medical and social science researchers generally deployed "sexualization" to refer to a liminal zone between sexual abuse and normal family life, in which the child's relationship with their parents was characterized by an "excessive", improper sexuality, even though no recognizable forms of abuse had occurred. The American Psychological Association also argues that the sexualization of young girls contributes to sexist attitudes within society and a societal tolerance of sexual violence as well as that consumerism and globalization have led to the sexualization of girls occurring across all advanced economies, in media and advertisements, to clothing and toys marketed for young girls. The APA cites the following as advertising techniques that contribute to the sexualization of girls: Including girls in ads with sexualized women wearing matching clothing or posed seductively. Dressing girls up to look like adult women. Dressing women down to look like young girls. The employment of youthful celebrity adolescents in highly sexual ways to promote or endorse products. The APA additionally further references the teen magazine market by citing a study by Roberts et al that found that "47% of 8- to 18-year-old [girls] reported having read at least 5 minutes of a magazine the previous day." A majority of these magazines focused on a theme of presenting oneself as sexually desirable to men, a practice which is called "costuming for seduction" in a study by Duffy and Gotcher. Studies have found that thinking about the body and comparing it to sexualized cultural ideals may disrupt a girl's mental concentration, and a girl's sexualization or objectification may undermine her confidence in and comfort with her own body, leading to emotional and self-image problems, such as shame and anxiety. Research has linked sexualization with three of the most common mental health problems diagnosed in girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression or depressed mood. Research suggests that the sexualization of girls has negative consequences on girls' ability to develop a healthy sexual self-image. In 2012, an American study found that self-sexualization was common among 6–9-year-old girls. Girls overwhelmingly chose the sexualized doll over the non-sexualized doll for their ideal self and as popular. However other factors, such as how often mothers talked to their children about what is going on in television shows and maternal religiosity, reduced those odds. Surprisingly, the mere quantity of girls' media consumption (television and movies) was unrelated to their self-sexualization for the most part; rather, maternal self-objectification and maternal religiosity moderated its effects. A result of the sexualization of girls in the media is that young girls are "learning how to view themselves as sex objects". When girls fail to meet the thin ideal and dominant culture's standard of beauty they can develop anxieties. Sexualization is problematic for young children who are developing their sexual identity as they may think that turning themselves into sex objects is empowering and related to having sexual agency. Products for children Some commercial products seen as promoting the sexualization of children have drawn considerable media attention: A number of doll lines have drawn controversy. The original Bratz Dolls, marketed to children as old as 12, were considered by at least one preteen to be “sexy” and were noted for their more mature styles such as shrunken sweaters, shredded jeans, and other suggestive clothing. They were noted in a New York Times article to “look as though they might be at home on any street corner where prostitutes ply their trade.” Bratz Baby Dolls marketed at 6-year-old girls that feature sexualized clothing, like fishnet stockings, feather boas, and miniskirts also advertised fashion similar to that of the mainline "Bratz" line. The My Scene Barbie line, aiming for children in the 8-12 age demographic as the answer to the Bratz line, also drew criticism as the dolls wore low-rise pants, revealed the navel, and wore lots of makeup. Highly sexualized and gendered Halloween costumes marketed at young girls, such as the "sexy firefighter", a costume that consists of a tight fitted mini dress and high heeled boots. A girl’s version of a policy officer costume also designed similarly. Costumes made for somewhat older girls, such as those around ten-years-old, may be much shorter in length. Comparing and contrasting similar costumes designed by pre-tweens and tweens, the differences in costumes for the somewhat older girls was so dramatic that one observer noted that “According to the costume manufacturers of America, once a girl child reaches double digits, it is officially time for the Halloween hoochification process to begin.” Thong underwear designed by Abercrombie & Fitch made specifically for ten-year-olds. Released in 2002, the thongs were “adorned with the images of cherries and candy hearts and also include the words "‘kiss me’" and "‘wink, wink.’" While a company spokesman specifically stated that the thongs are not appropriate for children younger than ten, the thongs may have been small enough for girls as young as seven-years old to wear. Despite the controversy, at least some of the thongs were sold; one Abercrombie clerk stated at a mother bought thongs for both of her daughters, who looked to be ten or younger, because all the others girls in their class had at least one. While the Abercrombie & Fitch thongs were eventually pulled, girls aged 10 and 11 wearing thongs in primary school became a regular enough occurrence in at least English school that the headmaster sent a letter asking parents to not allow their daughters to wear them. In France, also in 2003, girls, some of them ten-years old, revealed whale tails on their way to school by exposing their thong underwear above their pants. Clothing such as T-shirts being marketed for young children in preschool and elementary school with printed slogans like "So Many Boys So Little Time." Other examples include the retailer Big W selling T-shirts for young girls with the slogan “nice baubles” in 2014 and the UK-based company Twisted Tee selling t-shirts that had nipple pasties. Some onesies also drew controversy. A Target onesie made for baby girls with the phrase “I only date heroes” and a TinyHaute Couture creating a cotton onesie for babies that had designs of a lace corset on it. Clothing originally aimed at young adult women marketed to tweens. Advertised to tween girls since at least the year 2000, low-rise jeans, tight-fitting miniskirts, and shirts that expose the midriff, once worn predominately by young adult women, became core fashion staples for many American tweens in the 8-12 age range in the 2000s. These styles, sold across the country, were so popular at one point that finding other styles for preteen girls became a difficult task for parents. Padded bras on bikinis aimed at seven-year-old girls. The bikinis were pulled after complaints in 2010. While made for girls slightly older, previously, in 2006, an Australian Target began selling a lightly padded Target brand bra designed for girls as young as eight-years-old. However, there is also evidence that with the mean age of puberty declining in Western cultures, a higher percentage of preteen girls will have enough breast development to justify wearing a functional brassier than ever before. The Scottish Executive report surveyed 32 High street UK retailers and found that many of the larger chains, including Tesco, Debenhams, JJ Sports, and Marks & Spencer did not offer sexualized goods aimed at children. The report noted that overall prevalence was limited but this was based on a very narrow research brief. Whilst this shows that not all High street retailers were aiming products deemed sexualized by the researchers, the research cannot be taken out of context and used to say that there is not an issue of sexualization. Effects on women of color The sexualization of women of color is different from the sexualization of white women. The media plays a significant role in this sexualization. "The media are likely to have powerful effects if the information is presented persistently, consistently, and corroborated among forms. As a media affect, stereotypes rely on the repetition to perpetuate and sustain them." According to Celine Parrenas Shimizu, "To see race is to see sex, and vice versa." Black women Many scholars trace the sexualization of Black women back to slavery, where certain stereotypes were invented as a way to dehumanize Black women. These stereotypes include the Jezebel, seen as a light skin overly sexual Black woman with no control over her desires; the Mammy, an Black woman who was asexual in nature and whose sole purpose was to cook for a white family; the Sapphire, first shown on the Radio/Television show Amos n' Andy, she was a loud, crude, jealous woman, who took joy in emasculating men. These stereotypes have carried over to the way young Black girls view themselves and how society views them. The Jezebel stereotype, in particular, has reemerged in the form of hip-hop video vixens. These images seen in music videos have two effects: they influence how black women are viewed in society and they also shape how Black women view themselves. "Representations of Black girlhood in the media and popular culture suggest that Black girls face a different set of rules when it comes to sex, innocence, and blame", the consequences of the sexualization of Black girls can be seen through the 2004 trial of R. Kelly. The immediate response from the public cleared R. Kelly of any wrongdoing while subsequently blaming the young girl for her abuse. One respondent to a Village Voice article claimed that she was not disturbed by the video because in her words, "It wasn't like she was new to the act. [She--the respondent] heard she [the victim] worked it like most of [her] 30 something-year-old friends have yet to learn how to do". This desensitization is directly linked to a music industry—and subsequent fans—who value the artist over their potential victims.” Instead of being correctly labeled as victims these women are instead turned into "groupies, hoochies, and chickenheads". One of the jurors on the R. Kelly case noted that he believed the defense because her body "appeared to developed". Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins acknowledged that  "this harmful and skewed reasoning reflects a national troubling tendency to view black adolescent females as sexually savvy and therefore responsible themselves for the sexualization and exploitation of their bodies". Dagbovie-Mullins introduced new problems in regards to the sexualization of Black girls, completely dichotomous to the sexualization of Black girls is the infantilization of Black women. Both of these problems are caused by denying the agency of Black women. Both the infantilization of Black women and the sexualization of young girls are about looking at Black women purely through the lens of their sexuality, without regard to their agency. There is a link between the images of a submissive woman being portrayed by a girl and a willingness for people to believe that young Black girls can give consent. This is a narrative that is supported by the sexy school girl image portrayed in media. The image girls off the illusion of being unavailable—both from a moral and legal standpoint—while at the same time being available. "Music, music videos, and images play a pivotal role in the messages individuals hear and see. These messages can be positive or negative, and they can influence how consumers and producers respond to and interrogate them critically, socially, physically, and emotionally". The images portrayed "in both African American and mainstream American culture reinforce the lenses through which the everyday experiences and ideal for adolescent Black women are viewed". Shows like the Flavor of Love which rely on the stereotype of the Black pimp and the submissive women, where Flavor Flav strip women of their real name and gives them nicknames such as "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" showcase the denial of the agency of Black women. This denial of agency makes it easier for people to see them as little more than sex symbols.  Infantilizing them and stripping them of all things that make them individuals creates a culture in which Black women are no longer seen as people, but objects used for individual male pleasure. Making it easier to side with men when Black women accuse them of assault because Black women cannot be assaulted when all they want is sex.   Along with a deflated sense of self-worth, these stereotypes can also influence Black girls—notably poor ones—that their sense of worth and an escape from poverty can be found through their sexualization.  The more modern version of the Jezebel—a black woman who is highly sexual and materialistic—may also have the most importance to inner-city Black girls, "The sexual links to poverty and its relevance to survival are clear. Their lives have been called 'ghetto fabulous', where they are socially embedded in a culture of poverty, yet have the economic means to procure middle-class goods". Even women are guilty of the sexualization, Nicki Minaj who made the phrase "Barbie Bitch" popular and raps about how she only "fuck[s] with ballers" draw on stereotypes such as the gold digger in order to promote her brand. While the "Bad Bitch Barbie" character was developed out of a history of over-sexualizing the bodies of Black women, it has also been used as a way of Black women to reconquer their sexuality. No longer is it men using their bodies for the enjoyment of other men, but it is they themselves who are showcasing their features as a way of uplifting who they are. Hence, duality is created within hip-hop culture the sexualization of Black women is still being seen, but with the emergence of female artists, we also see an emergence of a counter-culture reclaiming the sexuality of Black Women as their own. While are the same time the "Bad Bitch Barbie" still creates unrealistic images for black girls to compare themselves to. By reclaiming the sexuality that was robbed of them by men, they have introduced a new problem of body dimorphism as Black girls face the pressures to recreate themselves in the images being presented. In an NPR interview with Professor Herbert Samuels at LaGuardia Community College in New York and Professor Mireille Miller-Young at UC Santa Barbara, they talk about sexual stereotypes of black bodies in America and how even in sex work, already a dangerous job, black women are treated much worse than their counterparts due to the effects of their over-sexualization and objectification in society. Black women's bodies are either invisible or hypervisible. In the 1800s, a South African woman named Sarah Baartman was known as "Hottentot Venus" and her body was paraded around in London and Paris where they looked at her exotic features such as large breasts and behind. Her features were deemed lesser and over sexual. Asian women The image of Asian women in Hollywood cinema is directly linked to sexuality as essential to any imagining about the roles they play as well as her actual appearance in popular culture. Asian female fatale's hypersexualized subjection is derived from her sexual behavior that is considered as natural to her particular race and culture. Two types of Asian stereotypes that are commonly found in media are the Lotus Flower and the Dragon Lady. The Lotus Flower archetype is the "self-sacrificing, servile, and suicidal Asian woman." The dragon lady archetype is the opposite of the lotus flower, a "self-abnegating Asian woman…[who] uses her 'Oriental' femininity, associated with seduction and danger to trap white men on behalf of conniving Asian males." According to film-maker and film scholar, Celine Shimizu, "The figure of the Asian American femme fatale signifies a particular deathly seduction. She attracts with her soft, unthreatening, and servile femininity while concealing her hard, dangerous, and domineering nature." Latina women Latina characters that embody the "hot Latina" stereotype in film and television are marked by easily identifiable behavioral characteristics such as "'addictively romantic, sensual, sexual and even exotically dangerous', self-sacrificing, dependent, powerless, sexually naive, childlike, pampered, and irresponsible". Stereotypical Latina physical characteristics include "red lips, big bottoms, large hips, voluptuous bosoms, and small waists" and "high heels, huge hoop earrings, seductive clothing." Within the "hot Latina" stereotype lies three categories of representation: The Cantina Girl, the Faithful, self-sacrificing señorita, and the vamp. The Cantina Girl markers are "'great sexual allure', teasing, dancing, and 'behaving in an alluring fashion.'" The faithful, self-sacrificing Señorita starts out as a good girl and turns bad by the end. The Señorita, in an attempt to save her Anglo love interest, utilizes her body to protect him from violence. The Vamp representation "uses her intellectual and devious sexual wiles to get what she wants." The media represents Latinas "as either [a] hot-blooded spitfire" or "[a] dutiful mother". The sexual implications of the "hot-blooded" Latina has become an overgeneralized representation of Latin people. This has led many to see the Latin people as "what is morally wrong" with the United States. Some believe it to be wrong simply because the interpretation of this culture seems to go against white, Western culture. Culturally, the Latina is expected to dress "as a proper señorita" in order to be respected as a woman which conflicts with the Western ideals that a girl is sexual if she dresses "too 'mature' for [her] age". Even in the business world this stereotype continues; "tight skirts and jingling bracelets [are misinterpreted] as a come-on". This sexualization can also be linked to certain stereotypical jobs. The image of the Latina woman often is not in the business world but in the domestic. The sexualization of Latina women sexualizes the positions that they are expected to occupy. Domestic servants, maids, and waitresses are the typical "media-engendered" roles that make it difficult for Latinas to gain "upward mobility" despite the fact that many hold PhDs. Dominican women In the Dominican Republic, women are frequently stereotyped as sultry and sexual as the reputation of Dominican sex workers grows. Many poor women have resorted to sex work because the demand is high and the hours and pay are often dictated by the workers themselves. White European and American men "exoticize dark-skinned 'native' bodies" because "they can buy sex for cut-rate prices". This overgeneralizing of the sexuality of Dominican women can also carry back to the women's homes. Even "women who...worked in Europe have become suspect..." even if they had a legal job. They have become "exports" instead of people because of their sexualization. Native American women Starting from the time of white colonization of Native American land, some Native American women have been referred to as "squaw." "The 'squaw' [stereotype] is the dirty, subservient, and abused tribal female who is also haggard, violent, and eager to torture tribal captives." Another stereotype is the beautiful Indian princess who leaves her tribe and culture behind to marry a white man. See also Child sexuality Sexualism Bratz Kogal Miss Bimbo Rape culture Sexual objectification Pornographication Social impact of thong underwear Sexualization in the video games industry Pornified Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture Notes References Further reading Books A guide for parents on girls' body image and other issues. Looks at media messages and suggests that it promotes early maturation and sexualisation of pre-adolescent girls. A review of what Levy regards as a highly sexualized American culture in which women are objectified, objectify one another, and are encouraged to objectify themselves. Looks at sex in contemporary culture and the impact it has on young girls. Pamela Paul discusses the impact of ready access to pornography on Americans. Argues that pornography has become a mainstream part of American culture. Journals Pdf. Reports Online resources Feminism and society Women in society Women's rights legislation

Retrofuturism

Retrofuturism (adjective retrofuturistic or retrofuture) is a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a "science" bent on anticipating what will come, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation. Characterized by a blend of old-fashioned "retro styles" with futuristic technology, retrofuturism explores the themes of tension between past and future, and between the alienating and empowering effects of technology. Primarily reflected in artistic creations and modified technologies that realize the imagined artifacts of its parallel reality, retrofuturism can be seen as "an animating perspective on the world". Etymology The word retrofuturism is formed by the addition of the prefix "retro" from the Latin language, which gives the meaning of "backwards" to the word "future", a word also originating from Latin. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an early use of the term appears in a Bloomingdales advertisement in a 1983 issue of The New York Times. The ad talks of jewellery that is "silverized steel and sleek grey linked for a retro-futuristic look". In an example more related to retrofuturism as an exploration of past visions of the future, the term appears in the form of “retro-futurist” in a 1984 review of the film Brazil in The New Yorker. Critic Pauline Kael writes, "[Terry Gilliam] presents a retro-futurist fantasy." Historiography Retrofuturism builds on ideas of futurism, but the latter term functions differently in several different contexts. In avant-garde artistic, literary and design circles, futurism is a long-standing and well-established term. But in its more popular form, futurism (sometimes referred to as futurology) is "an early optimism that focused on the past and was rooted in the nineteenth century, an early-twentieth-century 'golden age' that continued long into the 1960s' Space Age". Retrofuturism is first and foremost based on modern but changing notions of "the future". As Guffey notes, retrofuturism is "a recent neologism", but it "builds on futurists' fevered visions of space colonies with flying cars, robotic servants, and interstellar travel on display there; where futurists took their promise for granted, retro-futurism emerged as a more skeptical reaction to these dreams." It took its current shape in the 1970s, a time when technology was rapidly changing. From the advent of the personal computer to the birth of the first test tube baby, this period was characterized by intense and rapid technological change. But many in the general public began to question whether applied science would achieve its earlier promise—that life would inevitably improve through technological progress. In the wake of the Vietnam War, environmental degradations, and the energy crisis, many commentators began to question the benefits of applied science. But they also wondered, sometimes in awe, sometimes in confusion, at the scientific positivism evinced by earlier generations. Retrofuturism "seeped into academic and popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s", inflecting George Lucas's Star Wars and the paintings of pop artist Kenny Scharf alike". Surveying the optimistic futurism of the early twentieth century, historians Joe Corn and Brian Horrigan remind us that retrofuturism is "a history of an idea, or a system of ideas—an ideology. The future, of course, does not exist except as an act of belief or imagination." Characteristics Retrofuturism incorporates two overlapping trends which may be summarized as the future as seen from the past and the past as seen from the future. The first trend, retrofuturism proper, is directly inspired by the imagined future which existed in the minds of writers, artists, and filmmakers in the pre-1960 period who attempted to predict the future, either in serious projections of existing technology (e.g. in magazines like Science and Invention) or in science fiction novels and stories. Such futuristic visions are refurbished and updated for the present, and offer a nostalgic, counterfactual image of what the future might have been, but is not. The second trend is the inverse of the first: futuristic retro. It starts with the retro appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts modern or futuristic technologies onto it, creating a mélange of past, present, and future elements. Steampunk, a term applying both to the retrojection of futuristic technology into an alternative Victorian age, and the application of neo-Victorian styles to modern technology, is a highly successful version of this second trend. In the movie Space Station 76 (2014), mankind has reached the stars, but clothes, technology, furnitures and above all social taboos are purposely highly reminiscent of the mid-1970s. In practice, the two trends cannot be sharply distinguished, as they mutually contribute to similar visions. Retrofuturism of the first type is inevitably influenced by the scientific, technological, and social awareness of the present, and modern retrofuturistic creations are never simply copies of their pre-1960 inspirations; rather, they are given a new (often wry or ironic) twist by being seen from a modern perspective. In the same way, futuristic retro owes much of its flavor to early science fiction (e.g. the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells), and in a quest for stylistic authenticity may continue to draw on writers and artists of the desired period. Both retrofuturistic trends in themselves refer to no specific time. When a time period is supplied for a story, it might be a counterfactual present with unique technology; a fantastic version of the future; or an alternate past in which the imagined (fictitious or projected) inventions of the past were indeed real. The import of retrofuturism has, in recent years, come under considerable discussion. Some, like the German architecture critic Niklas Maak, see retrofuturism as "nothing more than an aesthetic feedback loop recalling a lost belief in progress, the old images of the once radically new". Bruce McCall calls retrofuturism a "faux nostalgia"—the nostalgia for a future that never happened. Themes Although retrofuturism, due to the varying time-periods and futuristic visions to which it alludes, does not provide a unified thematic purpose or experience, a common thread is dissatisfaction or discomfort with the present, to which retrofuturism provides a nostalgic contrast. A similar theme is dissatisfaction with the modern world itself. A world of high-speed air transport, computers, and space stations is (by any past standard) "futuristic"; yet the search for alternative and perhaps more promising futures suggests a feeling that the desired or expected future has failed to materialize. Retrofuturism suggests an alternative path, and in addition to pure nostalgia, may act as a reminder of older but now forgotten ideals. This dissatisfaction also manifests as political commentary in Retrofuturistic literature, in which visionary nostalgia is paradoxically linked to a utopian future modelled after conservative values as seen in the example of Fox News' use of BioShock's aesthetic in a 2014 broadcast. Retrofuturism also implies a reevaluation of technology. Unlike the total rejection of post-medieval technology found in most fantasy genres, or the embrace of any and all possible technologies found in some science-fiction, retrofuturism calls for a human-scale, largely comprehensible technology, amenable to tinkering and less opaque than modern black-box technology. Retrofuturism has two main viewpoints that it stems from either an optimistic viewpoint or a pessimistic view. Retrofuturism which stems from an optimistic viewpoint tends to be an imagined futuristic society that comes from an advancement in technology in order to explore for the sake of science. Retrofuturism is not universally optimistic, and when its points of reference touch on gloomy periods like World War II, or the paranoia of the Cold War, it may itself become bleak and dystopian. This pessimistic retrofuturism is often imagined with technological advancement either being the downfall of humanity or being the last hope for humanity. In such cases, the alternative reality inspires fear, not hope, though it may still be coupled with nostalgia for a world of greater moral as well as mechanical transparency. It has been argued that retrofuturism, through finding hope in the disappointment and dystopia, and using that hope to push towards a brighter future, can be optimistic. Similarly, the visions of utopias depicted in retrofuturistic pieces can re-instill that hopefulness in audiences that have lost it. Genres Genres of retrofuturism include cyberpunk, steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, and Raygun Gothic, each referring to a technology from a specific time period. The first of these to be named and recognized as its own genre was cyberpunk, originating in the early to mid-1980s in literature with the works of Bruce Bethke, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan. Its setting is almost always a dystopian future, with a strong emphasis either upon outlaws hacking the futuristic world's machinery (often computers and computer networks), or even upon post-apocalyptic settings. The post-apocalyptic variant is the one usually associated with retrofuturism, where characters will rely upon a mixture of old and new technologies. Furthermore, synthwave and vaporwave are nostalgic, humorous and often retrofuturistic revivals of early cyberpunk aesthetic. The term "steampunk" was among the early subgenres recognized, emerging in the late 1980s. It presents a generally more optimistic and brighter outlook compared to cyberpunk. Steampunk is typically set in an alternate history closely resembling our own from the late 18th century, particularly the Regency era onwards, up to approximately 1914. However, it diverges from history in that it envisions 20th-century or even futuristic technologies powered by steam. One of the recurring themes in this genre is the fascination with electricity as a mysterious force, often considered a utopian power source of the future. It's occasionally portrayed as having mystical healing properties, akin to how nuclear energy was perceived in the mid-20th century. Steampunk shares similarities with the original scientific romances and utopian novels of authors like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. The modern form of steampunk literature can be traced back to works such as Mervyn Peake's "Titus Alone" (1959), Ronald W. Clark's "Queen Victoria's Bomb" (1967), Michael Moorcock's "A Nomad of the Time Streams" series (1971–1981), K. W. Jeter's "Morlock Night" (1979), and William Gibson & Bruce Sterling's "The Difference Engine" (1990). In the realm of cinema, early examples include "The Time Machine" (1960) and "Castle in the Sky" (1986). An early instance of steampunk in comics can be found in the Franco-Belgian graphic novel series "Les Cités obscures," initiated by creators François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters in the early 1980s. On occasion, steampunk blurs the lines with the Weird West genre. The most recently named and recognized retrofuturistic genre is dieselpunk aka decodence (the term dieselpunk is often associated with a more pulpish form and decodence, named after the contemporary art movement of Art Deco, with a more sophisticated form), set in alternate versions of an era located circa in the period of the 1920s–1950s. Early examples include the 1970s concept albums, their designs and marketing materials of the German band Kraftwerk (see below), the comic-book character Rocketeer (first appearing in his own series in 1982), the Fallout series of video games, and films such as Brazil (1985), Batman (1989), The Rocketeer (1991), Batman Returns (1992), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The City of Lost Children (1995), and Dark City (1998). Especially the lower end of the genre strongly mimic the pulp literature of the era (such as the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and films of the genre often reference the cinematic styles of film noir and German Expressionism. At times, the genre overlaps with the alternate history genre of a different World War II, such as with an Axis victory. Design and arts Although loosely affiliated with early-twentieth century Futurism, retrofuturism draws from a wider range of sources. To be sure, retrofuturist art and literature often draws from the factories, buildings, cities, and transportation systems of the machine age. But it might be said that 20th century futuristic vision found its ultimate expression in the development of Googie architecture or Populuxe design. As applied to fiction, this brand of retrofuturistic visual style began to take shape in William Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum". Here and elsewhere it is referred to as Raygun Gothic, a catchall term for a visual style that incorporates various aspects of the Googie, Streamline Moderne, and Art Deco architectural styles when applied to retrofuturistic science fiction environments. Although Raygun Gothic is most similar to the Googie or Populuxe style and sometimes synonymous with it, the name is primarily applied to images of science fiction. The style is also still a popular choice for retro sci-fi in film and video games. Raygun Gothic's primary influences include the set designs of Kenneth Strickfaden and Fritz Lang. The term was coined by William Gibson in his story "The Gernsback Continuum": "Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta [a noted pop-art historian] was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called 'American Streamlined Modern'. Cohen called it 'raygun Gothic'. Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was." Aspects of this form of retrofuturism can also be associated with the late 1970s and early 1980s the neo-Constructivist revival that emerged in art and design circles. Designers like David King in the UK and Paula Scher in the US imitated the cool, futuristic look of the Russian avant-garde in the years following the Russian Revolution. With three of their 1970s albums, German band Kraftwerk tapped into a larger retrofuturist vision, by combining their futuristic pioneering electronic music with nostalgic visuals. Kraftwerk's retro-futurism in their 1970s visual language has been referred to by German literary critic Uwe Schütte, a reader at Aston University, Birmingham, as "clear retro-style", and in the 2008 three-hour documentary Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution, Irish-British music scholar Mark J. Prendergast refers to Kraftwerk's peculiar "nostalgia for the future" clearly referencing "an interwar [progressive] Germany that never was but could've been, and now [due to their influence as a band] hopefully could happen again". Design historian Elizabeth Guffey has written that if Kraftwerk's machine imagery was lifted from Russian design motifs that were once considered futuristic, they also presented a "compelling, if somewhat chilling, vision of the world in which musical ecstasy is rendered cool, mechanical and precise." Kraftwerk's three retrofuturist albums are: Kraftwerk's 1975 album Radio-Activity showed a 1930s radio on the cover, its inlay (which for its later CD re-release was widely expanded as a booklet illustrated in the same nostalgic style) showed the band photographed in black and white with old-fashioned suits and hairdos, and the music in its instrumentation as well as its ambiguous lyrics were (besides the other obvious theme of nuclear decay and nuclear power referenced by the album's titular pun) in homage to the "Radio Stars", that is the pioneers of electronic music of the first half of the 20th century, such as Guglielmo Marconi, Léon Theremin, Pierre Schaeffer, and Karlheinz Stockhausen (due to whom the band referred to themselves as but the "second generation" of electronic music). The European version of the band's 1977 album Trans-Europe Express had a similar 1930s-style black and white photo of the band members on the cover (the U.S. version even had a cover of a vintage-style colored photograph in the style of Golden Age Hollywood stars), the style of the sleeve design as well as the design of promotional material tying in with the album were influenced by Bauhaus, Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne, the record came with a large, hand-tinted black and white poster of the band members in early-1930s style suits (where band member Karl Bartos later said in Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution that their intention was to visually resemble "an interwar string orchestra electrified" and that the background was meant to be a pictorial Switzerland where the band was making a resting stop in-between two legs of their European tour on the eponymous Trans-Europe Express), the song lyrics referenced the "elegance and decadence" of an urban interwar Europe, and in the promo clip made for the album's title song (shot in black and white on purpose) and other promotional material, the eponymous Trans-Europe Express was portrayed by the Schienenzeppelin first employed by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1931 (footage of the large original was used in outdoor shots, and a miniature model of it was used for shots where the TEE moved through a futuristic cityscape strongly reminiscent of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis). The cover and sleeve design of the 1978 album The Man-Machine exhibits an obvious stylistic nod to the Constructivism of 1920s artists such as El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and László Moholy-Nagy (due to which band members have also referred to it as "the Russian album"), and one song references the film Metropolis again. From this album on, Kraftwerk would also use their "show-room dummies" aka robot lookalikes on stage and in promotional material and increase the use of slightly campish make-up on band members that also resembled 1920s' expressionist make-up that to a lesser degree had already appeared in the promotional material for their 1977 album Trans-Europe Express. From their 1981 album Computer World onwards, Kraftwerk have largely abandoned their retro notions and appear mainly futuristic only. The only references to their earlier retro style today appear in excerpts from their 1970s' promo clips that are projected in between more modern segments in their stage shows during the performance of these old song. Fashion Retrofuturistic clothing is a particular imagined vision of the clothing that might be worn in the distant future, typically found in science fiction and science fiction films of the 1940s onwards, but also in journalism and other popular culture. The garments envisioned have most commonly been either one-piece garments, skin-tight garments, or both, typically ending up looking like either overalls or leotards, often worn together with plastic boots. In many cases, there is an assumption that the clothing of the future will be highly uniform. The cliché of futuristic clothing has now become part of the idea of retrofuturism. Futuristic fashion plays on these now-hackneyed stereotypes, and recycles them as elements into the creation of real-world clothing fashions. "We've actually seen this look creeping up on the runway as early as 1995, though it hasn't been widely popular or acceptable street wear even through 2008," said Brooke Kelley, fashion editor and Glamour magazine writer. "For the last 20 years, fashion has reviewed the times of past, decade by decade, and what we are seeing now is a combination of different eras into one complete look. Future fashion is a style beyond anything we've yet dared to wear, and it's going to be a trend setter's paradise." Architecture Retrofuturism has appeared in some examples of postmodern architecture. To critics such as Niklas Maak, the term suggests that the "future style" is "a mere quotation of its own iconographic tradition" and retrofuturism is little more than "an aesthetic feedback loop" In the example seen at right, the upper portion of the building is not intended to be integrated with the building but rather to appear as a separate object—a huge flying saucer-like space ship only incidentally attached to a conventional building. This appears intended not to evoke an even remotely possible future, but rather a past imagination of that future, or a reembracing of the futuristic vision of Googie architecture. The once-futuristic Los Angeles International Airport Theme Building was built in 1961 as an expression of the then new jet and space ages, incorporating what later came to be known as Googie and Populuxe design elements. Plans unveiled in 2008 for LAX's expansion featured retrofuturist flying-saucer/spaceship themes in proposals for new terminals and concourses. Music Modern electro style, influenced by Detroit-based artist in the early 80s (such as Drexciya, Aux 88, Cybotron). This style blend old analog gear (Roland Tr-808 and synths) and sampling methods from the 80's with modern approach of electro. The records labels involved in this journey are AMZS Recording, Gosu, Osman, Traffic Records and many others. Canadian band Alvvays's music video, "Dreams Tonite", which includes archival footage of Montreal's Expo 67 was described by the band as "fetishizing retro-futurism". English band Electric Light Orchestra released their concept album Time in 1981. This album follows a man who wakes up in the year 2095 and how he reacts to this sudden change as well as his longing to be back in 1981. There are multiple descriptions of life and what technology is like in 2095. Film and television Director Brad Bird describes his 2004 Pixar film The Incredibles as "looking like what we thought the future would turn out like in the 1960s." British filmmaker Richard Ayoade noted his film The Double from 2013 was designed with the intention of looking like "the future imagined by someone in the past who got it wrong." The 2015 Disney film Tomorrowland, based on Disneyland's attraction by the same name, directed by Brad Bird, has retrofuturistic aesthetic. The TVA in the 2021 MCU TV show Loki is reminiscent of 60's office building, with many futuristic devices scattered throughout. The 2024 Fallout live-action series, based on the homonymous video game franchise, is set in a 1950s-inspired Raygun Gothic and Atompunk retrofuture. See also Cyberpunk and cyberpunk derivatives Hauntology List of stories set in a future now past Raygun Gothic References Citations Further reading External links Interesting Engineering 17 February 2021 Fascinating Visions of Our Present From Over 100 Years Ago The wonder city you may live to see – 1950 as seen in 1925 retro-futurismus.de – A German site showing numerous illustrations (click the names) Architectural styles Science fiction themes Retro style Prequels Retro-style automobiles Futurist movements Futurism

Alternative fashion

Alternative fashion or alt fashion is fashion that stands apart from mainstream, commercial fashion. It includes both styles which do not conform to the mainstream fashion of their time and the styles of specific subcultures (such as emo, goth, hip hop and punk). Some alternative fashion styles are attention-grabbing and more artistic than practical (goth, ganguro, rivethead), while some develop from anti-fashion sentiments that focus on simplicity and utilitarianism (grunge, rocker, skinhead). Characteristics Alternative fashion styles often originate as ways of expressing attitudes towards individuality, consumerism, social constructs on behavior, self-expression, and/or disillusionment with what is viewed as "normal" society. Many styles are influenced by music and the dress style of individual bands or musicians. While the qualities of individuality and open-mindedness are associated with alternative fashion, levels of conformity within subcultures, judgemental behaviors and expressions of feelings of superiority exist within certain alternative fashion communities just as they exist in aspects of mainstream fashion and culture. Pressure to 'fit in,' even just within a small niche community, may influence personal style. Historical and sociological perspectives Alternative fashion is often considered a modern concept but it, and the concept of subculture it is often related to, have existed for centuries. As covered in Ken Gelder's exploration of the history of alternative culture patterns in Western society, Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice, alternative fashions have often been used to identify, and even stereotype, members of groups with value systems that diverged from common culture. Gelder states that alternative fashions have traditionally been related to subcultures that have been identified by mass society as: disinterested in common moral order: idle, parasitical, hedonistic, criminal disinterested in or against adhering to the structure of the social class identification with an area (street, neighborhood, club) rather than self-owned property preferring to develop "family" and community outside of traditional paradigms attitudes against or wary of mass production, homogeneity, heteronormativity, socially imposed behavior constrictions Those who utilize alternative fashion may vary greatly in beliefs and not identify with any of these concepts. Often it is the mass social perceptions of the meaning of certain fashions and their relation to a particular niche group that is important in understanding the interaction of alternative fashion with mass culture - a fashion is often more remembered for what it is related to in the popular consciousness than what its wearer's intended it to stand for. Particularly in a sociopolitical sense alternative fashion has often been intentionally adopted by an individual or group to display a break from the beliefs or mores of popular culture and as a form of self-expression that challenged the boundaries of what was considered appropriate, fashionable or practical. The use of subculture terminology in the 21st century to categorize or interpret dress style is often inaccurate, or at the least does not provide a complete picture of the individual being assessed by their 'look,' due to the constant evolution in the meaning, relevance and cohesion of certain subcultures and even the term 'subculture' itself. Alternative fashion is often looked at through the lens of social politics - it is considered a visual expression of opposition to societal norms, thus heavily associated with the idealism, energy and rebellion of youth culture. However, sociological studies into exploring alternative fashion have found individuals who retained statistically uncommon modes of dress on a permanent post-adolescent basis. Alternative fashion generally lays down a challenge to accepted norms, though the reactions received by wearers of alternative fashion from those who adhere to more conventional stylings can be as diverse as the wearers themselves. It can be a visual language that people employ to communicate with each other indicating common interests or involvement with similar activities, a challenge to modern conceptions of aesthetic beauty and/or a basic form of self-expression, like painting or writing. Commodification Traditionally alternative clothing, shoes and accessories have been largely procured from independently owned businesses, such as the boutiques found in artistic districts of large urban centers. As some alternative fashion have become increasingly embraced by the mainstream, these types of small, specialized retailers have become displaced much like mainstream retail outlets by the Internet. Also, as fashion trends are co-opted by more and more people chain stores, which may offer a wider variety of products at a lower price and are easier to access in non-urban areas than boutiques, began to soak up a large part of the alternative fashion market. This change in the availability and commodification of alternative fashions has encouraged much broader use of styles in the mainstream once only found in niche groups. Items from thrift & vintage shops, altered and DIY fashions have also long held a place in alternative fashion to the point where the use of mismatched second-hand clothing is considered cliche to alternative and liberal ideologies. Controversies Many forms of alternative fashion gain attention, and even notoriety, through their relationship to individuals or groups that are seen as socially undesirable – those involved in behavior considered criminal, deviant or anti-social – even though these types of behaviors may not be common among those involved in alternative fashion. For instance, greasers of the 1950s were associated with street gangs and random acts of juvenile violence, hippies of the 1960s (along with ravers of the 1980–1990s) with promiscuity, anti-establishment agendas and, especially, drug use and those sporting hip hop style with the selling of drugs and other criminal behavior. There was a wave of anti-gothic policies and commentary in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre. The crime, perpetrated by two young men dressed in black trench coats who were known to be fans of heavy, dark themed music, was immediately associated with the gothic subculture in the media despite the shooters' lack of association to the subculture and music. Policies were passed in schools across the country banning dress styles and items associated with the gothic subculture. Many individuals who dressed in any way related to the gothic style, whether or not they associated with this subculture, were targets of fear, anger and suspicion. The subculture as a whole, though extremely diverse in religious and social beliefs, was pigeonholed by the media as a dangerous influence on children. Influence Mainstream culture, particularly retailers and the mass media, have often looked to alternative fashion for up and coming trends and, increasingly, as an easy way to market products to a niche group that may not be having its tastes supplied elsewhere. Some in subcultures view this as flattering and as a positive expansion of what is socially acceptable, and easily available, fashion. Others consider the involvement of mainstream institutions in alternative fashion as a desecration of what the concept stands for and feel the mass marketing of previously underground styles, particularly to impressionable youth markets who are more concerned with a look than the meaning behind it, amounts to a non-violent form of cultural genocide. When a previously non-mainstream style becomes popular the core group of a certain alternative niche may be watered down with dozens or even hundreds of individuals who are not genuinely invested in the advancement of alternative culture or its precepts of individuality and present an image of the subculture not at all related to its traditional members' behaviors. For instance, rave culture was heavily associated with ideas of racial, gender and sexual orientation equality and encouraged unity, creativity and individuality amongst its members. The commodification of rave fashions in chain outlets and internet boutiques coincided with a media frenzy focusing on drug use in the rave community. These factors led to an insurgence of young people interested in emulating rave style, and obtaining the substances associated with it, rather than in promoting the utopian precepts originally associated with raves. Alternative fashion is expressed, discussed, viewed and proliferated through many of the same channels as mainstream fashion, such as fashion shows, websites, blogs and magazines, however in non-mainstream forms of these spaces, fueled by personal creativity. It is common for projects related to alternative fashion to be independently run by individuals or small groups and to be offered to the public cheaply or free of charge. However, just as alternative fashion has been commodified by chain stores, some level of commercialization may exist within outlets of alternative fashion seeking to exploit certain styles as "the next big thing" or taking financial advantage of customers with limited options. Alternative fashion examples Gallery See also References Underground culture 1990s fashion 2000s fashion 2010s fashion

Contemporary history

Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from about 1945 to the present. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related to, the rise of postmodernity. Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western Bloc, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union. The confrontation spurred fears of a nuclear war. An all-out "hot" war was avoided, but both sides intervened in the internal politics of smaller nations in their bid for global influence and via proxy wars. The Cold War ultimately ended with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter stages and aftermath of the Cold War enabled the democratization of much of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Decolonization was another important trend in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as new states gained independence from European colonial empires during the period from 1945–1975. The Middle East also saw a conflict involving the new state of Israel, the rise of petroleum politics, the continuing prominence but later decline of Arab nationalism, and the growth of Islamism. The first supranational organizations of government, such as the United Nations and European Union, emerged during the period after 1945. Countercultures rose and the sexual revolution transformed social relations in western countries between the 1960s and 1980s, as seen in the protests of 1968. Living standards rose sharply across the developed world because of the post-war economic boom. Japan and West Germany both emerged as exceptionally strong economies. The culture of the United States spread widely, with American television and movies spreading across the world. Some Western countries began a slow process of deindustrializing in the 1970s; globalization led to the emergence of new financial and industrial centers in Asia. The Japanese economic miracle was later followed by the Four Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. China launched major economic reforms from 1979 onward, becoming a major exporter of consumer goods around the world. Science made new advances after 1945, which included spaceflight, nuclear technology, lasers, semiconductors, molecular biology, genetics, particle physics, and the Standard Model of quantum field theory. The first commercial computers were created, followed by the Internet, beginning the Information Age. Political history 1945–1991 In 1945, the Allies of World War II had defeated all significant opposition to them. They established the United Nations to govern international relations and disputes. A looming question was how to handle the defeated Axis nations and the shattered nations that the Axis had conquered. Following the Yalta Conference, territory was divided into zones for which Allied country would have responsibility and manage rebuilding. While these zones were theoretically temporary (such as the eventual fate of occupied Austria, which was released to independence as a neutral country), growing tensions between the Western Bloc, led by the United States, with the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union, meant that many calcified into place. Countries in Soviet zones of Eastern Europe had communist regimes installed as satellite states. The Berlin Blockade of 1948 led to a Western Airlift to preserve West Berlin and signified a cooling of East-West relations. Germany split into two countries in 1949, liberal-democratic West Germany and communist East Germany. The conflict as a whole would become known as the Cold War. The Western Bloc formed NATO in 1949 while the Eastern Bloc formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Direct combat between the new Great Powers was generally avoided, although proxy wars fought in other countries by factions equipped by one side against the other side's faction occurred. An arms race to develop and build nuclear weapons happened as policymakers wanted to ensure their side had more if it came to a war. In East Asia, Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China was overthrown in the Chinese Communist Revolution from 1945–1949. His government retreated to Taiwan, but both the nationalist KMT government and the new communist mainland government under Mao Zedong continued to claim authority over all of China. Korea was divided similarly to Germany, with the Soviet Union occupying the North and the United States occupying the South (future North Korea and South Korea). Unlike Germany, the conflict there turned hot, as the Korean War erupted from 1950–1953. Korea was not reunified under either government, however, due to strong support from both the US and China for their favored side; it became a frozen conflict instead. Japan was given a new constitution foreswearing aggressive war in 1947, and the American occupation ended in 1952, although a treaty of mutual aid with the US was soon signed. The US also granted the Philippines their independence in 1946 while keeping close relations. The Middle East became a hotbed of instability. The new Jewish state of Israel declared its independence, recognized by both the United States and the Soviet Union, after which followed the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Egypt's weak and ineffective king Farouk was overthrown in the 1952 Egyptian revolution, and replaced by General Nasser; the 1953 Iran coup saw the American-friendly shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi remove the democratic constraints on his government and take power directly; and Iraq's Western-friendly monarchy was overthrown in 1958. Nasser's Egypt would go on to face the Suez Crisis in 1956, briefly unify with Syria as the United Arab Republic (UAR) from 1958 to 1961, and expensively intervene in the North Yemen civil war from 1962 to 1970. Decolonization was the most important development across Southeast Asia and Africa from 1946–1975, as the old British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese colonial empires were dismantled. Many new states were given their independence, but soon found themselves having to choose between allying with the Western Bloc, Eastern Bloc, or attempting to stay neutral as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement. British India was granted independence in 1947 without an outright war of independence being required. It was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan (West Pakistan and East Pakistan, future Pakistan and Bangladesh); Indo-Pakistani wars were fought in 1947, 1965, and 1971. Sukarno took control of an independent Indonesia in 1950, as attempts to reinstate Dutch rule in 1945–1949 had largely failed, and took an independent-to-Eastern leaning stance. He would later be overthrown by Suharto in 1968, who took a pro-Western stance. The Federation of Malaya was granted independence in 1957, with the concurrent fighting of the Malayan Emergency against communist forces from 1948–1960. The French unsuccessfully fought the First Indochina War in an attempt to hold on to French Indochina; at the 1954 Geneva Conference, the new states of Cambodia, Laos, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and the eventual Republic of Vietnam were created. The division of Indochina eventually led to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s (as well as the Laotian Civil War and Cambodian Civil War), which ended in communist North Vietnam took over Sai Gon in 1975. In Africa, France fought the grinding Algerian War from 1954–1962 that saw the end of French Algeria and the rise of a new independent Algeria. The British and French both slowly released their vast holdings, leading to the creation of states such as First Nigerian Republic in 1963. Portugal, on the other hand, fiercely held onto their Empire, leading to the Portuguese Colonial War from 1961–1974 in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique until the Estado Novo government fell. Meanwhile, apartheid-era South Africa remained fiercely anti-communist, but withdrew from the British Commonwealth in 1961, and supported various pro-colonial factions across Africa that had lost support from their "home" governments in Europe. Many of the newly independent African governments struggled with the balance between being too weak and overthrown by ambitious coup-plotters, and too strong and becoming dictatorships. Latin America saw gradual economic growth but also instability in many countries, as the threat of coups and military regimes (juntas) were a major threat. The most famous was the Cuban Revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista's American-friendly government for Fidel Castro's Soviet-aligned government. This led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, generally considered one of the incidents most dangerously close to turning the Cold War into a direct military conflict. The 1968 Peruvian coup d'état and also installed a Soviet-friendly government. Despite this, the region ultimately leaned toward the US in this period, with the CIA supporting American-friendly factions in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, and others. Nicaragua suffered the most, with the Nicaraguan Revolution seeing major military aid from both great powers to their favored factions that extended a civil war in the country for decades. Mexico escaped this unrest, although functioned largely as a one-party state dominated by the PRI. Argentina had a succession of idiosyncratic governments that courted both the US and USSR, but generally mismanaged the economy. The Middle East saw events that presaged later conflicts in the 70s and 80s. A few years after the end of the UAR's union between Egypt and Syria, Syria's government was overthrown in the 1966 Syrian coup d'état and replaced with the Neo-Baathist Party, eventually leading to the leadership of the Al-Assad family. Israel and its neighbors fought the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Under Anwar Sadat and later Hosni Mubarak, Egypt switched from Nasserism to favoring the Western Bloc, and signed a peace treaty with Israel. Lebanon, once among the most prosperous countries in the region and a cultural center, collapsed into the decade-long Lebanese Civil War from 1975–1990. Iran's unpopular pro-American government was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and was replaced by a new Islamic Republic headed by Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran and Baathist Iraq under Saddam Hussein then fought each other in the Iran–Iraq War from 1980–1988, which ended inconclusively. In East Asia, China underwent the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, a major internal struggle that saw an intense program of Maoism and persecution of perceived internal enemies. China's relations with the Soviets deteriorated in the 1960s and 70s, resulting in the Sino-Soviet split, although the two were able to cooperate on some matters. "Ping-pong diplomacy" led to a rapprochement between the US and China and American recognition of the Chinese communist government in the 1970s. China's pro-democracy movement was suppressed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and China's government survived the tensions that would roil the Soviet-aligned bloc during the 1980s. South Korea (in the June Democratic Struggle) and Taiwan (with the lifting of martial law) would take major steps toward liberalization in 1987–1988, shifting from Western-aligned one-party states to more fully participatory democracies. The 1980s saw a general retreat for the communist bloc. The Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) is often called the "Soviet Union's Vietnam War" in comparison to the American defeat, being an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful war and occupation. More importantly, the intervening decades had seen that Eastern Europe was unable to compete economically with Western Europe, which undermined the promise of communist abundance compared to capitalist poverty. The Western capitalist economies had proven wealthier and stronger, which made matching the Soviet defense budget to the American one strain limited resources. The Pan-European Picnic in 1989 then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction with the subsequent fall of the Berlin Wall. The Revolutions of 1989 saw many countries of Eastern Europe throw off their communist governments, and the USSR declined to invade to re-establish them. East and West Germany were reunified. Client state status for many states ended, as there was no conflict left to fund. The Malta Summit on 3 December 1989, the failure of the August Coup by Soviet hardliners, and the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 sealed the end of the Cold War. 1991–2001 The end of the Cold War left the United States the world's sole superpower. Communism seemed discredited; while China remained an officially communist state, Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and socialism with Chinese characteristics allowed for the growth of a capitalist private sector in China. In Russia, President Boris Yeltsin pursued a policy of privatization, spinning off former government agencies into private corporations, attempting to handle budget problems inherited from the USSR. The end of Soviet foreign aid caused a variety of changes in countries previously part of the Eastern Bloc; many officially became democratic republics, though some were more accurately described as authoritarian or oligarchic republics and one-party states. Many Western commentators treated the development optimistically; it was thought the world was steadily progressing toward free, liberal democracies. South Africa, no longer able to attract Western support by claiming to be anti-communist, ended apartheid in the early 1990s, and many Eastern European countries switched to stable democracies. While some Americans had anticipated a "peace dividend" from budget cuts to the Defense Department, these cuts were not as large as some had hoped. The European Economic Community evolved into the European Union with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, which integrated Europe across borders to a new degree. International coalitions continued to have a role; the Gulf War saw a large international coalition undo Baathist Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, but other "police" style actions were less successful. Somalia and Afghanistan descended into long, bloody civil wars for almost the entirety of the decade (Somali Civil War, Afghan Civil War (1992–1996), Afghan Civil War (1996–2001)). Russia fought a brutal war in Chechnya that failed to suppress the insurgency there from 1994–1996; war would resume during the Second Chechen War in 1999–2000 that saw a resumption of Russian control after Russia successfully convinced enough rebels to join their cause with promises of autonomy. The breakup of Yugoslavia also led to a series of Yugoslav Wars; NATO eventually intervened in the Kosovo War. In the Middle East, the Israeli–Palestinian peace process offered the prospect of a long-term peace deal to many; the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 seemed to offer a "roadmap" to resolving the conflict. Despite these high hopes, they would be largely dashed in 2000–2001 after a breakdown of negotiations and the Second Intifada. 2001–present War on Terror, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on 11 September 2001. On that morning, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane. In response, the United States under President George W. Bush enacted the Patriot Act. Many other countries also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Major terrorist events after the September 11 attacks include the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, the 2003 Istanbul bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2004 Beslan school siege, the 2005 London bombings, the 2005 Delhi bombings, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks, generally from Islamic terrorism. The United States responded to the 11 September 2001 attacks by launching a "Global War on Terrorism", invading the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. The War in Afghanistan began in late 2001 and was launched by the UN-authorized ISAF, with the United States and United Kingdom providing most of the troops. The Bush administration policy and the Bush Doctrine stated forces would not distinguish between terrorist organizations and nations or governments that harbor them. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) was the United States combat operation involving some coalition partners and operating primarily in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistan border; the ISAF established by the United Nations Security Council was in charge of securing the capital of Kabul and its surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003. Despite initial coalition successes, the Taliban were never entirely defeated, and continued to hold territory in mountainous regions as well as threaten the new government, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, whose grasp on power outside the major cities was shaky at best. The war was also less successful in restricting al-Qaeda than anticipated. The Iraq War began in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force. The invasion of Iraq led to an occupation and the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein, who was later executed by the Iraqi Government. Despite government assumptions that the war in Iraq would be over with the fall of Hussein, it continued and intensified. Sectarian groups both fought each other and the occupying coalition forces via asymmetric warfare during the Iraqi insurgency, as Iraq was starkly divided between Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish groups that now competed with each other for power. Al-Qaeda operations in Iraq continued as well. In late 2008, the U.S. and Iraqi governments approved a Status of Forces Agreement effective through to the end of 2011. The Obama administration re-focused US involvement in the conflict on the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq and a surge of troops and government support in Afghanistan. In May 2011, the bin Laden raid occurred after bin Laden was tracked to his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In 2011, the United States declared a formal end to the Iraq War. In February 2020, President Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the next year. The Biden administration delayed the withdrawal by a few months, but still largely kept to the deal; the coalition-supported Afghan government soon collapsed, and the Taliban took undisputed control of the country in August 2021 after the successful 2021 Taliban offensive. Arab Spring and Syria The Arab Spring began in earnest in 2010 with anti-government protests in the Muslim world, but quickly escalated to full-scale military conflicts in countries like Syria, Libya, and Yemen and also gave the opportunity for the emergence of various militant groups including the Islamic State (IS). The IS was able to take advantage of social media platforms including Twitter to recruit foreign fighters from around the world and seized significant portions of territory in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt from 2013 and ongoing. On the other hand, some violent militant organizations were able to negotiate peace with governments including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines in 2014. The presence of IS and the stalemate in the Syrian civil war created a migration of refugees to Europe and also galvanized and encouraged high-profile terrorism attacks and armed conflicts around the world, such as the November 2015 Paris attacks and the Siege of Marawi in the Philippines in 2017. In 2014, the United States decided to intervene against the Islamic State in Iraq, with most IS fighters being driven out by the end of 2018. Russia and Iran also jointly launched a campaign against IS and in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As of 2022, Assad has largely regained authority in the southern half of the country, while the northern reaches are controlled by a mixture of Arab Sunni rebels, Kurds, and Turkey. Russia Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's successor, was very popular in Russia after his victory in the Second Chechen War. He portrayed himself as a corruption fighter initially, checking Russian oligarchs who had acquired vast wealth during Russia's liberalization period. With a combination of genuine popularity and legal rollbacks, Russia gradually moved toward being a one-party state, a democracy but one where Putin's party always won. Russia has since intervened in a variety of military conflicts in its neighboring countries including the 2008 Russo-Georgian War; the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War and Annexation of Crimea; a 2015 intervention in the Syrian Civil War; and the expansion of the Russo-Ukrainian War to the full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine where Russia declared their intent to depose the Ukrainian government and install a compliant, Russia-friendly government. The Russian government has often cited the enlargement of NATO as a major complaint. Economic history The end of World War II in 1945 saw an increase in international trade and an interconnected system of treaties and agreements to ease its flow. In particular, the United States and the United States dollar took a pivotal role in the world economy, displacing the UK. The era is sometimes called "Pax Americana" for the relative liberal peace in the Western world, resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by the US, as a comparison to the Pax Romana established at the height of the Roman Empire. New York's financial sector ("Wall Street") was the center of the financial world from 1945–1970 in a dominant way unlikely to be seen again. Unlike the aftermath of World War I, the US strongly aided in the rebuilding of Europe, including aid to the defeated Axis nations, rather than punishment. The Marshall Plan sent billions of dollars of aid to Western Europe to ensure its stability and ward off a potential economic downturn. The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference established the Bretton Woods system, a set of practices that governed world trade and currencies from 1945–1971, as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Western Europe also established the European Economic Community in 1957 to ease customs and aid international trade. In general, vast quality of life improvements affected most every corner of the globe during this period, in both the Western and Eastern spheres. France called them Les Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty [Years]"). Despite being largely destroyed in the war, West Germany soon bounced back to being an economic powerhouse by the 1950s with the wirtschaftswunder. Surprisingly, Japan followed Germany, achieving incredible economic growth and becoming the second largest economy in the world in 1968, a phenomenon called the Japanese economic miracle. Many explanations are proffered for the enviable results of these years: relative peace (at least outside the "Third World"); a reduction in average family size; technological improvements; and others. The Eastern Bloc, meanwhile, established Comecon as their equivalent to the Marshall Plan and to establish internal trading rules between communist states. The 1970s saw economic headwinds. Notably, the price of oil started to go up in the 1970s, as the easiest and most accessible wells had already been pumped dry in the preceding century, and oil is a non-renewable resource. Attention was drawn to the abundant oil in the Middle East, where countries in OPEC controlled substantial untapped oil reserves. Political tensions over the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution led to the 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis. The Soviet Union called it the "Era of Stagnation". The 1970s and 80s also saw the rise of the Four Asian Tigers, as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong emulated the Japanese route to prosperity with varying degree of success. In China, the leftist Gang of Four were overthrown in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping pursued a policy of tentatively opening the Chinese economy to capitalist innovations throughout the 1980s, which would be continued by his successors in the 1990s. China's economy, tiny in 1976, would see tremendous growth, and eventually take the spot as second largest economy from Japan in 2010. Among Western economies, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system was replaced by a more flexible era of floating exchange rates. The Group of Seven (G7) first met in 1975 and become one of the main international forums that regulated international trade among developed country. The Soviet Union implemented a policy of perestroika in the 1980s which allowed tentative market reforms. The fall of the USSR saw differing approaches in the 1990s in the East: some newly independent states went in a capitalist direction such as Estonia, some maintained a strong governmental presence in their economy, and some opted for a mix. The privatization of government firms and resources drew accusations of crony capitalism in many states, however, including the Russian Federation, the largest and most important state of the USSR; the beneficiaries of the turbulent period were often called the "Russian oligarchs". In the beginning of the 2000s, there was a global rise in prices in commodities and housing, marking an end to the 2000s commodities boom. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world and a broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities. The financial situation was also affected by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The collapse of the American housing bubble caused the values of securities tied to real estate pricing to plummet thereafter, damaging financial institutions. The Great Recession, a severe economic recession which began in the United States in 2007, was sparked by the outbreak of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. The modern financial crisis was linked to earlier lending practices by financial institutions and the trend of securitization of American real estate mortgages. The Great Recession spread to much of the developed country, and has caused a pronounced deceleration of economic activity. The global recession occurred in an economic environment characterized by various imbalances. This global recession has resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. The recession renewed interest in Keynesian economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions. However, various industrial countries continued to undertake austerity policies to cut deficits, reduced spending, as opposed to following Keynesian theories. From late 2009 European debt crisis, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed among investors concerning rising government debt levels across the globe together with a wave of downgrading of government debt of certain European states. Concerns intensified early 2010 and thereafter making it difficult or impossible for sovereigns to re-finance their debts. On 9 May 2010, Europe's Finance Ministers approved a rescue package worth €750 billion aimed at ensuring financial stability across Europe. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) was a special purpose vehicle financed by members of the eurozone to combat the European sovereign debt crisis. In October 2011 eurozone leaders agreed on another package of measures designed to prevent the collapse of member economies. The three most affected countries, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, collectively account for six percent of eurozone's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2012, eurozone finance ministers reached an agreement on a second €130-billion Greek bailout. In 2013, the European Union agreed to a €10 billion economic bailout for Cyprus. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic caused economic disruption, with wide-ranging economic impacts of COVID-19 such as supply chain changes and an increase in working-from-home, along with the COVID-19 recession. Social history Social changes since 1945 have been vast and disparate, affecting countries and subgroups within those countries in ways specific to each population, meaning there is not one single global story of social change. Despite this, one of the major trends has been an increasing interchange between cultures and a wider spread of the most successful works, enabled by new technology and globalization. In earlier periods, a successful musician or theater troupe might be confined to playing in a single city at a time, limiting their reach. The spread of better recording technology, such as the magnetophon, meant that a musical act could have their song be played over the radio everywhere without loss of sound quality, creating international superstars such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles. The spread of home television sets allowed people across the globe to easily watch the same show, rather than requiring viewers to attend a local theater. Hollywood in California produced films that dominated cinema; while intended for the lucrative American market, these films spread across the globe, backed by their large budgets and the cinematic expertise gathered there. The rise of the Internet in the 1990s allowed both for an ever further spread of the most popular and dominant works, but the comparatively cheap cost of publishing there, whether as a personal website, blog, or YouTube video, also allowed specific niche subcultures to connect and thrive in a way that was less true in the 20th century. For example, diaspora groups of immigrants can more easily stay in contact with their family and friends in their origin region, compared to earlier eras where travel and communication was far more expensive, making a narrative of strictly increasing global homogenization incomplete. International telephone networks, and later Internet telephony, allowed cheaper and easier long-distance communication than previous eras. Language usage in the contemporary era has seen a rise in English as a lingua franca, where people across the world learn the English language as a second language. This has been both to facilitate international communication, especially in places tied to international trade or tourism, as well as to better consume widespread English-language media. This is tied to increased Americanization, as American culture has grown increasingly influential and widespread. To a lesser extent, during the Cold War, something similar happened with the Russian language in the Eastern Bloc and among communist-aligned factions; however, this status was mostly reversed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The French and German languages saw their prestige as global languages decline after World War II. Religious trends have been disparate and not consistent across countries, often with sharply varying results even between similar and nearby groups. In industrialized and economically prosperous regions, there has been a loose trend toward secularization that deprioritized the role of religion, even among people who still identified as adherents. The decline of Christianity in the Western world has been perhaps the most notable of these trends, although many non-Western cultures have been affected as well, such as the rise of irreligion in China (buttressed by antireligious campaigns). As an example of how localized this process can be, during the Cold War both the Polish People's Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic endorsed state atheism. However, after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989–1990, the people of these bordering states had radically different cultural attitudes toward religion; Poland was one of the more religious states in Europe, with 96% of its population espousing a belief in Catholic Christianity in 2011, while the Czech Republic was one of the most stridently irreligious, with only 15% of its population espousing any religious beliefs at all by 2011. In the Islamic world, a notable trend has been the spread of international schools of thought into regions where belief was previously localized, such as the International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism funded by the government of Saudi Arabia. While regional Islamic groups remain strong, they are more contested than in the past. Another social trend has been the rise of urbanization as a larger proportion of the world's population has moved to live in cities and urban areas, and fewer people live in rural areas. In the United States, as the overall population more than doubled from 1930 to 1990, around a third of its counties saw their population decline by around 27%, suggesting that as rural counties empty, the urban counties are where the vast majority of inhabitants are moving to. In Eastern Africa, the urban population soared from 11 million in 1920 to 77 million in 2010. Many rural Chinese people moved to large coastal cities such as Shenzhen to work in the 1990s and 2000s, leading to a sharp increase of Urbanization in China. Rural parts of Japan have seen stark population declines, especially among the young, with only the Greater Tokyo area continuing to grow. How to deal with this change is a major issue, as many cities and their transportation networks were not designed to serve the larger populations that now occupy them. A major trend in many industrialized nations was the sexual revolution, an adoption of publicly more tolerant attitudes toward sex and pre-marital sex. "The pill" was first approved for use in 1960 in the United States, and spread rapidly around the world. The pill made birth control easier and more reliable than earlier methods. This made sex for pleasure less likely to result in unintended children. It also allowed for easier family planning, where couples could choose more specifically when to have kids compared to earlier eras. Some analysts credit this as one reason behind a decline in birth rates in the industrialized world, which had multiple second-order effects. Many regions have also made divorce much easier to officially procure. However, the decline in birth rate is not a universal trend; many nations continue to have high birth rates, and the world's overall population is still growing as of 2022. One of the yet evolving and unknown impacts in the contemporary era has been the social effects of cheap and common Internet access. As users gradually switched from personal web pages to blogs to social media, many surprising effects have resulted with both positive and negative assessments. Optimistic assessments often praise the decentralized nature that allows anyone to theoretically gain a platform without the need to convince a publisher or media company to back them, as well as the ease in enabling like-minded people to collaborate at long-distance, even if the digital utopianism of the 1990s is less common. Pessimistic assessments worry about the effects on children such as enabling cyberbullying; filter bubbles where Internet users are not challenged by outsider views; "cancel culture" where people are pilloried online but sometimes disproportionately; and slacktivism as an appealing but ineffective replacement for older forms of community work. Contemporary science and technology Energy The growing world population and rising standards of living has caused a vast increase in demand for energy development, both to power vehicles such as personal cars as well as on public electrical grids. In particular, petroleum oil has been in ravenous demand across the world. Many of the cheapest and easiest sources of oil to access were largely drained in the 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to a hunt for new sources of oil. The value of oil has spilled over into politics as well, as "petrostates" with access to oil found a source of vast revenue that did not require traditional government revenue-raising measures, such as tariffs or income taxation. The rising cost of oil led to the 1970s energy crisis and various adaptations in energy conservation to better conserve oil, such as more efficient engines and better insulation. It has also led to concerns of "peak oil," that the rising extraction costs of oil will eventually lead to massive shortages and a large disincentive to burn oil except when absolutely necessary (such as in the case of aviation fuel), although oil continues to be one of the most popular sources of energy. Other fossil fuels have continued a prominent role in the world's energy production. Coal energy, usually credited as helping kickstart the Industrial Revolution, has declined somewhat in prominence, but it started from a commanding large slice of the sources of energy. Even if diminished, coal is still a popular and common style of power plant; it made up a huge proportion of South Africa and India's power grid from 1945 to the present, for example. That said, increasing price, as well as concerns both over the air pollution generated when it is burnt and the landscape destruction when it is mined (such as mountaintop removal mining), have caused setbacks for the coal industry. Natural gas has grown in its proportion of the market, especially as Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has enabled it to be transported over longer distances than was previously feasible. An entirely new form of energy creation dawned in the 1950s and 1960s: nuclear power for peaceful purposes and the construction of nuclear power plants. Hopes that atomic energy would be "too cheap to meter" in the 1950s proved overly optimistic, however. Atomic energy grew to be a large part of several nations energy generation strategies, especially nuclear power in France. Nuclear power continues to be controversial. Concerns include its association with nuclear weapons, financial cost, disposal of radioactive nuclear waste, and fears of safety from reactor meltdowns, especially after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. An anti-nuclear movement arose that was skeptical of atomic energy and has discouraged many projects. Nuclear proponents counter that nuclear energy produces no air pollution compared to traditional fossil fuel plants, and can provide a steady supply of energy regardless of external conditions unlike solar and wind energy. With the supply of Russian natural gas disrupted in 2022, France is looking to reactivate some of its older decommissioned nuclear plants, for example. Various forms of renewable energy have grown in prominence in the contemporary era. Wind energy, while used on a small scale for centuries, has seen growth with large distributed groups of windmills used to produce energy for the grid. Solar power has also grown in prominence, with around 4% of the world's overall energy production in 2021 (compared to a much smaller slice before). While these energy sources are considered to be much less environmentally impactful than fossil fuels, concerns have been raised over the various rare earth metals used in the production of batteries and solar, which can require destructive mining techniques to gather. Computing and the Internet The Information Age or Information Era, also commonly known as the Age of the Computer, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. The idea is heavily linked to the concept of a Digital Age or Digital Revolution, and carries the ramifications of a shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based around the manipulation of information. The period is generally said to have begun in the latter half of the 20th century, though the particular date varies. The term began its use around the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has been used up to the present with the availability of the Internet. During the late 1990s, both Internet directories and search engines were popular—Yahoo! and Altavista (both founded 1995) were the respective industry leaders. By late 2001, the directory model had begun to give way to search engines, tracking the rise of Google (founded 1998), which had developed new approaches to relevancy ranking. Directory features, while still commonly available, became after-thoughts to search engines. Database size, which had been a significant marketing feature through the early 2000s (decade), was similarly displaced by emphasis on relevancy ranking, the methods by which search engines attempt to sort the best results first. "Web 2.0" is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. Social networking emerged in the early 21st century as a popular social communication, largely replacing much of the function of email, message boards and instant messaging services. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all major examples of social websites that gained widespread popularity. The information distribution continued into the early 21st century with mobile interaction and Internet access growing massively in the early 21st century. By the 2010s, a majority of people in the developed world had Internet access and a majority of people worldwide had a mobile phone. Marking the rise of mobile computing, worldwide sales of personal computers fall 14% during the first quarter of 2013. The Semantic Web (dubbed, "Web 3.0") begins the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, converting the current web dominated by unstructured and semi-structured documents into a "web of data". With the rise of information technology, computer security, and information security in general, is a concern for computers and networks. Concerns include information and services which are protected from unintended or unauthorized access, change or destruction. This has also raised questions of Internet privacy and personal privacy globally. Space exploration The Space Race was one of the rivalries of the Cold War, with both the United States space program (NASA) and the Soviet space program launching satellites, probes, and planning missions. While the Soviets put the first human into space with Yuri Gagarin, the Americans soon caught up, and the US was the first to launch a successful Moon landing mission with Apollo 11 in 1969, followed by five more landings in the next few years. In the 1970s and 80s, the US took a new approach with the Space Shuttle program, hoping to reduce the cost of launches by creating a re-usable Space Shuttle. The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter was Columbia (designated OV-102), launched into low Earth orbit in April 1981. In 1996, Shuttle mission STS-75 conducted research in space with the electrodynamic tether generator and other tether configurations. The program suffered from two incidents that destroyed a shuttle: the Challenger disaster and the Columbia disaster). The program ultimately had 135 missions. The retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet took place from March to July 2011. The end of the Cold War saw a new era of international cooperation with the International Space Station (ISS). Commercial spaceflight also became possible as governments loosened what had previously been their firm control over satellites, opening new possibilities, but also new risks such as light pollution from satellites. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program began in 2006. There are various spaceports, including spaceports of human spaceflight and other launch systems (space logistics). Private spaceflight is flight beyond the Kármán line that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. Commercialization of space is the use of equipment sent into or through outer space to provide goods or services of commercial value, either by a corporation or state. Space trade plans and predictions began in the 1960s. Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites. NASA announced in 2011 that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons. On 6 August 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, the most elaborate Martian exploration vehicle to date, landed on Mars. After the WMAP observations of the cosmic microwave background, information was released in 2011 of the work done by the Planck Surveyor, estimating the Age of the universe to 13.8 billion years old (a 100 million years older than previously thought). Another technological advancement came in 2012 with European physicists statistically demonstrating the existence of the Higgs boson. Challenges and problems Climate change Climate change and global warming reflects the notion of the modern climate. The changes of climate over the past century, have been attributed to various factors which have resulted in a global warming. This warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Some effects on both the natural environment and human life are, at least in part, already being attributed to global warming. A 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that glacier retreat, ice shelf disruption such as that of the Larsen Ice Shelf, sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns, and increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are attributable in part to global warming. Other expected effects include water scarcity in some regions and increased precipitation in others, changes in mountain snowpack, and adverse health effects from warmer temperatures. It is usually impossible to connect specific weather events to human impact on the world. Instead, such impact is expected to cause changes in the overall distribution and intensity of weather events, such as changes to the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation. Broader effects are expected to include glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage, and worldwide sea level rise. Other effects may include changes in crop yields, addition of new trade routes, species extinctions, and changes in the range of disease vectors. Until 2009, the Arctic Northwest Passage pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year in this area, but climate change has reduced the pack ice, and this Arctic shrinkage made the waterways more navigable. Health and pandemics Several disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics have occurred during contemporary history. Some of these include the 1957–1958 influenza pandemic, the Hong Kong flu of 1968–1969, the 1977–1979 Russian flu, the HIV/AIDS epidemic (1981–present), the SARS outbreak of 2002–2004, the swine flu pandemic of 2009–2010, and the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2022). COVID-19 pandemic In 2020, an outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, first documented in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, spread to other countries becoming a global pandemic, which caused a major socio-economic disruption all over the world. Many countries ordered mandatory lockdowns on movement and closures of non-essential businesses. The threat of the disease caused the COVID-19 recession, although the distribution of vaccines has since eased the economic impact in many countries. More generally, COVID-19 has been held up as an example of a global catastrophic risk unique to the modern era's ease of travel. New diseases can spread far faster and further in the contemporary era than any previous era of human history; pandemic prevention is one resulting field to ensure that if this happens with a sufficiently deadly virus, humanity can take measures to stop its spread. Charts Timeline Contemporary world map See also General: Modern history, Timelines of modern history, Anthropocene Generations: Generation, List of generations, Baby Boom Generation, Generation X, Xennials, Generation Y, Generation Z, Generation Alpha Music and arts: Contemporary art, Contemporary dance, Contemporary literature, Contemporary music, Contemporary hit radio, Adult contemporary music, Contemporary Christian music, Contemporary R&B, Urban contemporary, Video games Future: Future history, Futurology, Timeline of the near future], Third millennium, 21st century References Further reading Bell, P. M. H. and Mark Gilbert. The World Since 1945: An International History (2nd ed. 2017), 584pp excerpt Boyd, Andrew, Joshua Comenetz. An atlas of world affairs (2007) excerpt. Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (2002) excerpt. Hunt, Michael H. The World Transformed: 1945 to the Present (2nd ed. 2015) 624pp website Hunt, Michael H. ed., The World Transformed, 1945 to the Present: A Documentary Reader (2nd ed. 2001) primary sources excerpts McWilliams, Wayne C. and Harry Piotrowski. The World Since 1945: A History of International Relations (8th ed. 2014), 620pp External links Internet Modern History Sourcebook at Fordham University Journal of Contemporary History. SAGE Publications. (Print ) Contemporary History Institute (CHI). ohiou.edu (ed., Analyzes the contemporary period in world affairs—the period from World War II to the present—from an interdisciplinary historical perspective.) Soviet Union Timeline on BBC Historiography Historical eras Articles which contain graphical timelines Articles containing video clips

Subculture

A subculture is a group of people within a cultural society that differentiates itself from the conservative and standard values to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, political, and sexual matters. Subcultures are part of society while keeping their specific characteristics intact. Examples of subcultures include BDSM, hippies, hipsters (which include 1940s original parent subculture and nipster), goths, steampunks, bikers, punks, skinheads, gopnik, hip-hoppers, metalheads, cosplayers, otaku, otherkin, furries, hackers and more. The concept of subcultures was developed in sociology and cultural studies. Subcultures differ from countercultures. Definitions The Oxford English Dictionary defines subculture, in regards to sociological and cultural anthropology, as "an identifiable subgroup within a society or group of people, esp. one characterized by beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger group; the distinctive ideas, practices, or way of life of such a subgroup."Some subcultures are formed by members with characteristics or preferences that differ from the majority of society, who generally have a preference for body modifications such as tattoos, punctures, and certain forms of plastic surgery. Unlike mainstream social relationships, subcultural communities are characterized by transience, informality, and a lack of typical social kinship relationships. As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between a majority, "which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a 'subculture' which actively sought a minority style ... and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values". In his 1979 book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy. He wrote that subcultures can be perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to the dominant societal standard. Hebdige argued that subculture brings together like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and allow them to develop a sense of identity. In 1995, Sarah Thornton, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, described "subcultural capital" as the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups. In 2007, Ken Gelder proposed to distinguish subcultures from countercultures based on the level of immersion in society. Gelder further proposed six key ways in which subcultures can be identified through their: often negative relations to work (as 'idle', 'parasitic', at play or at leisure, etc.); negative or ambivalent relation to class (since subcultures are not 'class-conscious' and do not conform to traditional class definitions); association with territory (the 'street', the 'hood', the club, etc.), rather than property; movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family); stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some exceptions); refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification. Sociologists Gary Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinman argued that their 1979 research showed that a subculture is a group that serves to motivate a potential member to adopt the artifacts, behaviors, norms, and values characteristic of the group. Contemporary subcultures typically refer to popular culture, including animation, comics, video games, and popular music. History of studies The evolution of subcultural studies has three main steps: Subcultures and deviance The earliest sociological studies on subcultures came from the so-called Chicago School, who interpreted them as forms of deviance and delinquency. Starting with what they called Social Disorganization Theory, they claimed that subcultures emerged on one hand because of some population sectors' lack of socialization with the mainstream culture and, on the other, because of their adoption of alternative axiological and normative models. As Robert E. Park, Ernest Burgess, and Louis Wirth suggested, by means of selection and segregation processes, there thus appear in society "natural areas" or "moral regions" where deviant models concentrate and are re-inforced; they do not accept objectives or means of action offered by the mainstream culture, proposing different ones in their place—thereby becoming, depending on circumstances, innovators, rebels, or retreatists (Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin). Subcultures, however, are not only the result of alternative action strategies but also of labelling processes on the basis of which, as Howard S. Becker explains, society defines them as outsiders. As Cohen clarifies, every subculture's style, consisting of image, demeanour and language becomes its recognition trait. And an individual's progressive adoption of a subcultural model will furnish him/her with growing status within this context but it will often, in tandem, deprive him/her of status in the broader social context outside where a different model prevails. Cohen used the term 'Corner Boys' which were unable to compete with their better secured and prepared peers. These lower-class youths didn't have equal access to resources, resulting in the status of frustration, marginalization, and search for a solution. Subcultures and resistance In the work of John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts of the Birmingham CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies), subcultures are interpreted as forms of resistance. Society is seen as being divided into two fundamental classes, the working class and the middle class, each with its own class culture, and middle-class culture being dominant. Particularly in the working class, subcultures grow out of the presence of specific interests and affiliations around which cultural models spring up, in conflict with both their parents' culture and mainstream culture. Subcultural groups emphasize voluntary, informal, and organic subordinate relationships formed in unregulated street public spaces.Facing a weakening of class identity, subcultures are then new forms of collective identification, expressing what Cohen defined "symbolic resistance" against the mainstream culture and developing imaginary solutions for structural problems. However, the Birmingham School believes that the symbolic rejection of mainstream bourgeois lifestyles by subcultures is illusory. As Paul Willis and Dick Hebdige underline, identity and resistance in subcultures are expressed through the development of a distinctive style which, by a re-signification and "bricolage" operation, use cultural goods and services as standardized products to buy and consume, in order to communicate and express one's own conflict. Yet the culture industry is often capable of re-absorbing the components of such a style and once again transforming them into consumer goods for the mass society. At the same time the mass media, while they participate in building subcultures by broadcasting their images, also weaken subcultures by depriving them of their subversive content or by spreading a socially stigmatized image of them and their members. Subcultures and distinction The most recent interpretations see subcultures as forms of distinction. In an attempt to overcome the idea of subcultures as forms of deviance or resistance, they describe subcultures as collectivities which, on a cultural level, are sufficiently homogeneous internally and heterogeneous with respect to the outside world to be capable of developing, as Paul Hodkinson points out, consistent distinctiveness, identity, commitment and autonomy. Defined by Sarah Thornton as taste cultures, subcultures are endowed with elastic, porous borders, and are inserted into relationships of interaction and mingling, rather than independence and conflict, with the cultural industry and mass media, as Steve Redhead and David Muggleton emphasize. The very idea of a unique, internally homogeneous, dominant culture is explicitly criticized. Thus forms of individual involvement in subcultures are fluid and gradual, differentiated according to each actor's investment, outside clear dichotomies. The ideas of different levels of subcultural capital (Sarah Thornton) possessed by each individual, of the supermarket of style (Ted Polhemus) and of style surfing (Martina Böse) replace that of the subculture's insiders and outsiders – with the perspective of subcultures supplying resources for the construction of new identities going beyond strong, lasting identifications. Identifying The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music, hairstyles, jewellery, and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also of the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. Dick Hebdige writes that members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, , and argot. Subcultures can exist at all levels of organizations, highlighting the fact that there are multiple cultures or value combinations usually evident in any one organization that can complement but also compete with the overall organisational culture. In some instances, subcultures have been legislated against, and their activities regulated or curtailed. British youth subcultures had been described as a moral problem that ought to be handled by the guardians of the dominant culture within the post-war consensus. Relationships with mainstream culture It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style (particularly clothing and music) may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes. Businesses often seek to capitalize on the subversive allure of subcultures in search of Cool, which remains valuable in the selling of any product. This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society. Music-based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process; what may be considered subcultures at one stage in their historiessuch as jazz, goth, punk, hip hop, and rave culturesmay represent mainstream taste within a short period.Even religious groups can be seen as subcultures. In his research on British punk rock in the late 1970s, Hebdige proposed a controversial proposition at the time: punk portrayed the entire history of post-war working-class youth culture in a "cut" form, blending elements that originally belonged to completely different eras. Some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through the adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation. The punk subculture's distinctive (and initially shocking) style of clothing was adopted by mass-market fashion companies once the subculture became a media interest. Dick Hebdige argues that the punk subculture shares the same "radical aesthetic practices" as the Dadaist and Surrealist art movements: Like Duchamp's 'ready mades' - manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion ... Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic 'utility' context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip ... fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops. Urban tribes In 1985, French sociologist Michel Maffesoli coined the term urban tribe or neotribalism. It gained widespread use after the publication of his The Time of the Tribes (1988). In 1996, this book was published in English. According to Maffesoli, neo tribes are microgroups of people who share common interests in urban areas. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar worldviews, dress styles and behavioral patterns. Their social interactions are largely informal and emotionally laden, different from late capitalism's corporate-bourgeoisie cultures, based on dispassionate logic. Maffesoli claims that punks are a typical example of an "urban tribe". In the context of consumer culture, the notion of consumer tribes indicate ephemeral groups of individuals that often share a common interest and a share a subculture. Unlike traditional tribes that share kinship and language, consumer tribes are elective and ephemeral because they disperse without necessarily building long-term relationships. Consumer tribes often fluctuate around a common hobby or interest but lack permanent social bonds to become a brand community. Sexual and gender identity-based subcultures The sexual revolution of the 1960s led to a countercultural rejection of the established sexual and gender norms in the Western world, particularly in the urban areas of Europe, North and South America, Australia, and white South Africa. A more permissive social environment in these areas led to a proliferation of sexual subcultures—cultural expressions of non-normative sexuality. As with other subcultures, sexual subcultures adopted certain styles of fashion and gestures to distinguish themselves from mainstream Western culture. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people express themselves through the LGBT culture, considered the largest sexual subculture of the 20th and 21st centuries. With the ever-increasing acceptance of homosexuality in the early 21st century, including its expressions in fashion, music, and design, the gay culture can no longer be considered a subculture in many parts of the world, although some aspects of gay culture like leathermen, bears, and chubs are considered subcultures within the gay movement itself. The butch and femme identities or roles among some lesbians also engender their own subculture with stereotypical attire, for instance drag kings. A late 1980s development, the queer movement can be considered a subculture broadly encompassing those that reject normativity in sexual behavior, and who celebrate visibility and activism. The wider movement coincided with growing academic interests in queer studies and queer theory. Aspects of sexual subcultures can vary along other cultural lines. For instance, in the United States, down-low is a slang term specifically used within the African-American community to refer to Black men who usually identify as heterosexual but actively seek sexual encounters and relations with other men, practice gay cruising, and frequently adopt a specific hip-hop attire during these activities. They avoid sharing this information even if they have female sexual partner(s), they are married to a woman, or they are single. Social media In a 2011 study, Brady Robards and Andy Bennett said that online identity expression has been interpreted as exhibiting subcultural qualities. However, they argue it is more in line with neotribalism than with what is often classified as subculture. Social networking websites are quickly becoming the most used form of communication and means to distribute information and news. They offer a way for people with similar backgrounds, lifestyles, professions or hobbies to connect. According to a co-founder and executive creative strategist for RE-UP, as technology becomes a "life force," subcultures become the main bone of contention for brands as networks rise through cultural mash-ups and phenomenons. Where social media is concerned, there seems to be a growing interest among media producers to use subcultures for branding. This is seen most actively on social network sites with user-generated content, such as YouTube. Subcultures can be and have been successfully targeted by firms commercially. A stream of academic research in consumer culture shows the multiple ways in which companies and firms target subcultures with commercial offerings. Discrimination Discrimination-based harassment and violence are sometimes directed towards a person or group based on their culture or subculture. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the concept of subculture has always been the main explanatory tool for sociological and criminological understanding of deviant behavior.In 2013, the Greater Manchester Police in the United Kingdom began to classify attacks on subcultures such as goths, emos, punks, and metalheads as hate crimes, in the same way they record abuse against people because of their religion, race, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity. The decision followed the murder of Sophie Lancaster and beating of her boyfriend in 2007, who were attacked because they were goths. In 2012, human rights activists have denounced the occurrence of emo killings in Iraq, which consisted of between at least 6 and up to 70 teenage boys who were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, due to being targeted because they dressed in a "Westernized" emo style. See also Alternative lifestyle Art world Bohemianism Brandalism Culture Cultural identity Culture jamming Far-right subcultures Folk culture Heterosociality High culture History of Western subcultures in the 20th century Intercultural competence List of subcultures Low culture Neotribalism Popular culture Subcultural theory Underclass Underground culture Urban culture Urban sociology Youth subculture Rainbow Family Youth culture Youth subculture References Citations Sources Gelder, Ken (2007). Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (Routledge, March 2007; softcover ) Hebdige, Dick (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge, March 10, 1981; softcover ). Cited in Negus, Keith (1996). Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Wesleyan University Press. . Huq, Rupa (2006) 'Beyond subculture' (Routledge, 2006; softcover . Hardcover ) Maffesoli, Michel (1996). The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. (London: Sage Publications. ) McKay, George (1996) Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. (London: Verso. .) McKay, George (2005) Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain. Durham NC: Duke University Press. . Riesman, David (1950). "Listening to popular music", American Quarterly, 2, p. 359-71. Cited in Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music, p. 155. Philadelphia: Open University Press. . Thornton, Sarah (1995). Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cited in Negus, Keith (1996). Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Wesleyan University Press. . Watters, Ethan (2003). Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment. . Hall, Stuart, Tony Jefferson (1993). Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. Routledge, 1993. Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra. "Producers of 'Japan' in Israel: Cultural appropriation in a non-colonial context." Ethnos:Journal of Anthropology 68.3 (2003): 365. Print. Lewin, Phillip, J. Patrick Williams. "Reconceptualizing Punk through Ideology and Authenticity". Conference Papers—American Sociological Association. 2007 Conference Papers, 2007. Howes, David. Cross-cultural consumption: global markets, local realities. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print. Francois, L. (2013, May 25). Subcultures: Big Opportunity for Social Brands to Generate Value. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/subcultures-big-opportunity-social-brands-generate-value Huntington, S. (2014, March 24). Subcultures and Social Media: Mass Differentiation. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://socialmediadata.com/subcultures-and-social-media-mass-differentiation/ Беляев, И. А. Культура, субкультура, контркультура / И. А. Беляев, Н. А. Беляева // Духовность и государственность. Сборник научных статей. Выпуск 3; под ред. И. А. Беляева. — Оренбург: Филиал УрАГС в г. Оренбурге, 2002. — С. 5–18. Berzano, L., Genova, C. (2015). Lifestyles and Subcultures. History and a New Perspective. New York, NY: Routledge. External links Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy 126-98/5ย้าย126/2ตอนนี้แม่อยู่ไหนลูกก็อยู่นั้น563013ทะเบียนเล่ม Key youth subcultures from Lenin to our day Subcultures: Big Opportunities for Social Brands to Generate Value Etsy Touts the Economic Power of Its Small Business Owner--Even If They Make $100 a Year

Cultural practice

Cultural practice is the manifestation of a culture or sub-culture, especially in regard to the traditional and customary practices of a particular ethnic or other cultural groups. The term is gaining in importance due to the increased controversy over "rights of cultural practice", which are protected in many jurisdictions for indigenous peoples and sometimes ethnic minorities. It is also a major component of the field of cultural studies, and is a primary focus of international works such as the United Nations declaration of the rights of indigenous Peoples. Cultural practice is also a subject of discussion in questions of cultural survival. If an ethnic group retains its formal ethnic identity but loses its core cultural practices or the knowledge, resources, or ability to continue them, questions arise as to whether the culture is able to actually survive at all. International bodies such as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues continually work on these issues, which are increasingly at the forefront of globalization questions. Examples Medical treatment practices Forms of artistic expression Dietary preferences and culinary practices Cultural institutions (see also cultural institutions studies) Natural resource management Housing and construction Childcare practices Governance, leadership, conflict resolution Power relationships International cultural practices "Everyday life" practices (including household relationships) Qualifications The real question of what qualifies as a legitimate cultural practice is the subject of much legal and ethnic community debate. The question arises in controversial subject areas such as genital mutilation, indigenous hunting and gathering practices, and the question of licensing of traditional medical practitioners. Many traditional cultures acknowledge members outside of their ethnicity as cultural practitioners, but only under special circumstances. Generally, the knowledge or title must be passed in a traditional way, such as family knowledge shared through adoption, or through a master of that practice choosing a particular student who shows qualities desired for that practice, and teaching that student in a hands-on manner, in which they are able to absorb the core values and belief systems of the culture. The degree to which these non-ethnic practitioners are able to exercise "customary and traditional" rights, and the degree to which their practice is acknowledged as valid, is often a subject of considerable debate among indigenous and other ethnic communities, and sometimes with the legal systems under which these communities function. The difference between bona fide non-native cultural practitioners and cultural piracy, or cultural appropriation, is a major issue within the study of globalization and modernization. Evolution of culture The evolution of traditional cultures is a subject of much discussion in legal, scholarly, and community forums. It is generally accepted that all cultures are to some degree in a continual state of sociocultural evolution. However, major questions surround the legitimacy of newly evolved cultural expressions, especially when these are influenced by modernization or by the influence of other cultures. Also, there is significant debate surrounding the source of evolution: for example, an indigenous community may accept the use of store-bought materials in the creation of traditional arts, but may reject requirements to apply for a permit for certain gathering purposes; the central difference being that one is an internal cultural evolution, while the other is externally driven by the society or legal body that surrounds the culture. References Cultural studies Cultural geography Anthropology

Social environment

The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact. The interaction may be in person or through communication media, even anonymous or one-way, and may not imply equality of social status. The social environment is a broader concept than that of social class or social circle. The physical and social environment is a determining factor in active and healthy aging in place, being a central factor in the study of environmental gerontology. Moreover, the social environment is the setting where people live and interact. It includes the buildings and roads around them, the jobs available, and how money flows; relationships between people, like who has power and how different groups get along; and culture, like art, religion, and traditions. It includes the physical world and the way people relate to each other and their communities. Components The physical environment is the ever-changing natural world, including weather, land, and natural resources. Floods or earthquakes can alter the landscape, affecting how plants and animals live. Human interaction with nature can also have an impact. For example, logging can change the weather in that area, pollution can make water dirty, and habitat fragmentation caused by human activity makes it so animals cannot move around as easily, which can cause problems for their families. Social relations are how people interact with each other. Sociologist Emile Durkheim thought that if these interactions were disrupted, it could affect how we feel. Social relations can offer social support, which means the different ways people help each other out. This could be emotional support, like comforting someone when they are sad, or practical support, like helping with chores. Being part of groups, like families or clubs, can also make people feel good about ourselves; conversely, not having good relationships or having too many problems with others can make them feel bad. So, having good connections with people can make us happier and healthier. "Sociocultural" basically means the mix of society and culture that affects how people think, feel, and act, which can also affect our health. It includes things like how wealth, education, career, cultural background, race, ethnicity, language, and beliefs shape people's identity and health. Interpersonal relationships are how people connect with others emotionally and socially. When someone has a mental disorder, it often affects how they get along with people. Sometimes, the disorder itself can cause conflicts with others. These conflicts can appear in different areas of our relationships. Family relationships are important because having a supportive family makes life easier. They're there for you no matter what, whether things are going great or not so great. When life gets tough, hearing comforting words from your mom, spouse, or siblings can help you feel better and give you the courage to face challenges. In this post, we're going to talk about why family is important, what makes a good family, and how to make your relationships with family members stronger. Social relationships are the connections between people like family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. When scientists study how relationships affect human health and behavior, they usually focus on these close connections, not just formal ones like with doctors or lawyers. They are interested in how people interact with their social circle and how it impacts them overall. Work relationship: Work friendships are special connections between people at work. They are important because they affect the people involved and the company they work for. Friendships at work play a big role in how well someone does their job and how motivated they are. These relationships can be complicated, happening both at work and outside of it, and they can be good or bad. Not having any work friends can make someone feel really lonely and left out. Religious relationship: Religion can have a significant impact on relationships. Couples who share the same religious beliefs can find comfort and support in their faith. For example, they might pray together when they are arguing, which can help them deal with their feelings. Studies have shown that couples who pray together tend to focus more on what they have in common rather than their own individual worries. Having a strong religious foundation can also help couples get through difficult situations, like cheating. They might feel like their relationship is special because they believe it is part of God's plan for them. Overall, when couples share the same religious beliefs, it can make it easier for them to talk about their faith and support each other in their relationship. A sexual relationship, also called an intimate relationship, is when two people have a close bond either physically or emotionally. Intimacy usually means being close in a special way, and while it often involves sex, it can also happen in relationships without any sexual attraction, like between friends or family members. Importance of positive social environments and relationships for parents Where a child grows up and goes to school has a big impact on who they become friends with and how good those friendships are. Most of the time, kids make friends with people in their family or neighborhood. So, where parents choose to live, work, and send their kids to school can affect how healthy and happy their children are. Solidarity People with the same social environment often develop a sense of social solidarity; people often tend to trust and help one another, and to congregate in social groups. They will often think in similar styles and patterns, even though the conclusions which they reach may differ. Natural/artificial environment In order to enrich their lives, people have used natural resources, and in the process have brought about many changes in the natural environment. Human settlements, roads, farmlands, dams, and many other elements have all developed through the process. All these man-made components are included in human cultural environment, Erving Goffman in particular emphasising the deeply social nature of the individual environment. There are still many people living in villages and this is their social environment. A village is a township with production, living, ecology and culture. The state is trying to solve the problem of integrated rural development, which includes construction, expansion, and road building. Milieu/social structure C. Wright Mills contrasted the immediate milieu of jobs/family/neighborhood with the wider formations of the social structure, highlighting in particular a distinction between "the personal troubles of milieu" and the "public crises of social structure". Emile Durkheim took a wider view of the social environment (milieu social), arguing that it contained internalized expectations and representations of social forces/social facts: "Our whole social environment seems to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds" – collective representations. Phenomenology Phenomenologists contrast two alternative visions of society, as a deterministic constraint (milieu) and as a nurturing shell (ambiance). Max Scheler distinguishes between milieu as an experienced value-world, and the objective social environment on which we draw to create the former, noting that the social environment can either foster or restrain our creation of a personal milieu. Social surgery Pierre Janet saw neurosis in part as the product of the identified patient's social environment – family, social network, work etc. – and considered that in some instances what he termed "social surgery" to create a healthier environment could be a beneficial measure. Similar ideas have since been taken up in community psychiatry and family therapy. See also Alfred Schütz – The four divisions of the lifeworld Communitarianism Community of practice Family nexus Framing (social sciences) Generalized other Habitus (sociology) Microculture Milieu control Milieu therapy Pillarisation References Further reading Leo Spitzer, "Milieu and Ambience: An Essay in Historical Semantics", in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research III (1942-3) James Morrow, Where the Everyday Begins. A Study of Environment and Everyday Life. transcript, Bielefeld 2017, . Alfred Russel Wallace (1913), Social Environment and Moral Progress Sociological terminology Personal life

Metamodernism

Metamodernism is the term for a cultural discourse and paradigm that has emerged after postmodernism. It refers to new forms of contemporary art and theory that respond to modernism and postmodernism and integrate aspects of both together. Metamodernism reflects an oscillation between, or synthesis of, different "cultural logics" such as modern idealism and postmodern skepticism, modern sincerity and postmodern irony, and other seemingly opposed concepts. Philosophically, metamodern advocates agree with many postmodern critiques of modernism (for example, highlighting gender inequality); however, they often contend that postmodern deconstruction and critical analytic strategies fall short in facilitating desired resolutions. Metamodern scholarship initially focused on interpretting art in this vein and established a foundation for the field, particularly through observing the growing blend of irony and sincerity (or post-irony) in society. Later authors have explored metamodernism in other disciplines as well, with many frequently drawing on Integral Theory in their approach. The term "metamodern" first appeared as early as 1975, when scholar Mas'ud Zavarzadeh used it to describe emerging American literature from the mid-1950s, and later notably in 1999 when Moyo Okediji applied the term to contemporary African-American art as an "extension of and challenge to modernism and postmodernism." It wasn't until Vermeulen and van den Akker's 2010 essay "Notes on Metamodernism" that the subject garnered broader attention within academia. Metamodern authors Vermeulen and van den Akker Cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker published their essay "Notes on Metamodernism" in 2010 and ran an online research blog with the same name from 2009 to 2016. Their work is often considered an attempt to explain post-postmodernism. According to them, the metamodern sensibility "can be conceived of as a kind of informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism" characteristic of cultural responses to recent global events such as climate change, the financial crisis, political instability, and the digital revolution. They asserted that "the postmodern culture of relativism, irony, and pastiche" is over, having been replaced by a sensibility that stresses engagement, affect, and storytelling through "ironic sincerity." The prefix "meta-" referred not so much to a reflective stance or repeated rumination, but to Plato's metaxy, which denotes a movement between (meta) opposite poles as well as beyond (meta) them. Vermeulen and van den Akker described metamodernism as a "structure of feeling" that oscillates between modernism and postmodernism like "a pendulum swinging... between two opposite poles". "Ontologically," they write, "metamodernism oscillates between the modern and the postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern." For the metamodern generation, according to Vermeulen, "grand narratives are as necessary as they are problematic; hope is not simply something to distrust, love not necessarily something to be ridiculed." The return of a Romantic sensibility has been posited as a key characteristic of metamodernism, observed by Vermeulen and van den Akker in the architecture of Herzog & de Meuron, and the work of artists such as Bas Jan Ader, Peter Doig, Olafur Eliasson, Kaye Donachie, Charles Avery, and Ragnar Kjartansson. They claim that the neoromantic approach to metamodernism is done in the spirit of resignifying "‘the commonplace with significance, the ordinary with mystery, the familiar with the seemliness of the unfamiliar, and the finite with the semblance of the infinite." By doing so, these artists seek to "perceive anew a future that was lost from sight." Vermeulen asserted that "metamodernism is not so much a philosophy — which implies a closed ontology — as it is an attempt at a vernacular [or] a sort of open source document, that might contextualise and explain what is going on around us, in political economy as much as in the arts." They asserted that the 2000s were marked by a return to typically modern positions, while still retaining the postmodern sensibilities of the 1980s and 1990s. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm In 2021, American academic Jason Josephson Storm published Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. In the book, Storm argues for a metamodern method of scholarly research in the social sciences and humanities which requires a "revaluation of values" and a new analytic process. He incorporates Hegelian dialectics to negate what he argues are reflective negatives in postmodern thought, including general skepticism, antirealism, ethical nihilism, and the linguistic turn. Notable concepts detailed by Storm in the book include his proposition of metarealism, "process social ontology", and "hylosemiotics" (see: process philosophy and semiotics). Storm describes metamodernism in brief as follows:"Metamodernism is what we get when we take the strategies associated with postmodernism and productively reduplicate and turn them in on themselves. This will entail disturbing the symbolic system of poststructuralism, producing a genealogy of genealogies, deconstructing deconstruction, and providing a therapy for therapeutic philosophy."In 2024, Storm also launched the academic journal: Metamodern Theory and Praxis as Chair of the Science and Technology Studies department at Williams College. Storm asserts that self-analytical, "anti-disciplinary" thought is needed to effectively engage metamodern ideas in the real world and has stated his work is more about creating a paradigm shift than describing an intellectual movement. Hanzi Freinacht Hanzi Freinacht is the pen-name used by author Emil Ejner Friis and sociologist Daniel Görtz who published The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics. Written as a philospher and polemic, Freinacht plays into common metamodern themes like informed-naivete and ironic-sincerity vis-à-vis his performance as an author. Freinacht centrally argues that metamodernism is the natural successor of postmodernism and earlier developmental stages in history, advocating for stage theories as a valid way to understand metamodern phenomena. In The Listening Society, Freinacht attempts to describe how relationships between memetics (or units of culture), epistemology, and developmental psychology are integral to comparative politics and a metamodern lifestyle in general. The book seeks to broadly and systematically describe the world under the framing of "symbolic development", arguing that societies can most effectively address their issues through better understanding how developed its people and places are. To this end, Freinacht conceptualizes development by showing how inner-personal growth and trends in culture and politics follow patterns that can be found in relation to stages of increasing complexity (notably building upon Michael Commons' Model of Hierarchical Complexity). Görtz summarizes this concept of "stages" in his own name in the collective anthology: Metamodernity: Dispatches from a Time Between Worlds:"It is a tenet of metamodern sociology that perspectives are not arbitrarily ordered, but that they emerge in recognisable patterns... These sequences are, in turn, always dependent upon social and material – ultimately, even biological – conditions, with which they interact. Postmodernism did not emerge before modernism, nor could it have. For this reason, metamodern sociology always looks for meaningful explanatory developmental sequences, putting them in relation to one another on some kind of developmental scale. This developmentalism thus accepts at least some minimal form of stage theories… Each stage must be, in clearly definable terms, either more complex than the former, or, at a minimum, be derived from the former and qualitatively distinct."In terms of political ideology, Freinacht advocates for government policy that emphasizes environmental sustainability, economic liberalism, and substantial spending on social programs, which can be found in his second book: Nordic Ideology. Brendan Graham Dempsey In 2023, Dempsey wrote Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics, in which he attempted to synthesize the various strands of metamodern discourse to date (e.g., Vermeulen, Storm, Freinacht, etc.) into a single coherent framework based on the idea of "meta" as "recursive reflection." For Dempsey, what all forms of metamodernism have in common is the attempt to move beyond postmodernism by means of postmodernism—a move which requires progressively "decentering" from the postmodern vantage in order to reflect on it as an object of analysis (i.e., "going meta" on postmodernism). This reflective move creates a new orientation that is able to critique the previous perspective from a higher vantage. However, since this is also the process by which postmodernism distinguished itself from its modernist predecessor, such a dynamic can be seen as an enduring throughline in the development of all cultural logics. As he puts it:"The claim I’d like to make is that cultural shifts—like those from modernism to postmodernism to metamodernism—reflect society-level manifestations of such recursive, self-reflective moves. Postmodernists come after, objectify, reflect upon, critique, and transcend modernism; metamodernists come after, objectify, reflect upon, critique, and transcend postmodernism; and so on. As they do, genuinely novel insights and sensibilities are generated that justify speaking in terms of distinct cultural phases."Dempsey sees this "recursive transcendence through iterative self-reflection" operating (implicitly or explicitly) as part of all contemporary articulations of metamodernism. Consequently, he posits that such a "logic" to the unfolding of cultural logics is itself a defining feature of the emerging metamodern worldview: "In sum, what “metamodernism” speaks to, I am suggesting, is 1) the cultural moment when the deep recursive process of iterative self-reflection is applied to postmodernism, and thus constitutes an advance beyond the postmodern that includes many of its strategies. In the process, metamodernism becomes 2) the cultural moment when this deep recursive process in cultural shifts becomes an explicit object of reflection and the basis of a new way of seeing. Metamodernism thus becomes a cultural logic about (meta) cultural logics. Thus, with the awareness of the full implications of “going meta” in eternal recursive reflection, metamodernism entails the necessary inclusion within it of all prior cultural logics (at least insofar as it contains representations of their information in its complexity from a higher vantage). In this way, metamodernism signals an inherently multi-perspectival perspective, one that recognizes its inherent ability to toggle in and out of its own recursive contents." Luke Turner Explicitly drawing upon the work of Vermeulen and van den Akker, Luke Turner published The Metamodernist Manifesto in 2011 as "an exercise in simultaneously defining and embodying the metamodern spirit," describing it as "a romantic reaction to our crisis-ridden moment." The manifesto recognized "oscillation to be the natural order of the world," and called for an end to "the inertia resulting from a century of modernist ideological naivety and the cynical insincerity of its antonymous bastard child." Instead, Turner proposed metamodernism as "the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons," and concluded with a call to "go forth and oscillate!" In 2014, the manifesto became the impetus for LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner's collaborative art practice, after Shia LaBeouf reached out to Turner after encountering the text, with the trio embarking on a series of metamodern performance projects exploring connection, empathy, and community across digital and physical platforms. Examples of metamodernism in art Exhibits In November 2011, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York staged an exhibition entitled No More Modern: Notes on Metamodernism, featuring the work of Pilvi Takala, Guido van der Werve, Benjamin Martin, and Mariechen Danz. In March 2012, Galerie Tanja Wagner in Berlin curated Discussing Metamodernism in collaboration with Vermeulen and van den Akker. The show featured the work of Ulf Aminde, Yael Bartana, Monica Bonvicini, Mariechen Danz, Annabel Daou, Paula Doepfner, Olafur Eliasson, Mona Hatoum, Andy Holden, Sejla Kameric, Ragnar Kjartansson, Kris Lemsalu, Issa Sant, David Thorpe, Angelika J. Trojnarski, Luke Turner, and Nastja Säde Rönkkö. In 2013 Andy Holden staged the exhibition Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity 1999-2003: Towards a Unified Theory of M!MS. The exhibition examined the manifesto he had written in 2003 that called for art to be simultaneously ironic and sincere. The exhibition told the history of the writing of the manifesto and subsequently M!MS it now often cited as a precursor to Metamodernism as a ‘structure of feeling’. Starting 2018 the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has funded a Metamodernism Research Network. The Network has hosted several international symposia and conferences. Media James MacDowell, in his formulation of the "quirky" cinematic sensibility, described the works of Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Miranda July, and Charlie Kaufman as building upon the "New Sincerity", and embodying the metamodern structure of feeling in their balancing of "ironic detachment with sincere engagement". Linda Ceriello's work with Greg Dember on popular cultural products such as Joss Whedon's seminal television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and on Whedon and Goddard's 2012 film The Cabin in the Woods proposed an epistemic taxonomy of the monstrous/paranormal to distinguish the character of metamodern monsters from those which could be read as postmodern, modern or pre-modern. In May 2014, country music artist Sturgill Simpson told CMT that his album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music had been inspired in part by an essay by Seth Abramson, who writes about metamodernism on his Huffington Post blog. Simpson stated that "Abramson homes in on the way everybody is obsessed with nostalgia, even though technology is moving faster than ever." According to J.T. Welsch, "Abramson sees the 'meta-' prefix as a means to transcend the burden of modernism and postmodernism's allegedly polarised intellectual heritage." Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade and Inside have been described as metamodern reactions to growing up with social media. The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once was explicitly identified by the directors, The Daniels, as a metamodern film. In 2024, Steve Jones published The Metamodern Slasher Film, "the first monograph to examine film in a sustained way using metamodernism, and the first academic work to analyse horror under a metamodern lens". The music of contemporary classical composers Jennifer Walshe and Robin Haigh had been described as metamodern. Other works Essays The 2013 issue of the American Book Review dedicated to metamodernism included a series of essays identifying authors such as Roberto Bolaño, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen, Haruki Murakami, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace as metamodernists. In a 2014 article in PMLA, literary scholars David James and Urmila Seshagiri argued that "metamodernist writing incorporates and adapts, reactivates and complicates the aesthetic prerogatives of an earlier cultural moment", specifically modernism, in discussing twenty-first century writers such as Tom McCarthy. In 2014, Professor Stephen Knudsen, writing in ArtPulse, noted that metamodernism "allows the possibility of staying sympathetic to the poststructuralist deconstruction of subjectivity and the self—Lyotard’s teasing of everything into intertextual fragments—and yet it still encourages genuine protagonists and creators and the recouping of some of modernism's virtues." In 2017, Vermeulen and van den Akker, with Allison Gibbons, published Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth After Postmodernism, an edited collection of essays exploring the notion of metamodernism across a variety of fields in the arts and culture. Individual chapters cover metamodernism in areas such as film, literary fiction, crafts, television, photography and politics. Contributors include the three editors, James MacDowell, Josh Toth, Jöog Heiser, Sjoerd van Tuinen, Lee Konstantinou, Nicole Timmer, Gry C. Rustad, Kuy Hanno Schwind, Irmtraud Huber, Wolfgang Funk, Sam Browse, Raoul Eshelman, and James Elkins. In the introductory chapter, van den Akker and Vermeulen update and consolidate their original 2010 proposal, while addressing the divergent usages of the term “metamodernism” by other thinkers. An article applying metamodern theory to the study of religions was published in 2017 by Michel Clasquin-Johnson. In a 2017 essay on metamodernism in literary fiction, Fabio Vittorini stated that since the late 1980s, memetic strategies of the modern have been combined with the meta-literary strategies of the postmodern, performing "a pendulum-like motion between the naive and/or fanatic idealism of the former and the skeptical and/or apathetic pragmatism of the latter." Books In 2002, Andre Furlani, analyzing the literary works of Guy Davenport, defined metamodernism as an aesthetic that is "after yet by means of modernism.... a departure as well as a perpetuation." The relationship between metamodernism and modernism was seen as going "far beyond homage, toward a reengagement with modernist method in order to address subject matter well outside the range or interest of the modernists themselves." In 2013, Linda C. Ceriello proposed a theorization of metamodernism for the field of religious studies, connecting the contemporary phenomenon of secular spirituality to the emergence of a metamodern episteme. Her analysis of contemporary religious/spiritual movements and ontologies posits a shift that is consonant with the metamodern cultural sensibilities identified by others such as Vermeulen and van den Akker, and which has given rise to a distinct metamodern soteriology. In More Deaths than One (2014), the New Zealand writer and singer-songwriter Gary Jeshel Forrester examined metamodernism by way of a search for the Central Illinois roots of David Foster Wallace during a picaresque journey to America. In it, Forrester wrote that "[m]etamodernist theory proposes to fill the postmodernist void with a rough synthesis of the two predecessors from the twentieth century [modernism and post-modernism]. In the new paradigm, metaphysics, epistemology, and ontology all have their places, but the overriding concern is with yet another division of philosophy – ethics. It's okay to search for values and meaning, even as we continue to be skeptical." In 2019, Lene Rachel Anderson published her book Metamodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World, in which she claims: "Metamodernity provides us with a framework for understanding ourselves and our societies in a much more complex way. It contains both indigenous, premodern, modern, and postmodern cultural elements and thus provides social norms and a moral fabric for intimacy, spirituality, religion, science, and self-exploration, all at the same time." In November 2023 she moved to working on Polymodernity to differentiate her work on Nordic Bildung from Metamodernity. See also Eric Van Hove Invented tradition Jean Gebser Kitsch Ken Wilber Metatheory References Works cited External links Notes on Metamodernism (research blog founded by Vermeulen and van den Akker) Metamoderna (blog) What is Metamodern? (blog) Why do movies feel so different now? (popular video essay on YouTube)

Ethos

Ethos ( or ) is a Greek word meaning 'character' that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of Orpheus exhibit this idea in a compelling way. The word's use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs or modes of persuasion alongside pathos and logos. It gives credit to the speaker, or the speaker is taking credit. Etymology and origin Ethos (, ; plurals: ethe, ; ethea, ) is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" (as in "the habitats of horses/", Iliad 6.511, 15.268), "custom, habit", equivalent to Latin mores. Ethos forms the root of ethikos, meaning "morality, showing moral character". As an adjective in the neuter plural form ta ethika. Current usage In modern usage, ethos denotes the disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, organization, culture, or movement. For example, the poet and critic T. S. Eliot wrote in 1940 that "the general ethos of the people they have to govern determines the behavior of politicians". Similarly the historian Orlando Figes wrote in 1996 that in Soviet Russia of the 1920s "the ethos of the Communist party dominated every aspect of public life". Ethos may change in response to new ideas or forces. For example, according to the Jewish historian Arie Krampf, ideas of economic modernization which were imported into Palestine in the 1930s brought about "the abandonment of the agrarian ethos and the reception of...the ethos of rapid development". Rhetoric In rhetoric, ethos (credibility of the speaker) is one of the three artistic proofs (pistis, πίστις) or modes of persuasion (other principles being logos and pathos) discussed by Aristotle in 'Rhetoric' as a component of argument. Speakers must establish ethos from the start. This can involve "moral competence" only; Aristotle, however, broadens the concept to include expertise and knowledge. Ethos is limited, in his view, by what the speaker says. Others, however, contend that a speaker's ethos extends to and is shaped by the overall moral character and history of the speaker—that is, what people think of his or her character before the speech has even begun (cf Isocrates). According to Aristotle, there are three categories of ethos: phronesis – useful skills and practical wisdom arete – virtue, goodwill eunoia – goodwill towards the audience In a sense, ethos does not belong to the speaker but to the audience and it's appealing to the audience's emotions. Thus, it is the audience that determines whether a speaker is a high- or a low-ethos speaker. Violations of ethos include: The speaker has a direct interest in the outcome of the debate (e.g. a person pleading innocence of a crime); The speaker has a vested interest or ulterior motive in the outcome of the debate; The speaker has no expertise (e.g. a lawyer giving a speech on space flight is less convincing than an astronaut giving the same speech). Completely dismissing an argument based on any of the above violations of ethos is an informal fallacy (Appeal to motive). The argument may indeed be suspect; but is not, in itself, invalid. Modern interpretations Although Plato never uses the term "ethos" in his extant corpus; scholar Collin Bjork, a communicator, podcaster, and digital rhetorician, argues that Plato dramatizes the complexity of rhetorical ethos in the Apology of Socrates. For Aristotle, a speaker's ethos was a rhetorical strategy employed by an orator whose purpose was to "inspire trust in his audience" (Rhetorica 1380). Ethos was therefore achieved through the orator's "good sense, good moral character, and goodwill", and central to Aristotelian virtue ethics was the notion that this "good moral character" was increased in virtuous degree by habit (Rhetorica 1380). Ethos also is related to a character's habit as well (The Essential Guide to Rhetoric, 2018). The person's character is related to a person's habits (The Essential Guide to Rhetoric, 2018). Aristotle links virtue, habituation, and ethos most succinctly in Book II of Nicomachean Ethics: "Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching [...] while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name ethike is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit)" (952). Discussing women and rhetoric, scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell notes that entering the public sphere was considered an act of moral transgression for females of the nineteenth century: "Women who formed moral reform and abolitionist societies, and who made speeches, held conventions, and published newspapers, entered the public sphere and thereby lost their claims to purity and piety" (13). Crafting an ethos within such restrictive moral codes, therefore, meant adhering to membership of what Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner have theorized as counter publics. While Warner contends that members of counter publics are afforded little opportunity to join the dominant public and therefore exert true agency, Nancy Fraser has problematized Habermas's conception of the public sphere as a dominant "social totality" by theorizing "subaltern counter publics", which function as alternative publics that represent "parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs" (67). Though feminist rhetorical theorists have begun to offer ways of conceiving of ethos that are influenced by postmodern concepts of identity, they remain cognizant of how these classical associations have shaped and still do shape women's use of the rhetorical tool. Johanna Schmertz draws on Aristotelian ethos to reinterpret the term alongside feminist theories of subjectivity, writing that, "Instead of following a tradition that, it seems to me, reads ethos somewhat in the manner of an Aristotelian quality proper to the speaker's identity, a quality capable of being deployed as needed to fit a rhetorical situation, I will ask how ethos may be dislodged from identity and read in such a way as to multiply the positions from which women may speak" (83). Rhetorical scholar and Kate Ronald's claim that "ethos is the appeal residing in the tension between the speaker's private and public self", (39) also presents a more postmodern view of ethos that links credibility and identity. Similarly, Nedra Reynolds and Susan Jarratt echo this view of ethos as a fluid and dynamic set of identifications, arguing that "these split selves are guises, but they are not distortions or lies in the philosopher's sense. Rather they are 'deceptions' in the sophistic sense: recognition of the ways one is positioned multiply differently" (56). Rhetorical scholar Michael Halloran has argued that the classical understanding of ethos "emphasizes the conventional rather than the idiosyncratic, the public rather than the private" (60). Commenting further on the classical etymology and understanding of ethos, Halloran illuminates the interdependence between ethos and cultural context by arguing that "To have ethos is to manifest the virtues most valued by the culture to and for which one speaks" (60). While scholars do not all agree on the dominant sphere in which ethos may be crafted, some agree that ethos is formed through the negotiation between private experience and the public, rhetorical act of self-expression. Karen Burke LeFevre's argument in Invention as Social Act situates this negotiation between the private and the public, writing that ethos "appears in that socially created space, in the 'between', the point of intersection between speaker or writer and listener or reader" (45–46). According to Nedra Reynolds, "ethos, like postmodern subjectivity, shifts and changes over time, across texts, and around competing spaces" (336). However, Reynolds additionally discusses how one might clarify the meaning of ethos within rhetoric as expressing inherently communal roots. This stands in direct opposition to what she describes as the claim "that ethos can be faked or 'manipulated'" because individuals would be formed by the values of their culture and not the other way around (336). Rhetorical scholar John Oddo also suggests that ethos is negotiated across a community and not simply a manifestation of the self (47). In the era of mass-mediated communication, Oddo contends, one's ethos is often created by journalists and dispersed over multiple news texts. With this in mind, Oddo coins the term intertextual ethos, the notion that a public figure's "ethos is constituted within and across a range of mass media voices" (48). In "Black Women Writers and the Trouble with Ethos", scholar Coretta Pittman notes that race has been generally absent from theories of ethos construction and that this concept is troubling for black women. Pittman writes, "Unfortunately, in the history of race relations in America, black Americans' ethos ranks low among other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. More often than not, their moral characters have been associated with a criminalized and sexualized ethos in visual and print culture" (43). In Greek tragedy The ways in which characters were constructed is important when considering ethos, or character, in Greek tragedy. Augustus Taber Murray explains that the depiction of a character was limited by the circumstances under which Greek tragedies were presented. These include the single unchanging scene, necessary use of the chorus, small number of characters limiting interaction, large outdoor theatres, and the use of masks, which all influenced characters to be more formal and simple. Murray also declares that the inherent characteristics of Greek tragedies are important in the makeup of the characters. One of these is the fact that tragedy characters were nearly always mythical characters. This limited the character, as well as the plot, to the already well-known myth from which the material of the play was taken. The other characteristic is the relatively short length of most Greek plays. This limited the scope of the play and characterization so that the characters were defined by one overriding motivation toward a certain objective from the beginning of the play. However, Murray clarifies that strict constancy is not always the rule in Greek tragedy characters. To support this, he points out the example of Antigone who, even though she strongly defies Creon at the beginning of the play, begins to doubt her cause and plead for mercy as she is led to her execution. Several other aspects of the character element in ancient Greek tragedy are worth noting. One of these, which C. Garton discusses, is the fact that either because of contradictory action or incomplete description, the character cannot be viewed as an individual, or the reader is left confused about the character. One method of reconciling this would be to consider these characters to be flat, or type-cast, instead of round. This would mean that most of the information about the character centers around one main quality or viewpoint. Comparable to the flat character option, the reader could also view the character as a symbol. Examples of this might be the Eumenides as vengeance, or Clytemnestra as symbolizing ancestral curse. Yet another means of looking at character, according to Tycho von Wilamowitz and Howald, is the idea that characterization is not important. This idea is maintained by the theory that the play is meant to affect the viewer or reader scene by scene, with attention being only focused on the section at hand. This point of view also holds that the different figures in a play are only characterized by the situation surrounding them, and only enough so that their actions can be understood. Garet makes three more observations about a character in Greek tragedy. The first is an abundant variety of types of characters in Greek tragedy. His second observation is that the reader or viewer's need for characters to display a unified identity that is similar to human nature is usually fulfilled. Thirdly, characters in tragedies include incongruities and idiosyncrasies. Another aspect stated by Garet is that tragedy plays are composed of language, character, and action, and the interactions of these three components; these are fused together throughout the play. He explains that action normally determines the major means of characterization. For example, the play Julius Caesar, is a good example for a character without credibility, Brutus. Another principle he states is the importance of these three components' effect on each other; the important repercussion of this being character's impact on action. Augustus Taber Murray also examines the importance and degree of interaction between plot and character. He does this by discussing Aristotle's statements about plot and character in his Poetics: that plot can exist without character, but the character cannot exist without plot, and so the character is secondary to the plot. Murray maintains that Aristotle did not mean that complicated plot should hold the highest place in a tragedy play. This is because the plot was, more often than not, simple and therefore not a major point of tragic interest. Murray conjectures that people today do not accept Aristotle's statement about character and plot because to modern people, the most memorable things about tragedy plays are often the characters. However, Murray does concede that Aristotle is correct in that "[t]here can be no portrayal of character [...] without at least a skeleton outline of plot". One other term frequently used to describe the dramatic revelation of character in writing is "persona". While the concept of ethos has traveled through the rhetorical tradition, the concept of persona has emerged from the literary tradition, and is associated with a theatrical mask. Roger Cherry explores the distinctions between ethos and pathos to mark the distance between a writer's autobiographical self and the author's discursive self as projected through the narrator. The two terms also help to refine distinctions between situated and invented ethos. Situated ethos relies on a speaker's or writer's durable position of authority in the world; invented ethos relies more on the immediate circumstances of the rhetorical situation. In pictorial narrative Ethos, or character, also appears in the visual art of famous or mythological ancient Greek events in murals, on pottery, and sculpture referred to generally as pictorial narrative. Aristotle even praised the ancient Greek painter Polygnotos because his paintings included characterization. The way in which the subject and his actions are portrayed in visual art can convey the subject's ethical character and through this the work's overall theme, just as effectively as poetry or drama can. This characterization portrayed men as they ought to be, which is the same as Aristotle's idea of what ethos or character should be in tragedy. (Stansbury-O'Donnell, p. 178) Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell states that pictorial narratives often had ethos as its focus, and was therefore concerned with showing the character's moral choices. (Stansbury-O'Donnell, p. 175) David Castriota, agreeing with Stansbury-O'Donnell's statement, says that the main way Aristotle considered poetry and visual arts to be on equal levels was in character representation and its effect on action. However, Castriota also maintains about Aristotle's opinion that "his interest has to do with the influence that such ethical representation may exert upon the public". Castriota also explains that according to Aristotle, "[t]he activity of these artists is to be judged worthy and useful above all because exposure of their work is beneficial to the polis". Accordingly, this was the reason for the representation of character, or ethos, in public paintings and sculptures. In order to portray the character's choice, the pictorial narrative often shows an earlier scene than when the action was committed. Stansbury-O'Donnell gives an example of this in the form of a picture by the ancient Greek artist Exekia which shows the Greek hero Ajax planting his sword in the ground in preparation to commit suicide, instead of the actual suicide scene (Stansbury-O'Donnell, p. 177). Additionally, Castriota explains that ancient Greek art expresses the idea that character was the major factor influencing the outcome of the Greeks' conflicts against their enemies. Because of this, "ethos was the essential variable in the equation or analogy between myth and actuality". See also References Further reading Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (transl. W. D. Ross). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. . Aristotle. On Rhetoric (Transl. G. A. Kennedy). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. . Barthes, Roland.L'Ancienne rhétorique. Communications, Vol. 16, Nr. 1 (1970), Seuil: pp. 172–223. Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs Man Cannot Speak for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric. Praeger, 1989. Castriota, David. Myth, Ethos, and Actuality: Official Art in Fifth-Century B.C. Athens. London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. Chiron, Pierre. Aristotle: Rhétorique. Paris: Flammarion, 2007. Fraser, Nancy. "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of the Actually Existing Democracy." Social Text 25.26 (1990): 56–80. Gandler, Stefan "The quadruple modern Ethos: Critical Theory in the Americas." APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, Newark, DE: American Philosophical Association/University of Delaware, vol. 14, núm. 1, fall 2014, pp. 2–4. . Garton, C. "Characteristics in Greek Tragedy." The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 77, Part 2. (1957), pp. 247–254. JSTOR. Garver, Eugene. Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Givone, Sergio. Eros/Ethos. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. . Grazia, Margreta. Hamlet without Hamlet. New York, NY: Cambridge, 2007. . Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991. Halliwell, Stephen. Aristotle's Poetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. . Halloran, S. Michael. "Aristotle's Concept of Ethos, or if not His, Someone Else's." Rhetoric Review, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Sep. 1982), pp. 58–63. JSTOR. . Jarratt, Susan, and Nedra Reynolds. "The Splitting Image: Contemporary Feminisms and the Ethics of ethos." Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory. Eds. James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994. 37–63. LeFevre, K.B. Invention as a Social Act. Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Lundberg, Christian O. and Keith, William M. "The Essential Guide to Rhetoric". 2nd Eds. Bedford/St. Martin's: Macmillan Learning, 2018. McDonald, Marianne; Walton, J. Michael (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theater. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 2007. . Meyer, Michel. La rhétorique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, coll. «Que sais-je? n° 2133», 2004. . Müller, Jörn. Physics und Ethos: Der Naturbegriff bei Aristoteles und seine Relevanz für die Ethik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006. Höffe, Otfried (ed.). Aristoteles. Poetik. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009. Hyde, Michael J.; Schrag, Calvin O. (eds.). The Ethos of Rhetoric. Columbia (SC): University of South Carolina, 2004. . Oddo, John. (2014) "The Chief Prosecutor and the Iraqi Regime: Intertextual Ethos and Transitive Chains of Authority." In Intertextuality and the 24-Hour News Cycle: A Day in the Rhetorical Life of Colin Powell's U.N. Address, pp. 45–76. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. Paris, Bernard. Character as a Subversive Force in Shakespeare: the history and Roman plays. London: Associated University Presses Inc, 1991. Pittman, Corretta. "Black Women Writers and the Trouble with Ethos: Harriet Jacobs, Billie Holiday, and Sister Souljah." Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 37 (2007): 43–70. Proscurcin Jr., Pedro. Der Begriff Ethos bei Homer. Beitrag zu einer philosophischen Interpretation. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2014. . Rapp, Christof. Aristoteles: Rhetorik. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002. Ronald, Kate. "A Reexamination of Personal and Public Discourse in Classical Rhetoric." Rhetoric Review 9.1 (1990): 36–48. Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.). Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press, 1996. Schmertz, Johanna. "Constructing Essences: Ethos and the Postmodern Subject of Feminism." Rhetoric Review 18.1 (1999): 82–91. Vergnières, Solange. Éthique et Politique chez Aristote: Physis, Êthos, Nomos. Paris: PUF, 1995. Warner, Michael. "Publics and Counterpublics." Public Culture 14.1: 49–90. Woerther, Frédérique. L'èthos aristotélicien. Paris: Librairie Philosophique Vrin, 2007. . External links Ancient Greek theatre Concepts in ancient Greek ethics Narratology Plot (narrative) Poetics Rhetoric Virtue Social agreement Theories in ancient Greek philosophy Writing

Praxis (process)

Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied, or put into practice. "Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practising ideas. This has been a recurrent topic in the field of philosophy, discussed in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, Ludwig von Mises, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paulo Freire, Murray Rothbard, and many others. It has meaning in the political, educational, spiritual and medical realms. Origins The word praxis is from . In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾶξις) referred to activity engaged in by free people. The philosopher Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of humans: theoria (thinking), poiesis (making), and praxis (doing). Corresponding to these activities were three types of knowledge: theoretical, the end goal being truth; poietical, the end goal being production; and practical, the end goal being action. Aristotle further divided the knowledge derived from praxis into ethics, economics, and politics. He also distinguished between eupraxia (εὐπραξία, "good praxis") and dyspraxia (δυσπραξία, "bad praxis, misfortune"). Marxism Young Hegelian August Cieszkowski was one of the earliest philosophers to use the term praxis to mean "action oriented towards changing society" in his 1838 work Prolegomena zur Historiosophie (Prolegomena to a Historiosophy). Cieszkowski argued that while absolute truth had been achieved in the speculative philosophy of Hegel, the deep divisions and contradictions in man's consciousness could only be resolved through concrete practical activity that directly influences social life. Although there is no evidence that Karl Marx himself read this book, it may have had an indirect influence on his thought through the writings of his friend Moses Hess. Marx uses the term "praxis" to refer to the free, universal, creative and self-creative activity through which man creates and changes his historical world and himself. Praxis is an activity unique to man, which distinguishes him from all other beings. The concept appears in two of Marx's early works: the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and the Theses on Feuerbach (1845). In the former work, Marx contrasts the free, conscious productive activity of human beings with the unconscious, compulsive production of animals. He also affirms the primacy of praxis over theory, claiming that theoretical contradictions can only be resolved through practical activity. In the latter work, revolutionary practice is a central theme: Marx here criticizes the materialist philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach for envisaging objects in a contemplative way. Marx argues that perception is itself a component of man's practical relationship to the world. To understand the world does not mean considering it from the outside, judging it morally or explaining it scientifically. Society cannot be changed by reformers who understand its needs, only by the revolutionary praxis of the mass whose interest coincides with that of society as a whole—the proletariat. This will be an act of society understanding itself, in which the subject changes the object by the very fact of understanding it. Seemingly inspired by the Theses, the nineteenth century socialist Antonio Labriola called Marxism the "philosophy of praxis". This description of Marxism would appear again in Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and the writings of the members of the Frankfurt School. Praxis is also an important theme for Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukacs, Karl Korsch, Karel Kosik and Henri Lefebvre, and was seen as the central concept of Marx's thought by Yugoslavia's Praxis School, which established a journal of that name in 1964. Jean-Paul Sartre In the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre posits a view of individual praxis as the basis of human history. In his view, praxis is an attempt to negate human need. In a revision of Marxism and his earlier existentialism, Sartre argues that the fundamental relation of human history is scarcity. Conditions of scarcity generate competition for resources, exploitation of one over another and division of labor, which in its turn creates struggle between classes. Each individual experiences the other as a threat to his or her own survival and praxis; it is always a possibility that one's individual freedom limits another's. Sartre recognizes both natural and man-made constraints on freedom: he calls the non-unified practical activity of humans the "practico-inert". Sartre opposes to individual praxis a "group praxis" that fuses each individual to be accountable to each other in a common purpose. Sartre sees a mass movement in a successful revolution as the best exemplar of such a fused group. Hannah Arendt In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt argues that Western philosophy too often has focused on the contemplative life (vita contemplativa) and has neglected the active life (vita activa). This has led humanity to frequently miss much of the everyday relevance of philosophical ideas to real life. For Arendt, praxis is the highest and most important level of the active life. Thus, she argues that more philosophers need to engage in everyday political action or praxis, which she sees as the true realization of human freedom. According to Arendt, our capacity to analyze ideas, wrestle with them, and engage in active praxis is what makes us uniquely human. In Maurizio Passerin d'Etreves's estimation, "Arendt's theory of action and her revival of the ancient notion of praxis represent one of the most original contributions to twentieth century political thought. ... Moreover, by viewing action as a mode of human togetherness, Arendt is able to develop a conception of participatory democracy which stands in direct contrast to the bureaucratized and elitist forms of politics so characteristic of the modern epoch." Education Praxis is used by educators to describe a recurring passage through a cyclical process of experiential learning, such as the cycle described and popularised by David A. Kolb. Paulo Freire defines praxis in Pedagogy of the Oppressed as "reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed." Through praxis, oppressed people can acquire a critical awareness of their own condition, and, with teacher-students and students-teachers, struggle for liberation. In the British Channel 4 television documentary New Order: Play at Home, Factory Records owner Tony Wilson describes praxis as "doing something, and then only afterwards, finding out why you did it". Praxis may be described as a form of critical thinking and comprises the combination of reflection and action. Praxis can be viewed as a progression of cognitive and physical actions: Taking the action Considering the impacts of the action Analysing the results of the action by reflecting upon it Altering and revising conceptions and planning following reflection Implementing these plans in further actions This creates a cycle which can be viewed in terms of educational settings, learners and educational facilitators. Scott and Marshall (2009) refer to praxis as "a philosophical term referring to human action on the natural and social world". Furthermore, Gramsci (1999) emphasises the power of praxis in Selections from the Prison Notebooks by stating that "The philosophy of praxis does not tend to leave the simple in their primitive philosophy of common sense but rather to lead them to a higher conception of life". To reveal the inadequacies of religion, folklore, intellectualism and other such 'one-sided' forms of reasoning, Gramsci appeals directly in his later work to Marx's 'philosophy of praxis', describing it as a 'concrete' mode of reasoning. This principally involves the juxtaposition of a dialectical and scientific audit of reality; against all existing normative, ideological, and therefore counterfeit accounts. Essentially a 'philosophy' based on 'a practice', Marx's philosophy, is described correspondingly in this manner, as the only 'philosophy' that is at the same time a 'history in action' or a 'life' itself (Gramsci, Hoare and Nowell-Smith, 1972, p. 332). Spirituality Praxis is also key in meditation and spirituality, where emphasis is placed on gaining first-hand experience of concepts and certain areas, such as union with the Divine, which can only be explored through praxis due to the inability of the finite mind (and its tool, language) to comprehend or express the infinite. In an interview for YES! Magazine, Matthew Fox explained it this way: According to Strong's Concordance, the Hebrew word ta‛am is, properly, a taste. This is, figuratively, perception and, by implication, intelligence; transitively, a mandate: advice, behaviour, decree, discretion, judgment, reason, taste, understanding. Medicine Praxis is the ability to perform voluntary skilled movements. The partial or complete inability to do so in the absence of primary sensory or motor impairments is known as apraxia. See also Apraxia Christian theological praxis Hexis Lex artis Orthopraxy Praxeology Praxis Discussion Series Praxis (disambiguation) Praxis intervention Praxis school Practice (social theory) Theses on Feuerbach References Further reading Paulo Freire (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum International Publishing Group. External links Entry for "praxis" at the Encyclopaedia of Informal Education Der Begriff Praxis Concepts in the philosophy of mind Marxism

Cultural turn

The cultural turn is a movement beginning in the early 1970s among scholars in the humanities and social sciences to make culture the focus of contemporary debates; it also describes a shift in emphasis toward meaning and away from a positivist epistemology. The cultural turn is described in 2005 by Lynette Spillman and Mark D. Jacobs as "one of the most influential trends in the humanities and social sciences in the last generation." A prominent historiographer argues that the cultural turn involved a "wide array of new theoretical impulses coming from fields formerly peripheral to the social sciences," especially post-structuralism, cultural studies, literary criticism, and various forms of linguistic analysis, which emphasized "the causal and socially constitutive role of cultural processes and systems of signification." Background The cultural turn in the late 20th century is interpreted as referring to either a substantive shift in society or an analytical shift in academia. The former argues that culture plays a more significant role in advanced societies, which fits with the notion of post-modernity as a historical era in which people "emphasizes the importance of art and culture for education, moral growth, and social criticism and change". The latter is movement within academia to place the concept of culture, and the related notions of meaning, cognition, affect, and symbols at the center of methodological and theoretical focus. Some argue that the analytical shift is endogenous to the substantive shift. Culture can be defined as "the social process whereby people communicate meanings, make sense of their world, construct their identities, and define their beliefs and values". Or, for Georg Simmel, culture refers to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Thus culture can be interpreted on a spectrum from purely individualistic solipsism to objective forms of social organization and interaction. History Analytical shift One of the earliest works in which the term "cultural turn" showed up was Jeffrey C. Alexander's chapter "The New Theoretical Movement" in Neil Smelser's Handbook of Sociology (1988). According to Alexander, the origins of the cultural turn should be traced to the nineteenth-century debate between idealism and materialism, i.e. Hegel and Marx, respectively. Prior to the labeling of the movement, in the 1970s, "foundational works underlying and facilitating the turn to cultural forms of analysis" emerged: Hayden White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (1973), Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1977), and Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977). While the earlier twentieth century experienced a linguistic turn, mostly brought about by the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ferdinand de Saussure, the cultural turn of the late twentieth century absorbed those criticisms and built on them. The cultural turn has helped cultural studies to gain more respect as an academic discipline. With the shift away from high arts the discipline has increased its perceived importance and influence on other disciplines. British historian Heather Jones argues that the historiography of the First World War has been reinvigorated by the cultural turn in recent years. Scholars have raised entirely new questions regarding military occupation, radicalisation of politics, race, and the male body. Substantive shift The cultural turn as an historical era that breaks substantively with the past is only tangentially related to cultural turn as analytical shift. Proponents of the former argue that: Advertising, amateur photography, yellow journalism and an assortment of other forms of media arose after the politically charged 1960s. Moreover, this media was multicultural, and attempted to target all races, ethnicities and age groups, as opposed to more exclusive media prior to the 1960s. This "new media" of a postmodern America brought about an expansion and differentiation of culture, which has only been rapidly expanded by the Internet and social media. In rural studies In recent years, there has been something of a resurgence in rural studies, which has become somewhat more mainstream than previously in the academic space of social science. Increasing numbers of people have taken on important dualistic questions of society/space, nature/culture structure/agency and self/other from the perspective of rural studies. However, it is the 'cultural turn' in wider social science which has lent both respectability and excitement to the nexus with rurality, particularly with new foci on landscape, otherness and the spatiality of nature. With a conceptual fascination with difference, and a methodological fascination with ethnography, cultural studies have provided a significant palimpsestuous overlay onto existing landscapes of knowledge. See also Aretaic turn Historical turn Linguistic turn Quantitative revolution References Finlay Macknay, The way of the lad. 2011 Cultural studies 20th century in philosophy

Cultural nationalism

Cultural nationalism is a term used by scholars of nationalism to describe efforts among intellectuals to promote the formation of national communities through emphasis on a common culture. It is contrasted with "political" nationalism, which refers to specific movements for national self-determination through the establishment of a nation-state. Definition John Hutchinson's 1987 work The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism argued against earlier scholarship that tended to conflate nationalism and state-seeking movements. Hutchinson developed a typography distinguishing cultural from political nationalists, describing how the former act as moral innovators, emerging at times of crisis, to engender movements that offer new maps of identity based on historical myths that - in turn - may inspire programmes of socio-political regeneration from the latter. He emphasises the dynamic role of historians and artists, showing how they interact with religious reformists and a discontented modernising intelligentsia to form national identities. In his later work, Hutchinson admits his earlier distinction may be too simplistic and recognises: What distinguishes these cultural "revivals" from earlier ones is their political dynamism, arising from the "coming together of neo-classical and pre-romantic European intellectual currents". These cultural nationalist movements aimed at cultural homogenisation and utilised the study of history as a resource for social innovation. Intellectuals aim to "present populations with new maps of identity and political prescriptions that claim to combine the virtues of historical tradition and modern progress at times of crisis". History Anthony D. Smith describes how intellectuals played a primary role in generating cultural perceptions of nationalism: Smith posits the challenges posed to traditional religion and society in the Age of Revolution propelled many intellectuals to "discover alternative principles and concepts, and a new mythology and symbolism, to legitimate and ground human thought and action". The simultaneous concept of 'historicism' was characterised by an emerging belief in the birth, growth, and decay of specific peoples and cultures, which became "increasingly attractive as a framework for inquiry into the past and present and [...] an explanatory principle in elucidating the meaning of events, past and present". Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte are considered key figures who argued for such a cultural definition of nationhood. They emphasised the distinctness of national cultures based predominantly around language, stressing its character as "the epitome of people’s unique historical memories and traditions and the central source of the national spirit". Miroslav Hroch argues cultural nationalism laid the foundation for the emergence political nationalism. For Yael Tamir, the right to national self-determination represents the embodiment of the "unique cultural essence of cultural groups" and their right to develop cultural distinctiveness, irrespective of whether these groups seek an independent nation-state. Criticism Some scholars, such as Craig Calhoun and Eric Hobsbawm, among others, criticize cultural definitions of nationhood for neglecting the role of the state in the formation of national identities and the role played by socio-political elites in constructing cultural identities. Similarly, Paul Brass argues national identities are not given but rather the product of the politics of socio-political elites. Umut Ozkirimli rejects a sharp distinction between cultural and political nationalism, emphasising that nationalism is about both. He states it simultaneously involves "the ‘culturalization’ of politics and the ‘politicisation’ of culture". Examples Moderate manifestations of Flemish or Hindu nationalisms might be "cultural nationalism", while these same movements also include forms of ethnic nationalism and national mysticism. See also Minzu (anthropology) References Further reading David Aberbach, 2008, Jewish Cultural Nationalism: Origins and Influences, Kosaku Yoshino, 1992, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry, J. Ellen Gainor, 2001, Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater, G. Gordon Betts, 2002, The Twilight of Britain: Cultural Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Politics of Toleration, Yingjie Guo, 2004, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity under Reform, Mike Featherstone, 1990, Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, Starrs, Roy, 2004, Vincent Martigny, 2016, Dire la France. Culture(s) et identités nationales, Nationalism Culture de:Kulturnation

Primitivism

In the arts of the Western World, Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that means to recreate the experience of the primitive time, place, and person, either by emulation or by re-creation. In Western philosophy, Primitivism proposes that the people of a primitive society possess a morality and an ethics that are superior to the urban value system of civilized people. In European art, the aesthetics of primitivism included techniques, motifs, and styles copied from the arts of Asian, African, and Australasian peoples perceived as primitive in relation to the urban civilization of western Europe. In that light, the painter Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian imagery to his oil paintings was a characteristic borrowing of technique, motif, and style that was important for the development of Modern art (1860s–1970s) in the late 19th century. As a genre of Western art, Primitivism reproduced and perpetuated racist stereotypes, such as the "noble savage", with which colonialists justified white colonial rule over the non-white other in Asia, Africa, and Australasia. Moreover, the term primitivism also identifies the techniques, motifs, and styles of painting that predominated representational painting before the emergence of the Avant-garde; and also identifies the styles of naïve art and of folk art produced by amateur artists, such as Henri Rousseau, who painted for personal pleasure. Philosophy Primitivism is a utopian style of art that means to represent the physical world of Nature and humanity's original state of nature with two styles: (i) chronological primitivism and (ii) cultural primitivism. In Europe, chronological primitivism proposes the moral superiority of a primitive way of life represented by the myth of a golden age of pre-societal harmony with Nature, as depicted in the Pastoral genres of European representational art and poetry. Notable examples of European cultural primitivism are the music of Igor Stravinsky, the Tahitian paintings of Paul Gauguin, and the African period artworks of Pablo Picasso. Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (1913) is primitivist program music about the subject of Paganism, specifically the rite of human sacrifice in pre-christian Russia. Foregoing the aesthetic and technical restraints of Western musical composition, in The Rite of Spring the composer employs harsh consonance and dissonance and loud, repetitive rhythms as a mode of Dionysian spontaneity in musical modernism. The critic Malcolm Cook said that "with its folk-music motifs and the infamous 1913 Paris riot securing its avant-garde credentials, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring engaged in Primitivism in both form and practice" while remaining within the technical praxes of Western classical music. 17th century During the Age of Enlightenment, intellectuals rhetorically used the idealization of indigenous peoples as political criticism of European culture; however, as part of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, the Italian intellectual Giambattista Vico said that the lives of primitive non-Europeans were more attuned to Nature's aesthetic inspirations for poetry than the arts of civilized, modern man. From that perspective, Vico compared the artistic merits of the epic poetry of Homer and of the Bible against the modern literature written in vernacular language. 18th century In the Prolegomena to Homer (1795), the scholar Friedrich August Wolf identified the language of Homer's poetry and the language of The Bible as examples of folk art communicated and transmitted by oral tradition. Later, the ideas of Vico and Wolf were developed at the beginning of the 19th century by Johann Gottfried Herder; nevertheless, although influential in literature, the ideas of Vico and Wolf slightly influenced the visual arts. 19th century The emergence of historicism — judging and evaluating different eras according to their historical context and criteria — resulted in new schools of visual art dedicated to historical fidelity of setting and costume, such as the art of Neoclassicism and the Romantic art of the Nazarene movement in Germany who were inspired by the primitive school of Italian devotional paintings, i.e. before Raphael and the discovery of oil painting. Whereas academic painting (after Raphael) used dark glazes, idealized forms, and suppression of detail, the artists of the Nazarene movement used clear outlines, bright colors, and much detail. The artistic styles of the Nazarene movement were similar to the artistic styles of the Pre-Raphaelites, who were inspired by the critical writings of John Ruskin, who admired the painters before Raphael (e.g. Sandro Botticelli) and recommended that artists paint outdoors. In the mid-19th century, the photographic camera and non-Euclidean geometry changed the visual arts; photography impelled the development of artistic Realism and non-Euclidean geometry voided the mathematic absolutes of Euclidean geometry, and so challenged the conventional perspective of Renaissance art by suggesting the existence of multiple worlds in which things are different from the human world. Modernist Primitivism The three-hundred-year Age of Discovery (15th c.–17th c.) exposed western European explorers to the peoples and cultures of Asia and the Americas, of Africa and Australasia, but the explorers' perspective of cultural difference led to colonialism. During the Age of Enlightenment, the explorers' encounters with the non-European Other provoked philosophers to question the Mediaeval assumptions about the fixed nature Man, of society, and of Nature, doubted the social-class organization of society and the mental, moral, and intellectual strictures of Christianity, by comparing the civilization of Europe against the way of life of the uncivilized natural man living in harmony with Nature. In the 18th century, Western artists and intellectuals participated in "the conscious search in history for a more deeply expressive, permanent human nature and cultural structure in contrast to the nascent modern realities", by studying the cultures of the primitive peoples encountered by explorers. The spoils of European colonialism included the works of art of the colonized natives, which featured primitive styles of expression and execution, especially the absence of linear perspective, a simple outline, the presence of hieroglyphs, distortions of the figure, and the meaning communicated with repeated patterns of ornamentation. The African and Australasian cultures provided artists an answer to their "white, Western, and preponderantly male quest" for the ideal of the primitive, "whose very condition of desirability resides in some form of distance and difference." Paul Gauguin The painter Paul Gauguin departed urban Europe to reside in the French colony of Tahiti, where he adopted a primitive style of life much unlike the way of life in urban France. Gauguin's search for the primitive was a search for sexual freedom from the Christian constrictions of private life, evident in the paintings Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892), Parau na te Varua ino (1892), and Anna the Javanerin (1893), Te Tamari No Atua (1896) and Cruel Tales (1902). Gauguin's European perspective of Tahiti as a sexual utopia free of the religious sexual prohibitions is in line with the perspective of pastoral art, which idealizes rural life as better than city life. The similarities between Pastoralism and Primitivism are evident in the paintings Tahitian Pastoral (1892) and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897–1898). The artist Gauguin said that his paintings celebrated Tahitian society, and that he was defending Tahiti against French colonialism; nonetheless, from the postcolonial perspective of the 20th century, feminist art critics said that Gauguin's taking adolescent mistresses voids his claim of being an anti-colonialist. As a European man, his sexual freedom derived from the male gaze of the colonist, because Gauguin's artistic primitivism is part of the "dense interweave of racial and sexual fantasies and power, both colonial and patriarchal", which French colonialists invented about Tahiti and the Tahitians; European fantasies invented in "effort to essentialize notions of primitiveness", by Othering non-European peoples into colonial subordinates. Fauves and Pablo Picasso In 1905–1906 period, a group of artists studied the arts from Sub-Saharan Africa and from Oceania, because of the popularity of the Gauguin paintings of Tahiti and the Tahitians. Two posthumous, retrospective exhibitions of Gauguin's works of art in Paris, one at the Salon d'Automne in 1903, and the other in 1906, influenced fauve movement artists such as Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain and Henri Matisse, but also Pablo Picasso. In particular, Picasso studied Iberian sculpture, African sculpture, and African traditional masks, and historical works such as the Mannerist paintings of El Greco, from which aesthetic study Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and invented Cubism. Anti-colonial primitivism Primitivism in art is usually regarded as a cultural phenomenon of Western art, yet the structure of primitivist idealism is in the art works of non-Western and anti-colonial artists. The nostalgia for an idealized past when humans lived in harmony with Nature is related to critiques of the negative cultural impact of Western modernity upon colonized peoples. The primitivist works of anti-colonial artists are critiques of the Western stereotypes about colonized peoples, while also yearning for the pre-colonial way of life. The processes of decolonization fuse with the reverse teleology of Primitivism to produce native works of art distinct from the primitivist artworks by Western artists, which reinforce colonial stereotypes as true. As a type of artistic primitivism, the artworks of the Négritude movement tend to nostalgia for a lost golden age. Begun in the 1930s, by francophone artists and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the Négritude movement was readily adopted throughout continental Africa and by the African diaspora. In rejection of Western rationalism and European colonialism, the Négritude artists idealized pre-colonial Africa with works of art that represent pre-colonial Africa as composed of societies who were more culturally united before the Europeans arrived to Africa. Notable among the artists of the Négritude movement is the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam who was associated with Picasso and the surrealists in Paris, in the 1930s. On returning to Cuba in 1941, Lam was emboldened to create dynamic tableaux that integrated human beings, animals, and Nature. In The Jungle (1943), Lam's polymorphism creates a fantastical jungle scene featuring African motifs among the stalks of sugar cane to represent the connection between the neo-African idealism of Négritude and the history of plantation slavery for the production of table sugar. Neo-primitivism Neo-primitivism was a Russian art movement that took its name from the 31-page pamphlet Neo-primitivizm, by Aleksandr . It is considered a type of avant-garde movement and is proposed as a new style of modern painting which fuses elements of Cézanne, Cubism, and Futurism with traditional Russian 'folk art' conventions and motifs, notably the Russian icon and the lubok. Neo-primitivism replaced the symbolist art of the Blue Rose movement. The nascent movement was embraced due to its predecessor's tendency to look back so that it passed its creative zenith. A conceptualization of neo-primitivism describes it as anti-primitivist Primitivism since it questions the primitivist's Eurocentric universalism. This view presents neo-primitivism as a contemporary version that repudiates previous primitivist discourses. Some characteristics of neo-primitivist art include the use of bold colors, original designs, and expressiveness. These are demonstrated in the works of Paul Gauguin, which feature vivid hues and flat forms instead of a three-dimensional perspective. Igor Stravinsky was another neo-primitivist known for his children's pieces, which were based on Russian folklore. Several neo-primitivist artists were also previous members of the Blue Rose group. Neo-primitive artists Russian artists associated with Neo-primitivism include: David Burlyuk Marc Chagall Pavel Filonov Natalia Goncharova Mikhail Larionov Kasimir Malevich Aleksandr Shevchenko Igor Stravinsky Museum exhibitions on primitivism in modern art In November 1910, Roger Fry organized the exhibition titled Manet and the Post-Impressionists held at the Grafton Galleries in London. This exhibition showcased works by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent Van Gogh, among others. This exhibition was meant to showcase how French art had developed over the past three decades; however, art critics in London were shocked by what they saw. Some called Fry "mad" and "crazy" for publicly displaying such artwork in the exhibition. Fry's exhibition called attention to primitivism in modern art even if he did not intend for it to happen; leading American scholar Marianna Torgovnick to term the exhibition as the "debut" of primitivism on the London art scene. In 1984, The Museum of Modern Art in New York had a new exhibition focusing on primitivism in modern art. Instead of pointing out the obvious issues, the exhibition celebrated the use of non-Western objects as inspiration for modern artists. The director of the exhibition, William Rubin, took Roger Fry's exhibition one step further by displaying the modern works of art juxtaposed to the non-Western objects themselves. Rubin stated, "That he was not so much interested in the pieces of 'tribal' art in themselves but instead wanted to focus on the ways in which modern artists 'discovered' this art." He was trying to show there was an 'affinity' between the two types of art. Scholar Jean-Hubert Martin argued this attitude effectively meant that the 'tribal' art objects were "given the status of not much more than footnotes or addenda to the Modernist avant-garde." Rubin's exhibition was divided into four different parts: Concepts, History, Affinities, and Contemporary Explorations. Each section is meant to serve a different purpose in showing the connections between modern art and non-Western 'art.' In 2017, the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in collaboration with the Musée National Picasso – Paris, put on the exhibition Picasso Primitif. Yves Le Fur, the director, stated he wanted this exhibition to invite a dialogue between "the works of Picasso – not only the major works but also the experiments with aesthetic concepts – with those, no less rich, by non-Western artists." Picasso Primitif meant to offer a comparative view of the artist's works with those of non-Western artists. The resulting confrontation was supposed to reveal the similar issues those artists have had to address such as nudity, sexuality, impulses and loss through parallel plastic solutions. In 2018, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts had an exhibition titled From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-Face Picasso, Past and Present. The MMFA adapted and expanded on Picasso Primitif by bringing in 300 works and documents from the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac and the Musée National Picasso – Paris. Nathalie Bondil saw the issues with the ways in which Yves Le Fur presented Picasso's work juxtaposed to non-Western art and objects and found a way to respond to it. The headline of this exhibition was, "A major exhibition offering a new perspective and inspiring a rereading of art history." The exhibition looked at the transformation in our view of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas from the end of the 19th century to the present day. Bondil wanted to explore the question about how ethnographic objects come to be viewed as art. She also asked, "How can a Picasso and an anonymous mask be exhibited in the same plane?" See also Notes References Antliff, Mark and Patricia Leighten, "Primitive" in Critical Terms for Art History, R. Nelson and R. Shiff (Eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 (rev. ed. 2003). Blunt, Anthony & Pool, Phoebe. Picasso, the Formative Years: A Study of His Sources. Graphic Society, 1962. Connelly, S. Frances. The Sleep of Reason: Primitivism in Modern European Art and Aesthetics, 1725–1907. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Cooper, Douglas The Cubist Epoch, Phaidon in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art & the Metropolitan Museum of Art, London, 1970, Diamond, Stanley. In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1974. Etherington, Ben. Literary Primitivism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. Flam, Jack and Miriam Deutch, eds. Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art Documentary History. University of California Press, 2003. Goldwater, Robert. Primitivism in Modern Art. Belnap Press. 2002. Lovejoy, A. O. and George Boas. Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935 (With supplementary essays by W. F. Albright and P. E. Dumont, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins U. Press. 1997). Redfield, Robert. "Art and Icon" in Anthropology and Art, C. Otten (Ed.). New York: Natural History Press, 1971. Rhodes, Colin. Primitivism and Modern Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. "Going Native: Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitivist Modernism" in The Expanded Discourse: Feminism and Art History, N. Broude and M. Garrard (Eds.). New York: Harper Collins, 1986. External links John Zerzan, Telos 124, Why Primitivism?. New York: Telos Press Ltd., Summer 2002. (Telos Press). Articles on Primitivism "Primitivism meaning and methods""Primitivism, or anarcho-primitivism, is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. Primitivists argue that the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation. " Research Group in Primitive Art and Primitivism (CIAP-UPF) Ben Etherington, "The New Primitives", Los Angeles Review of Books, May 24, 2018. Further reading on Neo-primitivism Cowell, Henry. 1933. "Towards Neo-Primitivism". Modern Music 10, no. 3 (March–April): 149–53. Reprinted in Essential Cowell: Selected writings on Music by Henry Cowell, 1921–1964, edited by Richard Carter (Dick) Higgins and Bruce McPherson, with a preface by Kyle Gann, 299–303. Kingston, NY: Documentext, 2002. . Doherty, Allison. 1983. "Neo-Primitivism". MFA diss. Syracuse: Syracuse University. Floirat, Anetta. 2015a. "Chagall and Stravinsky: Parallels Between a Painter and a Musician Convergence of Interests", Academia.edu (April). Floirat, Anetta. 2015b. "Chagall and Stravinsky, Different Arts and Similar Solutions to Twentieth-Century Challenges". Academia.edu (April). Floirat, Anetta. 2016. "The Scythian Element of the Russian Primitivism, in Music and Visual arts. Based on the Work of Three Painters (Goncharova, Malevich and Roerich) and Two Composers (Stravinsky and Prokofiev)". Academia.edu. Garafola, Lynn. 1989. "The Making of Ballet Modernism". Dance Research Journal 20, no. 2 (Winter: Russian Issue): 23–32. Hicken, Adrian. 1995. "The Quest for Authenticity: Folkloric Iconography and Jewish Revivalism in Early Orphic Art of Marc Chagall (c. 1909–1914)". In Fourth International Symposium Folklore–Music–Work of Art, edited by Sonja Marinković and Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, 47–66. Belgrade: Fakultet Muzičke Umetnosti. Nemirovskaâ, Izol'da Abramovna [Немировская, Изольда Абрамовна]. 2011. "Музыка для детей И.Стравинского в контексте художественной культуры рубежа XIX-ХХ веков" [Stravinsky's Music for Children and Art Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century]. In Вопросы музыкознания: Теория, история, методика. IV [Problems in Musicology: Theory, History, Methodology. IV], edited by Ûrij Nikolaevic Byckov [Юрий Николаевич Бычков] and Izol'da Abramovna Nemirovskaâ [Изольда Абрамовна Немировская], 37–51. Moscow: Gosudarstvennyj Institut Muzyki im. A.G. Snitke. . Sharp, Jane Ashton. 1992. "Primitivism, 'Neoprimitivism', and the Art of Natal'ia Gonchrova, 1907–1914". Ph.D. diss. New Haven: Yale University. Art movements Anthropology Modern art Folk art Criticism of rationalism

Avant-garde

In the arts and literature, the term avant-garde (French meaning 'advance guard' or 'vanguard') identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times. As a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825), Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues's political usage of vanguard identified the moral obligation of artists to "serve as [the] avant-garde" of the people, because "the power of the arts is, indeed, the most immediate and fastest way" to realise social, political, and economic reforms. In the realm of culture, the artistic experiments of the avant-garde push the aesthetic boundaries of societal norms, such as the disruptions of modernism in poetry, fiction, and drama, painting, music, and architecture, that occurred in the late 19th and in the early 20th centuries. In art history the socio-cultural functions of avant-garde art trace from Dada (1915–1920s) through the Situationist International (1957–1972) to the postmodernism of the American Language poets (1960s–1970s). History The French military term avant-garde (advanced guard) identified a reconnaissance unit who scouted the terrain ahead of the main force of the army. In 19th-century French politics, the term avant-garde (vanguard) identified Left-wing political reformists who agitated for radical political change in French society. In the mid-19th century, as a cultural term, avant-garde identified a genre of art that advocated art-as-politics, art as an aesthetic and political means for realising social change in a society. Since the 20th century, the art term avant-garde identifies a stratum of the Intelligentsia that comprises novelists and writers, artists and architects et al. whose creative perspectives, ideas, and experimental artworks challenge the cultural values of contemporary bourgeois society. In the U.S. of the 1960s, the post–WWII changes to American culture and society allowed avant-garde artists to produce works of art that addressed the matters of the day, usually in political and sociologic opposition to the cultural conformity inherent to popular culture and to consumerism as a way of life and as a worldview. Theories In The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia, 1962), the academic Renato Poggioli provides an early analysis of the avant-garde as art and as artistic movement. Surveying the historical and social, psychological and philosophical aspects of artistic vanguardism, Poggioli's examples of avant-garde art, poetry, and music, show that avant-garde artists share some values and ideals as contemporary bohemians. In Theory of the Avant-Garde (Theorie der Avantgarde, 1974), the literary critic Peter Bürger looks at The Establishment's embrace of socially critical works of art as capitalist co-optation of the artists and the genre of avant-garde art, because "art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work [of art]". In Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (2000), Benjamin H. D. Buchloh argues for a dialectical approach to such political stances by avant-garde artists and the avant-garde genre of art. Society and the avant-garde Sociologically, as a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists, writers, architects, et al. produce artefacts — works of art, books, buildings — that intellectually and ideologically oppose the conformist value system of mainstream society. In the essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939), Clement Greenberg said that the artistic vanguard oppose high culture and reject the artifice of mass culture, because the avant-garde functionally oppose the dumbing down of society — be it with low culture or with high culture. That in a capitalist society each medium of mass communication is a factory producing artworks, and is not a legitimate artistic medium; therefore, the products of mass culture are kitsch, simulations and simulacra of Art. Walter Benjamin in the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1939) and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) said that the artifice of mass culture voids the artistic value (the aura) of a work of art. That the capitalist culture industry (publishing and music, radio and cinema, etc.) continually produces artificial culture for mass consumption, which is facilitated by mechanically produced art-products of mediocre quality displacing art of quality workmanship; thus, the profitability of art-as-commodity determines its artistic value. In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord said that the financial, commercial, and economic co-optation of the avant-garde into a commodity produced by neoliberal capitalism makes doubtful that avant-garde artists will remain culturally and intellectually relevant to their societies for preferring profit to cultural change and political progress. In The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde (1991), Paul Mann said that the avant-garde are economically integral to the contemporary institutions of the Establishment, specifically as part of the culture industry. Noting the conceptual shift, theoreticians, such as Matei Calinescu, in Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987), and Hans Bertens in The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (1995), said that Western culture entered a post-modern time when the modernist ways of thought and action and the production of art have become redundant in a capitalist economy. Parting from the claims of Greenberg in the late 1930s and the insights of Poggioli in the early 1960s, in The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks (1983), the critic Harold Rosenberg said that since the middle of the 1960s the politically progressive avant-garde ceased being adversaries to artistic commercialism and the mediocrity of mass culture, which political disconnection transformed being an artist into "a profession, one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing [the profession of being an artist]." Avant-garde is frequently defined in contrast to arrière-garde, which in its original military sense refers to a rearguard force that protects the advance-guard. The term was less frequently used than "avant-garde" in 20th-century art criticism. The art historians Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris argue that arrière-garde is not reducible to a kitsch style or reactionary orientation, but can instead be used to refer to artists who engage with the legacy of the avant-garde while maintaining an awareness that doing so is in some sense anachronistic. The critic Charles Altieri argues that avant-garde and arrière-garde are interdependent: "where there is an avant-garde, there must be an arrière-garde." Examples Music Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. By this definition, some avant-garde composers of the 20th century include Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss (in his earliest work), Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, Edgard Varèse, Alban Berg, George Antheil (in his earliest works only), Henry Cowell (in his earliest works), Harry Partch, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, and Diamanda Galás. There is another definition of "Avant-gardism" that distinguishes it from "modernism": Peter Bürger, for example, says avant-gardism rejects the "institution of art" and challenges social and artistic values, and so necessarily involves political, social, and cultural factors. According to the composer and musicologist Larry Sitsky, modernist composers from the early 20th century who do not qualify as avant-gardists include Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky; later modernist composers who do not fall into the category of avant-gardists include Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, and Luciano Berio, since "their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience." The 1960s saw a wave of free and avant-garde music in jazz genre, embodied by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. In the rock music of the 1970s, the "art" descriptor was generally understood to mean "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive". Post-punk artists from the late 1970s rejected traditional rock sensibilities in favor of an avant-garde aesthetic. Theatre Whereas the avant-garde has a significant history in 20th-century music, it is more pronounced in theatre and performance art, and often in conjunction with music and sound design innovations, as well as developments in visual media design. There are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to the avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus, Happenings, and Neo-Dada. Architecture Brutalist architecture was greatly influenced by an avant-garde movement. Avant-garde types Abstract expressionism Art film Artivism COBRA Conceptual art Constructivism Cubism Dadaism De Stijl Expressionism Fauvism Fluxus Futurism Happening Imaginism Imagism Impressionism Incoherents Land art Les Nabis Lyrical Abstraction Minimal art Neo-Dada Orphism Pop art Precisionism Primitivism Rayonism Situationism Suprematism Surrealism Symbolism Tachisme Universal Constructivism Viennese Actionism Vorticism Creationism Nadaism Stridentism Ultraist See also Anti-art Bauhaus Chinese Apartment Art Experimental film Experimental literature Experimental music Experimental theatre List of avant-garde artists Outsider art Relationship between avant-garde art and American pop culture Russian avant-garde References Further reading Robert Archambeau. "The Avant-Garde in Babel. Two or Three Notes on Four or Five Words", Action-Yes vol. 1, issue 8, Autumn 2008. Bäckström, Per (ed.), Centre-Periphery. The Avant-Garde and the Other, Nordlit. University of Tromsø, no. 21, 2007. Bäckström, Per. "One Earth, Four or Five Words. The Peripheral Concept of 'Avant-Garde, Action-Yes vol. 1, issue 12, Winter 2010. Bäckström, Per & Bodil Børset (eds.), Norsk avantgarde (Norwegian Avant-Garde), Oslo: Novus, 2011. Bäckström, Per & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Decentring the Avant-Garde, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical Studies, 2014. Bäckström, Per and Benedikt Hjartarson. "Rethinking the Topography of the International Avant-Garde", in Decentring the Avant-Garde, Per Bäckström & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical Studies, 2014. Barron, Stephanie, and Maurice Tuchman. 1980. The Avant-garde in Russia, 1910–1930: New Perspectives: Los Angeles County Museum of Art [and] Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (pbk.); Cambridge, MA: Distributed by the MIT Press (pbk.) Bazin, Germain. 1969. The Avant-garde in Painting. New York: Simon and Schuster. Berg, Hubert van den, and Walter Fähnders (eds.). 2009. Metzler Lexikon Avantgarde. Stuttgart: Metzler. Crane, Diana. 1987. The Transformation of the Avant-garde: The New York Art World, 1940–1985. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Daly, Selina, and Monica Insinga (eds.). 2013. The European Avant-garde: Text and Image. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. . Fernández-Medina, Nicolás, and Maria Truglio (eds.). Modernism and the Avant-garde Body in Spain and Italy. Routledge, 2016. Harding, James M., and John Rouse, eds. Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance. University of Michigan, 2006. Hjartarson, Benedikt. 2013. Visionen des Neuen. Eine diskurshistorische Analyse des frühen avantgardistischen Manifests. Heidelberg: Winter. Kostelanetz, Richard, and H. R. Brittain. 2000. A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, second edition. New York: Schirmer Books. . Paperback edition 2001, New York: Routledge. (pbk.) Kramer, Hilton. 1973. The Age of the Avant-garde; An Art Chronicle of 1956−1972. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Léger, Marc James (ed.). 2014. The Idea of the Avant Garde—And What It Means Today. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press; Oakland: Left Curve. . Maerhofer, John W. 2009. Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the Modernist Debate, 1917–1962. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Mann, Paul. The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde. Indiana University Press, 1991. Novero, Cecilia. 2010. Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. (University of Minnesota Press) Pronko, Leonard Cabell. 1962. Avant-garde: The Experimental Theater in France. Berkeley: University of California Press. Roberts, John. 2015. Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde. London and New York: Verso. (cloth); (pbk). Schechner, Richard. "The Five Avant-Gardes or ... [and] ... or None?" The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Schmidt-Burkhardt, Astrit. 2005. Stammbäume der Kunst: Zur Genealogie der Avantgarde. Berlin Akademie Verlag. [online version is available] Sell, Mike. The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War. Seagull Books, 2011. Shishanov, V. A. 2007. Vitebskii muzei sovremennogo iskusstva: istoriia sozdaniia i kollektsii (1918–1941). Minsk: Medisont. Online edition External links Historic Avant-Garde Periodicals for Digital Research, The Blue Mountain Project, Princeton University Library Avant-garde and Modernist Magazines (Monoskop) Magazines in Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris Periodicals in Iowa Digital Library, University of Iowa Libraries Digital Dada Library of International Dada Archive, University of Iowa Libraries Magazines in Digital Collections of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Avant-Garde Periodicals Meet Digital Archives, New York Public Library Dada, Surrealism, and De Stijl Magazines on UbuWeb Historical Index of Modernist Magazines, Davidson College Modernist Journal Project, Brown University and University of Tulsa Spanish and Italian Modernist Studies Forum, Pennsylvania State University Collection: "Spanish Avant-Garde" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art Concepts in aesthetics Modern art Postmodernism Modernism

Relativism

Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. Alethic relativism (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism). Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance to philosophical skepticism. Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the word truthfulness of views within a given framework. Forms of relativism Anthropological versus philosophical relativism Anthropological relativism refers to a methodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) their own cultural prejudice while trying to understand beliefs or behaviors in their contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and concerns itself specifically with avoiding ethnocentrism or the application of one's own cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures. This is also the basis of the so-called "emic" and "etic" distinction, in which: An emic or insider account of behavior is a description of a society in terms that are meaningful to the participant or actor's own culture; an emic account is therefore culture-specific, and typically refers to what is considered "common sense" within the culture under observation. An etic or outsider account is a description of a society by an observer, in terms that can be applied to other cultures; that is, an etic account is culturally neutral, and typically refers to the conceptual framework of the social scientist. (This is complicated when it is scientific research itself that is under study, or when there is theoretical or terminological disagreement within the social sciences.) Philosophical relativism, in contrast, asserts that the truth of a proposition depends on the metaphysical, or theoretical frame, or the instrumental method, or the context in which the proposition is expressed, or on the person, groups, or culture who interpret the proposition. Methodological relativism and philosophical relativism can exist independently from one another, but most anthropologists base their methodological relativism on that of the philosophical variety. Descriptive versus normative relativism The concept of relativism also has importance both for philosophers and for anthropologists in another way. In general, anthropologists engage in descriptive relativism ("how things are" or "how things seem"), whereas philosophers engage in normative relativism ("how things ought to be"), although there is some overlap (for example, descriptive relativism can pertain to concepts, normative relativism to truth). Descriptive relativism assumes that certain cultural groups have different modes of thought, standards of reasoning, and so forth, and it is the anthropologist's task to describe, but not to evaluate the validity of these principles and practices of a cultural group. It is possible for an anthropologist in his or her fieldwork to be a descriptive relativist about some things that typically concern the philosopher (e.g., ethical principles) but not about others (e.g., logical principles). However, the descriptive relativist's empirical claims about epistemic principles, moral ideals and the like are often countered by anthropological arguments that such things are universal, and much of the recent literature on these matters is explicitly concerned with the extent of, and evidence for, cultural or moral or linguistic or human universals. The fact that the various species of descriptive relativism are empirical claims may tempt the philosopher to conclude that they are of little philosophical interest, but there are several reasons why this is not so. First, some philosophers, notably Kant, argue that certain sorts of cognitive differences between human beings (or even all rational beings) are impossible, so such differences could never be found to obtain in fact, an argument that places a priori limits on what empirical inquiry could discover and on what versions of descriptive relativism could be true. Second, claims about actual differences between groups play a central role in some arguments for normative relativism (for example, arguments for normative ethical relativism often begin with claims that different groups in fact have different moral codes or ideals). Finally, the anthropologist's descriptive account of relativism helps to separate the fixed aspects of human nature from those that can vary, and so a descriptive claim that some important aspect of experience or thought does (or does not) vary across groups of human beings tells us something important about human nature and the human condition. Normative relativism concerns normative or evaluative claims that modes of thought, standards of reasoning, or the like are only right or wrong relative to a framework. 'Normative' is meant in a general sense, applying to a wide range of views; in the case of beliefs, for example, normative correctness equals truth. This does not mean, of course, that framework-relative correctness or truth is always clear, the first challenge being to explain what it amounts to in any given case (e.g., with respect to concepts, truth, epistemic norms). Normative relativism (say, in regard to normative ethical relativism) therefore implies that things (say, ethical claims) are not simply true in themselves, but only have truth values relative to broader frameworks (say, moral codes). (Many normative ethical relativist arguments run from premises about ethics to conclusions that assert the relativity of truth values, bypassing general claims about the nature of truth, but it is often more illuminating to consider the type of relativism under question directly.) Legal relativism In English common law, two (perhaps three) separate standards of proof are recognized: proof based on the balance of probabilities is the lesser standard used in civil litigation, which cases mostly concern money or some other penalty, that, if further and better evidence should emerge, is reasonably reversible. proof beyond reasonable doubt is used in criminal law cases where an accused's right to personal freedom or survival is in question, because such punishment is not reasonably reversible. Absolute truth is so complex as to be only capable of being fully understood by the omniscient established during the Tudor period as the one true God Related and contrasting positions Relationism is the theory that there are only relations between individual entities, and no intrinsic properties. Despite the similarity in name, it is held by some to be a position distinct from relativism—for instance, because "statements about relational properties [...] assert an absolute truth about things in the world". On the other hand, others wish to equate relativism, relationism and even relativity, which is a precise theory of relationships between physical objects: Nevertheless, "This confluence of relativity theory with relativism became a strong contributing factor in the increasing prominence of relativism". Whereas previous investigations of science only sought sociological or psychological explanations of failed scientific theories or pathological science, the 'strong programme' is more relativistic, assessing scientific truth and falsehood equally in a historic and cultural context. Criticisms A common argument against relativism suggests that it inherently refutes itself: the statement "all is relative" classes either as a relative statement or as an absolute one. If it is relative, then this statement does not rule out absolutes. If the statement is absolute, on the other hand, then it provides an example of an absolute statement, proving that not all truths are relative. However, this argument against relativism only applies to relativism that positions truth as relative–i.e. epistemological/truth-value relativism. More specifically, it is only extreme forms of epistemological relativism that can come in for this criticism as there are many epistemological relativists who posit that some aspects of what is regarded as factually "true" are not universal, yet still accept that other universal truths exist (e.g. gas laws or moral laws). Another argument against relativism posits a Natural Law. Simply put, the physical universe works under basic principles: the "Laws of Nature". Some contend that a natural Moral Law may also exist, for example as argued by, Immanuel Kant in Critique of Practical Reason, Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) and addressed by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (1952). Dawkins said "I think we face an equal but much more sinister challenge from the left, in the shape of cultural relativism - the view that scientific truth is only one kind of truth and it is not to be especially privileged". Philosopher Hilary Putnam, among others, states that some forms of relativism make it impossible to believe one is in error. If there is no truth beyond an individual's belief that something is true, then an individual cannot hold their own beliefs to be false or mistaken. A related criticism is that relativizing truth to individuals destroys the distinction between truth and belief. Views Philosophical Ancient Sophism Sophists are considered the founding fathers of relativism in Western philosophy. Elements of relativism emerged among the Sophists in the 5th century BC. Notably, it was Protagoras who coined the phrase, "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." The thinking of the Sophists is mainly known through their opponent, Plato. In a paraphrase from Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, Protagoras said: "What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me." Modern Bernard Crick Bernard Crick, a British political scientist and advocate of relativism, suggested in In Defence of Politics (1962) that moral conflict between people is inevitable. He thought that only ethics can resolve such conflict, and when that occurs in public it results in politics. Accordingly, Crick saw the process of dispute resolution, harms reduction, mediation or peacemaking as central to all of moral philosophy. He became an important influence on feminists and later on the Greens. Paul Feyerabend Philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend is often considered to be a relativist, although he denied being one. Feyerabend argued that modern science suffers from being methodologically monistic (the belief that only a single methodology can produce scientific progress). Feyerabend summarises his case in Against Method with the phrase "anything goes". In an aphorism [Feyerabend] often repeated, "potentially every culture is all cultures". This is intended to convey that world views are not hermetically closed, since their leading concepts have an "ambiguity" - better, an open-endedness - which enables people from other cultures to engage with them. [...] It follows that relativism, understood as the doctrine that truth is relative to closed systems, can get no purchase. [...] For Feyerabend, both hermetic relativism and its absolutist rival [realism] serve, in their different ways, to "devalue human existence". The former encourages that unsavoury brand of political correctness which takes the refusal to criticise "other cultures" to the extreme of condoning murderous dictatorship and barbaric practices. The latter, especially in its favoured contemporary form of "scientific realism", with the excessive prestige it affords to the abstractions of "the monster 'science'", is in bed with a politics which likewise disdains variety, richness and everyday individuality - a politics which likewise "hides" its norms behind allegedly neutral facts, "blunts choices and imposes laws". Thomas Kuhn Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, as expressed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is often interpreted as relativistic. He claimed that, as well as progressing steadily and incrementally ("normal science"), science undergoes periodic revolutions or "paradigm shifts", leaving scientists working in different paradigms with difficulty in even communicating. Thus the truth of a claim, or the existence of a posited entity, is relative to the paradigm employed. However, it is not necessary for him to embrace relativism because every paradigm presupposes the prior, building upon itself through history and so on. This leads to there being a fundamental, incremental, and referential structure of development which is not relative but again, fundamental. From these remarks, one thing is however certain: Kuhn is not saying that incommensurable theories cannot be compared - what they can't be is compared in terms of a system of common measure. He very plainly says that they can be compared, and he reiterates this repeatedly in later work, in a (mostly in vain) effort to avert the crude and sometimes catastrophic misinterpretations he suffered from mainstream philosophers and post-modern relativists alike. But Kuhn rejected the accusation of being a relativist later in his postscript: scientific development is ... a unidirectional and irreversible process. Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles ... That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress. Some have argued that one can also read Kuhn's work as essentially positivist in its ontology: the revolutions he posits are epistemological, lurching toward a presumably 'better' understanding of an objective reality through the lens presented by the new paradigm. However, a number of passages in Structure do indeed appear to be distinctly relativist, and to directly challenge the notion of an objective reality and the ability of science to progress towards an ever-greater grasp of it, particularly through the process of paradigm change. In the sciences there need not be progress of another sort. We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth. We are all deeply accustomed to seeing science as the one enterprise that draws constantly nearer to some goal set by nature in advance. But need there be any such goal? Can we not account for both science's existence and its success in terms of evolution from the community's state of knowledge at any given time? Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal? George Lakoff and Mark Johnson George Lakoff and Mark Johnson define relativism in Metaphors We Live By as the rejection of both subjectivism and metaphysical objectivism in order to focus on the relationship between them, i.e. the metaphor by which we relate our current experience to our previous experience. In particular, Lakoff and Johnson characterize "objectivism" as a "straw man", and, to a lesser degree, criticize the views of Karl Popper, Kant and Aristotle. Robert Nozick In his book Invariances, Robert Nozick expresses a complex set of theories about the absolute and the relative. He thinks the absolute/relative distinction should be recast in terms of an invariant/variant distinction, where there are many things a proposition can be invariant with regard to or vary with. He thinks it is coherent for truth to be relative, and speculates that it might vary with time. He thinks necessity is an unobtainable notion, but can be approximated by robust invariance across a variety of conditions—although we can never identify a proposition that is invariant with regard to everything. Finally, he is not particularly warm to one of the most famous forms of relativism, moral relativism, preferring an evolutionary account. Joseph Margolis Joseph Margolis advocates a view he calls "robust relativism" and defends it in his books Historied Thought, Constructed World, Chapter 4 (California, 1995) and The Truth about Relativism (Blackwell, 1991). He opens his account by stating that our logics should depend on what we take to be the nature of the sphere to which we wish to apply our logics. Holding that there can be no distinctions which are not "privileged" between the alethic, the ontic, and the epistemic, he maintains that a many-valued logic just might be the most apt for aesthetics or history since, because in these practices, we are loath to hold to simple binary logic; and he also holds that many-valued logic is relativistic. (This is perhaps an unusual definition of "relativistic". Compare with his comments on "relationism".) To say that "True" and "False" are mutually exclusive and exhaustive judgements on Hamlet, for instance, really does seem absurd. A many-valued logicwith its values "apt", "reasonable", "likely", and so onseems intuitively more applicable to interpreting Hamlet. Where apparent contradictions arise between such interpretations, we might call the interpretations "incongruent", rather than dubbing either of them "false", because using many-valued logic implies that a measured value is a mixture of two extreme possibilities. Using the subset of many-valued logic, fuzzy logic, it can be said that various interpretations can be represented by membership in more than one possible truth set simultaneously. Fuzzy logic is therefore probably the best mathematical structure for understanding "robust relativism" and has been interpreted by Bart Kosko as philosophically being related to Zen Buddhism. It was Aristotle who held that relativism implies that we should, sticking with appearances only, end up contradicting ourselves somewhere if we could apply all attributes to all ousiai (beings). Aristotle, however, made non-contradiction dependent upon his essentialism. If his essentialism is false, then so too is his ground for disallowing relativism. (Subsequent philosophers have found other reasons for supporting the principle of non-contradiction.) Beginning with Protagoras and invoking Charles Sanders Peirce, Margolis shows that the historic struggle to discredit relativism is an attempt to impose an unexamined belief in the world's essentially rigid rule-like nature. Plato and Aristotle merely attacked "relationalism"the doctrine of true for l or true for k, and the like, where l and k are different speakers or different worldsor something similar (most philosophers would call this position "relativism"). For Margolis, "true" means true; that is, the alethic use of "true" remains untouched. However, in real world contexts, and context is ubiquitous in the real world, we must apply truth values. Here, in epistemic terms, we might tout court retire "true" as an evaluation and keep "false". The rest of our value-judgements could be graded from "extremely plausible" down to "false". Judgements which on a bivalent logic would be incompatible or contradictory are further seen as "incongruent", although one may well have more weight than the other. In short, relativistic logic is not, or need not be, the bugbear it is often presented to be. It may simply be the best type of logic to apply to certain very uncertain spheres of real experiences in the world (although some sort of logic needs to be applied in order to make that judgement). Those who swear by bivalent logic might simply be the ultimate keepers of the great fear of the flux. Richard Rorty Philosopher Richard Rorty has a somewhat paradoxical role in the debate over relativism: he is criticized for his relativistic views by many commentators, but has always denied that relativism applies to much anybody, being nothing more than a Platonic scarecrow. Rorty claims, rather, that he is a pragmatist, and that to construe pragmatism as relativism is to beg the question. '"Relativism" is the traditional epithet applied to pragmatism by realists' '"Relativism" is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic, is as good as every other. No one holds this view. Except for the occasional cooperative freshman, one cannot find anybody who says that two incompatible opinions on an important topic are equally good. The philosophers who get called 'relativists' are those who say that the grounds for choosing between such opinions are less algorithmic than had been thought.' 'In short, my strategy for escaping the self-referential difficulties into which "the Relativist" keeps getting himself is to move everything over from epistemology and metaphysics into cultural politics, from claims to knowledge and appeals to self-evidence to suggestions about what we should try.' Rorty takes a deflationary attitude to truth, believing there is nothing of interest to be said about truth in general, including the contention that it is generally subjective. He also argues that the notion of warrant or justification can do most of the work traditionally assigned to the concept of truth, and that justification is relative; justification is justification to an audience, for Rorty. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity he argues that the debate between so-called relativists and so-called objectivists is beside the point because they do not have enough premises in common for either side to prove anything to the other. Nalin de Silva In his book Mage Lokaya (My World), 1986, Nalin de Silva criticized the basis of the established western system of knowledge, and its propagation, which he refers as "domination throughout the world".He explained in this book that mind independent reality is impossible and knowledge is not found but constructed. Further he has introduced and developed the concept of "Constructive Relativism" as the basis on which knowledge is constructed relative to the sense organs, culture and the mind completely based on Avidya. Colin Murray Turbayne In his final book Metaphors for the Mind: The Creative Mind and Its Origins (1991), Colin Murray Turbayne joins the debate about relativism and realism by providing an analysis of the manner in which Platonic metaphors which were first presented in the procreation model of the Timaeus dialogue have evolved over time to influence the philosophical works of both George Berkeley and Emmanuel Kant. In addition, he illustrates the manner in which these ancient Greek metaphors have subsequently evolved to impact the development of the theories of "substance" and "attribute", which in turn have dominated the development of human thought and language in the 20th century. In his The Myth of Metaphor (1962) Turbayne argues that it is perfectly possible to transcend the limitations which are inherent in such metaphors, including those incorporated within the framework of classical "objective" mechanistic Newtonian cosmology and scientific materialism in general. In Turbayne's view, one can strive to embrace a more satisfactory epistemology by first acknowledging the limitations imposed by such metaphorical systems. This can readily be accomplished by restoring Plato's metaphorical model to its original state in which both "male" and "female" aspects of the mind work in concert within the context of a harmonious balance during the process of creation. Postmodernism The term "relativism" often comes up in debates over postmodernism, poststructuralism and phenomenology. Critics of these perspectives often identify advocates with the label "relativism". For example, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is often considered a relativist view because it posits that linguistic categories and structures shape the way people view the world. Stanley Fish has defended postmodernism and relativism. These perspectives do not strictly count as relativist in the philosophical sense, because they express agnosticism on the nature of reality and make epistemological rather than ontological claims. Nevertheless, the term is useful to differentiate them from realists who believe that the purpose of philosophy, science, or literary critique is to locate externally true meanings. Important philosophers and theorists such as Michel Foucault, Max Stirner, political movements such as post-anarchism or post-Marxism can also be considered as relativist in this sense - though a better term might be social constructivist. The spread and popularity of this kind of "soft" relativism varies between academic disciplines. It has wide support in anthropology and has a majority following in cultural studies. It also has advocates in political theory and political science, sociology, and continental philosophy (as distinct from Anglo-American analytical philosophy). It has inspired empirical studies of the social construction of meaning such as those associated with labelling theory, which defenders can point to as evidence of the validity of their theories (albeit risking accusations of performative contradiction in the process). Advocates of this kind of relativism often also claim that recent developments in the natural sciences, such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, quantum mechanics, chaos theory and complexity theory show that science is now becoming relativistic. However, many scientists who use these methods continue to identify as realist or post-positivist, and some sharply criticize the association. Religious Buddhism Madhyamaka Buddhism, which forms the basis for many Mahayana Buddhist schools and which was founded by Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna taught the idea of relativity. In the Ratnāvalī, he gives the example that shortness exists only in relation to the idea of length. The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast. He held that the relationship between the ideas of "short" and "long" is not due to intrinsic nature (svabhāva). This idea is also found in the Pali Nikāyas and Chinese Āgamas, in which the idea of relativity is expressed similarly: "That which is the element of light ... is seen to exist on account of [in relation to] darkness; that which is the element of good is seen to exist on account of bad; that which is the element of space is seen to exist on account of form." Madhyamaka Buddhism discerns two levels of truth: relative and ultimate. The two truths doctrine states that there are Relative or conventional, common-sense truth, which describes our daily experience of a concrete world, and Ultimate truth, which describes the ultimate reality as sunyata, empty of concrete and inherent characteristics. Conventional truth may be understood, in contrast, as "obscurative truth" or "that which obscures the true nature". It is constituted by the appearances of mistaken awareness. Conventional truth would be the appearance that includes a duality of apprehender and apprehended, and objects perceived within that. Ultimate truth is the phenomenal world free from the duality of apprehender and apprehended. Catholicism The Catholic Church, especially under John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, has identified relativism as one of the most significant problems for faith and morals today. According to the Church and to some theologians, relativism, as a denial of absolute truth, leads to moral license and a denial of the possibility of sin and of God. Whether moral or epistemological, relativism constitutes a denial of the capacity of the human mind and reason to arrive at truth. Truth, according to Catholic theologians and philosophers (following Aristotle) consists of adequatio rei et intellectus, the correspondence of the mind and reality. Another way of putting it states that the mind has the same form as reality. This means when the form of the computer in front of someone (the type, color, shape, capacity, etc.) is also the form that is in their mind, then what they know is true because their mind corresponds to objective reality. The denial of an absolute reference, of an axis mundi, denies God, who equates to Absolute Truth, according to these Christian theologians. They link relativism to secularism, an obstruction of religion in human life. Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII (1810–1903) was the first known Pope to use the word "relativism", in his encyclical Humanum genus (1884). Leo condemned Freemasonry and claimed that its philosophical and political system was largely based on relativism. John Paul II John Paul II wrote in Veritatis Splendor As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature. In Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), he says: Freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim. Benedict XVI In April 2005, in his homily during Mass prior to the conclave which would elect him as Pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger talked about the world "moving towards a dictatorship of relativism": How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Ephesians 4, 14). Having a clear Faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching", looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an "Adult" means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. On June 6, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI told educators: Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own 'ego'. Then during the World Youth Day in August 2005, he also traced to relativism the problems produced by the communist and sexual revolutions, and provided a counter-counter argument. In the last century we experienced revolutions with a common programme–expecting nothing more from God, they assumed total responsibility for the cause of the world in order to change it. And this, as we saw, meant that a human and partial point of view was always taken as an absolute guiding principle. Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism. It does not liberate man, but takes away his dignity and enslaves him. It is not ideologies that save the world, but only a return to the living God, our Creator, the Guarantor of our freedom, the Guarantor of what is really good and true. Pope Francis Pope Francis refers in Evangelii gaudium to two forms of relativism, "doctrinal relativism" and a "practical relativism" typical of "our age". The latter is allied to "widespread indifference" to systems of belief. Jainism Mahavira (599-527 BC), the 24th Tirthankara of Jainism, developed a philosophy known as Anekantavada. John Koller describes anekāntavāda as "epistemological respect for view of others" about the nature of existence, whether it is "inherently enduring or constantly changing", but "not relativism; it does not mean conceding that all arguments and all views are equal". Sikhism In Sikhism the Gurus (spiritual teachers) have propagated the message of "many paths" leading to the one God and ultimate salvation for all souls who tread on the path of righteousness. They have supported the view that proponents of all faiths can, by doing good and virtuous deeds and by remembering the Lord, certainly achieve salvation. The students of the Sikh faith are told to accept all leading faiths as possible vehicles for attaining spiritual enlightenment provided the faithful study, ponder and practice the teachings of their prophets and leaders. The holy book of the Sikhs called the Sri Guru Granth Sahib says: "Do not say that the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran are false. Those who do not contemplate them are false." Guru Granth Sahib page 1350; later stating: "The seconds, minutes, and hours, days, weeks and months, and the various seasons originate from the one Sun; O nanak, in just the same way, the many forms originate from the Creator." Guru Granth Sahib page 12,13. See also References Bibliography Maria Baghramian, Relativism, London: Routledge, 2004, Gad Barzilai, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, Andrew Lionel Blais, On the Plurality of Actual Worlds, University of Massachusetts Press, 1997, Benjamin Brown, Thoughts and Ways of Thinking: Source Theory and Its Applications. London: Ubiquity Press, 2017. . Ernest Gellner, Relativism and the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, Rom Harré and Michael Krausz, Varieties of Relativism, Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Blackwell, 1996, Knight, Robert H. The Age of Consent: the Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture. Dallas, Tex.: Spence Publishing Co., 1998. xxiv, 253, [1] p. Michael Krausz, ed., Relativism: A Contemporary Anthology, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, Martin Hollis, Steven Lukes, Rationality and Relativism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982, Joseph Margolis, Michael Krausz, R. M. Burian, Eds., Rationality, Relativism, and the Human Sciences, Dordrecht: Boston, M. Nijhoff, 1986, Jack W. Meiland, Michael Krausz, Eds. Relativism, Cognitive and Moral, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982, Markus Seidel, Epistemic Relativism: A Constructive Critique, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, External links Westacott, E. Relativism, 2005, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Westacott, E. Cognitive Relativism, 2006, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Professor Ronald Jones on relativism What 'Being Relative' Means, a passage from Pierre Lecomte du Nouy's "Human Destiny" (1947) BBC Radio 4 series "In Our Time", on Relativism - the battle against transcendent knowledge, 19 January 2006 Against Relativism, by Christopher Noriss The Catholic Encyclopedia Harvey Siegel reviews Paul Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge Epistemological schools and traditions

Cultural variation

Cultural variation refers to the rich diversity in social practices that different cultures exhibit around the world. Cuisine and art all change from one culture to the next, but so do gender roles, economic systems, and social hierarchy among any number of other humanly organised behaviours. Cultural variation can be studied across cultures (for example, a cross-cultural study of ritual in Indonesia and Brazil) or across generations (for example, a comparison of Generation X and Generation Y) and is often a subject studied by anthropologists, sociologists and cultural theorists with subspecialties in the fields of economic anthropology, ethnomusicology, health sociology etc. In recent years, cultural variation has become a rich source of study in neuroanthropology, cultural neuroscience, and social neuroscience. See also Cultural diversity Cultural anthropology Cultural studies Culture theory Neuroanthropology References Further reading Lende, D. H., & Downey, G. (2012). The encultured brain: an introduction to neuroanthropology. MIT press. External links Global Sociology Cultural geography Cultural economics Cultural politics Multiculturalism Majority–minority relations

Romanticism

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjectivity, imagination, and appreciation of nature in society and culture in response to the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Romanticists rejected the social conventions of the time in favour of a moral outlook known as individualism. They argued that passion and intuition were crucial to understanding the world, and that beauty is more than merely an affair of form, but rather something that evokes a strong emotional response. With this philosophical foundation, the Romanticists elevated several key themes to which they were deeply committed: a reverence for nature and the supernatural, an idealization of the past as a nobler era, a fascination with the exotic and the mysterious, and a celebration of the heroic and the sublime. The Romanticist movement had a particular fondness for the Middle Ages, which to them represented an era of chivalry, heroism, and a more organic relationship between humans and their environment. This idealization contrasted sharply with the values of their contemporary industrial society, which they considered alienating for its economic materialism and environmental degradation. The movement's illustration of the Middle Ages was a central theme in debates, with allegations that Romanticist portrayals often overlooked the downsides of medieval life. The consensus is that Romanticism peaked from 1800 until 1850. However, a "Late Romantic" period and "Neoromantic" revivals are also discussed. These extensions of the movement are characterized by a resistance to the increasingly experimental and abstract forms that culminated in modern art, and the deconstruction of traditional tonal harmony in music. They continued the Romantic ideal, stressing depth of emotion in art and music while showcasing technical mastery in a mature Romantic style. By the time of World War I, though, the cultural and artistic climate had changed to such a degree that Romanticism essentially dispersed into subsequent movements. The final Late Romanticist figures to maintain the Romantic ideals died in the 1940s. Though they were still widely respected, they were seen as anachronisms at that point. Romanticism was a complex movement with a variety of viewpoints that permeated Western civilization across the globe. The movement and its opposing ideologies mutually shaped each other over time. After its end, Romantic thought and art exerted a sweeping influence on art and music, speculative fiction, philosophy, politics, and environmentalism that has endured to the present day. The movement is the reference for the modern notion of "romanticization" and the act of "romanticizing" something. Overview Timeline For most of the Western world, Romanticism was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850. The first Romantic ideas arose from an earlier German Counter-Enlightenment movement called Sturm und Drang (German: "Storm and Stress"). This movement directly criticized the Enlightenment's position that humans can fully comprehend the world through rationality alone, suggesting that intuition and emotion are key components of insight and understanding. Published in 1774, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began to shape the Romanticist movement and its ideals. The events and ideologies of the French Revolution were also direct influences on the movement; many early Romantics throughout Europe sympathized with the ideals and achievements of French revolutionaries. A confluence of circumstances led to Romanticism's decline in the mid-19th century, including (but not limited to) the rise of Realism and Naturalism, Charles Darwin's publishing of the Origin of Species, the transition from widespread revolution in Europe to a more conservative climate, and a shift in public consciousness to the immediate impact of technology and urbanization on the working class. By World War I, Romanticism was overshadowed by new cultural, social, and political movements, many of them hostile to the perceived illusions and preoccupations of the Romantics. However, Romanticism has had a lasting impact on Western civilization, and many works of art, music, and literature that embody the Romantic ideals have been made after the end of the Romantic Era. The movement's advocacy for nature appreciation is cited as an influence for current nature conservation efforts. The majority of film scores from the Golden Age of Hollywood were written in the lush orchestral Romantic style, and this genre of orchestral cinematic music is still often seen in films of the 21st century. The philosophical underpinnings of the movement have influenced modern political theory, both among liberals and conservatives. Purpose Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as the glorification of the past and nature, preferring the medieval over the classical. Romanticism was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, and the prevailing ideology of the Age of Enlightenment, especially the scientific rationalization of Nature. The movement's ideals were embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature; it also had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and the natural sciences. Romanticism had a significant and complex effect on politics: Romantic thinking influenced conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism. Romanticism prioritized the artist's unique, individual imagination above the strictures of classical form. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience. It granted a new importance to experiences of sympathy, awe, wonder, and terror, in part by naturalizing such emotions as responses to the "beautiful" and the "sublime". Romantics stressed the nobility of folk art and ancient cultural practices, but also championed radical politics, unconventional behavior, and authentic spontaneity. In contrast to the rationalism and classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism and juxtaposed a pastoral conception of a more "authentic" European past with a highly critical view of recent social changes, including urbanization, brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Romanticism lionized the achievements of "heroic" individuals—especially artists, who began to be represented as cultural leaders (one Romantic luminary, Percy Bysshe Shelley, described poets as the "unacknowledged legislators of the world" in his "Defence of Poetry"). Defining Romanticism Basic characteristics Romanticism placed the highest importance on the freedom of the artists to authentically express their sentiments and ideas. Romantics like the German painter Caspar David Friedrich believed that an artist's emotions should dictate their formal approach; Friedrich went as far as declaring that "the artist's feeling is his law". The Romantic poet William Wordsworth, thinking along similar lines, wrote that poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility", enabling the poet to find a suitably unique form for representing such feelings. The Romantics never doubted that emotionally motivated art would find suitable, harmonious modes for expressing its vital content—if, that is, the artist steered clear of moribund conventions and distracting precedents. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others thought there were natural laws the imagination of born artists followed instinctively when these individuals were, so to speak, "left alone" during the creative process. These "natural laws" could support a wide range of different formal approaches: as many, perhaps, as there were individuals making personally meaningful works of art. Many Romantics believed that works of artistic genius were created "ex nihilo", "from nothing", without recourse to existing models. This idea is often called "romantic originality". The translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most valuable quality of human nature is its tendency to diverge and diversify. According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals". Romantic artists also shared a strong belief in the importance and inspirational qualities of Nature. Romantics were distrustful of cities and social conventions. They deplored Restoration and Enlightenment Era artists who were largely concerned with depicting and critiquing social relations, thereby neglecting the relationship between people and Nature. Romantics generally believed a close connection with Nature was beneficial for human beings, especially for individuals who broke off from society in order to encounter the natural world by themselves. Romantic literature was frequently written in a distinctive, personal "voice". As critic M. H. Abrams has observed, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves." This quality in Romantic literature, in turn, influenced the approach and reception of works in other media; it has seeped into everything from critical evaluations of individual style in painting, fashion, and music, to the auteur movement in modern filmmaking. Etymology The group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history. By the 18th century, European languages—notably German, French and Slavic languages—were using the term "Roman" in the sense of the English word "novel", i.e. a work of popular narrative fiction. This usage derived from the term "Romance languages", which referred to vernacular (or popular) language in contrast to formal Latin. Most such novels took the form of "chivalric romance", tales of adventure, devotion and honour. The founders of Romanticism, critics (and brothers) August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel, began to speak of romantische Poesie ("romantic poetry") in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his 1800 essay Gespräch über die Poesie ("Dialogue on Poetry"): I seek and find the romantic among the older moderns, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of chivalry, love and fable, from which the phenomenon and the word itself are derived. The modern sense of the term spread more widely in France by its persistent use by Germaine de Staël in her De l'Allemagne (1813), recounting her travels in Germany. In England Wordsworth wrote in a preface to his poems of 1815 of the "romantic harp" and "classic lyre", but in 1820 Byron could still write, perhaps slightly disingenuously, I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call 'Classical' and 'Romantic', terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, and in 1824 the Académie française took the wholly ineffective step of issuing a decree condemning it in literature. Period The period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848", and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, perhaps a little later than some other critics. Others have proposed 1780–1830. In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different; musical Romanticism, for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 1946–1948. However, in most fields the Romantic period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier. The early period of the Romantic era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by the Napoleonic Wars until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism. The key generation of French Romantics born between 1795 and 1805 had, in the words of one of their number, Alfred de Vigny, been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums". According to Jacques Barzun, there were three generations of Romantic artists. The first emerged in the 1790s and 1800s, the second in the 1820s, and the third later in the century. Context and place in history The more precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism has been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the 20th century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. That it was part of the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, is generally accepted in current scholarship. Its relationship to the French Revolution, which began in 1789 in the very early stages of the period, is clearly important, but highly variable depending on geography and individual reactions. Most Romantics can be said to be broadly progressive in their views, but a considerable number always had, or developed, a wide range of conservative views, and nationalism was in many countries strongly associated with Romanticism, as discussed in detail below. In philosophy and the history of ideas, Romanticism was seen by Isaiah Berlin as disrupting for over a century the classic Western traditions of rationality and the idea of moral absolutes and agreed values, leading "to something like the melting away of the very notion of objective truth", and hence not only to nationalism, but also fascism and totalitarianism, with a gradual recovery coming only after World War II. For the Romantics, Berlin says, in the realm of ethics, politics, aesthetics it was the authenticity and sincerity of the pursuit of inner goals that mattered; this applied equally to individuals and groups—states, nations, movements. This is most evident in the aesthetics of romanticism, where the notion of eternal models, a Platonic vision of ideal beauty, which the artist seeks to convey, however imperfectly, on canvas or in sound, is replaced by a passionate belief in spiritual freedom, individual creativity. The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely the means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the self-expression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some "external" voice—church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste—is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of defining Romanticism in his seminal article "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948); some scholars see Romanticism as essentially continuous with the present, some like Robert Hughes see in it the inaugural moment of modernity, while writers of the 19th Century such as Chateaubriand, Novalis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to Enlightenment rationalism—a "Counter-Enlightenment"— to be associated most closely with German Romanticism. Another early definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling." The end of the Romantic era is marked in some areas by a new style of Realism, which affected literature, especially the novel and drama, painting, and even music, through Verismo opera. This movement was led by France, with Balzac and Flaubert in literature and Courbet in painting; Stendhal and Goya were important precursors of Realism in their respective media. However, Romantic styles, now often representing the established and safe style against which Realists rebelled, continued to flourish in many fields for the rest of the century and beyond. In music such works from after about 1850 are referred to by some writers as "Late Romantic" and by others as "Neoromantic" or "Postromantic", but other fields do not usually use these terms; in English literature and painting the convenient term "Victorian" avoids having to characterise the period further. In northern Europe, the Early Romantic visionary optimism and belief that the world was in the process of great change and improvement had largely vanished, and some art became more conventionally political and polemical as its creators engaged polemically with the world as it was. Elsewhere, including in very different ways the United States and Russia, feelings that great change was underway or just about to come were still possible. Displays of intense emotion in art remained prominent, as did the exotic and historical settings pioneered by the Romantics, but experimentation with form and technique was generally reduced, often replaced with meticulous technique, as in the poems of Tennyson or many paintings. If not realist, late 19th-century art was often extremely detailed, and pride was taken in adding authentic details in a way that earlier Romantics did not trouble with. Many Romantic ideas about the nature and purpose of art, above all the pre-eminent importance of originality, remained important for later generations, and often underlie modern views, despite opposition from theorists. Literature In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Maturin and Nathaniel Hawthorne, based their writings on the supernatural/occult and human psychology. Romanticism tended to regard satire as something unworthy of serious attention, a view still influential today. The Romantic movement in literature was preceded by the Enlightenment and succeeded by Realism. The precursors of Romanticism in English poetry go back to the middle of the 18th century, including figures such as Joseph Warton (headmaster at Winchester College) and his brother Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were the chief qualities of a poet. The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott. Thomas Chatterton is generally considered the first Romantic poet in English. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed was earlier literature that they had discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. The Gothic novel, beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the early revival of Gothic architecture. Tristram Shandy, a novel by Laurence Sterne (1759–1767), introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational sentimental novel to the English literary public. Germany An early German influence came from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude of small separate states, and Goethe's works would have a seminal influence in developing a unifying sense of nationalism. Another philosophic influence came from the German idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling, making Jena (where Fichte lived, as well as Schelling, Hegel, Schiller and the brothers Schlegel) a centre for early German Romanticism (see Jena Romanticism). Important writers were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Hölderlin. Heidelberg later became a centre of German Romanticism, where writers and poets such as Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts) met regularly in literary circles. Important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature, for example the German Forest, and Germanic myths. The later German Romanticism of, for example E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817, and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue), 1819, was darker in its motifs and has gothic elements. The significance to Romanticism of childhood innocence, the importance of imagination, and racial theories all combined to give an unprecedented importance to folk literature, non-classical mythology and children's literature, above all in Germany. Brentano and von Arnim were significant literary figures who together published Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Boy's Magic Horn" or cornucopia), a collection of versified folk tales, in 1806–1808. The first collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm was published in 1812. Unlike the much later work of Hans Christian Andersen, who was publishing his invented tales in Danish from 1835, these German works were at least mainly based on collected folk tales, and the Grimms remained true to the style of the telling in their early editions, though later rewriting some parts. One of the brothers, Jacob, published in 1835 Deutsche Mythologie, a long academic work on Germanic mythology. Another strain is exemplified by Schiller's highly emotional language and the depiction of physical violence in his play The Robbers of 1781. Great Britain In English literature, the key figures of the Romantic movement are considered to be the group of poets including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the much older William Blake, followed later by the isolated figure of John Clare; also such novelists as Walter Scott from Scotland and Mary Shelley, and the essayists William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, with many of the finest poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, is often held to mark the start of the movement. The majority of the poems were by Wordsworth, and many dealt with the lives of the poor in his native Lake District, or his feelings about nature—which he more fully developed in his long poem The Prelude, never published in his lifetime. The longest poem in the volume was Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which showed the Gothic side of English Romanticism, and the exotic settings that many works featured. In the period when they were writing, the Lake Poets were widely regarded as a marginal group of radicals, though they were supported by the critic and writer William Hazlitt and others. In contrast, Lord Byron and Walter Scott achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe with works exploiting the violence and drama of their exotic and historical settings; Goethe called Byron "undoubtedly the greatest genius of our century". Scott achieved immediate success with his long narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, followed by the full epic poem Marmion in 1808. Both were set in the distant Scottish past, already evoked in Ossian; Romanticism and Scotland were to have a long and fruitful partnership. Byron had equal success with the first part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, followed by four "Turkish tales", all in the form of long poems, starting with The Giaour in 1813, drawing from his Grand Tour, which had reached Ottoman Europe, and orientalizing the themes of the Gothic novel in verse. These featured different variations of the "Byronic hero", and his own life contributed a further version. Scott meanwhile was effectively inventing the historical novel, beginning in 1814 with Waverley, set in the 1745 Jacobite rising, which was a highly profitable success, followed by over 20 further Waverley Novels over the next 17 years, with settings going back to the Crusades that he had researched to a degree that was new in literature. In contrast to Germany, Romanticism in English literature had little connection with nationalism, and the Romantics were often regarded with suspicion for the sympathy many felt for the ideals of the French Revolution, whose collapse and replacement with the dictatorship of Napoleon was, as elsewhere in Europe, a shock to the movement. Though his novels celebrated Scottish identity and history, Scott was politically a firm Unionist, but admitted to Jacobite sympathies. Several Romantics spent much time abroad, and a famous stay on Lake Geneva with Byron and Shelley in 1816 produced the hugely influential novel Frankenstein by Shelley's wife-to-be Mary Shelley and the novella The Vampyre by Byron's doctor John William Polidori. The lyrics of Robert Burns in Scotland, and Thomas Moore from Ireland, reflected in different ways their countries and the Romantic interest in folk literature, but neither had a fully Romantic approach to life or their work. Though they have modern critical champions such as György Lukács, Scott's novels are today more likely to be experienced in the form of the many operas that composers continued to base on them over the following decades, such as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani (both 1835). Byron is now most highly regarded for his short lyrics and his generally unromantic prose writings, especially his letters, and his unfinished satire Don Juan. Unlike many Romantics, Byron's widely publicised personal life appeared to match his work, and his death at 36 in 1824 from disease when helping the Greek War of Independence appeared from a distance to be a suitably Romantic end, entrenching his legend. Keats in 1821 and Shelley in 1822 both died in Italy, Blake (at almost 70) in 1827, and Coleridge largely ceased to write in the 1820s. Wordsworth was by 1820 respectable and highly regarded, holding a government sinecure, but wrote relatively little. In the discussion of English literature, the Romantic period is often regarded as finishing around the 1820s, or sometimes even earlier, although many authors of the succeeding decades were no less committed to Romantic values. The most significant novelist in English during the peak Romantic period, other than Walter Scott, was Jane Austen, whose essentially conservative world-view had little in common with her Romantic contemporaries, retaining a strong belief in decorum and social rules, though critics such as Claudia L. Johnson have detected tremors under the surface of many works, such as Northanger Abbey (1817), Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1817). But around the mid-century the undoubtedly Romantic novels of the Yorkshire-based Brontë family appeared, most notably Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights, both published in 1847, which also introduced more Gothic themes. While these two novels were written and published after the Romantic period is said to have ended, their novels were heavily influenced by Romantic literature they had read as children. Byron, Keats, and Shelley all wrote for the stage, but with little success in England, with Shelley's The Cenci perhaps the best work produced, though that was not played in a public theatre in England until a century after his death. Byron's plays, along with dramatizations of his poems and Scott's novels, were much more popular on the Continent, and especially in France, and through these versions several were turned into operas, many still performed today. If contemporary poets had little success on the stage, the period was a legendary one for performances of Shakespeare, and went some way to restoring his original texts and removing the Augustan "improvements" to them. The greatest actor of the period, Edmund Kean, restored the tragic ending to King Lear; Coleridge said that "Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." Scotland Although after union with England in 1707 Scotland increasingly adopted English language and wider cultural norms, its literature developed a distinct national identity and began to enjoy an international reputation. Allan Ramsay (1686–1758) laid the foundations of a reawakening of interest in older Scottish literature, as well as leading the trend for pastoral poetry, helping to develop the Habbie stanza as a poetic form. James Macpherson (1736–1796) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian, he published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Fingal, written in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and especially in German literature, through its influence on Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It was also popularised in France by figures that included Napoleon. Eventually it became clear that the poems were not direct translations from Scottish Gaelic, but flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience. Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle. Burns, an Ayrshire poet and lyricist, is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and a major influence on the Romantic movement. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Scott began as a poet and also collected and published Scottish ballads. His first prose work, Waverley in 1814, is often called the first historical novel. It launched a highly successful career, with other historical novels such as Rob Roy (1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1818) and Ivanhoe (1820). Scott probably did more than any other figure to define and popularise Scottish cultural identity in the nineteenth century. Other major literary figures connected with Romanticism include the poets and novelists James Hogg (1770–1835), Allan Cunningham (1784–1842) and John Galt (1779–1839). Scotland was also the location of two of the most important literary magazines of the era, The Edinburgh Review (founded in 1802) and Blackwood's Magazine (founded in 1817), which had a major impact on the development of British literature and drama in the era of Romanticism. Ian Duncan and Alex Benchimol suggest that publications like the novels of Scott and these magazines were part of a highly dynamic Scottish Romanticism that by the early nineteenth century, caused Edinburgh to emerge as the cultural capital of Britain and become central to a wider formation of a "British Isles nationalism". Scottish "national drama" emerged in the early 1800s, as plays with specifically Scottish themes began to dominate the Scottish stage. Theatres had been discouraged by the Church of Scotland and fears of Jacobite assemblies. In the later eighteenth century, many plays were written for and performed by small amateur companies and were not published and so most have been lost. Towards the end of the century there were "closet dramas", primarily designed to be read, rather than performed, including work by Scott, Hogg, Galt and Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), often influenced by the ballad tradition and Gothic Romanticism. France Romanticism was relatively late in developing in French literature, more so than in the visual arts. The 18th-century precursor to Romanticism, the cult of sensibility, had become associated with the Ancien Régime, and the French Revolution had been more of an inspiration to foreign writers than those experiencing it at first-hand. The first major figure was François-René de Chateaubriand, an aristocrat who had remained a royalist throughout the Revolution, and returned to France from exile in England and America under Napoleon, with whose regime he had an uneasy relationship. His writings, all in prose, included some fiction, such as his influential novella of exile René (1802), which anticipated Byron in its alienated hero, but mostly contemporary history and politics, his travels, a defence of religion and the medieval spirit (Génie du christianisme, 1802), and finally in the 1830s and 1840s his enormous autobiography Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe ("Memoirs from beyond the grave"). After the Bourbon Restoration, French Romanticism developed in the lively world of Parisian theatre, with productions of Shakespeare, Schiller (in France a key Romantic author), and adaptations of Scott and Byron alongside French authors, several of whom began to write in the late 1820s. Cliques of pro- and anti-Romantics developed, and productions were often accompanied by raucous vocalizing by the two sides, including the shouted assertion by one theatregoer in 1822 that "Shakespeare, c'est l'aide-de-camp de Wellington" ("Shakespeare is Wellington's aide-de-camp"). Alexandre Dumas began as a dramatist, with a series of successes beginning with Henri III et sa cour (1829) before turning to novels that were mostly historical adventures somewhat in the manner of Scott, most famously The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both of 1844. Victor Hugo published as a poet in the 1820s before achieving success on the stage with Hernani—a historical drama in a quasi-Shakespearean style that had famously riotous performances on its first run in 1830. Like Dumas, Hugo is best known for his novels, and was already writing The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), one of the best known works, which became a paradigm of the French Romantic movement. The preface to his unperformed play Cromwell gives an important manifesto of French Romanticism, stating that "there are no rules, or models". The career of Prosper Mérimée followed a similar pattern; he is now best known as the originator of the story of Carmen, with his novella published 1845. Alfred de Vigny remains best known as a dramatist, with his play on the life of the English poet Chatterton (1835) perhaps his best work. George Sand was a central figure of the Parisian literary scene, famous both for her novels and criticism and her affairs with Chopin and several others; she too was inspired by the theatre, and wrote works to be staged at her private estate. French Romantic poets of the 1830s to 1850s include Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, Alphonse de Lamartine and the flamboyant Théophile Gautier, whose prolific output in various forms continued until his death in 1872. Stendhal is today probably the most highly regarded French novelist of the period, but he stands in a complex relation with Romanticism, and is notable for his penetrating psychological insight into his characters and his realism, qualities rarely prominent in Romantic fiction. As a survivor of the French retreat from Moscow in 1812, fantasies of heroism and adventure had little appeal for him, and like Goya he is often seen as a forerunner of Realism. His most important works are Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839). Poland Romanticism in Poland is often taken to begin with the publication of Adam Mickiewicz's first poems in 1822, and end with the crushing of the January Uprising of 1863 against the Russians. It was strongly marked by interest in Polish history. Polish Romanticism revived the old "Sarmatism" traditions of the szlachta or Polish nobility. Old traditions and customs were revived and portrayed in a positive light in the Polish messianic movement and in works of great Polish poets such as Adam Mickiewicz (Pan Tadeusz), Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński. This close connection between Polish Romanticism and Polish history became one of the defining qualities of the literature of Polish Romanticism period, differentiating it from that of other countries. They had not suffered the loss of national statehood as was the case with Poland. Influenced by the general spirit and main ideas of European Romanticism, the literature of Polish Romanticism is unique, as many scholars have pointed out, in having developed largely outside of Poland and in its emphatic focus upon the issue of Polish nationalism. The Polish intelligentsia, along with leading members of its government, left Poland in the early 1830s, during what is referred to as the "Great Emigration", resettling in France, Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, and the United States. Their art featured emotionalism and irrationality, fantasy and imagination, personality cults, folklore and country life, and the propagation of ideals of freedom. In the second period, many of the Polish Romantics worked abroad, often banished from Poland by the occupying powers due to their politically subversive ideas. Their work became increasingly dominated by the ideals of political struggle for freedom and their country's sovereignty. Elements of mysticism became more prominent. There developed the idea of the poeta wieszcz (the prophet). The wieszcz (bard) functioned as spiritual leader to the nation fighting for its independence. The most notable poet so recognized was Adam Mickiewicz. Zygmunt Krasiński also wrote to inspire political and religious hope in his countrymen. Unlike his predecessors, who called for victory at whatever price in Poland's struggle against Russia, Krasinski emphasized Poland's spiritual role in its fight for independence, advocating an intellectual rather than a military superiority. His works best exemplify the Messianic movement in Poland: in two early dramas, Nie-boska komedia (1835; The Undivine Comedy) and Irydion (1836; Iridion), as well as in the later Psalmy przyszłości (1845), he asserted that Poland was the Christ of Europe: specifically chosen by God to carry the world's burdens, to suffer, and eventually be resurrected. Russia Early Russian Romanticism is associated with the writers Konstantin Batyushkov (A Vision on the Shores of the Lethe, 1809), Vasily Zhukovsky (The Bard, 1811; Svetlana, 1813) and Nikolay Karamzin (Poor Liza, 1792; Julia, 1796; Martha the Mayoress, 1802; The Sensitive and the Cold, 1803). However the principal exponent of Romanticism in Russia is Alexander Pushkin (The Prisoner of the Caucasus, 1820–1821; The Robber Brothers, 1822; Ruslan and Ludmila, 1820; Eugene Onegin, 1825–1832). Pushkin's work influenced many writers in the 19th century and led to his eventual recognition as Russia's greatest poet. Other Russian Romantic poets include Mikhail Lermontov (A Hero of Our Time, 1839), Fyodor Tyutchev (Silentium!, 1830), Yevgeny Baratynsky (Eda, 1826), Anton Delvig, and Wilhelm Küchelbecker. Influenced heavily by Lord Byron, Lermontov sought to explore the Romantic emphasis on metaphysical discontent with society and self, while Tyutchev's poems often described scenes of nature or passions of love. Tyutchev commonly operated with such categories as night and day, north and south, dream and reality, cosmos and chaos, and the still world of winter and spring teeming with life. Baratynsky's style was fairly classical in nature, dwelling on the models of the previous century. Spain Romanticism in Spanish literature developed a well-known literature with a huge variety of poets and playwrights. The most important Spanish poet during this movement was José de Espronceda. After him there were other poets like Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Mariano José de Larra and the dramatists Ángel de Saavedra and José Zorrilla, author of Don Juan Tenorio. Before them may be mentioned the pre-romantics José Cadalso and Manuel José Quintana. The plays of Antonio García Gutiérrez were adapted to produce Giuseppe Verdi's operas Il trovatore and Simon Boccanegra. Spanish Romanticism also influenced regional literatures. For example, in Catalonia and in Galicia there was a national boom of writers in the local languages, like the Catalan Jacint Verdaguer and the Galician Rosalía de Castro, the main figures of the national revivalist movements Renaixença and Rexurdimento, respectively. There are scholars who consider Spanish Romanticism to be Proto-Existentialism because it is more anguished than the movement in other European countries. Foster et al., for example, say that the work of Spain's writers such as Espronceda, Larra, and other writers in the 19th century demonstrated a "metaphysical crisis". These observers put more weight on the link between the 19th-century Spanish writers with the existentialist movement that emerged immediately after. According to Richard Caldwell, the writers that we now identify with Spain's romanticism were actually precursors to those who galvanized the literary movement that emerged in the 1920s. This notion is the subject of debate for there are authors who stress that Spain's romanticism is one of the earliest in Europe, while some assert that Spain really had no period of literary romanticism. This controversy underscores a certain uniqueness to Spanish Romanticism in comparison to its European counterparts. Portugal Romanticism began in Portugal with the publication of the poem Camões (1825), by Almeida Garrett, who was raised by his uncle D. Alexandre, bishop of Angra, in the precepts of Neoclassicism, which can be observed in his early work. The author himself confesses (in Camões preface) that he voluntarily refused to follow the principles of epic poetry enunciated by Aristotle in his Poetics, as he did the same to Horace's Ars Poetica. Almeida Garrett had participated in the 1820 Liberal Revolution, which caused him to exile himself in England in 1823 and then in France, after the Vila-Francada. While living in Great Britain, he had contacts with the Romantic movement and read authors such as Shakespeare, Scott, Ossian, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine and de Staël, at the same time visiting feudal castles and ruins of Gothic churches and abbeys, which would be reflected in his writings. In 1838, he presented Um Auto de Gil Vicente ("A Play by Gil Vicente"), in an attempt to create a new national theatre, free of Greco-Roman and foreign influence. But his masterpiece would be Frei Luís de Sousa (1843), named by himself as a "Romantic drama" and it was acclaimed as an exceptional work, dealing with themes as national independence, faith, justice and love. He was also deeply interested in Portuguese folkloric verse, which resulted in the publication of Romanceiro ("Traditional Portuguese Ballads") (1843), that recollect a great number of ancient popular ballads, known as "romances" or "rimances", in redondilha maior verse form, that contained stories of chivalry, life of saints, crusades, courtly love, etc. He wrote the novels Viagens na Minha Terra, O Arco de Sant'Ana and Helena. Alexandre Herculano is, alongside Almeida Garrett, one of the founders of Portuguese Romanticism. He too was forced to exile to Great Britain and France because of his liberal ideals. All of his poetry and prose are (unlike Almeida Garrett's) entirely Romantic, rejecting Greco-Roman myth and history. He sought inspiration in medieval Portuguese poems and chronicles as in the Bible. His output is vast and covers many different genres, such as historical essays, poetry, novels, opuscules and theatre, where he brings back a whole world of Portuguese legends, tradition and history, especially in Eurico, o Presbítero ("Eurico, the Priest") and Lendas e Narrativas ("Legends and Narratives"). His work was influenced by Chateaubriand, Schiller, Klopstock, Walter Scott and the Old Testament Psalms. António Feliciano de Castilho made the case for Ultra-Romanticism, publishing the poems A Noite no Castelo ("Night in the Castle") and Os Ciúmes do Bardo ("The Jealousy of the Bard"), both in 1836, and the drama Camões. He became an unquestionable master for successive Ultra-Romantic generations, whose influence would not be challenged until the famous Coimbra Question. He also created polemics by translating Goethe's Faust without knowing German, but using French versions of the play. Other notable figures of Portuguese Romanticism are the famous novelists Camilo Castelo Branco and Júlio Dinis, and Soares de Passos, Bulhão Pato and Pinheiro Chagas. Romantic style would be revived in the beginning of the 20th century, notably through the works of poets linked to the Portuguese Renaissance, such as Teixeira de Pascoais, Jaime Cortesão, Mário Beirão, among others, who can be considered Neo-Romantics. An early Portuguese expression of Romanticism is found already in poets such as Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage (especially in his sonnets dated at the end of the 18th century) and Leonor de Almeida Portugal, Marquise of Alorna. Italy Romanticism in Italian literature was a minor movement although some important works were produced; it began officially in 1816 when Germaine de Staël wrote an article in the journal Biblioteca italiana called "Sulla maniera e l'utilità delle traduzioni", inviting Italian people to reject Neoclassicism and to study new authors from other countries. Before that date, Ugo Foscolo had already published poems anticipating Romantic themes. The most important Romantic writers were Ludovico di Breme, Pietro Borsieri and Giovanni Berchet. Better known authors such as Alessandro Manzoni and Giacomo Leopardi were influenced by Enlightenment as well as by Romanticism and Classicism. An Italian romanticist writer who produced works in various genres, including short stories and novels (such as Ricciarda o i Nurra e i Cabras), was the Piedmontese Giuseppe Botero (1815–1885), devoting much of his career to Sardinian literature. South America Spanish-speaking South American Romanticism was influenced heavily by Esteban Echeverría, who wrote in the 1830s and 1840s. His writings were influenced by his hatred for the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, and filled with themes of blood and terror, using the metaphor of a slaughterhouse to portray the violence of Rosas' dictatorship. Brazilian Romanticism is characterized and divided in three different periods. The first one is basically focused on the creation of a sense of national identity, using the ideal of the heroic Indian. Some examples include José de Alencar, who wrote Iracema and O Guarani, and Gonçalves Dias, renowned by the poem "Canção do exílio" (Song of the Exile). The second period, sometimes called Ultra-Romanticism, is marked by a profound influence of European themes and traditions, involving the melancholy, sadness and despair related to unobtainable love. Goethe and Lord Byron are commonly quoted in these works. Some of the most notable authors of this phase are Álvares de Azevedo, Casimiro de Abreu, Fagundes Varela and Junqueira Freire. The third cycle is marked by social poetry, especially the abolitionist movement, and it includes Castro Alves, Tobias Barreto and Pedro Luís Pereira de Sousa. United States In the United States, at least by 1818 with William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl", Romantic poetry was being published. American Romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance with Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) and "Rip Van Winkle" (1819), followed from 1823 onwards by the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape descriptions of an already-exotic mythicized frontier peopled by "noble savages", similar to the philosophical theory of Rousseau, exemplified by Uncas, from The Last of the Mohicans. There are picturesque "local colour" elements in Washington Irving's essays and especially his travel books. Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre and his balladic poetry were more influential in France than at home, but the romantic American novel developed fully with the atmosphere and drama of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). Later Transcendentalist writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson still show elements of its influence and imagination, as does the romantic realism of Walt Whitman. The poetry of Emily Dickinson—nearly unread in her own time—and Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick can be taken as epitomes of American Romantic literature. By the 1880s, however, psychological and social realism were competing with Romanticism in the novel. Influence of European Romanticism on American writers The European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century. American Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe. Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an emphasis on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was inherently good, while human society was filled with corruption. Romanticism became popular in American politics, philosophy and art. The movement appealed to the revolutionary spirit of America as well as to those longing to break free of the strict religious traditions of early settlement. The Romantics rejected rationalism and religious intellect. It appealed to those in opposition of Calvinism, which includes the belief that the destiny of each individual is preordained. The Romantic movement gave rise to New England Transcendentalism, which portrayed a less restrictive relationship between God and Universe. The new philosophy presented the individual with a more personal relationship with God. Transcendentalism and Romanticism appealed to Americans in a similar fashion, for both privileged feeling over reason, individual freedom of expression over the restraints of tradition and custom. It often involved a rapturous response to nature. It encouraged the rejection of harsh, rigid Calvinism, and promised a new blossoming of American culture. American Romanticism embraced the individual and rebelled against the confinement of neoclassicism and religious tradition. The Romantic movement in America created a new literary genre that continues to influence American writers. Novels, short stories, and poems replaced the sermons and manifestos of yore. Romantic literature was personal, intense, and portrayed more emotion than ever seen in neoclassical literature. America's preoccupation with freedom became a great source of motivation for Romantic writers as many were delighted in free expression and emotion without so much fear of ridicule and controversy. They also put more effort into the psychological development of their characters, and the main characters typically displayed extremes of sensitivity and excitement. The works of the Romantic Era also differed from preceding works in that they spoke to a wider audience, partly reflecting the greater distribution of books as costs came down during the period. Architecture Romantic architecture appeared in the late 18th century in a reaction against the rigid forms of neoclassical architecture. Romantic architecture reached its peak in the mid-19th century, and continued to appear until the end of the 19th century. It was designed to evoke an emotional reaction, either respect for tradition or nostalgia for a bucolic past. It was frequently inspired by the architecture of the Middle Ages, especially Gothic architecture, it was strongly influenced by romanticism in literature, particularly the historical novels of Victor Hugo and Walter Scott. It sometimes moved into the domain of eclecticism, with features assembled from different historic periods and regions of the world. Gothic Revival architecture was a popular variant of the romantic style, particularly in the construction of churches, Cathedrals, and university buildings. Notable examples include the completion of Cologne Cathedral in Germany, by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The cathedral's construction began in 1248, but was halted in 1473. The original plans for the façade were discovered in 1840, and it was decided to recommence. Schinkel followed the original design as much as possible, but he also used modern construction technology, including an iron frame for the roof. The building was finished in 1880. In Britain, notable examples include the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, a romantic version of traditional Indian architecture by John Nash (1815–1823), and the Houses of Parliament in London, built in a Gothic revival style by Charles Barry between 1840 and 1876. In France, one of the earliest examples of romantic architecture is the Hameau de la Reine, the small rustic hamlet created at the Palace of Versailles for Queen Marie Antoinette between 1783 and 1785 by the royal architect Richard Mique with the help of the romantic painter Hubert Robert. It consisted of twelve structures, ten of which still exist, in the style of villages in Normandy. It was designed for the Queen and her friends to amuse themselves by playing at being peasants, and included a farmhouse with a dairy, a mill, a boudoir, a pigeon loft, a tower in the form of a lighthouse from which one could fish in the pond, a belvedere, a cascade and grotto, and a luxuriously furnished cottage with a billiard room for the Queen. French romantic architecture in the 19th century was strongly influenced by two writers; Victor Hugo, whose novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame inspired a resurgence in interest in the Middle Ages; and Prosper Mérimée, who wrote celebrated romantic novels and short stories and was also the first head of the commission of Historic Monuments in France, responsible for publicizing and restoring (and sometimes romanticizing) many French cathedrals and monuments desecrated and ruined after the French Revolution. His projects were carried out by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. These included the restoration (sometimes creative) of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, the fortified city of Carcassonne, and the unfinished medieval Château de Pierrefonds. The romantic style continued in the second half of the 19th century. The Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house designed by Charles Garnier was a highly romantic and eclectic combination of artistic styles. Another notable example of late 19th century romanticism is the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur by Paul Abadie, who drew upon the model of Byzantine architecture for his elongated domes (1875–1914). Visual arts In the visual arts, Romanticism first showed itself in landscape painting, where from as early as the 1760s British artists began to turn to wilder landscapes and storms, and Gothic architecture, even if they had to make do with Wales as a setting. Caspar David Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner were born less than a year apart in 1774 and 1775 respectively and were to take German and English landscape painting to their extremes of Romanticism, but both their artistic sensibilities were formed when forms of Romanticism was already strongly present in art. John Constable, born in 1776, stayed closer to the English landscape tradition, but in his largest "six-footers" insisted on the heroic status of a patch of the working countryside where he had grown up—challenging the traditional hierarchy of genres, which relegated landscape painting to a low status. Turner also painted very large landscapes, and above all, seascapes. Some of these large paintings had contemporary settings and staffage, but others had small figures that turned the work into history painting in the manner of Claude Lorrain, like Salvator Rosa, a late Baroque artist whose landscapes had elements that Romantic painters repeatedly turned to. Friedrich often used single figures, or features like crosses, set alone amidst a huge landscape, "making them images of the transitoriness of human life and the premonition of death". Other groups of artists expressed feelings that verged on the mystical, many largely abandoning classical drawing and proportions. These included William Blake and Samuel Palmer and the other members of the Ancients in England, and in Germany Philipp Otto Runge. Like Friedrich, none of these artists had significant influence after their deaths for the rest of the 19th century, and were 20th-century rediscoveries from obscurity, though Blake was always known as a poet, and Norway's leading painter Johan Christian Dahl was heavily influenced by Friedrich. The Rome-based Nazarene movement of German artists, active from 1810, took a very different path, concentrating on medievalizing history paintings with religious and nationalist themes. The arrival of Romanticism in French art was delayed by the strong hold of Neoclassicism on the academies, but from the Napoleonic period it became increasingly popular, initially in the form of history paintings propagandising for the new regime, of which Girodet's Ossian receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes, for Napoleon's Château de Malmaison, was one of the earliest. Girodet's old teacher David was puzzled and disappointed by his pupil's direction, saying: "Either Girodet is mad or I no longer know anything of the art of painting". A new generation of the French school, developed personal Romantic styles, though still concentrating on history painting with a political message. Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) had his first success with The Charging Chasseur, a heroic military figure derived from Rubens, at the Paris Salon of 1812 in the years of the Empire, but his next major completed work, The Raft of the Medusa of 1818–19, remains the greatest achievement of the Romantic history painting, which in its day had a powerful anti-government message. Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) made his first Salon hits with The Barque of Dante (1822), The Massacre at Chios (1824) and Death of Sardanapalus (1827). The second was a scene from the Greek War of Independence, completed the year Byron died there, and the last was a scene from one of Byron's plays. With Shakespeare, Byron was to provide the subject matter for many other works of Delacroix, who also spent long periods in North Africa, painting colourful scenes of mounted Arab warriors. His Liberty Leading the People (1830) remains, with the Medusa, one of the best-known works of French Romantic painting. Both reflected current events, and increasingly "history painting", literally "story painting", a phrase dating back to the Italian Renaissance meaning the painting of subjects with groups of figures, long considered the highest and most difficult form of art, did indeed become the painting of historical scenes, rather than those from religion or mythology. Francisco Goya was called "the last great painter in whose art thought and observation were balanced and combined to form a faultless unity". But the extent to which he was a Romantic is a complex question. In Spain, there was still a struggle to introduce the values of the Enlightenment, in which Goya saw himself as a participant. The demonic and anti-rational monsters thrown up by his imagination are only superficially similar to those of the Gothic fantasies of northern Europe, and in many ways he remained wedded to the classicism and realism of his training, as well as looking forward to the Realism of the later 19th century. But he, more than any other artist of the period, exemplified the Romantic values of the expression of the artist's feelings and his personal imaginative world. He also shared with many of the Romantic painters a more free handling of paint, emphasized in the new prominence of the brushstroke and impasto, which tended to be repressed in neoclassicism under a self-effacing finish. Sculpture remained largely impervious to Romanticism, probably partly for technical reasons, as the most prestigious material of the day, marble, does not lend itself to expansive gestures. The leading sculptors in Europe, Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, were both based in Rome and firm Neoclassicists, not at all tempted to allow influence from medieval sculpture, which would have been one possible approach to Romantic sculpture. When it did develop, true Romantic sculpture—with the exception of a few artists such as Rudolf Maison—rather oddly was missing in Germany, and mainly found in France, with François Rude, best known from his group of the 1830s from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, David d'Angers, and Auguste Préault. Préault's plaster relief entitled Slaughter, which represented the horrors of wars with exacerbated passion, caused so much scandal at the 1834 Salon that Préault was banned from this official annual exhibition for nearly twenty years. In Italy, the most important Romantic sculptor was Lorenzo Bartolini. In France, historical painting on idealized medieval and Renaissance themes is known as the style Troubadour, a term with no equivalent for other countries, though the same trends occurred there. Delacroix, Ingres and Richard Parkes Bonington all worked in this style, as did lesser specialists such as Pierre-Henri Révoil (1776–1842) and Fleury-François Richard (1777–1852). Their pictures are often small, and feature intimate private and anecdotal moments, as well as those of high drama. The lives of great artists such as Raphael were commemorated on equal terms with those of rulers, and fictional characters were also depicted. Fleury-Richard's Valentine of Milan weeping for the death of her husband, shown in the Paris Salon of 1802, marked the arrival of the style, which lasted until the mid-century, before being subsumed into the increasingly academic history painting of artists like Paul Delaroche. Another trend was for very large apocalyptic history paintings, often combining extreme natural events, or divine wrath, with human disaster, attempting to outdo The Raft of the Medusa, and now often drawing comparisons with effects from Hollywood. The leading English artist in the style was John Martin, whose tiny figures were dwarfed by enormous earthquakes and storms, and worked his way through the biblical disasters, and those to come in the final days. Other works such as Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus included larger figures, and these often drew heavily on earlier artists, especially Poussin and Rubens, with extra emotionalism and special effects. Elsewhere in Europe, leading artists adopted Romantic styles: in Russia there were the portraitists Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin, with Ivan Aivazovsky specializing in marine painting, and in Norway Hans Gude painted scenes of fjords. In Poland, Piotr Michałowski (1800–1855) used a Romantic style in paintings particularly relating to the history of Napoleonic Wars. In Italy Francesco Hayez (1791–1882) was the leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan. His long, prolific and extremely successful career saw him begin as a Neoclassical painter, pass right through the Romantic period, and emerge at the other end as a sentimental painter of young women. His Romantic period included many historical pieces of "Troubadour" tendencies, but on a very large scale, that are heavily influenced by Gian Battista Tiepolo and other late Baroque Italian masters. Literary Romanticism had its counterpart in the American visual arts, most especially in the exaltation of an untamed American landscape found in the paintings of the Hudson River School. Painters like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church and others often expressed Romantic themes in their paintings. They sometimes depicted ancient ruins of the old world, such as in Fredric Edwin Church's piece Sunrise in Syria. These works reflected the Gothic feelings of death and decay. They also show the Romantic ideal that Nature is powerful and will eventually overcome the transient creations of men. More often, they worked to distinguish themselves from their European counterparts by depicting uniquely American scenes and landscapes. This idea of an American identity in the art world is reflected in W. C. Bryant's poem To Cole, the Painter, Departing for Europe, where Bryant encourages Cole to remember the powerful scenes that can only be found in America. Some American paintings (such as Albert Bierstadt's The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak) promote the literary idea of the "noble savage" by portraying idealized Native Americans living in harmony with the natural world. Thomas Cole's paintings tend towards allegory, explicit in The Voyage of Life series painted in the early 1840s, showing the stages of life set amidst an awesome and immense nature. Music The term "Romanticism" when applied to music has come to imply the period roughly from 1800 until 1850, or else until around 1900. Musical Romanticism is predominantly a German phenomenon—so much so that one respected French reference work defines it entirely in terms of "The role of music in the aesthetics of German romanticism". Another French encyclopedia holds that the German temperament generally "can be described as the deep and diverse action of romanticism on German musicians", and that there is only one true representative of Romanticism in French music, Hector Berlioz, while in Italy, the sole great name of musical Romanticism is Giuseppe Verdi, "a sort of [Victor] Hugo of opera, gifted with a real genius for dramatic effect". Similarly, in his analysis of Romanticism and its pursuit of harmony, Henri Lefebvre posits that, "But of course, German romanticism was more closely linked to music than French romanticism was, so it is there we should look for the direct expression of harmony as the central romantic idea." Nevertheless, the huge popularity of German Romantic music led, "whether by imitation or by reaction", to an often nationalistically inspired vogue amongst Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Czech, and Scandinavian musicians, successful "perhaps more because of its extra-musical traits than for the actual value of musical works by its masters". In the contemporary music culture, the romantic musician followed a public career depending on sensitive middle-class audiences rather than on a courtly patron, as had been the case with earlier musicians and composers. Public persona characterized a new generation of virtuosi who made their way as soloists, epitomized in the concert tours of Paganini and Liszt, and the conductor began to emerge as an important figure, on whose skill the interpretation of the increasingly complex music depended. Evolution of the term in musicology Although the term "Romanticism" when applied to music has come to imply the period roughly from 1800 until 1850, or else until around 1900, the contemporary application of "romantic" to music did not coincide with this modern interpretation. Indeed, one of the earliest sustained applications of the term to music occurs in 1789, in the Mémoires of André Grétry. This is of particular interest because it is a French source on a subject mainly dominated by Germans, but also because it explicitly acknowledges its debt to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (himself a composer, amongst other things) and, by so doing, establishes a link to one of the major influences on the Romantic movement generally. In 1810 E. T. A. Hoffmann named Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven as "the three masters of instrumental compositions" who "breathe one and the same romantic spirit". He justified his view on the basis of these composers' depth of evocative expression and their marked individuality. In Haydn's music, according to Hoffmann, "a child-like, serene disposition prevails", while Mozart (in the late E-flat major Symphony, for example) "leads us into the depths of the spiritual world", with elements of fear, love, and sorrow, "a presentiment of the infinite ... in the eternal dance of the spheres". Beethoven's music, on the other hand, conveys a sense of "the monstrous and immeasurable", with the pain of an endless longing that "will burst our breasts in a fully coherent concord of all the passions". This elevation in the valuation of pure emotion resulted in the promotion of music from the subordinate position it had held in relation to the verbal and plastic arts during the Enlightenment. Because music was considered to be free of the constraints of reason, imagery, or any other precise concept, it came to be regarded, first in the writings of Wackenroder and Tieck and later by writers such as Schelling and Wagner, as preeminent among the arts, the one best able to express the secrets of the universe, to evoke the spirit world, infinity, and the absolute. This chronologic agreement of musical and literary Romanticism continued as far as the middle of the 19th century, when Richard Wagner denigrated the music of Meyerbeer and Berlioz as "neoromantic": "The Opera, to which we shall now return, has swallowed down the Neoromanticism of Berlioz, too, as a plump, fine-flavoured oyster, whose digestion has conferred on it anew a brisk and well-to-do appearance." It was only toward the end of the 19th century that the newly emergent discipline of Musikwissenschaft (musicology)—itself a product of the historicizing proclivity of the age—attempted a more scientific periodization of music history, and a distinction between Viennese Classical and Romantic periods was proposed. The key figure in this trend was Guido Adler, who viewed Beethoven and Franz Schubert as transitional but essentially Classical composers, with Romanticism achieving full maturity only in the post-Beethoven generation of Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt. From Adler's viewpoint, found in books like Der Stil in der Musik (1911), composers of the New German School and various late-19th-century nationalist composers were not Romantics but "moderns" or "realists" (by analogy with the fields of painting and literature), and this schema remained prevalent through the first decades of the 20th century. By the second quarter of the 20th century, an awareness that radical changes in musical syntax had occurred during the early 1900s caused another shift in historical viewpoint, and the change of century came to be seen as marking a decisive break with the musical past. This in turn led historians such as Alfred Einstein to extend the musical "Romantic era" throughout the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th. It has continued to be referred to as such in some of the standard music references such as The Oxford Companion to Music and Grout's History of Western Music but was not unchallenged. For example, the prominent German musicologist Friedrich Blume, the chief editor of the first edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1949–86), accepted the earlier position that Classicism and Romanticism together constitute a single period beginning in the middle of the 18th century, but at the same time held that it continued into the 20th century, including such pre-World War II developments as expressionism and neoclassicism. This is reflected in some notable recent reference works such as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the new edition of Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Outside the arts Sciences The Romantic movement affected most aspects of intellectual life, and Romanticism and science had a powerful connection, especially in the period 1800–1840. Many scientists were influenced by versions of the Naturphilosophie of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others, and without abandoning empiricism, sought in their work to uncover what they tended to believe was a unified and organic Nature. The English scientist Sir Humphry Davy, a prominent Romantic thinker, said that understanding nature required "an attitude of admiration, love and worship, [...] a personal response". He believed that knowledge was only attainable by those who truly appreciated and respected nature. Self-understanding was an important aspect of Romanticism. It had less to do with proving that man was capable of understanding nature (through his budding intellect) and therefore controlling it, and more to do with the emotional appeal of connecting himself with nature and understanding it through a harmonious co-existence. Historiography History writing was very strongly, and many would say harmfully, influenced by Romanticism. In England, Thomas Carlyle was a highly influential essayist who turned historian; he both invented and exemplified the phrase "hero-worship", lavishing largely uncritical praise on strong leaders such as Oliver Cromwell, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Romantic nationalism had a largely negative effect on the writing of history in the 19th century, as each nation tended to produce its own version of history, and the critical attitude, even cynicism, of earlier historians was often replaced by a tendency to create romantic stories with clearly distinguished heroes and villains. Nationalist ideology of the period placed great emphasis on racial coherence, and the antiquity of peoples, and tended to vastly overemphasize the continuity between past periods and the present, leading to national mysticism. Much historical effort in the 20th century was devoted to combating the romantic historical myths created in the 19th century. Theology To insulate theology from scientism or reductionism in science, 19th-century post-Enlightenment German theologians developed a modernist or so-called liberal conception of Christianity, led by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl. They took the Romantic approach of rooting religion in the inner world of the human spirit, so that it is a person's feeling or sensibility about spiritual matters that comprises religion. Chess Romantic chess was the style of chess which emphasized quick, tactical maneuvers characterized by aesthetic beauty rather than long-term strategic planning, which was considered to be of secondary importance. The Romantic era in chess is generally considered to have begun around the 18th century (although a primarily tactical style of chess was predominant even earlier), and to have reached its peak with Joseph MacDonnell and Pierre LaBourdonnais, the two dominant chess players in the 1830s. The 1840s were dominated by Howard Staunton, and other leading players of the era included Adolf Anderssen, Daniel Harrwitz, Henry Bird, Louis Paulsen, and Paul Morphy. The "Immortal Game", played by Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London—where Anderssen made bold sacrifices to secure victory, giving up both rooks and a bishop, then his queen, and then checkmating his opponent with his three remaining minor pieces—is considered a supreme example of Romantic chess. The end of the Romantic era in chess is considered to be the 1873 Vienna Tournament where Wilhelm Steinitz popularized positional play and the closed game. Romantic nationalism One of Romanticism's key ideas and most enduring legacies is the assertion of nationalism, which became a central theme of Romantic art and political philosophy. From the earliest parts of the movement, with their focus on development of national languages and folklore, and the importance of local customs and traditions, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key vehicles of Romanticism, its role, expression and meaning. One of the most important functions of medieval references in the 19th century was nationalist. Popular and epic poetry were its workhorses. This is visible in Germany and Ireland, where underlying Germanic or Celtic linguistic substrates dating from before the Romanization-Latinization were sought out. Early Romantic nationalism was strongly inspired by Rousseau, and by the ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder, who in 1784 argued that the geography formed the natural economy of a people, and shaped their customs and society. The nature of nationalism changed dramatically, however, after the French Revolution with the rise of Napoleon, and the reactions in other nations. Napoleonic nationalism and republicanism were, at first, inspirational to movements in other nations: self-determination and a consciousness of national unity were held to be two of the reasons why France was able to defeat other countries in battle. But as the French Republic became Napoleon's Empire, Napoleon became not the inspiration for nationalism, but the object of its struggle. In Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in the struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, or nationality, was coined in German as part of this resistance to the now conquering emperor. Fichte expressed the unity of language and nation in his address "To the German Nation" in 1806: Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. ...Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality—then, and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be. This view of nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such people as the Brothers Grimm, the revival of old epics as national, and the construction of new epics as if they were old, as in the Kalevala, compiled from Finnish tales and folklore, or Ossian, where the claimed ancient roots were invented. The view that fairy tales, unless contaminated from outside literary sources, were preserved in the same form over thousands of years, was not exclusive to Romantic Nationalists, but fit in well with their views that such tales expressed the primordial nature of a people. For instance, the Brothers Grimm rejected many tales they collected because of their similarity to tales by Charles Perrault, which they thought proved they were not truly German tales; Sleeping Beauty survived in their collection because the tale of Brynhildr convinced them that the figure of the sleeping princess was authentically German. Vuk Karadžić contributed to Serbian folk literature, using peasant culture as the foundation. He regarded the oral literature of the peasants as an integral part of Serbian culture, compiling it to use in his collections of folk songs, tales and proverbs, as well as the first dictionary of vernacular Serbian. Similar projects were undertaken by the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and the Englishman Joseph Jacobs. Polish nationalism and messianism Romanticism played an essential role in the national awakening of many Central European peoples lacking their own national states, not least in Poland, which had recently failed to restore its independence when Russia's army crushed the Polish Uprising under Nicholas I. Revival and reinterpretation of ancient myths, customs and traditions by Romantic poets and painters helped to distinguish their indigenous cultures from those of the dominant nations and crystallise the mythography of Romantic nationalism. Patriotism, nationalism, revolution and armed struggle for independence also became popular themes in the arts of this period. Arguably, the most distinguished Romantic poet of this part of Europe was Adam Mickiewicz, who developed an idea that Poland was the Messiah of Nations, predestined to suffer just as Jesus had suffered to save all the people. The Polish self-image as a "Christ among nations" or the martyr of Europe can be traced back to its history of Christendom and suffering under invasions. During the periods of foreign occupation, the Catholic Church served as bastion of Poland's national identity and language, and the major promoter of Polish culture. The partitions came to be seen in Poland as a Polish sacrifice for the security for Western civilization. Adam Mickiewicz wrote the patriotic drama Dziady (directed against the Russians), where he depicts Poland as the Christ of Nations. He also wrote "Verily I say unto you, it is not for you to learn civilization from foreigners, but it is you who are to teach them civilization ... You are among the foreigners like the Apostles among the idolaters". In Books of the Polish Nation and Polish Pilgrimage Mickiewicz detailed his vision of Poland as a Messias and a Christ of Nations, that would save mankind. Dziady is known for various interpretation. The most known ones are the moral aspect of part II, individualist and romantic message of part IV, as well as deeply patriotic, messianistic and Christian vision in part III of the poem. Zdzisław Kępiński, however, focuses his interpretation on Slavic pagan and occult elements found in the drama. In his book Mickiewicz hermetyczny he writes about hermetic, theosophic and alchemical philosophy on the book as well as Masonic symbols. Gallery Emerging Romanticism in the 18th century French Romantic painting Other Romantic writers Scholars of Romanticism See also Related terms Goethean science Humboldtian science Sentimentalism (literature) Opposing terms The Academy Positivism Utilitarianism Related subjects Coleridge's theory of life Dark Romanticism List of romantics Mal du siècle Middle Ages in history Neo-romanticism Post-romanticism Opium and Romanticism Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period Romantic ballet Romantic epistemology Romantic hero Romantic medicine Romantic poetry List of Romantic poets Romantic psychology Related movements Aestheticism Arts and Crafts movement Decadent movement Düsseldorf School Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Symbolist Movement Vegetarianism and Romanticism Victorian literature Marxist-Leninist views on Romanticism Underground culture References Citations Sources Adler, Guido. 1911. Der Stil in der Musik. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. Adler, Guido. 1919. Methode der Musikgeschichte. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. Adler, Guido. 1930. Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, second, thoroughly revised and greatly expanded edition. 2 vols. Berlin-Wilmersdorf: H. Keller. Reprinted, Tutzing: Schneider, 1961. Barzun, Jacques. 2000. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present. . Berlin, Isaiah. 1990. The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy. London: John Murray. . Bloom, Harold (ed.). 1986. George Gordon, Lord Byron. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. Blume, Friedrich. 1970. Classic and Romantic Music, translated by M. D. Herter Norton from two essays first published in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. New York: W.W. Norton. Black, Joseph, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, and Claire Waters. 2010. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 4: The Age of Romanticism Second Edition. Peterborough: Broadview Press. . Bowra, C. Maurice. 1949. The Romantic Imagination (in series, "Galaxy Book[s]"). New York: Oxford University Press. Boyer, Jean-Paul. 1961. "Romantisme". Encyclopédie de la musique, edited by François Michel, with François Lesure and Vladimir Fédorov, 3:585–87. Paris: Fasquelle. Christiansen, Rupert. 1988. Romantic Affinities: Portraits From an Age, 1780–1830. London: Bodley Head. . Paperback reprint, London: Cardinal, 1989 . Paperback reprint, London: Vintage, 1994. . Paperback reprint, London: Pimlico, 2004. . Cunningham, Andrew, and Nicholas Jardine (eds.) (1990). Romanticism and the Sciences. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (cloth); (pbk.); another excerpt-and-text-search source . Day, Aidan. Romanticism, 1996, Routledge, . Eco, Umberto. 1994. "Interpreting Serials", in his The Limits of Interpretation , pp. 83–100. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. . excerpt Einstein, Alfred. 1947. Music in the Romantic Era. New York: W.W. Norton. Ferber, Michael. 2010. Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. . Friedlaender, Walter, David to Delacroix, (Originally published in German; reprinted 1980) 1952. Greenblatt, Stephen, M. H. Abrams, Alfred David, James Simpson, George Logan, Lawrence Lipking, James Noggle, Jon Stallworthy, Jahan Ramazani, Jack Stillinger, and Deidre Shauna Lynch. 2006. Norton Anthology of English Literature, eighth edition, The Romantic Period – Volume D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. . Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste. 1789. Mémoires, ou Essai sur la musique. 3 vols. Paris: Chez l'auteur, de L'Imprimerie de la république, 1789. Second, enlarged edition, Paris: Imprimerie de la république, pluviôse, 1797. Republished, 3 vols., Paris: Verdiere, 1812; Brussels: Whalen, 1829. Facsimile of the 1797 edition, Da Capo Press Music Reprint Series. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971. Facsimile reprint in 1 volume of the 1829 Brussels edition, Bibliotheca musica Bononiensis, Sezione III no. 43. Bologna: Forni Editore, 1978. Grout, Donald Jay. 1960. A History of Western Music. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus. 1810. "Recension: Sinfonie pour 2 Violons, 2 Violes, Violoncelle e Contre-Violon, 2 Flûtes, petite Flûte, 2 Hautbois, 2 Clarinettes, 2 Bassons, Contrabasson, 2 Cors, 2 Trompettes, Timbales et 3 Trompes, composée et dediée etc. par Louis van Beethoven. à Leipsic, chez Breitkopf et Härtel, Oeuvre 67. No. 5. des Sinfonies. (Pr. 4 Rthlr. 12 Gr.)". Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 12, no. 40 (4 July), cols. 630–42 [Der Beschluss folgt.]; 12, no. 41 (11 July), cols. 652–59. Honour, Hugh, Neo-classicism, 1968, Pelican. Hughes, Robert. Goya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. . Joachimides, Christos M. and Rosenthal, Norman and Anfam, David and Adams, Brooks (1993) American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913–1993 . Macfarlane, Robert. 2007. 'Romantic' Originality , in Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature , March 2007, pp. 18–50(33) (in Polish) Masłowski, Maciej, Piotr Michałowski, Warsaw, 1957, Arkady Publishers Noon, Patrick (ed), Crossing the Channel, British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism, 2003, Tate Publishing/Metropolitan Museum of Art. Novotny, Fritz, Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780–1880 (Pelican History of Art), Yale University Press, 2nd edn. 1971 . Ruthven, Kenneth Knowles. 2001. Faking Literature. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. . Samson, Jim. 2001. "Romanticism". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers. Smith, Logan Pearsall (1924) Four Words: Romantic, Originality, Creative, Genius. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Spearing, A. C. 1987. Introduction section to Chaucer's The Franklin's Prologue and Tale Steiner, George. 1998. "Topologies of Culture", chapter 6 of After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, third revised edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. . Wagner, Richard. Opera and Drama, translated by William Ashton Ellis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Originally published as volume 2 of Richard Wagner's Prose Works (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1900), a translation from Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (Leipzig, 1871–73, 1883). Warrack, John. 2002. "Romanticism". The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. . Waterhouse, Francis A. 1926. Romantic 'Originality' in The Sewanee Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (January 1926), pp. 40–49. Weber, Patrick, Histoire de l'Architecture de l'Antiquité à Nos Jours, Librio, Paris, (2008) . Wehnert, Martin. 1998. "Romantik und romantisch". Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik, begründet von Friedrich Blume, second revised edition. Sachteil 8: Quer–Swi, cols. 464–507. Basel, Kassel, London, Munich, and Prague: Bärenreiter; Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler. Further reading Abrams, Meyer H. 1971. The Mirror and the Lamp. London: Oxford University Press. . Abrams, Meyer H. 1973. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: W. W. Norton. Barzun, Jacques. 1943. Romanticism and the Modern Ego. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Barzun, Jacques. 1961. Classic, Romantic, and Modern. University of Chicago Press. . Berlin, Isaiah. 1999. The Roots of Romanticism. London: Chatto and Windus. . Blanning, Tim. The Romantic Revolution: A History (2011). Breckman, Warren, European Romanticism: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. Cavalletti, Carlo. 2000. Chopin and Romantic Music, translated by Anna Maria Salmeri Pherson. Hauppauge, New York: Barron's Educational Series. . Chaudon, Francis. 1980. The Concise Encyclopedia of Romanticism. Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell Books. . Ciofalo, John J. 2001. "The Ascent of Genius in the Court and Academy." The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya. Cambridge University Press. Clewis, Robert R., ed. The Sublime Reader. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Cox, Jeffrey N. 2004. Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and Their Circle. Cambridge University Press. . Dahlhaus, Carl. 1979. "Neo-Romanticism". 19th-Century Music 3, no. 2 (November): 97–105. Dahlhaus, Carl. 1980. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, translated by Mary Whittall in collaboration with Arnold Whittall; also with Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Music and Words", translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann. California Studies in 19th Century Music 1. Berkeley: University of California Press. . Original German edition, as Zwischen Romantik und Moderne: vier Studien zur Musikgeschichte des späteren 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Musikverlag Katzber, 1974. Dahlhaus, Carl. 1985. Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music, translated by Mary Whittall. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. . Original German edition, as Musikalischer Realismus: zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich: R. Piper, 1982. . Fay, Elizabeth. 2002. Romantic Medievalism. History and the Romantic Literary Ideal. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Garofalo, Piero. 2005. "Italian Romanticisms." Companion to European Romanticism, ed. Michael Ferber. London: Blackwell Press, 238–255. Gaull, Marilyn. 1988. English Romanticism: The Human Context. New York and London: W. W. Norton. . Gay, Peter. 2015. Why the Romantics Matter. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. . Geck, Martin. 1998. "Realismus". Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik begründe von Friedrich Blume, second, revised edition, edited by Ludwig Finscher. Sachteil 8: Quer–Swi, cols. 91–99. Kassel, Basel, London, New York, Prague: Bärenreiter; Suttgart and Weimar: Metzler. (Bärenreiter); (Metzler). Halmi, Nicholas. 2019. "European Romanticism." In The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought, ed. Warren Breckman and Peter Gordon, vol. 1, 40-64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107097759. Halmi, Nicholas. 2021. "Romantic Thinking." In Thought: A Philosophical History, ed. Daniel Whistler and Panayiota Vassilopoulou, 61-74. ISBN 9780367000103. Halmi, Nicholas. 2023. "Transcendental Revolutions." In The Cambridge History of European Romantic Literature, ed. Patrick Vincent, 223-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108497060 Hamilton, Paul, ed. The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism (2016). Hesmyr, Atle. 2018. From Enlightenment to Romanticism in 18th Century Europe Holmes, Richard. 2009. The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. London: HarperPress. . New York: Pantheon Books. . Paperback reprint, New York: Vintage Books. Honour, Hugh. 1979. Romanticism. New York: Harper and Row. . Kravitt, Edward F. 1992. "Romanticism Today". The Musical Quarterly 76, no. 1 (Spring): 93–109. Lang, Paul Henry. 1941. Music in Western Civilization. New York: W.W. Norton McCalman, Iain (ed.). 2009. An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Online at Oxford Reference Online Mason, Daniel Gregory. 1936. The Romantic Composers. New York: Macmillan. Masson, Scott. 2007. "Romanticism", Chapt. 7 in The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology, (Oxford University Press). Murray, Christopher, ed. Encyclopedia of the romantic era, 1760–1850 (2 vol 2004); 850 articles by experts; 1600pp Plantinga, Leon. 1984. Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style in Nineteenth-Century Europe. A Norton Introduction to Music History. New York: W.W. Norton. Reynolds, Nicole. 2010. Building Romanticism: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-century Britain. University of Michigan Press. . Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. 1992. The Emergence of Romanticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Rosen, Charles. 1995. The Romantic Generation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. . Rummenhöller, Peter. 1989. Romantik in der Musik: Analysen, Portraits, Reflexionen. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag; Kassel and New York: Bärenreiter. Ruston, Sharon. 2013. Creating Romanticism: Case Studies in the Literature, Science and Medicine of the 1790s. Palgrave Macmillan. . Schenk, H. G. 1966. The Mind of the European Romantics: An Essay in Cultural History. : Constable. Spencer, Stewart. 2008. "The 'Romantic Operas' and the Turn to Myth". In The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, edited by Thomas S. Grey, 67–73. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. . Turley, Richard Marggraf. 2002. The Politics of Language in Romantic Literature. London. Palgrave Macmillan. . Workman, Leslie J. 1994. "Medievalism and Romanticism". Poetica 39–40: 1–34. Wulf, Andrea. 2022. Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self. Knopf. External links Romantics & Victorians explored on the British Library Discovering Literature website The Romantic Poets The Great Romantics "Romanticism", Dictionary of the History of Ideas "Romanticism in Political Thought", Dictionary of the History of Ideas Romantic Circles—Electronic editions, histories, and scholarly articles related to the Romantic era Romantic Rebellion World Romanticism in literature, art, music, philosophy and architecture 18th century in art 18th century in the arts 18th-century literature 19th century in art 19th century in the arts 19th-century literature Romanticism Art of Europe European literature Music of Europe German idealism Literary genres Romanticism Theories of aesthetics

Fin de siècle

Fin de siècle is a French term meaning 'end of century', a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom turn of the century and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The "spirit" of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence". The term is commonly applied to French art and artists, as the traits of the culture first appeared there, but the movement affected many European countries. The term becomes applicable to the sentiments and traits associated with the culture, as opposed to focusing solely on the movement's initial recognition in France. The ideas and concerns developed by fin de siècle artists provided the impetus for movements such as symbolism and modernism. The themes of fin de siècle political culture were very controversial and have been cited as a major influence on fascism and as a generator of the science of geopolitics, including the theory of . Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham, Michael Heffernan, and Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote about the origins of geopolitics: The "new world of the twentieth century would need to be understood in its entirety, as an integrated global whole". Technology and global communication made the world "smaller" and turned it into a single system; the time was characterized by pan-ideas and a utopian "one-worldism," proceeding further than pan-ideas. The major political theme of the era was that of revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and liberal democracy. The fin de siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism, while the mindset of the age saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution. Fin de siècle syndrome Michael Heffernan in his article [End of the century, end of the world?] (2000) finds in the Christian world what he calls "the syndrome of fin de siècle". In 2000, this took the form of the Year 2000 problem. are accompanied by future expectations: Degeneration theory B. A. Morel's degeneration theory was a theory that held that although societies can progress, they can also remain static or even regress if influenced by a flawed environment, such as national conditions or outside cultural influences. This degeneration was described as being passed from generation to generation, resulting in imbecility and senility due to hereditary influence. Max Nordau's Degeneration held that the two dominant traits of those degenerated in a society involve ego mania and mysticism. The former term was understood to mean a pathological degree of self-absorption and unreasonable attention to one's own sentiments and activities, as can be seen in the extremely descriptive nature of minute details; the latter referred to the impaired ability to translate primary perceptions into fully developed ideas, largely noted in symbolist works. Nordau's treatment of these traits as degenerative qualities lends to the perception of a world falling into decay through fin de siècle corruptions of thought, and influencing the pessimism growing in Europe's philosophical consciousness. As fin de siècle citizens, attitudes tended toward science in an attempt to decipher the world in which they lived. The focus on psycho-physiology, now psychology, was a large part of fin de siècle society in that it studied a topic that could not be depicted through Romanticism, but relied on traits exhibited to suggest how the mind works, as does symbolism. The concept of genius returned to popular consciousness around this period through Max Nordau's work with degeneration, prompting study of artists supposedly affected by social degeneration and what separates imbecility from genius. The genius and the imbecile were determined to have largely similar character traits, including and . The first, which means delusions of grandeur, begins with a disproportionate sense of importance in one's own activities and results in a sense of alienation, as Nordau describes in Baudelaire, as well as the second characteristic of madness of doubt, which involves intense indecision and extreme preoccupation with minute detail. The difference between degenerate genius and degenerate madman become the extensive knowledge held by the genius in a few areas paired with a belief in one's own superiority as a result. Together, these psychological traits lend to originality, eccentricity, and a sense of alienation, all symptoms of (the evil of the century) that impacted French youth at the beginning of the 19th century until expanding outward and eventually influencing the rest of Europe approaching the turn of the century. Pessimism England's ideological space was affected by the philosophical waves of pessimism sweeping Europe, starting with philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's work from before 1860 and gradually influencing artists internationally. R. H. Goodale identified 235 essays by British and American authors concerning pessimism, ranging from 1871 to 1900, showing the prominence of pessimism in conjunction with English ideology. Further, Oscar Wilde's references to pessimism in his works demonstrate the relevance of the ideology on the English. In An Ideal Husband, Wilde's protagonist asks another character whether "at heart, [she is] an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays." Wilde's reflection on personal philosophy as more culturally significant than religion lends credence to degeneration theory, as applied to Baudelaire's influence on other nations. However, the optimistic Romanticism popular earlier in the century would also have affected the shifting ideological landscape. The newly fashionable pessimism appears again in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, written that same year: Lane is philosophically current as of 1895, reining in his master's optimism about the weather by reminding Algernon of how the world typically operates. His pessimism gives satisfaction to Algernon; the perfect servant of a gentleman is one who is philosophically aware. Charles Baudelaire's work demonstrates some of the pessimism expected of the time, and his work with modernity exemplified the decadence and decay with which turn-of-the-century French art is associated, while his work with symbolism promoted the mysticism Nordau associated with fin de siècle artists. Baudelaire's pioneering translations of Edgar Allan Poe's verse supports the aesthetic role of translation in fin de siècle culture, while his own works influenced French and English artists through the use of modernity and symbolism. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and their contemporaries became known as French decadents, a group that influenced its English counterpart, the aesthetes like Oscar Wilde. Both groups believed the purpose of art was to evoke an emotional response and demonstrate the beauty inherent in the unnatural as opposed to trying to teach its audience an infallible sense of morality. Literary conventions In the Victorian fin de siècle, the themes of degeneration and anxiety are expressed not only through the physical landscape which provided a backdrop for Gothic Literature, but also through the human body itself. Works such as Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan (1894), H. G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897) all explore themes of change, development, evolution, mutation, corruption and decay in relation to the human body and mind. These literary conventions were a direct reflection of many evolutionary, scientific, social and medical theories and advancements that emerged toward the end of the 19th century. Artistic conventions The works of the Decadents and the Aesthetes contain the hallmarks typical of fin de siècle art. Holbrook Jackson's The Eighteen Nineties describes the characteristics of English decadence, which are: perversity, artificiality, egoism, and curiosity. The first trait is the concern for the perverse, unclean, and unnatural. Romanticism encouraged audiences to view physical traits as indicative of one's inner self, whereas the fin de siècle artists accepted beauty as the basis of life, and so valued that which was not conventionally beautiful. This belief in beauty in the abject leads to the obsession with artifice and symbolism, as artists rejected ineffable ideas of beauty in favour of the abstract. Through symbolism, aesthetes could evoke sentiments and ideas in their audience without relying on an infallible general understanding of the world. The third trait of the culture is egoism, a term similar to that of "egomania", meaning disproportionate attention placed on one's own endeavours. This can result in a type of alienation and anguish, as in Baudelaire's case, and demonstrates how aesthetic artists chose cityscapes over country as a result of their aversion to the natural. Finally, curiosity is identifiable through diabolism and the exploration of the evil or immoral, focusing on the morbid and macabre, but without imposing any moral lessons on the audience. See also Belle Époque Decadent movement Futurism Gay Nineties Lost generation Symbolism (arts) References Further reading Schwartz, Hillel. Century's End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Siècle—From the 990s Through the 1990s. New York: Doubleday, 1990. External links Fin de Siècle at The British Library French words and phrases Literary modernism 19th century in France Cultural history of Europe

Counterculture

A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores. A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Countercultures differ from subcultures. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), and the globalized counterculture of the 1960s which consisted primarily of Hippies and Flower Children (ca. 1965–1975, peaking in 1967). Regarding this last group, when referring to themselves, counterculture will usually be capitalized and is often hyphenated as: Counter-Culture or Counter-culture. Definition and characteristics John Milton Yinger originated the term "contraculture" in his 1960 article in American Sociological Review. Yinger suggested the use of the term contraculture "wherever the normative system of a group contains, as a primary element, a theme of conflict with the values of the total society, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group's values, and wherever its norms can be understood only by reference to the relationships of the group to a surrounding dominant culture." Some scholars have attributed the counterculture to Theodore Roszak, author of The Making of a Counter Culture. It became prominent in the news media amid the social revolution that swept the Americas, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand during the 1960s. Scholars differ in the characteristics and specificity they attribute to "counterculture". "Mainstream" culture is of course also difficult to define, and in some ways becomes identified and understood through contrast with counterculture. Counterculture might oppose mass culture (or "media culture"), or middle-class culture and values. Counterculture is sometimes conceptualized in terms of generational conflict and rejection of older or adult values. Counterculture may or may not be explicitly political. It typically involves criticism or rejection of currently powerful institutions, with accompanying hope for a better life or a new society. It does not look favorably on party politics or authoritarianism. Cultural development can also be affected by way of counterculture. Scholars such as Joanne Martin and Caren Siehl, deem counterculture and cultural development as "a balancing act, [that] some core values of a counterculture should present a direct challenge to the core values of a dominant culture". Therefore, a prevalent culture and a counterculture should coexist in an uneasy symbiosis, holding opposite positions on valuable issues that are essentially important to each of them. According to this theory, a counterculture can contribute a plethora of useful functions for the prevalent culture, such as "articulating the foundations between appropriate and inappropriate behavior and providing a safe haven for the development of innovative ideas". During the late 1960s, hippies became the largest and most visible countercultural group in the United States. According to Sheila Whiteley, "recent developments in sociological theory complicate and problematize theories developed in the 1960s, with digital technology, for example, providing an impetus for new understandings of counterculture". Andy Bennett writes that "despite the theoretical arguments that can be raised against the sociological value of counterculture as a meaningful term for categorising social action, like subculture, the term lives on as a concept in social and cultural theory… [to] become part of a received, mediated memory". However, "this involved not simply the utopian but also the dystopian and that while festivals such as those held at Monterey and Woodstock might appear to embrace the former, the deaths of such iconic figures as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, the nihilistic mayhem at Altamont, and the shadowy figure of Charles Manson cast a darker light on its underlying agenda, one that reminds us that 'pathological issues [are] still very much at large in today's world". Literature The counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s generated its own unique brand of notable literature, including comics and cartoons, and sometimes referred to as the underground press. In the United States, this includes the work of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, and includes Mr. Natural; Keep on Truckin'; Fritz the Cat; Fat Freddy's Cat; Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers; the album cover art for Cheap Thrills; and in several countries contributions to International Times, The Village Voice, and Oz magazine. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, these comics and magazines were available for purchase in head shops along with items like beads, incense, cigarette papers, tie-dye clothing, Day-Glo posters, books, etc. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of these shops selling hippie items also became cafés where hippies could hang out, chat, smoke cannabis, read books, etc., e.g. Gandalf's Garden in the King's Road, London, which also published a magazine of the same name. Another such hippie/anarchist bookshop was Mushroom Books, tucked away in the Lace Market area of Nottingham. Media Some genres tend to challenge societies with their content that is meant to outright question the norms within cultures and even create change usually towards a more modern way of thought. More often than not, sources of these controversies can be found in art such as Marcel Duchamp whose piece Fountain was meant to be "a calculated attack on the most basic conventions of art" in 1917. Contentious artists like Banksy base most of their works off of mainstream media and culture to bring pieces that usually shock viewers into thinking about their piece in more detail and the themes behind them. A great example can be found in Dismaland, the biggest project of "anarchism" to be organised and exhibited which showcases multiple works such as an "iconic Disney princess's horse-drawn pumpkin carriage, [appearing] to re-enact the death of Princess Diana". Music Counterculture is very much evident in music particularly on the basis of the separation of genres into those considered acceptable and within the status quo and those not. Since many minority groups are already considered countercultural, the music they create and produce may reflect their sociopolitical realities and their musical culture may be adopted as a social expression of their counterculture. This is reflected in dancehall with the concept of base frequencies and base culture in Julian Henriques's "Sonic diaspora", where he expounds that "base denotes crude, debased, unrefined, vulgar, and even animal" for the Jamaican middle class and is associated with the "bottom-end, low frequencies…basic lower frequencies and embodied resonances distinctly inferior to the higher notes" that appear in dancehall. According to Henriques, "base culture is bottom-up popular, street culture, generated by an urban underclass surviving almost entirely outside the formal economy". That the music is low frequency sonically and regarded as reflective of a lower culture shows the influential connection between counterculture and the music produced. Although music may be considered base and counter culture, it may actually enjoy a lot of popularity which can be seen by the labelling of hip hop as a counterculture genre, despite it being one of the most commercially successful and high charting genres. Assimilation Many of these artists though once being taboo, have been assimilated into culture and are no longer a source of moral panic since they do not cross overtly controversial topics or challenge staples of current culture. Instead of being a topic to fear, they have initiated subtle trends that other artists and sources of media may follow. Digital counterculture Definition and theory Digital countercultures are online communities, and patterns of tech usage, that significantly deviate from mainstream culture. To understand the elements that shape digital countercultures, its best to start with Lingel's classifications of mainstream approaches to digital discourse: "[T]hat online activity relates to (dis)embodiment, that the Internet is a platform for authenticity and experimentation, and that web-based interactions are placeless." Disembodiment The basis for online disembodiment is that, contrary to the corporeal nature of offline interactions, a user's physical being does not have any relevance to their online interactions. However, for users whose physical existence is marginalized or shaped by counterculture (ex: gender identities outside the binary, ethnic minorities, punk culture/fashion), their lived experiences build a subjectivity that carries over into their online interactions. As put by Shaka McGlotten: "[T]he fluidity and playfulness of cyberspace and the intimacies it was supposed to afford have been punctuated by corporeality." Authenticity and experimentation Arguments that the Internet is a platform for authenticity and experimentation highlight its role in the creation or enhancement of identities. This approach asserts that norms of non-virtual social life restrict users' ability to express themselves fully in person, but online interactions eliminate these barriers and allow them to identify in new ways. One means by which this exploration takes place is online "identity tourism," which allows users to appropriate an identity without any of the offline, corporeal risks associated with that identity. A critique of this form of experimentation is that it gives the "tourist" a false impression that they understand the experiences and history of that identity, even if their Internet interactions are superficial. Moreover, it is especially harmful when used as a means to deceptively masquerade oneself to appeal to digital counterculture communities. However, especially for countercultures that are marginalized or demonized, experimentation can allow users to embrace an identity that they align with, but hide offline out of fear, and engage with that culture. Placelessness The final approach is on online communication as placeless, asserting that the consequences of geographic distance are rendered null and void by the Internet. Lingel argues that this approach is technologically determinist in its assumption that the placelessness provided by access to technology can single-handedly remedy structural inequality. Moreover, Mark Graham states that the persistence of spatial metaphors in describing the Internet's societal impact creates "a dualistic offline/online worldview [that] can depoliticize and mask the very real and uneven power relationships between different groups of people." Subscribing to this perceived depoliticization prevents an understanding of digital countercultures. Socio-cultural, power hierarchies on the Internet shape the mainstream, and without these mainstreams as a point of comparison, there are no grounds to define digital counterculture. Examples Marginalized communities often struggle to meet their needs on mainstream media. Jessa Lingel, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, had conducted field research on examples of digital counterculture as part of her studies. In her book Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, she focused on the Brooklyn Drag community and their battle for a Queerer Facebook to meet their specific needs of social media utilization. In the drag culture, there are many holiday and festivals such as Halloween, New Year's Eve, and Bushwig that they celebrate over a vibrant queer nightlife. While utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook to post and record their cultural events, the drag community has noticed the large schism between its "queerer and more countercultural community of drag queens" and Facebook's claimed global community. This gap is further realized through Facebook's change in the policy from "real-name" to "authentic-name" in 2015 when hundreds of drag queens' accounts were frozen and shut down because they had not registered with their legal names. Communities with "queerer culture" culture and "marginalized needs" continue to struggle to fulfill their social media needs while balancing their counterculture identity in today's social media landscape where the internet is largely monopolized by several big technology firms. LGBT Gay liberation (considered a precursor of various modern LGBT social movements) was known for its links to the counterculture of the time (e.g. groups like the Radical Faeries), and for the gay liberationists' intent to transform or abolish fundamental institutions of society such as gender and the nuclear family; in general, the politics were radical, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist in nature. In order to achieve such liberation, consciousness raising and direct action were employed. At the outset of the 20th century, homosexual acts were punishable offenses in these countries. The prevailing public attitude was that homosexuality was a moral failing that should be punished, as exemplified by Oscar Wilde's 1895 trial and imprisonment for "gross indecency". But even then, there were dissenting views. Sigmund Freud publicly expressed his opinion that homosexuality was "assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development". According to Charles Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis, there were already semi-public gay-themed gatherings by the mid-1930s in the United States (such as the annual drag balls held during the Harlem Renaissance). There were also bars and bathhouses that catered to gay clientele and adopted warning procedures (similar to those used by Prohibition-era speakeasies) to warn customers of police raids. But homosexuality was typically subsumed into bohemian culture, and was not a significant movement in itself. Eventually, a genuine gay culture began to take root, albeit very discreetly, with its own styles, attitudes and behaviors and industries began catering to this growing demographic group. For example, publishing houses cranked out pulp novels like The Velvet Underground that were targeted directly at gay people. By the early 1960s, openly gay political organizations such as the Mattachine Society were formally protesting abusive treatment toward gay people, challenging the entrenched idea that homosexuality was an aberrant condition, and calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Despite very limited sympathy, American society began at least to acknowledge the existence of a sizable population of gays. Disco music in large part rose out of the New York gay club scene of the early 1970s as a reaction to the stigmatization of gays and other outside groups such as blacks by the counterculture of that era. By later in the decade, disco was dominating the pop charts. The popular Village People and the critically acclaimed Sylvester had gay-themed lyrics and presentation. Another element of LGBT counter-culture that began in the 1970s—and continues today—is the lesbian land, landdyke movement, or womyn's land movement. Radical feminists inspired by the back-to-the-land initiative and migrated to rural areas to create communities that were often female-only and/or lesbian communes. "Free Spaces" are defined by Sociologist Francesca Polletta as "small-scale settings within a community or movement that are removed from the direct control of dominant groups, are voluntarily participated in, and generate the cultural challenge that precedes or accompanies political mobilization. Women came together in Free Spaces like music festivals, activist groups and collectives to share ideas with like-minded people and to explore the idea of the lesbian land movement. The movement is closely tied to eco-feminism. The four tenets of the Landdyke Movement are relationship with the land, liberation and transformation, living the politics, and bodily Freedoms. Most importantly, members of these communities seek to live outside of a patriarchal society that puts emphasis on "beauty ideals that discipline the female body, compulsive heterosexuality, competitiveness with other women, and dependence". Instead of adhering typical female gender roles, the women of Landdyke communities value "self-sufficiency, bodily strength, autonomy from men and patriarchal systems, and the development of lesbian-centered community". Members of the Landdyke movement enjoy bodily freedoms that have been deemed unacceptable in the modern Western world—such as the freedom to expose their breasts, or to go without any clothing at all. An awareness of their impact on the Earth, and connection to nature is essential members of the Landdyke Movement's way of life. The watershed event in the American gay rights movement was the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Following this event, gays and lesbians began to adopt the militant protest tactics used by anti-war and black power radicals to confront anti-gay ideology. Another major turning point was the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the official list of mental disorders. Although gay radicals used pressure to force the decision, Kaiser notes that this had been an issue of some debate for many years in the psychiatric community, and that one of the chief obstacles to normalizing homosexuality was that therapists were profiting from offering dubious, unproven "cures". The AIDS epidemic was initially an unexpected blow to the movement, especially in North America. There was speculation that the disease would permanently drive gay life underground. Ironically, the tables were turned. Many of the early victims of the disease had been openly gay only within the confines of insular "gay ghettos" such as New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's Castro; they remained closeted in their professional lives and to their families. Many heterosexuals who thought they did not know any gay people were confronted by friends and loved ones dying of "the gay plague" (which soon began to infect heterosexual people also). LGBT communities were increasingly seen not only as victims of a disease, but as victims of ostracism and hatred. Most importantly, the disease became a rallying point for a previously complacent gay community. AIDS invigorated the community politically to fight not only for a medical response to the disease, but also for wider acceptance of homosexuality in mainstream America. During the early 1980s what was dubbed "New Music", New wave, "New pop" popularized by MTV and associated with gender bending Second British Music Invasion stars such as Boy George and Annie Lennox became what was described by Newsweek at the time as an alternate mainstream to the traditional masculine/heterosexual rock music in the United States. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court officially declared all sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. History Bill Osgerby argues that: the counterculture's various strands developed from earlier artistic and political movements. On both sides of the Atlantic the 1950s "Beat Generation" had fused existentialist philosophy with jazz, poetry, literature, Eastern mysticism, and drugs—themes that were all sustained in the 1960s counterculture. United States In the United States, the counterculture of the 1960s became identified with the rejection of conventional social norms of the 1950s. Counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, especially with respect to racial segregation and initial widespread support for the Vietnam War, and, less directly, the Cold War—with many young people fearing that America's nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, coupled with its involvement in Vietnam, would lead to a nuclear holocaust. In the United States, widespread tensions developed in the 1960s in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the Vietnam War, race relations, sexual mores, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, and a materialist interpretation of the American Dream. White, middle class youth—who made up the bulk of the counterculture in Western countries—had sufficient leisure time, thanks to widespread economic prosperity, to turn their attention to social issues. These social issues included support for civil rights, women's rights, and LGBT rights movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. The counterculture also had access to a media which was eager to present their concerns to a wider public. Demonstrations for social justice created far-reaching changes affecting many aspects of society. Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States. Rejection of mainstream culture was best embodied in the new genres of psychedelic rock music, pop art, and new explorations in spirituality. Musicians who exemplified this era in the United Kingdom and United States included The Beatles, John Lennon,  Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Frank Zappa, The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin, The Who, Joni Mitchell, The Kinks, Sly and the Family Stone and, in their early years, Chicago. New forms of musical presentation also played a key role in spreading the counterculture, with large outdoor rock festivals being the most noteworthy. The climactic live statement on this occurred from August 15–18, 1969, with the Woodstock Music Festival held in Bethel, New York—with 32 of rock's and psychedelic rock's most popular acts performing live outdoors during the sometimes rainy weekend to an audience of half a million people. (Michael Lang stated 400,000 attended, half of which did not have a ticket.) It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history—with Rolling Stone calling it one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll. According to Bill Mankin, "It seems fitting… that one of the most enduring labels for the entire generation of that era was derived from a rock festival: the 'Woodstock Generation'." Songs, movies, TV shows, and other entertainment media with socially-conscious themes—some allegorical, some literal—became very numerous and popular in the 1960s. Counterculture-specific sentiments expressed in song lyrics and popular sayings of the period included things such as "do your own thing", "turn on, tune in, drop out", "whatever turns you on", "eight miles high", "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll", and "light my fire". Spiritually, the counterculture included interest in astrology, the term "Age of Aquarius" and knowing people's astrological signs of the Zodiac. This led Theodore Roszak to state "A eclectic taste for mystic, occult, and magical phenomena has been a marked characteristic of our post-war youth culture since the days of the beatniks." In the United States, even actor Charlton Heston contributed to the movement, with the statement "Don't trust anyone over thirty" (a saying coined in 1965 by activist Jack Weinberg) in the 1968 film Planet of the Apes; the same year, actress and social activist Jane Fonda starred in the sexually-themed Barbarella. Both actors opposed the Vietnam War during its duration, and Fonda would eventually become controversially active in the peace movement. The counterculture in the United States has been interpreted as lasting roughly from 1964 to 1972—coincident with America's involvement in Vietnam—and reached its peak in August 1969 at the Woodstock Festival, New York, characterized in part by the film Easy Rider (1969). Unconventional or psychedelic dress; political activism; public protests; campus uprisings; pacifist then loud, defiant music; recreational drugs; communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture—most of whose members were young, White, and middle class. In the United States, the movement divided the population. To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech, social equality, world peace, and the pursuit of happiness; to others, they reflected a self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive assault on the country's traditional moral order. Authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD, restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media. The counterculture has been argued to have diminished in the early 1970s, and some have attributed two reasons for this. First, it has been suggested that the most popular of its political goals—civil rights, civil liberties, gender equality, environmentalism, and the end of the Vietnam War—were "accomplished" (to at least some degree); and also that its most popular social attributes—particularly a "live and let live" mentality in personal lifestyles (including, but not limited to the "sexual revolution")—were co-opted by mainstream society. Second, a decline of idealism and hedonism occurred as many notable counterculture figures died, the rest settled into mainstream society and started their own families, and the "magic economy" of the 1960s gave way to the stagflation of the 1970s—the latter costing many in the middle-classes the luxury of being able to live outside conventional social institutions. The counterculture, however, continues to influence social movements, art, music, and society in general, and the post-1973 mainstream society has been in many ways a hybrid of the 1960s establishment and counterculture. The counterculture movement has been said to be rejuvenated in a way that maintains some similarities from the Counterculture of the 1960s, but it is different as well. Photographer Steve Schapiro investigated and documented these contemporary hippie communities from 2012 to 2014. He traveled the country with his son, attending festival after festival. These findings were compiled in Schapiro's book Bliss: Transformational Festivals & the Neo Hippie. One of his most valued findings was that these "Neo Hippies" experience and encourage such a spiritual commitment to the community. Australia Australia's countercultural trend followed the one burgeoning in the US, and to a lesser extent than the one in Great Britain. Political scandals in the country, such as the disappearance of Harold Holt, and the 1975 constitutional crisis, as well as Australia's involvement in Vietnam War, led to a disillusionment or disengagement with political figures and the government. Large protests were held in the country's most populated cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, one prominent march was held in Sydney in 1971 on George Street. The photographer Roger Scott, who captured the protest in front of the Queen Victoria Building, remarked: "I knew I could make a point with my camera. It was exciting. The old conservative world was ending and a new Australia was beginning. The demonstration was almost silent. The atmosphere was electric. The protesters were committed to making their presence felt … It was clear they wanted to show the government that they were mighty unhappy". Political upheaval made its way into art in the country: film, music and literature were shaped by the ongoing changes both within the country, the Southern Hemisphere and the rest of the world. Bands such as The Master's Apprentices, The Pink Finks and Normie Rowe & The Playboys, along with Sydney's The Easybeats, Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs and The Missing Links began to emerge in the 1960s. One of Australia's most noted literary voices of the counter-culture movement was Frank Moorhouse, whose collection of short stories, Futility and Other Animals, was first published in Sydney 1969. Its "discontinuous narrative" was said to reflect the "ambience of the counter-culture". Helen Garner's Monkey Grip (1977), released eight years later, is considered a classic example of the contemporary Australian novel, and captured the thriving countercultural movement in Melbourne's inner-city in the mid 1970s, specifically open relationships and recreational drug use. Years later, Garner revealed it was strongly autobiographical and based on her own diaries. Additionally, from the 1960s, surf culture took rise in Australia given the abundance of beaches in the country, and this was reflected in art, from bands such as The Atlantics and novels like Puberty Blues as well as the film of the same name. As delineations of gender and sexuality have been dismantled, counter-culture in contemporary Melbourne is heavily influenced by the LGBT club scene. Great Britain Starting in the late 1960s the counterculture movement spread quickly and pervasively from the US. Britain did not experience the intense social turmoil produced in America by the Vietnam War and racial tensions. Nevertheless, British youth readily identified with their American counterparts' desire to cast off the older generation's social mores. The new music was a powerful weapon. Rock music, which had first been introduced from the US in the 1950s, became a key instrument in the social uprisings of the young generation and Britain soon became a groundswell of musical talent thanks to groups like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Pink Floyd, and more in coming years. The antiwar movement in Britain closely collaborated with their American counterparts, supporting peasant insurgents in the Asian jungles. The "Ban the Bomb" protests centered around opposition to nuclear weaponry; the campaign gave birth to what was to become the peace symbol of the 1960s. Soviet Union Although not exactly equivalent to the English definition, the term Контркультура (Kontrkul'tura) became common in Soviet Union (Russian, Ukrainian underground and other) to define a 1990s cultural movement that promoted acting outside of cultural conventions: the use of explicit language; graphical descriptions of sex, violence and illicit activities; and uncopyrighted use of "safe" characters involved in such activities. During the early 1970s, the Soviet government rigidly promoted optimism in Russian culture. Divorce and alcohol abuse were viewed as taboo by the media. However, Russian society grew weary of the gap between real life and the creative world, and underground culture became "forbidden fruit". General satisfaction with the quality of existing works led to parody, such as how the Russian anecdotal joke tradition turned the setting of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy into a grotesque world of sexual excess. Another well-known example is black humor (mostly in the form of short poems) that dealt exclusively with funny deaths and/or other mishaps of small, innocent children. In the mid-1980s, the Glasnost policy permitted the production of less optimistic works. As a consequence, Soviet (and Russian) cinema during the late 1980s and the early 1990s manifested in action movies with explicit (but not necessarily graphic) scenes of ruthless violence and social dramas about drug abuse, prostitution and failing relationships. Although Russian movies of the time would be rated "R" in the United States due to violence, the use of explicit language was much milder than in American cinema. In the late 1990s, Soviet counterculture became increasingly popular on the Internet. Several websites appeared that posted user-created short stories dealing with sex, drugs and violence. The following features are considered the most popular topics in such works: Wide use of explicit language; Deliberate misspelling; Descriptions of drug use and consequences of abuse; Negative portrayals of alcohol use; Sex and violence: nothing is a taboo – in general, violence is rarely advocated, while all types of sex are considered good; Parody: media advertising, classic movies, pop culture and children's books are considered fair game; Non-conformance; and Politically incorrect topics, mostly racism, xenophobia and homophobia. A notable aspect of counterculture at the time was the influence of contra-cultural developments on Russian pop culture. In addition to traditional Russian styles of music, such as songs with jail-related lyrics, new music styles with explicit language were developed. Asia Sebastian Kappen, an Indian theologian, has tried to redefine counterculture in the Asian context. In March 1990, at a seminar in Bangalore, he presented his countercultural perspectives (chapter 4 in S. Kappen, Tradition, modernity, counterculture: an Asian perspective, Visthar, Bangalore, 1994). Kappen envisages counterculture as a new culture that has to negate the two opposing cultural phenomena in Asian countries: invasion by Western capitalist culture, and the emergence of revivalist movements. Kappen writes, "Were we to succumb to the first, we should be losing our identity; if to the second, ours would be a false, obsolete identity in a mental universe of dead symbols and delayed myths". The most important countercultural movement in India had taken place in the state of West Bengal during the 1960s by a group of poets and artists who called themselves Hungryalists. See also Alternative culture Alternative housing Alternative lifestyle Anti-establishment Avant-garde Beat generation Beatnik Bohemianism Bomb Culture Brand community Cannabis and LGBT culture Civil disobedience Non-conformists of the 1930s Counterculture of the 1960s Counter-economics Culture jamming Dialectic of Enlightenment Flag theory Flower power Freak scene Guerrilla theatre Hippie movement La Movida Madrileña Nambassa Neotribalism Nonconformity Paradigm shift Peace movement Psychedelic movement Punk subculture Radicalization Rebellion Revolution Second-wave feminism Subculture Timeline of 1960s counterculture Turn on, tune in, drop out Underground (British subculture) Ukrainian underground Underground culture User revolt References Bibliography Curl, John (2007), Memories of Drop City, The First Hippie Commune of the 1960s and the Summer of Love, a memoir, iUniverse. . https://web.archive.org/web/20090413150607/http://red-coral.net/DropCityIndex.html Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. (Vol. 7, pp. 123–245). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1905) Gelder, Ken (2007), Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice, London: Routledge. Goffman, Ken (2004), Counterculture through the ages Villard Books Heath, Joseph and Andrew Potter (2004) Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture Collins Books Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo (2009), Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture. University Press of Kansas. Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson (1991), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain, London: Routledge. Hazlehurst, Cameron and Kayleen M. Hazlehurst (1998), Gangs and Youth Subcultures: International Explorations, New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers. Hebdige, Dick (1979), Subculture: the Meaning of Style, London & New York: Routledge. Paul Hodkinson and Wolfgang Deicke (2007), Youth Cultures Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes, New York: Routledge. Macfarlane, Scott (2007),The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co Inc, & . McKay, George (1996), Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. London Verso. . Nelson, Elizabeth (1989), The British Counterculture 1966-73: A Study of the Underground Press. London: Macmillan. Roszak, Theodore (1968) The Making of a Counter Culture. Isadora Tast (2009), Mother India. Searching For a Place. Berlin: Peperoni Books, Whiteley, Sheila and Sklower, Jedediah (2014), Countercultures and Popular Music, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, . Беляев, И. А. Культура, субкультура, контркультура / И. А. Беляев, Н. А. Беляева // Духовность и государственность. Сборник научных статей. Выпуск 3; под ред. И. А. Беляева. — Оренбург: Филиал УрАГС в г. Оренбурге, 2002. — С. 5-18. Yinger, John Milton (1982). Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down. New York: Free Press. External links Dugald Baird, How International Times sparked a publishing revolution, The Guardian, 17 July 2009 "Perspectives", Vietnam magazine, World History Group, Leesburg, VA, (Aug. 2002):58-62. Majority–minority relations

Popular culture

Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art [cf. pop art] or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The primary driving forces behind popular culture, especially when speaking of Western popular cultures, are the mass media, mass appeal, marketing and capitalism; and it is produced by what philosopher Theodor Adorno refers to as the "culture industry". Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics. However, there are various ways to define pop culture. Because of this, popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting ways by different people across different contexts. It is generally viewed in contrast to other forms of culture such as folk culture, working-class culture, or high culture, and also from different academic perspectives such as psychoanalysis, structuralism, postmodernism, and more. The common pop-culture categories are entertainment (such as film, music, television, literature and video games), sports, news (as in people/places in the news), politics, fashion, technology, and slang. History In the past, folk culture functioned analogously to the popular culture of the masses and of the nations. The phrase "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier. Traditionally, popular culture was associated with poor education and with the lower classes, as opposed to the "official culture" and higher education of the upper classes. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain experienced social changes that resulted in increased literacy rates, and with the rise of capitalism and industrialization, people began to spend more money on entertainment, such as (commercialised) public houses and sports. Reading also gained traction. Labeling penny dreadfuls the Victorian equivalent of video games, The Guardian in 2016 described penny fiction as "Britain's first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young". A growing consumer culture and an increased capacity for travel via the newly invented railway (the first public railway, Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in north-east England in 1825) created both a market for cheap popular literature and the ability for its distribution on a large scale. The first penny serials were published in the 1830s to meet the growing demand. The stress on the distinction from "official culture" became more pronounced towards the end of the 19th century, a usage that became established by the interbellum period. From the end of World War II, following major cultural and social changes brought by mass media innovations, the meaning of "popular culture" began to overlap with the connotations of "mass culture", "media culture", "image culture", "consumer culture", and "culture for mass consumption". The abbreviated form "pop" for "popular", as in "pop music", dates from the late 1950s. Although the terms "pop" and "popular" are in some cases used interchangeably, and their meaning partially overlap, the term "pop" is narrower. Pop is specific to something containing qualities of mass appeal, while "popular" refers to what has gained popularity, regardless of its style. Definition According to author John Storey, there are various definitions of popular culture. The quantitative definition of culture has the problem that too much "high culture" (e.g., television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is also "popular". "Pop culture" is also defined as the culture that is "leftover" when we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle the boundaries, e.g., William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and George Orwell. A third definition equates pop culture with "mass culture" and ideas. This is seen as a commercial culture, mass-produced for mass consumption by mass media. From a Western European perspective, this may be compared to American culture. Alternatively, "pop culture" can be defined as an "authentic" culture of the people, but this can be problematic as there are many ways of defining the "people". Storey argued that there is a political dimension to popular culture; neo-Gramscian hegemony theory "sees popular culture as a site of struggle between the 'resistance' of subordinate groups in society and the forces of 'incorporation' operating in the interests of dominant groups in society". A postmodernist approach to popular culture would "no longer recognize the distinction between high and popular culture". Storey claims that popular culture emerged from the urbanization of the Industrial Revolution. Studies of Shakespeare (by Weimann, Barber, or Bristol, for example) locate much of the characteristic vitality of his drama in its participation in Renaissance popular culture, while contemporary practitioners like Dario Fo and John McGrath use popular culture in its Gramscian sense that includes ancient folk traditions (the commedia dell'arte for example). Popular culture is constantly evolving and occurs uniquely in place and time. It forms currents and eddies, and represents a complex of mutually interdependent perspectives and values that influence society and its institutions in various ways. For example, certain currents of pop culture may originate from, (or diverge into) a subculture, representing perspectives with which the mainstream popular culture has only limited familiarity. Items of popular culture most typically appeal to a broad spectrum of the public. Important contemporary contributions to understanding what popular culture means have been given by the German researcher Ronald Daus, who studies the impact of extra-European cultures in North America, Asia, and especially in Latin America. Levels Within the realm of popular culture, there exists an organizational culture. From its beginning, popular culture has revolved around classes in society and the push-back between them. Within popular culture, there are two levels that have emerged, high and low. High culture can be described as art and works considered of superior value, historically, aesthetically and socially. Low culture is regarded by some as that of the lower classes, historically. Folklore Adaptations based on traditional folklore provide a source of popular culture. This early layer of cultural mainstream still persists today, in a form separate from mass-produced popular culture, propagating by word of mouth rather than via mass media, e.g. in the form of jokes or urban legends. With the widespread use of the Internet from the 1990s, the distinction between mass media and word-of-mouth has become blurred. Although the folkloric element of popular culture engages heavily with the commercial element, communities amongst the public have their own tastes and they may not always embrace every cultural or subcultural item sold. Moreover, certain beliefs and opinions about the products of commercial culture may spread by word-of-mouth, and become modified in the process and in the same manner that folklore evolves. Criticism Popular culture in the West has been critiqued for being a system of commercialism that privileges products selected and mass-marketed by the upper-class capitalist elite; such criticisms are most notable in many Marxist theorists such as Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, bell hooks, Antonio Gramsci, Guy Debord, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, as well as certain postmodern philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard, who has written about the commercialisation of information under capitalism, and Jean Baudrillard, as well as others. The culture industry The most influential critiques of popular culture came from Marxist theorists of the Frankfurt School during the twentieth century. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer analyzed the dangers of the culture industry in their influential work the Dialectic of Enlightenment by drawing upon the works of Kant, Marx, Nietzsche and others. Capitalist popular culture, as Adorno argued, was not an authentic culture of the people but a system of homogenous and standardized products manufactured in the service of capitalist domination by the elite. The consumer demand for Hollywood films, pop tunes, and consumable books is influenced by capitalist industries like Hollywood and the elite who decide which commodities are to be promoted in the media, including television and print journalism. Adorno wrote, "The industry bows to the vote it has itself rigged". It is the elite who commodify products in accordance with their narrow ideological values and criteria, and Adorno argues that the audience becomes accustomed to these formulaic conventions, making intellectual contemplation impossible. Adorno's work has had a considerable influence on culture studies, philosophy, and the New Left. Writing in the New Yorker in 2014, music critic Alex Ross, argued that Adorno's work has a renewed importance in the digital age: "The pop hegemony is all but complete, its superstars dominating the media and wielding the economic might of tycoons...Culture appears more monolithic than ever, with a few gigantic corporations—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon—presiding over unprecedented monopolies". There is much scholarship on how Western entertainment industries strengthen transnational capitalism and reinforce Western cultural dominance. Hence, rather than being a local culture, commercial entertainment is artificially reinforced by transnational media corporations. Globalized pop culture can contribute to the homogenization of cultural identities, erasing or diluting diverse local traditions and practices in favor of standardized, marketable forms of entertainment and consumption. Jack Zipes, a professor of German and literature, critiqued the mass commercialization and corporate hegemony behind the Harry Potter franchise. He argued that the commodities of the culture industry are "popular" because they are homogenous and obey standard conventions; the media then influences the tastes of children. In his analysis of Harry Potter's global brand, Zipes wrote, "It must conform to the standards of exception set by the mass media and promoted by the culture industry in general. To be a phenomenon means that a person or commodity must conform to the hegemonic groups that determine what makes up a phenomenon." Imperialism According to John M. MacKenzie, many products of popular culture have been designed to promote imperialist ideologies and to glorify the British upper classes rather than present a democratic view of the world. Although there are many films which do not contain such propaganda, there have been many films that promote racism and militarist imperialism. Feminist critique bell hooks, an influential feminist, argues that commercial commodities and celebrities cannot be symbols of progressiveness when they collaborate with imperialist capitalism and promote ideals of beauty; hooks uses Beyoncé as an example of a commodity reinforced by capitalist corporations complicit in imperialism and patriarchy. Propaganda Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky critiqued the mass media in their 1988 work Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. They argue that mass media is controlled by a powerful hegemonic elite who are motivated by their own interests that determine and manipulate what information is present in the mainstream. The mass media is therefore a system of propaganda. Consumerism According to the postmodern sociologist Jean Baudrillard, the individual is trained into the duty of seeking the relentless maximization of pleasure lest he or she become asocial. Therefore, "enjoyment" and "fun" become indistinguishable from the need to consume. Whereas the Frankfurt School believed consumers were passive, Baudrillard argued that consumers were trained to consume products in the form of active labor in order to achieve upward social mobility. Thus, consumers under capitalism are trained to purchase products such as pop albums and consumable fiction in order to signal their devotion to social trends, fashions, and subcultures. Although the consumption may arise from an active choice, the choice is still the consequence of a social conditioning that the individual is unconscious of. Baudrillard says, "One is permanently governed by a code whose rules and meaning—constraints—like those of language—are, for the most part, beyond the grasp of individuals". Jean Baudrillard argued that the vague conception "Public Opinion" is a subjective and inaccurate illusion, for it attributes a sovereignty to consumers that they do not really have. In Baudrillard's understanding, the products of capitalist popular culture can only give the illusion of rebellion, since they are still produced by a system controlled by the powerful. Baudrillard stated in an interview, critiquing the content and production of The Matrix: Sources Print culture With the invention of the printing press in the sixteenth century, mass-produced, cheap books, pamphlets and periodicals became widely available to the public. With this, the transmission of common knowledge and ideas was possible. Radio culture In the 1890s, Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi created the radiotelegraph, allowing for the modern radio to be born. This led to the radio being able to influence a more "listened-to" culture, with individuals being able to feel like they have a more direct impact. This radio culture is vital, because it was imperative to advertising, and it introduced the commercial. Films Films and cinema are highly influential to popular culture, as films as an art form are what people seem to respond to the most. With moving pictures being first captured by Eadweard Muybridge in 1877, films have evolved into elements that can be cast into different digital formats, spreading to different cultures. The impact of films and cinema are most evident when analyzing in the search of what the films aim to portray. Films are used to seek acceptance and understanding of many subjects because of the influence the films carry—an example of an early representation of this can be seen in Casablanca (1942): the film introduced war subjects to the public after the United States entered World War II, and it meant to increase pro-war sentiment for the allies. Films are a known massive influencer to popular culture yet not all films create a movement that contributes enough to be part of the popular culture that starts movements. The content must resonate to most of the public so the knowledge in the material connects with the majority. Popular culture is a set of beliefs in trends and entail to change a person's set of ideologies and create social transformation. The beliefs are still a trend that change more rapidly in the modern age that carries a continuation of outpouring media and more specifically films. The trend does not last but it also carries a different effect based on individuals that can be grouped to generalized groups based on age and education. The creation of culture by films is seen in fandoms, religions, ideologies, and movements. The culture of film is more evident through social media. Social media is an instant source of feedback and creates discussion on films. A repeating event that has been set in modern culture within the trend setting phase is the creation of movements in social media platforms to defend a featured subject on a film. Popular culture or mass culture, is reached easily with films which are easily shared and reached worldwide. Television programs A television program is a segment of audiovisual content intended for broadcast (other than a commercial, trailer, or other content not serving as attraction for viewership). Television programs may be fictional (as in comedies and dramas), or non-fictional (as in documentary, light entertainment, news and reality television). They may be topical (as in the case of a local newscast and some made-for-television movies), or historical (as in the case of many documentaries and fictional series). They can be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy and game shows. Music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or "folk" music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of written music, although since the beginning of the recording industry, it is also disseminated through recordings. Traditional music forms such as early blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller, local audiences. Sports Sports include all forms of competitive physical activity or games which, through casual or organized participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants, and in some cases, entertainment for spectators. The connection between sports and popular culture is significant in recent times because there is an influx of sport history to keep track of, as sports journalists produce quality pieces, more sports museums are developed, and there are various radio, film, and television documentaries. Sport history has embraced popular culture as it has expanded its horizons on elite athletes and governing bodies, to the study of every day activities. It has broadened its perspective by connecting sports and athletes with class, gender, ethnicity, and disability. Sports are becoming more popular in the eyes of society, and impacting human culture as they get more invested in the game, and perhaps even play the sports themselves in their neighborhoods. Museums also show sports as popular culture, such as Stuart Clarke’s “The Homes of Football” photographic collection in the National Football Museum. Corporate branding Corporate branding refers to the practice of promoting the brand name of a corporate entity, as opposed to specific products or services. Personal branding Personal branding includes the use of social media to promotion to brands and topics to further good repute among professionals in a given field, produce an iconic relationship between a professional, a brand and its audience that extends networks past the conventional lines established by the mainstream and to enhance personal visibility. Popular culture: is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of the practices, beliefs, and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. As celebrities online identities are extremely important in order to create a brand to line-up sponsorships, jobs, and opportunities. As influencers, micro-celebrities, and users constantly need to find new ways to be unique or stay updated with trends, in order to maintain followers, views, and likes. For example, Ellen DeGeneres has created her own personal branding through her talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show. As she developed her brand we can see the branches she created to extend her fan base such as Ellen clothing, socks, pet beds, and more. Social media Social media is interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat are the most popular applications used on a daily basis by younger generations. Social media tends to be implemented into the daily routine of individuals in our current society. Social media is a vital part of our culture as it continues to impact the forms of communication used to connect with those in our communities, families, or friend groups. We often see that terms or slang are used online that is not used in face-to-face conversations, thus, adding to a persona users create through the screens of technology. For example, some individuals respond to situations with a hashtag or emojis. Social media influencers have become trendsetters through their direct engagement with large audiences, upending conventional marketing and advertising techniques. Consumer purchase choices have been impacted by fashion partnerships, sponsored material and outfit ideas offered by influencers. Social media has also made fashion more accessible by fostering uniqueness, expanding the depiction of trends, and facilitating the rise of niche influencers. The influencer-driven fashion industry, nevertheless, has also come under fire for encouraging excessive consumerism, inflated beauty ideals, and labour exploitation. Clothing The fashion industry has witnessed tremendous, rapid, and applaudable changes over the years, culminating in the production of masterpieces unimaginable in the past decades. This dynamic trend has compelled renowned clothing lines such as Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Balenciaga to intensify research and creative imagination to develop appealing designs that are outstanding and fascinating. Fashion has changed from the classical baggy and oversized pieces to trendy and slim-fit clothes for both males and females. Fashion trends and what has been considered popular have been directly influenced and affected by the environment and the state of the world. Dating back to the First and Second World Wars, clothing was designed for functionality as well as to be made in the cheapest way possible. This was due to collective preparation efforts through the conservation of materials. This trend can also be seen throughout the 1930s, or the Great Depression era of history. Due to the state of the economy, clothing yet again faced fundamental changes in shape and function. The term utility clothing was coined, meaning that fashion had taken a turn to more reserved silhouettes. For efficiency, handmade clothing became encouraged through government-backed campaigns. Post-war and continuing throughout the 1900s fashion began to take a more individualistic tone. Primarily marked by the turbulence of the 1960s and momentous social change, younger generations started to develop their own sense of style. Catapulting influences of things like different prints or patterns that can still be seen in the present day.The future of fashion is promising and is significantly inspired by past trends. Despite that influence, the fashion industry is moving towards a goal of sustainability. This is due to past actions of intense consumerism and fast fashion usage, as well as increasing environmental threats. The state of the economy continues to have a great effect on fashion, as consumers will be looking to make more of an investment in the items that they purchase, rather than participating in a constant cycle of buying. Sustainability is something that designers are actively pursuing as well. Connolly, a British menswear brand, is just one example of the many who are challenging designers and stylists to revamp and upcycle pieces of clothing from past collections.Further, the past few decades have seen the reintroduction of old designs, which have been revitalized and improvised to fit the current market needs. Additionally, celebrities and influencers are at the forefront of setting fashion trends through various platforms.Clothing will continue to act as an area for personal expression no matter the trends, constantly shaped by the world around us. Influences Pop culture has had a lasting influence to the products being released in their time. Many examples of art, books, films and others, have been inspired by pop culture. These include: Pop art Pop art is an art movement that first emerged in the 1950s as a reaction and a counter to traditional and high-class art by including common and well-known images and references. Artists known during this movement include Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, Larry Rivers, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Pop music Pop music is a wide-ranging genre of music whose characteristics include styles and tones that have a wider and more massive appeal to all kinds of consumers. Oftentimes, many examples of these music contain influences from other pre-existing works. The origins of popular music began in the late 1800s with the inventions of Edison’s phonograph and Berliner’s gramophone, both of which allowed for music to be available for purchase to the public rather than access to just the elites. Due to the almost nonexistent copyright laws, the early 1900s flourished with composers and publishers aiming to make and sell as much music as they could. The hub for this activity was a small area of New York known as Tin Pan Alley, which quickly became one of the major spots for popular music as the demand grew intensely. Technological advances in the 1940s only furthered the success and popularity of the genre. The reel-to-tape recorder was groundbreaking in terms of innovation and served as the baseline for many more transformations this genre and the music industry as a whole will endure. Along with the continued innovation of popular music, multiple subset genres emerged as the new faces of popular music, all with the foundation of jazz and blues. Some of those genres include Rock and Roll, Punk, and Hip Hop. Due to the increasing mainstream success of popular music, artists of the genre grew in fame and popularity. A few of the major singers and musicians of this genre include Michael Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Elvis Presley, Beatles, Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Popular music will continue to be shaped by, and evolve to fit the tastes and preferences of the public. Pop culture fiction Pop culture fiction is a genre in books, comics, films, shows, and many other story-telling media that depicts stories that are purposely filled with easter eggs and references to pop culture. The genre often overlaps with satire and parody, but the most-well known are considered to be more serious works of literature. Writers of this genre include Ernest Cline, Bret Easton Ellis, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Louis Bulaong. Pop culture studies Pop culture studies are researches thesis, and other academic works that analyzes various trends of pop and mass culture, pop icons, or the effects and influences of pop culture in society and history. Ray B. Browne is one of the first academicians to conduct courses on the studies about pop culture. See also Notes References Ashby, LeRoy. "The Rising of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch," OAH Magazine of History, 24 (April 2010), 11–14. Ashby, LeRoy. With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830 (2006). : Der deutsche Pop-Roman. Die neuen Archivisten (The German Pop-Novel. The new archivists), C.H. Beck, München 2002, . Bakhtin, M. M. and Michael Holquist, Vadim Liapunov, Kenneth Brostrom (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (University of Texas Press Slavic Series). Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Browne, Ray B. and Pat Browne, eds. The Guide to U.S. Popular Culture (2001), 1010 pages; essays by experts on many topics. Burke, Peter. "Popular Culture Reconsidered," Storia della Storiografia 1990, Issue 17, pp. 40–49. Freitag, Sandria B. "Popular Culture in the Rewriting of History: An Essay in Comparative History and Historiography," Journal of Peasant Studies, 1989, Vol. 16 Issue 3, pp. 169–198. Gans, Herbert J. Popular Culture and High Culture: an Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1974. xii, 179 p. Gerson, Stéphane. "' A World of Their Own': Searching for Popular Culture in the French Countryside," French Politics, Culture and Society, Summer 2009, Vol. 27 Issue 2, pp. 94–110 Golby, J. M. and A.W. Purdue, The civilisation of the crowd: popular culture in England, 1750–1900 (1985) online Griffin, Emma. "Popular Culture in Industrializing England," Historical Journal, (2002) 45#3 pp. 619–635. online , Historiography Hassabian, Anahid (1999). "Popular", Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, eds.: Horner, Bruce and Swiss, Thomas. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers. . Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, 2016: Globalized Muslim Youth in the Asia Pacific: Popular Culture in Singapore and Sydney, New York: Palgrave. . Knight, Robert H. The Age of Consent: the Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture. Dallas, Tex.: Spence Publishing Co., 1998. xxiv, 253, [1] p. Ross, Andrew. No Respect: Intellectuals & Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 1989. ix, 269 p. (pbk.) Seabrook, John. NoBrow : the culture of marketing the marketing of culture, New York: A.A. Knopf, 2000. . Storey, John (2006). Cultural theory and popular culture. Pearson Education. . Swirski, Peter (2010). Ars Americana Ars Politica: Partisan Expression in Contemporary American Literature and Culture. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press. . Swirski, Peter (2005). From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press. . On Religion and Popular Culture Further reading Duncan, Barry (1988). Mass Media and Popular Culture. Toronto, Ont.: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Canada. . Rosenberg, Bernard, and David Manning White, joint. eds. Mass Culture: the Popular Arts in America. [New York]: Free Press of Glencoe, 1957. Cowen, Tyler, "For Some Developing Countries, America's Popular Culture Is Resistible". The New York Times, 22 February 2007, sec. C, p. 3. Furio, Joanne, "The Significance of MTV and Rap Music in Popular Culture". The New York Times, 29 December 1991, sec. VI, p. 2. External links Media studies

Gender expression

Gender expression, or gender presentation, is a person's behavior, mannerisms, and appearance that are socially associated with gender, namely femininity or masculinity. Gender expression can also be defined as the external manifestation of one's gender identity through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice, or body characteristics. Typically, a person's gender expression is thought of in terms of masculinity and femininity, but an individual's gender expression may incorporate both feminine and masculine traits, or neither. A person's gender expression may or may not match their assigned sex at birth. This includes gender roles, and accordingly relies on cultural stereotypes about gender. It is distinct from gender identity. Terminology Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity (their internal sense of their own gender), but this is not always the case. Gender expression is separate and independent both from sexual orientation and sex assigned at birth. Gender identity can be expressed through behavior, clothing, hair, makeup, voice, body language and other aspects of one's external appearance. Gender expression does not always fall in line with a person's gender identity. A type of gender expression that is considered atypical for a person's externally perceived gender may be described as gender non-conforming. Gender expression can vary widely between individuals and cultures, and may not always align with traditional gender roles or expectations. Some people may express their gender in a way that is typically associated with the opposite sex, such as a man wearing a dress or a woman having short hair and wearing masculine clothing. Others may prefer a gender-neutral or androgynous appearance, or may choose to present differently depending on the situation or context. In men and boys, typical or masculine gender expression is often described as manly, while atypical or feminine expression is known as effeminate. In girls and young women, atypically masculine expression is called tomboyish. In lesbian and queer women, masculine and feminine expressions are known as butch and femme respectively. A mixture of typical and atypical expression may be described as androgynous. The term gender expression is used in the Yogyakarta Principles, which concern the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics. The term also designates a criterion for human rights protection in certain countries, including Canada. Versus sexual orientation While gender expression does not necessarily connect to sexuality, individuals often are misinterpreted as more masculine if lesbian and more feminine if gay, regardless of the individual's gender expression. These beliefs can lead to people misinterpreting an individual's gender expression based on their sexuality. Studies on adolescents conducted by Stacey Horn, showed that gay and lesbian individuals who did not express themselves as their assigned gender were seen as less acceptable. Individuals who expressed themselves with their assigned gender typically faced less social harassment and discrimination. On the other hand, heterosexual males whose gender expression was more feminine than masculine were the most discriminated against. "The heterosexual matrix" theory created by gender theorist Judith Butler posits that people often assume someone's sexuality based on their visible gender and sex. Lisa Disch states that it explains why people tend to assume someone's gender expression based on their sex and sexuality. Some sexologists, especially earlier on in the 20th century, viewed gay men and lesbians as "gender inverts". This idea was seen in figures in 1950s New York gay culture: effeminate men referred to as "fairies", as well as butch lesbians. Drag shows also can be considered a way that modifying one's gender expression can indicate their sexuality, though this is not always the case. Some research proved a similar idea, showing that homosexual people are generally more gender nonconforming than heterosexual people, and gender nonconformity throughout life can be an indicator of sexuality. Discrimination People sometimes face discrimination because of their gender expression. Victims of discrimination often culturally express different genders than their gender identity or biological sex. Gender expression-based discrimination can be independent of sexual orientation, and it can lead to bullying, childhood abuse, sexual assault, discrimination, and various other traumatizing hardships. Discrimination based on sexual orientation can be connected to a person's gender expression. Scholars say it is difficult to separate the connection between anti-LGBTQ discrimination and gender expression, especially when the expression differs from the person's assigned gender at birth. In a study done by Steph M. Anderson, she found that in discriminatory situations, participants' gender affected whether or not they were perceived as LGBTQ. People whose expression aligned with their assigned gender felt less of an impact than those whose expression did not align with their assigned gender. When it comes to health care, one study shows that people with a non-normative gender expression experienced biases during their care. For example, lesbians who presented femininely may be more comfortable in healthcare spaces than people whose expression does not match their assigned gender. Some gender non-conforming people in the study expressed feelings that having one's gender or sexuality assumed because of their expression limited their comfort and access to healthcare. Gender expression is a sizable aspect of how a person views themselves, and thus will impact self confidence. When an individual is forced, for personal or societal influences, to portray themselves in a manner they do not personally identify with, confidence can be greatly hindered in turn damaging mental health. A 2017 study reported that when masculine presenting lesbians are made to dress in a feminine style, their confidence suffers greatly. Related terms Other, rarer terms exist for aspects of gender expression. In academic sources, a feminine gender expression in a male (of any orientation) may be called gynemimesis (adjective: gynemimetic). The converse is andromimesis (adj.: andromimetic). See also Anti-gender movement Bem Sex-Role Inventory Discrimination against non-binary people Queer heterosexuality Cross-dressing Drag (clothing) Dual-role transvestism Feminization (activity) Gender bender Otokonoko Outline of transgender topics Transsexual Transvestite Travesti (theatre) References Bibliography Anderson, Steph M (2020). "Gender Matters: The Perceived Role of Gender Expression in Discrimination Against Cisgender and Transgender LGBQ Individuals". Psychology of Women Quarterly. Hillman, Betty Luther (2011). " "The most profoundly revolutionary act a homosexual can engage in": Drag and the Politics of Gender Presentation in the San Francisco Gay Liberation Movement, 1964–1972 ". Journal of the History of Sexuality. Klára Bártová; Zuzana Štěrbová; Marco Antonio Correa Varella; Jaroslava Varella Valentova (2020). "Femininity in men and masculinity in women is positively related to sociosexuality". Personality and Individual Differences. Serano, Julia (2016). Whipping Girl: A transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity (2nd ed.), Berkeley, CA: Seal Press. External links "There Is No Perfect Word: A Transgender Glossary of Sorts" by Julia Serano Gender Analysis: Transition as gender freedom, by Zinnia Jones, 1 December 2014 Gender Analysis: Identifying with a gender vs. reaffirming gender stereotypes, by Zinnia Jones, 1 June 2017 The Gender Unicorn – Trans Student Educational Resources Gender roles Gender identity

Dimensions of globalization

Manfred Steger, professor of Global Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa argues that globalization has four main dimensions: economic, political, cultural, ecological, with ideological aspects of each category. David Held's book Global Transformations is organized around the same dimensions, though the ecological is not listed in the title. This set of categories relates to the four-domain approach of circles of social life, and Circles of Sustainability. Steger compares the current study of globalization to the ancient Buddhist parable of blind scholars and their first encounter with an elephant. Similar to the blind scholars, some globalization scholars are too focused on compacting globalization into a singular process and clashes over “which aspect of social life constitutes its primary domain” prevail. Dimensions Economic Economic globalization is the intensification and stretching of economic interrelations around the globe. It encompasses such things as the emergence of a new global economic order, the internationalization of trade and finance, the changing power of transnational corporations, and the enhanced role of international economic institutions. Political Political globalization is the intensification and expansion of political interrelations around the globe. Aspects of political globalization include the modern-nation state system and its changing place in today's world, the role of global governance, and the direction of our global political systems. Cultural Cultural globalization is the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe. Culture is a very broad concept and has many facets, but in the discussion on globalization, Steger means it to refer to “the symbolic construction, articulation, and dissemination of meaning.” Topics under this heading include discussion about the development of a global culture, or lack thereof, the role of the media in shaping our identities and desires, and the globalization of languages. Ecological Topics of ecological globalization include population growth, access to food, worldwide reduction in biodiversity, the gap between rich and poor as well as between the global North and global South, human-induced climate change, and global environmental degradation. Ideologies According to Steger, there are three main types of globalisms (ideologies that endow the concept of globalization with particular values and meanings): market globalism, justice globalism, and religious globalisms. Steger defines them as follows: Market globalism seeks to endow ‘globalization’ with free-market norms and neoliberal meanings. Justice globalism constructs an alternative vision of globalization based on egalitarian ideals of global solidarity and distributive justice. Religious globalisms struggle against both market globalism and justice globalism as they seek to mobilize a religious values and beliefs that are thought to be under severe attack by the forces of secularism and consumerism. These ideologies of globalization (or globalisms) then relate to broader imaginaries and ontologies. See also Cultural globalization Globalism Globalization References Notes Globalization

Human sexuality

Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied with historical contexts over time, it lacks a precise definition. The biological and physical aspects of sexuality largely concern the human reproductive functions, including the human sexual response cycle. Someone's sexual orientation is their pattern of sexual interest in the opposite and/or same sex. Physical and emotional aspects of sexuality include bonds between individuals that are expressed through profound feelings or physical manifestations of love, trust, and care. Social aspects deal with the effects of human society on one's sexuality, while spirituality concerns an individual's spiritual connection with others. Sexuality also affects and is affected by cultural, political, legal, philosophical, moral, ethical, and religious aspects of life. Interest in sexual activity normally increases when an individual reaches puberty. Although no single theory on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, there is considerably more evidence supporting nonsocial causes of sexual orientation than social ones, especially for males. Hypothesized social causes are supported by only weak evidence, distorted by numerous confounding factors. This is further supported by cross-cultural evidence, because cultures that are tolerant of homosexuality do not have significantly higher rates of it. Evolutionary perspectives on human coupling, reproduction and reproduction strategies, and social learning theory provide further views of sexuality. Sociocultural aspects of sexuality include historical developments and religious beliefs. Some cultures have been described as sexually repressive. The study of sexuality also includes human identity within social groups, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and birth control methods. Development Sexual orientation There is considerably more evidence supporting innate causes of sexual orientation than learned ones, especially for males. This evidence includes the cross-cultural correlation of homosexuality and childhood gender nonconformity, moderate genetic influences found in twin studies, evidence for prenatal hormonal effects on brain organization, the fraternal birth order effect, and the finding that in rare cases where infant males were raised as girls due to physical differences or deformity, they nevertheless turned out attracted to females. Hypothesized social causes are supported by only weak evidence, distorted by numerous confounding factors. Cross-cultural evidence also leans more toward non-social causes. Cultures that are very tolerant of homosexuality do not have significantly higher rates of it. Homosexual behavior is relatively common among boys in British single-sex boarding schools, but adult Britons who attended such schools are no more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than those who did not. In an extreme case, the Sambia people ritually require their boys to engage in homosexual behavior during adolescence before they have any access to females, yet most of these boys become heterosexual. It is not fully understood why genes causing homosexuality persist in the gene pool. One hypothesis involves kin selection, suggesting that homosexuals invest heavily enough in their relatives to offset the cost of not reproducing as much directly. This has not been supported by studies in Western cultures, but several studies in Samoa have found some support for this hypothesis. Another hypothesis involves sexually antagonistic genes, which cause homosexuality when expressed in males but increase reproduction when expressed in females. Studies in both Western and non-Western cultures have found support for this hypothesis. Gender differences Psychological theories exist regarding the development and expression of gender differences in human sexuality. A number of them (including neo-analytic theories, sociobiological theories, social learning theory, social role theory, and script theory) agree in predicting that men should be more approving of casual sex (sex happening outside a stable, committed relationship such as marriage) and should also be more promiscuous (have a higher number of sexual partners) than women. These theories are mostly consistent with observed differences in males' and females' attitudes toward casual sex before marriage in the United States. Other aspects of human sexuality, such as sexual satisfaction, incidence of oral sex, and attitudes toward homosexuality and masturbation, show little to no observed difference between males and females. Observed gender differences regarding the number of sexual partners are modest, with males tending to have slightly more than females. Biological and physiological aspects Like other mammals, humans are primarily grouped into either the male or female sex. The biological aspects of humans' sexuality deal with the reproductive system, the sexual response cycle, and the factors that affect these aspects. They also deal with the influence of biological factors on other aspects of sexuality, such as organic and neurological responses, heredity, hormonal issues, gender issues, and sexual dysfunction. Physical anatomy and reproduction Males and females are anatomically similar; this extends to some degree to the development of the reproductive system. As adults, they have different reproductive mechanisms that enable them to perform sexual acts and to reproduce. Men and women react to sexual stimuli in a similar fashion with minor differences. Women have a monthly reproductive cycle, whereas the male sperm production cycle is more continuous. Brain The hypothalamus is the most important part of the brain for sexual functioning. This is a small area at the base of the brain consisting of several groups of nerve cell bodies that receives input from the limbic system. Studies have shown that within lab animals, the destruction of certain areas of the hypothalamus causes the elimination of sexual behavior. The hypothalamus is important because of its relationship to the pituitary gland, which lies beneath it. The pituitary gland secretes hormones that are produced in the hypothalamus and itself. The four important sexual hormones are oxytocin, prolactin, follicle-stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone. Oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the "love hormone", is released in both sexes during sexual intercourse when an orgasm is achieved. Oxytocin has been suggested as critical to the thoughts and behaviors required to maintain close relationships. The hormone is also released in women when they give birth or are breastfeeding. Prolactin and oxytocin are responsible for inducing milk production in women. Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is responsible for ovulation in women, and acts by triggering egg maturity; in men it stimulates sperm production. Luteinizing hormone (LH) triggers ovulation, which is the release of a mature egg. Male anatomy and reproductive system Males have both internal and external genitalia that are responsible for procreation and sexual intercourse. Production of spermatozoa (sperm) is also cyclic, but unlike the female ovulation cycle, the sperm production cycle is constantly producing millions of sperm daily. External male anatomy The external male genitalia are the penis and the scrotum. The penis provides a passageway for sperm and urine. The penis consists of nerves, blood vessels, fibrous tissue, and three parallel cylinders of spongy tissue. Other components of the penis include the shaft, glans, root, cavernous bodies, and spongy body. The three cylindrical bodies of spongy tissue, which are filled with blood vessels, run along the length of the shaft. The two bodies that lie side by side in the upper portion of the penis are the corpora cavernosa (cavernous bodies). The third, called the corpus spongiosum (spongy body), is a tube that lies centrally beneath the others and expands at the end to form the tip of the penis (glans). During arousal, these bodies erect the penis by filling with blood. The raised rim at the border of the shaft and glans is called the corona. The urethra connects the urinary bladder to the penis where urine exits the penis through the urethral meatus. The urethra eliminates urine and acts as a channel for semen and sperm to exit the body during sexual intercourse. The root consists of the expanded ends of the cavernous bodies, which fan out to form the crura and attach to the pubic bone and the expanded end of the spongy body. The bulb of the penis is surrounded by the bulbospongiosus muscle, while the corpora cavernosa are surrounded by the ischiocavernosus muscles. These aid urination and ejaculation. The penis has a foreskin that typically covers the glans; this is sometimes removed by circumcision for medical, religious or cultural reasons. In the scrotum, the testicles are held away from the body, one possible reason for this is so sperm can be produced in an environment slightly lower than normal body temperature. The penis has very little muscular tissue, and this exists in its root. The shaft and glans have no muscle fibers. Unlike most other primates, male humans lack a penile bone. Internal male anatomy Male internal reproductive structures are the testicles, the duct system, the prostate and seminal vesicles, and the Cowper's gland. The testicles (male gonads), are where sperm and male hormones are produced. Millions of sperm are produced daily in several hundred seminiferous tubules. Cells called the Leydig cells lie between the tubules; these produce hormones called androgens; these consist of testosterone and inhibin. The testicles are held by the spermatic cord, which is a tubelike structure containing blood vessels, nerves, the vas deferens, and a muscle that helps to raise and lower the testicles in response to temperature changes and sexual arousal, in which the testicles are drawn closer to the body. Sperm gets transported through a four-part duct system. The first part of this system is the epididymis. The testicles converge to form the seminiferous tubules, coiled tubes at the top and back of each testicle. The second part of the duct system is the vas deferens, a muscular tube that begins at the lower end of the epididymis. The vas deferens passes upward along the side of the testicles to become part of the spermatic cord. The expanded end is the ampulla, which stores sperm before ejaculation. The third part of the duct system is the ejaculatory ducts, which are -long paired tubes that pass through the prostate gland, where semen is produced. The prostate gland is a solid, chestnut-shaped organ that surrounds the first part of the urethra, which carries urine and semen. Similar to the female G-spot, the prostate provides sexual stimulation and can lead to orgasm through anal sex. The prostate gland and the seminal vesicles produce seminal fluid that is mixed with sperm to create semen. The prostate gland lies under the bladder and in front of the rectum. It consists of two main zones: the inner zone that produces secretions to keep the lining of the male urethra moist and the outer zone that produces seminal fluids to facilitate the passage of semen. The seminal vesicles secrete fructose for sperm activation and mobilization, prostaglandins to cause uterine contractions that aid movement through the uterus, and bases that help neutralize the acidity of the vagina. The Cowper's glands, or bulbourethral glands, are two pea-sized structures beneath the prostate. Female anatomy and reproductive system External female anatomy The external female genitalia are the vulva. The mons pubis is a soft layer of fatty tissue overlaying the pubic bone. Following puberty, this area grows in size. It has many nerve endings and is sensitive to stimulation. The labia minora and labia majora are collectively known as the labia or "lips". The labia majora are two elongated folds of skin extending from the mons to the perineum. Its outer surface becomes covered with hair after puberty. In between the labia majora are the labia minora, two hairless folds of skin that meet above the clitoris to form the clitoral hood, which is highly sensitive to touch. The labia minora become engorged with blood during sexual stimulation, causing them to swell and turn red. The labia minora are composed of connective tissues that are richly supplied with blood vessels which cause a pinkish appearance. Near the anus, the labia minora merge with the labia majora. In a sexually unstimulated state, the labia minora protects the vaginal and urethral opening by covering them. At the base of the labia minora are the Bartholin's glands, which add a few drops of an alkaline fluid to the vagina via ducts; this fluid helps to counteract the acidity of the outer vagina since sperm cannot live in an acidic environment. The Skene's glands are possibly responsible for secreting fluid during female ejaculation. The clitoris is developed from the same embryonic tissue as the penis; it or its glans alone consists of as many (or more in some cases) nerve endings as the human penis or glans penis, making it extremely sensitive to touch. The clitoral glans, which is a small, elongated erectile structure, has only one known function—sexual sensations. It is the female's most sensitive erogenous zone and the main source of orgasm in women. Thick secretions called smegma collect around the clitoris. The vaginal opening and the urethral opening are only visible when the labia minora are parted. These openings have many nerve endings that make them sensitive to touch. They are surrounded by a ring of sphincter muscles called the bulbocavernosus muscle. Underneath this muscle and on opposite sides of the vaginal opening are the vestibular bulbs, which help the vagina grip the penis by swelling with blood during arousal. Within the vaginal opening is the hymen, a thin membrane that partially covers the opening in many virgins. Rupture of the hymen has been historically considered the loss of one's virginity, though, by modern standards, loss of virginity is considered to be the first sexual intercourse. The hymen can be ruptured by activities other than sexual intercourse. The urethral opening connects to the bladder with the urethra; it expels urine from the bladder. This is located below the clitoris and above the vaginal opening. The breasts are the subcutaneous tissues on the front thorax of the female body. Though they are not technically part of a woman's sexual anatomy, they do have roles in both sexual pleasure and reproduction. Breasts are modified sweat glands made up of fibrous tissues and fat that provide support and contain nerves, blood vessels, and lymphatic vessels. Their main purpose is to provide milk to a developing infant. Breasts develop during puberty in response to an increase in estrogen. Each adult breast consists of 15 to 20 milk-producing mammary glands, irregularly shaped lobes that include alveolar glands and a lactiferous duct leading to the nipple. The lobes are separated by dense connective tissues that support the glands and attach them to the tissues on the underlying pectoral muscles. Other connective tissue, which forms dense strands called suspensory ligaments, extends inward from the skin of the breast to the pectoral tissue to support the weight of the breast. Heredity and the quantity of fatty tissue determine the size of the breasts. Men typically find female breasts attractive and this holds true for a variety of cultures. In women, stimulation of the nipple seems to result in activation of the brain's genital sensory cortex (the same region of the brain activated by stimulation of the clitoris, vagina, and cervix). This may be why many women find nipple stimulation arousing and why some women are able to orgasm by nipple stimulation alone. Internal female anatomy The female internal reproductive organs are the vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. The vagina is a sheath-like canal that extends from the vulva to the cervix. It receives the penis during intercourse and serves as a depository for sperm. The vagina is also the birth canal; it can expand to during labor and delivery. The vagina is located between the bladder and the rectum. The vagina is normally collapsed, but during sexual arousal it opens, lengthens, and produces lubrication to allow the insertion of the penis. The vagina has three layered walls; it is a self-cleaning organ with natural bacteria that suppress the production of yeast. The G-spot, named after the Ernst Gräfenberg who first reported it in 1950, may be located in the front wall of the vagina and may cause orgasms. This area may vary in size and location between women; in some it may be absent. Various researchers dispute its structure or existence or regard it as an extension of the clitoris. The uterus or womb is a hollow, muscular organ where a fertilized egg (ovum) will implant itself and grow into a fetus. The uterus lies in the pelvic cavity between the bladder and the bowel, and above the vagina. It is usually positioned in a 90-degree angle tilting forward, although in about 20% of women it tilts backwards. The uterus has three layers; the innermost layer is the endometrium, where the egg is implanted. During ovulation, this thickens for implantation. If implantation does not occur, it is sloughed off during menstruation. The cervix is the narrow end of the uterus. The broad part of the uterus is the fundus. During ovulation, the ovum travels down the fallopian tubes to the uterus. These extend about from both sides of the uterus. Finger-like projections at the ends of the tubes brush the ovaries and receive the ovum once it is released. The ovum then travels for three to four days to the uterus. After sexual intercourse, sperm swim up this funnel from the uterus. The lining of the tube and its secretions sustain the egg and the sperm, encouraging fertilization and nourishing the ovum until it reaches the uterus. If the ovum divides after fertilization, identical twins are produced. If separate eggs are fertilized by different sperm, the mother gives birth to non-identical or fraternal twins. The ovaries (female gonads), develop from the same embryonic tissue as the testicles. The ovaries are suspended by ligaments and are the source where ova are stored and developed before ovulation. The ovaries also produce female hormones progesterone and estrogen. Within the ovaries, each ovum is surrounded by other cells and contained within a capsule called a primary follicle. At puberty, one or more of these follicles are stimulated to mature on a monthly basis. Once matured, these are called Graafian follicles. The female reproductive system does not produce the ova; about 60,000 ova are present at birth, only 400 of which will mature during the woman's lifetime. Ovulation is based on a monthly cycle; the 14th day is the most fertile. On days one to four, menstruation and production of estrogen and progesterone decreases, and the endometrium starts thinning. The endometrium is sloughed off for the next three to six days. Once menstruation ends, the cycle begins again with an FSH surge from the pituitary gland. Days five to thirteen are known as the pre-ovulatory stage. During this stage, the pituitary gland secretes follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). A negative feedback loop is enacted when estrogen is secreted to inhibit the release of FSH. Estrogen thickens the endometrium of the uterus. A surge of luteinizing hormone (LH) triggers ovulation. On day 14, the LH surge causes a Graafian follicle to surface the ovary. The follicle ruptures and the ripe ovum is expelled into the abdominal cavity. The fallopian tubes pick up the ovum with the fimbria. The cervical mucus changes to aid the movement of sperm. On days 15 to 28—the post-ovulatory stage, the Graafian follicle—now called the corpus luteum—secretes estrogen. Production of progesterone increases, inhibiting LH release. The endometrium thickens to prepare for implantation, and the ovum travels down the fallopian tubes to the uterus. If the ovum is not fertilized and does not implant, menstruation begins. Sexual response cycle The sexual response cycle is a model that describes the physiological responses that occur during sexual activity. This model was created by William Masters and Virginia Johnson. According to Masters and Johnson, the human sexual response cycle consists of four phases; excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution, also called the EPOR model. During the excitement phase of the EPOR model, one attains the intrinsic motivation to have sex. The plateau phase is the precursor to orgasm, which may be mostly biological for men and mostly psychological for women. Orgasm is the release of tension, and the resolution period is the unaroused state before the cycle begins again. The male sexual response cycle starts in the excitement phase; two centers in the spine are responsible for erections. Vasoconstriction in the penis begins, the heart rate increases, the scrotum thickens, the spermatic cord shortens, and the testicles become engorged with blood. In the plateau phase, the penis increases in diameter, the testicles become more engorged, and the Cowper's glands secrete pre-seminal fluid. The orgasm phase, during which rhythmic contractions occur every 0.8 seconds, consists of two phases; the emission phase, in which contractions of the vas deferens, prostate, and seminal vesicles encourage ejaculation, which is the second phase of orgasm. Ejaculation is called the expulsion phase; it cannot be reached without an orgasm. In the resolution phase, the male is now in an unaroused state consisting of a refractory (rest) period before the cycle can begin. This rest period may increase with age. The female sexual response begins with the excitement phase, which can last from several minutes to several hours. Characteristics of this phase include increased heart and respiratory rate, and an elevation of blood pressure. Flushed skin or blotches of redness may occur on the chest and back; breasts increase slightly in size and nipples may become hardened and erect. The onset of vasocongestion results in swelling of the clitoris, labia minora, and vagina. The muscle that surrounds the vaginal opening tightens and the uterus elevates and grows in size. The vaginal walls begin to produce a lubricating liquid. The second phase, called the plateau phase, is characterized primarily by the intensification of the changes begun during the excitement phase. The plateau phase extends to the brink of orgasm, which initiates the resolution stage; the reversal of the changes begun during the excitement phase. During the orgasm stage the heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and breathing rates peak. The pelvic muscle near the vagina, the anal sphincter, and the uterus contract. Muscle contractions in the vaginal area create a high level of pleasure, though all orgasms are centered in the clitoris. Sexual dysfunction and sexual problems Sexual disorders, according to the DSM-IV-TR, are disturbances in sexual desire and psycho-physiological changes that characterize the sexual response cycle and cause marked distress and interpersonal difficulty. Sexual dysfunctions are a result of physical or psychological disorders. Physical causes include hormonal imbalance, diabetes, heart disease and more; psychological causes include but are not limited to stress, anxiety, and depression. Sexual dysfunction affects both men and women. There are four major categories of sexual problems in women: desire disorders, arousal disorders, orgasmic disorders, and sexual pain disorders. Sexual desire disorder occurs when an individual lacks sexual desire because of hormonal changes, depression, and pregnancy. Arousal disorder is a female sexual dysfunction leading to a lack of vaginal lubrication. In addition, blood flow problems may affect arousal disorder. Lack of orgasm, also known as anorgasmia, is another sexual dysfunction in women. The last sexual disorder is painful intercourse, which can be caused by factors including pelvic mass, scar tissue, and sexually transmitted infections. Three common sexual disorders for men are sexual desire disorder, ejaculation disorder, and erectile dysfunction. Lack of sexual desire in men may be caused by physical issues like low testosterone or psychological factors such as anxiety and depression. Ejaculation disorders include retrograde ejaculation, retarded ejaculation, and premature ejaculation. Erectile dysfunction is an inability to initiate and maintain an erection during intercourse. Psychological aspects As one form of behavior, the psychological aspects of sexual expression have been studied in the context of emotional involvement, gender identity, intersubjective intimacy, and Darwinian reproductive efficacy. Sexuality in humans generates profound emotional and psychological responses. Some theorists identify sexuality as the central source of human personality. Psychological studies of sexuality focus on psychological influences that affect sexual behavior and experiences. Early psychological analyses were carried out by Sigmund Freud, who believed in a psychoanalytic approach. He also proposed the concepts of psychosexual development and the Oedipus complex, among other theories. Gender identity is a person's sense of their own gender, whether male, female, or non-binary. Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a person's social identity in relation to other members of society. Sexual behavior and intimate relationships are strongly influenced by a person's sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex, same sex, or both sexes. Heterosexual people are romantically/sexually attracted to the members of the opposite sex, gay and lesbian people are romantically/sexually attracted to people of the same sex, and those who are bisexual are romantically/sexually attracted to both sexes. The idea that homosexuality results from reversed gender roles is reinforced by the media's portrayal of gay men as feminine and lesbians as masculine. However, a person's conformity or non-conformity to gender stereotypes does not always predict sexual orientation. Society believes that if a man is masculine, he is heterosexual, and if a man is feminine, he is homosexual. There is no strong evidence that a homosexual or bisexual orientation must be associated with atypical gender roles. By the early 21st century, homosexuality was no longer considered to be a pathology. Theories have linked many factors, including genetic, anatomical, birth order, and hormones in the prenatal environment, to homosexuality. Other than the need to procreate, there are many other reasons people have sex. According to one study conducted on college students (Meston & Buss, 2007), the four main reasons for sexual activities are physical attraction, as a means to an end, to increase emotional connection, and to alleviate insecurity. Sexuality and age Child sexuality Until Sigmund Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905, children were often regarded as asexual, having no sexuality until later development. Sigmund Freud was one of the first researchers to take child sexuality seriously. His ideas, such as psychosexual development and the Oedipus conflict, have been much debated but acknowledging the existence of child sexuality was an important development. Freud gave sexual drives an importance and centrality in human life, actions, and behavior; he said sexual drives exist and can be discerned in children from birth. He explains this in his theory of infantile sexuality, and says sexual energy (libido) is the most important motivating force in adult life. Freud wrote about the importance of interpersonal relationships to one's sexual and emotional development. From birth, the mother's connection to the infant affects the infant's later capacity for pleasure and attachment. Freud described two currents of emotional life; an affectionate current, including our bonds with the important people in our lives; and a sensual current, including our wish to gratify sexual impulses. During adolescence, a young person tries to integrate these two emotional currents. Alfred Kinsey also examined child sexuality in his Kinsey Reports. Children are naturally curious about their bodies and sexual functions. For example, they wonder where babies come from, they notice the differences between males and females, and many engage in genital play, which is often mistaken for masturbation. Child sex play, also known as playing doctor, includes exhibiting or inspecting the genitals. Many children take part in some sex play, typically with siblings or friends. Sex play with others usually decreases as children grow, but they may later possess romantic interest in their peers. Curiosity levels remain high during these years, but the main surge in sexual interest occurs in adolescence. Sexuality in late adulthood Adult sexuality originates in childhood. However, like many other human capacities, sexuality is not fixed, but matures and develops. A common stereotype associated with old people is that they tend to lose interest and the ability to engage in sexual acts once they reach late adulthood. This misconception is reinforced by Western popular culture, which often ridicules older adults who try to engage in sexual activities. Age does not necessarily change the need or desire to be sexually expressive or active. A couple in a long-term relationship may find that the frequency of their sexual activity decreases over time and the type of sexual expression may change, but feelings of intimacy may continue to grow and develop over time. Sociocultural aspects Human sexuality can be understood as part of the social life of humans, which is governed by implied rules of behavior and the status quo. This narrows the view to groups within a society. The socio-cultural context of society, including the effects of politics and the mass media, influences and forms social norms. Throughout history, social norms have been changing and continue to change as a result of movements such as the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism. Sex education The age and manner in which children are informed of issues of sexuality is a matter of sex education. The school systems in almost all developed countries have some form of sex education, but the nature of the issues covered varies widely. In some countries, such as Australia and much of Europe, age-appropriate sex education often begins in pre-school, whereas other countries leave sex education to the pre-teenage and teenage years. Sex education covers a range of topics, including the physical, mental, and social aspects of sexual behavior. Communities have differing opinions on the appropriate age for children to learn about sexuality. According to Time magazine and CNN, 74% of teenagers in the United States reported that their major sources of sexual information were their peers and the media, compared to 10% who named their parents or a sex education course. In the United States, some sex education programs encourage abstinence-only, the choice to restrain oneself from sexual activity. In contrast, comprehensive sex education aims to encourage students to take charge of their own sexuality and know how to have safe, healthy, and pleasurable sex if and when they choose to do so. Proponents for an abstinence-only education believe that teaching a comprehensive curriculum would encourage teenagers to have sex, while proponents for comprehensive sex education argue that many teenagers will have sex regardless and should be equipped with knowledge of how to have sex responsibly. According to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, many teens who intend to be abstinent fail to do so, and when these teenagers do have sex, many do not use safe sex practices such as contraceptives. Sexuality in history Sexuality has been an important, vital part of human existence throughout history. All civilizations have managed sexuality through sexual standards, representations, and behavior. Before the rise of agriculture, groups of hunter-gatherers and nomadic groups inhabited the world. These groups had less restrictive sexual standards that emphasized sexual pleasure and enjoyment, but with definite rules and constraints. Some underlying continuities or key regulatory standards contended with the tension between recognition of pleasure, interest, and the need to procreate for the sake of social order and economic survival. Hunter-gatherers also placed high value on certain types of sexual symbolism. A common tension in hunter-gatherer societies is expressed in their art, which emphasized male sexuality and prowess, but also blurred gender lines in sexual matters. One example of these male-dominated portrayals is the Egyptian creation myth, in which the sun god Atum masturbates in the water, creating the Nile River. In Sumerian myth, the gods' semen filled the Tigris. Once agricultural societies emerged, the sexual framework shifted in ways that persisted for many millennia in much of Asia, Africa, Europe, and parts of the Americas. One common characteristic new to these societies was the collective supervision of sexual behavior due to urbanization and the growth of population and population density. Children would commonly witness parents having sex because many families shared the same sleeping quarters. Due to land ownership, determination of children's paternity became important, and society and family life became patriarchal. These changes in sexual ideology were used to control female sexuality and to differentiate standards by gender. With these ideologies, sexual possessiveness and increases in jealousy emerged. While retaining the precedents of earlier civilizations, each classical civilization established a somewhat distinctive approach to gender, artistic expression of sexual beauty, and to behaviors such as homosexuality. Some of these distinctions are portrayed in sex manuals, which were also common among civilizations in China, Greece, Rome, Persia, and India; each has its own sexual history. Before the High Middle Ages, homosexual acts appear to have been ignored or tolerated by the Christian church. During the 12th century, hostility toward homosexuality began to spread throughout religious and secular institutions. By the end of the 19th century, it was viewed as a pathology. During the beginning of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, many changes in sexual standards occurred. New artificial birth control devices such as the condom and diaphragm were introduced. Doctors started claiming a new role in sexual matters, urging that their advice was crucial to sexual morality and health. New pornographic industries grew, and Japan adopted its first laws against homosexuality. In Western societies, the definition of homosexuality was constantly changing; Western influence on other cultures became more prevalent. New contacts created serious issues around sexuality and sexual traditions. There were also major shifts in sexual behavior. During this period, puberty began occurring at younger ages, so a new focus on adolescence as a time of sexual confusion and danger emerged. There was a new focus on the purpose of marriage; it was increasing regarded as being for love rather than only for economics and reproduction. Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud adopted more accepting stances toward homosexuality; Ellis said homosexuality was inborn and therefore not immoral, not a disease, and that many homosexuals made significant contributions to society. Freud wrote that all human beings as capable of becoming either heterosexual or homosexual; neither orientation was assumed to be innate. According to Freud, a person's orientation depended on the resolution of the Oedipus complex. He said male homosexuality resulted when a young boy had an authoritarian, rejecting mother and turned to his father for love and affection, and later to men in general. He said female homosexuality developed when a girl loved her mother and identified with her father and became fixated at that stage. Alfred Kinsey initiated the modern era of sex research. He collected data from questionnaires given to his students at Indiana University, but then switched to personal interviews about sexual behaviors. Kinsey and his colleagues sampled 5,300 men and 5,940 women. He found that most people masturbated, that many engaged in oral sex, that women are capable of having multiple orgasms, and that many men had had some type of homosexual experience in their lifetimes. Before William Masters, a physician, and Virginia Johnson, a behavioral scientist, the study of anatomy and physiological studies of sex was still limited to experiments with laboratory animals. Masters and Johnson started to directly observe and record the physical responses in humans that are engaged in sexual activity under laboratory settings. They observed 10,000 episodes of sexual acts between 312 men and 382 women. This led to methods of treating clinical problems and abnormalities. Masters and Johnson opened the first sex therapy clinic in 1965. In 1970, they described their therapeutic techniques in their book, Human Sexual Inadequacy. The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, classified homosexuality as a mental illness, and more specifically, a "sociopathic personality disturbance". This definition remained the professional understanding of homosexuality until 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from their list of diagnoses for mental disorders. Through her research of heterosexual and homosexual men, Evelyn Hooker revealed that there was no correlation between homosexuality and psychological maladjustment, and her findings played a pivotal role in shifting the scientific community away from the perspective that homosexuality was something that needed to be treated or cured. Sexuality, colonialism, and race European conquerors/colonists discovered that many non-European cultures had expressions of sexuality and gender which differed from European notion of heterosexual cisnormativity. These would include transgender practices. In 1516, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a Spanish explorer, discovered indigenous people in Central America, among whom several indigenous men who dressed like women and had sex with each other, resulting in him feeding forty of these men to his dogs for having non-gender conforming behaviors and sexuality. In North America and the United States, Europeans have used claims of sexual immorality to justify discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities. Scholars also study the ways in which colonialism has affected sexuality today and argue that due to racism and slavery it has been dramatically changed from the way it had previously been understood. In her book, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia, Laura Stoler investigates how the Dutch colonists used sexual control and gender-specific sexual sanctions to distinguish between the rulers from the ruled and enforce colonial domination onto the people of Indonesia. In America, there are 155 native tribes that are recorded to have embraced two-spirit people within their tribes, but the total number of tribes could be greater than what is documented. Two-spirit people were and still are members of communities who do not fall under Western gender categories of male and female, but rather under a "third gender" category. This system of gender contradicts both the gender binary and the assertion that sex and gender are the same. Instead of conforming to traditional roles of men and women, two-spirit fill a special niche in their communities. For example, two-spirited people are commonly revered for possessing special wisdom and spiritual powers. Two-spirited people also can take part in marriages, either monogamous and polygamous ones. Historically, European colonizers perceived relationships involving two-spirited people as homosexuality, and therefore believed in the moral inferiority of native people. In reaction, colonizers began to impose their own religious and social norms on indigenous communities, diminishing the role of two-spirit people in native cultures. Within reservations, the Religious Crime Code of the 1880s explicitly aimed to "aggressively attack Native sexual and marriage practices". The goal of colonizers was for native peoples to assimilate into Euro-American ideals of family, sexuality, gender expression, and more. The link between constructed sexual meanings and racial ideologies has been studied. According to Joane Nagel, sexual meanings are constructed to maintain racial-ethnic-national boundaries by the denigration of "others" and regulation of sexual behavior within the group. She writes, "both adherence to and deviation from such approved behaviors, define and reinforce racial, ethnic, and nationalist regimes". In the United States people of color face the effects of colonialism in different ways with stereotypes such as the Mammy and Jezebel for Black women; lotus blossom and dragon lady for Asian women; and the spicy Latina. These stereotypes contrast with standards of sexual conservatism, creating a dichotomy that dehumanizes and demonizes the stereotyped groups. An example of a stereotype that lies at the intersection of racism, classism, and misogyny is the archetype of the welfare queen. Cathy Cohen describes how the welfare queen stereotype demonizes poor black single mothers for deviating from conventions surrounding family structure. Reproductive and sexual rights Reproductive and sexual rights encompass the concept of applying human rights to issues related to reproduction and sexuality. This concept is a modern one, and remains controversial since it deals, directly and indirectly, with issues such as contraception, LGBT rights, abortion, sex education, freedom to choose a partner, freedom to decide whether to be sexually active or not, right to bodily integrity, freedom to decide whether or not, and when, to have children. These are all global issues that exist in all cultures to some extent, but manifest differently depending on the specific contexts. According to the Swedish government, "sexual rights include the right of all people to decide over their own bodies and sexuality" and "reproductive rights comprise the right of individuals to decide on the number of children they have and the intervals at which they are born." Such rights are not accepted in all cultures, with practices such criminalization of consensual sexual activities (such as those related to homosexual acts and sexual acts outside marriage), acceptance of forced marriage and child marriage, failure to criminalize all non-consensual sexual encounters (such as marital rape), female genital mutilation, or restricted availability of contraception, being common around the world. Stigma of contraceptives in the U.S. In 1915, Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger, leaders of the birth control movement, began to spread information regarding contraception in opposition to the laws, such as the Comstock Law, that demonized it. One of their main purposes was to assert that the birth control movement was about empowering women with personal reproductive and economic freedom for those who could not afford to parent a child or simply did not want one. Goldman and Sanger saw it necessary to educate people as contraceptives were quickly being stigmatized as a population control tactic due to being a policy limiting births, disregarding that this limitation did not target ecological, political, or large economic conditions. This stigma targeted lower-class women who had the most need of access to contraception. Birth control finally began to lose stigma in 1936 when the ruling of U.S. v. One Package declared that prescribing contraception to save a person's life or well-being was no longer illegal under the Comstock Law. Although opinions varied on when birth control should be available to women, by 1938, there were 347 birth control clinics in the United States but advertising their services remained illegal. The stigma continued to lose credibility as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicly showed her support for birth control through the four terms her husband served (1933–1945). However, it was not until 1966 that the Federal Government began to fund family planning and subsidized birth control services for lower-class women and families at the order of President Lyndon B. Johnson. This funding continued after 1970 under the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act. Today, all Health Insurance Marketplace plans are required to cover all forms of contraception, including sterilization procedures, as a result of The Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. Stigma and activism during the AIDS epidemic In 1981, doctors diagnosed the first reported cases of AIDS in America. The disease disproportionately affected and continues to affect gay and bisexual men, especially black and Latino men. The Reagan administration is criticized for its apathy towards the AIDS epidemic, and audio recordings reveal that Ronald Reagan's press secretary Larry Speakes viewed the epidemic as a joke, mocking AIDS by calling it the "gay plague". The epidemic also carried stigma coming from religious influences. For example, Cardinal Krol voiced that AIDS was "an act of vengeance against the sin of homosexuality", which clarifies the specific meaning behind the pope's mention of "the moral source of AIDS." Activism during the AIDS crisis focused on promoting safe sex practices to raise awareness that the disease could be prevented. The "Safe Sex is Hot Sex" campaign, for example, aimed to promote the use of condoms. Campaigns by the U.S. government, however, diverged from advocacy of safe sex. In 1987, Congress even denied federal funding from awareness campaigns that "[promoted] or [encouraged], directly or indirectly, homosexual activities". Instead, campaigns by the government primarily relied on scare tactics in order to instill fear in men who had sex with other men. In addition to prevention campaigns, activists also sought to counteract narratives that led to the "social death" for people living with AIDS. Gay men from San Francisco and New York City created the Denver Principles, a foundational document that demanded the rights, agency, and dignity of people living with AIDS. In his article "Emergence of Gay Identity and Gay Social Movements in Developing Countries", Matthew Roberts discusses how international AIDS prevention campaigns created opportunities for gay men to interact with other openly gay men from other countries. These interactions allowed western gay "culture" to be introduced to gay men in countries where homosexuality was not an important identifier. Thus, group organizers self-identified as gay more and more, creating the basis for further development of gay consciousness in different countries. Sexual behavior General activities and health In humans, sexual intercourse has been shown to have health benefits, such as an improved sense of smell, reduction in stress and blood pressure, increased immunity, and decreased risk of prostate cancer. Sexual intimacy and orgasms increase levels of oxytocin, which helps people bond and build trust. Some of these benefits, such as stress reduction, also apply to masturbation, as distinct from sexual intercourse with another person. Masturbation is also a healthy element of sexual development in itself. A long-term study of 3,500 people between ages 30 and 101 by clinical neuropsychologist David Weeks, MD, head of old-age psychology at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland, said he found that "sex helps you look between four and seven years younger", according to impartial ratings of the subjects' photographs. Exclusive causation, however, is unclear, and the benefits may be indirectly related to sex and directly related to significant reductions in stress, greater contentment, and better sleep that sex promotes. Sexual intercourse can also be a disease vector. There are 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections (STI) every year in the U.S., and worldwide there are over 340 million sexually transmitted infections each year. More than half of these occur in adolescents and young adults aged 15–24 years. At least one in four US teenage girls has a sexually transmitted infection. In the U.S., about 30% of 15- to 17-year-olds have had sexual intercourse, but only about 80% of 15- to 19-year-olds report using condoms for their first sexual intercourse. In one study, more than 75% of young women age 18–25 years felt they were at low risk of acquiring an STI. Creating a relationship People both consciously and subconsciously seek to attract others with whom they can form deep relationships. This may be for companionship, procreation, or an intimate relationship. This involves interactive processes whereby people find and attract potential partners and maintain a relationship. These processes, which involve attracting one or more partners and maintaining sexual interest, can include: Flirting, the use of indirect behavior to convey romantic or sexual interest. It can involve verbal or non-verbal cues, such as sexual comments, body language, gazing, or close to another, but non-verbal flirting is more common. Flirting is a socially accepted way of attracting someone. There are different types of flirting, and most people usually have one way of flirting that makes them most comfortable. When flirting, people can be polite, playful, physical, etc. Sometimes it is difficult to know whether or not the person is interested. Non-verbal flirting allows people to test another's interest without fear of direct rejection. Flirting styles vary according to culture. Different cultures have different social etiquette. For example, length of eye contact, or how closely one stands by someone. Seduction, the process whereby one person deliberately entices another to engage in sexual behavior. This behavior is one that the person you are seducing would not usually do, unless sexually aroused. Seduction can be seen as both a positive and a negative. Since the word seduction has a Latin meaning, which is "to lead astray" it can be viewed negatively. Sexual attraction Sexual attraction is attraction on the basis of sexual desire or the quality of arousing such interest. Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal is an individual's ability to attract the sexual or erotic interest of another person and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice. The attraction can be to the physical or other qualities or traits of a person, or to such qualities in the context in which they appear. The attraction may be to a person's aesthetics or movements or to their voice or smell, besides other factors. The attraction may be enhanced by a person's adornments, clothing, perfume, hair length and style, and anything else which can attract the sexual interest of another person. It can also be influenced by individual genetic, psychological, or cultural factors, or to other, more amorphous qualities of the person. Sexual attraction is also a response to another person that depends on a combination of the person possessing the traits and also on the criteria of the person who is attracted. Though attempts have been made to devise objective criteria of sexual attractiveness and measure it as one of several bodily forms of capital asset (see erotic capital), a person's sexual attractiveness is to a large extent a subjective measure dependent on another person's interest, perception, and sexual orientation. For example, a gay or lesbian person would typically find a person of the same sex to be more attractive than one of the other sex. A bisexual person would find either sex to be attractive. In addition, there are asexual people, who usually do not experience sexual attraction for either sex, though they may have romantic attraction (homoromantic, biromantic or heteroromantic). Interpersonal attraction includes factors such as physical or psychological similarity, familiarity or possessing a preponderance of common or familiar features, similarity, complementarity, reciprocal liking, and reinforcement. The ability of a person's physical and other qualities to create a sexual interest in others is the basis of their use in advertising, music video, pornography, film, and other visual media, as well as in modeling, sex work and other occupations. Legal issues Globally, laws regulate human sexuality in several ways, including criminalizing particular sexual behaviors, granting individuals the privacy or autonomy to make their own sexual decisions, protecting individuals with regard to equality and non-discrimination, recognizing and protecting other individual rights, as well as legislating matters regarding marriage and the family, and creating laws protecting individuals from violence, harassment, and persecution. In the United States, there are two fundamentally different approaches, applied in different states, regarding the way the law is used to attempt to govern a person's sexuality. The "black letter" approach to law focuses on the study of pre-existing legal precedent and attempts to offer a clear framework of rules within which lawyers and others can work. In contrast, the socio-legal approach focuses more broadly on the relationship between the law and society, and offers a more contextualized view of the relationship between legal and social change. Issues regarding human sexuality and human sexual orientation came to the forefront in Western law in the latter half of the twentieth century, as part of the gay liberation movement's encouragement of LGBT individuals to "come out of the closet" and engage with the legal system, primarily through courts. Therefore, many issues regarding human sexuality and the law are found in the opinions of the courts. Sexual privacy While the issue of privacy has been useful to sexual rights claims, some scholars have criticized its usefulness, saying that this perspective is too narrow and restrictive. The law is often slow to intervene in certain forms of coercive behavior that can limit individuals' control over their own sexuality (such as female genital mutilation, forced marriages or lack of access to reproductive health care). Many of these injustices are often perpetuated wholly or in part by private individuals rather than state agents, and as a result, there is an ongoing debate about the extent of state responsibility to prevent harmful practices and to investigate such practices when they do occur. State intervention with regards to sexuality also occurs, and is considered acceptable by some, in certain instances (e.g. same-sex sexual activity or prostitution). The legal systems surrounding prostitution are a topic of debate. Proponents for criminalization argue that sex work is an immoral practice that should not be tolerated, while proponents for decriminalization point out how criminalization does more harm than good. Within the feminist movement, there is also a debate over whether sex work is inherently objectifying and exploitative or whether sex workers have the agency to sell sex as a service. When sex work is criminalized, sex workers do not have support from law enforcement when they fall victim to violence. In a 2003 survey of street-based sex workers in NYC, 80% said they had been threatened with or experienced violence, and many said the police were no help. 27% said they had experienced violence from police officers themselves. Different identities such as being black, transgender, or poor can result in a person being more likely to be criminally profiled by the police. For example, in New York, there is a law against "loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution", which has been nicknamed the "walking while trans" law because of how often transgender women are assumed to be sex workers and arrested for simply walking out in public. Religious sexual morality In some religions, sexual behavior is regarded as primarily spiritual. In others it is treated as primarily physical. Some hold that sexual behavior is only spiritual within certain kinds of relationships, when used for specific purposes, or when incorporated into religious ritual. In some religions there are no distinctions between the physical and the spiritual, whereas some religions view human sexuality as a way of completing the gap that exists between the spiritual and the physical. Many religious conservatives, especially those of Abrahamic religions and Christianity in particular, tend to view sexuality in terms of behavior (i.e. homosexuality or heterosexuality is what someone does). These conservatives tend to promote celibacy for gay people, and may also tend to believe that sexuality can be changed through conversion therapy or prayer to become an ex-gay. They may also see homosexuality as a form of mental illness, something that ought to be criminalized, an immoral abomination, caused by ineffective parenting, and view same-sex marriage as a threat to society. On the other hand, most religious liberals define sexuality-related labels in terms of sexual attraction and self-identification. They may also view same-sex activity as morally neutral and as legally acceptable as opposite-sex activity, unrelated to mental illness, genetically or environmentally caused (but not as the result of bad parenting), and fixed. They also tend to be more in favor of same-sex marriage. Judaism According to Judaism, sex between a man and woman within marriage is sacred and should be regularly enjoyed; celibacy is considered sinful. Christianity Early Christianity Desire, including sexual desire and lust, were considered immoral and sinful, according to some authors. Elaine Pagels says, "By the beginning of the fifth century, Augustine had actually declared that spontaneous sexual desire is the proof of—and penalty for—universal original sin", though that this view goes against "most of his Christian predecessors". According to Jennifer Wright Knust, Paul framed desire a force Christians gained control over whereas non-Christians were "enslaved" by it; and he also said the bodies of Christians were members of Christ's body and thus sexual desire must be eschewed. Roman Catholic Church The Roman Catholic Church teaches that sexuality is "noble and worthy" and has a unitive and procreative end. For this reason, sexual activity's ideal should occur in the context of a marriage between a man and a woman, and open to the possibility of life. Pope Francis teaches in Amoris laetitia against "an attitude that would solve everything by applying general rules or deriving undue conclusions from particular theological considerations. and that he also warns that "not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium." and that "We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them." The church has authoritative teachings on sexuality found in the catechism. The church places primacy of conscience especially on the regulation of births. Anglicanism The Anglican Church teaches that human sexuality is a gift from a loving God designed to be between a man and a woman in a monogamous lifetime union of marriage. It also views singleness and dedicated celibacy as Christ-like. It states that people with same sex attraction are loved by God and are welcomed as full members of the Body of Christ, while the Church leadership has a variety of views in regard to homosexual expression and ordination. Some expressions of sexuality are considered sinful including "promiscuity, prostitution, incest, pornography, pedophilia, predatory sexual behavior, and sadomasochism (all of which may be heterosexual and homosexual), adultery, violence against wives, and female circumcision". The Church is concerned with pressures on young people to engage sexually and encourages abstinence. Evangelicalism In matters of sexuality, several Evangelical churches promote the virginity pledge among young Evangelical Christians, who are invited to commit themselves during a public ceremony to sexual abstinence until Christian marriage. This pledge is often symbolized by a purity ring. In evangelical churches, young adults and unmarried couples are encouraged to marry early in order to live a sexuality according to the will of God. Although some churches are discreet on the subject, other evangelical churches in United States and Switzerland speak of a satisfying sexuality as a gift from God and a component of a harmonious Christian marriage, in messages during worship services or conferences. Many evangelical books and websites are specialized on the subject. The perceptions of homosexuality in the Evangelical Churches are varied. They range from liberal through moderate to conservative. The christian marriage is presented by some churches as a protection against sexual misconduct and a compulsory step to obtain a position of responsibility in the church. This concept, however, has been challenged by numerous sex scandals involving married evangelical leaders. Finally, evangelical theologians recalled that celibacy should be more valued in the Church today, since the gift of celibacy was taught and lived by Jesus Christ and Paul of Tarsus. Islam In Islam, desire for sex is considered to be a natural urge that should not be suppressed, although the concept of free sex is not accepted; these urges should be fulfilled responsibly. Marriage is considered to be a good deed; it does not hinder spiritual wayfaring. The term used for marriage within the Quran is . Although Islamic sexuality is restrained via Islamic sexual jurisprudence, it emphasizes sexual pleasure within marriage. It is acceptable for a man to have more than one wife, but he must take care of those wives physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. Muslims believe that sexual intercourse is an act of worship that fulfils emotional and physical needs, and that producing children is one way in which humans can contribute to God's creation, and Islam discourages celibacy once an individual is married. However, homosexuality is strictly forbidden in Islam, and some Muslim lawyers have suggested that gay people should be put to death. Some have argued that Islam has an open and playful approach to sex so long as it is within marriage, free of lewdness, fornication and adultery. Hinduism Hinduism emphasizes that sex is only appropriate between husband and wife, in which satisfying sexual urges through sexual pleasure is an important duty of marriage. Any sex before marriage is considered to interfere with intellectual development, especially between birth and the age of 25, which is said to be brahmacharya and this should be avoided. Kama (sensual pleasures) is one of the four purusharthas or aims of life (dharma, artha, kama, and moksha). The Hindu Kama Sutra deals partially with sexual intercourse; it is not exclusively a sexual or religious work. Sikhism Sikhism views chastity as important, as Sikhs believe that the divine spark of Waheguru is present inside every individual's body, therefore it is important for one to keep clean and pure. Sexual activity is limited to married couples, and extramarital sex is forbidden. Marriage is seen as a commitment to Waheguru and should be viewed as part of spiritual companionship, rather than just sexual intercourse, and monogamy is deeply emphasized in Sikhism. Any other way of living is discouraged, including celibacy and homosexuality. However, in comparison to other religions, the issue of sexuality in Sikhism is not considered one of paramount importance. See also Notes References Further reading Gregersen, E. (1982). Sexual Practices: The Story of Human Sexuality. New York: F. Watts. Lyons, Andrew P. & Harriet D., eds. Sexualities in Anthropology: a reader. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011 Richardson, Niall; Smith, Clarissa & Werndly, Angela (2013) Studying Sexualities: Theories, Representations, Cultures. London: Palgrave Macmillan Soble, Alan (ed.). Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia, 2 volumes. Greenwood Press, 2006. Lay summary of primary source appearing from the University of Calgary, in Science, on prolactin release during sexual activity in mice, and its possible relationship to stroke therapy. External links "Examining the Relationship Between Media Use and Aggression, Sexuality, and Body Image", Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 3. Glossary of clinical sexology – Glossario di sessuologia clinica International Encyclopedia of Sexuality full text Janssen, D.F., Growing Up Sexually. Volume I. World Reference Atlas [full text] Masters, William H., Virginia E. Johnson, and Robert C. Kolodny. Crisis: Heterosexual Behavior in the Age of AIDS. New York: Grove Press, 1988. ix, 243 p. National Sexuality Resource Center Durex Global Sex Survey 2005 at data360.org POPLINE is a searchable database of the world's reproductive health literature. The Continuum Complete International Encyclopedia of Sexuality at the Kinsey Institute MRI Video of Human Copulation 1

Social constructionism

Social constructionism is a term used in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory. The term can serve somewhat different functions in each field; however, the foundation of this theoretical framework suggests various facets of social reality—such as concepts, beliefs, norms, and values—are formed through continuous interactions and negotiations among society's members, rather than empirical observation of physical reality. The theory of social constructionism posits that much of what individuals perceive as 'reality' is actually the outcome of a dynamic process of construction influenced by social conventions and structures. Unlike phenomena that are innately determined or biologically predetermined, these social constructs are collectively formulated, sustained, and shaped by the social contexts in which they exist. These constructs significantly impact both the behavior and perceptions of individuals, often being internalized based on cultural narratives, whether or not these are empirically verifiable. In this two-way process of reality construction, individuals not only interpret and assimilate information through their social relations but also contribute to shaping existing societal narratives. Examples of social constructs range widely, encompassing the assigned value of money, conceptions of concept of self/self-identity, beauty standards, gender, language, race, ethnicity, social class, social hierarchy, nationality, religion, social norms, the modern calendar and other units of time, marriage, education, citizenship, stereotypes, femininity and masculinity, social institutions, and even the idea of 'social construct' itself. These constructs are not universal truths but are flexible entities that can vary dramatically across different cultures and societies. They arise from collaborative consensus and are shaped and maintained through collective human interactions, cultural practices, and shared beliefs. This articulates the view that people in society construct ideas or concepts that may not exist without the existence of people or language to validate those concepts, meaning without a society these constructs would cease to exist. Overview A social construct or construction is the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event. The social construction of target populations refers to the cultural characterizations or popular images of the persons or groups whose behavior and well-being are affected by public policy. Social constructionism posits that the meanings of phenomena do not have an independent foundation outside the mental and linguistic representation that people develop about them throughout their history, and which becomes their shared reality. From a linguistic viewpoint, social constructionism centres meaning as an internal reference within language (words refer to words, definitions to other definitions) rather than to an external reality. Origins In the 16th century, Michel de Montaigne wrote that, "We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things." In 1886 or 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche put it similarly: "Facts do not exist, only interpretations." In his 1922 book Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann said, "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" between people and their environment. Each person constructs a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. People "live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones." Lippman's "environment" might be called "reality", and his "pseudo-environment" seems equivalent to what today is called "constructed reality". Social constructionism has more recently been rooted in "symbolic interactionism" and "phenomenology". With Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality published in 1966, this concept found its hold. More than four decades later, much theory and research pledged itself to the basic tenet that people "make their social and cultural worlds at the same time these worlds make them." It is a viewpoint that uproots social processes "simultaneously playful and serious, by which reality is both revealed and concealed, created and destroyed by our activities." It provides a substitute to the "Western intellectual tradition" where the researcher "earnestly seeks certainty in a representation of reality by means of propositions." In social constructionist terms, "taken-for-granted realities" are cultivated from "interactions between and among social agents"; furthermore, reality is not some objective truth "waiting to be uncovered through positivist scientific inquiry." Rather, there can be "multiple realities that compete for truth and legitimacy." Social constructionism understands the "fundamental role of language and communication" and this understanding has "contributed to the linguistic turn" and more recently the "turn to discourse theory". The majority of social constructionists abide by the belief that "language does not mirror reality; rather, it constitutes [creates] it." A broad definition of social constructionism has its supporters and critics in the organizational sciences. A constructionist approach to various organizational and managerial phenomena appear to be more commonplace and on the rise. Andy Lock and Tom Strong trace some of the fundamental tenets of social constructionism back to the work of the 18th-century Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist Giambattista Vico. Berger and Luckmann give credit to Max Scheler as a large influence as he created the idea of sociology of knowledge which influenced social construction theory. According to Lock and Strong, other influential thinkers whose work has affected the development of social constructionism are: Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Jürgen Habermas, Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, Valentin Volosinov, Lev Vygotsky, George Herbert Mead, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gregory Bateson, Harold Garfinkel, Erving Goffman, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Ken Gergen, Mary Gergen, Rom Harre, and John Shotter. Applications Personal construct psychology Since its appearance in the 1950s, personal construct psychology (PCP) has mainly developed as a constructivist theory of personality and a system of transforming individual meaning-making processes, largely in therapeutic contexts. It was based around the notion of persons as scientists who form and test theories about their worlds. Therefore, it represented one of the first attempts to appreciate the constructive nature of experience and the meaning persons give to their experience. Social constructionism (SC), on the other hand, mainly developed as a form of a critique, aimed to transform the oppressing effects of the social meaning-making processes. Over the years, it has grown into a cluster of different approaches, with no single SC position. However, different approaches under the generic term of SC are loosely linked by some shared assumptions about language, knowledge, and reality. A usual way of thinking about the relationship between PCP and SC is treating them as two separate entities that are similar in some aspects, but also very different in others. This way of conceptualizing this relationship is a logical result of the circumstantial differences of their emergence. In subsequent analyses these differences between PCP and SC were framed around several points of tension, formulated as binary oppositions: personal/social; individualist/relational; agency/structure; constructivist/constructionist. Although some of the most important issues in contemporary psychology are elaborated in these contributions, the polarized positioning also sustained the idea of a separation between PCP and SC, paving the way for only limited opportunities for dialogue between them. Reframing the relationship between PCP and SC may be of use in both the PCP and the SC communities. On one hand, it extends and enriches SC theory and points to benefits of applying the PCP "toolkit" in constructionist therapy and research. On the other hand, the reframing contributes to PCP theory and points to new ways of addressing social construction in therapeutic conversations. Educational psychology Like social constructionism, social constructivism states that people work together to construct artifacts. While social constructionism focuses on the artifacts that are created through the social interactions of a group, social constructivism focuses on an individual's learning that takes place because of his or her interactions in a group. Social constructivism has been studied by many educational psychologists, who are concerned with its implications for teaching and learning. For more on the psychological dimensions of social constructivism, see the work of Lev Vygotsky, Ernst von Glasersfeld and A. Sullivan Palincsar. Systemic therapy Some of the systemic models that use social constructionism include narrative therapy and solution-focused therapy. Poverty Max Rose and Frank R. Baumgartner (2013), in Framing the Poor: Media Coverage and U.S. Poverty Policy, 1960-2008, examine how media has framed the poor in the U.S. and how negative framing has caused a shift in government spending. Since 1960, the government has decreasingly spent money on social services such as welfare. Evidence shows the media framing the poor more negatively since 1960, with more usage of words such as lazy and fraud. Crime Potter and Kappeler (1996), in their introduction to Constructing Crime: Perspective on Making News And Social Problems wrote, "Public opinion and crime facts demonstrate no congruence. The reality of crime in the United States has been subverted to a constructed reality as ephemeral as swamp gas." Criminology has long focussed on why and how society defines criminal behavior and crime in general. While looking at crime through a social constructionism lens, there is evidence to support that criminal acts are a social construct where abnormal or deviant acts become a crime based on the views of society. Another explanation of crime as it relates to social constructionism are individual identity constructs that result in deviant behavior. If someone has constructed the identity of a "madman" or "criminal" for themselves based on a society's definition, it may force them to follow that label, resulting in criminal behavior. History and development Berger and Luckmann Constructionism became prominent in the U.S. with Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann's 1966 book, The Social Construction of Reality. Berger and Luckmann argue that all knowledge, including the most basic, taken-for-granted common-sense knowledge of everyday reality, is derived from and maintained by social interactions. In their model, people interact on the understanding that their perceptions of everyday life are shared with others, and this common knowledge of reality is in turn reinforced by these interactions. Since this common-sense knowledge is negotiated by people, human typifications, significations and institutions come to be presented as part of an objective reality, particularly for future generations who were not involved in the original process of negotiation. For example, as parents negotiate rules for their children to follow, those rules confront the children as externally produced "givens" that they cannot change. Berger and Luckmann's social constructionism has its roots in phenomenology. It links to Heidegger and Edmund Husserl through the teaching of Alfred Schutz, who was also Berger's PhD adviser. Narrative turn During the 1970s and 1980s, social constructionist theory underwent a transformation as constructionist sociologists engaged with the work of Michel Foucault and others as a narrative turn in the social sciences was worked out in practice. This particularly affected the emergent sociology of science and the growing field of science and technology studies. In particular, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Bruno Latour, Barry Barnes, Steve Woolgar, and others used social constructionism to relate what science has typically characterized as objective facts to the processes of social construction. Their goal was to show that human subjectivity imposes itself on the facts taken as objective, not solely the other way around. A particularly provocative title in this line of thought is Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. At the same time, social constructionism shaped studies of technologythe Sofield, especially on the social construction of technology, or SCOT, and authors as Wiebe Bijker, Trevor Pinch, Maarten van Wesel, etc. Despite its common perception as objective, mathematics is not immune to social constructionist accounts. Sociologists such as Sal Restivo and Randall Collins, mathematicians including Reuben Hersh and Philip J. Davis, and philosophers including Paul Ernest have published social constructionist treatments of mathematics. Postmodernism Within the social constructionist strand of postmodernism, the concept of socially constructed reality stresses the ongoing mass-building of worldviews by individuals in dialectical interaction with society at a time. The numerous realities so formed comprise, according to this view, the imagined worlds of human social existence and activity. These worldviews are gradually crystallized by habit into institutions propped up by language conventions; given ongoing legitimacy by mythology, religion and philosophy; maintained by therapies and socialization; and subjectively internalized by upbringing and education. Together, these become part of the identity of social citizens. In the book The Reality of Social Construction, the British sociologist Dave Elder-Vass places the development of social constructionism as one outcome of the legacy of postmodernism. He writes "Perhaps the most widespread and influential product of this process [coming to terms with the legacy of postmodernism] is social constructionism, which has been booming [within the domain of social theory] since the 1980s." Criticisms Critics argue that social constructionism rejects the influences of biology on behaviour and culture, or suggests that they are unimportant to achieve an understanding of human behaviour. Scientific estimates of nature versus nurture and gene–environment interactions have shown almost always substantial influences of both genetics and social, often in an inseparable manner. Claims that genetics does not affect humans are seen as outdated by most contemporary scholars of human development. Social constructionism has also been criticized for having an overly narrow focus on society and culture as a causal factor in human behavior, excluding the influence of innate biological tendencies. This criticism has been explored by psychologists such as Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate as well as by Asian studies scholar Edward Slingerland in What Science Offers the Humanities. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides used the term standard social science model to refer to social theories that they believe fail to take into account the evolved properties of the brain. In 1996, to illustrate what he believed to be the intellectual weaknesses of social constructionism and postmodernism, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted an article to the academic journal Social Text deliberately written to be incomprehensible but including phrases and jargon typical of the articles published by the journal. The submission, which was published, was an experiment to see if the journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions." In 1999, Sokal, with coauthor Jean Bricmont published the book Fashionable Nonsense, which criticized postmodernism and social constructionism. Philosopher Paul Boghossian has also written against social constructionism. He follows Ian Hacking's argument that many adopt social constructionism because of its potentially liberating stance: if things are the way that they are only because of human social conventions, as opposed to being so naturally, then it should be possible to change them into how people would rather have them be. He then states that social constructionists argue that people should refrain from making absolute judgements about what is true and instead state that something is true in the light of this or that theory. Countering this, he states: Woolgar and Pawluch argue that constructionists tend to "ontologically gerrymander" social conditions in and out of their analysis. Alan Sokal also criticize social constructionism for contradicting itself on the knowability of the existence of societies. The argument is that if there was no knowable objective reality, there would be no way of knowing whether or not societies exist and if so, what their rules and other characteristics are. One example of the contradiction is that the claim that "phenomena must be measured by what is considered average in their respective cultures, not by an objective standard." Since there are languages that have no word for average and therefore the whole application of the concept of "average" to such cultures contradict social constructionism's own claim that cultures can only be measured by their own standards. Social constructionism is a diverse field with varying stances on these matters. Some social constructionists do acknowledge the existence of an objective reality but argue that human understanding and interpretation of that reality are socially constructed. Others might contend that while the term average may not exist in all languages, equivalent or analogous concepts might still be applied within those cultures, thereby not completely invalidating the principle of cultural relativity in measuring phenomena. See also References Further reading Books Boghossian, P. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford University Press, 2006. Online review: Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism Berger, P. L. and Luckmann, T., The Social Construction of Reality : A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Anchor, 1967; ). Best, J. Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems, New York: Gruyter, 1989 Burr, V. Social Constructionism, 2nd ed. Routledge 2003. Ellul, J. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Trans. Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner. New York: Knopf, 1965. New York: Random House/ Vintage 1973 Ernst, P., (1998), Social Constructivism as a Philosophy of Mathematics; Albany, New York: State University of New York Press Gergen, K., An Invitation to Social Construction. Los Angeles: Sage, 2015 (3d edition, first 1999). Glasersfeld, E. von, Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 1995. Hacking, I., The Social Construction of What? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999; Hibberd, F. J., Unfolding Social Constructionism. New York: Springer, 2005. Kukla, A., Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science, London: Routledge, 2000. Lawrence, T. B. and Phillips, N. Constructing Organizational Life: How Social-Symbolic Work Shapes Selves, Organizations, and Institutions. Oxford University Press, 2019. Lowenthal, P., & Muth, R. Constructivism. In E. F. Provenzo, Jr. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the social and cultural foundations of education (pp. 177–179). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008. McNamee, S. and Gergen, K. (Eds.). Therapy as Social Construction. London: Sage, 1992 . McNamee, S. and Gergen, K. Relational Responsibility: Resources for Sustainable Dialogue. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 2005. . Penman, R. Reconstructing communicating. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000. Poerksen, B. The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism. Exeter: Imprint-Academic, 2004. Restivo, S. and Croissant, J., "Social Constructionism in Science and Technology Studies" (Handbook of Constructionist Research, ed. J.A. Holstein & J.F. Gubrium) Guilford, NY 2008, 213–229; Schmidt, S. J., Histories and Discourses: Rewriting Constructivism. Exeter: Imprint-Academic, 2007. Searle, J., The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press, 1995; . Shotter, J. Conversational realities: Constructing life through language. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1993. Stewart, J., Zediker, K. E., & Witteborn, S. Together: Communicating interpersonally – A social construction approach (6th ed). Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury, 2005. Weinberg, D. Contemporary Social Constructionism: Key Themes. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2014. Willard, C. A., Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996; . Wilson, D. S. (2005), "Evolutionary Social Constructivism". In J. Gottshcall and D. S. Wilson, (Eds.), The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative. Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press; . Full text Articles Drost, Alexander. "Borders. A Narrative Turn – Reflections on Concepts, Practices and their Communication", in: Olivier Mentz and Tracey McKay (eds.), Unity in Diversity. European Perspectives on Borders and Memories, Berlin 2017, pp. 14–33. Mallon, R, "Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Shotter, J., & Gergen, K. J., Social construction: Knowledge, self, others, and continuing the conversation. In S. A. Deetz (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, 17 (pp. 3–33). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994. External links Communication theory Consensus reality Human behavior Human communication Social concepts Social epistemology Sociology of knowledge Sociological theories

Rhizome (philosophy)

A rhizome is a concept in post-structuralism describing a nonlinear network. It appears in the work of French theorists Deleuze and Guattari, who used the term in their book A Thousand Plateaus to refer to networks that establish "connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles" with no apparent order or coherency. A rhizome is purely a network of multiplicities that are not arborescent (tree-like, or hierarchical, e.g. the idea of hypertext in literary theory) with properties similar to lattices. Deleuze referred to it as extending from his concept of an "image of thought" that he had previously discussed in Difference and Repetition. As a mode of knowledge and model for society Deleuze and Guattari use the terms "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" (from Ancient Greek ῥίζωμα, rhízōma, "mass of roots") to describe a network that "connects any point to any other point". In A Thousand Plateaus, they place it in opposition to an arborescent (hierarchic, tree-like) use of concepts, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. This is not a meaningful opposition in botany; both rhizomatic and aerial plant tissues exhibit largely the same pattern of branching and division, and differ instead in their internal structure and function within the plant. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections. Their use of the "orchid and the wasp" is taken from the biological concept of mutualism, in which two different species interact together to form a multiplicity (i.e. a unity that is multiple in itself). Hybridization and horizontal gene transfer are also rhizomatic in this sense. Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a "rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo." The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation. In a rhizome, "culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space." Principles Deleuze and Guattari introduce A Thousand Plateaus by outlining the concept of the rhizome (quoted from A Thousand Plateaus): 1 and 2. Principles of connection and heterogeneity: "...any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other, and must be"; 3. Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively treated as a substantive, "multiplicity", that it ceases to have any relation to the One; 4. Principle of asignifying rupture: a rhizome may be broken, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines; 5 and 6. Principles of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model; it is a "map and not a tracing". They elaborate in the same section, "What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real." Arborescent Arborescent refers to the shape and structure of a tree. The postmodern philosophers Deleuze and Guattari used the term to characterize a certain type of thinking, exemplified by the western scientific model, where knowledge emanates from a single stem and ends in predetermined 'fruits'. The concept suggests a linear progress towards the truth, which they condemned as both unrealistic and stultifying to the imagination. It is contrasted with 'rhizomatic' thinking, which is open ended, has no central structure, and is constantly changing. Arborescent thinking, to Deleuze and Guattari is marked by insistence on totalizing principles, binarism, and dualism. The term, first used (in western philosophy) in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) where it was opposed to the rhizome, comes from the way genealogy trees are drawn: unidirectional progress which enforces a dualist metaphysical conception, criticized by Deleuze. Rhizomes, on the contrary, mark a horizontal and non-hierarchical conception, where anything may be linked to anything else, with no respect whatsoever for specific species: rhizomes are heterogeneous links between things. For example, Deleuze and Guattari linked together desire and machines to create the concept of desiring machines). Horizontal gene transfer is also an example of rhizomes, opposed to the arborescent evolutionism theory. Deleuze also criticizes the generativism of Noam Chomsky, which he considers a perfect example of arborescent dualistic theory. See also References Sources Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2 vols. 1972-1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. . Guattari, Félix. 1995. Chaosophy. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). . ---. 1996. Soft Subversions. Ed. Sylvère Lotringer. Trans. David L. Sweet and Chet Wiener. Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Ser. New York: Semiotext(e). . External links Rhizomes – Cultural Studies Online Journal. Power of Networks – RSA Animate video on the "Power of Networks" by Manuel Lima (juxtaposes the tree vs. network approach). Social networks Social theories Literary concepts Philosophical analogies Postmodern theory Félix Guattari Gilles Deleuze

Sexual fluidity

Sexual fluidity is one or more changes in sexuality or sexual identity (sometimes known as sexual orientation identity). Sexual orientation is stable for the vast majority of people, but some research indicates that some people may experience change in their sexual orientation, and this is slightly more likely for women than for men. There is no scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy. Sexual identity can change throughout an individual's life, and does not have to align with biological sex, sexual behavior, or actual sexual orientation. According to scientific consensus, sexual orientation is not a choice. There is no consensus on the exact cause of developing a sexual orientation, but genetic, hormonal, social, and cultural influences have been examined. Scientists believe that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences. Although no single theory on the cause of sexual orientation has yet gained widespread support, scientists favor biologically-based theories. Research over several decades has demonstrated that sexual orientation can be at any point along a continuum, from exclusive attraction to the opposite sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex. The results of a large-scale, longitudinal study by Savin-Williams, Joyner, and Rieger (2012) indicated that stability of sexual orientation identity over a six-year period was more common than change, and that stability was greatest among men and those identifying as heterosexual. While stability is more common than change, change in sexual orientation identity does occur and the vast majority of research indicates that female sexuality is more fluid than male sexuality. This could be attributed to females' higher erotic plasticity or to sociocultural factors that socialize women to be more open to change. Due to the gender differences in the stability of sexual orientation identity, male and female sexuality may not function via the same mechanisms. Researchers continue to analyze sexual fluidity to better determine its relationship to sexual orientation subgroups (i.e., bisexual, lesbian, gay, etc.). Use of the term sexual fluidity has been attributed to Lisa M. Diamond. The term and the concept gained recognition in the psychological profession and in the media. Background Often, sexual orientation and sexual identity are not distinguished, which can impact accurately assessing sexual identity and whether or not sexual orientation is able to change; sexual orientation identity can change throughout an individual's life, and may or may not align with biological sex, sexual behavior or actual sexual orientation. While the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and American Psychiatric Association state that sexual orientation is innate, continuous or fixed throughout their lives for some people, but is fluid or changes over time for others, the American Psychological Association distinguishes between sexual orientation (an innate attraction) and sexual orientation identity (which may change at any point in a person's life). Scientists and mental health professionals generally do not believe that sexual orientation is a choice. The American Psychological Association states that "sexual orientation is not a choice that can be changed at will, and that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors...is shaped at an early age...[and evidence suggests] biological, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person's sexuality." They say that "sexual orientation identity—not sexual orientation—appears to change via psychotherapy, support groups, and life events." The American Psychiatric Association says individuals may "become aware at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual" and "opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as 'reparative' or 'conversion' therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder, or based upon a prior assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation". They do, however, encourage gay affirmative psychotherapy. In the first decade of the 2000s, psychologist Lisa M. Diamond studied 80 non-heterosexual women over several years. She found that in this group, changes in sexual identity were common, although they were typically between adjacent identity categories (such as 'lesbian' and 'bisexual'). Some change in self-reported sexual feeling occurred among many of the women, but it was small, only averaging about 1 point on the Kinsey scale on average. The range of these women's potential attractions was limited by their sexual orientations, but sexual fluidity permitted movement within that range. In her book Sexual Fluidity, which was awarded with the 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues Distinguished Book Award by Division 44 of the American Psychological Association, Diamond speaks of female sexuality and trying to go beyond the language of "phases" and "denial", arguing that traditional labels for sexual desire are inadequate. For some of 100 non-heterosexual women she followed in her study over a period of 10 years, the word bisexual did not truly express the versatile nature of their sexuality. Diamond calls "for an expanded understanding of same-sex sexuality." Diamond, when reviewing research on lesbian and bisexual women's sexual identities, stated that studies find "change and fluidity in same-sex sexuality that contradict conventional models of sexual orientation as a fixed and uniformly early-developing trait." She suggested that sexual orientation is a phenomenon more connected with female non-heterosexual sexuality, stating, "whereas sexual orientation in men appears to operate as a stable erotic 'compass' reliably channeling sexual arousal and motivation toward one gender or the other, sexual orientation in women does not appear to function in this fashion... As a result of these phenomena, women's same-sex sexuality expresses itself differently from men's same-sex sexuality at every stage of the life course." Biology and stability Conversion therapy (attempts to change sexual orientation) is rarely successful. In Maccio's (2011) review of sexual reorientation therapy attempts, she lists two studies that claim to have successfully converted gay men and lesbians to heterosexuals and four that demonstrate the contrary. She sought to settle the debate using a sample that was not recruited from religious organizations. The study consisted of 37 former conversion therapy participants (62.2% were male) from various cultural and religious backgrounds who currently or previously identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. The results indicated that there were no statistically significant shifts in sexual orientation from pre- to post-treatment. In follow-up sessions, the few changes in sexual orientation that did occur following therapy did not last. This study stands as support for the biological origin of sexual orientation, but the largely male sample population confounds the findings. Further support for the biological origin of sexual orientation is that gender atypical behavior in childhood (e.g., a young boy playing with dolls) appears to predict homosexuality in adulthood (see childhood gender nonconformity). A longitudinal study by Drummond et al. (2008) looked at young girls with gender dysphoria (a significant example of gender atypical behavior) and found that the majority of these girls grew up to identify as bisexual or lesbian. Many retrospective studies looking at childhood behavior are criticized for potential memory errors; so a study by Rieger, Linsenmeier, Gygax, & Bailey (2008) used home videos to investigate the relationship between childhood behaviors and adult sexual orientation. The results of this study support biological causation, but an understanding of how cultural assumptions about sexuality can affect sexual identity formation is also considered. There is strong evidence for a relationship between fraternal birth order and male sexual orientation, and there has been biological research done to investigate potential biological determinants of sexual orientation in men and women. One theory is the second to fourth finger ratio (2D:4D) theory. Some studies have discovered that heterosexual women had higher 2D:4D ratios than did lesbian women but the difference was not found between heterosexual and gay men. Similarly, a study has shown that homosexual men have a sexually dimorphic nucleus in the anterior hypothalamus that is the size of females'. Twin and family studies have also found a genetic influence. Changes in sexuality Demographics General One study by Steven E. Mock and Richard P. Eibach from 2011 shows 2% of 2,560 adult participants included in National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States reported change of sexual orientation identities after a 10-year period: 0.78% of male and 1.36% of female persons that identified themselves to be heterosexuals at the beginning of the 10-year period, as well as 63.6% of lesbians, 64.7% of bisexual females, 9.52% of gay males, and 47% of bisexual males. According to the study, "this pattern was consistent with the hypothesis that heterosexuality is a more stable sexual orientation identity, perhaps because of its normative status. However, male homosexual identity, although less stable than heterosexual identity, was relatively stable compared to the other sexual minority identities". Having only adults included in the examined group, they did not find the differences in fluidity which were affected by age of the participants. However, they stated that "research on attitude stability and change suggests most change occurs in adolescence and young adulthood (Alwin & Krosnick, 1991; Krosnick & Alwin, 1989), which could explain the diminished impact of age after that point". Males versus females Research generally indicates that while the vast majority of men and women are stable and unchanging in their orientation and identity; when it comes to those who are fluid, female sexuality is more fluid than male sexuality. In a seminal review of the sexual orientation literature, stimulated by the findings that the 1970s sexual revolution affected female sexuality more so than male sexuality, research by Baumeister et al. indicated that when compared to males, females have lower concordance between sexual attitudes and behaviors, and sociocultural factors affect female sexuality to a greater degree; it also found that personal change in sexuality is more common for females compared to males. Female sexuality (lesbian and heterosexual) changes significantly more than males on both dimensional and categorical measures of sexual orientation. Furthermore, the majority of homosexual women who previously identified as a different sexual orientation identified as heterosexual; whereas for males, the majority previously identified as bisexual, which the authors believe support the idea of greater fluidity in female sexuality. Females also report having identified with more than one sexual orientation, more often than males and are found to have higher levels of sexual orientation mobility. Females also report being bisexual or unsure of their sexuality more often than males, who more commonly report being exclusively gay or heterosexual. Over a six-year period, women have also been found to display more shifts in sexual orientation identity and were more likely to define their sexual orientation with non-exclusive terms. The social constructivist view suggests that sexual desire is a product of cultural and psychosocial processes and that men and women are socialized differently. This difference in socialization can explain differences in sexual desire and stability of sexual orientation. Male sexuality is centered around physical factors, whereas female sexuality is centered around sociocultural factors, making female sexuality inherently more open to change. The greater effect on female sexuality in 1970s sexual revolution shows that female shifts in sexual orientation identity may be due to greater exposure to moderating factors (such as the media). In western culture, women are also expected to be more emotionally expressive and intimate towards both males and females. This socialization is a plausible cause of greater female sexual fluidity. Whether female sexuality is naturally more fluid and therefore changes from social factors or social factors cause female sexuality to be less stable is unknown. An evolutionary psychology hypothesis proposes that bisexuality enables women to reduce conflict with other women, by promoting each others' mothering contributions, thus ensuring their reproductive success. According to this view, women are capable of forming romantic bonds with both sexes and sexual fluidity may be explained as a reproductive strategy that ensures the survival of offspring. A longitudinal study concluded that stability of sexual orientation was more common than change. Gender differences in the stability of sexual orientation may vary by subgroup and could possibly be related to individual differences more than gender-wide characteristics. Youth (age 14–21) One study that did compare the stability of youth sexual orientation identity across genders found results opposite to most done with adult samples. The study compared non-heterosexual male and female sexual orientation over a year and concluded that female youth were more likely to report consistent sexual identities than males. The study was conducted over a single year. Youth appears to be when most change in sexual orientation identity occurs for females. A 10-year study compared sexual orientation as measured at four times during the study. The most change was found between the first (taken at 18 years of age) and second (taken at 20 years of age) measurements which was the only time bracket that fell during adolescence. A population-based study conducted over 6 years found that nonheterosexual (gay/lesbian/bisexual) male and female participants were more likely to change sexual orientation identity than heterosexual participants. A yearlong study found that sexual identity was more stable for gay and lesbian youth participants when compared to bisexual participants. The identity integration process that individuals go through during adolescence appears to be associated with changes in sexual identity; adolescents who score higher on identity integration measures are more consistent in their sexual orientation. Bisexual youths seem to take longer to form their sexual identities than do consistently homosexual or heterosexual identifying youths so bisexuality may be seen as a transitional phase during adolescence. Rosario et al. (2006) conclude that "acceptance, commitment, and integration of a gay/lesbian identity is an ongoing developmental process that, for many youths, may extend through adolescence and beyond." Sabra L. Katz-Wise and Janet S. Hide report in article published 2014 in "Archives of Sexual Behavior" of their study on 188 female and male young adults in the United States with a same-gender orientation, aged 18–26 years. In that cohort, sexual fluidity in attractions was reported by 63% of females and 50% of males, with 48% of those females and 34% of those males reporting fluidity in sexual orientation identity. Bisexuality as a transitional phase Bisexuality as a transitional phase on the way to identifying as exclusively lesbian or gay has also been studied. In a large-scale, longitudinal study, participants who identified as bisexual at one point in time were especially likely to change sexual orientation identity throughout the six-year study. A second longitudinal study found conflicting results. If bisexuality is a transitional phase, as people grow older the number identifying as bisexual should decline. Over the 10-year span of this study (using a female-only sample), the overall number of individuals identifying as bisexual remained relatively constant (hovering between 50 and 60%), suggesting that bisexuality is a third orientation, distinct from homosexuality and heterosexuality and can be stable. A third longitudinal study by Kinnish, Strassberg, and Turner (2005) supports this theory. While sex differences in sexual orientation stability were found for heterosexuals and gays/lesbians, no sex difference was found for bisexual men and women. Bisexuality remains "undertheorized and underinvestigated". Cultural debate The exploration on sexual fluidity initiated by Lisa M. Diamond presented a cultural challenge to the LGBT community; this is because although researchers usually emphasize that changes in sexual orientation are unlikely, despite conversion therapy attempts, sexual identity can change over time. That sexual orientation is not always stable challenges the views of many within the LGBT community, who believe that sexual orientation is fixed and immutable. There is some level of cultural debate regarding the question of how (and if) fluidity exists among men, including questions regarding fluctuations in attractions and arousal in male bisexuals. Sexual fluidity may overlap with the label abrosexual, which has been used to refer to regular changes in one's sexuality. See also Aceflux Bambi effect (slang) Bi-curious Biology and sexual orientation Environment and sexual orientation List of people who identify as sexually fluid Pansexuality Questioning (sexuality and gender) Situational sexual behavior Unlabeled sexuality References Interpersonal relationships LGBTQ Plurisexuality

Artistic freedom

Artistic freedom (or freedom of artistic expression) can be defined as "the freedom to imagine, create and distribute diverse cultural expressions free of governmental censorship, political interference or the pressures of non-state actors." Generally, artistic freedom describes the extent of independence artists obtain to create art freely. Moreover, artistic freedom concerns "the rights of citizens to access artistic expressions and take part in cultural life—and thus [represents] one of the key issues for democracy." The extent of freedom indispensable to create art freely differs regarding the existence or nonexistence of national instruments established to protect, to promote, to control or to censor artists and their creative expressions. This is why universal, regional and national legal provisions have been installed to guarantee the right to freedom of expression in general and of artistic expression in particular. In 2013, Ms Farida Shaheed, United Nations special rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, presented her "Report in the field of cultural rights: The right to freedom of expression and creativity" providing a comprehensive study of the status quo of, and specifically the limitations and challenges to, artistic freedom worldwide. In this study, artistic freedom "was put forward as a basic human right that went beyond the 'right to create' or the 'right to participate in cultural life'." It stresses the range of fundamental freedoms indispensable for artistic expression and creativity, e.g. the freedoms of movement and association. "The State of Artistic Freedom" is an integral report published by arts censorship monitor on an annual basis. Definition of artistic freedom Repeatedly, the terms artistic freedom and freedom of artistic expressions are used as synonyms. Their underlying concepts "art", "freedom" and "expression" comprise very vast fields of discussion: "Art is a very 'subtle'—sometimes also symbolic—form of expression, suffering from definition problems more than any other form." As a result, "[i]t is almost impossible to give a satisfying definition of the concept art. It is even more difficult to define the concepts artistic creativity and artistic expression." UNESCO's 2005 Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions defines cultural expressions as "those expressions that result from the creativity of individuals, groups and societies, and that have cultural content" while the latter "refers to the symbolic meaning, artistic dimension and cultural values that originate from or express cultural identities." In the context of the freedom of (artistic) expressions, "[t]he word expression in the first instance refers to verbalisation of thoughts." Freedom of artistic expression "may mean that we have to tolerate some art that is offensive, insulting, outrageous, or just plain bad. But it is a small price to pay for the liberty and diversity that form the foundation of a free society." Officially, UNESCO defines artistic freedom as "the freedom to imagine, create and distribute diverse cultural expressions free of governmental censorship, political interference or the pressures of non-state actors. It includes the right of all citizens to have access to these works and is essential for the wellbeing of societies." UNESCO puts forth that "artistic freedom embodies a bundle of rights protected under international law." These include: The right to create without censorship or intimidation; The right to have artistic work supported, distributed and remunerated; The right to freedom of movement; The right to freedom of association; The right to the protection of social and economic rights; The right to participate in cultural life. Legal frameworks to protect and promote artistic freedom Legal frameworks to protect and promote artistic freedom reflect the conviction that "[c]ulture constitutes one process of, and space for, democratic debate. The freedom of artistic expression forms its backbone. There is compelling evidence that participation in culture also promotes democratic participation as well as empowerment and well-being of our citizens." Farida Shaheed wrote: "Artists may entertain people, but they also contribute to social debates, sometimes bringing counter-discourses and potential counterweights to existing power centres." Moreover, she emphasized that "the vitality of artistic creativity is necessary for the development of vibrant cultures and the functioning of democratic societies. Artistic expressions and creations are an integral part of cultural life,which entails contesting meanings and revisiting culturally inherited ideas and concepts." According to , "[p]opulists and nationalists, who often portray human rights as a limitation on what they claim is the will of the majority, are on the rise globally. As this phenomenon rises, artists continue to play an important role in expressing alternative visions for society." This is why "artists are sometimes responsible for radical criticism." As a result, artistic expressions and artists are suffering censorship and violations worldwide. Artists are among the first to be silenced by repressive regimes: the poets, playwrights and painters who challenge the status quo are often lone workers, and as such easy targets for an authoritarian state or violent oppressor. When their views fail to accord with the mainstream, the artist is also vulnerable to the censorship of the mob. Thù" shows that "[i]t is not only governments violating the right to artistic freedom. 2016 saw a worrying amount of actions by non-state actors, ranging from militant extremists to peaceful community groups, against art and artists. In some instances, authorities censored artists based on requests or the interference from civil society groups." Based on this development, "[m]ajor sources of international law across the board recognize freedom of artistic creativity explicitly, or implicitly, as an inherent element of the right to freedom of expression. In these instruments, the individual right to express ideas creatively is often irrevocably linked with the right to receive them." The growing importance of artistic freedom as a specific right is reflected by the introduction of the role of the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of culture in 2009, and other rapporteurs, notably the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression. UN instruments Artistic freedom as a specific right According to Farida Shaheed, the most explicit legal provisions protecting the right to the freedom indispensable for artistic expression and creativity are the following: Article 15 (3) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR): States "undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for ... creative activity"; Article 19 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information (...) in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice." Article 13 and 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; Article 13 (1) of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR); Article 14 of the ACHR Protocol in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Provisions; Article 42 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights; Article 27 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): the universal right "to enjoy the arts"; Article 49 of the Case of Karataş v. Turkey by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) emphasizes that the "[freedom of artistic expression] (...) affords the opportunity to take part in the public exchange of cultural, political and social information and ideas of all kinds. (...) Those who create, perform, distribute or exhibit works of art contribute to the exchange of ideas and opinions which is essential for a democratic society. Hence there is an obligation on the State not to encroach unduly on the author's freedom of expression." In September 2015, 57 UN Member States reaffirmed the right to freedom of expression including creative and artistic expression through a joint statement. Additionally, in 2015, the Carthage Declaration on the Protection of Artists in Vulnerable Situations was adopted in Tunis. Artistic freedom as a pillar of the right to freedom of expression The following legal instruments do not specifically mention artistic freedom but rather understand it as a pillar of freedom of expression in general related to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. They aim to guarantee the right to freedom of expression or the right to participate in cultural life without specific reference to the arts. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); Article 9 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; Article 9 and 17 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights; Article 32 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights; The right "to seek and develop cultural knowledge and expressions and to share them with others, as well as to act creatively and take part in creative activity" formulated by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). UNESCO instruments 1980 UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of the Artist Artistic freedom first appeared as a distinct right in UNESCO's 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist underlining "the essential role of art in the life and development of the individual and of society' and the duty of States to protect and defend artistic freedom." Although not a binding instrument, the Recommendation is an important reference in defining artists' rights across the spectrum worldwide. The 1980 Recommendation serves as a reference for policy development and as a basis for new formulations of cultural policies:Member States, recognizing the essential role of art in the life and development of the individual and of society, accordingly have a duty to protect, defend and assist artists and their freedom of creation. For this purpose, they should take all necessary steps to stimulate artistic creativity and the flowering of talent, in particular by adopting measures to secure greater freedom for artists, without which they cannot fulfill their mission, and to improve their status by acknowledging their right to enjoy the fruits of their work. 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions The 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions acknowledges that "the diversity of cultural expressions can only be promoted if human rights and fundamental freedoms are guaranteed." A guiding principle of the 2005 Convention is that "cultural diversity can be protected and promoted only if human rights and fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of expression, information and communication, as well as the ability of individuals to choose cultural expressions, are guaranteed." In this context, governance of culture refers to policies and measures governments establish to promote and to protect all forms of creativity and artistic expressions. The most recent UNESCO Convention in the field of culture and ratified by 146 Parties, it frames the formulation and implementation of different types of legislative, regulatory, institutional and financial interventions to promote the emergence of diverse cultural and creative industry sectors around the world. As a result, it aims to ensure participation in cultural life and to support access to diverse cultural expressions (film, music, performing arts, etc.). National legislative measures to promote artistic freedom Similar to the aforementioned universal instruments to protect artists and artistic freedom, "[i]n national constitutions (...), freedom of artistic creativity is often located within the strongly-protected right to freedom of expression." Certain countries also "recognize the freedom of artistic expression within the ambit of the right to science and culture." The following national legislative measures are listed in alphabetical order. The list is to be completed. Burkina Faso Adopted on 23 May 2013 by "Direction générale des arts (DGA)", the decree "Décret portant statut de l'artiste au Burkina Faso" envisages improving the social protection and the living conditions of artists, particularly the social security of employed artists and freelancers, the return of social contributions of artists and the complement dispositive for mutual accountability. Canada In Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects artistic expression. France In July 2016, France amended its legislation in order to extend it with the legal protection of artistic freedom, architecture and heritage. For the first time in international law, artistic expressions are established as public goods and the "dissemination of artistic creation is free". This implies not only that artists are free to create but also that the wider public has access to it. As a result, art and artistic expressions cannot be censored or simply excluded from exhibits and other events. Germany Article 5 of the German Basic Law contains a special paragraph that connects the right to freedom of expression with the right to freely develop the arts and sciences." Indonesia On 12 January 2012, Indonesia ratification UNESCO 2005 Convention. When 2017, Indonesia published Cultural Advancement Law based on principles 11 values, including guaranteeing freedom of expression, ensuring the protection of cultural expression, providing cultural facilities and infrastructure, also funding sources for cultural advancement. Mexico On 19 June 2017, Mexico published its "Ley General de Cultura y Derechos Culturales" promising strong protection for artistic freedom and artists and cultural professionals, a provision specifically needed given the alarming conditions under which Mexican artists, journalists and cultural professionals currently work. Spain On 6 September 2018, the Spanish Congress of Deputies unanimously ratified a proposal assigned to elaborate a "Estatuto del Artista y del Profesional de la Cultura". Broadly, the decree aims to protect and promote artists with regard to taxation, their work security and legal protection. Sweden Article 1 (2) of the Swedish Fundamental Law explicitly includes the freedom of artistic creation as part of the key purposes of freedom of expression: "The purpose of freedom of expression under this Fundamental Law is to secure the free exchange of opinion, free and comprehensive information, and freedom of artistic creation." Togo On 20 June 2016, Togo adopted its "Statut de l'artiste". Its major objective is to acknowledge artists as individuals and their moral role in society, their contributions towards the intellectual sphere protected by copyright. It defines the rights and duties linked to artistic professions and aims to promote creativity and to protect artists socially. Tunisia Adopted in 2014, article 42 of the Tunisian Constitution states: "The right to culture is guaranteed. The freedom of creative expression is guaranteed. The State encourages cultural creativity and supports the strengthening of national culture, its diversity and renewal, in promoting the values of tolerance, rejection of violence, openness to different cultures and dialogue between civilizations." United States In the U.S., the first amendment protects artistic expression. According to the Court, freedom of artistic creativity is an element of the respect for freedom of self-expression, one of the core values of the First Amendment. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has never considered artistic freedom as a distinct category akin to political or commercial speech: "it rather addresses the various forms of art in their relation to the First Amendment on a contextual basis." Challenges to artistic freedom The International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) explains the purpose of its existence with the following statement:Writers and artists are especially vulnerable to censorship, harassment, imprisonment and even death, because of what they do. They represent the liberating gift of the human imagination and give voice to thoughts, ideas, debate and critique, disseminated to a wide audience. They also tend to be the first to speak out and resist when free speech is threatened. Freemuse's report (2018) demonstrates that artistic freedom "is being shut down in every corner of the globe, including in the traditionally democratic West. According to Freemuse's 2016 report, the music industry is the main target of serious violations, and second to film in overall violations, including non-violent censorship. The most serious violations included the murder of Pakistani Qawwali singer Amjad Sabri and the killing of Burundi musician Pascal Treasury Nshimirimana. In 2019, Karima Bennoune, UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, underlines that "the freedom of artistic expression and creativity of persons with disabilities, women or older persons" remains significantly restricted. She states that "many cultural rights actors have not incorporated a gender perspective into their work, while many women's rights advocates have not considered cultural rights issues." Referring to Freemuse's 2016 report, UNESCO stresses that "laws dealing with terrorism and state security, defamation, religion and 'traditional values' have been used to curb artistic and other forms of free expression." Moreover, new digital technologies, including social media platforms, are challenging artistic freedom: "Art in the online and digital space continues to challenge authorities and corporations who are quick to react by closing down expression rather than using it as an opportunity to foster it." Social media and music streaming channels, like Instagram and SoundCloud are becoming the platforms on which artists publicly display and promote their work. However, they also bring with them threats to rights and freedoms. Online trolls often intimidate artists to withdraw their work. Additionally, growing digital surveillance has a corrosive effect on artistic freedom. Many platforms have established mechanisms, such as Instagram's guidelines on 'standards of behavior' whose formulations are very vague. This provides disproportionate power to individuals and organizations who use the platform's reporting processes to get individual artworks removed, and sometimes entire accounts blocked. In addition, the impact of algorithms on diversity of content is another area of concern: platforms display a plethora of cultural offerings, but also control not only sales but also communication and the recommendation algorithms (e.g. adapting offered content to the profile of each internet user). These algorithms finally serve to promote certain contents while oppressing others. In conclusion, new digital technologies—while providing a platform for the distribution of artistic content—may interrupt the flow of ideas of artists and curtail their artistic freedom. In the 10th Anniversary UN Report on Cultural Rights, Ole Reitov, former executive director of Freemuse, underscores the progressive fact that "artistic freedom is no longer a 'marginalized' issue in the 'world of freedom of expression'". Since Farida Shaheed's report and inspired by lobbying from arts and human rights NGOs, efforts to promote artistic freedom have multiplied across the entire United Nations system: "The UN Universal Periodic Review provides an opportunity for NGOs, among others, to make submissions on States' failures to meet human rights standards, including artistic freedom. New calls for a UN Action Plan on the Safety of Artists and Audiences (similar to the one for journalists) have been put forward." As UNESCO's Global Report "Reshaping Cultural Policies" (2018) shows, the number and capacity of organizations monitoring artistic freedom is increasing. "In this domain as well, cities are taking valuable initiatives by providing safe havens for artists at risk." As the list above shows, "measures to support the economic and social rights of artists are appearing increasingly in national legislation, especially in Africa." Monitoring artistic freedom Despite the progress made and legal instruments established to promote and protect freedom of artistic expressions, "there is urgent need for monitoring and surveillance, essential if these freedoms are to become a permanent reality." Karima Bennoune notes that the increasing number of reported attacks perpetrated by State and non-State actors against cultural professionals reflects the boosting capacity of monitoring artistic freedom. She states the UNESCO global reports monitoring the implementation of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Expressions have been "[o]f particular relevance". The reports provide a monitoring framework comprising four overarching goals to enhance cultural policies worldwide. One of these goals aims to "Promote Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms" and encompasses artistic freedom as an "area of monitoring" incorporating core indicators to measure achievements regarding the rights and protection of artists. Additionally, the framework relates artistic freedom to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 of the UN 2030 Agenda, which aims to "'Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels". Specifically, the SDG's target 16.10 aims to "ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements". Additionally, there are many other initiatives advocating and monitoring artistic freedom. Alongside other organizations documenting violations against freedom of artistic expression (such as Arterial Network, Artists at Risk Connection, PEN International and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions), Freemuse is an independent international organization particularly monitoring the freedom of expression of musicians and composers worldwide. "Freemuse's reports collated from all over the world show that artists are increasingly facing censorship, persecution, incarceration or death, because of their work." There is also monitoring carried out by Koalisi Seni, an institution that advocates for arts policy in Indonesia. From the results of its monitoring, Koalisi Seni notes, in Indonesia during the pandemic, social restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 became a new excuse for the state to suppress arts activities. There are also notes that stigmatization of art often occurs because art is considered to damage people's morals and invite immorality. In order to monitor the actions taken to implement the 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artists, the Secretariat of the 2005 UNESCO Convention (see below) runs a global survey every four years gathering information from Members States, NGOs and INGOs and prepares a report, which is then submitted to the General Conference. See also Freedom of expression Freemuse Awards United Nations UNESCO Victimless crime References External links Arterial Network Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) Freemuse Index on Censorship International City of Refuge Network (ICORN) PEN International Safemuse UNESCO Artistic Freedom Leaflet UNESCO Video "A Question on Artistic Freedom" UNESCO Video "Artistic Freedom is Not a Luxury!" Art Archives - National Coalition Against Censorship Kebebasan Berkesenian Freedom of expression The arts

Cultural homogenization

Cultural homogenization is an aspect of cultural globalization, listed as one of its main characteristics, and refers to the reduction in cultural diversity through the popularization and diffusion of a wide array of cultural symbols—not only physical objects but customs, ideas and values. David E. O'Connor defines it as "the process by which local cultures are transformed or absorbed by a dominant outside culture". Cultural homogenization has been called "perhaps the most widely discussed hallmark of global culture". In theory, homogenization could work in the breakdown of cultural barriers and the global adoption of a single culture. Cultural homogenization can impact national identity and culture, which would be "eroded by the impact of global cultural industries and multinational media". The term is usually used in the context of Western culture dominating and destroying other cultures. The process of cultural homogenization in the context of the domination of the Western (American), capitalist culture is also known as McDonaldization, coca-colonization, Americanization or Westernization and criticized as a form of cultural imperialism and neo-colonialism. This process has been resented by many indigenous cultures. However, while some scholars, critical of this process, stress the dominance of American culture and corporate capitalism in modern cultural homogenization, others note that the process of cultural homogenization is not one-way, and in fact involves a number of cultures exchanging various elements. Critics of cultural homogenization theory point out that as different cultures mix, homogenization is less about the spread of a single culture as about the mixture of different cultures, as people become aware of other cultures and adopt their elements. Examples of non-American culture affecting the West include world music and the popularization of non-American television (Latin American telenovelas, Japanese anime, Indian Bollywood), religion (Islam, Buddhism), food, and clothing in the West, though in most cases insignificant in comparison to the Western influence in other countries. The process of adoption of elements of global culture to local cultures is known as glocalization or cultural heterogenization. Some scholars like Arjun Appadurai note that "the central problem of today's global interaction [is] the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization". The Arab's World was found to be uncomfortable with the former as many of them perceived it as either a real or potential threat to their political, economic, and cultural independence. Perspectives The debate regarding the concept of cultural homogenization consists of two separate questions: whether homogenization is occurring or not. whether it is considered good or not. John Tomlinson says, "It is one thing to say that cultural diversity is being destroyed, quite another to lament the fact." Tomlinson argues that globalization leads to homogenization. He comments on Cees Hamelink, "Hamelink is right to identify cultural synchronization as an unprecedented feature of global modernity." However, unlike Hamelink, he believes in the idea that homogenization is not a bad thing in itself and that benefits of homogenization may outweigh the goods of cultural diversity. Appadurai, acknowledging the concept of homogenization, still provides an alternative argument of indigenization. He says that " the homogenization argument subspeciates into either an argument about Americanization or an argument about commoditization.... What these arguments fail to consider is that at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies, they tend to become indigenized." Although there is more to be explored on the dynamics of indigenization, examples such as Indonesianization in Irian Jaya and Indianization in Sri Lanka show the possibility of alternatives to Americanization. He remarks over this that "One man's imagined community is another man's political prison. Generally homogenization is viewed negatively, as it leads to the "reduction in cultural diversity." However, some scholars have a positive view on homogenization, especially in the area of education. They say that it "produces consistent norms of behavior across a set of modern institutions, thus tying institutions such as the modern nation state and formal education together in a tight political sphere." Teaching universal values such as rationality by mass schooling is a part of the positive benefits that can be generated from homogenization. See also American hegemony Criticism of Walmart Cultural uniformity Globalism Globalization Linguistic imperialism Monoculturalism References Cultural globalization Cultural geography Homogenization

Media culture

In cultural studies, media culture refers to the current Western capitalist society that emerged and developed from the 20th century, under the influence of mass media. The term alludes to the overall impact and intellectual guidance exerted by the media (primarily TV, but also the press, radio and cinema), not only on public opinion but also on tastes and values. The alternative term mass culture conveys the idea that such culture emerges spontaneously from the masses themselves, like popular art did before the 20th century. The expression media culture, on the other hand, conveys the idea that such culture is the product of the mass media. Another alternative term for media culture is "image culture." Media culture, with its declinations of advertising and public relations, is often considered as a system centered on the manipulation of the mass of society. Corporate media "are used primarily to represent and reproduce dominant ideologies." Prominent in the development of this perspective has been the work of Theodor Adorno since the 1940s. Media culture is associated with consumerism, and in this sense called alternatively "consumer culture." Definitions The news media mines the work of scientists and scholars and conveys it to the general public, often emphasizing elements that have inherent appeal or the power to amaze. For instance, giant pandas (a species in remote Chinese woodlands) have become well-known items of popular culture; parasitic worms, though of greater practical importance, have not. Both scholarly facts and news stories get modified through popular transmission, often to the point of outright falsehoods. As "Dumbing Down of Society" Hannah Arendt's 1961 essay "The Crisis in Culture" suggested that a media driven by markets would lead to culture being replaced by the commands of entertainment. Susan Sontag argues that in our culture, the most "...intelligible, persuasive values are [increasingly] drawn from the entertainment industries". As a result, "tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel" topics are becoming the norm. Some critics argue that popular culture is "dumbing down": "newspapers that once ran foreign news now feature celebrity gossip, pictures of scantily dressed young ladies... television has replaced high-quality drama with gardening, cookery, and other "lifestyle" programs [and] reality TV and asinine soaps," to the point that people are constantly immersed in trivia about celebrity culture. Critics have lamented the "replacement of high art and authentic folk culture by tasteless industrialized artifacts produced on a mass scale in order to satisfy the lowest common denominator." According to them, the popular culture which rose after the end of the Second World War led to the concentration of media into a handful of large, multinational conglomerates. This popular press decreased the amount of actual news or information and replaced it with entertainment or titillation that reinforces "fears, prejudice, scapegoating processes, paranoia, and aggression." As an unfavorable influence on television and cinema According to Altheid and Snow, media culture means that within a culture, the media increasingly influences other institutions (e.g. politics, religion, sports), which become constructed alongside a media logic. Since the 1950s, television has been the main medium for molding public opinion. In Rosenberg and White's book Mass Culture, Dwight Macdonald argues that "Popular culture is a debased, trivial culture that voids both the deep realities (sex, death, failure, tragedy) and also the simple spontaneous pleasures... The masses, debauched by several generations of this sort of thing, in turn come to demand trivial and comfortable cultural products." Van den Haag argues that "all mass media in the end alienate people from personal experience and though appearing to offset it, intensify their moral isolation from each other, from the reality and from themselves." Critics of television and film have argued that the quality of TV output has been diluted as stations pursue ratings by focusing on whatever is attractive and eye-catching, which ends up being heavily superficial. Hollywood films have changed from creating formulaic films which emphasize "shock-value and superficial thrill[s]" and the use of special effects, with themes that focus on the "basic instincts of aggression, revenge, violence, [and] greed." The plots are mostly simple, easy-to-comprehend and follow a standardized format which is similar to its predecessors. This leads to a decline in creative plotlines or elements, leaving the characters poorly-made, bland, repetitive and the dialogues unengaging, inaccurately representing the complexities of real life, or even unreal. More recently, scholars turned to the concept of the mediatization of culture to address the various processes through which culture is influenced by the modus operandi of the media. On one hand, the media are cultural institutions and artifacts of their own, on the other hand, other domains have become dependent on the media and their various affordances. Through religion Media culture, in its mass marketing, has been compared to the role of religions in the past. It has been considered as taking the place of the old traditional religions. The waves of enthusiasm and fervent exaltation for a given product, a characteristic consumerist phenomenon, has been compared to the "ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of the old religious fetishism". Conversely, the Catholic Church, the dominant religious institution in the Western world, has been considered retrospectively as an antecedent and sophisticated form of public relations, advertiser and multinational corporation, selling its product to a mass of worshipers, frequently alternating as consumers. Symbolic consumption Consumers' decisions are made based not only on the economic concept of the utility material goods provide but also from their symbolic value in terms of the search for one's self and place within the context of society and group identity. In other words, the products consumers purchase are part of creating a story about who they are and whom they identify with. Scholars view symbolic consumption as a social construct. A product is effective as an expression of identity only if the group shares a perception about the symbolic meaning of a product. These meanings are conveyed to consumers through advertising, magazines and television. Jean Paul Sartre wrote that under certain conditions things, or even people, can become part of an extended concept of "self". Consumers may develop a narrative of their life based on their consumption choices to hold on to or break continuity with their past, understand themselves and express changes in their sense of self. The creation of a "lifestyle" association through consumption may mean avoiding past patterns of consumption that symbolize the old self or certain social groups. The symbolism of goods is based on socially shared beliefs. Feminist approaches to media culture The feminist approaches related to media culture is something that can stem from feminist theory in relation to media culture. With the term feminism in itself having such a broad term, the feminist communication theory is something that branches off into many other concepts, thus providing us with feminist approaches on media culture. These approaches will often highlight how media has impacted women, the roles of women in media environments, how to dismantle certain perspectives with media culture etc.. For example, Angela McRobbie's analysis of teenage girls based on a popular magazine at the time called 'Jackie'. McRobbie uses a 'structural feminism' approach in order to analyze "the ideology of femininity in magazines and other medias, as identified through codes of romance, personal/domestic life, fashion/beauty, pop music and new sexualities." (Laughey, 2007). These codes had shown how these different aspects, when presented in the form of the popular media of the magazine 'Jackie', significantly impacted these individuals. The codes and case study showed how these aspects affected the way the teenage girls at this time acted, thought and portrayed themselves. Through approaches like McRobbie's it is shown how media culture had significant impact on women at this time. McRobbie's more recent research continuous to show how this is a prevalent reoccurrence in media culture and women. Feminist approaches can also be applied when discussing media culture in terms of fashion, and how it can relate to other media's like music, magazines, celebrities etc.. An example of this, is looking at the postfeminism approach and how it is explained by certain researchers, that women and many young girls become victim to postfeminist styled fashion. Meaning, a style of fashion that is promoting the early and/or over sexualization of clothing to girls at a young age solely because of how they are marketed with the ideologies that come with a postfeminist approach. This particular concept, is not to disregard the meaning that postfeminism approach provides for society and women, but to see how a specific way of feminist thinking has affected women and media culture. There are many feminist approaches to discuss, as well as different ways for researchers and individuals to apply these approaches to media culture. It is important to remember that feminist approaches are not the only way to understand media culture or dissect media culture, but one of many ways to do so. See also Advanced capitalism Agenda-setting theory Consumer capitalism Consumtariat (Consumer-Proletariat) Culture industry Infotainment Low culture Mass communication Mass or crowd psychology Media studies Mediatization More popular than Jesus Propaganda The Society of the Spectacle Dumbing down Notes References Adorno (1963) Culture Industry Reconsidered Bignell, Jonathan (2007) Postmodern Media Culture Debord (1977) [1967] The Society of the Spectacle, translation by Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Black & Red, 1970; rev. ed. 1977). Online at Library.nothingness.org (accessdate=2011-08-20) Debord (1994) [1967] The Society of the Spectacle, translation by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books). Online at Cddc.vt.edu (accessdate=2011-08-20) Jansson, André (2002) The Mediatization of Consumption, Journal of Consumer Culture, March 2002 vol. 2 no. 1 5-31 Nomai, Afsheen Joseph (2008) Culture Jamming: Ideological Struggle and the Possibilities for Social Change. Free pdf download available. Thoman, Elizabeth (1992) Rise of the Image Culture, in Media & Values, Issue# 57 Thomas, P. L. (2012) Ignoring Poverty in the U.S. the Corporate Takeover of Public Education Further reading Duncan, Barry (1988). Mass Media and Popular Culture. Toronto, Ont.: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Canada. Media studies Popular culture Influence of mass media Mass media issues Social influence

Culture war

A culture war is a form of cultural conflict between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology (moral beliefs, humane virtues, religious practices) upon mainstream society. In political usage, the term culture war is a metaphor for "hot-button" politics about values and ideologies, realized with intentionally adversarial social narratives meant to provoke political polarization among the mainstream of society over economic matters of public policy and of consumption. As practical politics, a culture war is about social policy wedge issues that are based on abstract arguments about values, morality, and lifestyle meant to provoke political cleavage in a multicultural society. Etymology Kulturkampf In the English language, the term culture war is a calque of the German word Kulturkampf (culture struggle), which refers to an historical event in Germany. The term appears as the title of an 1875 British book review of a German pamphlet. Research Criticism and evaluation Since the time that James Davison Hunter first applied the concept of culture wars to American life, the idea has been subject to questions about whether "culture wars" names a real phenomenon, and if so, whether the phenomenon it describes is a cause of, or merely a result of, membership in groups like political parties and religions. Culture wars have also been subject to the criticism of being artificial, imposed, or asymmetric conflicts, rather than a result of authentic differences between cultures. Researchers have differed about the scientific validity of the notion of culture war. Some claim it does not describe real behavior, or that it describes only the behavior of a small political elite. Others claim culture war is real and widespread, and even that it is fundamental to explaining Americans' political behavior and beliefs. A 2023 study on the circulation of conspiracy theories on social media noted that disinformation actors insert polarizing claims in culture wars by taking one side or the other, thus making the adherents circulate and parrot disinformation as a rhetorical ammunition against their perceived opponents. Political scientist Alan Wolfe participated in a series of scholarly debates in the 1990s and 2000s against Hunter, claiming that Hunter's concept of culture wars did not accurately describe the opinions or behavior of Americans, which Wolfe claimed were more united than polarized. A meta-analysis of opinion data from 1992 to 2012 published in the American Political Science Review concluded that, in contrast to a common belief that political party and religious membership shape opinion on culture war topics, instead opinions on culture war topics lead people to revise their political party and religious orientations. The researchers view culture war attitudes as "foundational elements in the political and religious belief systems of ordinary citizens." Artificiality or asymmetry Some writers and scholars have said that culture wars are created or perpetuated by political special interest groups, by reactionary social movements, by party dynamics, or by electoral politics as a whole. These authors view culture war not as an unavoidable result of widespread cultural differences, but as a technique used to create in-groups and out-groups for a political purpose. Political commentator E. J. Dionne has written that culture war is an electoral technique to exploit differences and grievances, remarking that the real cultural division is "between those who want to have a culture war and those who don't." Sociologist Scott Melzer says that culture wars are created by conservative, reactive organizations and movements. Members of these movements possess a "sense of victimization at the hands of a liberal culture run amok. In their eyes, immigrants, gays, women, the poor, and other groups are (undeservedly) granted special rights and privileges." Melzer writes about the example of the National Rifle Association of America, which he says intentionally created a culture war in order to unite conservative groups, particularly groups of white men, against a common perceived threat. Similarly, religion scholar Susan B. Ridgely has written that culture wars were made possible by Focus on the Family. This organization produced conservative Christian "alternative news" that began to bifurcate American media consumption, promoting a particular "traditional family" archetype to one part of the population, particularly conservative religious women. Ridgely says that this tradition was depicted as under liberal attack, seeming to necessitate a culture war to defend the tradition. Political scientists Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins have written about an asymmetry between the US's two major political parties, saying the Republican party should be understood as an ideological movement built to wage political conflict, and the Democratic party as a coalition of social groups with less ability to impose ideological discipline on members. This encourages Republicans to perpetuate and to draw new issues into culture wars, because Republicans are well equipped to fight such wars. According to The Guardian, "many on the left have argued that such [culture war] battles [a]re 'distractions' from the real fight over class and economic issues." Internet manipulation Culture wars by country United States 1920s–1991: Origins In American usage, culture war may imply a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. This usage originated in the 1920s when urban and rural American values came into closer conflict. This followed several decades of immigration to the States by people who earlier European immigrants considered 'alien'. It was also a result of the cultural shifts and modernizing trends of the Roaring Twenties, culminating in the presidential campaign of Al Smith in 1928. In subsequent decades during the 20th century, the term was published occasionally in American newspapers. Historian Matthew Dallek argues the John Birch Society (JBS) was an early promoter of culture war ideas. Scholar Celestini Carmen traces the JBS's apocalyptic culture war rhetoric through the connections of Christian right leaders such as Tim LaHaye and Phyllis Schlafly to the JBS and their founding of the Moral Majority. 1991–2001: Rise in prominence James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, introduced the expression again in his 1991 publication, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter described what he saw as a dramatic realignment and polarization that had transformed American politics and culture. He argued that on an increasing number of "hot-button" defining issues—abortion, gun politics, separation of church and state, privacy, recreational drug use, homosexuality, censorship—there existed two definable polarities. Furthermore, not only were there a number of divisive issues, but society had divided along essentially the same lines on these issues, so as to constitute two warring groups, defined primarily not by nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or even political affiliation, but rather by ideological world-views. Hunter characterized this polarity as stemming from opposite impulses, toward what he referred to as Progressivism and as Orthodoxy. Others have adopted the dichotomy with varying labels. For example, Bill O'Reilly, a conservative political commentator and former host of the Fox News Channel talk show The O'Reilly Factor, emphasizes differences between "Secular-Progressives" and "Traditionalists" in his 2006 book Culture Warrior. Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez attributes the 1990s emergence of culture wars to the end of the Cold War in 1991. She writes that Evangelical Christians viewed a particular Christian masculine gender role as the only defense of America against the threat of communism. When this threat ended upon the close of the Cold War, Evangelical leaders transferred the perceived source of threat from foreign communism to domestic changes in gender roles and sexuality. During the 1992 presidential election, commentator Pat Buchanan mounted a campaign for the Republican nomination for president against incumbent George H. W. Bush. In a prime-time slot at the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan gave his speech on the culture war. He argued: "There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." In addition to criticizing environmentalists and feminism, he portrayed public morality as a defining issue: The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God's country. A month later, Buchanan characterized the conflict as about power over society's definition of right and wrong. He named abortion, sexual orientation and popular culture as major fronts—and mentioned other controversies, including clashes over the Confederate flag, Christmas, and taxpayer-funded art. He also said that the negative attention his "culture war" speech received was itself evidence of America's polarization. The culture war had significant impact on national politics in the 1990s. The rhetoric of the Christian Coalition of America may have weakened president George H. W. Bush's chances for re-election in 1992 and helped his successor, Bill Clinton, win reelection in 1996. On the other hand, the rhetoric of conservative cultural warriors helped Republicans gain control of Congress in 1994. The culture wars influenced the debate over state-school history curricula in the United States in the 1990s. In particular, debates over the development of national educational standards in 1994 revolved around whether the study of American history should be a "celebratory" or "critical" undertaking and involved such prominent public figures as Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and historian Gary Nash. 2001–2012: Post-9/11 era A political view called neoconservatism shifted the terms of the debate in the early 2000s. Neoconservatives differed from their opponents in that they interpreted problems facing the nation as moral issues rather than economic or political ones. For example, neoconservatives saw the decline of the traditional family structure as well as the decline of religion in American society as spiritual crises that required a spiritual response. Critics accused neoconservatives of confusing cause and effect. During the 2000s, voting for Republicans began to correlate heavily with traditionalist or orthodox religious belief across diverse religious sects. Voting for Democrats became more correlated with liberal or modernist religious belief, and with being nonreligious. Belief in scientific conclusions, such as climate change, also became tightly coupled with political party affiliation in this era, causing climate scholar Andrew Hoffman to observe that climate change had "become enmeshed in the so-called culture wars." Topics traditionally associated with culture war were not prominent in media coverage of the 2008 election season, with the exception of coverage of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who drew attention to her conservative religion and created a performative climate change denialism brand for herself. Palin's defeat in the election and subsequent resignation as governor of Alaska caused the Center for American Progress to predict "the coming end of the culture wars," which they attributed to demographic change, particularly high rates of acceptance of same-sex marriage among millennials. 2012–present: Broadening of the culture war In the early 2010s, the American right took issue with the perceived worldwide dominance of leftism in international politics and corporate activity, anti-nationalism, and secular human rights policies and activism not based on Abrahamic religious worldviews. While traditional culture war issues, like abortion, continue to be a focal point, the issues identified with the culture war broadened and intensified in the mid-late 2010s. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Coddling of the American Mind, identified a rise in cancel culture via social media among young progressives since 2012, which he believes had "transformative effects on university life and later on politics and culture throughout the English-speaking world," in what Haidt and other commentators have called the "Great Awokening". Journalist Michael Grunwald says that "President Donald Trump has pioneered a new politics of perpetual culture war" and lists Black Lives Matter, U.S. national anthem protests, climate change, education policy, healthcare policy including Obamacare, and infrastructure policy as culture war issues in 2018. The rights of transgender people and the role of religion in lawmaking were identified as "new fronts in the culture war" by political scientist Jeremiah Castle, as the polarization of public opinion on these two topics resembles that of previous culture war issues. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum described opposition to wearing face masks as a "senseless" culture war issue that jeopardizes human safety. This broader understanding of culture war issues in the mid-late 2010s and 2020s is associated with a political strategy called "owning the libs." Conservative media figures employing this strategy emphasize and expand upon culture war issues with the goal of upsetting liberals. According to Nicole Hemmer of Columbia University, this strategy is a substitute for the cohesive conservative ideology that existed during the Cold War. It holds a conservative voting bloc together in the absence of shared policy preferences among the bloc's members. A number of conflicts about diversity in popular culture occurring in the 2010s, such as the Gamergate controversy, Comicsgate and the Sad Puppies science fiction voting campaign, were identified in the media as being examples of the culture war. Journalist Caitlin Dewey described Gamergate as a "proxy war" for a larger culture war between those who want greater inclusion of women and minorities in cultural institutions versus anti-feminists and traditionalists who do not. The perception that culture war conflict had been demoted from electoral politics to popular culture led writer Jack Meserve to call popular movies, games, and writing the "last front in the culture war" in 2015. These conflicts about representation in popular culture re-emerged into electoral politics via the alt-right and alt-lite movements. According to media scholar Whitney Phillips, Gamergate "prototyped" strategies of harassment and controversy-stoking that proved useful in political strategy. For example, Republican political strategist Steve Bannon publicized pop-culture conflicts during the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, encouraging a young audience to "come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump." Canada Some observers in Canada have used the term "culture war" to refer to differing values between Western versus Eastern Canada, urban versus rural Canada, as well as conservatism versus liberalism and progressivism. The phrase has also been used to describe the Harper government's attitude towards the arts community. Andrew Coyne termed this negative policy towards the arts community as "class warfare." Australia During the tenure of the Liberal–National Coalition government of 1996 to 2007, interpretations of Aboriginal history became a part of a wider political debate regarding Australian national pride and symbolism occasionally called the "culture wars", more often the "history wars". This debate extended into a controversy over the presentation of history in the National Museum of Australia and in high-school history curricula. It also migrated into the general Australian media, with major broadsheets such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age regularly publishing opinion pieces on the topic. Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as "war porn" and as an "intellectual dead end". Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating (in office 1991–1996) and John Howard (in office 1996–2007), became major participants in the "wars". According to Mark McKenna's analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library, John Howard believed that Paul Keating portrayed Australia pre-Whitlam (Prime Minister from 1972 to 1975) in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the monarchy and for the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the conservative Australian parties which had been barriers to national progress. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during the Second World War. Keating staunchly supported a symbolic apology to Australian Aboriginals for their mistreatment at the hands of previous administrations, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech of 10 December 1992 (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998 Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aborigines as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but he refused to issue an official apology. Howard saw an apology as inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt"; he said that "practical" measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to colonial origins: including deference for ANZAC Day, for the Australian flag and for the monarchy in Australia, while Howard supported these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke (Prime Minister 1983–1991) and Kim Beazley (Labor Party leader 2005–2006), Keating never traveled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided". In 2006 John Howard said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that "Political Correctness" was dead in Australia but: "we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's universities". Also in 2006, Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign-affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd was entering the philosophical debate by arguing in response that "John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating 'a fraud' in his so-called culture wars ... designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government's economic policies". The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election of 2007 and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Aboriginal Stolen Generation with bi-partisan support. Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for the Australian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day; he also expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies. Subsequent to the 2007 change of government, and prior to the passage, with support from all parties, of the Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate", a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen. Climate change in Australia is also considered a highly divisive or politically controversial topic, to the point it is sometimes called a "culture war". African continent According to political scientist Constance G. Anthony, American culture war perspectives on human sexuality were exported to Africa as a form of neocolonialism. In his view, this began during the AIDS epidemic in Africa, with the United States government first tying HIV/AIDS assistance money to evangelical leadership and the Christian right during the Bush administration, then to LGBTQ tolerance during the administration of Barack Obama. This stoked a culture war that resulted in (among others) the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014. Zambian scholar Kapya Kaoma notes that because "the demographic center of Christianity is shifting from the global North to the global South" Africa's influence on Christianity worldwide is increasing. American conservatives export their culture wars to Africa, Kaoma says, particularly when they realize they may be losing the battle back home. US Christians have framed their anti-LGBT initiatives in Africa as standing in opposition to a "Western gay agenda", a framing which Kaoma finds ironic. North American and European conspiracy theories have become widespread in West Africa via social media, according to 2021 survey by First Draft News. COVID-19 misinformation, New World Order conspiracy thinking, QAnon and other conspiracy theories associated with culture war topics are spread by American, Pro-Russian, French-language, and local disinformation websites and social media accounts, including prominent politicians in Nigeria. This has contributed to vaccine hesitancy in West Africa, with 60 percent of survey respondents saying they were unlikely to try to get vaccinated, and an erosion of trust in institutions in the region. United Kingdom A 2021 report from King's College London argued that many people's views on cultural issues in Britain had become tied up with the side of the Brexit debate with which they identify, while the public party-political identities, although not as strong, show similar alignments and that around half the country held relatively strong views on "culture war" issues such as debates on Britain's colonial history or Black Lives Matter. However, the report concluded Britain's cultural and political divide was not as stark as the Republican–Democratic divide in the US and that a sizeable section of the public can be categorised as having either moderate views or as being disengaged from social debates. It also found that The Guardian, as opposed to the centre-right newspapers, was more likely to talk about the culture wars. The Conservative Party have been described as attempting to ignite culture wars in regard to "conservative values" under the tenure of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, others argue that it is the left who are engaging in "culture wars", particularly against liberal values, accepted words and British institutions. Observers such as Johns Hopkins University professor Yascha Mounk and journalist and author Louise Perry have argued that the collapse in support for the Labour Party during the 2019 United Kingdom general election came as a result of both a media-induced public perception and a deliberate strategy of Labour of pursuing messages and policy ideas based on cultural issues that resonated with more university educated grassroots activists on the left of the party but alienated Labour's traditional working class voters. An April 2022 survey found evidence that Britons are less divided on "culture war" issues than has often been portrayed in the media. The greatest predictor of opinion was how people voted in the UK's referendum on membership of the European Union, Brexit, yet even among those who voted 'Leave', 75% agreed "it is important to be attentive to issues of race and social justice". Similarly, even among Remainers and those who last voted for the Labour Party, there was moderately strong support for several socially conservative positions. European Union Poland's Law and Justice party, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Serbia's Aleksandar Vučić, and Slovenia's Janez Janša have each been accused of fomenting culture wars in their respective countries by encouraging dissent, resistance to LGBT rights, and restrictions on abortion. One facet of the controversy in Poland is the removal of Soviet War Memorials which is divisive because some Poles viewed the memorials positively as commemorations of their ancestors who died during World War II while others felt negatively due to the oppression that some Poles experienced under the Soviet-backed Polish People's Republic Culture war in Hungary is alleged by Kim Scheppele to be a disguise for democratic backsliding by Viktor Orbán. Ukraine, meanwhile, has experienced a decades-long culture war pitting the eastern, predominately Russian-speaking, regions against the western Ukrainian-speaking areas of the country. LGBT rights are controversial in Poland, as exemplified by President Andrzej Duda's vow in 2020 to oppose both same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption. Different interpretations of bitter events during World War II have become especially contentious in Poland since 2015, shortly after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. One disputed issue is whether Poland bears any responsibility for the Holocaust, or whether Poland was entirely a victim of Nazi Germany. This dispute is embodied by the "Polish death camp" controversy (involving concentration camps that had been built by Nazi Germany during World War II on German-occupied Polish soil) and an attempt to address that controversy with a now partly repealed law A second issue, also addressed by the partly repealed law, revolves around Poland–Ukraine relations Poland is not alone in the region in passing a law to criminalize negative interpretations of the country's collaborationist nationalist movements during WWII and Poland–Ukraine relations have suffered as a result of a similar law in Ukraine that was criticized in Poland for deflecting blame away from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and their massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. See also Drugs Drug decriminalization Harm reduction Legal drinking age War on Drugs Education and parenting Corporal punishment and child discipline, most notably spanking Creation–evolution controversy Family values Homeschooling and educational choice Sexual education and abstinence only education Environment and energy Global warming controversy Gender and sexuality Age disparity in sexual relationships Age of consent Anti-gender movement Circumcision controversies Feminism LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory LGBT rights and same-sex marriage Polyamory Sex work Sexual revolution Toplessness and Nudity Law and government Crypto wars Disfranchisement Gerrymandering Gun rights Immigration reform Law and order Red state vs. blue state divide Life issues Anti-war movement Capital punishment Reproductive rights including birth control and in vitro fertilization (and their coverage by insurance) Right to die movement and euthanasia Stem-cell research Universal healthcare Society and culture Cancel culture Counterculture Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory Cultural Revolution Geographical renaming History wars Kulturkampf Media bias in the U.S. Moral absolutism vs. moral relativism Multiculturalism Negationism Owning the libs Permissive society Race, affirmative action Secularism and secularization Social justice warrior Squatting Theory wars Woke References Further reading Chapman, Roger, and James Ciment. Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices (2nd ed. Routledge, 2015) D'Antonio, William V., Steven A. Tuch and Josiah R. Baker, Religion, Politics, and Polarization: How Religiopolitical Conflict Is Changing Congress and American Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013) Fiorina, Morris P., with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America (Longman, 2004) Graff, Gerald. Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (1992) Hartman, Andrew. A war for the soul of America: a history of the culture wars (University of Chicago Press, 2015) Hunter, James Davison, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1992) Jay, Gregory S., American Literature and the Culture Wars, (Cornell University Press, 1997) Jensen, Richard. "The Culture Wars, 1965-1995: A Historian's Map" Journal of Social History 29 (Oct 1995) 17–37. in JSTOR Jones, E. Michael, Degenerate Moderns: Modernity As Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior, Ft. Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 1993 Petro, Anthony, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2015) Strauss, William & Howe, Neil, The Fourth Turning, An American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny, 1998, Broadway Books, New York Thomson, Irene Tavis., Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas, (University of Michigan Press, 2010) Walsh, Andrew D., Religion, Economics, and Public Policy: Ironies, Tragedies, and Absurdities of the Contemporary Culture Wars, (Praeger, 2000) Webb, Adam K., Beyond the Global Culture War, (Routledge, 2006) Zimmerman, Jonathan, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Harvard University Press, 2002) External links Cultural politics Culture of the United States Political terminology of the United States

Applied arts

The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing. The term is used in distinction to the fine arts, which are those that produce objects with no practical use, whose only purpose is to be beautiful or stimulate the intellect in some way. In practice, the two often overlap. Applied arts largely overlap with decorative arts, and the modern making of applied art is usually called design. Examples of applied arts are: Industrial design – mass-produced objects. Sculpture – also counted as a fine art. Architecture – also counted as a fine art. Crafts – also counted as a fine art. Ceramic art Automotive design Fashion design Calligraphy Interior design Graphic design Cartographic (map) design Movements Art movements that mostly operated in the applied arts include the following. In addition, major artistic styles such as Neoclassicism, Gothic and others cover both the fine and applied or decorative arts. Art Nouveau Art Deco Arts and Crafts Movement Bauhaus Productivism Museums of Applied Arts Bauhaus Archive Die Neue Sammlung, Germany Leipzig Museum of Applied Arts, Germany Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum of Applied Arts (Belgrade), Serbia Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest), Hungary Museum für angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, Germany Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Cologne), Germany Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien, Austria Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (MUDAC), Lausanne, Switzerland National Folk Decorative Art Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), Sydney Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts (Saint Petersburg), Russia Prague Museum of Decorative Arts, Czech Republic Victoria and Albert Museum, London Wolfsonian-FIU, Miami Beach, Florida See also Art for art's sake Decorative arts Design museum Fine art Sculpture Painting References Further reading Dormer, Peter (ed.), The Culture of Craft, 1997, Manchester University Press, , 9780719046186, google books Design Decorative arts Contemporary art Crafts The arts

Style (visual arts)

In the visual arts, style is a "...distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories" or "...any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made". Style refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates to other works with similar aesthetic roots, by the same artist, or from the same period, training, location, "school", art movement or archaeological culture: "The notion of style has long been historian's principal mode of classifying works of art". Style can be divided into the general style of a period, country or cultural group, group of artists or art movement, and the individual style of the artist within that group style. Divisions within both types of styles are often made, such as between "early", "middle" or "late". In some artists, such as Picasso for example, these divisions may be marked and easy to see; in others, they are more subtle. Style is seen as usually dynamic, in most periods always changing by a gradual process, though the speed of this varies greatly, from the very slow development in style typical of prehistoric art or Ancient Egyptian art to the rapid changes in Modern art styles. Style often develops in a series of jumps, with relatively sudden changes followed by periods of slower development. After dominating academic discussion in art history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, so-called "style art history" has come under increasing attack in recent decades, and many art historians now prefer to avoid stylistic classifications where they can. Overview Any piece of art is in theory capable of being analysed in terms of style; neither periods nor artists can avoid having a style, except by complete incompetence, and conversely natural objects or sights cannot be said to have a style, as style only results from choices made by a maker. Whether the artist makes a conscious choice of style, or can identify his own style, hardly matters. Artists in recent developed societies tend to be highly conscious of their own style, arguably over-conscious, whereas for earlier artists stylistic choices were probably "largely unselfconscious". Most stylistic periods are identified and defined later by art historians, but artists may choose to define and name their own style. The names of most older styles are the invention of art historians and would not have been understood by the practitioners of those styles. Some originated as terms of derision, including Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo. Cubism on the other hand was a conscious identification made by a few artists; the word itself seems to have originated with critics rather than painters, but was rapidly accepted by the artists. Western art, like that of some other cultures, most notably Chinese art, has a marked tendency to revive at intervals "classic" styles from the past. In critical analysis of the visual arts, the style of a work of art is typically treated as distinct from its iconography, which covers the subject and the content of the work, though for Jas Elsner this distinction is "not, of course, true in any actual example; but it has proved rhetorically extremely useful". History of the concept Classical art criticism and the relatively few medieval writings on aesthetics did not greatly develop a concept of style in art, or analysis of it, and though Renaissance and Baroque writers on art are greatly concerned with what we would call style, they did not develop a coherent theory of it, at least outside architecture: Artistic styles shift with cultural conditions; a self-evident truth to any modern art historian, but an extraordinary idea in this period [Early Renaissance and earlier]. Nor is it clear that any such idea was articulated in antiquity... Pliny was attentive to changes in ways of art-making, but he presented such changes as driven by technology and wealth. Vasari, too, attributes the strangeness and, in his view the deficiencies, of earlier art to lack of technological know-how and cultural sophistication. Giorgio Vasari set out a hugely influential but much-questioned account of the development of style in Italian painting (mainly) from Giotto to his own Mannerist period. He stressed the development of a Florentine style based on disegno or line-based drawing, rather than Venetian colour. With other Renaissance theorists like Leon Battista Alberti he continued classical debates over the best balance in art between the realistic depiction of nature and idealization of it; this debate was to continue until the 19th century and the advent of Modernism. The theorist of Neoclassicism, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, analysed the stylistic changes in Greek classical art in 1764, comparing them closely to the changes in Renaissance art, and "Georg Hegel codified the notion that each historical period will have a typical style", casting a very long shadow over the study of style. Hegel is often attributed with the invention of the German word Zeitgeist, but he never actually used the word, although in Lectures on the Philosophy of History, he uses the phrase der Geist seiner Zeit (the spirit of his time), writing that "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit." Constructing schemes of the period styles of historic art and architecture was a major concern of 19th century scholars in the new and initially mostly German-speaking field of art history, with important writers on the broad theory of style including Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Gottfried Semper, and Alois Riegl in his Stilfragen of 1893, with Heinrich Wölfflin and Paul Frankl continuing the debate in the 20th century. Paul Jacobsthal and Josef Strzygowski are among the art historians who followed Riegl in proposing grand schemes tracing the transmission of elements of styles across great ranges in time and space. This type of art history is also known as formalism, or the study of forms or shapes in art. Semper, Wölfflin, and Frankl, and later Ackerman, had backgrounds in the history of architecture, and like many other terms for period styles, "Romanesque" and "Gothic" were initially coined to describe architectural styles, where major changes between styles can be clearer and more easy to define, not least because style in architecture is easier to replicate by following a set of rules than style in figurative art such as painting. Terms originated to describe architectural periods were often subsequently applied to other areas of the visual arts, and then more widely still to music, literature and the general culture. In architecture stylistic change often follows, and is made possible by, the discovery of new techniques or materials, from the Gothic rib vault to modern metal and reinforced concrete construction. A major area of debate in both art history and archaeology has been the extent to which stylistic change in other fields like painting or pottery is also a response to new technical possibilities, or has its own impetus to develop (the kunstwollen of Riegl), or changes in response to social and economic factors affecting patronage and the conditions of the artist, as current thinking tends to emphasize, using less rigid versions of Marxist art history. Although style was well-established as a central component of art historical analysis, seeing it as the over-riding factor in art history had fallen out of fashion by World War II, as other ways of looking at art were developing, as well as a reaction against the emphasis on style; for Svetlana Alpers, "the normal invocation of style in art history is a depressing affair indeed". According to James Elkins "In the later 20th century criticisms of style were aimed at further reducing the Hegelian elements of the concept while retaining it in a form that could be more easily controlled". Meyer Schapiro, James Ackerman, Ernst Gombrich and George Kubler (The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, 1962) have made notable contributions to the debate, which has also drawn on wider developments in critical theory. In 2010 Jas Elsner put it more strongly: "For nearly the whole of the 20th century, style art history has been the indisputable king of the discipline, but since the revolutions of the seventies and eighties the king has been dead", though his article explores ways in which "style art history" remains alive, and his comment would hardly be applicable to archaeology. The use of terms such as Counter-Maniera appears to be in decline, as impatience with such "style labels" grows among art historians. In 2000 Marcia B. Hall, a leading art historian of 16th-century Italian painting and mentee of Sydney Joseph Freedberg (1914–1997), who invented the term, was criticised by a reviewer of her After Raphael: Painting in Central Italy in the Sixteenth Century for her "fundamental flaw" in continuing to use this and other terms, despite an apologetic "Note on style labels" at the beginning of the book and a promise to keep their use to a minimum. A rare recent attempt to create a theory to explain the process driving changes in artistic style, rather than just theories of how to describe and categorize them, is by the behavioural psychologist Colin Martindale, who has proposed an evolutionary theory based on Darwinian principles. However this cannot be said to have gained much support among art historians. Individual style Traditional art history has also placed great emphasis on the individual style, sometimes called the signature style, of an artist: "the notion of personal style—that individuality can be uniquely expressed not only in the way an artist draws, but also in the stylistic quirks of an author's writing (for instance)— is perhaps an axiom of Western notions of identity". The identification of individual styles is especially important in the attribution of works to artists, which is a dominant factor in their valuation for the art market, above all for works in the Western tradition since the Renaissance. The identification of individual style in works is "essentially assigned to a group of specialists in the field known as connoisseurs", a group who centre in the art trade and museums, often with tensions between them and the community of academic art historians. The exercise of connoisseurship is largely a matter of subjective impressions that are hard to analyse, but also a matter of knowing details of technique and the "hand" of different artists. Giovanni Morelli (1816 – 1891) pioneered the systematic study of the scrutiny of diagnostic minor details that revealed artists' scarcely conscious shorthand and conventions for portraying, for example, ears or hands, in Western old master paintings. His techniques were adopted by Bernard Berenson and others, and have been applied to sculpture and many other types of art, for example by Sir John Beazley to Attic vase painting. Personal techniques can be important in analysing individual style. Though artists' training was before Modernism essentially imitative, relying on taught technical methods, whether learnt as an apprentice in a workshop or later as a student in an academy, there was always room for personal variation. The idea of technical "secrets" closely guarded by the master who developed them, is a long-standing topos in art history from Vasari's probably mythical account of Jan van Eyck to the secretive habits of Georges Seurat. However the idea of personal style is certainly not limited to the Western tradition. In Chinese art it is just as deeply held, but traditionally regarded as a factor in the appreciation of some types of art, above all calligraphy and literati painting, but not others, such as Chinese porcelain; a distinction also often seen in the so-called decorative arts in the West. Chinese painting also allowed for the expression of political and social views by the artist a good deal earlier than is normally detected in the West. Calligraphy, also regarded as a fine art in the Islamic world and East Asia, brings a new area within the ambit of personal style; the ideal of Western calligraphy tends to be to suppress individual style, while graphology, which relies upon it, regards itself as a science. The painter Edward Edwards said in his Anecdotes of Painters (1808): "Mr. Gainsborough's manner of penciling was so peculiar to himself, that his work needed no signature". Examples of strongly individual styles include: the Cubist art of Pablo Picasso, the Pop Art style of Andy Warhol, Impressionist style of Vincent Van Gogh, Drip Painting by Jackson Pollock Manner "Manner" is a related term, often used for what is in effect a sub-division of a style, perhaps focused on particular points of style or technique. While many elements of period style can be reduced to characteristic forms or shapes, that can adequately be represented in simple line-drawn diagrams, "manner" is more often used to mean the overall style and atmosphere of a work, especially complex works such as paintings, that cannot so easily be subject to precise analysis. It is a somewhat outdated term in academic art history, avoided because it is imprecise. When used it is often in the context of imitations of the individual style of an artist, and it is one of the hierarchy of discreet or diplomatic terms used in the art trade for the relationship between a work for sale and that of a well-known artist, with "Manner of Rembrandt" suggesting a distanced relationship between the style of the work and Rembrandt's own style. The "Explanation of Cataloguing Practice" of the auctioneers Christie's' explains that "Manner of..." in their auction catalogues means "In our opinion a work executed in the artist's style but of a later date". Mannerism, derived from the Italian maniera ("manner") is a specific phase of the general Renaissance style, but "manner" can be used very widely. Style in archaeology In archaeology, despite modern techniques like radiocarbon dating, period or cultural style remains a crucial tool in the identification and dating not only of works of art but all classes of archaeological artefact, including purely functional ones (ignoring the question of whether purely functional artefacts exist). The identification of individual styles of artists or artisans has also been proposed in some cases even for remote periods such as the Ice Age art of the European Upper Paleolithic. As in art history, formal analysis of the morphology (shape) of individual artefacts is the starting point. This is used to construct typologies for different types of artefacts, and by the technique of seriation a relative dating based on style for a site or group of sites is achieved where scientific absolute dating techniques cannot be used, in particular where only stone, ceramic or metal artefacts or remains are available, which is often the case. Sherds of pottery are often very numerous in sites from many cultures and periods, and even small pieces may be confidently dated by their style. In contrast to recent trends in academic art history, the succession of schools of archaeological theory in the last century, from culture-historical archaeology to processual archaeology and finally the rise of post-processual archaeology in recent decades has not significantly reduced the importance of the study of style in archaeology, as a basis for classifying objects before further interpretation. Stylization Stylization and stylized (or stylisation and stylised in (non-Oxford) British English, respectively) have a more specific meaning, referring to visual depictions that use simplified ways of representing objects or scenes that do not attempt a full, precise and accurate representation of their visual appearance (mimesis or "realistic"), preferring an attractive or expressive overall depiction. More technically, it has been defined as "the decorative generalization of figures and objects by means of various conventional techniques, including the simplification of line, form, and relationships of space and color", and observed that "[s]tylized art reduces visual perception to constructs of pattern in line, surface elaboration and flattened space". Ancient, traditional, and modern art, as well as popular forms such as cartoons or animation very often use stylized representations, so for example The Simpsons use highly stylized depictions, as does traditional African art. The two Picasso paintings illustrated at the top of this page show a movement to a more stylized representation of the human figure within the painter's style, and the Uffington White Horse is an example of a highly stylized prehistoric depiction of a horse. Motifs in the decorative arts such as the palmette or arabesque are often highly stylized versions of the parts of plants. Even in art that is in general attempting mimesis or "realism", a degree of stylization is very often found in details, and especially figures or other features at a small scale, such as people or trees etc. in the distant background even of a large work. But this is not stylization intended to be noticed by the viewer, except on close examination. Drawings, modelli, and other sketches not intended as finished works for sale will also very often stylize. "Stylized" may mean the adoption of any style in any context, and in American English is often used for the typographic style of names, as in "AT&T is also stylized as ATT and at&t": this is a specific usage that seems to have escaped dictionaries, although it is a small extension of existing other senses of the word. Computer identification and recreation In a 2012 experiment at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, a computer analysed approximately 1,000 paintings from 34 well-known artists using a specially developed algorithm and placed them in similar style categories to human art historians. The analysis involved the sampling of more than 4,000 visual features per work of art. Apps such as Deep Art Effects can turn photos into art-like images claimed to be in the style of painters such as Van Gogh. With the development of sophisticated text-to-image AI art software, using specifiable art styles has become a widespread tool in the 2020s. See also Artistic rendering Composition (visual arts) Mise en scène Posthumanist art Notes References "Alpers in Lang": Alpers, Svetlana, "Style is What You Make It", in The Concept of Style, ed. Berel Lang, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 137–162, google books. Bahn, Paul G. and Vertut, Jean, Journey Through the Ice Age, University of California Press, 1997, , 9780520213067, google books Blunt Anthony, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450–1600, 1940 (refs to 1985 edn), OUP, Crane, Susan A. ed, Museums and Memory, Cultural Sitings, 2000, Stanford University Press, , 9780804735643, google books Elkins, James, "Style" in Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed March 6, 2013, subscriber link Elsner, Jas, "Style" in Critical Terms for Art History, Nelson, Robert S. and Shiff, Richard, 2nd Edn. 2010, University of Chicago Press, , 9780226571690, google books Gombrich, E. "Style" (1968), orig. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. D. L. Sills, xv (New York, 1968), reprinted in Preziosi, D. (ed.) The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (see below), whose page numbers are used. Gotlieb, Marc, "The Painter's Secret: Invention and Rivalry from Vasari to Balzac", The Art Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 469–490, JSTOR Grosvenor, Bendor, "On connoisseurship", article in Fine Art Connoisseur, 2011?, now on "art History News" website Honour, Hugh & John Fleming. A World History of Art. 7th edition. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2009, "Kubler in Lang": Kubler, George, Towards a Reductive Theory of Style, in Lang Lang, Berel (ed.), The Concept of Style, 1987, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, , 9780801494390, google books; includes essays by Alpers and Kubler Murphy, Caroline P., Review of: After Raphael: Painting in Central Italy in the Sixteenth Century by Marcia B. Hall, The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 323–324, Catholic University of America Press, JSTOR Nagel, Alexander, and Wood, Christopher S., Anachronic Renaissance, 2020, Zone Books, MIT Press, , google books Preziosi, D. (ed.) The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, Rawson, Jessica, Chinese Ornament: The lotus and the dragon, 1984, British Museum Publications, Further reading Conkey, Margaret W., Hastorf, Christine Anne (eds.), The Uses of Style in Archaeology, 1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Review by Clemency Chase Coggins in Journal of Field Archaeology,1992), from JSTOR Davis, W. Replications: Archaeology, Art History, Psychoanalysis. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. (Chapter on "Style and History in Art History", pp. 171–198.) Panofsky, Erwin. Three Essays on Style. Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press, 1995. Schapiro, Meyer, "Style", in Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, New York: Georg Braziller, 1995), 51–102 Sher, Yakov A.; "On the Sources of the Scythic Animal Style", Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1988), pp. 47–60; University of Wisconsin Press, JSTOR; pp. 50–51 discuss the difficulty of capturing style in words. Siefkes, Martin, Arielli, Emanuele, The Aesthetics and Multimodality of Style, 2018, New York, Peter Lang, Watson, William, Style in the Arts of China, 1974, Penguin, Wölfflin, Heinrich, Principles of Art History. The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, Translated from 7th German Edition (1929) into English by M D Hottinger, Dover Publications New York, 1950 and many reprints See also the lists at Elsner, 108–109 and Elkins Painting Concepts in aesthetics Art history Visual arts theory

Behavioral modernity

Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits believed to distinguish current Homo sapiens from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior (e.g., art, ornamentation), music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others. Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented experimentally and ethnographically by evolutionary and cultural anthropologists. These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin. Within the tradition of evolutionary anthropology and related disciplines, it has been argued that the development of these modern behavioral traits, in combination with the climatic conditions of the Last Glacial Period and Last Glacial Maximum causing population bottlenecks, contributed to the evolutionary success of Homo sapiens worldwide relative to Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other archaic humans. Debate continues as to whether anatomically modern humans were behaviorally modern as well. There are many theories on the evolution of behavioral modernity. These approaches tend to fall into two camps: cognitive and gradualist. The Later Upper Paleolithic Model theorizes that modern human behavior arose through cognitive, genetic changes in Africa abruptly around 40,000–50,000 years ago around the time of the Out-of-Africa migration, prompting the movement of some modern humans out of Africa and across the world. Other models focus on how modern human behavior may have arisen through gradual steps, with the archaeological signatures of such behavior appearing only through demographic or subsistence-based changes. Many cite evidence of behavioral modernity earlier (by at least about 150,000–75,000 years ago and possibly earlier) namely in the African Middle Stone Age. Anthropologists Sally McBrearty and Alison S. Brooks have been notable proponents of gradualism—challenging Europe-centered models by situating more change in the African Middle Stone Age—though this model is more difficult to substantiate due to the general thinning of the fossil record as one goes further back in time. Definition To classify what should be included in modern human behavior, it is necessary to define behaviors that are universal among living human groups. Some examples of these human universals are abstract thought, planning, trade, cooperative labor, body decoration, and the control and use of fire. Along with these traits, humans possess much reliance on social learning. This cumulative cultural change or cultural "ratchet" separates human culture from social learning in animals. In addition, a reliance on social learning may be responsible in part for humans' rapid adaptation to many environments outside of Africa. Since cultural universals are found in all cultures, including isolated indigenous groups, these traits must have evolved or have been invented in Africa prior to the exodus. Archaeologically, a number of empirical traits have been used as indicators of modern human behavior. While these are often debated a few are generally agreed upon. Archaeological evidence of behavioral modernity includes: Burial Fishing Figurative art (cave paintings, petroglyphs, dendroglyphs, figurines) Use of pigments (such as ochre) and jewelry for decoration or self-ornamentation Using bone material for tools Transport of resources over long distances Blade technology Diversity, standardization, and regionally distinct artifacts Hearths Composite tools Critiques Several critiques have been placed against the traditional concept of behavioral modernity, both methodologically and philosophically. Anthropologist John Shea outlines a variety of problems with this concept, arguing instead for "behavioral variability", which, according to the author, better describes the archaeological record. The use of trait lists, according to Shea, runs the risk of taphonomic bias, where some sites may yield more artifacts than others despite similar populations; as well, trait lists can be ambiguous in how behaviors may be empirically recognized in the archaeological record. In particular, Shea cautions that population pressure, cultural change, or optimality models, like those in human behavioral ecology, might better predict changes in tool types or subsistence strategies than a change from "archaic" to "modern" behavior. Some researchers argue that a greater emphasis should be placed on identifying only those artifacts which are unquestionably, or purely, symbolic as a metric for modern human behavior. Since 2018, recent dating methods utilized on various cave art sites in Spain and France have shown that Neanderthals performed symbolic artistic expression, consisting of red "lines, dots, and hand stencils" found in caves, prior to contact with anatomically modern humans. This is contrary to previous suggestions that Neanderthals lacked these capabilities. Theories and models Late Upper Paleolithic Model or "Upper Paleolithic Revolution" The Late Upper Paleolithic Model, or Upper Paleolithic Revolution, refers to the idea that, though anatomically modern humans first appear around 150,000 years ago (as was once believed), they were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern" until around 50,000 years ago, leading to their expansion out of Africa and into Europe and Asia. These authors note that traits used as a metric for behavioral modernity do not appear as a package until around 40–50,000 years ago. Anthropologist Richard Klein specifically describes that evidence of fishing, tools made from bone, hearths, significant artifact diversity, and elaborate graves are all absent before this point. According to both Shea and Klein, art only becomes common beyond this switching point, signifying a change from archaic to modern humans. Most researchers argue that a neurological or genetic change, perhaps one enabling complex language, such as FOXP2, caused this revolutionary change in humans. The role of FOXP2 as a driver of evolutionary selection has been called into question following recent research results. Building on the FOXP2 gene hypothesis, cognitive scientist Philip Lieberman has argued that proto-language behaviour existed prior to 50,000 BP, albeit in a more primitive form. Lieberman has advanced fossil evidence, such as neck and throat dimensions, to demonstrate that so-called “anatomically modern” humans from 100,000 BP continued to evolve their SVT (supralaryngeal vocal tract), which already possessed a horizontal portion (SVTh) capable of producing many phonemes which were mostly consonants. According to his theory, Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens would have been able to communicate using sounds and gestures. From 100,000 BP, Homo sapiens necks continued to lengthen to a point, by around 50,000 BP, where Homo sapiens necks were long enough to accommodate a vertical portion to their SVT (SVTv), which is now a universal trait among humans. This SVTv enabled the enunciation of quantal vowels: [i]; [u]; and [a]. These quantal vowels could then be immediately put to use by the already sophisticated neuro-motor-control features of the FOXP2 gene to generate more nuanced sounds and in effect increase by orders of magnitude the number of distinct sounds that can be produced, allowing for fully symbolic language. Goody (1986) draws an analogy between the development of spoken language and that of writing: the shift from pictographic or ideographic symbols into a fully abstract logographic writing system (such as hieroglyphics), or from a logoprahic system into an abjad or alphabet, led to dramatic changes in human civilization. Alternative models Contrasted with this view of a spontaneous leap in cognition among ancient humans, some anthropologists like Alison S. Brooks, primarily working in African archaeology, point to the gradual accumulation of "modern" behaviors, starting well before the 50,000-year benchmark of the Upper Paleolithic Revolution models. Howiesons Poort, Blombos, and other South African archaeological sites, for example, show evidence of marine resource acquisition, trade, the making of bone tools, blade and microlithic technology, and abstract ornamentation at least by 80,000 years ago. Given evidence from Africa and the Middle East, a variety of hypotheses have been put forth to describe an earlier, gradual transition from simple to more complex human behavior. Some authors have pushed back the appearance of fully modern behavior to around 80,000 years ago or earlier in order to incorporate the South African data. Others focus on the slow accumulation of different technologies and behaviors across time. These researchers describe how anatomically modern humans could have been cognitively the same, and what we define as behavioral modernity is just the result of thousands of years of cultural adaptation and learning. Archaeologist Francesco d'Errico, and others, have looked at Neanderthal culture, rather than early human behavior exclusively, for clues into behavioral modernity. Noting that Neanderthal assemblages often portray traits similar to those listed for modern human behavior, researchers stress that the foundations for behavioral modernity may in fact, lie deeper in our hominin ancestors. If both modern humans and Neanderthals express abstract art and complex tools then "modern human behavior" cannot be a derived trait for our species. They argue that the original "human revolution" theory reflects a profound Eurocentric bias. Recent archaeological evidence, they argue, proves that humans evolving in Africa some 300,000 or even 400,000 years ago were already becoming cognitively and behaviourally "modern". These features include blade and microlithic technology, bone tools, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, the use of aquatic resources, long-distance trade, systematic processing and use of pigment, and art and decoration. These items do not occur suddenly together as predicted by the "human revolution" model, but at sites that are widely separated in space and time. This suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviours in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World. Between these extremes is the view—currently supported by archaeologists Chris Henshilwood, Curtis Marean, Ian Watts and others—that there was indeed some kind of "human revolution" but that it occurred in Africa and spanned tens of thousands of years. The term "revolution," in this context, would mean not a sudden mutation but a historical development along the lines of the industrial revolution or the Neolithic revolution. In other words, it was a relatively accelerated process, too rapid for ordinary Darwinian "descent with modification" yet too gradual to be attributed to a single genetic or other sudden event. These archaeologists point in particular to the relatively explosive emergence of ochre crayons and shell necklaces, apparently used for cosmetic purposes. These archaeologists see symbolic organisation of human social life as the key transition in modern human evolution. Recently discovered at sites such as Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point, South Africa, pierced shells, pigments and other striking signs of personal ornamentation have been dated within a time-window of 70,000–160,000 years ago in the African Middle Stone Age, suggesting that the emergence of Homo sapiens coincided, after all, with the transition to modern cognition and behaviour. While viewing the emergence of language as a "revolutionary" development, this school of thought generally attributes it to cumulative social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary processes as opposed to a single genetic mutation. A further view, taken by archaeologists such as Francesco d'Errico and João Zilhão, is a multi-species perspective arguing that evidence for symbolic culture, in the form of utilised pigments and pierced shells, are also found in Neanderthal sites, independently of any "modern" human influence. Cultural evolutionary models may also shed light on why although evidence of behavioral modernity exists before 50,000 years ago, it is not expressed consistently until that point. With small population sizes, human groups would have been affected by demographic and cultural evolutionary forces that may not have allowed for complex cultural traits. According to some authors, until population density became significantly high, complex traits could not have been maintained effectively. Some genetic evidence supports a dramatic increase in population size before human migration out of Africa. High local extinction rates within a population also can significantly decrease the amount of diversity in neutral cultural traits, regardless of cognitive ability. Archaeological evidence Africa Research from 2017 indicates that Homo sapiens originated in Africa between around 350,000 and 260,000 years ago. There is some evidence for the beginning of modern behavior among early African H. sapiens around that period. Before the Out of Africa theory was generally accepted, there was no consensus on where the human species evolved and, consequently, where modern human behavior arose. Now, however, African archaeology has become extremely important in discovering the origins of humanity. The first Cro-Magnon expansion into Europe around 48,000 years ago is generally accepted as already "modern", and it is now generally believed that behavioral modernity appeared in Africa before 50,000 years ago, either significantly earlier, or possibly as a late Upper Paleolithic "revolution" soon before which prompted migration out of Africa. A variety of evidence of abstract imagery, widened subsistence strategies, and other "modern" behaviors have been discovered in Africa, especially South, North, and East Africa. The Blombos Cave site in South Africa, for example, is famous for rectangular slabs of ochre engraved with geometric designs. Using multiple dating techniques, the site was dated to be around 77,000 and 100,000 to 75,000 years old. Ostrich egg shell containers engraved with geometric designs dating to 60,000 years ago were found at Diepkloof, South Africa. Beads and other personal ornamentation have been found from Morocco which might be as much as 130,000 years old; as well, the Cave of Hearths in South Africa has yielded a number of beads dating from significantly prior to 50,000 years ago, and shell beads dating to about 75,000 years ago have been found at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Specialized projectile weapons as well have been found at various sites in Middle Stone Age Africa, including bone and stone arrowheads at South African sites such as Sibudu Cave (along with an early bone needle also found at Sibudu) dating approximately 72,000–60,000 years ago on some of which poisons may have been used, and bone harpoons at the Central African site of Katanda dating to about 90,000 years ago. Evidence also exists for the systematic heat treating of silcrete stone to increase its flake-ability for the purpose of toolmaking, beginning approximately 164,000 years ago at the South African site of Pinnacle Point and becoming common there for the creation of microlithic tools at about 72,000 years ago. In 2008, an ochre processing workshop likely for the production of paints was uncovered dating to c. 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Analysis shows that a liquefied pigment-rich mixture was produced and stored in the two abalone shells, and that ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones, and hammer-stones also formed a composite part of the toolkits. Evidence for the complexity of the task includes procuring and combining raw materials from various sources (implying they had a mental template of the process they would follow), possibly using pyrotechnology to facilitate fat extraction from bone, using a probable recipe to produce the compound, and the use of shell containers for mixing and storage for later use. Modern behaviors, such as the making of shell beads, bone tools and arrows, and the use of ochre pigment, are evident at a Kenyan site by 78,000–67,000 years ago. Evidence of early stone-tipped projectile weapons (a characteristic tool of Homo sapiens), the stone tips of javelins or throwing spears, were discovered in 2013 at the Ethiopian site of Gademotta, and date to around 279,000 years ago. Expanding subsistence strategies beyond big-game hunting and the consequential diversity in tool types has been noted as signs of behavioral modernity. A number of South African sites have shown an early reliance on aquatic resources from fish to shellfish. Pinnacle Point, in particular, shows exploitation of marine resources as early as 120,000 years ago, perhaps in response to more arid conditions inland. Establishing a reliance on predictable shellfish deposits, for example, could reduce mobility and facilitate complex social systems and symbolic behavior. Blombos Cave and Site 440 in Sudan both show evidence of fishing as well. Taphonomic change in fish skeletons from Blombos Cave have been interpreted as capture of live fish, clearly an intentional human behavior. Humans in North Africa (Nazlet Sabaha, Egypt) are known to have dabbled in chert mining, as early as ≈100,000 years ago, for the construction of stone tools. Evidence was found in 2018, dating to about 320,000 years ago, at the Kenyan site of Olorgesailie, of the early emergence of modern behaviors including: long-distance trade networks (involving goods such as obsidian), the use of pigments, and the possible making of projectile points. It is observed by the authors of three 2018 studies on the site that the evidence of these behaviors is approximately contemporary to the earliest known Homo sapiens fossil remains from Africa (such as at Jebel Irhoud and Florisbad), and they suggest that complex and modern behaviors had already begun in Africa around the time of the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. In 2019, further evidence of early complex projectile weapons in Africa was found at Aduma, Ethiopia, dated 100,000–80,000 years ago, in the form of points considered likely to belong to darts delivered by spear throwers. Olduvai Hominid 1 wore facial piercings. Europe While traditionally described as evidence for the later Upper Paleolithic Model, European archaeology has shown that the issue is more complex. A variety of stone tool technologies are present at the time of human expansion into Europe and show evidence of modern behavior. Despite the problems of conflating specific tools with cultural groups, the Aurignacian tool complex, for example, is generally taken as a purely modern human signature. The discovery of "transitional" complexes, like "proto-Aurignacian", have been taken as evidence of human groups progressing through "steps of innovation". If, as this might suggest, human groups were already migrating into eastern Europe around 40,000 years and only afterward show evidence of behavioral modernity, then either the cognitive change must have diffused back into Africa or was already present before migration. In light of a growing body of evidence of Neanderthal culture and tool complexes some researchers have put forth a "multiple species model" for behavioral modernity. Neanderthals were often cited as being an evolutionary dead-end, apish cousins who were less advanced than their human contemporaries. Personal ornaments were relegated as trinkets or poor imitations compared to the cave art produced by H. sapiens. Despite this, European evidence has shown a variety of personal ornaments and artistic artifacts produced by Neanderthals; for example, the Neanderthal site of Grotte du Renne has produced grooved bear, wolf, and fox incisors, ochre and other symbolic artifacts. Although few and controversial, circumstantial evidence of Neanderthal ritual burials has been uncovered. There are two options to describe this symbolic behavior among Neanderthals: they copied cultural traits from arriving modern humans or they had their own cultural traditions comparative with behavioral modernity. If they just copied cultural traditions, which is debated by several authors, they still possessed the capacity for complex culture described by behavioral modernity. As discussed above, if Neanderthals also were "behaviorally modern" then it cannot be a species-specific derived trait. Asia Most debates surrounding behavioral modernity have been focused on Africa or Europe but an increasing amount of focus has been placed on East Asia. This region offers a unique opportunity to test hypotheses of multi-regionalism, replacement, and demographic effects. Unlike Europe, where initial migration occurred around 50,000 years ago, human remains have been dated in China to around 100,000 years ago. This early evidence of human expansion calls into question behavioral modernity as an impetus for migration. Stone tool technology is particularly of interest in East Asia. Following Homo erectus migrations out of Africa, Acheulean technology never seems to appear beyond present-day India and into China. Analogously, Mode 3, or Levallois technology, is not apparent in China following later hominin dispersals. This lack of more advanced technology has been explained by serial founder effects and low population densities out of Africa. Although tool complexes comparative to Europe are missing or fragmentary, other archaeological evidence shows behavioral modernity. For example, the peopling of the Japanese archipelago offers an opportunity to investigate the early use of watercraft. Although one site, Kanedori in Honshu, does suggest the use of watercraft as early as 84,000 years ago, there is no other evidence of hominins in Japan until 50,000 years ago. The Zhoukoudian cave system near Beijing has been excavated since the 1930s and has yielded precious data on early human behavior in East Asia. Although disputed, there is evidence of possible human burials and interred remains in the cave dated to around 34–20,000 years ago. These remains have associated personal ornaments in the form of beads and worked shell, suggesting symbolic behavior. Along with possible burials, numerous other symbolic objects like punctured animal teeth and beads, some dyed in red ochre, have all been found at Zhoukoudian. Although fragmentary, the archaeological record of eastern Asia shows evidence of behavioral modernity before 50,000 years ago but, like the African record, it is not fully apparent until that time. See also Anatomically modern human Archaic Homo sapiens Blombos Cave Cultural universal Dawn of Humanity (film) Evolution of human intelligence Female cosmetic coalitions FOXP2 and human evolution Human evolution List of Stone Age art Origin of language Origins of society Prehistoric art Prehistoric music Paleolithic religion Recent African origin Sibudu Cave Sociocultural evolution Symbolism (disambiguation) Symbolic culture Timeline of evolution References External links Steven Mithen (1999), The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science, Thames & Hudson, . Artifacts in Africa Suggest An Earlier Modern Human Tools point to African origin for human behaviour Key Human Traits Tied to Shellfish Remains, nytimes 2007/10/18 "Python Cave" Reveals Oldest Human Ritual, Scientists Suggest Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016). Anthropology Anatomically modern humans Modernity Upper Paleolithic Human evolution Evolutionary biology Evolutionary psychology

Culture of Africa

The Culture of Africa is varied and manifold, consisting of a mixture of countries with various tribes depicting their unique characteristic and trait from the continent of Africa. It is a product of the diverse populations that inhabit the continent of Africa and the African diaspora. Generally, Culture can be defined as a collective mass of distinctive qualities belonging to a certain group of people. These qualities include laws, morals, beliefs, knowledge, art, customs, and any other attributes belonging to a member of that society. Culture is the way of life of a group of people. Africa has numerous ethnic nationalities all with varying qualities such as language, dishes, greetings, dressing and dances. However, each of the regions of Africa share a series of dominant cultural traits which distinguish various African regional cultures from each other and the rest of the world. For example, social values, religion, morals, political values, economics, and aesthetic values all contribute to various African cultures. Expressions of culture are abundant within Africa, with large amounts of cultural diversity being found not only across different countries but also within single countries. Even though within various regions, the cultures are widely diverse, they are also, when closely studied, seen to have many similarities; for example, the morals they uphold, their love and respect for their culture, as well as the strong respect they hold for the aged and the important, i.e. kings and chiefs. Africa has influenced and been influenced by other continents. This can be portrayed in the willingness to adapt to the ever-changing modern world rather than staying rooted in their static culture. The Westernized few, persuaded by American culture and Christianity, first denied African traditional culture, but with the increase of African nationalism, a cultural recovery occurred. The governments of most African nations encourage national dance and music groups, museums, and to a lower degree, artists and writers. 90 to 95% of Africa's cultural heritage is held outside of Africa by large museums. It is also important to note in a quote from BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) on African culture, “a recent study by Foresight Factory on defining factors of identity, 50-60% of British black African/Caribbean respondents, agreed that ethnicity played a key role, the largest of any group. The singular viewpoint of ‘black’ as an ‘identifier’ or an ‘ethnicity’ not only denies cultural differences between the population, it also denies the nuance within a vastly diverse community…. When we attempt to define African culture and identity, we have to be mindful that we are viewing a broad ethnicity comprising different sub communities that are resistant to having their heritage and culture boxed in simplistic labels.” African cultures, which originated on the continent of Africa, have several distinct differences than that of Black culture, which originated by African Americans in the United States after they were stripped of most of their own African cultures during enslavement. Some differences are that African cultures retain tribal affairs to only be worn during specific events, hand carvings, tribal masks and dances whereas Black culture is ethnic to African Americans such as hip hop, jazz, hamboning and soul food. Though some Africanisms were retained in Black culture of the United States, most of Black American culture and history was created by Black Americans. The same retained Africanisms and also created cultural differences and can be noticed and noted in Caribbean cultures from the descendants of the enslaved as well as in black South American cultures, such as culturally different expressions, foods, styles and languages due to the centuries separation and enslavement away from the African continent, being formed uniquely in places like Bahia, Brazil. Historical overview Africa is divided into a great number of ethnic cultures. The continent's cultural regeneration has also been an integral aspect of post-independence nation-building on the continent, with a recognition of the need to harness the cultural resources of Africa to enrich the process of education, requiring the creation of an enabling environment in several ways. In recent times, the call for a much greater emphasis on the cultural dimension in all aspects of development has become increasingly vocal. During the Roman colonization of North Africa (parts of Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and the whole of Tunisia), provinces such as Tripolitania became major producers of food for the republic and the empire. This generated much wealth in these places for their 400 years of occupation. During colonialism in Africa, Europeans possessed attitudes of superiority and a sense of mission. The French accepted an African as French if that person gave up their African culture and adopted French ways. Knowledge of the Portuguese language and culture and abandonment of traditional African ways defined one as civilized. Kenyan social commentator Mwiti Mugambi argues that the future of Africa can only be forged from accepting and mending the sociocultural present. For Mugambi, colonial cultural hangovers, pervasive Western cultural inundation, and aid-giving arm-twisting donors are, he argues, here to stay and no amount of looking into Africa's past will make them go away. However, Maulana Karenga states: African arts and crafts Africa has a rich tradition of arts and crafts. African arts and crafts find expression in a variety of woodcarvings, brass and leather artworks. African arts and crafts also include sculpture, paintings, pottery, ceremonial and religious headgear and dress. Maulana Karenga states that in African art, the object was not as important as the soul force behind the creation of the object. He also states that All art must be revolutionary, and in being revolutionary, it must be collective, committing, and functional. The meaning behind what he said can simply be interpreted as black art serving an actual purpose in the direction of a revolutionary change. Black art should not be done simply for “arts sake” but should rather be a means by which artists make a vast change through a medium that awakens, strengthens, and provides inspiration for a massive change within the black community. Certain African cultures have always emphasized personal appearance, and jewelry has remained an important personal accessory. Many pieces of such jewelry are made of cowry shells and similar materials. Similarly, masks are made with elaborate designs and are an important part of some cultures in Africa. Masks are used in various ceremonies depicting ancestors and spirits, mythological characters, and deities. In many traditional arts and craft traditions in Africa, certain themes significant to those particular cultures recur, including a couple, a woman with a child, a male with a weapon or animal, and an outsider or a stranger. Couples may represent ancestors, community founders, married couples, or twins. The couple theme rarely exhibits the intimacy of men and women. The mother with the child or children reveals the intense desire of the women to have children. The theme is also representative of mother mars and the people as her children. The man with the weapon or animal theme symbolizes honor and power. A stranger may be from some other tribe or someone from a different country, and a more distorted portrayal of the stranger indicates a proportionately greater gap from the stranger. These are all popular interpretations of African craft and art. Folklore and religion Like all human cultures, African folklore and religion represents a variety of social facets of the various cultures in Africa. Like almost all civilizations and cultures, flood myths have been circulating in different parts of Africa. Culture and religion share space and are deeply intertwined in African cultures. In Ethiopia, Christianity and Islam form the core aspects of Ethiopian culture and inform dietary customs and rituals and rites. According to a myth among Central African foragers, Chameleon, hearing a strange noise in a tree, cut open its trunk, and water came out in a great flood that spread all over the land. Folktales also play an important role in many African cultures. Stories reflect a group's cultural identity, and preserving the stories of Africa will help preserve an entire culture. Storytelling affirms pride and identity in a culture. In Africa, stories are created by and for the ethnic group telling them. Different ethnic groups in Africa have different rituals or ceremonies for storytelling, which creates a sense of belonging to a cultural group. To outsiders hearing an ethnic group's stories, it provides an introspection and insight into the beliefs, views, and customs of the community. For people within the community, it allows them to encompass their group's uniqueness. They show the human desires and fears of a group, such as love, marriage, and death. Folktales are also seen as a tool for education and entertainment. Folklore provides the wisdom to understand certain moments from different perspectives and it also showcases that all of our problems and successes happen in every culture and throughout different periods of history. They provide a way for children to understand the material and social environment. Every story has a moral to teach people, such as goodwill prevail over evil. For entertainment, stories are set in fantastic, non-human worlds. Often, the main character of the story would be a talking animal, or something unnatural would happen to a human character. Even though folktales are for entertainment, they bring a sense of belonging and pride to communities in Africa. There are different types of African stories: animal tales and day-to-day tales. Animal tales are more oriented towards entertainment but still have morals and lessons to them. Animal tales are normally divided into trickster tales and ogre tales. In animal tales, a certain animal would always have the same character or role in each story, so the audience does not have to worry about characterization. The popular roles for some animals are as follows; The Hare was always the trickster, clever and cunning, while the Hyena was always tricked by the Hare. Ogres are always cruel, greedy monsters. The messengers in all the stories were the Birds. Day-to-Day tales are the most serious tales, never including humor, that explained the everyday life and struggles of an African community. These tales take on famine, escape from death, courtship, and family matters, using a song form when the climax of the story was being told. African stories all have a certain structure to them. Villagers would gather around a common meeting place at the end of the day to listen and tell their stories. Storytellers had certain commands to start and end the stories, "Ugai Itha" to get the audience's attention and begin the story, and "Rukirika" to signal the end of a tale. Each scene of a story is depicted with two characters at a time, so the audience does not get overwhelmed. In each story, victims can overcome their predators and take justice out on the culprit. Certain tools were used in African folktales. For example, idiophones, such as drums, were used to make the sounds of different animals. Repetition and call-back techniques in prose or poem were also used to get the audience involved in the stories. Clothes Women's traditional clothes in Ethiopia are made from cloth called schema and are used to make habesha kemis. This all white outfit can be said to be the national costume for the Ethiopian as a result of it being commonly accepted and it's wild spread use but there exists much more variations to this outfit for example the Oromo people of Bale wear more of a leather garment and the Afaris wear brightly colored wraps made of cotton. The latter garment (habesha kemis) is basically cotton cloth, about 90 cm wide, woven in long strips which are then sewn together. Sometimes shiny threads are woven into the fabric for an elegant effect. Men wear pants and a knee-length shirt with a white collar, and perhaps a sweater. Men often wear knee-high socks, while women might not wear socks at all. Men, as well as women, wear shawls, the netela. Zulus wear a variety of attire, both traditional for ceremonial or culturally celebratory occasions. Traditional male clothing is usually light, consisting of a two-part apron (similar to a loincloth) used to cover the genitals and buttocks. The front piece is called the umutsha (pronounced ) and is usually made of springbok or other animal hide twisted into different bands which cover the genitals. The rear piece, called the Ibheshu , is made of a single piece of springbok or cattle hide, and its length is usually used as an indicator of age and social position; longer amabheshu (plural of ibheshu) are worn by older men. Married men will usually also wear a headband, called the umqhele , which is usually also made of springbok hide, or leopard hide by men of higher social status, such as chiefs. Zulu men will also wear cow tails as bracelets and anklets called imishokobezi during ceremonies and rituals, such as weddings or dances. In the Muslim parts of Africa, daily attire also often reflects Islamic tradition.The traditional attire for the Muslim men usually covers a minimum of the head and the range between the waist of the man and the knees, while the dress code for the islamic women is made to conceal and cover the hair and the body from the neck down to the ankles. There are some Muslim women who also conceal their face. Nevertheless, there are some Muslims that believe that the Quran does not command that women should wear a hijab or a burqa. Cuisine The various cuisines of Africa use a combination of locally available fruits, cereal grains and vegetables, as well as milk and meat products. In some parts of the continent, the traditional diet features a preponderance of milk, curd and whey products. In much of tropical Africa, however, cow's milk is rare and cannot be produced locally (owing to various diseases that affect livestock). The continent's diverse demographic makeup is reflected in the many different eating and drinking habits, dishes, and preparation techniques of its manifold populations. However it is important to consider the affordability of and access of these products on daily basis. In Central Africa, the basic ingredients are plantains and cassava. Fufu-starchy foods (usually made from fermented cassava roots) are served with grilled meat and sauces. Many local ingredients are used while preparing other dishes like spinach stew, cooked with tomato, peppers, chillis, onions, and peanut butter. Cassava plants are also consumed as cooked greens. Groundnut (peanut) stew is also prepared, containing chicken, okra, ginger, and other spices. Another favorite is Bambara, a porridge of rice, peanut butter, and sugar. Beef and chicken are favorite meat dishes, but game meat preparations containing crocodile, monkey, antelope and warthog are also served occasionally. The cuisine of the African Great Lakes region varies from area to area. In the inland savannah, the traditional cuisine of cattle-keeping peoples is distinctive in that meat products are generally absent. Cattle, sheep and goats were regarded as a form of currency and a store of wealth and are not generally consumed as food. In some areas, traditional peoples consume the milk and blood of cattle, but rarely the meat. Elsewhere, other peoples are farmers who grow a variety of grains and vegetables. Maize (corn) is the basis of ugali, the East African version of West Africa's fufu. Ugali is a starch dish eaten with meats or stews. In Uganda, steamed, green bananas called matoke provide the starch filler of many meals. In the Horn of Africa, the main traditional dishes in Ethiopian cuisine and Eritrean cuisine are tsebhis (stews) served with injera (flatbread made from teff, wheat, or sorghum), and hilbet (paste made from legumes, mainly lentil, faba beans). Eritrean and Ethiopian cuisine (especially in the northern half) are very similar, given the shared history of the two countries. The related Somali cuisine consists of an exotic fusion of diverse culinary influences. Varieties of bariis (rice), the most popular probably being basmati, usually serve as the main dish. Xalwo (halwo) or halva is a popular confection served during special occasions such as Eid celebrations or wedding receptions. After meals, homes are traditionally perfumed using frankincense (lubaan) or incense (cuunsi), which is prepared inside an incense burner referred to as a dabqaad. All food is served halal. The roots of North African cuisine can be traced back to the ancient empires of North Africa, particularly in Egypt, where many of the country's dishes and culinary traditions date back to ancient Egypt. Over several centuries traders, travelers, invaders, migrants and immigrants all have influenced the cuisine of North Africa. Most of the North African countries today have several similar dishes, sometimes almost the same dish with a different name (the Moroccan tangia and the Tunisian coach are both essentially the same dish: a meat stew prepared in an urn and cooked overnight in a public oven), sometimes with a slight change in ingredients and cooking style. To add to the confusion, two completely different dishes may also share the same name (for example, a "tajine" dish is a slow-cooked stew in Morocco, whereas the Tunisian "tajine" is a baked omelet/quiche-like dish). There are noticeable differences between the cooking styles of different nations – there's the sophisticated, full-bodied flavours of Moroccan palace cookery, the fiery dishes of Tunisian cuisine, and the humbler, simpler cuisines of Egypt and Algeria. The cooking of Southern Africa is sometimes called 'rainbow cuisine', as the food in this region is a blend of many culinary traditions, including those of the Khoisan, Bantu, European and Asian populations. Basic ingredients include seafood, meat products (including wild game), poultry, as well as grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. Fruits include apples, grapes, mangoes, bananas and papayas, avocado, oranges, peaches and apricots. Desserts may simply be fruit. However, there are some more western style puddings, such as the Angolan Cocada amarela, which was inspired by Portuguese cuisine. Meat products include lamb, as well as game like venison, ostrich, and impala. The seafood includes a wide variety such as crayfish, prawns, tuna, mussels, oysters, calamari, mackerel, and lobster. There are also several types of traditional and modern alcoholic beverages including many European-style beers. A typical West African meal is heavy with starchy items, meat, spices, and flavors. A wide array of staples are eaten across the region, including those of Fufu, Banku and Kenkey (originating from Ghana), Foutou, Couscous, Tô, and Garri, which are served alongside soups and stews. Fufu is often made from starchy root vegetables such as yams, cocoyams, or cassava, but also from cereal grains like millet, sorghum or plantains. The staple grain or starch varies from region to region and ethnic group to ethnic group. However, corn has gained significant ground as it is cheap, swells to greater volumes and creates a beautiful white final product that is greatly desired. Banku and Kenkey are maize dough staples, and Gari is made from dried grated cassavas. Rice dishes are also widely eaten in the region, especially in the dry Sahel belt inland. Examples of these include Benachin from The Gambia and Jollof rice, a pan-West African rice dish similar to Arab kabsah. African music Traditional Sub-Saharan African music is as diverse as the region's various populations. The common perception of Sub-Saharan African music is that it is rhythmic music centered on the drums, and indeed, a large part of Sub-Saharan music, mainly among speakers of Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages, is rhythmic and centered on the drum. Sub-Saharan music is polyrhythmic, usually consisting of multiple rhythms in one composition such as the Serer of Senegambia's ultra-religious njuup tradition (the progenitor of mbalax). Dance involves moving multiple body parts. These aspects of Sub-Saharan music were transferred to the new world by enslaved West Africans and can be seen in its influence on music forms as Samba, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Rock & Roll, Salsa, and Rap music. Other African musical traditions also involve strings, horns, and very few poly-rhythms. Music from the eastern Sahel and along the Nile, among the Nilo-Saharan, made extensive use of strings and horns in ancient times. Dancing involves swaying body movements and footwork. Among the Khoisans extensive use of string instruments with emphasis on footwork. Modern Sub-Saharan African music has been influenced by music from the New World (Jazz, Salsa, Rhythm and Blues etc.). Popular styles include Mbalax in Senegal and Gambia, Highlife in Ghana, Zoblazo in Côte d'Ivoire, Makossa in Cameroon, Soukous in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kizomba in Angola, and Xhosa music in South Africa. New World styles like Salsa, R&B/Rap, Reggae, and Zouk also have widespread popularity. Like the musical genres of the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa, North African music has close ties with Middle Eastern music and utilizes similar melodic modes (maqamat). It has a considerable range, from the music of ancient Egypt to the Berber and the Tuareg music of the desert nomads. The region's art music has for centuries followed the outline of Arabic and Andalusian classical music. Its popular contemporary genres include the Algerian Raï. Somali music is typically pentatonic, using five pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (seven note) scale such as the major scale. In Ethiopia, the Amhara music of the highlands uses a fundamental modal system called qenet, of which there are four main modes: tezeta, bati, ambassel, and anchihoy. Three additional modes are variations on the above: tezeta minor, bati major, and bati minor. Some songs take the name of their qenet, such as tizita, a song of reminiscence. Languages Africa is home to approximately one-third of the world's languages, anywhere between 1000 and 2000 languages. The main ethnolinguistic divisions in Africa are Afro-Asiatic (approximately 200 languages) covering nearly Northern Africa (including the horn of Africa, Central Sahara et the top Nile), Niger–Congo with approximately 1,350 - 1,650 languages is the largest of the four; it is also the largest language family in the world. The Niger-Congo languages inhabit Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa this includes the Bantu language. Nilo-Saharan in parts of the Sahara and the Sahel and parts of Eastern Africa, and Khoisan (indigenous minorities of Southern Africa). Nilo-Saharan gathers approximately 140 languages with some eleven million speakers scattered in Central and Eastern Africa. Last but not least is the Khoisan family with between 40 - 70 members. Believed to be the oldest of the four language families, it is the smallest of the four and is found mainly in Southern Africa. The continent of Africa speaks hundreds of languages, and if dialects spoken by various ethnic groups are also included, the number is much higher. These languages and dialects do not have the same importance: some are spoken by only a few hundred people, others are spoken by millions. The most widely spoken languages of Africa, Swahili (100 million), Hausa (38 million), Yoruba (20 million), Amharic (20 million), Igbo (21 million), and Fula (13 million), belong mostly to the Niger-Congo family. Very few countries of Africa use any single language, and for this reason, several official languages coexist, African and European. Some Africans speak various European languages such as English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch. The official languages of the African Union and all its institutions shall be Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Kiswahili and any other African language. African Diaspora African cultures have had profound influences on the rest of the world through West African cultural traditions that were brought to the Americas and the Caribbean during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, as well as later immigration of people from throughout Africa. See also African philosophy Africana philosophy African divination History of Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Culture of Asia Culture of Europe Culture of North America Culture of Oceania Culture of South America National African Immigrant Heritage Month References Further reading Finnegan, Ruth; Leiper, Thomas. Oral literature in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Robert H. Milligan. The jungle folk of Africa. New York: Fleming H. Revell company, 1908. ---- The fetish folk of West Africa . New York: Fleming H. Revell company, 1912. External links Unesco African Website Squinti African Art culture africaine African Union

Cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions. Anthropologists have pointed out that through culture, people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances). Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology, including participant observation (often called fieldwork because it requires the anthropologist spending an extended period of time at the research location), interviews, and surveys. History Modern anthropology emerged in the 19th century alongside developments in the Western world. With these developments came a renewed interest in humankind, such as its origins, unity, and plurality. It is, however, in the 20th century that cultural anthropology shifts to having a more pluralistic view of cultures and societies. The rise of cultural anthropology took place within the context of the late 19th century, when questions regarding which cultures were "primitive" and which were "civilized" occupied the mind of not only Freud, but many others. Colonialism and its processes increasingly brought European thinkers into direct or indirect contact with "primitive others". The first generation of cultural anthropologists were interested in the relative status of various humans, some of whom had modern advanced technologies, while others lacked anything but face-to-face communication techniques and still lived a Paleolithic lifestyle. Theoretical foundations The concept of culture One of the earliest articulations of the anthropological meaning of the term "culture" came from Sir Edward Tylor: "Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." The term "civilization" later gave way to definitions given by V. Gordon Childe, with culture forming an umbrella term and civilization becoming a particular kind of culture. According to Kay Milton, former director of anthropology research at Queens University Belfast, culture can be general or specific. This means culture can be something applied to all human beings or it can be specific to a certain group of people such as African American culture or Irish American culture. Specific cultures are structured systems which means they are organized very specifically and adding or taking away any element from that system may disrupt it. The critique of evolutionism Anthropology is concerned with the lives of people in different parts of the world, particularly in relation to the discourse of beliefs and practices. In addressing this question, ethnologists in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like Grafton Elliot Smith, argued that different groups must have learned from one another somehow, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "diffused". Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of creating similar beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like Lewis Henry Morgan, additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the same stages of cultural evolution (See also classical social evolutionism). Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could not have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized. 20th-century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts. Some 20th-century ethnologists, like Julian Steward, have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments. Although 19th-century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most ethnographers quickly reached a consensus that both processes occur, and that both can plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers also pointed out the superficiality of many such similarities. They noted that even traits that spread through diffusion often were given different meanings and function from one society to another. Analyses of large human concentrations in big cities, in multidisciplinary studies by Ronald Daus, show how new methods may be applied to the understanding of man living in a global world and how it was caused by the action of extra-European nations, so highlighting the role of Ethics in modern anthropology. Accordingly, most of these anthropologists showed less interest in comparing cultures, generalizing about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development, than in understanding particular cultures in those cultures' own terms. Such ethnographers and their students promoted the idea of "cultural relativism", the view that one can only understand another person's beliefs and behaviors in the context of the culture in which they live or lived. Others, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology and by French Durkheimian sociology), have argued that apparently similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see structuralism). By the mid-20th century, the number of examples of people skipping stages, such as going from hunter-gatherers to post-industrial service occupations in one generation, were so numerous that 19th-century evolutionism was effectively disproved. Cultural relativism Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes." Although Boas did not coin the term, it became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to be found in connection with any sub-species, is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a relationship between culture and race. Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not these claims require a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be confused with moral relativism. Cultural relativism was in part a response to Western ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one consciously believes that one's people's arts are the most beautiful, values the most virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful. Boas, originally trained in physics and geography, and heavily influenced by the thought of Kant, Herder, and von Humboldt, argued that one's culture may mediate and thus limit one's perceptions in less obvious ways. This understanding of culture confronts anthropologists with two problems: first, how to escape the unconscious bonds of one's own culture, which inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions to the world, and second, how to make sense of an unfamiliar culture. The principle of cultural relativism thus forced anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies. Boas and his students realized that if they were to conduct scientific research in other cultures, they would need to employ methods that would help them escape the limits of their own ethnocentrism. One such method is that of ethnography. This method advocates living with people of another culture for an extended period of time to learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture. In this context, cultural relativism is of fundamental methodological importance, because it calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding the meaning of particular human beliefs and activities. Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote, "Cultural relativity, to phrase it in starkest abstraction, states the relativity of the part to the whole. The part gains its cultural significance by its place in the whole, and cannot retain its integrity in a different situation." Theoretical approaches Actor–network theory Cultural materialism Culture theory Feminist anthropology Functionalism Symbolic and interpretive anthropology Political economy in anthropology Practice theory Structuralism Post-structuralism Systems theory in anthropology Comparison with social anthropology The rubric cultural anthropology is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in approach, are oriented to the ways in which culture affects individual experience or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. Social anthropology is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewhat secondary to the main issues of social scientific inquiry. Parallel with the rise of cultural anthropology in the United States, social anthropology developed as an academic discipline in Britain and in France. Foundational thinkers Lewis Henry Morgan Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), a lawyer from Rochester, New York, became an advocate for and ethnological scholar of the Iroquois. His comparative analyses of religion, government, material culture, and especially kinship patterns proved to be influential contributions to the field of anthropology. Like other scholars of his day (such as Edward Tylor), Morgan argued that human societies could be classified into categories of cultural evolution on a scale of progression that ranged from savagery, to barbarism, to civilization. Generally, Morgan used technology (such as bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position on this scale. Franz Boas, founder of the modern discipline Franz Boas (1858–1942) established academic anthropology in the United States in opposition to Morgan's evolutionary perspective. His approach was empirical, skeptical of overgeneralizations, and eschewed attempts to establish universal laws. For example, Boas studied immigrant children to demonstrate that biological race was not immutable, and that human conduct and behavior resulted from nurture, rather than nature. Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argued that the world was full of distinct cultures, rather than societies whose evolution could be measured by the extent of "civilization" they had. He believed that each culture has to be studied in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations, like those made in the natural sciences, were not possible. In doing so, he fought discrimination against immigrants, blacks, and indigenous peoples of the Americas. Many American anthropologists adopted his agenda for social reform, and theories of race continue to be popular subjects for anthropologists today. The so-called "Four Field Approach" has its origins in Boasian Anthropology, dividing the discipline in the four crucial and interrelated fields of sociocultural, biological, linguistic, and archaic anthropology (e.g. archaeology). Anthropology in the United States continues to be deeply influenced by the Boasian tradition, especially its emphasis on culture. Kroeber, Mead, and Benedict Boas used his positions at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to train and develop multiple generations of students. His first generation of students included Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir, and Ruth Benedict, who each produced richly detailed studies of indigenous North American cultures. They provided a wealth of details used to attack the theory of a single evolutionary process. Kroeber and Sapir's focus on Native American languages helped establish linguistics as a truly general science and free it from its historical focus on Indo-European languages. The publication of Alfred Kroeber's textbook Anthropology (1923) marked a turning point in American anthropology. After three decades of amassing material, Boasians felt a growing urge to generalize. This was most obvious in the 'Culture and Personality' studies carried out by younger Boasians such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, these authors sought to understand the way that individual personalities were shaped by the wider cultural and social forces in which they grew up. Though such works as Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) remain popular with the American public, Mead and Benedict never had the impact on the discipline of anthropology that some expected. Boas had planned for Ruth Benedict to succeed him as chair of Columbia's anthropology department, but she was sidelined in favor of Ralph Linton, and Mead was limited to her offices at the AMNH. Wolf, Sahlins, Mintz, and political economy In the 1950s and mid-1960s anthropology tended increasingly to model itself after the natural sciences. Some anthropologists, such as Lloyd Fallers and Clifford Geertz, focused on processes of modernization by which newly independent states could develop. Others, such as Julian Steward and Leslie White, focused on how societies evolve and fit their ecological niche—an approach popularized by Marvin Harris. Economic anthropology as influenced by Karl Polanyi and practiced by Marshall Sahlins and George Dalton challenged standard neoclassical economics to take account of cultural and social factors and employed Marxian analysis into anthropological study. In England, British Social Anthropology's paradigm began to fragment as Max Gluckman and Peter Worsley experimented with Marxism and authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach incorporated Lévi-Strauss's structuralism into their work. Structuralism also influenced a number of developments in the 1960s and 1970s, including cognitive anthropology and componential analysis. In keeping with the times, much of anthropology became politicized through the Algerian War of Independence and opposition to the Vietnam War; Marxism became an increasingly popular theoretical approach in the discipline. By the 1970s the authors of volumes such as Reinventing Anthropology worried about anthropology's relevance. Since the 1980s issues of power, such as those examined in Eric Wolf's Europe and the People Without History, have been central to the discipline. In the 1980s books like Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter pondered anthropology's ties to colonial inequality, while the immense popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault moved issues of power and hegemony into the spotlight. Gender and sexuality became popular topics, as did the relationship between history and anthropology, influenced by Marshall Sahlins, who drew on Lévi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel to examine the relationship between symbolic meaning, sociocultural structure, and individual agency in the processes of historical transformation. Jean and John Comaroff produced a whole generation of anthropologists at the University of Chicago that focused on these themes. Also influential in these issues were Nietzsche, Heidegger, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Derrida and Lacan. Geertz, Schneider, and interpretive anthropology Many anthropologists reacted against the renewed emphasis on materialism and scientific modelling derived from Marx by emphasizing the importance of the concept of culture. Authors such as David Schneider, Clifford Geertz, and Marshall Sahlins developed a more fleshed-out concept of culture as a web of meaning or signification, which proved very popular within and beyond the discipline. Geertz was to state: Geertz's interpretive method involved what he called "thick description". The cultural symbols of rituals, political and economic action, and of kinship, are "read" by the anthropologist as if they are a document in a foreign language. The interpretation of those symbols must be re-framed for their anthropological audience, i.e. transformed from the "experience-near" but foreign concepts of the other culture, into the "experience-distant" theoretical concepts of the anthropologist. These interpretations must then be reflected back to its originators, and its adequacy as a translation fine-tuned in a repeated way, a process called the hermeneutic circle. Geertz applied his method in a number of areas, creating programs of study that were very productive. His analysis of "religion as a cultural system" was particularly influential outside of anthropology. David Schnieder's cultural analysis of American kinship has proven equally influential. Schneider demonstrated that the American folk-cultural emphasis on "blood connections" had an undue influence on anthropological kinship theories, and that kinship is not a biological characteristic, but a cultural relationship established on very different terms in different societies. Prominent British symbolic anthropologists include Victor Turner and Mary Douglas. The post-modern turn In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as James Clifford pondered ethnographic authority, in particular how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. They were reflecting trends in research and discourse initiated by feminists in the academy, although they excused themselves from commenting specifically on those pioneering critics. Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theory and methods became de rigueur as part of the 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies became more interpretative and reflexive, explicitly addressing the author's methodology; cultural, gendered, and racial positioning; and their influence on the ethnographic analysis. This was part of a more general trend of postmodernism that was popular contemporaneously. Currently anthropologists pay attention to a wide variety of issues pertaining to the contemporary world, including globalization, medicine and biotechnology, indigenous rights, virtual communities, and the anthropology of industrialized societies. Socio-cultural anthropology subfields Anthropology of art Cognitive anthropology Anthropology of development Disability anthropology Ecological anthropology Economic anthropology Feminist anthropology and anthropology of gender and sexuality Ethnohistory and historical anthropology Kinship and family Legal anthropology Multimodal anthropology Media anthropology Medical anthropology Political anthropology Political economy in anthropology Psychological anthropology Public anthropology Anthropology of religion Cyborg anthropology Transpersonal anthropology Urban anthropology Visual anthropology Methods Modern cultural anthropology has its origins in, and developed in reaction to, 19th century ethnology, which involves the organized comparison of human societies. Scholars like E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer in England worked mostly with materials collected by others—usually missionaries, traders, explorers, or colonial officials—earning them the moniker of "arm-chair anthropologists". Participant observation Participant observation is one of the principal research methods of cultural anthropology. It relies on the assumption that the best way to understand a group of people is to interact with them closely over a long period of time. The method originated in the field research of social anthropologists, especially Bronislaw Malinowski in Britain, the students of Franz Boas in the United States, and in the later urban research of the Chicago School of Sociology. Historically, the group of people being studied was a small, non-Western society. However, today it may be a specific corporation, a church group, a sports team, or a small town. There are no restrictions as to what the subject of participant observation can be, as long as the group of people is studied intimately by the observing anthropologist over a long period of time. This allows the anthropologist to develop trusting relationships with the subjects of study and receive an inside perspective on the culture, which helps him or her to give a richer description when writing about the culture later. Observable details (like daily time allotment) and more hidden details (like taboo behavior) are more easily observed and interpreted over a longer period of time, and researchers can discover discrepancies between what participants say—and often believe—should happen (the formal system) and what actually does happen, or between different aspects of the formal system; in contrast, a one-time survey of people's answers to a set of questions might be quite consistent, but is less likely to show conflicts between different aspects of the social system or between conscious representations and behavior. Interactions between an ethnographer and a cultural informant must go both ways. Just as an ethnographer may be naive or curious about a culture, the members of that culture may be curious about the ethnographer. To establish connections that will eventually lead to a better understanding of the cultural context of a situation, an anthropologist must be open to becoming part of the group, and willing to develop meaningful relationships with its members. One way to do this is to find a small area of common experience between an anthropologist and their subjects, and then to expand from this common ground into the larger area of difference. Once a single connection has been established, it becomes easier to integrate into the community, and it is more likely that accurate and complete information is being shared with the anthropologist. Before participant observation can begin, an anthropologist must choose both a location and a focus of study. This focus may change once the anthropologist is actively observing the chosen group of people, but having an idea of what one wants to study before beginning fieldwork allows an anthropologist to spend time researching background information on their topic. It can also be helpful to know what previous research has been conducted in one's chosen location or on similar topics, and if the participant observation takes place in a location where the spoken language is not one the anthropologist is familiar with, they will usually also learn that language. This allows the anthropologist to become better established in the community. The lack of need for a translator makes communication more direct, and allows the anthropologist to give a richer, more contextualized representation of what they witness. In addition, participant observation often requires permits from governments and research institutions in the area of study, and always needs some form of funding. The majority of participant observation is based on conversation. This can take the form of casual, friendly dialogue, or can also be a series of more structured interviews. A combination of the two is often used, sometimes along with photography, mapping, artifact collection, and various other methods. In some cases, ethnographers also turn to structured observation, in which an anthropologist's observations are directed by a specific set of questions they are trying to answer. In the case of structured observation, an observer might be required to record the order of a series of events, or describe a certain part of the surrounding environment. While the anthropologist still makes an effort to become integrated into the group they are studying, and still participates in the events as they observe, structured observation is more directed and specific than participant observation in general. This helps to standardize the method of study when ethnographic data is being compared across several groups or is needed to fulfill a specific purpose, such as research for a governmental policy decision. One common criticism of participant observation is its lack of objectivity. Because each anthropologist has their own background and set of experiences, each individual is likely to interpret the same culture in a different way. Who the ethnographer is has a lot to do with what they will eventually write about a culture, because each researcher is influenced by their own perspective. This is considered a problem especially when anthropologists write in the ethnographic present, a present tense which makes a culture seem stuck in time, and ignores the fact that it may have interacted with other cultures or gradually evolved since the anthropologist made observations. To avoid this, past ethnographers have advocated for strict training, or for anthropologists working in teams. However, these approaches have not generally been successful, and modern ethnographers often choose to include their personal experiences and possible biases in their writing instead. Participant observation has also raised ethical questions, since an anthropologist is in control of what they report about a culture. In terms of representation, an anthropologist has greater power than their subjects of study, and this has drawn criticism of participant observation in general. Additionally, anthropologists have struggled with the effect their presence has on a culture. Simply by being present, a researcher causes changes in a culture, and anthropologists continue to question whether or not it is appropriate to influence the cultures they study, or possible to avoid having influence. Ethnography In the 20th century, most cultural and social anthropologists turned to the crafting of ethnographies. An ethnography is a piece of writing about a people, at a particular place and time. Typically, the anthropologist lives among people in another society for a period of time, simultaneously participating in and observing the social and cultural life of the group. Numerous other ethnographic techniques have resulted in ethnographic writing or details being preserved, as cultural anthropologists also curate materials, spend long hours in libraries, churches and schools poring over records, investigate graveyards, and decipher ancient scripts. A typical ethnography will also include information about physical geography, climate and habitat. It is meant to be a holistic piece of writing about the people in question, and today often includes the longest possible timeline of past events that the ethnographer can obtain through primary and secondary research. Bronisław Malinowski developed the ethnographic method, and Franz Boas taught it in the United States. Boas' students such as Alfred L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead drew on his conception of culture and cultural relativism to develop cultural anthropology in the United States. Simultaneously, Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe Brown's students were developing social anthropology in the United Kingdom. Whereas cultural anthropology focused on symbols and values, social anthropology focused on social groups and institutions. Today socio-cultural anthropologists attend to all these elements. In the early 20th century, socio-cultural anthropology developed in different forms in Europe and in the United States. European "social anthropologists" focused on observed social behaviors and on "social structure", that is, on relationships among social roles (for example, husband and wife, or parent and child) and social institutions (for example, religion, economy, and politics). American "cultural anthropologists" focused on the ways people expressed their view of themselves and their world, especially in symbolic forms, such as art and myths. These two approaches frequently converged and generally complemented one another. For example, kinship and leadership function both as symbolic systems and as social institutions. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to the work of both sets of predecessors and have an equal interest in what people do and in what people say. Cross-cultural comparison One means by which anthropologists combat ethnocentrism is to engage in the process of cross-cultural comparison. It is important to test so-called "human universals" against the ethnographic record. Monogamy, for example, is frequently touted as a universal human trait, yet comparative study shows that it is not. The Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF) is a research agency based at Yale University. Since 1949, its mission has been to encourage and facilitate worldwide comparative studies of human culture, society, and behavior in the past and present. The name came from the Institute of Human Relations, an interdisciplinary program/building at Yale at the time. The Institute of Human Relations had sponsored HRAF's precursor, the Cross-Cultural Survey (see George Peter Murdock), as part of an effort to develop an integrated science of human behavior and culture. The two eHRAF databases on the Web are expanded and updated annually. eHRAF World Cultures includes materials on cultures, past and present, and covers nearly 400 cultures. The second database, eHRAF Archaeology, covers major archaeological traditions and many more sub-traditions and sites around the world. Comparison across cultures includes the industrialized (or de-industrialized) West. Cultures in the more traditional standard cross-cultural sample of small-scale societies are: Multi-sited ethnography Ethnography dominates socio-cultural anthropology. Nevertheless, many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists have rejected earlier models of ethnography as treating local cultures as bounded and isolated. These anthropologists continue to concern themselves with the distinct ways people in different locales experience and understand their lives, but they often argue that one cannot understand these particular ways of life solely from a local perspective; they instead combine a focus on the local with an effort to grasp larger political, economic, and cultural frameworks that impact local lived realities. Notable proponents of this approach include Arjun Appadurai, James Clifford, George Marcus, Sidney Mintz, Michael Taussig, Eric Wolf and Ronald Daus. A growing trend in anthropological research and analysis is the use of multi-sited ethnography, discussed in George Marcus' article, "Ethnography In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography". Looking at culture as embedded in macro-constructions of a global social order, multi-sited ethnography uses traditional methodology in various locations both spatially and temporally. Through this methodology, greater insight can be gained when examining the impact of world-systems on local and global communities. Also emerging in multi-sited ethnography are greater interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork, bringing in methods from cultural studies, media studies, science and technology studies, and others. In multi-sited ethnography, research tracks a subject across spatial and temporal boundaries. For example, a multi-sited ethnography may follow a "thing", such as a particular commodity, as it is transported through the networks of global capitalism. Multi-sited ethnography may also follow ethnic groups in diaspora, stories or rumours that appear in multiple locations and in multiple time periods, metaphors that appear in multiple ethnographic locations, or the biographies of individual people or groups as they move through space and time. It may also follow conflicts that transcend boundaries. An example of multi-sited ethnography is Nancy Scheper-Hughes' work on the international black market for the trade of human organs. In this research, she follows organs as they are transferred through various legal and illegal networks of capitalism, as well as the rumours and urban legends that circulate in impoverished communities about child kidnapping and organ theft. Sociocultural anthropologists have increasingly turned their investigative eye on to "Western" culture. For example, Philippe Bourgois won the Margaret Mead Award in 1997 for In Search of Respect, a study of the entrepreneurs in a Harlem crack-den. Also growing more popular are ethnographies of professional communities, such as laboratory researchers, Wall Street investors, law firms, or information technology (IT) computer employees. Topics Kinship and family Kinship refers to the anthropological study of the ways in which humans form and maintain relationships with one another and how those relationships operate within and define social organization. Research in kinship studies often crosses over into different anthropological subfields including medical, feminist, and public anthropology. This is likely due to its fundamental concepts, as articulated by linguistic anthropologist Patrick McConvell: Throughout history, kinship studies have primarily focused on the topics of marriage, descent, and procreation. Anthropologists have written extensively on the variations within marriage across cultures and its legitimacy as a human institution. There are stark differences between communities in terms of marital practice and value, leaving much room for anthropological fieldwork. For instance, the Nuer of Sudan and the Brahmans of Nepal practice polygyny, where one man has several marriages to two or more women. The Nyar of India and Nyimba of Tibet and Nepal practice polyandry, where one woman is often married to two or more men. The marital practice found in most cultures, however, is monogamy, where one woman is married to one man. Anthropologists also study different marital taboos across cultures, most commonly the incest taboo of marriage within sibling and parent-child relationships. It has been found that all cultures have an incest taboo to some degree, but the taboo shifts between cultures when the marriage extends beyond the nuclear family unit. There are similar foundational differences where the act of procreation is concerned. Although anthropologists have found that biology is acknowledged in every cultural relationship to procreation, there are differences in the ways in which cultures assess the constructs of parenthood. For example, in the Nuyoo municipality of Oaxaca, Mexico, it is believed that a child can have partible maternity and partible paternity. In this case, a child would have multiple biological mothers in the case that it is born of one woman and then breastfed by another. A child would have multiple biological fathers in the case that the mother had sex with multiple men, following the commonplace belief in Nuyoo culture that pregnancy must be preceded by sex with multiple men in order have the necessary accumulation of semen. Late twentieth-century shifts in interest In the twenty-first century, Western ideas of kinship have evolved beyond the traditional assumptions of the nuclear family, raising anthropological questions of consanguinity, lineage, and normative marital expectation. The shift can be traced back to the 1960s, with the reassessment of kinship's basic principles offered by Edmund Leach, Rodney Neeham, David Schneider, and others. Instead of relying on narrow ideas of Western normalcy, kinship studies increasingly catered to "more ethnographic voices, human agency, intersecting power structures, and historical context". The study of kinship evolved to accommodate for the fact that it cannot be separated from its institutional roots and must pay respect to the society in which it lives, including that society's contradictions, hierarchies, and individual experiences of those within it. This shift was progressed further by the emergence of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s, which introduced ideas of marital oppression, sexual autonomy, and domestic subordination. Other themes that emerged during this time included the frequent comparisons between Eastern and Western kinship systems and the increasing amount of attention paid to anthropologists' own societies, a swift turn from the focus that had traditionally been paid to largely "foreign", non-Western communities. Kinship studies began to gain mainstream recognition in the late 1990s with the surging popularity of feminist anthropology, particularly with its work related to biological anthropology and the intersectional critique of gender relations. At this time, there was the arrival of "Third World feminism", a movement that argued kinship studies could not examine the gender relations of developing countries in isolation and must pay respect to racial and economic nuance as well. This critique became relevant, for instance, in the anthropological study of Jamaica: race and class were seen as the primary obstacles to Jamaican liberation from economic imperialism, and gender as an identity was largely ignored. Third World feminism aimed to combat this in the early twenty-first century by promoting these categories as coexisting factors. In Jamaica, marriage as an institution is often substituted for a series of partners, as poor women cannot rely on regular financial contributions in a climate of economic instability. In addition, there is a common practice of Jamaican women artificially lightening their skin tones in order to secure economic survival. These anthropological findings, according to Third World feminism, cannot see gender, racial, or class differences as separate entities, and instead must acknowledge that they interact together to produce unique individual experiences. Rise of reproductive anthropology Kinship studies have also experienced a rise in the interest of reproductive anthropology with the advancement of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), including in vitro fertilization (IVF). These advancements have led to new dimensions of anthropological research, as they challenge the Western standard of biogenetically based kinship, relatedness, and parenthood. According to anthropologists Maria C. Inhorn and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, "ARTs have pluralized notions of relatedness and led to a more dynamic notion of "kinning" namely, kinship as a process, as something under construction, rather than a natural given". With this technology, questions of kinship have emerged over the difference between biological and genetic relatedness, as gestational surrogates can provide a biological environment for the embryo while the genetic ties remain with a third party. If genetic, surrogate, and adoptive maternities are involved, anthropologists have acknowledged that there can be the possibility for three "biological" mothers to a single child. With ARTs, there are also anthropological questions concerning the intersections between wealth and fertility: ARTs are generally only available to those in the highest income bracket, meaning the infertile poor are inherently devalued in the system. There have also been issues of reproductive tourism and bodily commodification, as individuals seek economic security through hormonal stimulation and egg harvesting, which are potentially harmful procedures. With IVF, specifically, there have been many questions of embryotic value and the status of life, particularly as it relates to the manufacturing of stem cells, testing, and research. Current issues in kinship studies, such as adoption, have revealed and challenged the Western cultural disposition towards the genetic, "blood" tie. Western biases against single parent homes have also been explored through similar anthropological research, uncovering that a household with a single parent experiences "greater levels of scrutiny and [is] routinely seen as the 'other' of the nuclear, patriarchal family". The power dynamics in reproduction, when explored through a comparative analysis of "conventional" and "unconventional" families, have been used to dissect the Western assumptions of child bearing and child rearing in contemporary kinship studies. Critiques of kinship studies Kinship, as an anthropological field of inquiry, has been heavily criticized across the discipline. One critique is that, as its inception, the framework of kinship studies was far too structured and formulaic, relying on dense language and stringent rules. Another critique, explored at length by American anthropologist David Schneider, argues that kinship has been limited by its inherent Western ethnocentrism. Schneider proposes that kinship is not a field that can be applied cross-culturally, as the theory itself relies on European assumptions of normalcy. He states in the widely circulated 1984 book A critique of the study of kinship that "[K]inship has been defined by European social scientists, and European social scientists use their own folk culture as the source of many, if not all of their ways of formulating and understanding the world about them". However, this critique has been challenged by the argument that it is linguistics, not cultural divergence, that has allowed for a European bias, and that the bias can be lifted by centering the methodology on fundamental human concepts. Polish anthropologist Anna Wierzbicka argues that "mother" and "father" are examples of such fundamental human concepts and can only be Westernized when conflated with English concepts such as "parent" and "sibling". A more recent critique of kinship studies is its solipsistic focus on privileged, Western human relations and its promotion of normative ideals of human exceptionalism. In Critical Kinship Studies, social psychologists Elizabeth Peel and Damien Riggs argue for a move beyond this human-centered framework, opting instead to explore kinship through a "posthumanist" vantage point where anthropologists focus on the intersecting relationships of human animals, non-human animals, technologies and practices. Institutional anthropology The role of anthropology in institutions has expanded significantly since the end of the 20th century. Much of this development can be attributed to the rise in anthropologists working outside of academia and the increasing importance of globalization in both institutions and the field of anthropology. Anthropologists can be employed by institutions such as for-profit business, nonprofit organizations, and governments. For instance, cultural anthropologists are commonly employed by the United States federal government. The two types of institutions defined in the field of anthropology are total institutions and social institutions. Total institutions are places that comprehensively coordinate the actions of people within them, and examples of total institutions include prisons, convents, and hospitals. Social institutions, on the other hand, are constructs that regulate individuals' day-to-day lives, such as kinship, religion, and economics. Anthropology of institutions may analyze labor unions, businesses ranging from small enterprises to corporations, government, medical organizations, education, prisons, and financial institutions. Nongovernmental organizations have garnered particular interest in the field of institutional anthropology because they are capable of fulfilling roles previously ignored by governments, or previously realized by families or local groups, in an attempt to mitigate social problems. The types and methods of scholarship performed in the anthropology of institutions can take a number of forms. Institutional anthropologists may study the relationship between organizations or between an organization and other parts of society. Institutional anthropology may also focus on the inner workings of an institution, such as the relationships, hierarchies and cultures formed, and the ways that these elements are transmitted and maintained, transformed, or abandoned over time. Additionally, some anthropology of institutions examines the specific design of institutions and their corresponding strength. More specifically, anthropologists may analyze specific events within an institution, perform semiotic investigations, or analyze the mechanisms by which knowledge and culture are organized and dispersed. In all manifestations of institutional anthropology, participant observation is critical to understanding the intricacies of the way an institution works and the consequences of actions taken by individuals within it. Simultaneously, anthropology of institutions extends beyond examination of the commonplace involvement of individuals in institutions to discover how and why the organizational principles evolved in the manner that they did. Common considerations taken by anthropologists in studying institutions include the physical location at which a researcher places themselves, as important interactions often take place in private, and the fact that the members of an institution are often being examined in their workplace and may not have much idle time to discuss the details of their everyday endeavors. The ability of individuals to present the workings of an institution in a particular light or frame must additionally be taken into account when using interviews and document analysis to understand an institution, as the involvement of an anthropologist may be met with distrust when information being released to the public is not directly controlled by the institution and could potentially be damaging. See also References External links Official website of Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) based at Yale University A Basic Guide to Cross-Cultural Research from HRAF eHRAF World Cultures eHRAF Archaeology

Decoloniality

Decoloniality is a school of thought that aims to delink from Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies and ways of being in the world in order to enable other forms of existence on Earth. It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce these perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understand colonialism as the basis for the everyday function of capitalist modernity and imperialism. Decoloniality emerged as part of a South America movement examining the role of the European colonization of the Americas in establishing Eurocentric modernity/coloniality according to Aníbal Quijano, who defined the term and reach. Decolonial theory and practice have recently been subject to increasing critique. For example, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argued that it is analytically unsound, that "coloniality" is often conflated with "modernity", and that "decolonisation" becomes an impossible project of total emancipation. Jonatan Kurzwelly and Malin Wilckens used the example of decolonisation of academic collections of human remains, which were collected during colonial times to support racist theories and give legitimacy to colonial oppression, and showed how both contemporary scholarly methods and political practice perpetuate reified and essentialist notions of identities. Foundational principles Coloniality of knowledge Coloniality of power Colonialism as the root The decolonial movement includes diverse forms of critical theory, articulated by pluriversal forms of liberatory thinking that arise out of distinct situations. In its academic forms, it analyzes class distinctions, ethnic studies, gender studies, and area studies. It has been described as consisting of analytic (in the sense of semiotics) and practical "options confronting and delinking from [...] the colonial matrix of power" or from a "matrix of modernity" rooted in colonialism. It considers colonialism "the underlying logic of the foundation and unfolding of Western civilization from the Renaissance to today," although this foundational interconnectedness is often downplayed. This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power or coloniality of power. Some have built upon decolonial theory by proposing Critical Indigenous Methodologies for research. Imperialism as the successor Although formal and explicit colonization ended with the decolonization of the Americas during the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the decolonization of much of the Global South in the late twentieth century, its successors, Western imperialism and globalization perpetuate those inequalities. The colonial matrix of power produced social discrimination eventually variously codified as racial, ethnic, anthropological or national according to specific historic, social, and geographic contexts. Decoloniality emerged as the colonial matrix of power was put into place during the 16th century. It is, in effect, a continuing confrontation of, and delinking from, Eurocentrism. Coloniality of gender Disobedience and de-linking Decoloniality has been called a form of "epistemic disobedience", "epistemic de-linking", and "epistemic reconstruction". In this sense, decolonial thinking is the recognition and implementation of a border gnosis or subaltern, a means of eliminating the provincial tendency to pretend that Western European modes of thinking are universal. In less theoretical applications—such as movements for Indigenous autonomy—decoloniality is considered a program of de-linking from contemporary legacies of coloniality, a response to needs unmet by the modern Rightist or Leftist governments, or, most broadly, social movements in search of a "new humanity" or the search for "social liberation from all power organized as inequality, discrimination, exploitation, and domination". Decoloniality Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire contributed to decolonial thinking, theory, and practice by identifying core principles of decoloniality. The first principle they identified is that colonialism must be confronted and treated as a discourse which fundamentally frames all aspects of thinking, organization, and existence. Framing colonialism as a "fundamental problem" empowers the colonized to center their experiences and thinking without seeking the recognition of the colonizer—a step towards the creation of decolonial thinking. The second core principle is that decolonization goes beyond ending colonization. Nelson Maldonado-Torres explains, "For decolonial thinking decolonization is less the end of colonialism wherever it has occurred and more the project of undoing and unlearning the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being and of creating a new sense of humanity and forms of interrelationality." This is the work of the decolonial project that has epistemic, political, and ethical dimensions. Aníbal Quijano summarized the goals of decoloniality as a need to recognize that the instrumentation of reason by the colonial matrix of power produced distorted paradigms of knowledge and spoiled the liberating promises of modernity, and by that recognition, realize the destruction of the global coloniality of power. Alanna Lockward explains that Europe has engaged in an intentional "politics of confusion" to conceal the relationship between modernity and coloniality. Decoloniality is synonymous with decolonial "thinking and doing", and it questions or problematizes the histories of power emerging from Europe. These histories underlie the logic of Western civilization. Thus, decoloniality refers to analytic approaches and socioeconomic and political practices opposed to pillars of Western civilization: coloniality and modernity. This makes decoloniality both a political and epistemic project. Examples Examples of contemporary decolonial programmatics and analytics exist throughout the Americas. Decolonial movements include the contemporary Zapatista governments of Southern Mexico, Indigenous movements for autonomy throughout South America, ALBA, CONFENIAE in Ecuador, ONIC in Colombia, the TIPNIS movement in Bolivia, and the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil. These movements embody action oriented towards the goals expressed to seek ever-increasing freedoms by challenging the reasoning behind modernity, since modernity is in fact a facet of the colonial matrix of power. Examples of contemporary decolonial analytics include ethnic studies programs at various educational levels designed primarily to appeal to certain ethnic groups, including those at the K-12 level recently banned in Arizona, as well as long-established university programs. Scholars primarily with analytics who fail to recognize the connection between politics or decoloniality and the production of knowledge—between programmatics and analytics—are those claimed by decolonialists to most likely to reflect "an underlying acceptance of capitalist modernity, liberal democracy, and individualism" values which decoloniality seeks to challenge. Decolonial critique Researchers, authors, creators, theorists, and others engage in decoloniality through essays, artwork, and media. Many of these creators engage in decolonial critique. In decolonial critique, thinkers employ the theoretical, political, epistemic, and social frameworks advanced by decoloniality to scrutinize, reformulate, and denaturalize often widely accepted and celebrated concepts. Many decolonial critiques focus on reformulating the concept of modernity as situated within colonial and racial frameworks. Decolonial critique may inspire a decolonial culture that delinks from reproducing Western hierarchies. Decolonial critique is a method of applying decolonial methods and practices to all facets of epistemic, social, and political thinking. Decolonial art Decolonial art critiques Western art for the way it is alienated from the surrounding world and its focus on pursuing aesthetic beauty. Rather than feelings of sublime at the beauty of an art object, decolonial art seeks to evoke feelings of "sadness, indignation, repentance, hope, solidarity, resolution to change the world in the future, and, most importantly, with the restoration of human dignity." Decolonial aesthetics "seek to recognize and open options for liberating the senses" beyond just visual senses and challenge "the idea of art from Eurocentric forms of expression and philosophies of the beautiful." Decolonial art may "re-inscribe indigeneity on the land" that has been obscured by colonialism and reveal alternatives or an "always elsewhere of colonialism." Graffiti can function as an open or public challenge to colonial or imperialist structures and disrupt notions of a contented oppressed or colonized people. Notable artists include: Kwame Akoto-Bamfo (Ghana): Creates sculptures and installations that reflect on the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its impact on African communities. Maria Thereza Alves (Brazil): Focuses on Indigenous and environmental issues, shedding light on the impact of colonization on Indigenous communities. Wangechi Mutu (Kenya/United States): Explores African identities and the interplay between tradition and modernity in a postcolonial context through painting, collage, and sculpture. Tracey Moffatt (Australia): Examines identities, stories, and representations of Indigenous populations in Australia, focusing on colonial and postcolonial themes. Yinka Shonibare (United Kingdom/Nigeria): Utilizes African batik-printed fabrics and examines cultural identity, colonialism, and postcolonial issues through sculptures and installations. Decolonial feminism Decolonial feminism reformulates the coloniality of gender by critiquing the very formation of gender and its subsequent formations of patriarchy and the gender binary, not as universal constants across cultures, but as structures that have been instituted by and for the benefit of European colonialism. Marìa Lugones proposes that decolonial feminism speaks to how "the colonial imposition of gender cuts across questions of ecology, economics, government, relations with the spirit world, and knowledge, as well as across everyday practices that either habituate us to take care of the world or to destroy it." Decolonial feminists like Karla Jessen Williamson and Rauna Kuokkanen have examined colonialism as a force that has imposed gender hierarchies on Indigenous women that have disempowered and fractured Indigenous communities and ways of life. Decolonial love Decolonial love is a love established on our relationality that is directed toward the emancipation of community from the coloniality of power, including human and non-human beings. It was developed by Chicana feminist Chela Sandoval as a reformulation of love beyond individualist romantic notions of love. Decolonial love "demands a deep recognition of our humanity and mutual implacability in undoing colonial relations of power and oppression that lead to indifference, contempt, and dehumanization." It begins from within, as a love of one's humanity and for those who have resisted colonial violence in their pursuit of healing and liberation. Thinkers who speak to the concept state that it is rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, including In Lak'ech ("you are my other me"), where love is a relational and resisting act toward the coloniality of power. Critiquing Western liberal democracy Moving beyond the critiques of enlightenment philosophy and modernity, decolonial critiques of democracy uncover how practices in democratic governance root themselves in colonial and racial rhetoric. Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee seeks to counter "hegemonic models of democracy that cannot address issues of inequality and colonial difference." Banerjee critiques western liberal democracy: "In liberal democracies colonial power becomes the epistemic basis of a privileged Eurocentric position that can explain culture and define the realities and identities of marginalized populations, while eliding power asymmetries inherent in the fixing of colonial difference." He also extends this analysis against deliberative democracy, arguing that this political theory fails to take into account colonized forms of deliberation often discounted and silenced—including oral history, music production, and more—as well as how asymmetries of power are reproduced within political arenas. Distinction from related ideas Decoloniality is often conflated with postcolonialism, decolonization, and postmodernism. However, decolonial theorists draw clear distinctions. Postcolonialism Postcolonialism is often mainstreamed into general oppositional practices by "people of color", "Third World intellectuals", or ethnic groups. Decoloniality—as both an analytic and a programmatic approach—is said to move "away and beyond the post-colonial" because "post-colonialism criticism and theory is a project of scholarly transformation within the academy". This final point is debatable, as some postcolonial scholars consider postcolonial criticism and theory to be both an analytic (a scholarly, theoretical, and epistemic) project and a programmatic (a practical, political) stance. This disagreement is an example of the ambiguity—"sometimes dangerous, sometimes confusing, and generally limited and unconsciously employed"—of the term "postcolonialism," which has been applied to analysis of colonial expansion and decolonization, in contexts such as Algeria, the 19th-century United States, and 19th-century Brazil. Decolonial scholars consider the colonization of the Americas a precondition for postcolonial analysis. The seminal text of postcolonial studies, Orientalism by Edward Said, describes the nineteenth-century European invention of the Orient as a geographic region considered racially and culturally distinct from, and inferior to, Europe. However, without the European invention of the Americas in the sixteenth century, sometimes referred to as Occidentalism, the later invention of the Orient would have been impossible. This means that postcolonialism becomes problematic when applied to post-nineteenth-century Latin America. Political decolonization Decolonization is largely political and historical: the end of the period of territorial domination of lands primarily in the global south by European powers. Decolonial scholars contend that colonialism did not disappear with political decolonization. It is important to note the vast differences in the histories, socioeconomics, and geographies of colonization in its various global manifestations. However, coloniality— meaning racialized and gendered socioeconomic and political stratification according to an invented Eurocentric standard—was common to all forms of colonization. Similarly, decoloniality in the form of challenges to this Eurocentric stratification manifested previous to de jure decolonization. Gandhi and Jinnah in India, Fanon in Algeria, Mandela in South Africa, and the early 20th-century Zapatistas in Mexico are all examples of decolonial projects that existed before decolonization. Postmodernism "Modernity" as a concept is complementary to coloniality. Coloniality is called "the darker side of western modernity". The problematic aspects of coloniality are often overlooked when describing the totality of Western society, whose advent is instead often framed as the introduction of modernity and rationality, a concept critiqued by post-modern thinkers. However, this critique is largely "limited and internal to European history and the history of European ideas". Although postmodern thinkers recognize the problematic nature of the notions of modernity and rationality, these thinkers often overlook the fact that modernity as a concept emerged when Europe defined itself as the center of the world. In this sense, those seen as part of the periphery are themselves part of Europe's self-definition. To summarize, like modernity, postmodernity often reproduces the "Eurocentric fallacy" foundational to modernity. Therefore, rather than criticizing the terrors of modernity, decolonialism criticizes Eurocentric modernity and rationality because of the "irrational myth" that these conceal. Decolonial approaches thus seek to "politicise epistemology from the experiences of those on the 'border,' not to develop yet another epistemology of politics". See also Anti-imperialism References Works cited Further reading LeVine, Mark 2005a: Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine. Berkeley: University of California Press. LeVine, Mark 2005b: Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications. Quijano, Aníbal and Immanuel Wallerstein 1992: Americanity as Concept: Or the Americas in the Modern World-System. International Social Science Journal 131: 549–557. Vallega, Alejandro A. 2015: Latin American Philosophy: from Identity to Radical Exteriority. Indiana University Press. Walsh, Catherine & Mignolo Walter (2018) On Decoloniality Duke University Press Walsh, Catherine. (2012) ""Other" Knowledges,"Other" Critiques: Reflections on the Politics and Practices of Philosophy and Decoloniality in the "Other" America." Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1.3. Wan-hua, Huang. (2011) "The Process of Decoloniality of Taiwan Literature in the Early Postwar Period." Taiwan Research Journal 1: 006. Bhambra, G. (2012). Postcolonialism and decoloniality: A dialogue. In The Second ISA Forum of Sociology (August 1–4). Isaconf. Drexler-Dreis, J. (2013). Decoloniality as Reconciliation. Concilium: International Review of Theology-English Edition, (1), 115–122. Wanzer, D. A. (2012). Delinking Rhetoric, or Revisiting McGee's Fragmentation Thesis through Decoloniality. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 15(4), 647–657. Chalmers, Gordon (2013) Indigenous as ’not-Indigenous' as ’Us'?: A dissident insider's views on pushing the bounds for what constitutes 'our mob'. Australian Indigenous Law Review, 17(2), pp. 47–55. http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=900634481905301;res=IELIND Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2nd edition). London: Zed Books. Critical theory Decolonization International relations theory

Humanities

Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term 'humanities' referred to the study of classical literature and language, as opposed to the study of religion or 'divinity.' The study of the humanities was a key part of the secular curriculum in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently defined as any fields of study outside of natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences (like mathematics), and applied sciences (or professional training). They use methods that are primarily critical, speculative, or interpretative and have a significant historical element—as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of science. The humanities include the studies of philosophy, religion, history, language arts (literature, writing, oratory, rhetoric, poetry, etc.), performing arts (theater, music, dance, etc.), and visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography, filmmaking, etc.). Some definitions of the humanities encompass law and religion due to their shared characteristics, such as the study of language and culture. However, these definitions are not universally accepted, as law and religion are often considered professional subjects rather than humanities subjects. Professional subjects, like some social sciences, are sometimes classified as being part of both the liberal arts and professional development education, whereas humanities subjects are generally confined to the traditional liberal arts education. Although sociology, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and psychology share some similarities with the humanities, these are often considered social sciences. Similarly, disciplines such as finance, business administration, political science, economics, and global studies have closer ties to the social sciences rather than the humanities. Scholars in the humanities are called humanities scholars or sometimes humanists. The term humanist also describes the philosophical position of humanism, which antihumanist scholars in the humanities reject. Renaissance scholars and artists are also known as humanists. Some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of literature, history, foreign language, and art. Human disciplines like history and language mainly use the comparative method and comparative research. Other methods used in the humanities include hermeneutics, source criticism, esthetic interpretation, and speculative reason. Etymology The word humanities comes from the Renaissance Latin phrase studia humanitatis, which translates to study of humanity. This phrase was used to refer to the study of classical literature and language, which was seen as an important aspect of a refined education in the Renaissance. In its usage in the early 15th century, the studia humanitatis was a course of studies that consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy, primarily derived from the study of Latin and Greek classics. The word humanitas also gave rise to the Renaissance Italian neologism umanisti, whence "humanist", "Renaissance humanism". Fields Classics Classics, in the Western academic tradition, refers to the studies of the cultures of classical antiquity, namely Ancient Greek and Latin and the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Classical studies is considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities; however, its popularity declined during the 20th century. Nevertheless, the influence of classical ideas on many humanities disciplines, such as philosophy and literature, remains strong. History History is systematically collected information about the past. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of humans, societies, institutions, and any topic that has changed over time. Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. In modern academia, history can occasionally be classified as a social science, though this definition is contested. Language While the scientific study of language is known as linguistics and is generally considered a social science, a natural science or a cognitive science, the study of languages is also central to the humanities. A good deal of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy has been devoted to the analysis of language and to the question of whether, as Wittgenstein claimed, many of our philosophical confusions derive from the vocabulary we use; literary theory has explored the rhetorical, associative, and ordering features of language; and historical linguists have studied the development of languages across time. Literature, covering a variety of uses of language including prose forms (such as the novel), poetry and drama, also lies at the heart of the modern humanities curriculum. College-level programs in a foreign language usually include study of important works of the literature in that language, as well as the language itself. Law In everyday language, law refers to a rule that is enforced by a governing institution, as opposed to a moral or ethical rule that is not subject to formal enforcement. The study of law can be seen as either a social science or a humanities discipline, depending on one's perspective. Some see it as a social science because of its objective and measurable nature, while others view it as a humanities discipline because of its focus on values and interpretation. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. Law has been defined in various ways, such as "a system of rules", "an interpretive concept" for achieving justice, "an authority" to mediate between people's interests, or "the command of a sovereign" backed by the threat of punishment. However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy is shaped by the practical application of ideas from many social science and humanities disciplines, including philosophy, history, political science, economics, anthropology, and sociology. Law is politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. Law is also economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on how productivity is organised and the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the Old English word lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed, and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word LEX. Literature Literature is a term that does not have a universally accepted definition, but which has variably included all written work; writing that possesses literary merit; and language that emphasizes its own literary features, as opposed to ordinary language. Etymologically the term derives from the Latin word literatura/litteratura which means "writing formed with letters", although some definitions include spoken or sung texts. Literature can be classified as fiction or non-fiction; poetry or prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorised according to historical periods, or according to their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre). Philosophy Philosophy—etymologically, the "love of wisdom"—is generally the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these issues by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument, rather than experiments (experimental philosophy being an exception). Philosophy used to be a very comprehensive term, including what have subsequently become separate disciplines, such as physics. (As Immanuel Kant noted, "Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.") Today, the main fields of philosophy are logic, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. Still, it continues to overlap with other disciplines. The field of semantics, for example, brings philosophy into contact with linguistics. Since the early twentieth century, philosophy in English-speaking universities has moved away from the humanities and closer to the formal sciences, becoming much more analytic. Analytic philosophy is marked by emphasis on the use of logic and formal methods of reasoning, conceptual analysis, and the use of symbolic and/or mathematical logic, as contrasted with the Continental style of philosophy. This method of inquiry is largely indebted to the work of philosophers such as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Religion Religious Studies is commonly regarded as a social science. Based on current knowledge, it seems that all known cultures, both in the past and present, have some form of belief system or religious practice. While there may be isolated individuals or groups who do not practice any form of religion, it is not known if there has ever been a society that was entirely devoid of religious belief. The definition of religion is not universal, and different cultures may have different ideas about what constitutes religion. Religion may be characterized with a community since humans are social animals. Rituals are used to bound the community together. Social animals require rules. Ethics is a requirement of society, but not a requirement of religion. Shinto, Daoism, and other folk or natural religions do not have ethical codes. While some religions do include the concept of deities, others do not. Therefore, the supernatural does not necessarily require the existence of deities. Rather, it can be broadly defined as any phenomena that cannot be explained by science or reason. Magical thinking creates explanations not available for empirical verification. Stories or myths are narratives being both didactic and entertaining. They are necessary for understanding the human predicament. Some other possible characteristics of religion are pollutions and purification, the sacred and the profane, sacred texts, religious institutions and organizations, and sacrifice and prayer. Some of the major problems that religions confront, and attempts to answer are chaos, suffering, evil, and death. The non-founder religions are Hinduism, Shinto, and native or folk religions. Founder religions are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Daoism, Mormonism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and the Baháʼí Faith. Religions must adapt and change through the generations because they must remain relevant to the adherents. When traditional religions fail to address new concerns, then new religions will emerge. Performing arts The performing arts differ from the visual arts in that the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal, or paint, which can be molded or transformed to create some art object. Performing arts include acrobatics, busking, comedy, dance, film, magic, music, opera, juggling, marching arts, such as brass bands, and theatre. Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft. Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, etc. There is also a specialized form of fine art in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. This is called Performance art. Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era. Musicology Musicology as an academic discipline can take a number of different paths, including historical musicology, music literature, ethnomusicology and music theory. Undergraduate music majors generally take courses in all of these areas, while graduate students focus on a particular path. In the liberal arts tradition, musicology is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills, including concentration and listening. Theatre Theatre (or theater) (Greek "theatron", θέατρον) is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime. Dance Dance (from Old French dancier, perhaps from Frankish) generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. Dance is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language) between humans or animals (bee dance, mating dance), and motion in inanimate objects (the leaves danced in the wind). Choreography is the process of creating dances, and the people who create choreography are known as choreographers. Choreographers use movement, music, and other elements to create expressive and artistic dances. They may work alone or with other artists to create new works, and their work can be presented in a variety of settings, from small dance studios to large theaters. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic, and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. Visual art History of visual arts The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Japan, Greece and Rome, China, India, Greater Nepal, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. Ancient Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (e.g., Zeus' thunderbolt). The emphasis on spiritual and religious themes in Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages reflected the dominance of the church. However, in the Renaissance, a renewed focus on the physical world was reflected in art forms that depicted the human body and landscape in a more naturalistic and three-dimensional way. Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan. Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The physical and rational certainties depicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen psychology by Freud, but also by unprecedented technological development. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art. Media types Drawing Drawing is a means of making a picture, using a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. A computer aided designer who excels in technical drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman. Painting Literally, painting is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense, it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting has been used throughout history to express spiritual and religious ideas, from mythological scenes on pottery to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, to body art. Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but elsewhere white may be. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, Isaac Newton, have written their own colour theories. Moreover, the use of language is only a generalization for a colour equivalent. The word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the spectrum. Unlike music, where notes such as C or C# are universally accepted, there is no formalized register of colors. However, the Pantone system is widely used in the printing and design industry to standardize color reproduction. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage. This began with cubism and is not painting in strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of these are the works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer. Modern and contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft in favour of concept (conceptual art); this has led some e.g. Joseph Kosuth to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work. Sculpture involves creating three-dimensional forms out of various materials. These typically include malleable substances like clay and metal but may also extend to material that is cut or shaved down to the desired form, like stone and wood. History In the West, the history of the humanities can be traced to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium), along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium). These subjects formed the bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing". A major shift occurred with the Renaissance humanism of the fifteenth century, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to study rather than practice, with a corresponding shift away from traditional fields into areas such as literature and history (studia humaniora). In the 20th century, this view was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more egalitarian terms suitable for a democratic society since the Greek and Roman societies in which the humanities originated were elitist and aristocratic. A distinction is usually drawn between the social sciences and the humanities. Classicist Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987): Today Education and employment For many decades, there has been a growing public perception that a humanities education inadequately prepares graduates for employment. The common belief is that graduates from such programs face underemployment and incomes too low for a humanities education to be worth the investment. Humanities graduates find employment in a wide variety of management and professional occupations. In Britain, for example, over 11,000 humanities majors found employment in the following occupations: Education (25.8%) Management (19.8%) Media/Literature/Arts (11.4%) Law (11.3%) Finance (10.4%) Civil service (5.8%) Not-for-profit (5.2%) Marketing (2.3%) Medicine (1.7%) Other (6.4%) Many humanities graduates may find themselves with no specific career goals upon graduation, which can lead to lower incomes in the early stages of their career. On the other hand, graduates from more career-oriented programs often find jobs more quickly. However, the long-term career prospects of humanities graduates may be similar to those of other graduates, as research shows that by five years after graduation, they generally find a career path that appeals to them. There is empirical evidence that graduates from humanities programs earn less than graduates from other university programs. However, the empirical evidence also shows that humanities graduates still earn notably higher incomes than workers with no postsecondary education, and have job satisfaction levels comparable to their peers from other fields. Humanities graduates also earn more as their careers progress; ten years after graduation, the income difference between humanities graduates and graduates from other university programs is no longer statistically significant. Humanities graduates can boost their incomes if they obtain advanced or professional degrees. Humanities majors are sought after in many areas of business, specifically for their critical thinking and problem solving skills. While often considered "soft skills", Humanities majors gain skills such as, "include persuasive written and oral communication, creative problem-solving, teamwork, decision-making, self-management, and critical analysis". In the United States The Humanities Indicators The Humanities Indicators, unveiled in 2009 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, are the first comprehensive compilation of data about the humanities in the United States, providing scholars, policymakers and the public with detailed information on humanities education from primary to higher education, the humanities workforce, humanities funding and research, and public humanities activities. Modeled after the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators, Humanities Indicators are a source of reliable benchmarks to guide analysis of the state of the humanities in the United States. The Humanities in American Life The 1980 United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities described the humanities in its report, The Humanities in American Life: Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world where irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. In liberal arts education The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences 2013 report, The Heart of the Matter, supports the notion of a broad "liberal arts education", which includes study in disciplines from the natural sciences to the arts as well as the humanities. Many colleges provide such an education; some require it. The University of Chicago and Columbia University were among the first schools to require an extensive core curriculum in philosophy, literature, and the arts for all students. Other colleges with nationally recognized, mandatory programs in the liberal arts are Fordham University, St. John's College, Saint Anselm College and Providence College. Prominent proponents of liberal arts in the United States have included Mortimer J. Adler and E. D. Hirsch, Jr. As a major In 1950, 1.2% of Americans aged 22 had earned a degree in the humanities. By 2010, this figure had risen to 2.6%. This represents a doubling of the number of Americans with degrees in the humanities over a 60-year period. The increase in the number of Americans with humanities degrees is in part due to the overall rise in college enrollment in the United States. In 1940, 4.6% of Americans had a four-year degree, but by 2016, this figure had risen to 33.4%. This means that the total number of Americans with college degrees has increased significantly, resulting in a greater number of people with degrees in the humanities as well. The proportion of degrees awarded in the humanities has declined in recent decades, even as the overall number of people with humanities degrees has increased. In 1954, 36 percent of Harvard undergraduates majored in the humanities, but in 2012, only 20 percent took that course of study. As recently as 1993, the humanities accounted for 15% of the bachelor's degrees awarded by colleges and universities in the United States. As of 2022, they accounted for less than 9%. In the digital age Researchers in the humanities have developed numerous large- and small-scale digital corporations, such as digitized collections of historical texts, along with the digital tools and methods to analyze them. Their aim is both to uncover new knowledge about corpora and to visualize research data in new and revealing ways. Much of this activity occurs in a field called the digital humanities. STEM Politicians in the United States currently espouse a need for increased funding of the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, mathematics. Federal funding represents a much smaller fraction of funding for humanities than other fields such as STEM or medicine. The result was a decline of quality in both college and pre-college education in the humanities field. Three-term Louisiana Governor, Edwin Edwards acknowledged the importance of the humanities in a 2014 video address to the academic conference, Revolutions in Eighteenth-Century Sociability. Edwards said: Without the humanities to teach us how history has succeeded or failed in directing the fruits of technology and science to the betterment of our tribe of homo sapiens, without the humanities to teach us how to frame the discussion and to properly debate the uses-and the costs-of technology, without the humanities to teach us how to safely debate how to create a more just society with our fellow man and woman, technology and science would eventually default to the ownership of—and misuse by—the most influential, the most powerful, the most feared among us. In Europe The value of the humanities debate The contemporary debate in the field of critical university studies centers around the declining value of the humanities. As in America, there is a perceived decline in interest within higher education policy in research that is qualitative and does not produce marketable products. This threat can be seen in a variety of forms across Europe, but much critical attention has been given to the field of research assessment in particular. For example, the UK [Research Excellence Framework] has been subject to criticism due to its assessment criteria from across the humanities, and indeed, the social sciences. In particular, the notion of "impact" has generated significant debate. Philosophical history Citizenship and self-reflection Since the late 19th century, a central justification for the humanities has been that it aids and encourages self-reflection—a self-reflection that, in turn, helps develop personal consciousness or an active sense of civic duty. Wilhelm Dilthey and Hans-Georg Gadamer centered the humanities' attempt to distinguish itself from the natural sciences in humankind's urge to understand its own experiences. This understanding, they claimed, ties like-minded people from similar cultural backgrounds together and provides a sense of cultural continuity with the philosophical past. Scholars in the late 20th and early 21st centuries extended that "narrative imagination" to the ability to understand the records of lived experiences outside of one's own individual social and cultural context. Through that narrative imagination, it is claimed, humanities scholars and students develop a conscience more suited to the multicultural world we live in. That conscience might take the form of a passive one that allows more effective self-reflection or extend into active empathy that facilitates the dispensation of civic duties a responsible world citizen must engage in. There is disagreement, however, on the level of influence humanities study can have on an individual and whether or not the understanding produced in humanistic enterprise can guarantee an "identifiable positive effect on people". Humanistic theories and practices There are three major branches of knowledge: natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Technology is the practical extension of the natural sciences, as politics is the extension of the social sciences. Similarly, the humanities have their own practical extension, sometimes called "transformative humanities" (transhumanities) or "culturonics" (Mikhail Epstein's term): Nature – natural sciences – technology –  transformation of nature Society – social sciences –  politics – transformation of society Culture – human sciences – culturonics – transformation of culture Technology, politics and culturonics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study: nature, society, and culture. The field of transformative humanities includes various practicies and technologies, for example, language planning, the construction of new languages, like Esperanto, and invention of new artistic and literary genres and movements in the genre of manifesto, like Romanticism, Symbolism, or Surrealism. Truth and meaning The divide between humanistic study and natural sciences informs arguments of meaning in humanities as well. What distinguishes the humanities from the natural sciences is not a certain subject matter, but rather the mode of approach to any question. Humanities focuses on understanding meaning, purpose, and goals and furthers the appreciation of singular historical and social phenomena—an interpretive method of finding "truth"—rather than explaining the causality of events or uncovering the truth of the natural world. Apart from its societal application, narrative imagination is an important tool in the (re)production of understood meaning in history, culture and literature. Imagination, as part of the tool kit of artists or scholars, helps create meaning that invokes a response from an audience. Since a humanities scholar is always within the nexus of lived experiences, no "absolute" knowledge is theoretically possible; knowledge is instead a ceaseless procedure of inventing and reinventing the context a text is read in. Poststructuralism has problematized an approach to the humanistic study based on questions of meaning, intentionality, and authorship. In the wake of the death of the author proclaimed by Roland Barthes, various theoretical currents such as deconstruction and discourse analysis seek to expose the ideologies and rhetoric operative in producing both the purportedly meaningful objects and the hermeneutic subjects of humanistic study. This exposure has opened up the interpretive structures of the humanities to criticism that humanities scholarship is "unscientific" and therefore unfit for inclusion in modern university curricula because of the very nature of its changing contextual meaning. Pleasure, the pursuit of knowledge and scholarship Some, like Stanley Fish, have claimed that the humanities can defend themselves best by refusing to make any claims of utility. (Fish may well be thinking primarily of literary study, rather than history and philosophy.) Any attempt to justify the humanities in terms of outside benefits such as social usefulness (say increased productivity) or in terms of ennobling effects on the individual (such as greater wisdom or diminished prejudice) is ungrounded, according to Fish, and simply places impossible demands on the relevant academic departments. Furthermore, critical thinking, while arguably a result of humanistic training, can be acquired in other contexts. And the humanities do not even provide any more the kind of social cachet (what sociologists sometimes call "cultural capital") that was helpful to succeed in Western society before the age of mass education following World War II. Instead, scholars like Fish suggest that the humanities offer a unique kind of pleasure, a pleasure based on the common pursuit of knowledge (even if it is only disciplinary knowledge). Such pleasure contrasts with the increasing privatization of leisure and instant gratification characteristic of Western culture; it thus meets Jürgen Habermas' requirements for the disregard of social status and rational problematization of previously unquestioned areas necessary for an endeavor which takes place in the bourgeois public sphere. In this argument, then, only the academic pursuit of pleasure can provide a link between the private and the public realm in modern Western consumer society and strengthen that public sphere that, according to many theorists, is the foundation for modern democracy. Others, like Mark Bauerlein, argue that professors in the humanities have increasingly abandoned proven methods of epistemology (I care only about the quality of your arguments, not your conclusions.) in favor of indoctrination (I care only about your conclusions, not the quality of your arguments.). The result is that professors and their students adhere rigidly to a limited set of viewpoints, and have little interest in, or understanding of, opposing viewpoints. Once they obtain this intellectual self-satisfaction, persistent lapses in learning, research, and evaluation are common. Romanticization and rejection Implicit in many of these arguments supporting the humanities are the makings of arguments against public support of the humanities. Joseph Carroll asserts that we live in a changing world, a world where "cultural capital" is replaced with scientific literacy, and in which the romantic notion of a Renaissance humanities scholar is obsolete. Such arguments appeal to judgments and anxieties about the essential uselessness of the humanities, especially in an age when it is seemingly vitally important for scholars of literature, history and the arts to engage in "collaborative work with experimental scientists or even simply to make "intelligent use of the findings from empirical science." Despite many humanities based arguments against the humanities some within the exact sciences have called for their return. In 2017, Science popularizer Bill Nye retracted previous claims about the supposed 'uselessness' of philosophy. As Bill Nye states, "People allude to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all the time, and I think many of us who make those references don't have a solid grounding," he said. "It's good to know the history of philosophy." Scholars, such as biologist Scott F. Gilbert, make the claim that it is in fact the increasing predominance, leading to exclusivity, of scientific ways of thinking that need to be tempered by historical and social context. Gilbert worries that the commercialization that may be inherent in some ways of conceiving science (pursuit of funding, academic prestige etc.) need to be examined externally. Gilbert argues: See also Art school Discourse analysis Outline of the humanities (humanities topics) Great Books Great Books programs in Canada Liberal arts Social sciences Humanities, arts, and social sciences Human science The Two Cultures List of academic disciplines Public humanities STEAM fields Tinbergen's four questions Environmental humanities References External links Society for the History of the Humanities Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR) – Japan (archived 15 April 2016) The American Academy of Arts and Sciences – US Humanities Indicators – US National Humanities Center – US (archived 7 July 2007) The Humanities Association – UK National Humanities Alliance National Endowment for the Humanities – US Australian Academy of the Humanities National American Academy Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences "Games and Historical Narratives" by Jeremy Antley – Journal of Digital Humanities Film about the Value of the Humanities Humans Main topic articles Society

Social liberalism

Social liberalism is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses social justice, social services, a mixed economy, and the expansion of civil and political rights, as opposed to classical liberalism which favors limited government and an overall more laissez-faire style of governance. While both are committed to personal freedoms, social liberalism places greater emphasis on the role of government in addressing social inequalities and ensuring public welfare. Economically, social liberalism is based on the social market economy and views the common good as harmonious with the individual's freedom. Social liberals overlap with social democrats in accepting market intervention more than other liberals; its importance is considered auxiliary compared to social democrats. Ideologies that emphasize its economic policy include welfare liberalism, New Deal liberalism and New Democrats in the United States, and Keynesian liberalism. Cultural liberalism is an ideology that highlights its cultural aspects. The world has widely adopted social liberal policies. Social liberal ideas and parties tend to be considered centre to centre-left, although there are deviations from these positions to both the political left or right. Addressing economic and social issues, such as poverty, welfare, infrastructure, health care and education using government intervention, while emphasising individual rights and autonomy, are expectations under a social liberal government. In modern political discourse, social liberalism is associated with progressivism, a left-liberalism contrasted to the right-leaning neoliberalism, and combines support for a mixed economy with cultural liberalism. Social liberalism may also refer to American progressive stances on sociocultural issues, such as reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, in contrast with American social conservatism. Cultural liberalism is often referred to as social liberalism because it expresses the social dimension of liberalism; however, it is not the same as the broader political ideology known as social liberalism. In American politics, a social liberal may hold either conservative (economic liberal) or liberal (economic progressive) views on fiscal policy. Origins United Kingdom By the end of the 19th century, downturns in economic growth challenged the principles of classical liberalism, a growing awareness of poverty and unemployment present within modern industrial cities, and the agitation of organised labour. A significant political reaction against the changes introduced by industrialisation and laissez-faire capitalism came from one-nation conservatives concerned about social balance and the introduction of the famous Education Act 1870. However, socialism later became a more important force for change and reform. Some Victorian writers—including Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold—became early influential critics of social injustice. John Stuart Mill contributed enormously to liberal thought by combining elements of classical liberalism with what eventually became known as the new liberalism. Mill developed this philosophy by liberalising the concept of consequentialism to promote a rights based system. He also developed his liberal dogma by combining the idea of using a utilitarian foundation to base upon the idea of individual rights. The new liberals tried to adapt the old language of liberalism to confront these difficult circumstances, which they believed could only be resolved through a broader and more interventionist conception of the state. Ensuring that individuals did not physically interfere with each other or merely by impartially having formulated and applied laws could not establish an equal right to liberty. More positive and proactive measures were required to ensure that every individual would have an equal opportunity for success. New Liberals In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a group of British thinkers known as the New Liberals made a case against laissez-faire classical liberalism. It argued in favour of state intervention in social, economic and cultural life. What they proposed is now called social liberalism. The New Liberals, including intellectuals Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Hobhouse and John A. Hobson, saw individual liberty achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed through collective action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented and interventionist state could alleviate these conditions. The Liberal governments of Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith, mainly thanks to Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister David Lloyd George, established the foundations of the welfare state in the United Kingdom before World War I. The comprehensive welfare state built in the United Kingdom after World War II, although primarily accomplished by the Labour Party's Attlee ministry, was significantly designed by two Liberals, namely John Maynard Keynes (who laid the foundations in economics with the Keynesian Revolution) and William Beveridge (whose Beveridge Report was used to design the welfare system). Historian Peter Weiler has argued: Although still partially informed by older Liberal concerns for character, self-reliance, and the capitalist market, this legislation nevertheless marked a significant shift in Liberal approaches to the state and social reform, approaches that later governments would slowly expand and that would grow into the welfare state after the Second World War. What was new in these reforms was the underlying assumption that the state could be a positive force, that the measure of individual freedom ... was not how much the state left people alone, but whether he gave them the capacity to fill themselves as individuals.Weiler, Peter (2016). The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914 (2016). Excerpt . Germany In 1860s Germany, left-liberal politicians like Max Hirsch, Franz Duncker, and Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch established trade unions—modelled on their British counterparts—to help workers improve working and economic conditions through reconciliation of interests and cooperation with their employers rather than class struggle. Schulze-Delitzsch is also the founding father of the German cooperative movement and the organiser of the world's first credit unions. Some liberal economists, such as Lujo Brentano or Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz, established the (German Economic Association) in 1873 to promote social reform based on the historical school of economics and therefore rejecting classical economics, proposing a third way between Manchester Liberalism and socialist revolution in the 1871-founded German Empire. However, the German left-liberal movement fragmented into wings and new parties over the 19th century. The main objectives of the left-liberal parties—the German Progress Party and its successors—were free speech, freedom of assembly, representative government, secret and equal but obligation-tied suffrage, and protection of private property. At the same time, they were strongly opposed to creating a welfare state, which they called state socialism. The main differences between the left-liberal parties were: The national ambitions. The different substate people's goals. Free trade against Schutzzollpolitik. The building of the national economy. The term social liberalism was used first in 1891 by Austria-Hungarian economist and journalist Theodor Hertzka. Subsequently, in 1893, the historian and social reformer Ignaz Jastrow also used this term and joined the German Economic Association. He published the socialist democratic manifesto "Social-liberal: Tasks for Liberalism in Prussia" to create an "action group" for the general people's welfare in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which they rejected. The National-Social Association, founded by the Protestant pastor Friedrich Naumann also maintained contacts with the left liberals. He tried to draw workers away from Marxism by proposing a mix of nationalism and Protestant-Christian-value-inflected social liberalism to overcome class antagonisms by non-revolutionary means. Naumann called this a "proletarian-bourgeois integral liberalism". Although the party could not win any seats and soon dissolved, he remained influential in theoretical German left-liberalism. In the Weimar Republic, the German Democratic Party was founded and came into an inheritance of the left-liberal past and had a leftist social wing and a rightist economic wing but heavily favoured the democratic constitution over a monarchist one. Its ideas of a socially balanced economy with solidarity, duty, and rights among all workers struggled due to the economic sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles, but it influenced local cooperative enterprises. After 1945, the Free Democrats included most of the social liberals while others joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Until the 1960s, post-war ordoliberalism was the model for Germany. It had a theoretical social liberal influence based on duty and rights. As the Free Democrats discarded social liberal ideas in a more conservative and economically liberal approach in 1982, some members left the party and formed the social liberal Liberal Democrats. France In France, solidaristic thinkers, including Alfred Fouillée and Émile Durkheim, developed the social-liberal theory in the Third Republic. Sociology inspired them, and they influenced radical politicians like Léon Bourgeois. They explained that a more extensive division of labour caused more opportunity and individualism and inspired more complex interdependence. They argued that the individual had a debt to society, promoting progressive taxation to support public works and welfare schemes. However, they wanted the state to coordinate rather than manage, encouraging cooperative insurance schemes among individuals. Their main objective was to remove barriers to social mobility rather than create a welfare state. United States Social liberalism was a term in the United States to differentiate it from classical liberalism or laissez-faire. It dominated political and economic thought for several years until the word branched off from it around the Great Depression and the New Deal. In the 1870s and the 1880s, the American economists Richard Ely, John Bates Clark, and Henry Carter Adams—influenced both by socialism and the Evangelical Protestant movement—castigated the conditions caused by industrial factories and expressed sympathy toward labour unions. However, none developed a systematic political philosophy, and they later abandoned their flirtations with socialist thinking. In 1883, Lester Frank Ward published the two-volume Dynamic Sociology. He formalized the basic tenets of social liberalism while at the same time attacking the laissez-faire policies advocated by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. The historian Henry Steele Commager ranked Ward alongside William James, John Dewey, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and called him the father of the modern welfare state. A writer from 1884 until the 1930s, John Dewey—an educator influenced by Hobhouse, Green, and Ward—advocated socialist methods to achieve liberal goals. John Dewey's expanding popularity as an economist also coincided with the greater Georgist movement that rose in the 1910s, pinnacling with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. America later incorporated some social liberal ideas into the New Deal, which developed as a response to the Great Depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office. Implementation The welfare state grew gradually and unevenly from the late 19th century but fully developed following World War II, along with the mixed market economy and general welfare capitalism. Also called embedded liberalism, social liberal policies gained broad support across the political spectrum because they reduced society's disruptive and polarizing tendencies without challenging the capitalist economic system. Businesses accepted social liberalism in the face of widespread dissatisfaction with the boom and bust cycle of the earlier financial system as it seemed to them to be a lesser evil than more left-wing modes of government. Characteristics of social liberalism were cooperation between big business, government, and labour unions. Governments could assume a vital role because the wartime economy had strengthened their power, but the extent to which this occurred varied considerably among Western democracies. Social liberalism is also a generally internationalist ideology. Social liberalism has also historically been an advocate for liberal feminism among other forms social progress. Social liberals tend to find a compromise between the perceived extremes of unrestrained capitalism and state socialism to create an economy built on regulated capitalism. Due to a reliance on what they believe to be a too centralized government to achieve its goals, critics have called this strain of liberalism a more authoritarian ideological position compared to the original schools of liberal thought, especially in the United States, where conservatives have called presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson authoritarians. United Kingdom The first notable implementation of social liberal policies occurred under the Liberal Party in Britain from 1906 until 1914. These initiatives became known as the Liberal welfare reforms. The main elements included pensions for poor older adults, and health, sickness, and unemployment insurance. These changes were accompanied by progressive taxation, particularly in the People's Budget of 1909. The old system of charity relying on the Poor Laws and supplemented by private charity, public cooperatives, and private insurance companies was in crisis, giving the state added impetus for reform. The Liberal Party caucus elected in 1906 also contained more professionals, including academics and journalists, sympathetic to social liberalism. The large business owners had mostly deserted the Liberals for the Conservatives, the latter becoming the favourite party for commercial interests. Both business interests and trade unions regularly opposed the reforms. Liberals most identified with these reforms were Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, John Maynard Keynes, David Lloyd George (especially as Chancellor of the Exchequer), and Winston Churchill (as President of the Board of Trade), in addition to the civil servant (and later Liberal MP) William Beveridge. Most of the social democratic parties in Europe (notably the British Labour Party) have taken on strong influences of social liberal ideology. Despite Britain's two major parties coming from the traditions of socialism and conservatism, the most substantive political and economic debates of recent times were between social liberal and classical liberal concepts. Germany Alexander Rüstow, a German economist, first proposed the German variant of economically social liberalism. In 1932, he dubbed this kind of social liberalism neoliberalism while speaking at the Social Policy Association. However, that term now carries a meaning different from the one proposed by Rüstow. Rüstow wanted an alternative to socialism and the classical liberal economics developed in the German Empire. In 1938, Rüstow met with various economic thinkers—including Ludwig Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Wilhelm Röpke—to determine how and what could renew liberalism. Rüstow advocated a powerful state to enforce free markets and state intervention to correct market failures. However, Mises argued that monopolies and cartels operated because of state intervention and protectionism and claimed that the only legitimate role for the state was to abolish barriers to market entry. He viewed Rüstow's proposals as negating market freedom and saw them as similar to socialism. Following World War II, the West German government adopted Rüstow's neoliberalism, now usually called ordoliberalism or the social market economy, under Ludwig Erhard. He was the Minister of Economics and later became Chancellor. Erhard lifted price controls and introduced free markets. While Germany's post-war economic recovery was due to these policies, the welfare state—which Bismarck had established—became increasingly costly. Turkey The Kemalist economic model was designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1930s, founder of the Republic of Turkey, after an unsuccessful attempt to embrace a regulated market economy from İzmir Economic Congress until the 1929 Depression. He put the principle of "etatism" in his Six Arrows and stated that etatism was a unique economic system for Turkey and that it was different from socialism, communism, and collectivism. Atatürk explained his economic idea as follows: State can't take the place of individuals, but, it must take into consideration the individuals to make them improve and develop theirselves. Etatism includes the work that individuals won't do because they can't make profit or the work which are necessary for national interests. Just as it is the duty of the state to protect the freedom and independence of the country and to regulate internal affairs, the state must take care of the education and health of its citizens. The state must take care of the roads, railways, telegraphs, telephones, animals of the country, all kinds of vehicles and the general wealth of the nation to protect the peace and security of the country. During the administration and protection of the country, the things we just counted are more important than cannons, rifles and all kinds of weapons. (...) Private interests are generally the opposite of the general interests. Also, private interests are based on rivalries. But, you can't create a stable economy only with this. People who think like that are delusional and they will be a failure. (...) And, work of an individual must stay as the main basis of economic growth. Not preventing an individual's work and not obstructing the individual's freedom and enterprise with the state's own activities is the main basis of the principle of democracy. Moreover, Atatürk said this in his opening speech on 1 November 1937: "Unless there is an absolute necessity, the markets can't be intervened; also, no markets can be completely free." Also it was said by İsmet İnönü that Atatürk's principle of etatism was Keynesian and a Turkish variant of New Deal. Rest of Europe The post-war governments of other countries in Western Europe also followed social liberal policies. These policies were implemented primarily by Christian democrats and social democrats as liberal parties in Europe declined in strength from their peak in the 19th century. United States American political discourse resisted this social turn in European liberalism. While the economic policies of the New Deal appeared Keynesian, there was no revision of liberal theory in favour of more significant state initiatives. Even though the United States lacked an effective socialist movement, New Deal policies often appeared radical and were attacked by the right. American liberalism would eventually evolve into a more anti-communist ideology as a result. American exceptionalism was likely the reason for the separate development of modern liberalism in the United States, which kept mainstream American ideology within a narrow range. John Rawls' principal work, A Theory of Justice (1971), can be considered a flagship exposition of social liberal thinking, noted for its use of analytic philosophy and advocating the combination of individual freedom and a fairer distribution of resources. According to Rawls, every individual should be allowed to choose and pursue their conception of what is desirable. At the same time, the greater society must maintain a socially just distribution of goods. Rawls argued that differences in material wealth are tolerable if general economic growth and wealth also benefit the poorest. A Theory of Justice countered utilitarian thinking in the tradition of Jeremy Bentham, instead following the Kantian concept of a social contract, picturing society as a mutual agreement between rational citizens, producing rights and duties as well as establishing and defining roles and tasks of the state. Rawls put the equal liberty principle in the first place, providing every person with equal access to the same set of fundamental liberties, followed by the fair equality of opportunity and difference, thus allowing social and economic inequalities under the precondition that privileged positions are accessible to everyone, that everyone has equal opportunities and that even the least advantaged members of society benefit from this framework. This framework repeated itself in the equation of Justice as Fairness. Rawls proposed these principles not just to adherents of liberalism but as a basis for all democratic politics, regardless of ideology. The work advanced social liberal ideas immensely within the 1970s political and philosophic academia. Rawls may therefore be a "patron saint" of social liberalism. Decline Following economic problems in the 1960s and 1970s, liberal thought underwent some transformation. Keynesian financial management faced criticism for interfering with the free market. At the same time, increased welfare spending funded by higher taxes prompted fears of lower investment, lower consumer spending, and the creation of a "dependency culture." Trade unions often caused high wages and industrial disruption, while total employment was considered unsustainable. Writers such as Milton Friedman and Samuel Brittan, whom Friedrich Hayek influenced, advocated a reversal of social liberalism. Their policies—often called neoliberalism—had a significant influence on Western politics, most notably on the governments of United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the United States President Ronald Reagan. They pursued policies of deregulation of the economy and reduction in spending on social services. Part of the reason for the collapse of the social liberal coalition was a challenge in the 1960s and 1970s from financial interests that could operate independently of national governments. A related reason was the comparison of ideas such as socialized medicine, advocated by politicians such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, facing criticisms and being dubbed as socialist by conservatives during the midst of the Red Scare, notably by the previously mentioned Reagan. Another cause was the decline of organized labour which had formed part of the coalition but was also a support for left-wing ideologies challenging the liberal consensus. Related to this were the downfall of working-class consciousness and the growth of the middle class. The push by the United States and the United Kingdom, which had been least accepting of social liberalism for trade liberalization, further eroded support. Contemporary revival of social liberal thought From the end of the 20th century, at the same time that it was losing political influence, social liberalism experienced an intellectual revival with several substantial authors, including John Rawls (political philosophy), Amartya Sen (philosophy and economy), Ronald Dworkin (philosophy of law), Martha Nussbaum (philosophy), Bruce Ackerman (constitutional law), and others. Parties and organisations In Europe, social liberal parties tend to be small or medium-sized centrist and centre-left parties. Examples of successful European social liberal parties participating in government coalitions at national or regional levels include the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, the Democrats 66 in the Netherlands, and the Danish Social Liberal Party. In continental European politics, social liberal parties are integrated into the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, the third biggest group in the parliament, and includes social liberal parties, market liberal parties, and centrist parties. Other groups such as the European People's Party, the Greens–European Free Alliance, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats also house some political parties with social-liberal factions. In North America, social liberalism (as Europe would refer to it) tends to be the dominant form of liberalism present, so in common parlance, "liberal" refers to social liberals. In Canada, social liberalism is held by the Liberal Party of Canada, while in the United States, social liberalism is a significant force within the Democratic Party. Giving an exhaustive list of social liberal parties worldwide is difficult, mainly because political organisations are not always ideologically pure, and party ideologies often change over time. However, peers such as the Africa Liberal Network, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, the European Liberal Forum, the Liberal International, and the Liberal Network for Latin America or scholars usually accept them as parties who are following social liberalism as a core ideology. Social liberal parties or parties with social liberal factions Social liberal political parties that are more left-biased than general centre-left parties are not described here. (See list of progressive parties) Åland: Liberals for Åland Andorra: Action for Andorra Argentina: Radical Civic Union Australia: Liberal Party of Australia (factions), Australian Labor Party (factions) Bahamas: Progressive Liberal Party Belgium: DéFI, Party for Freedom and Progress, Vivant Bosnia and Herzegovina: Our Party Brazil : Cidadania, Brazilian Social Democracy Party Canada: Liberal Party of Canada Chile: Radical Party of Chile, Liberal Party of Chile Croatia: Croatian People's Party – Liberal Democrats, Centre, Civic Liberal Alliance, Istrian Democratic Assembly Czech Republic: Czech Pirate Party Denmark: Danish Social Liberal Party Egypt: Constitution Party Estonia: Estonian Centre Party, Estonian Greens, Estonia 200 European Union: Volt Europa Faroe Islands: Self-Government Party Finland: Centre Party, Green League, National Coalition Party, Swedish People's Party of Finland France: Renaissance, Radical Party of the Left, Territories of Progress, The New Democrats Germany: Alliance 90/The Greens, Liberal Democrats, Social Democratic Party of Germany (factions). Greenland: Democrats Hungary: Democratic Coalition Iceland: Bright Future India: Indian National Congress Indonesia: Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle Israel: Israel Resilience Party, Yesh Atid Italy: Democratic Party (factions), Italia Viva, Italian Republican Party, Action Japan: Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan Kosovo: Democratic Party of Kosovo Latvia: Development/For! Lesotho: Revolution for Prosperity Luxembourg: Democratic Party Malaysia: Democratic Action Party, People's Justice Party Montenegro: Positive Montenegro, United Reform Action Morocco: Citizens' Forces Myanmar: National League for Democracy, National Democratic Force Netherlands: Democrats 66 New Zealand: New Zealand Labour Party (factions) Norway: Liberal Party Philippines: Liberal Party Poland: Polish Initiative, Your Movement, Union of European Democrats Portugal: Together for the People, Liberal Initiative (faction) Romania: PRO Romania Russia: Yabloko Serbia: Democratic Party Slovakia: Progressive Slovakia Slovenia: List of Marjan Šarec, Party of Alenka Bratušek South Africa: Democratic Alliance South Korea: Democratic Party of Korea, Justice Party Sweden: Liberals (factions), Centre Party Taiwan: Democratic Progressive Party、Taiwan People's Party Trinidad and Tobago: People's National Movement Turkey: Good Party Democracy and Progress Party United Kingdom: Liberal Democrats, Liberal Party United States: Democratic Party Historical social liberal parties or parties with social liberal factions Andorra: Democratic Renewal Australia: Australian Democrats Belgium: Spirit France: Radical Movement Germany: Free-minded People's Party, German Democratic Party, German People's Party, Progressive People's Party Greece: The River Hungary: Alliance of Free Democrats Iceland: Liberal Party, Union of Liberals and Leftists Israel: Independent Liberals, Kulanu, Progressive Party Italy: Action Party, Radical Party, Italian Liberal Party, Democratic Alliance, Democratic Union, The Democrats Japan: Japan Socialist Party (factions), Democratic Party of Japan Latvia: Society for Political Change Lithuania: New Union (Social Liberals) Luxembourg: Radical Socialist Party Malta: Democratic Party Moldova: Our Moldova Alliance Netherlands: Free-thinking Democratic League Poland: Democratic Party – demokraci.pl, Spring, Russian: Constitutional Democratic Party Slovenia: Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, Zares South Korea: Progressive Party (1956), Uri Party, Grand Unified Democratic New Party Spain: Union, Progress and Democracy Switzerland: Ring of Independents United Kingdom: Liberal Party, Social Democratic Party Notable thinkers Some notable scholars and politicians ordered by date of birth who are generally considered as having made significant contributions to the evolution of social liberalism as a political ideology include: Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) John Stuart Mill(1806–1873) Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913) Lujo Brentano (1844–1931) Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923) Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) Émile Durkheim(1858–1917) John Atkinson Hobson (1858–1940) John Dewey (1859–1952) Friedrich Naumann(1860–1919) Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz(1864–1943) Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse(1864–1929) Tokuzō Fukuda (1874–1930) William Beveridge (1879–1963) Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) Mohammad Mossadegh (1882–1967) John Maynard Keynes(1883–1946) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) Pierre Elliot Trudeau (1919–2000) Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Piero Gobetti (1901–1926) Karl Popper (1902–1994) (1904–1986) Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004) Masao Maruyama (1914–1996) John Rawls (1921–2002) Don Chipp (1925–2006) Karl-Hermann Flach (1929–1973) Vlado Gotovac (1930–2000) Richard Rorty (1931–2007) Ronald Dworkin(1931–2013) Amartya Sen (born 1933) José G. Merquior (1941–1991) Bruce Ackerman (born 1943) Roh Moo-hyun (1946–2009) Martha Nussbaum (born 1947) Grigory Yavlinsky (born 1952) Paul Krugman (born 1953) Dirk Verhofstadt (born 1955) Justin Trudeau (born 1971) Robert Biedroń (born 1976) See also Classical liberalism Classical radicalism Constitutional liberalism Left-libertarianism Liberalism by country Modern liberalism in the United States Neo-libertarianism Progressivism Social democracy Social-liberal coalition Social market economy Notes References Sources Adams, Ian (2001). Political ideology today. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. . De Ruggiero, Guido (1959). The History of European Liberalism. Boston: Beacon Press. Faulks, Keith (1999). Political Sociology: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. . Feuchtwanger, E. J. (1985). Democracy and Empire: Britain 1865-1914. London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd. . Richardson, James L. (2001). Contending Liberalisms in World Politics. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. . Slomp, Hans (2000). European Politics Into the Twenty-first Century: Integration and Division. Westport: Praeger Publishers. . Further reading External links Centre-left ideologies Centrism Liberalism Political culture Political ideologies Radicalism (historical) Social policy Social philosophy Syncretic political movements el:Φιλελευθερισμός#Κοινωνικός φιλελευθερισμός ή σοσιαλφιλελευθερισμός

New media art

New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture, painting or sculpture. New Media art has origins in the worlds of science, art, and performance. Some common themes found in new media art include databases, political and social activism, Afrofuturism, feminism, and identity, a ubiquitous theme found throughout is the incorporation of new technology into the work. The emphasis on medium is a defining feature of much contemporary art and many art schools and major universities now offer majors in "New Genres" or "New Media" and a growing number of graduate programs have emerged internationally. New media art may involve degrees of interaction between artwork and observer or between the artist and the public, as is the case in performance art. Several theorists and curators have noted that such forms of interaction do not distinguish new media art but rather serve as a common ground that has parallels in other strands of contemporary art practice. Such insights emphasize the forms of cultural practice that arise concurrently with emerging technological platforms, and question the focus on technological media per se. New Media art involves complex curation and preservation practices that make collecting, installing, and exhibiting the works harder than most other mediums. Many cultural centers and museums have been established to cater to the advanced needs of new media art. History The origins of new media art can be traced to the moving image inventions of the 19th century such as the phenakistiscope (1833), the praxinoscope (1877) and Eadweard Muybridge's zoopraxiscope (1879). From the 1900s through the 1960s, various forms of kinetic and light art, from Thomas Wilfred's 'Lumia' (1919) and 'Clavilux' light organs to Jean Tinguely's self-destructing sculpture Homage to New York (1960) can be seen as progenitors of new media art. Steve Dixon in his book Digital Performance: New Technologies in Theatre, Dance and Performance Art argues that the early twentieth century avant-garde art movement Futurism was the birthplace of the merging of technology and performance art. Some early examples of performance artists who experimented with then state-of-the-art lighting, film, and projection include dancers Loïe Fuller and Valentine de Saint-Point. Cartoonist Winsor McCay performed in sync with an animated Gertie the Dinosaur on tour in 1914. By the 1920s many Cabaret acts began incorporating film projection into performances. Robert Rauschenberg's piece Broadcast (1959), composed of three interactive re-tunable radios and a painting, is considered one of the first examples of interactive art. German artist Wolf Vostell experimented with television sets in his (1958) installation TV De-collages. Vostell's work influenced Nam June Paik, who created sculptural installations featuring hundreds of television sets that displayed distorted and abstract footage. Beginning in Chicago during the 1970s, there was a surge of artists experimenting with video art and combining recent computer technology with their traditional mediums, including sculpture, photography, and graphic design. Many of the artists involved were grad students at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including Kate Horsfield and Lyn Blumenthal, who co-founded the Video Data Bank in 1976. Another artists involved was Donna Cox, she collaborated with mathematician George Francis and computer scientist Ray Idaszak on the project Venus in Time which depicted mathematical data as 3D digital sculptures named for their similarities to paleolithic Venus statues. In 1982 artist Ellen Sandor and her team called (art)n Laboratory created the medium called PHSCologram, which stands for photography, holography, sculpture, and computer graphics. Her visualization of the AIDS virus was depicted on the cover of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications in November 1988. At the University of Illinois in 1989, members of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory Carolina Cruz-Neira, Thomas DeFanti, and Daniel J. Sandin collaborated to create what is known as CAVE or Cave Automatic Virtual Environment an early virtual reality immersion using rear projection. In 1983, Roy Ascott introduced the concept of "distributed authorship" in his worldwide telematic project La Plissure du Texte for Frank Popper's "Electra" at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The development of computer graphics at the end of the 1980s and real time technologies in the 1990s combined with the spreading of the Web and the Internet favored the emergence of new and various forms of interactive art by Ken Feingold, Lynn Hershman Leeson, David Rokeby, Ken Rinaldo, Perry Hoberman, Tamas Waliczky; telematic art by Roy Ascott, Paul Sermon, Michael Bielický; Internet art by Vuk Ćosić, Jodi; virtual and immersive art by Jeffrey Shaw, Maurice Benayoun, Monika Fleischmann, and large scale urban installation by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. In Geneva, the Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine or CIC coproduced with Centre Georges Pompidou from Paris and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne the first internet video archive of new media art. Simultaneously advances in biotechnology have also allowed artists like Eduardo Kac to begin exploring DNA and genetics as a new art medium. Influences on new media art have been the theories developed around interaction, hypertext, databases, and networks. Important thinkers in this regard have been Vannevar Bush and Theodor Nelson, whereas comparable ideas can be found in the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Julio Cortázar. Themes In the book New Media Art, Mark Tribe and Reena Jana named several themes that contemporary new media art addresses, including computer art, collaboration, identity, appropriation, open sourcing, telepresence, surveillance, corporate parody, as well as intervention and hacktivism. In the book Postdigitale, Maurizio Bolognini suggested that new media artists have one common denominator, which is a self-referential relationship with the new technologies, the result of finding oneself inside an epoch-making transformation determined by technological development. New media art does not appear as a set of homogeneous practices, but as a complex field converging around three main elements: 1) the art system, 2) scientific and industrial research, and 3) political-cultural media activism. There are significant differences between scientist-artists, activist-artists and technological artists closer to the art system, who not only have different training and technocultures, but have different artistic production. This should be taken into account in examining the several themes addressed by new media art. Non-linearity can be seen as an important topic to new media art by artists developing interactive, generative, collaborative, immersive artworks like Jeffrey Shaw or Maurice Benayoun who explored the term as an approach to looking at varying forms of digital projects where the content relays on the user's experience. This is a key concept since people acquired the notion that they were conditioned to view everything in a linear and clear-cut fashion. Now, art is stepping out of that form and allowing for people to build their own experiences with the piece. Non-linearity describes a project that escape from the conventional linear narrative coming from novels, theater plays and movies. Non-linear art usually requires audience participation or at least, the fact that the "visitor" is taken into consideration by the representation, altering the displayed content. The participatory aspect of new media art, which for some artists has become integral, emerged from Allan Kaprow's Happenings and became with Internet, a significant component of contemporary art. The inter-connectivity and interactivity of the internet, as well as the fight between corporate interests, governmental interests, and public interests that gave birth to the web today, inspire a lot of current new media art. Databases One of the key themes in new media art is to create visual views of databases. Pioneers in this area include Lisa Strausfeld, Martin Wattenberg and Alberto Frigo. From 2004–2014 George Legrady's piece "Making Visible the Invisible" displayed the normally unseen library metadata of items recently checked out at the Seattle Public Library on six LCD monitors behind the circulation desk. Database aesthetics holds at least two attractions to new media artists: formally, as a new variation on non-linear narratives; and politically as a means to subvert what is fast becoming a form of control and authority. Political and social activism Many new media art projects also work with themes like politics and social consciousness, allowing for social activism through the interactive nature of the media. New media art includes "explorations of code and user interface; interrogations of archives, databases, and networks; production via automated scraping, filtering, cloning, and recombinatory techniques; applications of user-generated content (UGC) layers; crowdsourcing ideas on social- media platforms; narrowcasting digital selves on "free" websites that claim copyright; and provocative performances that implicate audiences as participants". Afrofuturism Afrofuturism is an interdisciplinary genre that explores the African diaspora experience, predominantly in the United States, by deconstructing the past and imagining the future through the themes of technology, science fiction, and fantasy. Musician Sun Ra, believed to be one of the founders of Afrofuturism, thought a blend of technology and music could help humanity overcome the ills of society. His band, The Sun Ra Arkestra, combined traditional Jazz with sound and performance art and were among the first musicians to perform with a synthesizer. The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of Afrofuturism aesthetics and themes with artists and cooperation's like Jessi Jumanji and Black Quantum Futurism and art educational centers like Black Space in Durham, North Carolina. Feminism and the female experience Japanese artist Mariko Mori's multimedia installation piece Wave UFO (1999–2003) sought to examine the science and perceptions behind the study of consciousness and neuroscience. Exploring the ways that these fields undertake research in a materially reductionist manner. Mori's work emphasized the need for these fields to become more holistic and incorporate incites and understanding of the world from philosophy and the humanities. Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist's (2008) immersive video installation Pour Your Body Out explores the dichotomy of beauty and the grotesque in the natural world and their relation to the female experience. The large-scale 360-degree installation featured breast-shaped projectors and circular pink pillows that invited viewers to relax and immerse themselves in the vibrant colors, psychedelic music, and partake in meditation and yoga. American filmmaker and artist Lynn Hershman Leeson explores in her films the themes of identity, technology and the erasure of women's roles and contributions to technology. Her (1999) film Conceiving Ada depicts a computer scientist and new media artist named Emmy as she attempts and succeeds at creating a way to communicate through cyberspace with Ada Lovelace, an Englishwoman who created the first computer program in the 1840s via a form of artificial intelligence. Identity With its roots in outsider art, New Media has been an ideal medium for an artist to explore the topics of identity and representation. In Canada, Indigenous multidisciplinary artists like Cheryl L'Hirondelle and Kent Monkman have incorporated themes about gender, identity, activism, and colonization in their work. Monkman, a Cree artist, performs and appears as their alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, in film, photography, painting, installation, and performance art. Monkman describes Miss Chief as a representation of a two-spirit or non-binary persona that does not fall under the traditional description of drag. Future of new media art The emergence of 3D printing has introduced a new bridge to new media art, joining the virtual and the physical worlds. The rise of this technology has allowed artists to blend the computational base of new media art with the traditional physical form of sculpture. A pioneer in this field was artist Jonty Hurwitz who created the first known anamorphosis sculpture using this technique. Longevity As the technologies used to deliver works of new media art such as film, tapes, web browsers, software and operating systems become obsolete, New Media art faces serious issues around the challenge to preserve artwork beyond the time of its contemporary production. Currently, research projects into New media art preservation are underway to improve the preservation and documentation of the fragile media arts heritage (see DOCAM – Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage). Methods of preservation exist, including the translation of a work from an obsolete medium into a related new medium, the digital archiving of media (see the Rhizome ArtBase, which holds over 2000 works, and the Internet Archive), and the use of emulators to preserve work dependent on obsolete software or operating system environments. Around the mid-90s, the issue of storing works in digital form became a concern. Digital art such as moving images, multimedia, interactive programs, and computer-generated art has different properties than physical artwork such as oil paintings and sculptures. Unlike analog technologies, a digital file can be recopied onto a new medium without any deterioration of content. One of the problems with preserving digital art is that the formats continuously change over time. Former examples of transitions include that from 8-inch floppy disks to 5.25-inch floppies, 3-inch diskettes to CD-ROMs, and DVDs to flash drives. On the horizon is the obsolescence of flash drives and portable hard drives, as data is increasingly held in online cloud storage. Museums and galleries thrive off of being able to accommodate the presentation and preservation of physical artwork. New media art challenges the original methods of the art world when it comes to documentation, its approach to collection and preservation. Technology continues to advance, and the nature and structure of art organizations and institutions will remain in jeopardy. The traditional roles of curators and artist are continually changing, and a shift to new collaborative models of production and presentation is needed. Preservation see also Conservation and restoration of new media art New media art encompasses various mediums all which require their own preservation approaches. Due to the vast technical aspects involved no established digital preservation guidelines fully encompass the spectrum of new media art. New media art falls under the category of "complex digital object" in the Digital Curation Centre's digital curation lifecycle model which involves specialized or totally unique preservation techniques.  Complex digital objects preservation has an emphasis on the inherent connection of the components of the piece. Education In New Media programs, students are able to get acquainted with the newest forms of creation and communication. New Media students learn to identify what is or isn't "new" about certain technologies. Science and the market will always present new tools and platforms for artists and designers. Students learn how to sort through new emerging technological platforms and place them in a larger context of sensation, communication, production, and consumption. When obtaining a bachelor's degree in New Media, students will primarily work through practice of building experiences that utilize new and old technologies and narrative. Through the construction of projects in various media, they acquire technical skills, practice vocabularies of critique and analysis, and gain familiarity with historical and contemporary precedents. In the United States, many Bachelor's and Master's level programs exist with concentrations on Media Art, New Media, Media Design, Digital Media and Interactive Arts. Theorists and historians Notable art theorists and historians working in this field include: Roy Ascott Maurice Benayoun Christine Buci-Glucksmann Jack Burnham Mario Costa Edmond Couchot Fred Forest Oliver Grau Margot Lovejoy Lev Manovich Robert C. Morgan Dominique Moulon Christiane Paul Catherine Perret Frank Popper Edward A. Shanken Types The term New Media Art is generally applied to disciplines such as: Artistic computer game modification ASCII art Bio Art Cyberformance Computer art Critical making Digital art Demoscene Digital poetry Electronic art Experimental musical instrument building Evolutionary art Fax art Generative art Glitch art Hypertext Information art Interactive art Kinetic art Light art Motion graphics Net art Performance art Radio art Robotic art Software art Sound art Systems art Telematic art Video art Video games Virtual art Artists Cultural centres Australian Network for Art and Technology Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine Daniel Langlois Foundation Eyebeam Art and Technology Center Foundation for Art and Creative Technology Gray Area Foundation for the Arts Harvestworks InterAccess Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) Netherlands Media Art Institute NTT InterCommunication Center Rhizome (organization) RIXC School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) School of the Art Institute of Chicago Squeaky Wheel: Film and Media Arts Center V2 Institute for the Unstable Media WORM See also ART/MEDIA Artmedia Aspect magazine Culture jamming Digital media Digital puppetry Electronic Language International Festival Expanded Cinema Experiments in Art and Technology Interactive film Interactive media Intermedia LA Freewaves Net.art New media art festivals New media artist New media art journals New media art preservation Remix culture VJing References Further reading Jorge Luis Borges (1941). "The Garden of Forking Paths." Editorial Sur. Graham, Philip Mitchell, New Epoch Art, InterACTA: Journal of the Art Teachers Association of Victoria, Published by ACTA, Parkville, Victoria, No 4, 1990, , Cited In APAIS. This database is available on the Informit Online Internet Service or on CD-ROM, or on Australian Public Affairs – Full Text Lopes, Dominic McIver. (2009). A Philosophy of Computer Art. London: Routledge Robert C. Morgan, Commentaries on the New Media Arts Pasadena, CA: Umbrella Associates,1992 Janet Murray (2003). "Inventing the Medium", The New Media Reader. MIT Press. Frank Popper (2007) From Technological to Virtual Art, MIT Press/Leonardo Books Frank Popper (1997) Art of the Electronic Age, Thames & Hudson Rainer Usselmann, (2002) "About Interface: Actualisation and Totality", University of Southampton Youngblood, Gene (1970). Expanded Cinema. New York. E.P. Dutton & Company. New Media Faculty, (2011). "New Media", University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Mass media technology Visual arts genres New media Digital art

Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration, especially when there is also a playful or ironic element. Camp is historically associated with LGBTQ+ culture and especially gay men. Camp aesthetics disrupt modernist understandings of high art by inverting traditional aesthetic judgements of beauty, value, and taste, and inviting a different kind of aesthetic engagement. Camp art is distinct from but often confused with kitsch. The American writer Susan Sontag emphasized its key elements as embracing frivolity, excess and artifice. Art historian David Carrier notes that, despite these qualities, it is also subversive and political. Camp may be sophisticated, but subjects deemed camp may also be perceived as being dated, offensive or in bad taste. Camp may also be divided into high and low camp (i.e., camp arising from serious versus unserious matters), or alternatively into naive and deliberate camp (i.e., accidental versus intentional camp). While author and academic Moe Meyer defines camp as a form of "queer parody", journalist Jack Babuscio argues it is a specific "gay sensibility" which has often been "misused to signify the trivial, superficial and 'queer'". Camp, as a particular style or set of mannerisms, may serve as a marker of identity, such as in camp talk, which expresses a gay male identity. This camp style is associated with incongruity or juxtaposition, theatricality, and humour, and has appeared in film, cabaret, and pantomime. Both high and low forms of culture may be camp, but where high art incorporates beauty and value, camp often strives to be lively, audacious and dynamic. Camp can also be tragic, sentimental and ironic, finding beauty or black comedy even in suffering. The humour of camp, as well as its frivolity, may serve as a coping mechanism to deal with intolerance and marginalization in society. Origins and development In his 1972 book Gay Talk, writer Bruce Rodgers traces the term camp to 16th century British theatre, where it referred to men dressed as women (drag). Camp may have derived from the gay slang Polari, which borrowed the term from the Italian campare, or from the French term se camper, meaning "to pose in an exaggerated fashion". A similar sense is also found in French theatre in Molière's 1671 play Les Fourberies de Scapin. Writer Susan Sontag and linguist Paul Baker place the "soundest starting point" for the modern sense of camp, meaning flamboyant, as the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Writer Anthony Burgess theorized it may have emerged from the primary sense of the word, as in a military encampment, where gay men would subtly advertize their sexuality in all-male company through a particular style and affectation. By 1870, British crossdresser Frederick Park referred to his "campish undertakings" in a letter produced in evidence at his examination before a magistrate at Bow Street, London, on suspicion of illegal homosexual acts; the letter does not make clear what these were. In 1909, the Oxford English Dictionary gave the first print citation of camp, described as an "etymologically obscure" use of the word, as "ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual" behavior. In the UK's pre-liberation gay culture, the term was used as a general description of the aesthetic choices and behavior of working-class gay men. The term camp is still sometimes used in the UK to describe a gay man who is perceived as outwardly garish or eccentric, such as Matt Lucas' character Daffyd Thomas in the English comedy skit show Little Britain. From the mid-1940s, numerous representations of camp speech or camp talk, as used by gay men, began to appear in print in America, France and the United Kingdom. By the mid-1970s, camp was defined by the college edition of Webster's New World Dictionary as "banality, mediocrity, artifice, [and] ostentation ... so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal".In America, the concept of camp was also described by Christopher Isherwood in 1954 in his novel The World in the Evening, and later by Susan Sontag in her 1964 essay 'Notes on "Camp"'. Two key components of the "radical spectacle of camp" were originally feminine performances: swish and drag. With swish's extensive use of superlatives and drag's exaggerated female impersonation, camp occasionally became extended to all things "over the top", including women posing as female impersonators (faux queens) such as Carmen Miranda, while also retaining its meaning as "queer parody". In her study of drag, cultural anthropologist Esther Newton argued that camp has three major features: incongruity, theatricality, and humour. In his 1984, writer George Melly argued that the camp sensibility allowed almost anything to be seen as a camp, and that this was a way of projecting one's own queer sensibility upon the world to therefore reclaim it. Conversely, he argued, the biggest threat to camp wasn't heterosexuals ("who tend to accept it, although usually at a fairly broad and superficial level"), but "a neo-puritanism, a received conformism" emerging among gay people at the time. The rise of postmodernism and queer theory has made camp a common perspective on aesthetics, not solely identified with gay men. Women (especially lesbians), trans people, and people of colour have described new forms of camp, such as dyke camp (including subcategories such as cubana and high-femme dyke camp) and queer of color camp. Camp has also been a subject of psychoanalytic theory, where it has been portrayed as a form of performance or masquerade. Scholar Cynthia Morrill has argued that the conception of "camp-as-masquerade" ignores the specifically queer sensibility of camp by interrogating queerness through a heteronormative lens (i.e., solely in relation to the symbol of the phallus). Camp has become prevalent in mainstream popular entertainment such as theatre, cinema, TV and music. In reaction to its popularisation, critics such as Jack Babuscio and Jeanette Cooperman have argued that camp requires the alienation of LGBTQ+ people from the mainstream to maintain its edge. Poet and scholar Chris Philpot, like Cooperman, nevertheless argues that camp can still be a viable "survival strategy" for marginalized queer people, so long as it evolves with them. Curator Andrew Bolton, after his show Camp: Notes on Fashion at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, explains that context is also important for understanding the power and relevance of camp: "Camp tends to come to the fore through moments of social and political instability, when our society is deeply polarized. The 1960s is one such moment, as were the 1980s, so, too, are the times in which we’re living." Camp in contemporary culture Fashion Patrick Kelly's designs have been described as camp and "Radical Cheek" for his ironic use of bold colours, antiquated or incongruous styles, and reclaimed racist symbols. He designed a banana dress in reference to Josephine Baker and dedicated a whole collection to her. He used mismatched buttons when creating his own take on a Chanel suit. By the time he died in 1990, he had dressed noted queer icons such as Grace Jones and Isabella Rossellini. His grave is marked with a stylized golliwog—a reclaimed symbol for his label—featuring big gold earrings and bright red lips.The 2019 Met Gala's theme was Camp: Notes on Fashion, co-chaired by Anna Wintour, Serena Williams, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, and Alessandro Michele. The show featured tributes to queer and camp figures, including a bronze statue of the Vatican's Belvedere Antinous, portraits of Louis XIV and Oscar Wilde, and celebrations of Black and Latinx ball culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Dapper Dan—whose luxurious fashion has been credited with camping up the hip-hop genre—designed seven camp outfits for Gucci, worn at the gala by 21 Savage, Omari Hardwick, Regina Hall, Bevy Smith, Ashley Graham and Karlie Kloss (he wore the seventh). Lady Gaga's entrance took 16 minutes, as she arrived to the gala alongside an entourage of five dancers carrying umbrellas, a make up artist, and a personal photographer to snap pictures of Gaga's poses. Gaga arrived in a hot pink Brandon Maxwell gown with a 25-foot train and went through a series of four "reveals," paying homage to drag culture, debuting a new outfit each time, until reaching her final look: a bra and underwear with fishnets and platform heels. Other notable ensembles included Katy Perry wearing a gown that looked like a chandelier, designed by Moschino; and Kacey Musgraves appearing as a life-size Barbie, also by Moschino. Film Famous representatives of camp films are, for example, John Waters (Pink Flamingos, 1972) and Rosa von Praunheim (The Bed Sausage, 1971), who mainly used this style in the 1970s, and who created films which achieved cult status. The 1972 musical Cabaret is also seen as an example of the aesthetic, with film critic Esther Leslie describing the camp in the film thus:Camp thrives on tragic gestures, on lament at the transience of life, on an excess of sentiment, an ironic sensibility that art and artifice is preferable to nature and health, in a Wildean sense.Australian writer/director Baz Luhrmann's Red Curtain Trilogy, in particular the film Strictly Ballroom (1992), has been described as camp. Literature Dandyism is often seen as a precursor to camp, especially as embodied in Oscar Wilde and his work. The character of Amarinth in Robert Hichens' The Green Carnation (1894), based on Wilde, uses "camp coding" in his "effusive and inverted" use of language. The scene where Anthony Blanche arrives late to Sebastian Flyte's lunch party in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, has been described by writer George Melly as an example of camp's "alchemical ability" to project a queer sensibility upon the world and unite one's peers in that sensibility. The first post-World War II use of the word in print may be Christopher Isherwood's 1954 novel The World in the Evening, where he comments: "You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it; you're making fun out of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance." In the American writer Susan Sontag's 1964 essay Notes on "Camp", Sontag emphasized the embrace of artifice, frivolity, naivety, pretentiousness, offensiveness, and excess as key elements of camp. Examples cited by Sontag included Tiffany lamps, the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, and Japanese science fiction films such as Rodan and The Mysterians of the 1950s. However, critics of Sontag's description, such as art historian David Carrier, say that it is outdated and that "her celebration of its ecstatic marginality downplays its implicit subversiveness". In Mark Booth's 1983 book Camp, he defines camp as "to present oneself as being committed to the marginal with a commitment greater than the marginal merits". He makes a distinction between genuine camp, and camp fads and fancies — things that are not intrinsically camp, but display artificiality, stylization, theatricality, naivety, sexual ambiguity, tackiness, poor taste, stylishness, or camp people, and thus appeal to them. In his 1984 book Camp: The Lie That Tells The Truth, writer and artist Philip Core describes Jean Cocteau's autobiography as "the definition of camp". In 1993, journalist Russell Davies published comedian Kenneth Williams' diaries. Williams' diary entry for 1 January 1947 reads: "Went to Singapore with Stan—very camp evening, was followed, but tatty types so didn't bother to make overtures." Music American singer and actress Cher is one of the artists who received the title of "Queen of Camp" through her colourful on-stage fashion and live performances. She gained this status in the 1970s when she launched her variety shows in collaboration with the costume designer Bob Mackie and became a constant presence on American prime-time television. Madonna is also considered camp and according to educator Carol Queen, her "whole career up to and including Sex has depended heavily on camp imagery and camp understandings of gender and sex". Madonna has also been named "Queen of Camp". In public and on stage, Dusty Springfield developed an image supported by her peroxide blonde beehive hairstyle, evening gowns, and heavy make-up that included her much-copied "panda eye" look. Springfield borrowed elements of her look from blonde glamour queens of the 1950s, such as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. This, her singing style and her sexuality made her a "camp icon" and won her a following in the gay community. Besides the prototypical female drag queen, she was presented in the roles of the "Great White Lady" of pop and soul, and the "Queen of Mods". Rappers such as Lil' Kim, Nicki Minaj and Cam’ron have all been described as camp, often because of the opulence and winking humour of their personas. Dapper Dan has been credited with introducing high fashion and camp to hip hop. In pop and rock, musicians Prince and Jimi Hendrix have also been called camp because of their flamboyance and playful use of artifice. South Korean rapper Psy, known for his viral internet music videos full of flamboyant dance and visuals, has come to be seen as a 21st-century incarnation of camp style. Geri Halliwell is recognized as a camp icon for her high camp aesthetics, performance style and kinship with the gay community during her time as a solo artist. Dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker has been described as camp. Her famous banana dress has been noted as particularly camp for its flamboyant, humorous and ironic qualities, as well as the way it makes a political point using outdated but reclaimed imagery. Lady Gaga, a contemporary exemplar of camp, uses music and dance to make social commentary on pop culture, as in the "Judas" music video. Her clothes, makeup, and accessories, created by high-end fashion designers, are integral to the narrative structure of her performances. Katy Perry has also been described as camp, with outlets like Vogue describing her as another "Queen of Camp". The British tradition of the "Last Night of the Proms" has been said to glory in "nostalgia, camp, and pastiche". Camp still forms a strong element in UK culture, and many so-called gay icons and objects are chosen as such because they are camp, including musicians such as Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Lulu, and Mika. Musicologist Philip Brett has highlighted campness in the work of Benjamin Britten and has also argued for a camp reading of French composer Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos in D minor, noting its combination of a Balinese gamelan with a sense of "musical resignation and longing". Musicologist Raymond Knapp has compared musical camp to jazz, especially in camp's playfulness and admiration for its subjects, which can seem mocking but often borders on veneration. He argues that musical camp draws attention to its performativity and inspirations, while engaging the audience interactively in the process of creating meaning. Photography Thomas Dworzak published a collection of "last portrait" photographs of young Taliban soldiers about to depart for the front, found in Kabul photo studios. The book, titled Taliban, attests to a campy aesthetic, quite close to the gay movement in California or a Peter Greenaway film. Television The Comedy Central television show Strangers with Candy (1999–2000), starring comedian Amy Sedaris, was a camp spoof of the ABC Afterschool Special genre. Inspired by the work of George Kuchar and his brother Mike Kuchar, ASS Studios began making a series of short, no-budget camp films. Their feature film Satan, Hold My Hand (2013) features many elements recognized in camp pictures. Since 2000, the Eurovision Song Contest, an annually televised competition of song performers from different countries, has shown an increasing element of camp—since the contest has shown an increasing attraction within the LGBTQ+ communities—in their stage performances. This is especially true during the televised finale, which is screened live across Europe. As it is a visual show, many Eurovision performances attempt to attract the attention of voters through means other than the music, which sometimes leads to bizarre onstage gimmicks, and what some critics have called "the Eurovision kitsch drive", with almost cartoonish novelty acts performing. Theatre The Australian theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky is renowned for his use of camp in interpreting the works of the Western canon, including Shakespeare, Wagner, Molière, Seneca and Kafka. His 2006 eight-hour production for the Sydney Theatre Company The Lost Echo was based on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Euripides's The Bacchae. In the first act ("The Song of Phaeton"), for instance, the goddess Juno takes the form of a highly stylized Marlene Dietrich, and the musical arrangements feature Noël Coward and Cole Porter. Kosky's use of camp is also effectively employed to satirize the pretensions, manners, and cultural vacuity of Australia's suburban middle class, which is suggestive of the style of Dame Edna Everage. For example, in The Lost Echo, Kosky employs a chorus of high school students: one girl in the chorus takes leave from the goddess Diana, and begins to rehearse a dance routine, muttering to herself in a broad Australian accent, "Mum says I have to practice if I want to be on Australian Idol." In the UK, the music hall tradition of pantomime, which often uses drag and other features of camp, remains a popular form of entertainment for families and young children. Most towns and cities in the UK stage at least one pantomime between November and February, drawing in an estimated £146 million in 2014. Distinguishing between kitsch and camp The words camp and kitsch are often used interchangeably, though they are distinct. Camp is rooted in a specifically queer sensibility, informed by queer identity and culture, whereas kitsch is rooted in the rise of mass-produced art and popular culture for the mainstream. Both terms may relate to an object or work that carries aesthetic value, but kitsch refers specifically to the work itself, whereas camp is a sensibility as well as a mode of performance. A person may consume kitsch intentionally or unintentionally, but camp, as Susan Sontag observed, is always a way of consuming or performing culture "in quotation marks". Sontag also distinguishes between naïve and deliberate camp, and examines Christopher Isherwood's distinction between low camp — which he associated with cross-dressing and drag performances — and high camp — which included "the whole emotional basis of the Ballet, for example, and of course of Baroque art". High camp has also been used to describe drag that is more subtle or ironic, as opposed to drag that is more parodic and obvious (and thus low camp). According to sociologist Andrew Ross, camp combines outmoded and contemporary forms of style, fashion, and technology. Often characterized by the reappropriation of a "throwaway Pop aesthetic", camp works to intermingle the categories of "high" and "low" culture. Objects may become camp objects because of their historical association with a power now in decline. As opposed to kitsch, camp reappropriates culture in an ironic fashion, whereas kitsch is indelibly sincere. Additionally, kitsch may be seen as a quality of an object, while camp "tends to refer to a subjective process". Those who identify objects as "camp" note the distance often apparent in the process through which "unexpected value can be located in some obscure or exorbitant object." In its subversiveness and irony, camp can also suggest the possibility of overturning the status quo, making it a far more "radical spectacle" than kitsch. Musicologist Philip Brett has described camp as:a strategy which confronts un-queer ontology [states of being] and homophobia with humor and which by those same means may also signal the possibility of the overturn of that ontology—as when, on a famous night in 1969, the evening of the funeral of Judy Garland, the mood of a group of gays and drag queens reveling in the spectacle of their own arrest by members of the New York City Vice Squad at the Stonewall Bar turned to one of rage and produced the event that solidified the lesbian and gay movement. See also Avant-garde Asemic writing Collection de l'art brut David Bowie's art collection and Outside (1995) Glam rock Horror vacui Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art Lowbrow (art movement) Neo-pop Neurodiversity Outsider art Outsider music Pop art Postmodernism Psychedelic art The Rocky Horror Picture Show Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments Surrealism Unilalianism Vaporwave Vernacular architecture References Sources Babuscio, Jack (1993) "Camp and the Gay Sensibility" in Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, David Bergman Ed., U of Massachusetts, Amherst Feil, Ken (2005) "Queer Comedy", in Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide Vol. 2. pp. 19–38, 477–492, Maurice Charney Ed., Praeger, Westport, CN Levine, Martin P. (1998) Gay Macho, New York UP, New York Meyer, Moe, Ed. (1994) The Politics and Poetics of Camp, Routledge, London and New York Morrill, Cynthia (1994) "Revamping the Gay Sensibility: Queer Camp and dyke noir" (In Meyer pp. 110–129) Helene A. Shugart and Catherine Egley Waggoner (2008) Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture, U of Alabama P., Tuscaloosa Van Leer, David (1995) The Queening of America: Gay Culture in Straight Society, Routledge, London and New York Further reading Baker, Paul (2023). Camp! The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World. London: Footnote Press. Core, Philip (1984/1994). CAMP, The Lie That Tells the Truth, foreword by George Melly. London: Plexus Publishing Limited. Cleto, Fabio, editor (1999). Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. . Padva, Gilad (2008). "Educating The Simpsons: Teaching Queer Representations in Contemporary Visual Media". Journal of LGBT Youth 5(3), 57–73. Padva, Gilad and Talmon, Miri (2008). "Gotta Have An Effeminate Heart: The Politics of Effeminacy and Sissyness in a Nostalgic Israeli TV Musical". Feminist Media Studies 8(1), 69–84. Padva, Gilad (2005). "Radical Sissies and Stereotyped Fairies in Laurie Lynd's The Fairy Who Didn't Want To Be A Fairy Anymore". Cinema Journal 45(1), 66–78. Padva, Gilad (2000). "Priscilla Fights Back: The Politicization of Camp Subculture". Journal of Communication Inquiry 24(2), 216–243. Meyer, Moe, editor (1993). The Politics and Poetics of Camp. Routledge. . Sontag, Susan (1964). "Notes on Camp" in Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. . External links Notes on "Camp" by Susan Sontag 1900s neologisms Fashion aesthetics Gay effeminacy LGBTQ terminology Gay working-class culture Cultural trends Postmodernism Concepts in aesthetics

Lifestyle (social sciences)

Lifestyle is the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. The term was introduced by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in his 1929 book, The Case of Miss R., with the meaning of "a person's basic character as established early in childhood". The broader sense of lifestyle as a "way or style of living" has been documented since 1961. Lifestyle is a combination of determining intangible or tangible factors. Tangible factors relate specifically to demographic variables, i.e. an individual's demographic profile, whereas intangible factors concern the psychological aspects of an individual such as personal values, preferences, and outlooks. A rural environment has different lifestyles compared to an urban metropolis. Location is important even within an urban scope. The nature of the neighborhood in which a person resides affects the set of lifestyles available to that person due to differences between various neighborhoods' degrees of affluence and proximity to natural and cultural environments. For example, in areas near the sea, a surf culture or lifestyle can often be present. Individual identity A lifestyle typically reflects an individual's attitudes, way of life, values, or world view. Therefore, a lifestyle is a means of forging a sense of self and to create cultural symbols that resonate with personal identity. Not all aspects of a lifestyle are voluntary. Surrounding social and technical systems can constrain the lifestyle choices available to the individual and the symbols they are able to project to others and themself. The lines between personal identity and the everyday doings that signal a particular lifestyle become blurred in modern society. For example, "green lifestyle" means holding beliefs and engaging in activities that consume fewer resources and produce less harmful waste (i.e. a smaller ecological footprint), and deriving a sense of self from holding these beliefs and engaging in these activities. Some commentators argue that, in modernity, the cornerstone of lifestyle construction is consumption behavior, which offers the possibility to create and further individualize the self with different products or services that signal different ways of life. Lifestyle may include views on politics, religion, health, intimacy, and more. All of these aspects play a role in shaping someone's lifestyle. In the magazine and television industries, "lifestyle" is used to describe a category of publications or programs. History of lifestyles studies Three main phases can be identified in the history of lifestyles studies: Lifestyles and social position Earlier studies on lifestyles focus on the analysis of social structure and of the individuals' relative positions inside it. Thorstein Veblen, with his 'emulation' concept, opens this perspective by asserting that people adopt specific 'schemes of life', and in particular specific patterns of 'conspicuous consumption', depending on a desire for distinction from social strata they identify as inferior and a desire for emulation of the ones identified as superior. Max Weber intends lifestyles as distinctive elements of status groups strictly connected with a dialectic of recognition of prestige: the lifestyle is the most visible manifestation of social differentiation, even within the same social class, and in particular it shows the prestige which the individuals believe they enjoy or to which they aspire. Georg Simmel carries out formal analysis of lifestyles, at the heart of which can be found processes of individualisation, identification, differentiation, and recognition, understood both as generating processes of, and effects generated by, lifestyles, operating "vertically" as well as "horizontally". Finally, Pierre Bourdieu renews this approach within a more complex model in which lifestyles, made up mainly of social practices and closely tied to individual tastes, represent the basic point of intersection between the structure of the field and processes connected with the habitus. Lifestyles as styles of thought The approach interpreting lifestyles as principally styles of thought has its roots in the soil of psychological analysis. Initially, starting with Alfred Adler, a lifestyle was understood as a style of personality, in the sense that the framework of guiding values and principles which individuals develop in the first years of life end up defining a system of judgement which informs their actions throughout their lives. Later, particularly in Milton Rokeach's work, Arnold Mitchell's VALS research and Lynn R. Kahle's LOV research, lifestyles' analysis developed as profiles of values, reaching the hypothesis that it is possible to identify various models of scales of values organized hierarchically, to which different population sectors correspond. Then with Daniel Yankelovich and William Wells we move on to the so-called AIO approach in which attitudes, interests and opinions are considered as fundamental lifestyles' components, being analysed from both synchronic and diachronic points of view and interpreted on the basis of socio-cultural trends in a given social context (as, for instance, in Bernard Cathelat's work). Finally, a further development leads to the so-called profiles-and-trends approach, at the core of which is an analysis of the relations between mental and behavioural variables, bearing in mind that socio-cultural trends influence both the diffusion of various lifestyles within a population and the emerging of different modalities of interaction between thought and action. Lifestyles as styles of action Analysis of lifestyles as action profiles is characterized by the fact that it no longer considers the action level as a simple derivative of lifestyles, or at least as their collateral component, but rather as a constitutive element. In the beginning, this perspective focussed mainly on consumer behaviour, seeing products acquired as objects expressing on the material plane individuals' self-image and how they view their position in society. Subsequently, the perspective broadened to focus more generally on the level of daily life, concentrating – as in authors such as Joffre Dumazedier and Anthony Giddens – on the use of time, especially loisirs, and trying to study the interaction between the active dimension of choice and the dimension of routine and structuration which characterize that level of action. Finally, some authors, for instance Richard Jenkins and A. J. Veal, suggested an approach to lifestyles in which it is not everyday actions which make up the plane of analysis but those which the actors who adopt them consider particularly meaningful and distinctive. Health A healthy or unhealthy lifestyle will most likely be transmitted across generations. According to the study done by Case et al. (2002), when a 0-3-year-old child has a mother who practices a healthy lifestyle, this child will be 27% more likely to become healthy and adopt the same lifestyle. For instance, high income parents are more likely to eat more fruit and vegetables, have time to exercise, and provide the best living condition to their children. On the other hand, low-income parents are more likely to participate in unhealthy activities such as smoking to help them release poverty-related stress and depression. Parents are the first teacher for every child. Everything that parents do will be very likely transferred to their children through the learning process. Adults may be drawn together by mutual interest that results in a lifestyle. For example, William Dufty described how pursuing a sugar-free diet led to such associations: Class Lifestyle research can contribute to the question of the relevance of the class concept. Media culture The term lifestyle was introduced in the 1950s as a derivative of that of style in art: Theodor W. Adorno noted that there is a "culture industry" in which the mass media is involved, but that the term "mass culture" is inappropriate: The media culture of advanced capitalism typically creates new "life-styles" to drive the consumption of new commodities: See also Aeromobility Alternative lifestyle Intentional living Life stance Lifestyle brand Lifestyle guru Otium Personal life Sustainable living Simple living Style of life Tao Anthropology References Notes Sources Adorno, Th., "Culture Industry Reconsidered," in Adorno (1991). Adorno, The Culture Industry – Selected essays on mass culture, Routledge, London, 1991. Amaturo E., Palumbo M., Classi sociali. Stili di vita, coscienza e conflitto di classe. Problemi metodologici, Ecig, Genova, 1990. Ansbacher H. L., Life style. A historical and systematic review, in "Journal of individual psychology", 1967, vol. 23, n. 2, pp. 191–212. Bell D., Hollows J., Historicizing lifestyle. Mediating taste, consumption and identity from the 1900s to 1970s, Asghate, Aldershot-Burlington, 2006. Bénédicte Châtel (Auteur), Jean-Luc Dubois (Auteur), Bernard Perret (Auteur), Justice et Paix-France (Auteur), François Maupu (Postface), Notre mode de vie est-il durable ? : Nouvel horizon de la responsabilité, Karthala Éditions, 2005 Bernstein, J. M. (1991) "Introduction," in Adorno (1991) Berzano L., Genova C., Lifestyles and Subcultures. History and a New Perspective, Routledge, London, 2015. Burkle, F. M. (2004) Calvi G. (a cura di), Indagine sociale italiana. Rapporto 1986, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1987. Calvi G. (a cura di), Signori si cambia. Rapporto Eurisko sull'evoluzione dei consumi e degli stili di vita, Bridge, Milano, 1993. Calvi G., Valori e stili di vita degli italiani, Isedi, Milano, 1977. Cathelat B., Les styles de vie des Français 1978–1998, Stanké, Parigi, 1977. Cathelat B., Socio-Styles-Système. Les "styles de vie". Théorie, méthodes, applications, Les éditions d'organisation, Parigi, 1990. Cathelat B., Styles de vie, Les éditions d'organisation, pàgiri, 1985. Chaney D., Lifestyles, Routledge, Londra, 1996. Fabris G., Mortara V., Le otto Italie. Dinamica e frammentazione della società italiana, Mondadori, Milano, 1986. Faggiano M. P., Stile di vita e partecipazione sociale giovanile. Il circolo virtuoso teoria-ricerca-teoria, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2007. Gonzalez Moro V., Los estilos de vida y la cultura cotidiana. Un modelo de investigacion, Baroja, [San Sebastian, 1990]. Kahle L., Attitude and social adaption. A person-situation interaction approach, Pergamon, Oxford, 1984. Kahle L., Social values and social change. Adaptation to life in America, Praeger, Santa Barbara, 1983. Leone S., Stili di vita. Un approccio multidimensionale, Aracne, Roma, 2005. Mitchell A., Consumer values. A tipology, Values and lifestyles program, SRI International, Stanford, 1978. Mitchell A., Life ways and life styles, Business intelligence program, SRI International, Stanford, 1973. Mitchell A., The nine American lifestyles. Who we are and where we're going, Macmillan, New York, 1983. Mitchell A., Ways of life, Values and lifestyles program, SRI International, Stanford, 1982. Negre Rigol P., El ocio y las edades. Estilo de vida y oferta lúdica, Hacer, Barcelona, 1993. Parenti F., Pagani P. L., Lo stile di vita. Come imparare a conoscere sé stessi e gli altri, De Agostini, Novara, 1987. Patterson M. Consumption and Everyday Life, 2006 Ragone G., Consumi e stili di vita in Italia, Guida, Napoli, 1985. Ramos Soler I., El estilo de vida de los mayores y la publicidad, La Caixa, Barcelona, [2007]. Rokeach M., Beliefs, attitudes and values, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1968. Rokeach M., The nature of human values, Free Press, New York, 1973. Shields R., Lifestyle shopping. The subject of consumption, Routledge, Londra, 1992. Shulman B. H., Mosak H. H., Manual for life style assessment, Accelerated Development, Muncie, 1988 (trad. it. Manuale per l'analisi dello stile di vita, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2008). Sobel M. E., Lifestyle and social structure. Concepts, definitions and analyses, Academic Press, New York, 1981. Soldevilla Pérez C., Estilo de vida. Hacia una teoría psicosocial de la acción, Entimema, Madrid, 1998. Valette-Florence P., Les styles de vie. Bilan critique et perspectives. Du mythe à la réalité, Nathan, Parigi, 1994. Valette-Florence P., Les styles de vie. Fondements, méthodes et applications, Economica, Parigi, 1989. Valette-Florence P., Jolibert A., Life-styles and consumption patterns, Publications de recherche du CERAG, École supériore des affaires de Grenoble, 1988. Veal A. J., The concept of lifestyle. A review, in "Leisure studies", 1993, vol. 12, n. 4, pp. 233–252. Vergati S., Stili di vita e gruppi sociali, Euroma, Roma, 1996. Walters G. D., Beyond behavior. Construction of an overarching psychological theory of lifestyles, Praeger, Westport, 2000. Wells W. (a cura di), Life-style and psycographics, American marketing association, Chicago, 1974. Yankelovich D., New criteria for market segmentation, in "Harvard Business Review", 1964, vol. 42, n. 2, pp. 83–90. Yankelovich D., Meer D., Rediscovering market segmentation, in "Harvard Business Review", 2006, febbraio, pp. 1–10. External links George Vrousgos, N.D. – Southern Cross University Personal life Philosophy of life Sociological terminology 1920s neologisms

Cultural pluralism

Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, whereby their values and practices are accepted by the dominant culture, provided such are consistent with the laws and values of the wider society. As a sociological term, the definition and description of cultural pluralism has evolved. It has been described as not only a fact but a societal goal. Pluralist culture In a pluralist culture, groups not only co-exist side by side but also consider qualities of other groups as traits worth having in the dominant culture. Pluralistic societies place strong expectations of integration on members, rather than expectations of assimilation. The existence of such institutions and practices is possible if the cultural communities are accepted by the larger society in a pluralist culture and sometimes require the protection of the law. Often, the acceptance of a culture may require that the new or minority culture remove some aspects of their culture which is incompatible with the laws or values of the dominant culture. The pluralist Hamed Kazemzadeh argues that the concept of pluralist culture has been prevalent since ancient times; for example, the Achaemenid Empire, which was founded by Cyrus the Great, successfully followed a policy of incorporating and tolerating various cultures. Distinction from multiculturalism Cultural pluralism is distinct from multiculturalism, which lacks the requirement of a dominant culture. If the dominant culture is weakened, societies can easily pass from cultural pluralism into multiculturalism without any intentional steps being taken by that society. If communities function separately from each other, or compete with one another, they are not considered culturally pluralistic. In 1971, the Canadian government referred to cultural pluralism, as opposed to multiculturalism, as the "very essence" of the nation's identity. Cultural pluralism can be practiced at varying degrees by a group or an individual. A prominent example of pluralism is the United States, in which a dominant culture with strong elements of nationalism, a sporting culture, and an artistic culture contained also smaller groups with their own ethnic, religious, and cultural norms. History The notion of cultural pluralism in the United States has its roots in the transcendentalist movement, and was developed by pragmatist philosophers such as Horace Kallen, William James, and John Dewey. Randolph Bourne, a later theorist, provided one of the most famous articulations of cultural pluralism through his 1916 essay, "Trans-National America". Kallen is widely credited as being the originator of the concept of cultural pluralism. His 1915 essay in The Nation, titled "Democracy versus the Melting Pot", was written as an argument against the concept of the 'Americanization' of European immigrants. He coined the term cultural pluralism, itself, in 1924 through his Culture and Democracy in the United States. In 1976, the concept was further explored by Merwin Crawford Young in The Politics of Cultural Pluralism. Young's work, in African studies, emphasizes the flexibility of the definition of cultural pluralism within a society. More recent advocates include moral and cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder. A 1976 article in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare offered a redefinition of cultural pluralism, described as a social condition in which communities of different cultures live together and function in an open system. References Further reading Pluralism Social theories Majority–minority relations

Elements of art

Elements of art are stylistic features that are included within an art piece to help the artist communicate. The seven most common elements include line, shape, texture, form, space, color and value, with the additions of mark making, and materiality. When analyzing these intentionally utilized elements, the viewer is guided towards a deeper understanding of the work. Line Lines are marks moving in a space between two points whereby a viewer can visualize the stroke movement, direction, and intention based on how the line is oriented. Lines describe an outline, capable of producing texture according to their length and curve. There are different types of lines artists may use, including, actual, implied, vertical, horizontal, diagonal and contour lines, which all have different functions. Lines are also situational elements, requiring the viewer to have knowledge of the physical world in order to understand their flexibility, rigidity, synthetic nature, or life. Shape A shape is a two-dimensional design encased by lines to signify its height and width structure, and can have different values of color used within it to make it appear three-dimensional. In animation, shapes are used to give a character a distinct personality and features, with the animator manipulating the shapes to provide new life. There are different types of shapes an artist can use and fall under either geometrical shapes, defined by mathematics, or organic shapes, created by an artist. Simplistic, geometrical shapes include circles, triangles and squares, and provide a symbolic and synthetic feeling, whereas acute angled shapes with sharp points are perceived as dangerous shapes. Rectilinear shapes are viewed as dependable and more structurally sound, while curvilinear shapes are chaotic and adaptable. Form Form is a three-dimensional object with volume of height, width and depth. These objects include cubes, spheres and cylinders. Form is often used when referring to physical works of art, like sculptures, as form is connected most closely with those three-dimensional works. Color Color is an element consisting of hues, of which there are three properties: hue, chroma or intensity, and value. Color is present when light strikes an object and is reflected back into the eye, a reaction to a hue arising in the optic nerve. The first of the properties is hue, which is the distinguishable color, like red, blue or yellow. The next property is value, meaning the lightness or darkness of the hue. The last is chroma or intensity, distinguishing between strong and weak colors. A visual representation of chromatic scale is observable through the color wheel that uses the primary colors. Color is divided into various classes, primary color, secondary color, complimentary color, tertiary color, analogous color and neutral color. Primary colors are fundamental colors and can't be achieved by mixture of other colors (they are not mixable) and they are red, yellow and blue. Secondary colors are colors produced when two primary colors (of equal rate) are mixed together. Space (positive and negative space) Space refers to the perspective (distance between and around) and proportion (size) between shapes and objects and how their relationship with the foreground or background is perceived. There are different types of spaces an artist can achieve for different effect. Positive space refers to the areas of the work with a subject, while negative space is the space without a subject. Open and closed space coincides with three-dimensional art, like sculptures, where open spaces are empty, and closed spaces contain physical sculptural elements. Texture Texture is used to describe the surface quality of the work, referencing the types of lines the artist created. The surface quality can either be tactile (real) or strictly visual (implied). Tactile surface quality is mainly seen through three-dimensional works, like sculptures, as the viewer can see and/or feel the different textures present, while visual surface quality describes how the eye perceives the texture based on visual cues. Value Value refers to the degree of perceivable lightness of tones within an image. The element of value is compatible with the term luminosity, and can be "measured in various units designating electromagnetic radiation". The difference in values is often called contrast, and references the lightest (white) and darkest (black) tones of a work of art, with an infinite number of grey variants in between. While it is most relative to the greyscale, though, it is also exemplified within colored images. Mark making Mark making is the interaction between the artist and the materials they are using. It provides the viewer of the work with an image of what the artist had done to create the mark, reliving what the artist had done at the time. Materiality is the choice of materials used and how it impacts the work of art and how the viewer perceives it. See also Style (visual arts) Perspective (graphical) References Visual arts theory

Social change

Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformation. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic structure, for instance the transition from feudalism to capitalism, or hypothetical future transition to some form of post-capitalism. Social development is the people that develop social and emotional skills across the lifespan, with particular attention to childhood and adolescence. Healthy social development allows us to form positive relationships with family, friends, teachers, and other people in our lives. Accordingly, it may also refer to social revolution, such as the Socialist revolution presented in Marxism, or to other social movements, such as women's suffrage or the civil rights movement. Social change may be driven through cultural, religious, economic, environmental, scientific or technological forces. Prominent theories Change comes from two sources. One source is unique factors such as climate, weather, or the presence of specific groups of people. Another source is systematic factors. For example, successful development generally has the same requirements, such as a stable and flexible government, enough free and available resources, and a diverse social organization of society. On the whole, social change is usually a combination of systematic factors along with some random or unique factors. Many theories attempt to explain social change. One view suggests that a theory of change should include elements such as structural aspects of change (like population shifts), processes and mechanisms of social change, and directions of change. Christian: In Christianity & Judaism social change is seen in terms of God's blessings on faithfulness or curses on disobedience. See Deuteronomy chapter 28. Hegelian: The classic Hegelian dialectic model of change is based on the interaction of opposing forces. Starting from a point of momentary stasis, Thesis countered by Antithesis first yields conflict, then it subsequently results in a new Synthesis. Marxist: Marxism presents a dialectical and materialist concept of history, seeing humankind's history as a fundamental "struggle between social classes". Kuhnian: The philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn argues in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions with respect to the Copernican Revolution that people are likely to continue utilizing an apparently unworkable paradigm until a better paradigm is commonly accepted. A Kuhnian approach to the study of societies is provided by the critical juncture approach to social order and change. Heraclitan: The Greek philosopher Heraclitus used the metaphor of a river to speak of change thus: "On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow" (DK22B12). What Heraclitus seems to be suggesting here, later interpretations notwithstanding, is that, in order for the river to remain the river, change must constantly be taking place. Thus one may think of the Heraclitan model as parallel to that of a living organism, which, in order to remain alive, must constantly change. A contemporary application of this approach is shown in the social-change theory SEED-SCALE which builds off of the complexity theory subfield of emergence. Daoist: The Chinese philosophical work Dao De Jing, I.8 and II.78 uses the metaphor of water as the ideal agent of change. Water, although soft and yielding, will eventually wear away stone. Change, in this model, is to be natural, harmonious and steady, albeit imperceptible. Types of change Social changes can vary according to speed and scope and impetus. Some research on the various types of social change focuses on social organizations such as corporations. Different manifestations of change include: Fabian change – gradual and reformist incremental amelioration after the manner of the Fabian Society radical change – improvements root and branch in the style of political radicalism revolutionary change – abrupt, radical and drastic change, with implications of violence and of starting afresh (perhaps most popular as a political bogeyman) transformational change – a New-age version of radical change, and thus difficult to define continuous change, open-ended change – change (allegedly) for the sake of change top-down change – reliance on leadership bottom-up change – reliance on the huddled masses socio-tectonic change – postulated deep-seated fundamental social shifts Current examples Global demographic shifts One of the most obvious changes currently occurring is the change in the relative global population distribution between countries. In recent decades, developing countries have become a larger proportion of the world population, increasing from 68% in 1950 to 82% in 2010, and the population of the developed countries has declined from 32% of the total world population in 1950 to 18% in 2010. China and India continue to be the largest countries, followed by the US as a distant third. However, population growth throughout the world is slowing. Population growth among developed countries has been slowing since the 1950s and is now at 0.3% annual growth. Population growth among the less developed countries excluding the least developed ones has also been slowing since 1960 and is now at 1.3% annually. Population growth among the least developed countries has slowed relatively little; as of 2022, the annual growth rate is 2.33%. Gendered patterns of work and care In much of the developed world, changes from distinct men's work and women's work to more gender equal patterns have been economically important since the mid-20th century. Both men and women are considered to be great contributors to social change worldwide. See also Accelerating change Activism Alternative movement Comparative historical research Constitutional economics Critical juncture theory Culture change Decadence Global Social Change Research Project Globalization Historical sociology Industrialisation Lifestyle (sociology) Modernization theory Reform movement Reformism Revolution Secularization Social conservatism Social degeneration Social development theory Social movement Social progress Social relation Social revolution Social transformation Societal collapse Societal transformation Sociocultural evolution References Further reading Eisenstadt, S. N. (1973). Tradition, Change, and Modernity. Krieger Publishing. Giddens, Anthony (2006). Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Haralambos, Michael and Holborn, Martin (2008). Sociology: Themes and Perspectives. London: HarperCollins. Harper, C. L. (1993). Exploring Social Change. New Jersey: Engelwood Cliffs. Milstein, T. & Castro-Sotomayor, J. (2020). "Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity." London, UK: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840. Talcott Parsons, The Social System (1951). New York: The Free Press Polanyi, Karl (1944). The Great Transformation. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Tilly, Charles (1988). "Misreading, then Rereading, Nineteenth-Century Social Change." Pp. 332–58 in Social Structures: A Network Approach, eds. Barry Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charles (2004). Social Movements, 1768-2004. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. . Vago, Steven (1999). Social Change, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. . External links Understanding The World Today – reports about global social, political, economic, demographic and technological change Social Change Collection from Georgia State University Social movements

Culture theory

Culture theory is the branch of comparative anthropology and semiotics that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms. Overview In the 19th century, "culture" was used by some to refer to a wide array of human activities, and by some others as a synonym for "civilization". In the 20th century, anthropologists began theorizing about culture as an object of scientific analysis. Some used it to distinguish human adaptive strategies from the largely instinctive adaptive strategies of animals, including the adaptive strategies of other primates and non-human hominids, whereas others used it to refer to symbolic representations and expressions of human experience, with no direct adaptive value. Both groups understood culture as being definitive of human nature. According to many theories that have gained wide acceptance among anthropologists, culture exhibits the way that humans interpret their biology and their environment. According to this point of view, culture becomes such an integral part of human existence that it is the human environment, and most cultural change can be attributed to human adaptation to historical events. Moreover, given that culture is seen as the primary adaptive mechanism of humans and takes place much faster than human biological evolution, most cultural change can be viewed as culture adapting to itself. Although most anthropologists try to define culture in such a way that it separates human beings from other animals, many human traits are similar to those of other animals, particularly the traits of other primates. For example, chimpanzees have big brains, but human brains are bigger. Similarly, bonobos exhibit complex sexual behaviour, but human beings exhibit much more complex sexual behaviours. As such, anthropologists often debate whether human behaviour is different from animal behaviour in degree rather than in kind; they must also find ways to distinguish cultural behaviour from sociological behaviour and psychological behavior. Acceleration and amplification of these various aspects of culture change have been explored by complexity economist, W. Brian Arthur. In his book, The Nature of Technology, Arthur attempts to articulate a theory of change that considers that existing technologies (or material culture) are combined in unique ways that lead to novel new technologies. Behind that novel combination is a purposeful effort arising in human motivation. This articulation would suggest that we are just beginning to understand what might be required for a more robust theory of culture and culture change, one that brings coherence across many disciplines and reflects an integrating elegance. See also Cultural studies Culturology Cultural behavior Culture industry Critical theory Dual inheritance theory Engaged theory Intercultural relations Popular culture studies Semiotics of culture Structuralism Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School References Groh, Arnold A. Theories of Culture. Routledge, London. 2020. Ogburn, William F. Social Change. 1922. Reprint. Dell, New York. 1966. Rogers, G.F.C. The Nature of the Engineering: A Philosophy of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1983. Schumpeter, Joseph. The Theory of Economic Development. 1912. Reprint. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1966. 1934. Cultural anthropology Cultural studies Theories

Sociocultural anthropology

Sociocultural anthropology is a term used to refer to social anthropology and cultural anthropology together. It is one of the four main branches of anthropology. Sociocultural anthropologists focus on the study of society and culture, while often interested in cultural diversity and universalism. Sociocultural anthropologists recognise a change in the nature of the field and that a previous focus on traditional tribal perspectives has shifted to a contemporary understanding. Methodologies have altered accordingly, and the discipline continues to evolve with that of society. Globalisation has contributed to the changing influence of the state on individuals and their interactions. Overview The rubric cultural anthropology is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in approach, are oriented to the ways in which culture affects individual experience, or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. Cultural anthropology focuses on how individuals make sense of the world around them using knowledge, beliefs, morals, arts, laws and customs of groups. Social anthropology is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewhat secondary to the main issues of social scientific inquiry. Sociocultural anthropology, which is understood to include linguistic anthropology, is concerned with the problem of difference and similarity within and between human populations. The discipline arose through the expansion of European colonial empires, and its practices and theories have been questioned and reformulated along with processes of decolonization. Such issues have re-emerged as transnational processes have challenged the centrality of the nation-state to theorizations about culture and power. New challenges have emerged as public debates about multiculturalism and the increasing use of the culture concept outside of the academy and among peoples studied by anthropology. History The synergy of sociology and anthropology was initially developed during the early 1920s by European scholars. Both disciplines shared a common search for a science of society. During the 20th century, the disciplines diverged further to as cultural studies were integrated, centralising geographical and methodological features. 1920s-50s 'Social' and 'cultural' anthropology was developed in the 1920s. It was associated with the social sciences and linguistics rather than the human biology and archaeology studied in anthropology. Specialists in the respective fields of social and cultural anthropology were elemental in the foundations of the later developed synergy. Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski marked the point of differentiation between social and cultural anthropology in 1930, evident in texts from this period. In the 1930s and 40s, an influx of monographs and comparative studies of 'tribal societies' emerged. Meyer Fortes and Edward Evans Pritchard described and classified African societies in African Political Systems (1940). Their comparative anthology aimed to provide a basis for sociological knowledge by classifying kin-based bans instead of relying on empirical observation. Claude Lévi-Strauss, used structuralism as a way to analyse cultural systems in terms of their structural relations, including that of kinship. In 1949, he attempted to classify marriage systems from diverse locations. Structuralism was applied to anthropology by Lévi-Strauss to reaffirms the coexistence between the individual and society and categorise information about cultural systems by the formal relationships among their elements. Structuralism remains a central concept involved in the study of sociocultural anthropology. 1960s–90s Before WWII, 'social' anthropology and 'cultural' anthropology were still separate entities in the field. The war called upon anthropologists from all countries to assist in the war effort. Anthropologists were extensively involved in resettlements in Europe and consulting issues of racial status in occupied areas. Ethical issues surrounding the allies involvement were topical among anthropologists and institutional development and practiced methodologies were altered by programs in 'developing countries'. As developing countries grew independence, they grew a dislike for an apparent imperialistic nature of anthropological studies, declining work in the field. After the war, anthropologists collaborated ideas and methodologies to form the collective 'sociocultural anthropology'. Topical interests included that of religion, kingship, acculturation, function, and community studies. During the 1970s, public spending was increased in most industrialised counties which expanded social rights, produced dramatic rises in wealth, living standards and overall equity. This neoliberal globalisation movement followed through until the 1990s. Increased spending assisted to provide academic opportunity in anthropology during 1974–1990. After this period, a steady decline in anthropology opportunity is the continued trend. The drastic growth of students in Ph.D. and M.A. programs, decline in university funding, downward shift in birth rates and decreased government funding are contributors to anthropologies current state. 2000s–present Traditional methodologies used to study sociocultural anthropology have changed with the shift in culture in modernised society. Individuals undergo daily routines differing to that of previous decades. Individuals participate in minority groups within which only certain aspects relate to the broader national culture. Anthropologists are unable to receive a holistic ethnography, as individuals return to the private sphere after interacting within their minority groups. Impacts of globalisation, neoliberalism, and capitalism have contributed to the decline in anthropology field work. The job market of the 2000s is centralised around those occupations that are income generating, reducing the number of university students in the social science fields. In accordance, universities have reduced funding for many anthropological programs. The 2008 global financial crisis enhanced this effect as universities had to decline spending as income generation was lesser. Decreased spending in the anthropological sector in combination with an increasing trend of anthropology university students has results in decreasing job opportunities. Sociocultural anthropological study of the 21st century, produces facts created by an intersection of cultural classification systems and heterogenous and dynamic societies. A contributor to this dynamic societal environment is the media. The influence of the media produces accessibility for all to gather experience and evidence, however charged political conditions sway social discourse. Anthropologists use theory such as structuralism to decipher epistemological obstacles. Considering that systems are defined by the laws of their constitutive elements rather than the content alone is a lens through which modern society is studied. Theoretical foundations Concepts Sociocultural anthropology divides into a broader national level and minority of subcultural groups to ethnographically study societies and cultures. The national culture is emitted through formally organised institutions including those of government forms and legal systems, economic institution, religious organisation, educational systems, law enforcement and military organisations. National achievements are influential on sociocultural integration however can be limited to upper class relevance only. Subcultural segments are groups of individuals behaving within the national culture. Subcultural groups are observed through vertical lens, differentiation because of national development, and horizontal lens, class and occupational divisions structured by societal hierarchy. Human Migration Human migration is a topic of anthropology which produced a macro and micro impact on society and its culture. Human migration is ‘the movement of persons away from their place of usual residence, either across an international border or within a state’. An interplay of social, political, economic, demographic, cultural and geographical factors remain central to the movement of individuals. Boas (1920) in his article The Methods of Ethnology (1920) states that it is the migration and dissemination of peoples rather than evolution that provides the basis for ethological research. Migration is accepted as the cause for the similarities of languages the dissemination of ideas and inventions across continents. The process of migration is responsible for the carrying of culture whilst the adaptation of culture to societies in different environments. Linguistics The discipline of linguistics is interrelated with the study of society and culture. Both fields share a common intellectual origin in 19th Century scholarship as archaeologists and early folklorists looked for origins of culture in folktales and shared memory. These early anthropologists narrowly focused on the influence structural codes had on the distinction between communities. The comparison of societies prompted early linguistic enquiries. In the 20th century, there became a distinction between linguistic anthropology and formal linguistics, with greater focus placed on the cultural and behaviour lens of language. Formal linguistics remains to be studied through a cognitive viewpoint. Linguistic anthropology looks at how language is used in the social and cultural life of people in different societies.Speech is used in societies as a system to indicate the series of certain events and how role relations effect such events. Sociology Sociocultural integration studies the interaction of the spheres and draws comparisons with alternate societies and cultures. Sociocultural anthropology is closely aligned with sociology sharing theoretical generalisation for social science and reflection of human lives. The 20th Century saw the separation of the two as differences in research topics, geographic focus and methodological emphasis diverged. Commonly, sociocultural anthropology centralises study of broader political, ethical, and economic subjects within small-scale societies whereas sociology looks at societies as a whole. Sociologically trained ethnographers have less regard for anthropological theory and place greater emphasis on empirical data. Recently, the two have reconverged as globalisation has aligned subject ideas and methodologies. Methodologies The traditional anthropological research method is to gather what people say and do through initial observations. Participant observation hinges on a synthesis of subjective insider and outsider elements. Insider elements rely on the fieldworker to learn what behaviour means to the people. Outsider elements are gathered through observations and experiences drawing comparisons with internal cultural customs and behaviours with alternate cultures. These observations are transferred into a monograph of elements sorted by importance and studied in relation to anthropological theories or questions. The process is controlled, and a hypothesis is tested reporting results after every return. Alternatively, the process may be more fortuitous if unique or unexpected events occur, and the writing processes is extended to make sense of elements. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have recognised the importance of collaboration through reflections of experiences in the field, relationships with informants and contexts used to gather material. The reflections provide a better understanding for readers of ethnographic texts and anthropologists in practicing with awareness of their own biases and emotions when writing. This has led to advancements in the field of sociocultural anthropology. The Marxist and Structuralist theories are methods for gathering anthropological information are being challenged. Marxism validifies the necessity for conventional field work, exploring the intersection between empirical observation and theoretical frameworks with the aim of improving each. Lévi-Straussian structuralists (Lévi-Strauss 1969) are more concerned with theoretical structures. See also Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck's values orientation theory Claude Lévi-Strauss's Structuralism Human Migration Linguistics Sociology References Further reading Social anthropology Cultural anthropology Ethnography Linguistics

Westernization

Westernization (or Westernisation, see spelling differences), also Europeanisation or occidentalization (from the Occident), is a process whereby societies come under or adopt what is considered to be Western culture, in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, economics, lifestyle, law, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality, perceptions, diet, clothing, language, writing system, religion, and philosophy. During colonialism it often involved the spread of Christianity. A related concept is Northernization, which is the consolidation or influence of the Global North. Westernization has been a growing influence across the world in the last few centuries, with some thinkers assuming Westernization to be the equivalent of modernization, a way of thought that is often debated. The overall process of Westernization is often two-sided in that Western influences and interests themselves are joined with parts of the affected society, at minimum, to become a more Westernized society, with the putative goal of attaining a Western life or some aspects of it, while Western societies are themselves affected by this process and interaction with non-Western groups. Westernization traces its roots back to Ancient Greece. Later, the Roman Empire took on the first process of Westernization as it was heavily influenced by Greece and created a new culture based on the principles and values of the Ancient Greek society. The Romans emerged with a culture that grew into a new Western identity based on the Greco-Roman society. Westernization can also be compared to acculturation and enculturation. Acculturation is "the process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between cultural groups and their individual members". After contact, changes in cultural patterns are evident within one or both cultures. Specific to Westernization and the non-Western culture, foreign societies tend to adopt changes in their social systems relative to Western ideology, lifestyle, and physical appearance, along with numerous other aspects, and shifts in culture patterns can be seen to take root as a community becomes acculturated to Western customs and characteristics – in other words, Westernized. The phenomenon of Westernization does not follow any one specific pattern across societies as the degree of adaption and fusion with Western customs will occur at varying magnitudes within different communities. Specifically, the extent to which domination, destruction, resistance, survival, adaptation, or modification affect a native culture may differ following inter-ethnic contact. Western world The West was originally defined as the Western world. A thousand years later, the East-West Schism separated the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church from each other. The definition of Western changed as the West was influenced by and spread to other nations. Islamic and Byzantine scholars added to the Western canon when their stores of Greek and Roman literature jump-started the Renaissance. The Cold War also reinterpreted the definition of the West by excluding the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Today, most modern uses of the term refer to the societies in the West and their close genealogical, linguistic, and philosophical descendants. Typically included are those countries whose ethnic identity and dominant culture are derived from Western European culture. Though it shares a similar historical background, the Western world is not a monolithic bloc, as many cultural, linguistic, religious, political, and economic differences exist between Western countries and populations. Significantly influenced countries The following countries or regions experienced a significant influence by the process of Westernization: Armenia: Geographically located in the Caucasus region of West Asia, Armenia's culture has been increasingly influenced by the process of Westernization. Throughout its history, Armenia has been influenced by Western and Eastern civilizations. Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion in 301 AD. The traditional Armenian homeland composed of Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia came under the rule of the Roman, Persian, Arab, Ottoman, and Russian empires. Current Armenia gained its independence in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, the Government of Armenia maintains positive relations with Iran, Russia, and the West, including the United States and the EU. The country participates in various organizations linked to the EU, such as the Eastern Partnership, the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly and is a member of the Council of Europe, the European Political Community, the OSCE, the BSEC, La Francophonie, and NATO's Partnership for Peace and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 2017, Armenia signed an extensive agreement with the EU; the CEPA agreement further strengthens economic and political ties. Armenia is also a member of various European organisations for sports, education, and cultural events such as UEFA, the European Olympic Committees, and the European Higher Education Area, and participates in the Eurovision Song Contest. Azerbaijan: Geographically located in the Caucasus mountain range (natural border between Western Asia and Eastern Europe). Azerbaijan borrowed Western traditions mainly as a result of imperial Russian influence, with the Muslim world's first opera and secular democracy being established there before its invasion by the Soviets. Currently, the country participates in various European organizations including the EU's Eastern Partnership, the Council of Europe, and GUAM. It is also a member of European organisations for sports such as UEFA and the European Olympic Committees, and regularly participates in the Eurovision Song Contest. Despite this, the country remains an authoritarian regime with considerable human rights and press freedom issues. Cape Verde: An insular country in West Africa, Cape Verde has influences of European culture (particularly Portuguese) and, together with the Azores and Madeira (Portugal), and the Canary Islands (Spain), it is part of the archipelagos of Macaronesia. Due to this, the country has shared close diplomatic and cultural relations with both Iberian countries and has even tried to approach Western organizations, like the EU and NATO. Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore: Despite their geographical positions in East and Southeast Asia, due to the heavy influences of European heritage (particularly British and Portuguese) culture, they are at-least partially westernized. Israel: Although Israel is geographically located in Western Asia, many Western cultural influences were brought in Israel by Jewish settlers from the diaspora, particularly countries like Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is a member of the OECD. It is often a member of European organisations for sports and cultural events such as UEFA and Eurovision, which is due in large part to Israel's ouster from their respective Asian counterparts. According to Sammy Smooha, a professor emeritus of sociology at Haifa University, Israel is described as a "hybrid," a modern and developed "semi-Western" state. With time, he acknowledged, Israel will become "more and more Western." But as a result of the ongoing Arab–Israeli conflict, full Westernization will be a slow process in Israel. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan: Although they are geographically located in East Asia, the three countries have westernized themselves by adopting democratic forms of government, free market economic systems, major contributions to Western science and technology, and could be described as "hybrid", "semi-Western" states. Americas: Most countries in Americas are considered Western countries, largely because most of its peoples are descended from Europeans (Spanish and Portuguese settlers and later immigration from other European nations), and their society operates in a highly Westernized way. Most countries in the Americas use either English, French, Spanish or Portuguese as their official language. According to the CIA World Factbook, there has also been considerable immigration to South America, particularly to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, from European nations other than Spain and Portugal (for example, from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, etc.—see Immigration to Argentina, Immigration to Brazil, Immigration to Chile, and Immigration to Uruguay). Lebanon: Geographically located in Western Asia, Lebanon is the most Westernized country in the Arab world. In ancient history, Lebanon was ruled by the Hellenistic and Roman empires. Even though it was later ruled by the Caliphate, Lebanon has the highest proportion of Christians in the Arab world, and Christians have dominated the country politically, economically and culturally. Since it was historically a French mandate, France promotes French culture and European-style education in Lebanon. At that time, Beirut was known as the "Little Paris of the Middle East". Currently, French language is still widely spoken and Lebanon is a member of the Organization of la Francophonie. Philippines: Geographically located in Southeast Asia, due to heavy influences of European (particularly Spanish) and American cultures in Filipino culture, the country is considered Westernized. Moreover, nearly 90% of the Filipino population practices Christianity. Thailand: Although Thailand is geographically located in Southeast Asia, through the 18th and 19th centuries, Siam faced imperialist pressure from France and the United Kingdom, including many unequal treaties with Western powers and forced concessions of territory; it nevertheless remained the only Southeast Asian country to avoid direct Western colonization. The country became westernized by itself, the Siamese system of government was centralized and initially organized into a modern unitary absolute monarchy during the reign of Chulalongkorn, later as a constitutional monarchy following the Siamese revolution of 1932. In the late 1950s, Thailand became a major ally of the United States, and played a key anti-communist role in the region as a member of the SEATO. Currently, Thailand continues to have strong ties to Western countries. Turkey: Although geographically only 3% of Turkey lies in Europe (East Thrace) and the rest in Western Asia, Turkey is one of the most Westernized Turkic countries. The country has a similar economic system, has a customs union with the European Union in addition to being an official candidate for membership, and is a member of traditional European & Western organisations such as the OECD, the Council of Europe, and NATO. It is also a member of European organisations for sports such as UEFA and the European Olympic Committees, and has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest. Relations between Turkey and Western countries have been deteriorating since the 2010s. Vietnam:Geographically located in Southeast Asia, due to the influence of French rule, Vietnamese completely abandoned Chữ Hán and Chữ Nôm that the French government considered backward and hindered the spread of European ideas, and adopted Latin script (chữ Quốc ngữ). During French rule, a large number of French-style buildings were built in Saigon and Hanoi, thus earning the nickname Paris of the East. Christianity (especially Catholicism) has a huge influence in Vietnam. After the partition of Vietnam, South Vietnam was Americanized and North Vietnam was Sovietized. Currently, Vietnam is a member of the Organization of la Francophonie. Views Kishore Mahbubani Kishore Mahbubani's book entitled The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World (Public Affairs), is very optimistic. It proposes that a new global civilization is being created. The majority of non-Western countries admire and adhere to Western living standards. It says this newly emerging global order has to be ruled through new policies and attitudes. He argues that policymakers all over the world must change their preconceptions and accept that we live in one world. The national interests must be balanced with global interests and the power must be shared. Mahbubani urges that only through these actions can we create a world that converges benignly. Samuel P. Huntington posits a conflict between "the West and the Rest" and offers three forms of general action that non-Western civilizations can react toward Western countries. Non-Western countries can attempt to achieve isolation to preserve their own values and protect themselves from Western invasion. He argues that the cost of this action is high and only a few states can pursue it. According to the theory of "band-wagoning" non-Western countries can join and accept Western values. Non-Western countries can make an effort to balance Western power through modernization. They can develop economic, and military power and cooperate with other non-Western countries against the West while still preserving their own values and institutions. Mahbubani counters this argument in his other book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. This time, he argues that Western influence is now "unraveling", with Eastern powers such as China arising. He states: He explains the decline of Western influence, stating reasons as to the loss of Western credibility with the rest of the world. There is an increasing perception that Western countries will prioritize their domestic problems over international issues, despite their spoken and written promises of having global interests and needs. The West has become increasingly biased and close-minded in their perception of "non-Western" countries such as China, declaring it an "un-free" country for not following a democratic form of government. The West uses a double standard when dealing with international issues. As the biggest Eastern populations gain more power, they are moving away from the Western influences they sought after in the past. The "anti-Americanism" sentiment is not temporary, as Westerners like to believe – the change in the Eastern mindset has become far too significant for it to change back. Samuel P. Huntington In contrast to territorial delineation, others, like the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations, consider what is "Western" based on religious affiliation, such as deeming the majority-Western Christian part of Europe and North America the West, and creating 6 other civilizations, including Latin America, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu and Slavic-Orthodox, to organize the rest of the globe. Huntington argued that after the end of the Cold War, world politics had been moved into a new aspect in which non-Western civilizations were no more the exploited recipients of Western civilization but become another important actor joining the West to shape and move the world history. Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. Edward Said In Orientalism Edward Said views Westernization as it occurred in the process of colonization, an exercise of essentializing a "subject race" in order to more effectively dominate them. Said references Arthur Balfour, the British Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905, who regarded the rise of nationalism in Egypt in the late 19th century as counterproductive to a "benevolent" system of occupational rule. Balfour frames his argument in favor of continued rule over the Egyptian people by appealing to England's great "understanding" of Egypt's civilization and purporting that England's cultural strengths complemented and made them natural superiors to Egypt's racial deficiencies. Regarding this claim, Said says, "Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to its prime to its decline – and of course, it means being able to...The object of such knowledge is inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; this object is a 'fact' which, if it develops, changes, or otherwise transforms itself...[the civilization] nevertheless is fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it." The act of claiming coherent knowledge of a society in effect objectifies and others it into marginalization, making people who are classified into that race as "almost everywhere nearly the same." Said also argues that this relationship to the "inferior" races, in fact, works to also fortify and make coherent what is meant by "the West"; if "The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, "different..." then "...the European is rational, virtuous, mature, normal." Thus, "the West" acts as a construction in the similar way as does "the Orient" – it is a created notion to justify a particular set of power relations, in this case, the colonization and rule of a foreign country. Process Colonization and Europeanization (1400s–1970s) From the 1400s onward, Europeanization and colonialism spread gradually over much of the world and controlled different regions during this five centuries long period, colonizing or subjecting the majority of the globe. Following World War II, Western leaders and academics sought to expand innate liberties and international equality. A period of decolonization began. At the end of the 1960s, most colonies were allowed autonomy. Those new states often adopted some aspects of Western politics such as a constitution, while frequently reacting against Western culture. In Asia General reactions to Westernization can include fundamentalism, protectionism, or embrace to varying degrees. Countries such as Korea and China attempted to adopt a system of isolationism but have ultimately juxtaposed parts of Western culture into their own, often adding original and unique social influences, as exemplified by the introduction of over 1,300 locations of the traditionally Western fast-food chain McDonald's into China. Specific to Taiwan, the industry of bridal photography (see Photography in Taiwan) has been significantly influenced by the Western idea of "love". As examined by author Bonnie Adrian, Taiwanese bridal photos of today provide a striking contrast to past accepted norms, contemporary couples often displaying great physical affection and, at times, placed in typically Western settings to augment the modernity, in comparison to the historically prominent relationship, often stoic and distant, exhibited between bride and groom. Though Western concepts may have initially played a role in creating this cultural shift in Taiwan, the market and desire for bridal photography has not continued without adjustments and social modifications to this Western notion. Korea In Korea, the first contact with Westernization was during the Joseon Dynasty, in the 17th century. Every year, the emperor dispatched a few envoy ambassadors to China and while they were staying in Beijing, the Western missionaries were there. Through the missionaries, Korean ambassadors were able to adopt Western technology. In the 19th century, Korea started to send ambassadors to the foreign countries, other than Japan and China. While Korea was being Westernized slowly in the late 19th century, Korea had the idea of "Eastern ways and Western frames (東道西器)", meaning that they accepted the Western "bowl", but used it with Eastern principles inside. Japan In Japan, the Netherlands continued to play a key role in transmitting Western know-how to the Japanese from the 17th century to the mid-19th century, because the Japanese had only opened their doors to Dutch merchants before US Navy Commodore Matthew Perry's visit in 1853. After Commodore Perry's visit, Japan began to deliberately accept Western culture to the point of hiring Westerners to teach Western customs and traditions to the Japanese starting in the Meiji era. Since then, many Japanese politicians have encouraged the Westernization of Japan with the use of the term Datsu-A Ron, which means the argument for "leaving Asia" or "Good-bye Asia". In Datsu-A Ron, "Westernization" was described as an "unavoidable" but "fruitful" change. In contrast, despite many advances in industrial efficiency, Japan has sustained a culture of strict social hierarchy and limited individualization. Iran In Iran, the process of Westernization dates back to the country's attempt to westernize during the beginning of the 1930s, which was dictated by Shah Rezā Khan and continued by his son during the Cold War and agitated the largely conservative Shia Muslim masses of the country which was partly responsible for the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Turkey In Turkey, the synchronization process with the West is known as the Tanzimat (reorganization) period. The Ottoman Empire began to change itself according to modern science, practice, and culture. The Empire took some innovations from the West. Also, with the contribution of foreign engineers, the Empire repaired its old arm systems. Newly-found schools, permanent ambassadors, and privy councils were an essential improvement for the Empire. As a result, Turkey is one of the most Westernized majority-Muslim nations. India India's independence movement took inspiration from Western ideas about democracy and human rights. India's ruling class after independence in 1947 remained somewhat Westernized; India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had such a substantial Britishness that he once described himself as "the last Englishman to rule India." In 2014, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power on the back of perceptions of the ruling class being insufficiently Indian. Globalization (1970s–present) Westernization is often regarded as a part of the ongoing process of globalization. This theory proposes that Western thought has led to globalisation, and that globalisation propagates Western culture, leading to a cycle of Westernization. On top of largely Western government systems such as democracy and constitution, many Western technologies and customs like music, clothing, and cars have been introduced across various parts of the world and copied and created in traditionally non-Western countries. Westernization has been reversed in some countries following war or regime change. For example: Russia in aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution around 1917, Continental China by 1949, Cuba in aftermath of the Revolution in 1959, and Iran by the 1979 revolution. The main characteristics are economic and political (free trade) democratisation, combined with the spread of an individualised culture. Often it was regarded as opposite to the worldwide influence of communism. After the break-up of the USSR in late 1991 and the end of the Cold War, many of its component states and allies nevertheless underwent Westernization, including privatization of hitherto state-controlled industry. With debates still going on, the question of whether globalization can be characterized as Westernization can be seen in various aspects. Globalization is happening in various aspects, ranging from economics, politics, and even food or culture. Westernization, to some schools, is seen as a form of globalization that leads the world to be similar to Western powers. Being globalized means taking positive aspects of the world, but globalization also brings the debate about being Westernized. Democracy, fast food, and American pop culture can all be examples that are considered as Westernization of the world. According to the "Theory of the Globe scrambled by Social network: a new Sphere of Influence 2.0", published by Jura Gentium (University of Florence), the increasing role of Westernization is characterized by social media. The comparison with Eastern societies, who decided to ban American social media platforms (such as Iran and China with Facebook and Twitter), marks a political desire to avoid the Westernization process of their own populations and ways to communicate. Consequences Due to the colonization of the Americas and Oceania by Europeans, the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic make-up of the Americas and Oceania has been changed. This is most visible in settler colonies such as: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States,Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, where the traditional indigenous population has been predominantly replaced demographically by non-indigenous settlers due to transmitted disease and conflict. This demographic takeover in settler countries has often resulted in the linguistic, social, and cultural marginalisation of indigenous people. Even in countries where large populations of indigenous people remain or the indigenous peoples have mixed (mestizo) considerably with European settlers, such as: Mexico, Peru, Panama, Suriname, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Belize, Paraguay, South Africa, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Guyana, El Salvador, Jamaica, Cuba, or Nicaragua, relative marginalisation still exists. Linguistic influence Due to colonization and immigration, the formerly prevalent languages in the Americas, Oceania, and part of South Africa, are now usually Indo-European languages or creoles based on them: English (Australia, New Zealand, United States, and Canada without mainly French-speaking Quebec); English along with English-based creole languages (Anglophone Africa, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Grenada, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Trinidad and Tobago). French (Quebec, New Brunswick and parts of Ontario in Canada and Saint Pierre and Miquelon); French along with French-based creole languages (Francophone Africa, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Vanuatu, Martinique, and Saint-Barthelemy). Spanish ( the Americas, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, and the Philippines). Portuguese (Brazil, Lusophone Africa, East Timor, Macau, Goa, and other members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries). Dutch along with Creole languages (Suriname, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles). Afrikaans along with English (parts of South Africa and Namibia). German along with Creole languages (along with Afrikaans in Namibia and some areas in the US, such as Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania Dutch)) Many indigenous languages are on the verge of becoming extinct. Some settler countries have preserved indigenous languages; for example, in New Zealand, the Māori language is one of three official languages, the others being English and New Zealand sign language, another example is Ireland, where Irish is the first official language, followed by English as the second official language. Sports importance in Westernization The importance of sports partly comes from its connection to Westernization. The insight by Edelman, R., & Wilson, W. (2017) explains “This new system of thought and practices imbued with positive values in the exertion and strategic deployment of the human body, embracing the Anglo-American notion that physical activity was meaningful in and of itself, conducive to values such as learning and character-building. Modern athletics and competitive sports, avatars of this new body culture, elicited largely willing local receptions in North Asia, though there were no doubt isolated cases of coercive foisting better characterized as cultural imperialism.” See also References Further reading ' The Limits of Westernization: American and East Asian Intellectuals Create Modernity, 1860-1960 (2019) Routledge, written by Jon Thares Davidann The Decline of the West (1918), written by Oswald Spengler. The End of History and the Last Man (1992), written by Francis Fukuyama. The Clash of Civilizations (1996), written by Samuel P. Huntington. The Triumph of the West (1985) written by Oxford University historian J.M. Roberts. Gardels, Nathan (1997) 'Clash of civilizations: modernization without Westernization', The National Times, May/June: 8-10. Global culture Cultural assimilation Cultural geography Imperialism Western culture

Cultural identity theory

Cultural identity refers to a person's sense of belonging to a particular culture or group. This process involves learning about and accepting traditions, heritage, language, religion, ancestry, aesthetics, thinking patterns, and social structures of a culture. Normally, people internalize the beliefs, values, norms, and social practices of their culture and identify themselves with that culture. The culture becomes a part of their self-concept. However, some studies have noted that existing cultural identity theory may not account for the fact that different individuals and groups may not react to or interpret events, happenings, attitudes, etc. in the same ways as other individuals or groups. Myron Lustig notes that cultural identities are central to a person's sense of self. That is because cultural identities “are central, dynamic, and multifaceted components of one’s self concept”. Lustig also points out that cultural identities are dynamic, and exist within a changing social context. As a result, a person's identity changes as do one's ongoing experiences in life. Other researchers describe cultural identity as referring to the content of values as guiding principles, to meaningful symbols, and to life styles that individuals share with others, though not necessarily within recognizable groups. In addition, Boski et al. point out that most books and studies have ignored cultural identity as a theoretical construct in the field of cross-cultural psychology. Instead, books and journals report works on the theme of social identity. Social identity is described as a sense of “We-ness,” or attachment to a group that one is a member of, and by comparison to others. The sense of “We-ness” remains culturally empty, however. Even with natural groups, it is portrayed in trait-attributes, “which is not different from those used to characterize individuals”. There is, however, research evidence about the social (ethnic) vs. cultural distinction. This study found that the task-oriented cultural style was generally more favored than the task-plus interpersonal alternative, particularly among Anglo-American participants, for whom ethnicity did not matter. Mexican and Latino participants, however, showed some degree of favoritism toward ethnically similar participants. It seems that there are different viewpoints regarding cultural and social identities. Cultural identity is defined as the identity of a group or culture or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Further, Cultural identity is similar to, and overlaps with, identity politics. New forms of identification have been suggested to break down the understanding of the individual as a whole subject into a collection of various cultural identifiers. Such identifiers can result from various conditions including: location, gender, race, history, nationality, language, sexuality, religious beliefs, ethnicity, aesthetics, and even food. In places like the U.S. and Canada, where the people are ethnically diverse, social unity is primarily based on common social values and beliefs. However, some critics of cultural identity declare that cultural identity based upon difference is a divisive force in society. In addition, cultural identity may be defined by the social network of people imitating and following the social norms as presented by the media. Therefore, instead of learning behavior and knowledge from cultural or religious groups, people may be learning social norms from the media to build on their cultural identity. Language may also be an important factor in culture identity. The communication that comes with sharing a language promotes connections and roots to ancestors and cultural histories. When young people are severed from the ideals and positively sanctioned statuses, feelings of alienation or social isolation may develop. These feelings can result in undesired treatment and status. This process results in personal marginalization, and it may lead to social marginalization which includes that person's relative economic, employment, educational, and cultural loss compared to those around him. This provides a second source of alienation from mainstream society. This can cause an individual to experience extreme discomfort called ego identity discomfort. Because external sources have too much control, the individual cannot construct a personal definition of him/her self. The person is then motivated to identify with an alternative social group such as a drug subcultural group. Such groups provide opportunities to resolve identity problems. Identification with such a group reduces the person's ego identity discomfort, or it helps to solve identity problems. Scholars today are focusing on the basic elements of social organization (race, ethnicity, gender, and social class) in their theory and research. In the case of drug subcultures, it is reported that Anderson (1998) discovered that the composition of the drug subcultural groups differed between blacks and whites. Blacks described neighborhood and school based groups as securing an improved social status and reputation. On the other hand, Anderson (1998) found that the drug subcultural groups reported by whites differed. These groups were located at nightclubs, bars, colleges, high schools and around the neighborhood. Some of these groups were “other” activity oriented, such as college groups or the entertainment industry, and these groups had a “very strong” interest in drugs. Whites reported using many different drugs, from alcohol and cocaine to marijuana and heroin. References Further reading Groh, A. (2019). Theories of Culture. London: Routledge. Theories of Identity. (2012). Retrieved Feb. 28, 2012. Anthropology Cultural geography Identity politics Sociology of culture

Anamorphosis

Anamorphosis is a distorted projection that requires the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices, or both to view a recognizable image. It is used in painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special effects. The word is derived from the Greek prefix ana-, meaning "back" or "again", and the word morphe, meaning "shape" or "form". Extreme anamorphosis has been used by artists to disguise caricatures, erotic and scatological scenes, and other furtive images from a casual spectator, while revealing an undistorted image to the knowledgeable viewer. Types of projection There are two main types of anamorphosis: perspective (oblique) and mirror (catoptric). More complex anamorphoses can be devised using distorted lenses, mirrors, or other optical transformations. An oblique anamorphism forms an affine transformation of the subject. Early examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the Renaissance of the fifteenth century and largely relate to religious themes. With mirror anamorphosis, a conical or cylindrical mirror is placed on the distorted drawing or painting to reveal an undistorted image. The deformed picture relies on laws regarding angles of incidence of reflection. The length of the flat drawing's curves are reduced when viewed in a curved mirror, such that the distortions resolve into a recognizable picture. Unlike perspective anamorphosis, catoptric images can be viewed from many angles. The technique was originally developed in China during the Ming Dynasty, and the first European manual on mirror anamorphosis was published around 1630 by the mathematician Vaulezard. Channel anamorphosis or tabula scalata has a different image on each side of a corrugated carrier. A straight frontal view shows an unclear mix of the images, while each image can be viewed correctly from a certain angle. History Prehistory The Stone Age cave paintings at Lascaux may make use of anamorphic technique, because the oblique angles of the cave would otherwise result in distorted figures from a viewer's perspective. The ancient historians Pliny and Tzetzes both record a sculpture competition between Alcamenes and Phidias to create an image of Minerva. Alcamenes' sculpture was beautiful, while Phidias' had grotesque proportions. Yet once both had been mounted on pillars, the decelerated perspective made Phidias' Minerva beautiful, and Alcamenes' ugly. Renaissance Artists' experimentation with optics and perspective during the Renaissance advanced anamorphic technique, at a time when science and religious thought were equally important to its growth in Europe. Leonardo's Eye by Leonardo da Vinci, included in the Codex Atlanticus (1483-1518), is the earliest known example. He later completed several large-scale anamorphic commissions for the King of France. Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola credited Tommaso Laureti as the originator of a perspectival anamorphic technique in one of the earliest written descriptions in The Two Rules of Practical Perspective, compiled between 1530 and 1540 but not published until 1583. Many other descriptions and examples were created before 1583 without access to Vignola's work. The Ambassadors (c. 1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger is known for the prominent gray diagonal slash across the bottom of the frame which, when viewed from an acute angle, resolves into the image of a human skull. It has been hypothesized that the painting, regarded as a vanitas – a meditation on the transience of life including the skull as a memento mori – was intended to be hung alongside stairs to startle viewers with the sudden appearance of a skull. Four centuries later, psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan noted in 'Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a''' (1973) that the use of anamorphism, particularly in this painting, is one of the few methods for making viewers aware of their gaze. 17th century By the 17th century, a revival of fantastical anamorphic imagery occurred. Magical and religious connotations were largely abandoned, and the images were understood as a scientific curiosity. Two major works on perspective were published: Perspective (1612) by Salomon de Caus, and Curious Perspective (1638) by Jean-Francois Niceron. Each contained extensive scientific and practical information on anamorphic imagery. In Niceron's work, three types of large-scale anamorphism are explained: 'optical' (looking horizontally); 'anoptric' (looking upwards); and 'catoptric' (looking down i.e. from a mezzanine). A conical perspective is also described. Towards the end of the century, Charles Ozanam's Mathematical Recreations widely popularized the techniques for the creation of anamorphic images. Between 1669 and 1685, both perspective and mirror anamorphosis were introduced in China by the Jesuits to the Kangxi Emperor and monks at the Peking Mission. However, Chinese production of anamorphic images were already occurring on a large scale during the late Ming Dynasty. The images were mostly created freehand, unlike the grid system used in the west. As Chinese anamorphoses primarily focused on erotic themes, Jesuit influence is unlikely. It is considered likely that Chinese catoptric techniques, which are technically unrelated to geometric anamorphosis, influenced European mirror anamorphosis, and not the other way around. Baroque trompe-l'œil murals often used anamorphism to combine actual architectural elements with illusory painted elements to create a seamless effect when viewed from a specific location. The dome and vault of the Church of St. Ignazio in Rome, painted by Andrea Pozzo, represented the pinnacle of illusion. Due to neighboring monks complaining about blocked light, Pozzo was commissioned to paint the ceiling to look like the inside of a dome, instead of building a real dome. As the ceiling is flat, there is only one spot where the illusion is perfect and a dome looks undistorted. Anamorphosis could be used to conceal images for privacy or personal safety, and many secret portraits were created of deposed royalty. A well-known anamorphic portrait of the English King Edward VI was completed in 1546, only visible when viewed through a hole in the frame. It was later hung at Whitehall Palace, and may have influenced Shakespeare during the writing of Richard II. Many anamorphic portraits of King Charles I were created and shared following his 1649 execution. A secret mirror anamorphosis portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie, held at the West Highland Museum, can only be recognized when a polished cylinder is placed in the correct position. To possess such an image would have been seen as treason in the aftermath of the 1746 Battle of Culloden. The memento mori theme continued into this period, such as in an Anamorphic Painting of Adam and Eve, on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. This painting by an unknown Italian artist of the 17th or early 18th century portrays the Biblical couple, along with a large unidentified male face at the top, and a large human skull at the bottom. The images are distorted when viewed straight on, and can only be seen by peeking through one of two holes at each end of the surrounding frame. The painting includes a Latin religious inscription adapted from John 14:6, ending with the words memento mori. 18th and 19th century The eighteenth century saw anamorphism completely enter the realm of entertainment and diversion, as well as the widest dissemination of the technique. By the 19th century, a revival of interest in anamorphism for architectural illusion occurred, as well as a fashion for classical themes. Reprints of Renaissance-era engravings became popular, as did political, obscene and popular subjects. Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Ligeia" describes a room filled with "simple monstrosities" that resolve in to "an endless succession of ... ghastly forms" as the narrator walks through the room. This mass popularization was to later have effect on the Surrealists. 20th century By the twentieth century, some artists wanted to renew the technique of anamorphosis for aesthetic and conceptual effect. During the First World War, Arthur Mole, an American commercial photographer, used anamorphic techniques to create patriotic images from massive assembled groups of soldiers and reservists. When seen from a tower at their base, the gathered people resolved into recognizable pictures. Marcel Duchamp was interested in anamorphosis. His last work Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (1946–66) used mild anamorphosis to force viewers into the position of peep-hole voyeurs in order to see a nude, anonymous human body. Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí used extreme foreshortening and anamorphism in his paintings and works. A glass floor installed in a room next to his studio enabled radical perspective studies from above and below. The Dalí Theatre and Museum features a three-dimensional anamorphic living-room installation; the Mae West Lips Sofa that looks like the face of the film star when seen from a certain viewpoint. Interestingly, Lacan also compared Holbein's 16th-century painting to Dali's imagery, rather than the other way around. Impossible objects In the twentieth century, artists began to play with perspective by drawing "impossible objects". These objects included stairs that always ascend, or cubes where the back meets the front. Such works were popularized by the artist M. C. Escher and the mathematician Roger Penrose. Although referred to as "impossible objects", such objects as the Necker Cube and the Penrose triangle can be sculpted in 3-D by using anamorphic illusion. When viewed at a certain angle, such sculptures appear as the so-called impossible objects. Ames rooms The Ames room was invented by American scientist Adelbert Ames Jr. in 1946. When viewed through a peephole, the room appears to have normal perspective. However, all other viewpoints reveal that the room is constructed of irregular trapezoids. Similar effects had been achieved during the Renaissance through the use of "accelerated perspective" in stage design. These included productions by Scamozzi (1588-9), Furtenbach (1625), Sabbattini (1637) and Troili (1672). One of the most interesting effects of an Ames room is that the distorted perspective can make people and objects look much bigger or smaller than they really are. For this reason, Ames rooms are widely used in cinema for practical special effects. A well-known example is the homes in the Shire from the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. Through the use of forced perspective, the character of Gandalf appeared much larger than the characters of Frodo and Bilbo, without the use of digital effects. Practical uses Cinemascope, Panavision, Technirama, and other widescreen formats use anamorphosis to project a wider image from a narrower film frame. The IMAX company uses even more extreme anamorphic transformations to project moving images from a flat film frame onto the inside of a hemispheric dome, in its "Omnimax" or "IMAX Dome" process. The technique of anamorphic projection can be seen quite commonly on text written at a very flat angle on roadways, such as "Bus Lane" or "Children Crossing", to make it easily read by drivers who otherwise would have difficulty reading obliquely as the vehicle approaches the text; when the vehicle is nearly above the text, its true abnormally elongated shape can be seen. Similarly, in many sporting stadiums, especially in Rugby football in Australia, it is used to promote company brands which are painted onto the playing surface; from the television camera angle, the writing appear as signs standing vertically within the field of play. Much writing on shop windows is in principle anamorphic, as it was written mirror-reversed on the inside of the window glass. In the work of contemporary artists While not as widespread in contemporary art, anamorphosis as a technique has been used by contemporary artists in painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, film and video, digital art and games, holography, street art and installation. The latter two art forms are largely practised in public areas such as parks, city centres and transit stations. In 1975 a major exhibition was held focusing exclusively on anamorphic imagery: Anamorphoses: Games of Perception and Illusion in Art. The artist Jan Beutener created The Room, a major new installation specifically for the exhibit. Sculpture and installation Since the mid-20th century, many artists have made use of anamorphosis in public artworks. American land art pioneer Michael Heizer's Complex One (1972-1974), a massive earth and concrete structure in the Nevada desert, creates a rectangular frame for a mastaba when viewed from a specific location. Inspired by Luxor and other ancient monumental sites, it is part of the larger work City, an enormous sculpture running a mile and a half long. The entire work will not be completed until 2020. Shigeo Fukuda, a Japanese artist and designer globally renowned for his satirical posters on anti-war and environmental advocacy, created posters and sculptures making use of both types of anamorphosis in the 1970s and 1980s. He also wrote multiple books on the topic of optical illusions. Felice Varini's 2014 work Three Ellipses for Three Locks in Hasselt, Belgium is an image of three loops that are made up of segments painted on to over 100 buildings. It is only visible from a specific vantage point over the city. French artists that have created recent anamorphic installations include François Abélanet and Jean-Max Albert. Markus Raetz's Kopf is a large scale public installation that reveals the form of a person's head in profile when viewed from a specific vantage-point. It was installed in a public park in Basel, Switzerland. While anamorphic images were not his exclusive area of focus, the American artist Jonathan Borofsky created installations in the 1980s using anamorphic techniques, exhibiting at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art. Jonty Hurwitz pioneered the use of a mathematical technique to create catoptric sculptures that resolve in a cylinder. In 2013 he produced a public work for the Savoy Hotel's River Room. Drawing and painting The Swedish artist Hans Hamngren produced and exhibited many examples of mirror anamorphosis in the 1960s and 1970s. Sara Willet's paintings focus on anamorphic images. Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave also widely uses anamorphosis in her paintings, whereby her original drawings or paintings are stretched out and revert to a 'normal' dimension once the drawing or painting is pleated to its final form. Photography Beginning in 1967, Dutch artist Jan Dibbets based an entire series of photographic work titled Perspective Corrections on the distortion of reality through perspective anamorphosis. This involved the incorporation of land art into his work, where areas dug out of the Earth formed squares from specific perspectives. Street art Anamorphic effects are popular in street art, sometimes called "Slant Art" when accomplished on sidewalks. Examples are the sidewalk chalk drawings of Kurt Wenner and Julian Beever, where the chalked image, the pavement, and the architectural surroundings all become part of an illusion. Art of this style can be produced by taking a photograph of an object or setting at a sharp oblique angle, then putting a grid over the photograph. Another elongated grid is placed on the sidewalk based on a specific perspective, and visual elements of one are transcribed into the other, one grid square at a time. In 2016, the street artist JR completed a massive temporary anamorphic illusion over the Louvre's pyramid, making the modern structure disappear and the original building appear as though it was still in the 17th century. Gallery Popular culture Since the 18th century, anamorphosis has been a widespread art form in popular culture. It has been used for children's toys, album art, advertising, videogames and movies, among other things. In the 1970s, albums for musicians Steeleye Span and Rick Wakeman featured anamorphic album art. The 2009 video game Batman: Arkham Asylum has a series of riddles posed by the classic Batman antagonist The Riddler, the solution of which is based on perspective anamorphosis. In 2013, Honda released a commercial which incorporated a series of illusions based on anamorphosis. Tourists attractions employing large-scale illusory art allowing visitors to photograph themselves in fantastic scenes have opened in several Asian countries, such as the Trickeye Museum and Hong Kong 3D Museum. OK Go makes repeated use of anamorphic illusions in the music video for The Writing's On the Wall. See also Adelbert Ames Jr. Ames Demonstrations Anamorphic format, a widescreen film technique Anamorphic widescreen, a widescreen video encoding concept Arthur Mole Image warping Mad Fold-in Perspective control Panomorph Artists Jonty Hurwitz Jean-Max Albert Julian Beever Peter Dazeley Joe Hill Hans Holbein the Younger Kelly Houle Patrick Hughes William Kentridge Leon Keer René Luckhardt Edgar Müller Matthew Ngui István Orosz Andrea Pozzo Eduardo Relero Georges Rousse Ed Ruscha Tracy Lee Stum Kurt Wenner References Bibliography Andersen, Kirsti (1996) "The mathematical treatment of anamorphoses from Piero della Francesca to Niceron", pp 3 to 28 in History of Mathematics, J.W. Dauben, M. Folkerts, E. Knobloch & H. Wussing editors, . Baltrušaitis, Jurgis (1976) "Anamorphic Art". Trans. W.J. Strachn. Harry N. Abrams Inc. New York. Standard Book Number: 8109-0662-7. Library of Congress: 77-73789 Baltrušaitis, Jurgis (1984) Anamorphoses ou Thaumaturgus opticus. Flammarion, Paris. Behrens, R.R. (2009a). "Adelbert Ames II" entry in Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books, pp. 25–26. . Behrens, R.R. (2009b). "Ames Demonstrations in Perception" in E. Bruce Goldstein, ed., Encyclopedia of Perception. Sage Publications, pp. 41–44. . Cole, Alison: Perspective (1992) Dorling Kindersley, London. Damisch, Hubert: L'Origine de la perspective (1987) Flammarion, Paris. De Rosa, Agostino; D'Acunto, Giuseppe (2002) La Vertigine dello Sguardo. Tre saggi sulla rappresentazione anamorfica (The Vertigo of Sight. Three Essays on the Anamorphic Representation). Cafoscarina Publishing, Venice. De Rosa, Agostino (Ed), Jean François Nicéron (2012) Prospettiva, catottrica e magia artificiale (Jean François Nicéron. Perspective, catoptric and artificial magic), 2 Vols. with critical editions and translations of J. F. Nicéron's La Perspective curieuse and Thaumaturgus opticus. Marsilio, Venezia. Du Breuil, La Pere (1649) La Perspective pratique. Paris. Fischer, Sören (2016) "Una vista amirabile": Remarks on the Illusionary Interplay Between Real and Painted Windows in 16th Century Italy, in The Most Noble of the Senses: Anamorphosis, Trompe-L'Oeil, and Other Optical Illusions in Early Modern Art, ed. by Lilian Zirpolo, Ramsey, New Jersey, , pp. 1–28. Foister, Susan, Roz Ashok, Wyld Martin. Holbein's Ambassadors. National Gallery Publications, London. Haddock, Nickolas (2013) "Medievalism and Anamorphosis: Curious Perspectives on the Middle Ages," in Medievalism Now, ed. E.L. Risden, Karl Fugelso, and Richard Utz (special issue of The Year's Work in Medievalism, 28). Houle, Kelly (2003) Portrait of Escher: Behind the Mirror. M.C. Escher's Legacy. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. Kircher, Athanasius (1646) Ars Magna lucis et umbrae in decem Libros digesta. Rome. Lanners, Edi: Illusionen. VerlagC.J.Bucher GmbH, München und Luzern, 1973. Leemann, Fred: Anamorphosen. DuMont Buchverlag, Köln, 1975. Leemann, Fred: Hidden Images. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1976. Maignan, Emmanuel (1648) Perspectiva horaria, sive de Horographia gnomonica.... Rome. Mastai, M. L. d'Otrange (1975) Illusion in Art. Abaris Books, New York. Niceron, Jean-Francois (1638) La Perspective curieuse ou magie artificelle des effets merveilleux. Paris. Niceron, Jean-Francois (1646) Thaumaturgus opticus, seu Admiranda optices per radium directum, catoptrices per radium reflectum. Paris. North, John (2002) The Ambassadors' Secret. Hamblendon and London, London. István, Orosz (2000) Artistic Expression of Mirror, Reflection and Perspective. Symmetry. – (2002) Portland Press, London. István, Orosz (2003) The Mirrors of the Master. Escher Legacy. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. Quay, Stephen and Timothy (1991) De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis (film) Shickman, Allan: "Turning Pictures" in Shakespeare's England. University of N. Iowa, Cedar Falls Ia. Art Bulletin LIX/March 1, 1977. Sakane, Itsuo: A Museum of Fun (The Expanding Perceptual World) The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, 1979 (Part I.) 1984 (Part II.) Schott, Gaspar (1657) Magia universalis naturae et artis. Würzburg. Stillwell, John (1989) Mathematics and Its History'', §7.2 Anamorphosis, pp 81,2, Springer . The Arcimboldo Effect (1987) (exhibition catalogue - Palazzo Grassi, Velence) Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Bompiani, Milan. External links Phillip Kent: Art of Anamorphosis The 'Pericentric' lens - makes anamorphic circular images from cylindrical objects Anamorphic art at New Scientist Leon Keer: Anamorphose Art Artistic techniques Composition in visual art Mathematics and art Optical toys Perspective projection

Suprematism

Suprematism is an early twentieth-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term suprematism refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" rather than on visual depiction of objects. Founded by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1913, Supremus conceived of the artist as liberated from everything that predetermined the ideal structure of life and art. Projecting that vision onto Cubism, which Malevich admired for its ability to deconstruct art, and in the process change its reference points of art, he led a group of Russian avant-garde artists—including Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Kliun, Ivan Puni, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Nina Genke-Meller, Ksenia Boguslavskaya and others—in what's been described as the first attempt to independently found a Russian avant-garde movement, seceding from the trajectory of prior Russian art history. To support the movement, Malevich established the journal Supremus (initially titled Nul or Nothing), which received contributions from artists and philosophers. The publication, however, never took off and its first issue was never distributed due to the Russian Revolution. The movement itself, however, was announced in Malevich's 1915 Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10, in St. Petersburg, where he, and several others in his group, exhibited 36 works in a similar style. Birth of the movement Kazimir Malevich developed the concept of Suprematism when he was already an established painter, having exhibited in the Donkey's Tail and the Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) exhibitions of 1912 with cubo-futurist works. The proliferation of new artistic forms in painting, poetry and theatre as well as a revival of interest in the traditional folk art of Russia provided a rich environment in which a Modernist culture was born. In "Suprematism" (Part II of his book The Non-Objective World, which was published 1927 in Munich as Bauhaus Book No. 11), Malevich clearly stated the core concept of Suprematism: He created a suprematist "grammar" based on fundamental geometric forms; in particular, the square and the circle. In the 0.10 Exhibition in 1915, Malevich exhibited his early experiments in suprematist painting. The centerpiece of his show was the Black Square, placed in what is called the red/beautiful corner in Russian Orthodox tradition; the place of the main icon in a house. "Black Square" was painted in 1915 and was presented as a breakthrough in his career and in art in general. Malevich also painted White on White which was also heralded as a milestone. White on White marked a shift from polychrome to monochrome Suprematism. Distinct from Constructivism Malevich's Suprematism is fundamentally opposed to the postrevolutionary positions of Constructivism and materialism. Constructivism, with its cult of the object, is concerned with utilitarian strategies of adapting art to the principles of functional organization. Under Constructivism, the traditional easel painter is transformed into the artist-as-engineer in charge of organizing life in all of its aspects. Suprematism, in sharp contrast to Constructivism, embodies a profoundly anti-materialist, anti-utilitarian philosophy. In "Suprematism" (Part II of The Non-Objective World), Malevich writes: Jean-Claude Marcadé has observed that "Despite superficial similarities between Constructivism and Suprematism, the two movements are nevertheless antagonists and it is very important to distinguish between them." According to Marcadé, confusion has arisen because several artists—either directly associated with Suprematism such as El Lissitzky or working under the suprematist influence as did Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova—later abandoned Suprematism for the culture of materials. Suprematism does not embrace a humanist philosophy which places man at the center of the universe. Rather, Suprematism envisions man—the artist—as both originator and transmitter of what for Malevich is the world's only true reality—that of absolute non-objectivity. For Malevich, it is upon the foundations of absolute non-objectivity that the future of the universe will be built - a future in which appearances, objects, comfort, and convenience no longer dominate. Influences on the movement Malevich also credited the birth of Suprematism to Victory Over the Sun, Kruchenykh's Futurist opera production for which he designed the sets and costumes in 1913. The aim of the artists involved was to break with the usual theater of the past and to use a "clear, pure, logical Russian language". Malevich put this to practice by creating costumes from simple materials and thereby took advantage of geometric shapes. Flashing headlights illuminated the figures in such a way that alternating hands, legs or heads disappeared into the darkness. The stage curtain was a black square. One of the drawings for the backcloth shows a black square divided diagonally into a black and a white triangle. Because of the simplicity of these basic forms they were able to signify a new beginning. Another important influence on Malevich were the ideas of the Russian mystic, philosopher, and disciple of Georges Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, who wrote of "a fourth dimension or a Fourth Way beyond the three to which our ordinary senses have access". Some of the titles to paintings in 1915 express the concept of a non-Euclidean geometry which imagined forms in movement, or through time; titles such as: Two dimensional painted masses in the state of movement. These give some indications towards an understanding of the Suprematic compositions produced between 1915 and 1918. The Supremus journal The Supremus group, which in addition to Malevich included Aleksandra Ekster, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Ivan Kliun, Lyubov Popova, Lazar Khidekel, Nikolai Suetin, Ilya Chashnik, Nina Genke-Meller, Ivan Puni and Ksenia Boguslavskaya, met from 1915 onwards to discuss the philosophy of Suprematism and its development into other areas of intellectual life. The products of these discussions were to be documented in a monthly publication called Supremus, titled to reflect the art movement it championed, that would include painting, music, decorative art, and literature. Malevich conceived of the journal as the contextual foundation in which he could base his art, and originally planned to call the journal Nul. In a letter to a colleague, he explained: Malevich conceived of the journal as a space for experimentation that would test his theory of nonobjective art. The group of artists wrote several articles for the initial publication, including the essays "The Mouth of the Earth and the Artist" (Malevich), "On the Old and the New in Music" (Matiushin), "Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism" (Rozanova), "Architecture as a Slap in the Face to Ferroconcrete" (Malevich), and "The Declaration of the Word as Such" (Kruchenykh). However, despite a year spent planning and writing articles for the journal, the first issue of Supremus was never published. El Lissitzky: Bridge to the West The most important artist who took the art form and ideas developed by Malevich and popularized them abroad was the painter El Lissitzky. Lissitzky worked intensively with Suprematism particularly in the years 1919 to 1923. He was deeply impressed by Malevich's Suprematist works as he saw it as the theoretical and visual equivalent of the social upheavals taking place in Russia at the time. Suprematism, with its radicalism, was to him the creative equivalent of an entirely new form of society. Lissitzky transferred Malevich's approach to his Proun constructions, which he himself described as "the station where one changes from painting to architecture". The Proun designs, however, were also an artistic break from Suprematism; the Black Square by Malevich was the end point of a rigorous thought process that required new structural design work to follow. Lissitzky saw this new beginning in his Proun constructions, where the term "Proun" (Pro Unovis) symbolized its Suprematist origins. Lissitzky exhibited in Berlin in 1923 at the Hanover and Dresden showrooms of Non-Objective Art. During this trip to the West, El Lissitzky was in close contact with Theo van Doesburg, forming a bridge between Suprematism and De Stijl and the Bauhaus. Architecture Lazar Khidekel (1904–1986), Suprematist artist and visionary architect, was the only Suprematist architect who emerged from the Malevich circle. Khidekel started his study in architecture in Vitebsk art school under El Lissitzky in 1919–20. He was instrumental in the transition from planar Suprematism to volumetric Suprematism, creating axonometric projections (The Aero-club: Horizontal architecton, 1922–23), making three-dimensional models, such as the architectons, designing objects (model of an "Ashtray", 1922–23), and producing the first Suprematist architectural project (The Workers' Club, 1926). In the mid-1920s, he began his journey into the realm of visionary architecture. Directly inspired by Suprematism and its notion of an organic form-creation continuum, he explored new philosophical, scientific and technological futuristic approaches, and proposed innovative solutions for the creation of new urban environments, where people would live in harmony with nature and would be protected from man-made and natural disasters (his still topical proposal for flood protection – the City on the Water, 1925). Nikolai Suetin used Suprematist motifs on works at the Imperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg where Malevich and Chashnik were also employed, and Malevich designed a Suprematist teapot. The Suprematists also made architectural models in the 1920s, which offered a different conception of socialist buildings to those developed in Constructivist architecture. Malevich's architectural projects were known after 1922 Arkhitektoniki. Designs emphasized the right angle, with similarities to De Stijl and Le Corbusier, and were justified with an ideological connection to communist governance and equality for all. Another part of the formalism was low regard for triangles which were "dismissed as ancient, pagan, or Christian". The first Suprematist architectural project was created by Lazar Khidekel in 1926. In the mid-1920s to 1932 Lazar Khidekel also created a series of futuristic projects such as Aero-City, Garden-City, and City Over Water. In the 21st century, architect Zaha Hadid had 'a particular interest [in] the Russian avant-garde, and the movement known as Constructivism,' and 'as part of their work on the Russian avant-garde, Hadid's unit studied Suprematism, the abstract movement founded by the painter Kazimir Malevich.'. Social context This development in artistic expression came about when Russia was in a revolutionary state, ideas were in ferment, and the old order was being swept away. As the new order became established, and Stalinism took hold from 1924 on, the state began limiting the freedom of artists. From the late 1920s the Russian avant-garde experienced direct and harsh criticism from the authorities and in 1934 the doctrine of Socialist Realism became official policy, and prohibited abstraction and divergence of artistic expression. Malevich nevertheless retained his main conception. In his self-portrait of 1933 he represented himself in a traditional way—the only way permitted by Stalinist cultural policy—but signed the picture with a tiny black-over-white square. Notable exhibitions Historic exhibitions Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art at Lemercier Gallery, Moscow, 1915 The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 at Galerie Dobychina, Petrograd, 1915 First Russian Art Exhibition at Galerie Van Diemen, Berlin, 1922 First State Exhibition of Local and Moscow Artists, Vitebsk, 1919 Exhibition of Paintings by Petrograd Artists of All Trends, 1918–1923, Petrograd, 1923 Retrospective exhibitions The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992 Malevich's Circle. Confederates. Students. Followers in Russia 1920s-1950s at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2000 Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2003 Zaha Hadid and Suprematism at Galerie Gmurzynska, Zürich, 2010 Lazar Khidekel: Surviving Suprematism at Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley CA, 2004-2005 Lazar Markovich Khidekel – the Rediscovered Suprematist at House Konstruktiv, Zurich, 2010-2011 Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2013 Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art at the Tate Modern, London, 2014 Floating Worlds and Future Cities. Genius of Lazar Khidekel, Suprematism and Russian Avant-garde. NYC, 2013 Artists associated with Suprematism Kazimir Malevich El Lissitzky Ilya Chashnik Lazar Khidekel Alexandra Exter Lyubov Popova Sergei Senkin References and sources References Sources Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World. English translation by Howard Dearstyne from the German translation of 1927 by A. von Riesen from Malevich's original Russian manuscript, Paul Theobald and Company, Chicago, 1959. Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, Thames and Hudson, 1976. Mel Gooding, Abstract Art, Tate Publishing, 2001. Jean-Claude Marcadé, "What is Suprematism?", from the exhibition catalogue, Kasimir Malewitsch zum 100. Geburtstag, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1978. Further reading Jean-Claude Marcadé, "Malevich, Painting and Writing: On the Development of a Suprematist Philosophy", Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, Guggenheim Museum, April 17, 2012 [Kindle Edition] Jean-Claude Marcadé, "Some Remarks on Suprematism"; and Emmanuel Martineau, "A Philosophy of the 'Suprema' ", from the exhibition catalogue Suprematisme, Galerie Jean Chauvelin, Paris, 1977 Miroslav Lamac and Juri Padrta, "The Idea of Suprematism", from the exhibition catalogue, Kasimir Malewitsch zum 100. Geburtstag, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1978 Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism. Regina Khidekel, Charlotte Douglas, Magdolena Dabrowsky, Alla Rosenfeld, Tatiand Goriatcheva, Constantin Boym. Prestel Publishing, 2014. S. O. Khan-Magomedov. Lazar Khidekel (Creators of Russian Classical Avant-garde series), M., 2008 Alla Efimova. Surviving Suprematism: Lazar Khidekel. Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley CA, 2004. S.O. Khan-Magomedov. Pioneers of the Soviet Design. Galart, Moscow, 1995. Selim Khan-Magomedov, Regina Khidekel. Lazar Markovich Khidekel. Suprematism and Architecture. Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York, 1995. Alexandra Schatskikh. Unovis: Epicenter of a New World. The Great Utopia. The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde 1915–1932.- Solomon Guggenheim Museum, 1992, State Tretiakov Gallery, State Russian Museum, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. Mark Khidekel. Suprematism and Architectural Projects of Lazar Khidekel. Architectural Design 59, # 7–8, 1989 Mark Khidekel. Suprematism in Architecture. L’Arca, Italy, # 27, 1989 Selim O. Chan-Magomedow. Pioniere der sowjetischen Architectur, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, 1983. Larissa A. Zhadova. Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art 1910–1930, Thames and Hudson, London, 1982. Larissa A. Zhadowa. Suche und Experiment. Russische und sowjetische Kunst 1910 bis 1930, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, 1978 External links Kazimir Malevich. Suprematism. Manifesto. Online extracts from Malevich' suprematism art manifesto. Suprematist Manifesto Russian artist groups and collectives Russian avant-garde Ukrainian avant-garde Suprematism (art movement) Russian art movements

Cultural analysis

As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the arts, humanities, social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena and to interpret cultural representations and practices; in an effort to gain new knowledge or understanding through analysis of that data and cultural processes. This is particularly useful for understanding and mapping trends, influences, effects, and affects within cultures. There are four themes to sociological cultural analysis: 1. Adaptation and Change This refers to how well a certain culture adapts to its surroundings by being used and developed. Some examples of this are foods, tools, home, surroundings, art, etc. that show how the given culture adapted. Also, this aspect aims to show how the given culture makes the environment more accommodating. 2. How culture is used to survive How the given culture helps its members survive the environment. 3. Holism, Specificity The ability to put the observations into a single collection, and presenting it in a coherent manner. 4. Expressions This focuses on studying the expressions and performance of everyday culture. Cultural analysis in the humanities This developed at the intersection of cultural studies, history, comparative literature, art history, fine art, philosophy, literary theory, theology, anthropology, economy. It developed an interdisciplinary approach to the study of texts, images, films, and all related cultural practices. It offers an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of cultural representations and practices. Cultural analysis is also a method for rethinking our relation to history because it makes visible the position of researcher, writer or student. The social and cultural present from which we look at past cultural practices—history— shapes the interpretations that are made of the past, while cultural analysis also reveals how the past shapes the present through the role of cultural memory for instance. Cultural analysis understands culture, therefore, as a constantly changing set of practices that are in dialogue with the past as it has been registered through texts, images, buildings, documents, stories, myths. In addition to having a relation to disciplines also interested in cultures as what people do and say, believe and think, such as ethnography and anthropology, cultural analysis as a practice in the humanities considers the texts and images, the codes and behaviours, the beliefs and imaginings that you might study in literature, philosophy, art history. But cultural analysis does not confine the meanings to the disciplinary methods. It allows and requires dialogue across many ways of understanding what people have done and what people are doing through acts, discourses, practices, statements. Cultural analysis crosses the boundaries between disciplines but also between formal and informal cultural activities. The major purpose of cultural analysis is to develop analytical tools for reading and understanding a wide range of cultural practices and forms, past and present. See also Girl Heroes Semiotics of culture Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School Daniel Seddiqui References External links Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture Institute for Cultural Analysis, Nottingham http://www.centrecath.leeds.ac.uk Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History, University of Leeds Master of Applied Cultural Analysis Lund University, University of Copenhagen Cultural anthropology

Cultural conservatism

Cultural conservatism is described as the protection of the cultural heritage of a nation state, or of a culture not defined by state boundaries. It is sometimes associated with criticism of multiculturalism, anti-immigration sentiment, and opposition to illegal immigration. Because their cultural preservationist objectives are in conflict with those of anti-racists, cultural conservatives are often accused of racism. Despite this, however, cultural conservatism can be more nuanced in its approach to minority languages and cultures; it is sometimes focused upon heritage language learning or threatened language revitalization, such as of the distinctive local dialect of French in Quebec, Acadian French, Canadian Gaelic, and the Mi'kmaq language in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, or the Irish language in Newfoundland. Other times cultural conservatism is more focused upon the preservation of an ethnic minority's endangered ancestral culture, such as those of Native Americans. In the United States, cultural conservatism may imply a conservative position in the culture wars. Because cultural conservatism expresses the social dimension of conservatism according to the political compass theory, it is sometimes referred to as social conservatism. Instead, social conservatism describes conservative moral and social values, or traditionalist conservative stances on socio-cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, in opposition to cultural liberalism (social liberalism in the United States). Meanwhile, nationalism also differs from cultural conservatism as it does not always focus upon a particular culture. Arguments In favor Proponents argue that cultural conservatism preserves the cultural identity of a country. They often promote assimilation into the dominant culture, believing that monoculturalism is more constructive to national unity. They claim that assimilation facilitates the integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities into broader society, framing cultural conservatism as a solution to ethnic strife. Researchers note that the more culturally homogeneous a community is, the more people trust each other. Trust was shown to decrease in more culturally diverse areas. Proponents of cultural conservatism have criticized multiculturalism, believing that cultural pluralism is detrimental to a unified national identity. They argue that cultural diversity only serves to marginalize immigrants by othering them as outsiders in society. In some countries multiculturalism is believed to create de facto racial segregation in the form of ethnic enclaves. Opposition to immigration is also a common stance among proponents. Immigrants often bring the cultures, religions, and languages of their home countries with them, sometimes influencing and changing the cultures of their host countries. Proponents of cultural conservatism argue that some of these imported cultural practices, such as hijabs, polygamy, child marriage, and female genital mutilation, are in direct conflict with the values of the dominant culture. Against Opponents argue that cultural conservatism is detrimental to cultural diversity. They criticize cultural conservatism for promoting cultural intolerance, creating narrow ethnocentric mindsets, and stifling self-expression. Opponents cite numerous historical atrocities that originated from extreme forms of cultural conservatism, such as racism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and racial segregation. They claim that cultural assimilation leads to the marginalization of minorities who do not conform to the dominant culture. Opponents have supported multiculturalism, believing it creates a more diverse and tolerant society. They claim it helps people of the ethnic majority to learn more about other cultures, adapt better to social change, and be more tolerant of diversity. They also believe multiculturalism brings more attention to the historical accomplishments of other ethnic groups, which had been neglected in past times. Support for immigration is also a common stance among opponents of cultural conservatism, who argue that it enriches society by contributing diverse new ideas. In some cases the art, music, food, or clothing of the immigrants are adopted by the dominant culture. By country Australia In 2006 the Australian Government proposed to introduce a compulsory citizenship test which would assess English skills and knowledge of Australian values. This sparked a debate over cultural conservatism in Australia. Andrew Robb told a conference that some Australians worried that interest groups had transformed multiculturalism into a philosophy that put "allegiances to original culture ahead of national loyalty, a philosophy which fosters separate development, a federation of ethnic cultures, not one community." The One Nation Party is a conservative political party that opposes multiculturalism, calling it "a threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values." Canada Unlike the United States, Canada has always been a culturally divided country, though to varying degrees. Since the premiership of Pierre Trudeau, Canadian identity has been viewed as a cultural mosaic. Trudeau Sr. once stated that there is "no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian," and that to desire one is a "disastrous" pursuit. His son Justin Trudeau, likewise Prime Minister, has continued to spread this spirit in declaring Canada "the first post-national state" due to its lack of a core identity and mainstream. The fifth wave of immigration to Canada which followed Trudeau Sr.'s premiership and continues to this day is the largest manifestation of this change. For example, the city of Richmond, British Columbia is majority Chinese, and nearly half of Torontonians are foreign-born, the city which now bears the motto "Diversity Our Strength." Canadian cultural conservatism as a reaction to the multiculturalism of Pierre Trudeau (and subsequently of Brian Mulroney) reached its peak with the Reform Party and waned over time. Its decline has been marked by the electoral failure of the People's Party of Canada, which formed partly as a response to the Conservative Party's perceived weakness on the issue. Quebec Quebec is unique in Canada for its cultural conservatism. Though not a socially conservative province, nor religiously conservative (not since the aftermath of the Grande Noirceur), Quebecois culture has always maintained a certain suspicion and reluctance towards unity with the rest of Canada. Language protectionism (reflected in laws such as Bill 101) is a central concern of Quebec cultural conservatives. Quebec has held two referendums on separation and has never ratified the Constitution Act of 1982. The Bloc Québécois formed in reaction to the Mulroney premiership (like the Reform Party) to advocate for Quebecois interests in the federal parliament. It once held the office of Official Opposition, which was followed by a decline, but the party has seen a surge in popularity as of late, currently holding 32 of Quebec's 78 seats in the House of Commons. China Central to the ideas of the Cultural Revolution was the elimination of the Four Olds, which were elements of Chinese culture that at the time were seen to oppose the goals of Communism in China. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the time protected some of the most important Chinese historical monuments, including some archaeological discoveries such as the Terracotta Army. CCP general secretary Xi Jinping has overseen a revival in popularity of historical Chinese cultural figures such as Confucius and has placed more emphasis on the value of Chinese culture than his predecessors. He also includes culture in his "comprehensive" political goals. France French political theorist Alain de Benoist argues that democracy itself must inherently be a government of a national culture, and that liberal pluralism is therefore not democratic. Germany In Germany, parallel societies established by some immigrant communities have been criticized by cultural conservatives, giving rise to the concept of the Leitkultur. Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union described attempts to build a multicultural German society to have "failed, utterly failed". Many Germans have expressed alarm over the large number of Muslim immigrants in their country, many of whom have failed to integrate into German society. Italy Italy is a very culturally conservative society. Recent surveys show that the vast majority of Italians want fewer immigrants to be allowed into the country, while few want to keep the current level or increase immigration. Japan Japan has been a culturally conservative society. Being monocultural, it has traditionally refused to recognize ethnic differences in Japan. Netherlands Paul Cliteur attacked multiculturalism, political correctness, cultural relativism, and non-Western cultural values. He argued that cultural relativism would lead to acceptance of outdated practices brought to the Western World by immigrants such as sexism, homophobia, and antisemitism. Paul Scheffer believes that cultural conservatism and integration are necessary for a society, but the presence of immigrants undermines this. He cites failure to assimilate, de facto segregation, unemployment, crime, and Muslim opposition to secularism as the main problems resulting from immigration. Russia In Russia, Russian culture has been defended by cultural conservatives on the grounds that the destruction of traditional values is undemocratic. United Kingdom In the 20th century, immigration to the United Kingdom gave rise to multicultural policies. However, ever since the beginning of the 21st century, the UK government has moved towards cultural conservatism and the assimilation of minority communities. Opposition has grown to multicultural government policies, with some viewing it as a costly failure. After the 7 July 2005 London bombings, Conservative David Davis called such policies "outdated". Ed West argues that the British establishment had blindly embraced multiculturalism without proper consideration of the downsides of ethnic diversity. According to cultural conservatives, while minority cultures are allowed to remain distinct, traditional British culture is abhorred for being exclusive and adapts to accommodate minorities, often without the consent of the local population. United States A prominent criticism by cultural conservatives in the United States is that multiculturalism undermines national unity, hinders social integration, and leads to the fragmentation of society. Samuel P. Huntington described multiculturalism as an anti-Western ideology that attacked the United States' inclusion in Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted ethnic identities over national ones. Discussions to do with the conservation of American culture often involve definitional disputes. Some consider the United States as a nation of immigrants or "melting pot," others (such as David Hackett Fischer) argue that British immigrant cultures are responsible for the development of modern American culture and values. American cultural conservatives often claim that the culture is at risk due primarily to demographic change from immigration, as well as the influence of academia, which has produced increasingly left-wing alumni over time. Dinesh D'Souza argues that multiculturalism in American universities undermines the moral universalism that education once stood for. In particular, he criticized the growth of ethnic studies programs. List of cultural conservative political parties Australia Australia First Party Australian Defence League Australian Protectionist Party Pauline Hanson's One Nation Bulgaria Bulgarian National Union – New Democracy Canada Canadian Nationalist Party (defunct) People's Party of Canada Coalition Avenir Quebec Czech Republic Freedom and Direct Democracy Denmark Danish People's Party Estonia Conservative People's Party of Estonia Finland Blue and White Front Power Belongs to the People France Blue, White and Red Rally National Rally Reconquête Germany Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht Greece Greek Solution Greeks for the Fatherland LEPEN National Popular Consciousness Hungary Fidesz Our Homeland Movement Italy Lega Nord Lega per Salvini Premier Netherlands Forum for Democracy Party for Freedom New Zealand New Zealand First Poland Law and Justice Portugal CDS-PP Chega Ergue-te Romania Alliance for the Union of Romanians People's Movement Party Romanian Nationhood Party Serbia Serbian Party Oathkeepers South Korea Dawn of Liberty Party Spain Vox Sweden Alternative for Sweden Sweden Democrats United States Constitution Party Republican Party See also Criticism of multiculturalism Cultural appropriation Cultural nationalism Paleoconservatism Paleolibertarianism Social conservatism Traditionalist conservatism Notes Further reading John J. Langdale III (2012). Superfluous Southerners: Cultural Conservatism and the South, 1920–1990. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. Conservatism Conservatism in the United States Right-wing ideologies Political terminology fi:Arvokonservatismi

Mediatization (media)

Mediatization (or medialization) is a method whereby the mass media influence other sectors of society, including politics, business, culture, entertainment, sport, religion, or education. Mediatization is a process of change or a trend, similar to globalization and modernization, where the mass media integrates into other sectors of the society. Political actors, opinion makers, business organizations, civil society organizations, and others have to adapt their communication methods to a form that suits the needs and preferences of the mass media. Any person or organization wanting to spread messages to a larger audience have to adapt their messages and communication style to make it attractive for the mass media. Introduction The concept of mediatization is still requires development, and there is no commonly agreed definition of the term. For example, a sociologist, Ernst Manheim, used mediatization as a way to describe social shifts that are controlled by the mass media, while a media researcher, Kent Asp, viewed mediatization as the relationship between politics, mass media, and the ever-growing divide between the media and government control. Some theorists reject precise definitions and operationalizations of mediatization, fearing that they would reduce the complexity of the concept and the phenomena it refers to, while others prefer a clear theory that can be tested, refined, or potentially refuted. The concept of mediatization is seen not as an isolated theory, but as a framework that holds the potential to integrate different theoretical strands, linking micro-level with meso- and macro-level processes and phenomena, and thus contributing to a broader understanding of the role of the media in the transformation of modern societies. Technological developments from newspapers to radio, television, Internet, and interactive social media helped shape mediatization. Other important influences include changes in organization and economic conditions of the media, such as the growing importance of independent market-driven media and a decreasing influence of state-sponsored, public service, and partisan media. Mass media influence public opinion and the structure and processes of political communication, political decision-making and the democratic process. This political influence is not a one-way influence. While the mass media may influence government and political actors, the politicians also influence the media through regulation, negotiation, or selective access to information. The increasing influence of economic market forces is typically seen in trends such as tabloidization and trivialization, while news reporting and political coverage diminish to slogans, sound bites, spin, horse race reporting, celebrity scandals, populism, and infotainment. History The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan is sometimes associated with the founding of the field. He proposed that a communication medium, not the messages it carries, should be the primary focus of study. The Hungarian-born sociologist Ernest Manheim was the first to use the German word Mediatisierung to describe the social influence of the mass media in a book published in 1933, though with little elaboration on the concept. Mediatisierung already existed in German but had a different meaning (see German mediatisation). In his Theory of Communicative Action, the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas used the word in 1981. Whether Habermas used the word in the old meaning or in the new meaning of media influence is debated. The first appearance of the word mediatization in the English language may be in the English translation of Theory of Communication Action. The Swedish professor of journalism, Kent Asp, was the first into develop the concept of mediatization to a coherent theory in his seminal dissertation, where he investigated the mediatization of politics. His dissertation was published as a book in Swedish in 1986. Kent Asp described the mediatization of political life, by which he meant a process whereby “a political system to a high degree is influenced by and adjusted to the demands of the mass media in their coverage of politics." In the tradition of Kent Asp, the Danish media science professor Stig Hjarvard further developed the concept of mediatization and applied it not only to politics but also to other sectors of society, including religion. Hjarvard defined mediatization as a social process whereby the society is saturated and inundated by the media to the extent that the media can no longer be thought of as separated from other institutions within the society. Mediatization has since gained widespread usage in English despite sounding awkward. Mediatization theory is part of a paradigmatic shift in media and communication research. Following the concept of mediation, mediatization has become a significant concept for capturing how processes of communication transform society in large-scale relationships. While the early theory building around mediatization had a strong center in Europe, many American media sociologists and media economists made observations about the effects of commercial mass media competition on news quality, public opinion, and political processes. For example, David Altheide discussed how media logic distorts political news, and John McManus demonstrated how economic competition violates media ethics and makes it difficult for citizens to evaluate the quality of the news. The European theorists readily embraced Altheide's concept of media logic, and now the two lines of research are integrated into one standard paradigm. Modern theorists now believe there is a new form of mediatization developing. This next phase of mediatization has been dubbed "deep mediatization". Industry change caused through mediatization only increase under deep mediatization and may quickly grow out of control. Schools of Mediatization Theorists have distinguished three theoretical schools of mediatization, listed below. Institutionalist The leading scholars of this school of mediatization, David Altheide and Robert Snow, coined the term media logic in 1979. Media logic refers to the form of communication and the process through which media transmit and communicate information. The logic of media forms the fund of knowledge that is generated and circulated in society. Building on Marshall McLuhan, Altheide discusses the role of communication formats for the recognition, definition, selection, organization, and presentation of experience. A central thesis is that knowledge affects social activities more than wealth or force. A consequence of this is communication technology influencing power. For example, Gutenberg's printing press enabled the wide distribution of his Bible, which was a threat to the dominance of the Catholic Church. Altheide has emphasized that social order is communicated. It has severe consequences if this communication is exaggerated and dramatized to fit the media logic. The media may create moral panics by exaggerating and misrepresenting social problems. One example documented by Altheide is a media panic over missing children in the 1980s. The media gave the impression that many children were abducted by criminals, when in fact, most of the children listed as missing were runaways or involved in custody disputes. The penchant of the media for emotional drama and horror may lead to gonzo journalism and perversion of justice. Altheide describes "gonzo justice" as a process where the media become active players in the persecution of perceived wrongdoers, where public humiliation replaces court trials without concern for due process and civil liberties. Gonzo journalism can have severe consequences for democracy and international relations when, for example, international conflicts are presented by dramatizing the evil of foreign heads of state, such as Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein. Socio-constructivist The social constructivist school of mediatization theory involves discussions at a high level of abstraction to embrace the complexity of the interaction between mass media and other fields of society. The theorists are not denying the relevance of empirical research of causal connections but warning against a linear understanding of process and change. The theorists want to avoid the extreme positions of either technological determinism or social determinism. Their approach is not media-centric in the sense of a one-sided approach to causality, but media-centered in the sense of a holistic understanding of the various intersecting social forces at work, allowing a particular perspective and emphasis on the role of the media in these processes. The concept of media logic is criticized with the argument that there is not one media logic but many media logics, depending on the context. Andreas Hepp, a leading theorist of the constructivist school of mediatization theory, describes the role of the mass media not as a driving force but as a molding force. This force is not a direct effect of the material structure of the media. The molding force of the media only becomes concrete in different ways of mediation that are highly contextual. Hepp does not see mediatization as a theory of media effects, but as a sensitizing concept that draws our attention to fundamental transformations we experience in today's media environment. This concept provides a panorama of investigating the meta-process of interrelation between media communicative change and sociocultural change. These transformations are seen in three ways in particular: the historical depth of the process of media-related transformations, the diversity of media-related transformations in different domains of society, and the connection of media-related transformations to further processes of modernization. Hepp is deliberately avoids precise definitions of mediatization by using metaphors such as molding force and panorama. He argues that precise definitions may limit the complexity of the interrelations where it is important to consider both the material and the symbolic domain. However, materialists argue that such a loosely defined concept may too easily become a matter of belief rather than a proper theory than can be tested. The process of media change is coupled with technological change. The emergence of digital media has brought a new stage of mediatization, which can be called deep mediatization. Deep mediatization is an advanced stage of the process in which all elements of our social world are intricately related to digital media and their underlying infrastructures, and where large IT corporations play a greater role. Materialist The materialist school of mediatization theory studies how society, to an increasing degree, becomes dependent on the media and their logic. The studies combine results from different areas of science to describe how changes in the media and society are interrelated. In particular, they are focusing on how the political processes in Western democracies are changing through mediatization. The mediatization of politics can be characterized by four different dimensions, according to the Swedish professor of political communication Jesper Strömbäck and the Swiss professor of media research Frank Esser: The first dimension refers to the degree to which the media constitute the most important source of information about politics and society. The second dimension refers to the degree to which the media have become independent from other political and social institutions. The third dimension refers to the degree to which media content and the coverage of politics and current affairs are guided by media logic rather than political logic. This dimension deals with the extent to which the media's needs and standards of newsworthiness, rather than those of political actors or institutions, are decisive for what the media cover and how they cover it. The fourth dimension refers to how media logic or political logic guides political institutions, organizations, and actors. This four-dimensional framework makes it possible to break down the highly complex process of the mediatization of politics into discrete dimensions that can be studied empirically. The relationship between these four dimensions can be described as follows: If the mass media provide the most important source of information and the media are relatively independent, then media will be able to shape their contents to fit their demand for optimizing the number of readers and viewers, i.e., the media logic, while politicians have to adjust their communication to fit this media logic. The media are never completely independent, of course. They are subject to political regulation and dependent on economic factors and news sources. Scholars are debating where the balance of powers between media and politicians lies. The central concept of media logic contains three components: professionalism, commercialism, and technology. Media professionalism refers to the professional norms and values that guide journalists, such as independence and newsworthiness. Commercialism refers to the result of economic competition between commercial news media. The commercial criteria can be summarized as the least expensive mix of content that protects the interests of sponsors and investors while garnering the largest audience advertisers will pay to reach. Media technology refers to the specific requirements and possibilities that are characteristic of each of the different media technologies, including newspapers with their emphasis on print, radio with its emphasis on audio, television with its emphasis on visuals, and digital media with their emphasis on interactivity and instantaneousness. Mediatization plays a key role in social change that can be defined by four tendencies: extension, substitution, amalgamation, and accommodation. Extension refers to how communication technology extends the limits of human communication in terms of space, time, and expressiveness. Substitution refers to how media consumption replaces other activities by providing an attractive alternative or simply by consuming time that might otherwise have been spent on, for example, social activities. Amalgamation refers to how media use is woven into the fabric of everyday life so that the boundaries between mediated and nonmedia activities and between mediated and social definitions of reality are becoming blurred. Accommodation refers to how actors and organizations of all sectors of society, including business, politics, entertainment, sport, etc., adapt their activities and modes of operation to fit the media system. There is a vigorous discussion about the role of mediatization in society. Some argue that we live in a mediatization society where mass media deeply penetrate all spheres of society and are complicit in the rising political populism, while others warn against inflating mediatization to a meta-process or a superordinate process of social change. The media should not be seen as powerful agents of change because it is rare to observe the consequences of intentional actions by the media. The social consequences of mediatization are more often to be seen as unintended consequences of the media structure. Influence of media technology Newspapers Newspapers have been available since the 18th century and became more widespread in the early 20th century due to improvements in printing technology (see history of journalism). Four typical types of newspapers can be distinguished: popular, quality, regional, and financial newspapers. The popular or tabloid newspapers typically contain a high proportion of soft news, personal focus, and negative news. They often use sensationalism and attention-catching headlines to increase single-copy sales from newsstands and supermarkets, while quality newspapers are generally considered to have a higher quality of journalism. Relying more on subscriptions than on single copy sales, they have less need for sensationalism. Regional newspapers have more local news, while financial newspapers have more international news of interest to their readers. Early newspapers were often partisan, associated with a particular political party, while today they are mostly controlled by free market forces. Telegraph The introduction of the electric telegraph in the US in the mid-19th century significantly influenced the contents of newspapers, giving them easy access to national news. This increased voter turnout for presidential elections. Radio When radio became commonly available, it became an efficient medium for news, education of the public, and propaganda. Exposure to radio programs with educational content significantly increased children's school performance. Campaigns about the health effects of tobacco smoking and other health issues have been effective. The effects of radio programs may be unintended. For example, soap opera programs in Africa that portrayed attractive lifestyles affected people's norms and behaviors and their political preferences for redistribution of wealth. The radio can also facilitate political activism. Radio stations targeting a black audience had a strong effect on political activism and participation in the civil rights movement in the southern US states in the 1960s. The radio could also be a strong medium for propaganda in the years before television became available. The Roman Catholic priest Charles Coughlin in Michigan embraced radio broadcasting when radio was a new and rapidly expanding technology during the 1920s. Coughlin initially used the new possibility for reaching a mass audience for religious sermons, but after the onset of the Great Depression, he switched to mainly voicing his controversial political opinions, which were often antisemitic and fascistic. The radio was also a powerful tool for propaganda in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and during the war. The Nazi government facilitated the distribution of cheap radio receivers (Volksempfänger), which enabled Adolf Hitler to reach a large audience through his frequent propaganda speeches, while it was illegal for the Germans to listen to foreign radio stations. In Italy, Benito Mussolini used the radio for similar propaganda speeches. Television The social impact of radio was reduced after the war when television outcompeted the radio. Kent Asp, who studied the interaction of television with politics in Sweden, has identified a history of increasing mediatization. The politicians recognized in the 1960s that television had become a predominant channel for political communication took place through the following decades. The gradual acclimatization, adjustment, and adoption of media logic in political communication took place through the following decades. By the 2000s, the political institutions had almost completely integrated the logic of television and other mass media into their procedures. Television outcompeted newspapers and radio and crowded out other activities such as play, sports, study, and social activities. This outcome has led to lower school performance for children who have access to entertainment TV programs. TV viewers tend to imitate the lifestyle of role models that they see on entertainment shows. This imitation has resulted in lower fertility and higher divorce rates in various countries. Television is delivering strong messages of patriotism and national unity in China where the media are state-controlled. Toys/Play The mediatization of toys in the United States can be traced back to the post-World War II era of the 1950s. Advertisers saw the rise of children's television programming as an opportunity to utilize a new medium to market toys. Toys became heavily promoted in the media through television. Commercialization of children's television programs increased in the 1980s after the deregulation of American television. Over time, this led to the creation of popular toy brands and characters, such as G.I. Joe and Barbie, who were given their own television shows and movies to sell more toys. With the rise of the Internet, tablets, smartphones, and other Internet-connected devices, the toy and media industries have become even more closely linked, giving companies even greater opportunities to market their toys to children with the help of mediatization. Internet The advent of the Internet has created new opportunities and conditions for traditional newspapers and online-only news providers. Many newspapers are now publishing their news on paper and also online. This shift has enabled a more diverse assembly of breaking news, longer reports, and traditional magazine journalism. The increased competition in a diversified media market has led to more human interest and lifestyle stories and less political news, especially in the online versions of the newspapers. Social media Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, have enabled a more interactive form of mass communication. The new form of Internet media that allow user-generated content has been called Web 2.0. The possibilities for user involvement have increased opportunities for networking, collaboration, and civic engagement. Protest movements, in particular, have benefited from an independent communication infrastructure. The circulation of messages on social media relies, to a great extent, on users who like, share, and re-distribute messages. This kind of circulation of messages is controlled less by the logic of market economics and more by the principles of memetics. Messages are selected and recirculated based on a new set of criteria different from the selection criteria of newspapers, radio, and television. People tend to share the psychologically appealing and attention-catching messages. Social media users are remarkably bad at evaluating the truth of the messages they share. Studies show that false messages are shared more often than true messages because false messages are more surprising and attention-catching. This spreading of false information has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories on social media. Attempts to counter misinformation by fact-checking have had limited effect. People prefer to follow the Internet forums, pages, and groups they agree with. At the same time, the media prefer topics that are already popular. This has led to the large-scale occurrence of echo chambers and filter bubbles. A consequence of this is that the political arena has become more polarized because different groups of citizens are attending to different news sources, though the evidence of this effect is mixed. Other forms of communication channels Online political participation may affect the political standpoints of frequent media consumers due to mass mediatization, which is becoming increasingly prevalent. Blogs, videos, and websites are all examples of alternative communication channels, as opposed to traditional media, such as newspapers and television. Through blog, video and website communication, individuals can gain a further connection to political institutions through freely expressing their views and opinions. This communication is possible because the Internet is bringing elites and members of the public closer together. Any ordinary person can send e-mails to a politician or a political journalist, expecting a response, or even generate millions of impressions upon regular viewers on YouTube or the Internet by publishing their opinions. Through these alternative means of communication, many people find that online participation with politics and even high-status politicians is becoming increasingly common and accessible. Expressive communication through the Internet proves to be more effective than communication through traditional sources, as prosumers (a combination of a producer and consumer making their media as a consumer) are becoming powerful through their reach. This alternative means of communication makes it more likely for false information to spread online, however, through sources that are unreliable and that anybody can post on, such as TikTok, and political participation can be damaged by this or corrupted through ideas or concepts that are not true. Online participation has led to in-person political activities and the contribution of political activists. An example is Howard Dean's Blog for America, which served as a forum for people from various backgrounds to get involved and coordinate events in the 2004 election. Online communication breeds offline communication through activism organized online, which takes place in the real world. Physical resources Media materialism is a theory that addresses the media's impact on the physical environment. Media materialism covers three aspects: The consumption of natural resources for industrial production of modern communication technology The energy consumption of communication technology in residential and institutional sectors The waste that is created by discarded cell phones, televisions, computers, etc. Influence of market forces The economic mechanisms that influence the mass media are quite complex because commercial mass media are competing on many different markets at the same time: Competition for consumers, i.e. readers, listeners, and viewers Competition for advertisers and sponsors Competition for investors Competition for access to information sources, such as politicians, experts, etc. Competition for content providers and access rights, e.g. transmission rights for sports events The economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian wrote that information commodity markets don't work. There are several reasons for this. An important characteristic that makes information markets different from most other markets is that the fixed costs are high while the variable costs are low or zero. The fixed costs are the costs of producing content. This includes journalistic work, research, production of educational content, entertainment, etc. The variable costs are the marginal costs of adding one more consumer. The costs of broadcasting a TV show are the same whether there is one viewer or a million viewers, hence the variable costs are zero. In general, the variable costs for digital media is virtually zero because information can be copied at very low costs. The variable costs for newspapers are the costs of printing and selling one more copy, which are low but not zero. Commercial mass media are competing for a limited supply of advertising money. The more media companies that compete for advertising money, the lower the price of advertising, and the less money each company has for covering the fixed costs of producing content. Free competition in a media market with many competitors can lead to ruinous competition where the revenue for each company is hardly enough to produce content of the lowest possible quality. The news media are not only competing for advertisers with other news media, they are also competing for advertisers with other companies that mainly facilitate communication rather than produce information, such as search engines and social media. IT companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. are dominating the advertising market, leaving less than half of the revenue for news media. The strong dependence on advertising money is forcing commercial mass media to mainly target audiences that are profitable to the advertisers. They tend to avoid controversial content and avoid issues that the advertisers dislike. The competition for access to politicians, police, and other important news sources can enable these sources to manipulate the media by providing selective information and by favoring those media that give them positive coverage. Competition between TV stations for transmission rights to the most popular sports events, the most popular entertainment formats, and the most popular talk show hosts can drive up prices to extreme levels. This is often a winner-takes-it-all market where perhaps a pay TV channel is able to outbid the public broadcast channels. The result is that for example a popular sports event will be available to fewer viewers at higher prices than would result if competition was limited. Thus, competition on media markets is very different from competition on other markets with higher variable costs. Many studies have shown that fierce competition between news media results in trivialization and poor quality. We are seeing a large amount of cheap entertainment, gossip, and sensationalism, and very little civic affairs and thorough journalistic research. Newspapers are particularly affected by the increasing competition, resulting in lower circulation and lower journalistic quality. Classical economic theory would predict that competition leads to diversity, but this is not always the case with media markets. Moderate competition may lead to niche diversification, but there are many examples where fierce competition instead leads to wasteful sameness. Many TV channels are producing the same kind of cheap entertainment that appeals to the largest possible audience. The high fixed costs favor large companies and large markets. Unregulated media markets often lead to concentration of ownership, which can be horizontal (same company owning multiple channels) or vertical (content suppliers and network distributors under same owner). Economic efficiency is improved by the concentration of ownership, but it may reduce diversity by excluding unaffiliated content suppliers. Unregulated markets tend to be dominated by a few large companies, while smaller firms may occupy niche positions. Large markets are characterized by monopolistic competition where each company offers a slightly different product. The cable TV companies are differentiated along political lines in the USA where the fairness doctrine no longer applies. We may expect that a company that runs multiple broadcast channels would produce different content on the different channels to avoid competing with itself, but the evidence shows a mixed picture. Some studies show that market concentration increases diversity and innovation, while other studies show the opposite. A market where multiple companies own one TV channel each does not guarantee diversity either. On the contrary, we often see wasteful duplication where everybody is trying to reach the same mainstream audience with the same kind of programs. The situation is different for publicly funded TV channels. The non-commercial Danish national TV, for example, has multiple broadcast channels sending different kinds of content in order to meet its public service obligation. European countries have a tradition for public service radio and television that is funded fully or partially by government subsidies or mandatory license payment for everybody who has a radio or TV. Historically, these public service broadcasters have delivered high quality programmes including news based on thorough journalistic investigation, as well as educational programmes, public information, debate, special programs for minorities, and entertainment. However, broadcasters who depend on government funding or mandatory license payments are vulnerable to political pressure from the incumbent government. Some media are protected from political pressure through strong charters and arms-length oversight organizations, while those with weaker protection are more influenced by pressure from politicians. The public service broadcasters in several European countries initially had monopoly on broadcasting, but the strict regulation was relaxed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Competition from commercial radio and TV stations had a strong impact on the public service broadcasters. In Greece, the new competition from commercial TV led to lower quality and less diversity, contrary to the expectation of the economists. The contents of the public channels became similar to the commercial channels with less news and more entertainment. In the Netherlands, diversity of TV programs increased in periods with moderate competition, but decreased in periods with ruinous competition. In Denmark, the degree of dependence on advertising and private investors influenced the amount of trivialization, but even a publicly financed advertisement-free TV channel became more trivialized as a result of competition with commercial channels. In Finland, the government has avoided ruinous competition by strict regulation of the TV market. The result is more diversity. Sociocultural change The concept of mediatization is focusing not only on media effects but on the interrelation between the change of media communication on the one hand and sociocultural changes on the other. Some aspects of sociocultural change are reviewed in the following sections. Crime, disaster, and fear It is a common adage that fear sells. News media are often using fearmongering to attract readers, listeners, and viewers. Stories about crime, disaster, dangerous diseases, etc. have a prominent place in many news media. Historically, the tabloid newspapers have relied quite a lot on crime news in order to make customers buy today's newspaper. This strategy has been copied by the electronic media, especially when competition is fierce. The news media have often created moral panics by exaggerating minor social problems or even completely imaginary dangers as seen, for example, in the satanic cult scare. The scare stories may have political consequences, even if the media have only economic motives. Politicians often implement draconian laws and tough on crime policies because they feel compelled to react to the perceived dangers. In a larger perspective, the high affinity of many news media for crime and disaster has led to a culture of fear where people are taking unnecessary precautions against minor or unlikely dangers while they pay less attention to the much higher risks of, for example, lifestyle diseases or traffic accidents. Psychologists fear that the heavy exposure to crime and disaster in the media is fostering a mean world syndrome causing depression, anxiety, and anger. The perception of the world as a dangerous place may lead to authoritarian submission, conformism, and aggression against minorities according to the theory of right-wing authoritarianism. The culture of fear may have a strong influence on the whole culture and political climate. A widespread perception of collective danger can push the culture and politics in the direction of authoritarianism, intolerance, and bellicosity, according to regality theory. This is an unintended consequence of the economic competition between the news media. Law enforcement agencies have learned to cooperate with the mass media to dramatize crime in order to promote their own agenda. It is often suspected that politicians actively take advantage of the media's proclivity for fearmongering in order to promote a particular agenda. Warnings about possible terror attacks have increased public support for the US president, and the fearful sentiments after the September 11 terror attacks have been used to garner support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mediatization of Ignorance Unlike other forms of mediatization that focus on spreading knowledge, the mediatization of ignorance involves the mediatization of unknowns (known unknowns). The mediatization of ignorance occurs when information that has not yet been vetted, fully understood, or confirmed by experts moves through various media channels and is presented to audiences as fact. Three phases are found in the mediatization of ignorance: the revelation, the acceleration, and the irredeemable phases. During the revelation phase, information that experts still need to fully vetted is revealed to the media; however, communicative leaders such as scientists, health professionals, or researchers still have control of the narrative. During the acceleration phase, the information spreads rapidly and becomes, regardless of validity, what the audience begins to view as reality. Communicative leaders lose control of the narrative during this phase of the mediatization of ignorance. Finally, during the irredeemable phase, experts lose all control of the narrative even after gathering scientific evidence to prove that the non-vetted information was false. An example of the three phases of the mediatization of ignorance can be found during the early months of the COVID-19 Pandemic surrounding the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) drug. During the revelation phase, the media heard that the HCQ could be a potential treatment for COVID-19 based on limited initial evidence. This revelation sparked media and audience interest. The topic of the HCQ drug was later boosted into the acceleration phase after Donald Trump endorsed the drug, even though evidence of the drug's effectiveness was still lacking. Due to the reports of success and a celebrity endorsement, there was a temporary shortage of the HCQ drug due to high demand based on the perceived effectiveness of the drug. Even though later research and trials revealed little to no effectiveness of the HCQ drug against the COVID-19 virus, the irredeemable phase of the mediatization of ignorance had already been reached. Because of this, the link between the ineffective drug and COVID-19 had already been established and believed as true by a majority of audiences. Democracy and news media A democracy can only function properly if voters are well informed about candidates and political issues. It is generally assumed that the news media are serving the function of informing voters. However, since the late 20th century there has been a growing concern that voters may be poorly informed because the news media are focusing more on entertainment and gossip and less on serious journalistic research on political issues. The media professors Michael Gurevitch and Jay Blumler have proposed a number of functions that the mass media are expected to fulfill in a democracy: Surveillance of the sociopolitical environment Meaningful agenda setting Platforms for an intelligible and illuminating advocacy Dialogue across a diverse range of views Mechanisms for holding officials to account for how they have exercised power Incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved A principled resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence, integrity, and ability to serve the audience A sense of respect for the audience member, as potentially concerned and able to make sense of his or her political environment This proposal has inspired a lot of discussions over whether the news media are actually fulfilling the functions that a well functioning democracy requires. Commercial mass media are generally not accountable to anybody but their owners, and they have no obligation to serve a democratic function. They are controlled mainly by economic market forces. Fierce economic competition may force the mass media to divert themselves from any democratic ideals and focus entirely on how to survive the competition. Quality or elite newspapers are still providing serious political news, while tabloid newspapers and commercial TV stations deliver more soft news and entertainment. The quality of the news media is different in different countries, depending on regulation and market structure. However, even the quality newspapers are dumbing down their contents in order to target more readers when competition is fierce. Public service media have an obligation to provide reliable information to voters. Many countries have publicly funded radio and television stations with public service obligations, especially in Europe and Japan, while such media are weak or non-existent in other countries including the USA. Several studies have shown that the stronger the dominance of commercial broadcast media over public service media, the less the amount of policy-relevant information in the media and the more focus on horse race journalism, personalities, and the peccadillos of politicians. Public service broadcasters are characterized by more policy-relevant information and more respect for journalistic norms of impartiality than the commercial media. However, the trend of deregulation has put the public service model under increased pressure from competition with commercial media. Many journalists would prefer to hold their professional standards high, but the competition for audience is forcing them to deliver more soft news and entertainment and less substantial public affairs coverage. Politics has become popularized to such a degree that the lines between politics and entertainment are becoming increasingly blurred. At the same time, the commercialization has made the news media vulnerable to external influence and manipulation. The tabloidization and popularization of the news media is seen in an increasing focus on human examples rather than statistics and principles. The ability to find effective political solutions to social problems is hampered when problems tend to be blamed on individuals rather than on structural causes. This person-centered focus may have far-reaching consequences not only for domestic problems but also for foreign policy when international conflicts are blamed on foreign heads of state rather than on political and economic structures. A strong focus on fear and terrorism has allowed military logic to penetrate public institutions, leading to increased surveillance and the erosion of civil rights. There is more focus on politicians as personalities and less focus on political issues in the popular media. Election campaigns are covered more as horse races and less as debates about ideologies and issues. The dominating focus on spin, conflict, and competitive strategies has made voters perceive the politicians as egoists rather than idealists. This fosters mistrust and a cynical attitude to politics, less civic engagement, and less interest in voting. Bargaining between political parties becomes more difficult under media focus because necessary concessions will make individual negotiators lose credibility. Negotiations require an atmosphere of privacy which allows for compromises, communicated to the public as collective decisions without indicating any winner or loser. A considerable decline in the quantity and quality of negotiation outcomes seems likely due to this incompatibility between news media logic and political bargaining logic. The responsiveness and accountability of the democratic system is compromised when lack of access to substantive, diverse, and undistorted information is handicapping the citizens' capability of evaluating the political process. Formal ties between newspapers and political parties were common in the first half of the 20th century, but rare today. Instead, politicians must adapt to the media logic. Many politicians have found ways to manipulate the media to serve their own ends. They often stage events or leak information with the sole purpose of getting the media to cover their agenda. The fast pace and trivialization in the competitive news media is handicapping the political debate. Thorough and balanced investigation of complex political issues does not fit into this format. The political communication is characterized by short time horizons, short slogans, simple explanations, and simple answers. This is conducive to political populism rather than serious deliberation. The Italian businessman and populist politician Silvio Berlusconi took advantage of the fact that he owned many of the commercial TV stations. This secured him a favorable coverage that enabled him to become prime minister for a total of nine years. Studies in Italy show that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and less civic minded as adults. Exposure to educational content, on the other hand, improved the cognitive abilities and civic engagement. People form habits around their media consumption and often stick to the same media. This is an easy way to minimize the cognitive efforts of information processing. An experiment in China showed that consumers who were given access to uncensored news tended to stick to their old habits and watch the state censored news media. However, after given incentives to watch the uncensored news, they kept preferring the uncensored news, which led to persistent changes in their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Some commentators have presented an optimistic view, arguing that democracy is still functioning despite the shortcomings of the media, while others deplore the rise of political populism, polarization, and extremism that the popular media seem to be contributing to. Many media scholars have discussed non-commercial news media with public service obligations as a means to improve the democratic process by providing the kind of political contents that a free market does not provide. The World Bank has recommended public service broadcasting services in order to strengthen democracy in developing countries. These broadcasting services should be accountable to an independent regulatory body that is adequately protected from interference from political and economic interests. Democracy and social media The emergence of the internet and the social media has profoundly altered the conditions for political communication. The social media have given ordinary citizens easy access to voice their opinion and share information while bypassing the filters of the large news media. This is often seen as an advantage for democracy. The social media make it possible for politicians to get immediate feedback from citizens on their policy proposals, but they also make it difficult for politicians and business leaders to hide information. The new possibilities for communication have fundamentally changed the way social movements and protest movements operate and organize. The internet and social media have provided powerful new tools for democracy movements in developing countries and emerging democracies, enabling them to organize protests and to produce visual events suitable for the media. The social media and search engines are financed mainly by advertising. They are able to target advertisements specifically to the population segments that the advertisers select. The fact that these media act like marketing companies and consultants may compromise their neutrality. Another problem is that the social media have no truth filters. The established news media have to guard their reputation as trustworthy, while ordinary citizens may post unreliable information. Echo chambers may emerge when people are sharing unchecked information with groups of like minded people. Studies find evidence of clusters of people with the same opinions on social media like Facebook. People tend to trust information shared by their friends. This may lead to selective exposure to partisan opinions, but several studies show that people are exposed to a more diverse set of news and opinions on social media than on traditional news media. False stories are shared more than true stories, as discussed above. Conspiracy theories, whether true or false, are shared on social media because people find them interesting, exciting, and entertaining. The proliferation of conspiracy beliefs may undermine public trust in the political system and public officials. A noteworthy example is the mistrust of health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some studies indicate that there are political asymmetries in responses to misinformation due to differences in personality characteristics and media structures. Psychological traits such as close-mindedness, uncertainty avoidance, and resistance to change are more common among conservatives than among liberals and moderates. These traits, combined with more selective media use and a more insular nature of the conservative media ecosystem, make conservatives more likely than liberals to share and believe misinformation. Liberal citizens are more likely to share fact-checking information than conservatives. Furthermore, liberal and moderate media are more likely than conservative media to fact check their stories and to retract false stories. State regulation of social media is a problem for free speech. Instead, major social media have implemented self-regulation in order to defend their reputation. Social media are often sanctioning against hate speech, while general misinformation is more difficult to combat. The medias' own filters are often unreliable and vulnerable to manipulation. Some social media are publishing fact-checking information in order to counter misinformation. Studies of the effects of fact-checking have given mixed results. Some studies find that fact-checking is reducing the beliefs in misinformation. Other studies find that corrective information influences knowledge but not voting intentions. Fact-checking may even be counterproductive when people do not trust the fact-checking organizations or when they construct counter-arguments. Some observers have proposed media literacy education as a means to make people less susceptible to believe misinformation. Research suggests that media literacy education is most effective when it includes personal feedback. The social media are very vulnerable to manipulation because it is possible to set up fake accounts. Various propaganda agencies are secretly setting up large numbers of fake social media accounts pretending to be ordinary people. The fake accounts are often operated by automated computers programmed to act like real people, the so-called bots. Such fake accounts and bots are used for spreading and sharing propaganda, disinformation, and fake news. Business operators may spread disinformation about competitors or stock markets; political organizations may try to influence the public opinion in political matters; and military intelligence organizations may use the spreading of disinformation as a means of information warfare. For example, the Russian web brigades or troll farms have disseminated large amounts of fake news in order to influence the election of US president Donald Trump in 2016, according to an intelligence report. See also Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Bots have also been highly involved in spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Mediatization of Politics The mediatization of politics focuses on the transformative effect media exerts on politics. It is argued that there are four dimensions of the transformation of politics. The first dimension focuses on media as the source of political information. If politics is highly mediatized, a public's only way of learning about new laws and policy is through the media. The second dimension is concerned with the media's independency from politics and whether or not the media is able to speak out against political figures. The third dimension focuses on which logic rules the media–– media logic or political logic. If politics are low to moderately mediatized, political logic (media coverage of laws and policy) will be favored whereas if politics are highly mediatized, media logic (coverage of entertaining and dramatized political stories) will be favored. Finally, the fourth dimension focuses on whether or not political figures favor media or political logic. Political populism Populism refers to a political style characterized by anti-establishment and anti-elite rhetoric and a simplified, polarized definition of political issues. The establishment is often evoked in populist rhetoric as the source of crisis, breakdown, or corruption. This can take the form of the denial of expert knowledge and the championing of common sense against the bureaucrats. Much of the appeal of populists comes from their disregard for “appropriate” ways of acting in the political realm. This includes a tabloid style with the use of slang, political incorrectness, and being overly demonstrative and colorful, as opposed to the elite behaviors of rigidness, rationality, and technocratic language. Citizens with populist attitudes have a preference for tabloid media content that simplifies issues in binary “us” versus “them” oppositions. It is often difficult for populist politicians to get their messages through the mainstream media, especially when these messages contain unverified claims or socially inappropriate speech. The internet has provided populists with new communication channels that match their needs for unfiltered communication. Populists sometimes rely on borderline truths, forged content, manipulative speech, and unverified claims that would not pass the gatekeepers at reputable news media. The availability of independent internet media and social media has thus opened a door to the spreading of biased information, selective perception, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and inclinations to reinforce in-group identities in echo chambers. This has paved the way to a rise in populism around the world. Another factor contributing to the rise of populism is the concentration of ownership of internet news media. This enables the dissemination of attention-catching content targeted at specific audience segments in a fragmented market. The content that is most profitable happens to also be the most emotional, incendiary, polarizing, and divisive messages. This contributes to inflating the loudest and most antagonistic voices and intensifying social conflicts by distorting facts and limiting exposure to competing ideas. Right-wing populism is characterized by short and emotional or scandalizing messages without sophisticated theorizing. The communication is controlled by strong charismatic leaders in an asymmetric top-down manner. The social media pages of populist politicians are often heavily moderated to suppress critical comments. The type of reasoning is based mostly on anecdotal evidence and emotional narratives, while abstract arguments based on statistics or theory are dismissed as elitist. Left-wing populism is less top-down controlled and more engaging than right-wing populism. For example, the Spanish party Podemos is relying on a media strategy of viral dissemination of emotional, controversial, and provocative messages. Populism has led to strong polarization in many countries. The lack of shared world view and agreed-upon facts is an obstacle to meaningful democratic dialogue. Extreme political polarization may undermine the trust in democratic institutions, leading to erosion of civil rights and free speech and in some cases even reversion to autocracy. Sport Sport is a prime example of mediatization. The organization of sports is highly influenced by the mass media, and the media in turn are influenced by sports. Sport has historically had a very close relationship with mass media through a parallel development of sports organizations and sports journalism. Big sports events, such as the Tour de France and the UEFA Champions League, were originally invented and initiated by newspapers. The mass media are important for sports organizations. The media help attract new participants, encourage spectators, and attract sponsors, advertisers, and investors. Broadcasting of sports events is important for sports organizations as well as for television stations. This has led to increasing commercialization of sports since the 1980s. We have seen the development of close partnerships between a relatively small number of highly professional sports organizations and big broadcast organizations. The rules of the games, as well as tournament structures etc., have been adjusted to fit the entertainment focus of television and other news media. The commercialization of elite sport has led to an increased focus on individual athletes and individual teams through press photos, interviews, merchandise, and fan culture leading to the rise of stardom and extremely high salaries. The most popular sports can attract huge amounts of money through sponsorship and transmission rights, while a majority of less popular sports are marginalized and find it hard to attract funding. The most popular athletes, in particular, are traded or transferred at extreme prices. Popular sports events are used not only for advertising products and companies, but also for promoting countries through the organization of large international sporting events, such as the olympic games, world championships, etc. The commercialization and professionalization of sports has led to an increasing integration of sport enterprises and entertainment media, and a growing industry involving professional coaches, consultants, biomechanical experts, etc. These developments have led to new ethical concerns about the erosion of the spirit of amateurism and the ideals of fair play. Athletes in elite sports are often forced to play to the extreme limits of the rules in order to maximize their chances of winning. This makes them poor role models for amateurs and fans. The large sums of money at stake increase the temptations to various forms of cheating, such as unfair play, doping, match fixing, bribery, etc. Among the concerns are also sponsorships with unhealthy products and the gambling industry. The competition for exclusive transmission rights to popular sports events has driven up prices to such levels that several countries have implemented anti-siphoning laws to make sure that consumers have free access to watch these events. Religion The application of mediatization theory to the study of religion was initiated by Stig Hjarvard with a main focus on Northern Europe. Hjarvard described how the media have gradually taken over many of the social functions that used to be performed by religious institutions, such as rituals, worship, mourning, celebration, and spiritual guidance. This can be considered part of a general process of modernization and secularization. Religious activities are less controlled and organized by the church and instead subsumed under the media logic and delivered through genres like news, documentaries, drama, comedy, and entertainment. The mass media and the entertainment industry are combining aspects of folk religion such as trolls, vampires, and magic with the iconography and liturgy of institutionalized religions into a mixture that Hjarvard calls banal religion. Television shows depicting astrology, séances, exorcism, chiromancy, etc. are legitimizing superstition and supporting an individualization of belief while the church's control over access to religious texts is weakened. Such TV shows, as well as novels and films like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, and computer games such as the World of Warcraft are all sources of religious imagination. Hjarvard argues that these representations of banal religion are not irrelevant, but fundamental in the production of religious thoughts and feelings where the institutionalized religious texts and symbols arise as secondary features, in a sense as rationalization after the fact. David Morgan is criticizing Hjarvard's concept of mediatization for being limited to a specific historical context. Morgan argues that the mediatization of religion is not necessarily connected with modernization and secularization. Historically, communication through music, art, and writing have had a degree of ubiquity similar to the modern mass media and have shaped human society in distinct ways. Religious life has always been mediated when people believe that séances communicate with spirits of the dead, prayers communicate with deities, icons establish connection to the heavenly saint, and sacred objects are facilitating interaction between human actors and the divine. Morgan shows how British evangelical printed texts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries shaped religious life. These texts were not endorsed by the state or the church, but still explicitly Christian. This is an example of mediatization that was not connected with secularization or modernization. Morgan agrees, however, that mediatization remains a useful concept for describing the effects of certain forms of media use. The intrigue or mystery that many find in fiction, exotic religions, occultism, astrology, dreams, etc. — what Hjarvard calls banal religion — suggests that images, music, and objects carry a potency that operates independent of explicit or institutional religion. Studies of religious media in other parts of the world confirm that mediatization is not necessarily connected with secularization. Televangelism has a large influence on religious life in Northern America. The American concept of televangelism has been copied in many parts of the world and adopted not only by Christian evangelists, but also by Islamic, Buddhist, and Hinduist preachers. This has led to increased competition between the established religious institutions and self-styled televangelists, between different sects, and between different religions. Televangelism is a powerful medium for fund raising which has enabled televangelists to establish large business enterprises combining religious activity with entertainment and trade. The internet has opened many new possibilities for religious communication. Memorial sites on the internet have supplemented or replaced physical cemeteries. Dalai Lama performs religious ceremonies online which help Tibetan refugees and diaspora recreate religious practices outside of Tibet. Many religious communities around the world are using interactive internet media to communicate with believers, transmit services, give directions and advise, answer questions, and even engage in dialogues between different religions. The social media allow a more democratic and less centralized religious dialogue. Sharing of religious texts, images, and videos on social media is often encouraged by religious communities. Unlike the traditional commercial information economy based on copyright, some televangelists in Singapore are deliberately sharing their media products without intellectual property rights in order to allow their followers to share these works on social media and make new combinations, compositions, and mash-up's such that new ideas can develop and thrive. Subcultures Hjarvard and Peterson summarize the media's role in cultural change: "(1) When various forms of subcultures try to make use of media for their own purposes, they often become (re-)embedded into mainstream culture; (2) National cultural policies often serve as levers for increased mediatization; (3) Mediatization involves a transformation of the ways in which authority and expertise are performed and reputation is acquired and defended; and (4) Technological developments shape the media's affordances and thus the particular path of mediatization." Mediatization research explores the ways in which media are embedded in cultural transformation. For example, "tactical" mediatization designates the response of community organizations and activists to wider technological changes. Kim Sawchuk, professor in Communication Studies, worked with a group of elderly who managed to retain their own agency in this context. For the elderly, the pressure to mediatize comes from various institutions that are transitioning to online services (government agencies, funding, banks, etc.), among other things. A tactical approach to media is one that comes from those who are subordinates within these systems. It means to implement work-arounds to make the technologies work for them. For example, in the case of the elderly group she studies, they borrowed equipment to produce video capsules explaining their mandate and the importance of this mandate for their communities, which allowed them to reach new audiences while keeping the tone and style of face-to-face communication they privilege in their day-to-day practice. Doing this, they also subverted expectations about the ability of the elderly to use new media effectively. Another example of study is one that is focused on the media-related practices of graffiti writers and skaters, showing how media integrate and modulate their everyday practices. The analysis also demonstrates how the mediatization of these subcultural groups brings them to become part of mainstream culture, changes their rebellious and oppositional image and engages them with the global commercialization culture. Another example is how media's omnipresence informs the ways Femen's protests may take place on public scenes, allow communication between individual bodies and a shared understanding of activist imaginary. It aims to analyse how their practices are moulded by the media and how these are staged in manners that facilitate spreadability. See also Attention economy Concentration of media ownership Digital citizen Echo chamber (media) Mass communication Media culture Media literacy Media psychology Mediacracy Media effects Media studies Mediated Stylistics Social aspects of television References Media studies Sociological terminology Political science theories

Participatory culture

Participatory culture, an opposing concept to consumer culture, is a culture in which private individuals (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media. Overview Recent advances in technologies (mostly personal computers and the Internet) have enabled private persons to create and publish such media, usually through the Internet. Since technology now enables new forms of expression and engagement in public discourse, participatory culture not only supports individual creation but also informal relationships that pair novices with experts. This new culture, as it relates to the Internet, has been described as Web 2.0. In participatory culture, "young people creatively respond to a plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities in ways that surprise their makers, finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of 'consumers'." The increasing access to the Internet has come to play an integral part in the expansion of participatory culture because it increasingly enables people to work collaboratively, generate and disseminate news, ideas, and creative works, and connect with people who share similar goals and interests (see affinity groups). The potential of participatory culture for civic engagement and creative expression has been investigated by media scholar Henry Jenkins. In 2009, Jenkins and co-authors Ravi Purushotma, Katie Clinton, Margaret Weigel and Alice Robison authored a white paper entitled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. This paper describes a participatory culture as one: With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement With strong support for creating and sharing one's creations with others With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices Where members believe that their contributions matter Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). History Participatory culture has been around longer than the Internet. The emergence of the Amateur Press Association in the middle of the 19th century is an example of historical participatory culture; at that time, young people were hand typing and printing their own publications. These publications were mailed throughout a network of people and resemble what are now called social networks. The evolution from zines, radio shows, group projects, and gossip to blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networks has impacted society greatly. With web services such as eBay, Blogger, Wikipedia, Photobucket, Facebook, and YouTube, it is no wonder that culture has become more participatory. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound and will affect the very core of culture, economy, society, and democracy. Forms Forms of participatory culture can be manifested in affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving, and circulations. Affiliations include both formal and informal memberships in online communities such as discussion boards or social media. Expression refers to the types of media that could be created. This may manifest as memes, fanfiction, or other forms of mash-ups. When individuals and groups work together on a particular form of media or media product, like a wiki, then they engage in collaborative problem solving. Finally, circulation refers to the means through which the communication may be spread. This could include blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and even some forms of social media. Some of the most popular apps that involve participation include: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok. Fanfiction creators were one of the first communities to showcase the public could participate in pop culture, by changing, growing, and altering TV show storylines during their run times, as well as strengthening the series’ popularity after the last episode aired. Some fan fiction creators develop theories and speculation, while others create ‘new’ material outside of the confines of the original content. Fans expand on the original story, putting the characters falling in love within the series through different adventures and sexualities. These communities are composed of audiences and readers from around the world, at different ages, with different backgrounds, coming together to develop theories and possibilities about current TV shows, books and films, or expand and continue the stories of TV shows, books, and movies that have come to a close. Technology As technology continues to enable new avenues for communication, collaboration, and circulation of ideas, it has also given rise to new opportunities for consumers to create their own content. Barriers like time and money are beginning to become less significant to large groups of consumers. For example, the creation of movies once required large amounts of expensive equipment, but now movie clips can be made with equipment that is affordable to a growing number of people. The ease with which consumers create new material has also grown. Extensive knowledge of computer programming is no longer necessary to create content on the internet. Media sharing over the Internet acts as a platform to invite users to participate and create communities that share similar interests through duplicated sources, original content, and re-purposed material. Social media People no longer blindly absorb and consume what large media corporations distribute. Today there are a great deal of people who are consumers who also produce their own content (referring to "prosumers"). The reason participatory culture is a high interest topic is due to the fact that there are just so many different social media platforms to participate in and contribute to. These happen to be some of the leaders in the social media industry, and are the reason people are able to have such an advantage to participate in media creation. Today, millions of people across the world have the ability to post, quote, film, or create whatever they want. With the aid of these platforms, the ability to reach a global audience has never been easier. Social media and politics Social media have become a huge factor in politics and civics in not just elections, but gaining funds, spreading information, getting legislation and petition support, and other political activities. Social media make it easier for the public to make an impact and participate in politics. A study that showed the connection between Facebook messages among friends and how these messages have influenced political expression, voting, and information seeking in the 2012 United States presidential election. Social media mobilizes people easily and effectively, and does the same for the circulation of information. These can accomplish political goals such as gaining support for legislation, but social media can also greatly influence elections. The impact social media can have on elections was shown in the 2016 United States presidential election, hundreds of fake news stories about candidates were shared on Facebook tens of millions of times. Some people do not recognize fake news and vote based on false information. Web 2.0 Not only has hardware increased the individual's ability to submit content to the internet so that it may be reached by a wide audience, but in addition numerous internet sites have increased access. Websites like Flickr, Wikipedia, and Facebook encourage the submission of content to the Internet. They increase the ease with which a user may post content by allowing them to submit information even if they only have an Internet browser. The need for additional software is eliminated. These websites also serve to create online communities for the production of content. These communities and their web services have been labelled as part of Web 2.0. The relationship between Web 2.0 tools and participatory culture is more than just material, however. As the mindsets and skillsets of participatory practices have been increasingly taken up, people are increasingly likely to exploit new tools and technology in 2.0 ways. One example is the use of cellphone technology to engage "smart mobs" for political change worldwide. In countries where cellphone usage exceeds use of any other form of digital technology, passing information via mobile phone has helped bring about significant political and social change. Notable examples include the so-called "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, the overthrow of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, and regular political protests worldwide Participatory media There have been several ways that participatory media allows people to create, connect, and share their content or build friendships throughout the media. YouTube encourages people to create and upload their content to share it around the world, creating an environment for content creators new or old. Discord allows people, primarily gamers, to connect with each other around the world and acts as a live chatroom. Twitch is a streaming media website where content creators can "go live" for viewers all around the world. A lot of times, these participatory sites have community events such as charity events or memorial streams for someone important to the people in the Twitch community. Relationship to the smartphone The smartphone is one example that combines the elements of interactivity, identity, and mobility. The mobility of the smartphone demonstrates that media is no longer bound by time and space and can be used in any context. Technology continues to progress in this direction as it becomes more user driven and less restricted to schedules and locations: for example, the progression of movies from theaters to private home viewing, to now the smartphone that can be watched anytime and anywhere. The smartphone also enhances the participatory culture by increased levels of interactivity. Instead of merely watching, users are actively involved in making decisions, navigating pages, contributing their own content and choosing what links to follow. This goes beyond the "keyboard" level of interactivity, where a person presses a key and the expected letter appears, and becomes rather a dynamic activity with continually new options and changing setting, without a set formula to follow. The consumer role shifts from a passive receiver to an active contributor. The smartphone epitomizes this by the endless choices and ways to get personally involved with multiple media at the same time, in a nonlinear way. The smartphone also contributes to participatory culture because of how it changes the perception of identity. A user can hide behind an avatar, false profile, or simply an idealized self when interacting with others online. There is no accountability to be who one says one is. The ability to slide in and out of roles changes the effect of media on culture, and also the user himself. Now not only are people active participants in media and culture, but also their imagined selves. Producers, consumers, and "produsage" In Vincent Miller's Understanding Digital Culture, he makes the argument that the lines between producer and consumers have become blurry. Producers are those that create content and cultural objects, and consumers are the audience or purchasers of those objects. By referring to Axel Bruns' idea of "prosumer," Miller argues "With the advent of convergent new media and the plethora of choice in sources for information, as well as the increased capacity for individuals to produce content themselves, this shift away from producer hegemony to audience or consumer power would seem to have accelerated, thus eroding the producer-consumer distinction" (p. 87). "Prosumer" is the ending result of a strategy that has been increasingly used which encourages feedback between producers and consumers (prosumers), "which allows for more consumer influence over the production of goods." Bruns (2008) refers to produsage, therefore, as a community collaboration that participants can access in order to share "content, contributions, and tasks throughout the networked community" (p. 14). This is similar to how Wikipedia allows users to write, edit, and ultimately use content. Producers are active participants who are empowered by their participation as network builders. Bruns (2008) describes the empowerment for users as different from the typical "top-down mediated spaces of the traditional mediaspheres" (p. 14). Produsage occurs when the users are the producers and vice versa, essentially eliminating the need for these "top-down" interventions. The collaboration of each participant is based on a principle of inclusivity; each member contributes valuable information for another user to use, add to, or change. In a community of learners, collaboration through produsage can provide access to content for every participant, not just those with some kind of authority. Every participant has authority. This leads to Bruns' (2008) idea of "equipotentiality: the assumption that while the skills and abilities of all the participants in the produsage project are not equal, they have an equal ability to make a worthy contribution to the project" (p. 25). Because there are no more distinctions between producers and consumers, every participant has an equal chance to participate meaningfully in produsage. In July 2020, an academic description reported on the nature and rise of the "robot prosumer", derived from modern-day technology and related participatory culture, that, in turn, was substantially predicted earlier by Frederik Pohl and other science fiction writers. Explicit and implicit participation An important contribution has been made by media theorist Mirko Tobias Schäfer who distinguishes explicit and implicit participation (2011). Explicit participation describes the conscious and active engagement of users in fan communities or of developers in creative processes. Implicit participation is more subtle and unfolds often without the user's knowledge. In her book, The Culture of Connectivity, Jose Van Dijck emphasizes the importance of recognizing this distinction in order to thoroughly analyze user agency as a techno-cultural construct (2013). Dijck (2013) outlines the various ways in which explicit participation can be conceptualized. The first is the statistical conception of user demographics. Websites may “publish facts and figures about their user intensity (e.g., unique monthly users), their national and global user diversity, and relevant demographic facts” (p. 33). For instance, Facebook publishes user demographic data such as gender, age, income, education level and more. Explicit participation can also take place on the research end, where an experimental subject interacts with a platform for research purposes. Dijck (2013) references Leon et al. (2011), giving an example of an experimental study where “a number of users may be selected to perform tasks so researchers can observe their ability to control privacy settings “(p. 33). Lastly, explicit participation may inform ethnographic data through observational studies, or qualitative interview-based research concerning user habits. Implicit participation is achieved by implementing user activities into user interfaces and back-end design. Schäfer argues that the success of popular Web 2.0 and social media applications thrives on implicit participation. The notion of implicit participation expands theories of participatory culture as formulated by Henry Jenkins and Axel Bruns who both focus most prominently on explicit participation (p. 44). Considering implicit participation allows therefore for a more accurate analysis of the role technology in co-shaping user interactions and user generated content (pp. 51–52). Textual Poachers The term "textual poachers" was originated by de Certeau and has been popularized by Jenkins. Jenkins uses this term to describe how some fans go through content like their favourite movie and engage with the parts that they are interested in, unlike audiences who watch the show more passively and move on to the next thing. Jenkins takes a stand against the stereotypical portrayal of fans as obsessive nerds who are out of touch with reality. He demonstrates that fans are pro-active constructors of an alternative culture using elements "poached" and reworked from the mass media. Specifically, fans use what they have poached to become producers themselves, creating new cultural materials in a variety of analytical and creative formats from "meta" essays to fanfiction, comics, music, and more. In this way, fans become active participants in the construction and circulation of textual meanings. Fans usually interact with each other through fan groups, fanzines, social events, and even in the case of Trekkers (fans of Star Trek) interact with each other through annual conferences. In a participatory culture, fans are actively involved in the production, which may also influence producer decisions within the medium. Fans do not only interact with each other but also try to interact with media producers to express their opinions. For example, what would be the ending between two characters in a TV show? Therefore, fans are readers and producers of culture. Participatory culture transforms the media consumption experience into the production of new texts, in fact, the production of new cultures and new communities. The result is an autonomous, self-sufficient fan culture. Gendered experiences Participatory culture lacks representation of the female, which has created a misrepresentation of women online. This in turn, makes it difficult for women to represent themselves with authenticity, and deters participation of females in participatory culture. The content that is viewed on the internet in participatory situations is biased because of the overrepresentation of male generated information, and the ideologies created by the male presence in media, thus creates a submissive role for the female user, as they unconsciously accept patriarchal ideologies as reality. With males in the dominant positions "media industries [engage]… existing technologies to break up and reformulate media texts for reasons of their own". Design intent from the male perspective is a main issue deterring accurate female representation. Females active in participatory culture are at a disadvantage because the content they are viewing is not designed with their participation in mind. Instead of producing male biased content, "feminist interaction design should seek to bring about political emancipation… it should also force designers to question their own position to assert what an "improved society" is and how to achieve it". The current interactions and interfaces of participatory culture fails to "challenge the hegemonic dominance, legitimacy and appropriateness of positivist epistemologies; theorize from the margins; and problematize gender". Men typically are more involved in the technology industry as "relatively fewer women work in the industry that designs technology now... only in the areas of HCI/usability is the gender balance of workforce anything like equal". Since technology and design is at the crux of the creation of participatory culture "much can – and should – be said about who does what, and it is fair to raise the question of whether an industry of men can design for women". "Although the members of the group are not directly teaching or perhaps even indicating the object of… representation, their activities inevitably lead to the exposure of the other individual to that object and this leads to that individual acquiring the same narrow… representations as the other group members have. Social learning of this type (another, similar process is known as local enhancement) has been shown to lead to relatively stable social transmission of behavior over time". Local enhancement is the driving mechanism that influences the audience to embody and recreate the messages produced in media. Statistically, men are actively engaging in the production of these problematic representations, whereas, women are not contributing to the portrayal of women experiences because of local enhancement that takes place on the web. There is no exact number to determine the precise percentage for female users; in 2011 there were numerous surveys that slightly fluctuate in numbers, but none seem to surpass 15 percent. This shows a large disparity of online users in regards to gender when looking at Wikipedia content. Bias arises as the content presented in Wikipedia seems to be more male oriented. Promise and potential In mass media and civic engagement Participatory culture has been hailed by some as a way to reform communication and enhance the quality of media. According to media scholar Henry Jenkins, one result of the emergence of participatory cultures is an increase in the number of media resources available, giving rise to increased competition between media outlets. Producers of media are forced to pay more attention to the needs of consumers who can turn to other sources for information. Howard Rheingold and others have argued that the emergence of participatory cultures will enable deep social change. Until as recently as the end of the 20th century, Rheingold argues, a handful of generally privileged, generally wealthy people controlled nearly all forms of mass communication—newspapers, television, magazines, books and encyclopedias. Today, however, tools for media production and dissemination are readily available and allow for what Rheingold labels "participatory media." As participation becomes easier, the diversity of voices that can be heard also increases. At one time only a few mass media giants controlled most of the information that flowed into the homes of the public, but with the advance of technology even a single person has the ability to spread information around the world. The diversification of media has benefits because in cases where the control of media becomes concentrated it gives those who have control the ability to influence the opinions and information that flows to the public domain. Media concentration provides opportunity for corruption, but as information continues to become accessed from more and more places it becomes increasingly difficult to control the flow of information to the will of an agenda. Participatory Culture is also seen as a more democratic form of communication as it stimulates the audience to take an active part because they can help shape the flow of ideas across media formats. The democratic tendency lent to communication by participatory culture allows new models of production that are not based on a hierarchical standard. In the face of increased participation, the traditional hierarchies will not disappear, but "Community, collaboration, and self-organization" can become the foundation of corporations as powerful alternatives. Although there may be no real hierarchy evident in many collaborative websites, their ability to form large pools of collective intelligence is not compromised. In civics Participatory culture civics organizations mobilize participatory cultures towards political action. They build on participatory cultures and organize such communities toward civic and political goals. Examples include Harry Potter Alliance, Invisible Children, Inc., and Nerdfighters, which each leverage shared cultural interests to connect and organize members towards explicit political goals. These groups run campaigns by informing, connecting, and eventually organizing their members through new media platforms. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik identified three mechanisms used to translate cultural interests into political outcomes: Tapping shared passion around content worlds and their communities Creative production of content Informal discussion spaces for conversations about salient issues In education Social and participatory media allow for—and, indeed, call for—a shift in how we approach teaching and learning in the classroom. The increased availability of the Internet in classrooms allows for greater access to information. For example, it is no longer necessary for relevant knowledge to be contained in some combination of the teacher and textbooks; today, knowledge can be more de-centralized and made available for all learners to access. The teacher, then, can help facilitate efficient and effective means of accessing, interpreting, and making use of that knowledge. Jenkins believes that participatory culture can play a role in the education of young people as a new form of implicit curriculum. He finds a growing body of academic research showing the potential benefits of participatory cultures, both formal and informal, for the education of young people. Including Peer-to-peer learning opportunities, the awareness of intellectual property and multiculturalism, cultural expression and the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship. Challenges In online platforms Rachael Sullivan discusses how some online platforms can be a challenge. According to Rachael Sullivan's book review, she emphasizes on Reddit, and the content used that can be offensive and inappropriate. Memes, GIFs, and other content that users create are negative, and are used primarily for trolling. Reddit has a platform where any users in the community can post without restrictions or barriers, regardless of whether it's positive or negative. This has the potential for backlash against Reddit, as it doesn't restrict content that could be considered offensive or pejorative, and can reflect negatively on the community as a whole. On the other hand, Reddit would likely face similar backlash for restricting what others would consider their right to free speech, although free speech only pertains to government backlash and not private companies. YouTube and participatory culture YouTube has been the start-up for many up and coming pop stars; Both Justin Bieber and One Direction can credit their presence on YouTube as the catalyst for their respective careers. Other users have gained fame or notoriety by expounding on how simple it can be to become a popular YouTuber. Charlie “How to Get Featured on YouTube,” is one such example, in that his library consists solely of videos on how to get featured, and nothing else. YouTube offers the younger generation the opportunity to test out their content, while gaining feedback via likes, dislikes, and comments to find out where they need to improve. For consumers All people want to be a consumer in some and an active contributor in other situations. Being a consumer or active contributor is not an attribute of a person, but of a context. The important criteria that needs to be taken into account is personally meaningful activities. Participatory cultures empower humans to be active contributors in personally meaningful activities. The drawback of such cultures is that they may force humans to cope with the burden of being an active contributor in personally irrelevant activities. This trade-off can be illustrated with the potential and drawbacks of "Do-It-Yourself Societies": starting with self-service restaurants and self-service gas stations a few decades ago, and this trend has been greatly accelerated over the last 10 years. Through modern tools (including electronic commerce supported by the Web), humans are empowered to do many tasks themselves that were done previously by skilled domain workers serving as agents and intermediaries. While this shift provides power, freedom, and control to customers (e.g., banking can be done at any time of the day with ATMs, and from any location with the Web), it has led also to some less desirable consequences. People may consider some of these tasks not very meaningful personally and therefore would be more than content with a consumer role. Aside from simple tasks that require a small or no learning effort, customers lack the experience the professionals have acquired and maintained through daily use of systems, and the broad background knowledge to do these tasks efficiently and effectively. The tools used to do these tasks — banking, travel reservations, buying airline tickets, checking out groceries at the supermarket — are core technologies for the professionals, but occasional technologies for the customers. This will put a new, substantial burden on customers rather than having skilled domain workers doing these tasks. Significantly, too, as businesses increasingly recruit participatory practices and resources to market goods and services, consumers who are comfortable working within participatory media are at a distinct advantage over those who are less comfortable. Not only do consumers who are resistant to making use of the affordances of participatory culture have decreased access to knowledge, goods, and services, but they are less likely to take advantage of the increased leverage inherent in engaging with businesses as a prosumer. In education Participation gap This category is linked to the issue of the digital divide, the concern with providing access to technology for all learners. The movement to break down the digital divide has included efforts to bring computers into classrooms, libraries, and other public places. These efforts have been largely successful, but as Jenkins et al. argue, the concern is now with the quality access to available technologies. They explain: What a person can accomplish with an outdated machine in a public library with mandatory filtering software and no opportunity for storage or transmission pales in comparison to what [a] person can accomplish with a home computer with unfettered Internet access, high band-width, and continuous connectivity.(Current legislation to block access to social networking software in schools and public libraries will further widen the participation gap.) The school system's inability to close this participation gap has negative consequences for everyone involved. On the one hand, those youth who are most advanced in media literacies are often stripped of their technologies and robbed of their best techniques for learning in an effort to ensure a uniform experience for all in the classroom. On the other hand, many youth who have had no exposure to these new kinds of participatory cultures outside school find themselves struggling to keep up with their peers. (Jenkins et al. pg. 15) Passing out the technology free of charge is not enough to ensure youth and adults learn how to use the tools effectively. Most American youths now have at least minimal access to networked computers, be it at school or in public libraries, but "children who have access to home computers demonstrate more positive attitudes towards computers, show more enthusiasm, and report more enthusiast and ease when using computer than those who do not (Page 8 Wartella, O'Keefe, and Scantlin (2000)). As the children with more access to computers gain more comfort in using them, the less tech-savvy students get pushed aside. It is more than a simple binary at work here, as working-class youths may still have access so some technologies (e.g. gaming consoles) while other forms remain unattainable. This inequality would allow certain skills to develop in some children, such as play, while others remain unavailable, such as the ability to produce and distribute self-created media. In a participatory culture, one of the key challenges that is encountered is participatory gap. This comes into play with the integration of media and society. Some of the largest challenges we face in regards to the participation gap is in education, learning, accessibility, and privacy. All of these factors are huge setbacks when it comes to the relatively new integration of youth participating in today's popular forms of media. Education is one realm where the participatory gap is very prominent. In today's society, our education system heavily focuses on integrating media into its curriculum. More and more our classrooms are utilizing computers and technology as learning aides. While this is beneficial for students and teachers to enhance learning environments and allow them to access a plethora of information, it also presents many problems. The participation gap leaves many schools as well as its teachers and students at a disadvantage as they struggle to utilize current technology in their curriculum. Many schools do not have to funding to invest in computers or new technologies for their academic programs. They are unable to afford computers, cameras, and interactive learning tools, which prevents students from accessing the tools that other, wealthier schools have. Another challenge is that as we integrate new technology into schools and academics, we need to be able to teach people how to use these instruments. Teaching both student and adults how to use new media technologies is essential so that they can actively participate as their peers do. Additionally, teaching children how to navigate the information available on new media technologies is very important as there is so much content available on the internet these days. For beginners this can be overwhelming and teaching kids as well as adults how to access what is pertinent, reliable and viable information will help them improve how they utilize media technologies. One huge aspect of the participation gap is access. Access to the Internet and computers is a luxury in some households, and in the today's society, access to a computer and the Internet is often overlooked by both the education system and many other entities. In today's society, almost everything we do is based online, from banking to shopping to homework and ordering food, we spend all of our time doing everyday tasks online. For those who are unable to access these things, they are automatically put at a severe disadvantage. They cannot participate in activities that their peers do and may suffer both academically and socially. The last feature of the participation gap is privacy concerns. We put everything on the Internet these days, from pictures to personal information. It is important to question how this content will be used. Who owns this content? Where does it go or where is it stored? For example, the controversy of Facebook and its ownership and rights of user's content has been a hot button issue over the past few years. It is disconcerting to a lot of people to find out that their content they have posted to a particular website is no longer under their control, but may be retained and used by the website in the future. All of the above-mentioned issued are key factors in the participation gap. They play a large role is the challenges we face as we incorporate new media technology into everyday life. These challenges affect how many populations interact with the changing media in society and unfortunately leave many at a disadvantage. This divide between users of new media and those who are unable to access these technologies is also referred to as the digital divide. It leaves low-income families and children at a severe disadvantage that affects them in the present as well as the future. Students for example are largely affected because without access to the Internet or a computer they are unable to do homework and projects and will moreover be unsuccessful in school. These poor grades can lead to frustration with academia and furthermore may lead to delinquent behavior, low income jobs, decreased chanced of pursuing higher educations, and poor job skills. Transparency problem Increased facility with technology does not necessarily lead to increased ability to interpret how technology exerts its own pressure on us. Indeed, with increased access to information, the ability to interpret the viability of that information becomes increasingly difficult. It is crucial, then, to find ways to help young learners develop tactics for engaging critically with the tools and resources they use. Ethics challenge This is identified as a "breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants" (Jenkins et al. pg. 5). For example, throughout most of the last half of the 20th century learners who wanted to become journalists would generally engage in a formal apprenticeship through journalism classes and work on a high school newspaper. This work would be guided by a teacher who was an expert in the rules and norms of journalism and who would confer that knowledge to student-apprentices. With increasing access to Web 2.0 tools, however, anybody can be a journalist of sorts, with or without an apprenticeship to the discipline. A key goal in media education, then, must be to find ways to help learners develop techniques for active reflection on the choices they make—and contributions they offer—as members of a participatory culture. Issues for educators and educational policy-makers As teachers, administrators, and policymakers consider the role of new media and participatory practices in the school environment, they will need to find ways to address the multiple challenges. Challenges include finding ways to work with the decentralization of knowledge inherent in online spaces; developing policies with respect to filtering software that protects learners and schools without limiting students' access to sites that enable participation; and considering the role of assessment in classrooms that embrace participatory practices. Cultures are substantially defined by their media and their tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. Unfortunately a large number of new media are designed to see humans only as consumers; and people, particularly young people in educational institutions, form mindsets based on their exposure to specific media. The current mindset about learning, teaching, and education is dominated by a view in which teaching is often fitted "into a mold in which a single, presumably omniscient teacher explicitly tells or shows presumably unknowing learners something they presumably know nothing about". A critical challenge is a reformulation and reconceptualization of this impoverished and misleading conception. Learning should not take place in a separate phase and in a separate place, but should be integrated into people's lives allowing them to construct solutions to their own problems. As they experience breakdowns in doing so, they should be able to learn on demand by gaining access to directly relevant information. The direct usefulness of new knowledge for actual problem situations greatly improves the motivation to learn the new material because the time and effort invested in learning are immediately worthwhile for the task at hand — not merely for some putative long-term gain. In order to create active contributor mindsets serving as the foundation of participatory cultures, learning cannot be restricted to finding knowledge that is "out there". Rather than serving as the "reproductive organ of a consumer society" educational institutions must cultivate the development of an active contributor mindset by creating habits, tools and skills that help people become empowered and willing to actively contribute to the design of their lives and communities. Beyond supporting contributions from individual designers, educational institutions need to build a culture and mindset of sharing, supported by effective technologies and sustained by personal motivation to occasionally work for the benefit of groups and communities. This includes finding ways for people to see work done for the benefits of others being "on-task", rather than as extra work for which there is no recognition and no reward. A new form of literacy Jenkins et al. believes that conversation surrounding the digital divide should focus on opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills required to take part rather than get stuck on the question of technological access. As institutions, schools have been slow on the uptake of participatory culture. Instead, afterschool programs currently devote more attention to the development of new media literacies, or, a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape. Participatory culture shifts this literacy from the individual level to community involvement. Networking and collaboration develop social skills that are vital to the new literacies. Although new, these skills build on an existing foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom. Meta-design: a design methodology supporting participatory cultures Metadesign is "design for designers" It represents an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social and technical infrastructures in which participatory cultures can come alive and new forms of collaborative design can take place. It extends the traditional notion of system design beyond the original development of a system to allow users become co-designers and co-developers. It is grounded in the basic assumption that future uses and problems cannot be completely anticipated at design time, when a system is developed. Users, at use time, will discover mismatches between their needs and the support that an existing system can provide for them. These mismatches will lead to breakdowns that serve as potential sources of new insights, new knowledge, and new understanding. Meta-design supports participatory cultures as follows: Making changes must seem possible: Contributors should not be intimidated and should not have the impression that they are incapable of making changes; the more users become convinced that changes are not as difficult as they think they are, the more they may be willing to participate. Changes must be technically feasible: If a system is closed, then contributors cannot make any changes; as a necessary prerequisite, there needs to be possibilities and mechanisms for extension. Benefits must be perceived: Contributors have to believe that what they get in return justifies the investment they make. The benefits perceived may vary and can include professional benefits (helping for one's own work), social benefits (increased status in a community, possibilities for jobs), and personal benefits (engaging in fun activities). The environments must support tasks that people engage in: The best environments will not succeed if they are focused on activities that people do rarely or consider of marginal value. Low barriers must exist to sharing changes: Evolutionary growth is greatly accelerated in systems in which participants can share changes and keep track of multiple versions easily. If sharing is difficult, it creates an unnecessary burden that participants are unwilling to overcome. See also Affinity space Constructed world Consumtariat Culture of Peace Hypersociability Participatory democracy Prosumer Public participation Remix culture The Long Tail Transmedia storytelling References External links - : Henry Jenkins describes "Participatory culture" (May 7, 2013) Collaboration Internet culture Digital divide Culture

Cultural reproduction

Cultural reproduction, a concept first developed by French sociologist and cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu, is the mechanisms by which existing cultural forms, values, practices, and shared understandings (i.e., norms) are transmitted from generation to generation, thereby sustaining the continuity of cultural experience across time. In other words, reproduction, as it is applied to culture, is the process by which aspects of culture are passed on from person to person or from society to society. Cultural reproduction often results in social reproduction, or the process of transferring aspects of society (such as class) intergenerationally. There are various ways in which such reproduction can take place. Often, groups of people, notably social classes, may act to reproduce the existing social structure so as to preserve their advantage. Likewise, processes of schooling in modern societies are among the main mechanisms of cultural reproduction, and do not operate solely through what is taught in courses of formal instruction. Historically, people have moved from different regions, taking with them certain cultural norms and traditions. Cultures transmit aspects of behaviour that individuals learn in an informal way while they are out of the home. This interaction between individuals, which results in the transfer of accepted cultural norms, values, and information, is accomplished through a process known as socialisation. Methods The method through which cultural reproduction is perpetuated varies by the socialising agent's relative location, awareness, and intention to reproduce social or cultural norms. Enculturation Enculturation can be described as "a partly conscious and partly unconscious learning experience when the older generation invites, induces, and compels the younger generation to adopt traditional ways of thinking and behaving." Although, in many ways enculturation duplicates the norms and traditions of previous generations, the degree of similarity between the cultures of each successive generation through enculturation may vary. This concept could be demonstrated by the tendency of each successive generation to follow cultural norms, such as the concept of right-of-way in transportation. These expectations are set forth and replicated by the prior generation. For example, there may be little if any empirical evidence supporting a choice of driving in one lane or another, yet with each new generation, the accepted norm of that individual's culture is reinforced and perpetuated. Parents and educators prove to be two of the most influential enculturating forces of cultural reproduction. Diffusion Comparatively, diffusion is the dispersion of cultural norms and behaviours between otherwise unrelated groups or individuals. For example, the integration of Chinese food or French linguistics into American culture both represent this concept. History of Bourdieu and reproduction theory The concept of cultural reproduction was first developed by French sociologist and cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu in the early 1970s. Initially, Bourdieu's work pertained to education in modern society, believing that the education system was used solely to 'reproduce' the culture of the dominant class in order for the elite to continue to hold and release power. Bourdieu's theories recognizably build upon the conjectures of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Norbert Elias, among others. Beginning to study socialisation and how dominant culture and certain norms and traditions affected many social relations, Bourdieu's ideas were especially similar to those of Louis Althusser's notion of Ideological State Apparatuses, which had emerged around the same time. Bourdieu's sociological work was dominated by an analysis of the mechanisms of reproduction of social hierarchies. In opposition to Marxist analyses, Bourdieu criticised the primacy given to the economic factors, and stressed that the capacity of social actors to actively impose and engage their cultural productions and symbolic systems plays an essential role in the reproduction of social structures of domination. Playing an essential part in Bourdieu's sociological analysis is what he called symbolic violence: the capacity to ensure that the predictability of the social order is ignored—or mis-recognised as natural—and thus to ensure the legitimacy of social structures. In regards to cultural reproduction, one of the main concepts of Bourdieu was introduced in Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction (1970), written with Jean-Claude Passeron, in which the writers primarily focus on the structural reproduction of disadvantages and inequalities that are caused by cultural reproduction. According to Bourdieu, inequalities are recycled through the education system and other social institutions. Bourdieu believed that the prosperous and affluent societies of the West were becoming the cultural capital. High social class, familiarity with bourgeois culture, and educational credentials determined one's life chances. It was biased towards those of higher social class and aided in conserving social hierarchies. This system concealed and neglected individual talent and academic meritocracy. Along with Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society, Bourdieu demonstrated most of his known theories in his book The Inheritors (1964). Both books established him as a progenitor of "reproduction theory." Bourdieu also pioneered many procedural frameworks and terminologies, emphasising the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Such concepts of Bourdieu's include: cultural, social, and symbolic capital; habitus; field theory; and symbolic violence. Education as an agent Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction is concerned with the link between original class membership and ultimate class membership, and how this link is mediated by the education system. Bourdieu theorizes that what is taught to younger generations is dependent on the varying degrees of social, economic, and cultural capital. Such cultures have gained cultural capital and are considered the dominant group among the rest. However, in order to acquire cultural capital one must undergo indiscernible learning and these cultural norms must be used in the earliest days of life. Through cultural reproduction, only those members of the dominant culture can acquire knowledge in relation to the way it is taught from within this cultural system. Therefore, those who are not members of the dominant culture are at a disadvantage to receive cultural information, and therefore will remain at a disadvantage. Capitalist societies depend on a stratified social system, where the working class has an education suited for manual labour: levelling out such inequalities would break down the system. Therefore, schools in capitalist societies require a method of stratification, and often choose to do so in a way in which the dominant culture will not lose its hegemony. One method of maintaining this stratification is through cultural reproduction. According to Alice Sullivan (2001), the theory of cultural reproduction entails three fundamental propositions: parental cultural capital is inherited by children; children's cultural capital is converted into educational credentials; and educational credentials are a major mechanism of social reproduction in advanced capitalist societies. There is no clear consensus as to the exact role of education within cultural reproduction; and further to what degree, if any, this system either encourages or discourages topics such as social stratification, resource inequality, and discrepancies in access to opportunities. It is believed, however, that the primary means in which education determines an individual's social status, class, values, and hierarchy, is through the distribution of cultural capital. This notion of cultural capital accumulation, and the degree to which an individual attains cultural capital, determines the individual's access to resources and opportunities. There are, however several competing ideologies and explanations that have been significantly discussed. Hidden curriculum The concept of education as an agent of cultural reproduction is argued to be less directly explained by the material and a subject taught, but rather more so through what is known as the hidden curriculum. This refers to the socialisation aspect of the education process through which an adolescent acquires "appropriate attitudes and values" needed to further succeed within the confines of education. An adolescent's success or failure within the formal education system is a function of both their ability to demonstrate both measures of formal educational qualifications, as well as the attainment of the aforementioned qualities acquired through socialisation mechanisms. This nature of education is reproduced throughout all stages of the system; from primary to post-secondary. The ability of a student to progress to each subsequent level requires mastery of the prior. One's ability to successfully complete the process of educational attainment strongly correlates to the capacity to realise adequate pay, occupational prestige, social status, etc. upon workforce participation. Parsonian functionalism Education provides functional prerequisites—known as Parsonian functionalism—states that education's function is to provide individuals with the necessary values and attitudes for future work. This forms the assumption that, regardless of the trade an individual participates in, they will all need a similar set of social skills for their day-to-day interactions. From this concept, the idea of education as an ideological state apparatus emerged, elaborating on the prior by continuing that both family and school work together to reproduce social classes, occupational hierarchy, value orientation, and ideology. Education system as capitalist system Education mirrors the capitalist system, in that it sorts individuals and assigns them the skills necessary to fulfil their destined occupation. An individual is provided the appropriate attitude that should be observed within the labour force. Further, it establishes an "acceptance to the reproduction of submissive attitude to the established order." With this, education's primary role is believed to be as a method of sorting individuals rather than equally educating: those with high levels of accumulated social capital from parents or other sources are more easily able to excel within the system of education. Thus, these individuals will continue on a track that places them into specialised and comparatively highly prestigious occupations. In contrast, those with little social or cultural capital will maintain low levels throughout the process of education and be placed into occupations with little demand for cultural capital—significantly less specialised and prestigious occupation. With this occupational selection, both the individuals will maintain the cultural norms and social status associated with each outside of their occupations as well. With any of the concepts, whether considering the intrinsic value of education or the externally-perceived value, each unit of educational attainment requires forgone earnings to attain. Insomuch as an individual would have to sacrifice wages in order to gain an additional unit of education. Outside of forgone monetary earnings, there are also direct expenses such as tuition, supplies, books, etc. one must consider when acquiring education, as well as less direct psychic costs. With this there is an economic consideration and trade-off an individual must consider in their further education aspirations. One who has resources and the desire to continue education has a significant comparative advantage to an individual who by comparison does not. This financial aspect of educational acquirement proves as yet another consideration in the reproductive nature of education. One who successfully completes the process of educational attainment incurs a significant comparative advantage over a similar individual who does not. Thus the degree to which education reproduces cultural and social norms already present in the underlying society stands to prove a significant factor in the continued propagation of these established norms. With this harsh divide between individuals who do and do not complete the process of formal education, social stratification and inequality between the two groups emerges. This further confirms cultural norms and reproduces the same system upon each successive generation. See also Cultural capital Social reproduction References Cultural concepts

Synecdoche

Synecdoche is a type of metonymy; it is a figure of speech that uses a term for a part of something to refer to the whole (pars pro toto), or vice versa (totum pro parte). The term is derived . Common English synecdoches include suits for businessmen, wheels for automobile, and boots for soldiers. Another example is the use of government buildings to refer to their resident agencies or bodies, such as The Pentagon for the United States Department of Defense and Downing Street or Number 10 for the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the use of the name of a country's capital city to refer to the government of the country. Definition Synecdoche is a rhetorical trope and a kind of metonymy—a figure of speech using a term to denote one thing to refer to a related thing. Synecdoche (and thus metonymy) is distinct from metaphor, although in the past, it was considered a sub-species of metaphor, intending metaphor as a type of conceptual substitution (as Quintilian does in Book VIII). In Lanham's Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, the three terms possess somewhat restrictive definitions in tune with their etymologies from Greek: Metaphor: changing a word from its literal meaning to one not properly applicable but analogous to it; assertion of identity—rather than likeness as with simile. Metonymy: substituting an attribute of or object associated with something for the thing itself (e.g., substituting "the crown" for "the monarch"). Classification Synecdoche is often used as a type of personification by attaching a human aspect to a nonhuman thing. It is used in reference to political relations, including "having a footing", to mean a country or organization is in a position to act, or "the wrong hands", to describe opposing groups, usually in the context of military power. The two main types of synecdoche are microcosm and macrocosm. A microcosm uses a part of something to refer to the entirety. An example of this is saying "I need a hand" with a project, but needing the entire person. A macrocosm is the opposite, using the name of the entire structure of something to refer to a small part. An example of this is saying "the world" while referring to a certain country or part of the planet. The figure of speech is divided into the image (what the speaker uses to refer to something) and the subject (what is referred to). In politics, the residence or location of an executive can be used to represent the office itself. For example, "the White House" can mean the Executive Office of the President of the United States; "Buckingham Palace" can mean the monarchy of the United Kingdom; "the Sublime Porte" can mean the Ottoman Empire; and "the Kremlin" can mean the government of Russia. The Élysée Palace might indicate the President of the French Republic. Sonnets and other forms of love poetry frequently use synecdoches to characterize the beloved in terms of individual body parts rather than a coherent whole. This practice is especially common in the Petrarchan sonnet, where the idealised beloved is often described part by part, head-to-toe. Synecdoche is also popular in advertising. Since synecdoche uses a part to represent a whole, its use requires the audience to make associations and "fill in the gaps", engaging with the ad by thinking about the product. Moreover, catching the attention of an audience with advertising is often referred to by advertisers with the synecdoche "getting eyeballs". Synecdoche is common in spoken English, especially in reference to sports. The names of cities are used as shorthand for their sports teams to describe events and their outcomes, such as "Denver won Monday's game," while accuracy would require specifying the sports team's name. Kenneth Burke (1945), an American literary theorist, declared that in rhetoric, the four master tropes, or figures of speech, are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Burke's primary concern with these four master tropes is more than simply their figurative usage, but includes their role in the discovery and description of the truth. He described synecdoche as "part of the whole, whole for the part, container for the contained, sign for the thing signified, material for the thing made… cause for the effect, effect for the cause, genus for the species, species for the genus". In addition, Burke suggests synecdoche patterns can include reversible pairs such as disease-cure. Burke proclaimed the noblest synecdoche is found in the description of "microcosm and macrocosm" since microcosm is related to macrocosm as part to the whole, and either the whole can represent the part or the part can represent the whole". Burke compares synecdoche with the concept of "representation", especially in the political sense in which elected representatives stand in pars pro toto for their electorate. Examples Part referring to whole (pars pro toto) Referring to a person according to a single characteristic: "gray beard" meaning an old man Referring to a sword as a "blade" Describing a complete vehicle as "wheels", an entire airplane as a private jet, or a manual transmission vehicle as a "stick" General class name that denotes a specific member of that or an associated class Referring to a species of an organism or virus by the name of one of its hierarchical groups, e.g., "Coronavirus [specifically meaning the COVID-19 virus] is rampant throughout the city." Using technology specifically to refer to high technology or electronic devices Specific class name referring to general set of associated things "John Hancock" (used in the United States), for the signature of any person A genericized trademark, for example, "Xerox" for any variety of duplicate made on a photocopier, "Coke" for any variety of cola (or for any variety of soft drink, as in the southern United States), "Kleenex" for facial tissues, "Vaseline" for petroleum jelly, "Band-Aid" (in the United States) for any variety of adhesive bandage, "Tide" (US) for any variety of laundry detergent, "Hoover" (UK) for any variety of vacuum cleaner, or "Styrofoam" (US) for any product made of expanded polystyrene. Referring to material actually or supposedly used to make something "brass" for brass instruments, or the shell casings of bullet cartridges, or the medals and stars of high-ranking military officers "lead" for bullets, lead being the most common material for making bullets, or for the graphite core of a pencil "vinyl" for phonograph records "cement" for concrete, cement being just the binder in concrete Container refers to its contents "barrel" for a barrel of oil, or the equivalent volume of a standard barrel "keg" for a keg of beer "She drank the cup", to refer to her drinking of the cup's contents See also Antonomasia Bahuvrihi Category mistake Conceptual metaphor Hendiadys Holonymy Hyponymy Merism Meronymy Faulty generalization Fallacy of division Symbol Notes References Further reading External links Figures of speech Rhetoric Tropes by type

E-kid

E-kids, split by binary gender as e-girls and e-boys, are a youth subculture of Gen Z that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing application TikTok. It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese and Korean street fashion. Videos by e-girls and e-boys tend to be flirtatious and, many times, overtly sexual. Eye-rolling and protruding tongues (a facial expression known as , imitating climaxing) are common. According to Business Insider, the terms are not gender-specific, instead referring to two separate styles of fashion, stating that "While the e-boy is a vulnerable 'softboi' and embraces skate culture, the e-girl is cute and seemingly innocent". Origins The terms "e-girl" and "e-boy" are derived from "electronic boy" and "electronic girl" due to their association with the internet. "E-girl" was first used in the late-2000s as a pejorative against women perceived to be seeking out male attention online. According to an article by Business Insider, the earliest examples of e-girls were found on Tumblr, with Vice Media stating the subculture evolved out of the earlier emo and scene cultures. Vox writer Rebecca Jennings instead referred to the Tumblr aesthetic as a precursor of the subculture, as it lacked the cutesy aspect that would come to define e-girl hair and makeup. Ruby Barry of Heatworld traces the origins of e-girl fashion to 2000s Japanese street fashion, including anime, kawaii and lolita fashion styles. Kayla Marci of Edited described it as an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion that was heavily influenced by Asian fashion styles such as anime, cosplay and K-pop. i-D referred to Avril Lavigne as "the original e-girl" due to her polished take on alternative fashion, contrast to mainstream norms of the time and affinity for Japanese kawaii culture. Additionally, fictional characters such as Ramona Flowers, Harley Quinn and Sailor Moon were influential on the development of the subculture. By the late-2010s, e-boys had split from this original all female culture, embracing elements of emo, mallgoth, and scene culture. The popularity and eventual death of emo rapper Lil Peep also influenced the beginnings of the subculture, with the New York Post describing him as "the patron musical saint of e-land". E-boys also make use of "soft-boy aesthetics" through presenting themselves as sensitive and vulnerable. According to the Brown Daily Herald this is due to a transformation of ideal male attractiveness from being traditionally masculine to embracing introvertedness, shyness, emotional vulnerability and androgyny. Mainstream popularity The subculture gained mainstream attention in 2018, following the worldwide release of TikTok. According to an article in i-D, the subculture's emergence on the app challenged the polished and edited photos of influencers and VSCO girls common on Instagram, due to TikTok lacking the features to do so. An article by CNN stated that "If VSCO girls are the sunshine-basking hippies of 2020, e-girls are the opposite". The subculture first began to gain mainstream attention in 2019. MEL Magazine attributed the subculture's popularity to the increased interest of K-Pop groups like BTS, Exo and Got7 in the Western mainstream, due to the two's similar style of dress and hair. A trend soon began on TikTok and other social media platforms, where people would upload videos "transforming" into an e-boy or e-girl, according to Vox Media, this is how the culture "entered the mainstream lexicon". In the summer of 2019, Belle Delphine's emerging online prominence helped bring attention to the e-girl subculture; Business Insider described Delphine as "a symbol of the first wave of e-girl". The July 2019 murder of Bianca Devins also brought attention to e-girls due to Devins' participation in the subculture. The subculture continued to grow in prominence through 2020, with Vogue publishing an article featuring Doja Cat discussing e-girl makeup, and "e-girl style" being in the top 10 trending fashion terms on Google in the year. Additionally, a number of mainstream celebrities began to adopt the bleached stripes hairstyle associated with e-girls, including American socialite Kylie Jenner and Kosovar-English singer Dua Lipa. In July, high fashion designer Hedi Slimane released a preview of a collection called "the Dancing Kid" for Celine, influenced by the fashion of e-boys. In a July 29 article from GQ, fashion critic Rachel Tashjian referenced this as a sign that "TikTok is now driving fashion". Corpse Husband's song "E-Girls Are Ruining My Life!", which was released in September, gained large amounts of attention on TikTok, eventually charting in the UK Singles Chart for three weeks. In late 2020 and early 2021, a number of high fashion designers, namely Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Celine, began designing collections inspired by e-boy fashion. Both InStyle and Paper magazine credited e-boys and e-girls as important to the rise in popularity and resurgence of pop punk in the 2020s. Fashion The subculture's fashion is inspired by a number of prior subcultures, fashion trends and forms of entertainment, including mall goth, 1990s–2000s fashion, skater culture, anime, Japanese street fashion, cosplay, K-pop, BDSM, emo, scene, hip hop, and rave. Dazed described the aesthetic as "A little bit bondage, a little bit baby". Outfits commonly consist of baggy, thrifted clothes. In particular, some e-girls wear mesh shirts, plaid skirts, oversized t-shirts, crop tops, platform shoes, chokers and beanies, while e-boys wear oversized sweaters or monochrome clothes and band merchandise layered over long sleeve striped shirts, and polo necks. Chain necklaces, wallet chains and dangle earrings are also frequently worn. E-boys often wear curtained hair, whereas e-girls hair is dyed neon colors, often pink or blue, or is bleached blonde in the front. Some tie their hair into pigtails. Hair dyed two different colours down the centre (known as "split-dye hair") is common amongst both sexes. Both boys and girls may wear heavy makeup, in particular pink blush on the cheeks and nose, imitating anime. Fake freckles unkempt nail polish, and winged eye liner are common. YouTuber Jenna Marbles made a video imitating an e-girl's makeup style, calling it a mix between "Harajuku, emo, and igari makeup", the latter of which is a Japanese makeup style imitative of a hangover. Some e-girls draw over their philtrum using lipstick to make their lips look rounder. One notable element of e-girl makeup is under-eye stamps, often in a heart shape, a trend that has been influenced by Marina Diamandis. Discussion of mental health is also common. Music E-boys and e-girls are associated with "Sad Boy" music, a broadly defined grouping of musicians, who similarly write music influenced by sadness and mental illness, that often overlaps with emo rap. The term has been criticized by artists such as James Blake, due to its portrayal of mental illness, which he considers "unhealthy and problematic". In the 2020s, it became common for participants of the subculture to listen to artists associated with the 2020s pop punk revival. See also Boxxy Scene (subculture) Jirai Kei Internet culture Youth subculture Yé-yé girls References External links 2010s fashion 2010s in Internet culture 2010s neologisms 2018 in Internet culture 2020s fashion 2020s in Internet culture Counterculture of the 2010s Fashion aesthetics Generation Z Internet aesthetics Internet memes introduced in the 2010s Subcultures TikTok Youth culture

Convergence culture

Convergence culture is a theory which recognizes changing relationships and experiences with new media. Henry Jenkins is accepted by media academics to be the father of the term with his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. It explores the flow of content distributed across various intersections of media, industries and audiences, presenting a back and forth power struggle over the distribution and control of content. Convergence culture is grouped under the larger term of media convergence, however, it is not mutually exclusive to the other types of convergence such as technological or regulatory aspects. The cultural shift within convergence discourse focuses on how media production and consumption has changed with the relevance of participatory culture, collective intelligence and a converging technological environment. Users can now experience an extended, interactive and even shared engagement with not just entertainment media, but also informational media. A converging technological environment involves the changes in technology that cause different technological systems to develop and perform similar tasks. Older media such as television and radio provided the single task of broadcasting while new media can perform multiple tasks. Smartphones are an example of new media and a convergent device that can be used for not only making phone calls and sending text messages but also used for surfing the internet, watching videos, paying bills, accessing social media, and so on. Social media platforms are forms of new media that create new models of social convergence. Platforms like Google have managed to expand their services to allow a single sign-on that connects a user's workplace to their entertainment system to create a converging technological environment. However, as the notion became popular in various media discourses, some scholars see an over-use of the idea of convergence culture, reassessing its broad nature or lack of specificity. History Even though convergence culture is grouped under the wider term of "media convergence," this idea emerged within the "convergence" discourse roughly around the 2000s. Some scholars view the progression of media convergence as a four-part historical and narratological model as a way to organize the wide and various uses of "convergence". From the 1980s, media convergence focused on technological aspects or a rise in the digitization of the media, where communication, information and electronic technology began to intersect. Media becoming a mediator of visuals, audio and text, all into one. From here to the early 1990s, theories of economic and market convergence became prominent, which highlighted a phase of merging of businesses and integration of industries. Subsequently, political and regulatory ways of thinking concerning the convergence of media arose during the 1990, as media online became a new subject of political and regulatory control. In the 2000s, a focus on "culture", increased the popularity around convergence. This included consumer preferences and participation of active audiences with the media. During this time, some scholars argue that this notion became over-used and taken for granted in its application to media and cultural studies. Aspects of convergence culture Collective intelligence This term "collective intelligence", introduced by Pierre Levy, refers to the ability of virtual communities to collaborate bits of their knowledge or expertise to make it a whole, essentially working together towards a shared goal.Collective intelligence is also distinguished from simply "shared knowledge" across a community, since not one single mind or group can possibly know everything, instead it becomes a sum of many minds half full. In a converged culture, according to Jenkins, "media consumption has become a collective process" where meaning-making is collaborated. Survivor fans In his book Convergence Culture, Jenkins uses the example of the Survivor fan culture to reveal this phenomenon at play. Here, fans on Reddit, described as a "knowledge community", work like a hive mind and come together online to put multiple pieces of relatively small bits of information together, thus being able to puzzle together spoilers. If someone was faced with a roadblock, or complication in their investigations, other users part of the Reddit thread would contribute with their own specific expertise by adding more of their findings, or even correcting previous information.These spoilers revealed secrets such as the next season's location, the finalists, eventual winner, and other exciting moments of the seasons. For example, in the second season The Australian Outback, fans were able to figure out that a contestant was eliminated due to a medical evacuation, as well as who that person was. By finding a contestant's corporate website, they were able to view pictures of the contestant (Mike Skupin) post-season with a business associate and wearing an arm cast, which showed evidence of an arm injury. This prediction was confirmed when after episode 6 aired and Mike Skupin fell into the camp fire. Other fans in their travels would be able to find where the next season's location is, before it is even revealed (the show would withhold the next season's location until it began its promos). By building on what others have contributed, a couple goes through a detailed process of satellite images, building a network of travel agencies and tourism directors, studying ecology and culture and asking locals for information. This collective intelligence behind the reality TV show became so ingrained into the show's culture whereby the executive producer Mark Burnett would "play" with his audience, misdirecting their predictions, and switch up his editing style to throw them off from their assumptions. According to Jenkins, this spoiler culture behind Survivor revealed a new power-relationship between production and consumption with more interactive online behaviors because of the show's open recognition of the so-called "collective intelligence" . Watching the show became a shared experience of collaboration which extended their engagement with the media hence, some argue that not taking this into account can be a flaw in the producers, not fully accepting a new commodity. Transmedia storytelling This aspect of convergence culture refers more to the production of media, encompassing a change where industries and mediums of media have expanded and overlapped. Rather than simply sending out their media through one medium, whether it be a film or comic, it can extend to different cultural commodities, that individually present a self-sustaining addition to the story and therefore add depth to a consumer's experience.Jenkins describes transmedia storytelling to require consumers of media to actively participate, both being encouraged and encouraging media creators to create fiction that is no longer consumed in one manner, but through multiple mediums and platforms. In the words of Jenkins, "Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making." A single story can now stretch across TV, film, video games and even social media. However what separates this from a franchise is that each medium ideally makes its own unique contribution to the progression of the story, it should be more than just a reiteration onto a new medium. Matrix A film such as the Matrix, is an example of a franchised cinema project, where auxiliary information extended outwards, outside of the film industry and into other means of cultural production. In the case of Matrix, its audience was expected to go out of their way into different media channels, such as online fan-community forums, to fully understand the mythology of the film and continue on the storytelling journey throughout the sequel franchise Matrix: Reloaded and Revolutions. Taking one of its multiple video games, such as Enter the Matrix, exemplifies these extensions as not just adaptations, but instead add to the story by almost "upstaging" a main character in the films (Morpheus) with a minor character who you play as in the game (Niobe) thus creating a new narrative perspective for fans who participated within the "world" more. Participatory culture Terms such as produsage and prosumption that describe the audience of participatory culture, refer to a shift from passive consumers to a more active audience within a new media environment. These terms recognize the ability of users on web 2.0 to generate their own amateur content which can span from personal social media content to fan fiction and to even forming a new genre of citizen journalism. Barriers to production are low, as technologies facilitate the ability to easily produce, share and consume content. For example, missing out on the current week's episode of one's favorite TV show would be a common problem, but internet technologies have enabled the practice of downloading and streaming an episode on demand. Also, creating fan videos are a more accessible type of fan engagement with the download of scenes, and using free pre-installed video editing software. Jenkins integrates this active audience participation as a notable element of convergence culture, whereby fans as consumers can directly interact with content and appropriate or remix it into their own consumption process. Because of the more emerging participatory content, it represents the media industries to not simply be a top-down corporate driven process, but just as much a bottom-up, consumer driven process too. While companies are looking to extend their content across platforms and enter new realms, consumers in this converged ecology have also gained control in aspects of the process such as where, how and when they want to consume. For example, the creation of fan fiction, while it can sometimes be managed and facilitated by the corporate leaders, fans can take worlds and remix and collaborate it into something new and their own. It has reached a point where consumption now can entail some fragment of collaboration, creation etc. An example of this flattened hierarchical structure between the production and consumption of content or media is Counter-Strike the computer game. This game originated as an extension of Half Life,a modification ("mod") and therefore not its own game. Creators Minh Lee and Jeff Cliff, developed and released this "mod" for free but the game required a Half-Life copy to work. Using the Software Developer's Kit of Half Life to access the game's -building tools, the creators coded and modeled the game, but its maps and character options, which would traditionally be assigned a team of developers by the company, were essentially decided by its gamers, through prepublications and discussions on its websites. In this way, converged culture reveals a challenge of who is in charge, collaborating with outside developers, fans and producers to develop the game. The challenge of convergence culture As the idea of convergence culture became more apparent in media and cultural studies, other scholars such as Nick Couldry and James Hay, saw the notion to be over-used catch all term. They began to question convergence culture as a buzzword that has yet to be fully mapped, and demands specificity. Scholars Anders Fagerjord and Tanja Storsul believe that while it may be an appropriate term to describe the changing technologies, convergence should not be applied as a "catch-all term." Instead, they propose the use of adjectives when using the term in order to highlight the type of convergence, whether it be media, regulatory, network and so on. This is because convergence has come to mean many things in different contexts and if not specified, can result in unwanted complexity and meaninglessness. Critics like Ginette Verstraete, have also mentioned a need to acknowledge and discuss the converged culture discourse within the context of other social spaces such as politics and economics. Jenkins in response also agreed to this need for further discussion, proposing to explore it in a more nuanced framework. Other challenges that may concern a converged culture, are the political aspect of politics involved, regarding issues of media concentration and regulation of social networking sites and the use of "free labour". As various media and technological industries begin to merge, traditional media policies regarding each platform are beginning to overlap and become irrelevant. Furthermore, there is the additional challenge of user-generated content that goes under the radar, not having "gatekeepers" manage everything. Therefore, it has become a global challenge to embrace this change and implement policies and control accordingly. Another challenge faced by the media industry is how to deal with digital communication and information technologies. With the rapid development of convergence culture, media professionals, like reporters, are frightened or confused whether their current skills are needed in the future. It’s common for them to have fear and resistance to change. Meanwhile, in this converged environment, the competition between different media becomes fiercer. The news media has adopted a 24-hour news cycle over time to provide a constant flood of information. Reporters are expected to process more stories and add more work to keep up with the industry demand, which are overloaded without appropriate financial compensation. References New media

Pedagogy

Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts. Pedagogy is often described as the act of teaching. The pedagogy adopted by teachers shapes their actions, judgments, and teaching strategies by taking into consideration theories of learning, understandings of students and their needs, and the backgrounds and interests of individual students. Its aims may range from furthering liberal education (the general development of human potential) to the narrower specifics of vocational education (the imparting and acquisition of specific skills). Instructive strategies are governed by the pupil's background knowledge and experience, situation and environment, as well as learning goals set by the student and teacher. One example would be the Socratic method. Definition The meaning of the term "pedagogy" is often contested and a great variety of definitions has been suggested. The most common approach is to define it as the study or science of teaching methods. In this sense, it is the methodology of education. As a methodology, it investigates the ways and practices that can be used to realize the aims of education. The main aim is often identified with the transmission of knowledge. Other aims include fostering skills and character traits. They include helping the student develop their intellectual and social abilities as well as psychomotor and affective learning, which are about developing practical skills and adequate emotional dispositions, respectively. However, not everyone agrees with this characterization of pedagogy and some see it less as a science and more as an art or a craft. This characterization puts more emphasis on the practical aspect of pedagogy, which may involve various forms of "tacit knowledge that is hard to put into words". This approach is often based on the idea that the most central aspects of teaching are only acquired by practice and cannot be easily codified through scientific inquiry. In this regard, pedagogy is concerned with "observing and refining one's skill as a teacher". A more inclusive definition combines these two characterizations and sees pedagogy both as the practice of teaching and the discourse and study of teaching methods. Some theorists give an even wider definition by including considerations such as "the development of health and bodily fitness, social and moral welfare, ethics and aesthetics". Due to this variety of meanings, it is sometimes suggested that pedagogy is a "catch-all term" associated with various issues of teaching and learning. In this sense, it lacks a precise definition. According to Patricia Murphy, a detailed reflection on the meaning of the term "pedagogy" is important nonetheless since different theorists often use it in very different ways. In some cases, non-trivial assumptions about the nature of learning are even included in its definition. Pedagogy is often specifically understood in relation to school education. But in a wider sense, it includes all forms of education, both inside and outside schools. In this wide sense, it is concerned with the process of teaching taking place between two parties: teachers and learners. The teacher's goal is to bring about certain experiences in the learner to foster their understanding of the subject matter to be taught. Pedagogy is interested in the forms and methods used to convey this understanding. Pedagogy is closely related to didactics but there are some differences. Usually, didactics is seen as the more limited term that refers mainly to the teacher's role and activities, i.e how their behavior is most beneficial to the process of education. This is one central aspect of pedagogy besides other aspects that consider the learner's perspective as well. In this wider sense, pedagogy focuses on "any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in another". The word pedagogy is a derivative of the Greek (paidagōgia), from (paidagōgos), itself a synthesis of (ágō), "I lead", and (, genitive , ) "boy, child": hence, "attendance on boys, to lead a child". It is pronounced variously, as , , or . The related word pedagogue has had a negative connotation of pedantry, dating from at least the 1650s; a related expression is educational theorist. The term "pedagogy" is also found in the English discourse, but it is more broadly discussed in other European languages, such as French and German. History Western In the Western world, pedagogy is associated with the Greek tradition of philosophical dialogue, particularly the Socratic method of inquiry. A more general account of its development holds that it emerged from the active concept of humanity as distinct from a fatalistic one and that history and human destiny are results of human actions. This idea germinated in ancient Greece and was further developed during the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment. Socrates Socrates (470 – 399 BCE) employed the Socratic method while engaging with a student or peer. This style does not impart knowledge, but rather tries to strengthen the logic of the student by revealing the conclusions of the statement of the student as erroneous or supported. The instructor in this learning environment recognizes the learners' need to think for themselves to facilitate their ability to think about problems and issues. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. Plato Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BCE) describes a system of education in The Republic (375 BCE) in which individual and family rights are sacrificed to the State. He describes three castes: one to learn a trade; one to learn literary and aesthetic ideas; and one to be trained in literary, aesthetic, scientific, and philosophical ideas. Plato saw education as a fulfillment of the soul, and by fulfilling the soul the body subsequently benefited. Plato viewed physical education for all as a necessity to a stable society. Aristotle Aristotle (384–322 BCE) composed a treatise, On Education, which was subsequently lost. However, he renounced Plato's view in subsequent works, advocating for a common education mandated to all citizens by the State. A small minority of people residing within Greek city-states at this time were considered citizens, and thus Aristotle still limited education to a minority within Greece. Aristotle advocates physical education should precede intellectual studies. Quintilian Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (35 – 100 CE) published his pedagogy in Institutio Oratoria (95 CE). He describes education as a gradual affair, and places certain responsibilities on the teacher. He advocates for rhetorical, grammatical, scientific, and philosophical education. Tertullian Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (155 – 240 CE) was a Christian scholar who rejected all pagan education, insisting this was "a road to the false and arrogant wisdom of ancient philosophers". Jerome Saint Jerome (347 – 30 September 420 CE), or Saint Hieronymus, was a Christian scholar who detailed his pedagogy of girls in numerous letters throughout his life. He did not believe the body in need of training, and thus advocated for fasting and mortification to subdue the body. He only recommends the Bible as reading material, with limited exposure, and cautions against musical instruments. He advocates against letting girls interact with society, and of having "affections for one of her companions than for others." He does recommend teaching the alphabet by ivory blocks instead of memorization so "She will thus learn by playing." He is an advocate of positive reinforcement, stating "Do not chide her for the difficulty she may have in learning. On the contrary, encourage her by commendation..." Jean Gerson Jean Charlier de Gerson (13 December 1363 – 12 July 1429), the Chancellor of the University of Paris, wrote in De parvulis ad Christum trahendis "Little children are more easily managed by caresses than fear," supporting a more gentle approach than his Christian predecessors. He also states "Above all else, let the teacher make an effort to be a father to his pupils." He is considered a precursor of Fenelon. John Amos Comenius John Amos Comenius (28 March 1592 – 15 November 1670) is considered the father of modern education. Johann Pestalozzi Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (January 12, 1746 – February 17, 1827), founder of several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland and wrote many works explaining his revolutionary modern principles of education. His motto was "Learning by head, hand and heart". Johann Herbart The educational philosophy and pedagogy of Johann Friedrich Herbart (4 May 1776 – 14 August 1841) highlighted the correlation between personal development and the resulting benefits to society. In other words, Herbart proposed that humans become fulfilled once they establish themselves as productive citizens. Herbartianism refers to the movement underpinned by Herbart's theoretical perspectives. Referring to the teaching process, Herbart suggested five steps as crucial components. Specifically, these five steps include: preparation, presentation, association, generalization, and application. Herbart suggests that pedagogy relates to having assumptions as an educator and a specific set of abilities with a deliberate end goal in mind. John Dewey The pedagogy of John Dewey (20 October 1859 – 1 June 1952) is presented in several works, including My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The School and Society (1900), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916), Schools of To-morrow (1915) with Evelyn Dewey, and Experience and Education (1938). In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one's full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good (My Pedagogic Creed, Dewey, 1897). Dewey advocated for an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student (The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey, 1902). Dewey not only re-imagined the way that the learning process should take place but also the role that the teacher should play within that process. He envisioned a divergence from the mastery of a pre-selected set of skills to the cultivation of autonomy and critical-thinking within the teacher and student alike. Eastern Confucius Confucius (551–479 BCE) stated that authority has the responsibility to provide oral and written instruction to the people under the rule, and "should do them good in every possible way." One of the deepest teachings of Confucius may have been the superiority of personal exemplification over explicit rules of behavior. His moral teachings emphasized self-cultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgement rather than knowledge of rules. Other relevant practices in the Confucian teaching tradition include the Rite and its notion of body-knowledge as well as Confucian understanding of the self, one that has a broader conceptualization than the Western individual self. Pedagogical considerations Teaching method Hidden curriculum A hidden curriculum refers to extra educational activities or side effect of an education, "[lessons] which are learned but not openly intended" such as the transmission of norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in the classroom and the social environment. Learning space Learning space or learning setting refers to a physical setting for a learning environment, a place in which teaching and learning occur. The term is commonly used as a more definitive alternative to "classroom", but it may also refer to an indoor or outdoor location, either actual or virtual. Learning spaces are highly diverse in use, learning styles, configuration, location, and educational institution. They support a variety of pedagogies, including quiet study, passive or active learning, kinesthetic or physical learning, vocational learning, experiential learning, and others. Learning theories Learning theories are conceptual frameworks describing how knowledge is absorbed, processed, and retained during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences, as well as prior experience, all play a part in how understanding, or a world view, is acquired or changed and knowledge and skills retained. Distance learning Distance education or long-distance learning is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school. Traditionally, this usually involved correspondence courses wherein the student corresponded with the school via post. Today it involves online education. Courses that are conducted (51 percent or more) are either hybrid, blended or 100% distance learning. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), offering large-scale interactive participation and open access through the World Wide Web or other network technologies, are recent developments in distance education. A number of other terms (distributed learning, e-learning, online learning, etc.) are used roughly synonymously with distance education. Teaching resource adaptation Adapting the teaching resource should suit appropriate teaching and learning environments, national and local cultural norms, and make it accessible to different types of learners. Key adaptations in teaching resource include: Classroom constraints Large class size – consider smaller groups or have discussions in pairs; Time available – shorten or lengthen the duration of activities; Modifying materials needed – find, make or substitute required materials; Space requirements – reorganize classroom, use a larger space, move indoors or outdoors. Cultural familiarity Change references to names, food and items to make them more familiar; Substitute local texts or art (folklore, stories, songs, games, artwork and proverbs). Local relevance Use the names and processes for local institutions such as courts; Be sensitive of local behavior norms (e.g. for genders and ages); Ensure content is sensitive to the degree of rule of law in society (trust in authorities and institutions). Inclusivity for diverse students Appropriate reading level(s) of texts for student use; Activities for different learning styles; Accommodation for students with special educational needs; Sensitivity to cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity; Sensitivity to students' socioeconomic status. Pedagogical approaches Evidence-based Dialogic learning Dialogic learning is learning that takes place through dialogue. It is typically the result of egalitarian dialogue; in other words, the consequence of a dialogue in which different people provide arguments based on validity claims and not on power claims. Student-centered learning Student-centered learning, also known as learner-centered education, broadly encompasses methods of teaching that shift the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student. In original usage, student-centered learning aims to develop learner autonomy and independence by putting responsibility for the learning path in the hands of students. Student-centered instruction focuses on skills and practices that enable lifelong learning and independent problem-solving. Critical pedagogy Critical pedagogy applies critical theory to pedagogy and asserts that educational practices are contested and shaped by history, that schools are not politically neutral spaces, and that teaching is political. Decisions regarding the curriculum, disciplinary practices, student testing, textbook selection, the language used by the teacher, and more can empower or disempower students. It asserts that educational practices favor some students over others and some practices harm all students. It also asserts that educational practices often favor some voices and perspectives while marginalizing or ignoring others. Academic degrees The academic degree Ped. D., Doctor of Pedagogy, is awarded honorarily by some US universities to distinguished teachers (in the US and UK, earned degrees within the instructive field are classified as an Ed.D., Doctor of Education, or a Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy). The term is also used to denote an emphasis in education as a specialty in a field (for instance, a Doctor of Music degree in piano pedagogy). Pedagogues around the world The education of pedagogues, and their role in society, varies greatly from culture to culture. Belgium Important pedagogues in Belgium are Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons (Catholic University of Leuven). According to these scholars, schools nowadays are often dismissed as outdated or ineffective. Deschoolers even argue that schools rest on the false premise that schools are necessary for learning but that people learn faster or better outside the classroom. Others critique the fact that some teachers stand before a classroom with only six weeks of teacher education. Against this background, Masschelein and Simons propose to look at school from a different point of view. Their educational morphology approaches the school as a particular scholastic 'form of gathering'. What the authors mean with that, is the following: school is a particular time-space-matter arrangement. This thus includes concretes architectures, technologies, practices and figures. This arrangement "deals in a specific way with the new generation, allows for a particular relation to the world, and for a particular experience of potentiality and of commonality (of making things public)". Masschelein and Simons' most famous work is the book "Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in Education". It takes a critical look at the main discourse of today's education. Education is seen through a socio-economic lens: education is aimed at mobilising talents and competencies (p23). This is seen in multiple texts from governing bodies, in Belgium and Europe. One of the most significant examples is quoted on page 23:  "Education and training can only contribute to growth and job-creation if learning is focused on the knowledge, skills and competences to be acquired by students (learning outcomes) through the learning process, rather than on completing a specific stage or on time spent in school." (European Commission, 2012, p.7) This is, according to Masschelein and Simons a plea for learning outcomes and demonstrates a vision of education in which the institution is no longer the point of departure. The main ambition in this discourse of education is the efficient and effective realisation of learning outcomes for all. Things like the place and time of learning, didactic and pedagogic support are means to an end: the acquisition of preplanned learning outcomes. And these outcomes are a direct input for the knowledge economy. Masschelein and Simons' main critique here is that the main concern is not the educational institution (anymore). Rather, the focus lies on the learning processes and mainly on the learning outcomes of the individual learner. Brazil In Brazil, a pedagogue is a multidisciplinary educator. Undergraduate education in Pedagogy qualifies students to become school administrators or coordinators at all educational levels, and also to become multidisciplinary teachers, such as pre-school, elementary and special teachers. Denmark In Scandinavia, a pedagogue (pædagog) is broadly speaking a practitioner of pedagogy, but the term is primarily reserved for individuals who occupy jobs in pre-school education (such as kindergartens and nurseries). A pedagogue can occupy various kinds of jobs, within this restrictive definition, e.g. in retirement homes, prisons, orphanages, and human resource management. When working with at-risk families or youths they are referred to as social pedagogues (socialpædagog). The pedagogue's job is usually distinguished from a teacher's by primarily focusing on teaching children life-preparing knowledge such as social or non-curriculum skills, and cultural norms. There is also a very big focus on the care and well-being of the child. Many pedagogical institutions also practice social inclusion. The pedagogue's work also consists of supporting the child in their mental and social development. In Denmark all pedagogues are educated at a series of national institutes for social educators located in all major cities. The education is a 3.5-year academic course, giving the student the title of a Bachelor in Social Education (Danish: Professionsbachelor som pædagog). It is also possible to earn a master's degree in pedagogy/educational science from the University of Copenhagen. This BA and MA program has a more theoretical focus compared to the more vocational Bachelor in Social Education. Hungary In Hungary, the word pedagogue (pedagógus) is synonymous with the teacher (tanár); therefore, teachers of both primary and secondary schools may be referred to as pedagogues, a word that appears also in the name of their lobbyist organizations and labor unions (e.g. Labor Union of Pedagogues, Democratic Labor Union of Pedagogues). However, undergraduate education in Pedagogy does not qualify students to become teachers in primary or secondary schools but makes them able to apply to be educational assistants. As of 2013, the six-year training period was re-installed in place of the undergraduate and postgraduate division which characterized the previous practice. Modern pedagogy An article from Kathmandu Post published on 3 June 2018 described the usual first day of school in an academic calendar. Teachers meet their students with distinct traits. The diversity of attributions among children or teens exceeds similarities. Educators have to teach students with different cultural, social, and religious backgrounds. This situation entails a differentiated strategy in pedagogy and not the traditional approach for teachers to accomplish goals efficiently. American author and educator Carol Ann Tomlinson defined Differentiated Instruction as "teachers' efforts in responding to inconsistencies among students in the classroom." Differentiation refers to methods of teaching. She explained that Differentiated Instruction gives learners a variety of alternatives for acquiring information. Primary principles comprising the structure of Differentiated Instruction include formative and ongoing assessment, group collaboration, recognition of students' diverse levels of knowledge, problem-solving, and choice in reading and writing experiences. Howard Gardner gained prominence in the education sector for his Multiple Intelligences Theory. He named seven of these intelligences in 1983: Linguistic, Logical and Mathematical, Visual and Spatial, Body and Kinesthetic, Musical and Rhythmic, Intrapersonal, and Interpersonal. Critics say the theory is based only on Gardner's intuition instead of empirical data. Another criticism is that the intelligence is too identical for types of personalities. The theory of Howard Gardner came from cognitive research and states these intelligences help people to "know the world, understand themselves, and other people." Said differences dispute an educational system that presumes students can "understand the same materials in the same manner and that a standardized, collective measure is very much impartial towards linguistic approaches in instruction and assessment as well as to some extent logical and quantitative styles." Educational research See also Outline of education References Sources See also List of important publications in philosophy List of important publications in anthropology List of important publications in economics Further reading Bruner, J. S. (1960). The Process of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. S. (1971). The Relevance of Education. New York, NY: Norton Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belkapp Press. John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968 (English translation: 1970) Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1971 David L. Kirp, The Sandbox Investment, 2007 Montessori, M. (1910). Antropologia Pedagogica. Montessori, M. (1921). Manuale di Pedagogia Scientifica. Montessori, M. (1934). Psico Aritmética. Montessori, M. (1934). Psico Geométria. Piaget, J. (1926). The Language and Thought of the Child. London: Routledge & Kegan. Karl Rosenkranz (1848). Pedagogics as a System. Translated 1872 by Anna C. Brackett, R.P. Studley Company Karl Rosenkranz (1899). The philosophy of education. D. Appleton and Co. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1794 Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Didactics Educational psychology Teaching

Object sexuality

Object sexuality or objectophilia is a group of paraphilias characterized by sexual or romantic attraction focused on particular inanimate objects. Individuals with this attraction may have strong feelings of love and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation. Some do not desire sexual or close emotional relationships with humans. Object-sexual individuals also often believe in animism, and sense reciprocation based on the belief that objects have souls, intelligence, feelings, and the ability to communicate. Questions of objectophilia's legality or ethical provenance have not arisen, given that inanimate objects are inert and not harmed through object sexuality. Public sexual consummation of object sexual desires may be dealt with through public nudity or anti-exhibitionism legislation. Research In 2009, Amy Marsh, a clinical sexologist, surveyed the twenty-one English-speaking members of Erika Eiffel's 40-strong OS Internationale about their experiences. About half reported autism spectrum disorders: six had been diagnosed, four were affected but not diagnosed, and three of the remaining nine reported having "some traits." According to Marsh, "The emotions and experiences reported by OS people correspond to general definitions of sexual orientation," such as that in an APA article "on sexual orientation and homosexuality ... [which] refers to sexual orientation as involving 'feelings and self-concept'". Sociolinguistic researcher Heiko Motschenbacher has developed the concept of humanonormativity to describe the marginalization of objectum sexuality. Humanonormativity is "the belief that people normally and naturally engage in sexual practices and romantic relationships with other human beings." It arises as a discourse that pathologizes objectum sexuality. This concept has been referenced in relevant academic fields, including research on fictosexuality. OS awareness and advocacy In 2009, Erika Eiffel appeared on Good Morning America and The Tyra Banks Show with Amy Marsh to discuss her "marriage" to the Eiffel Tower and how her object love helped her become a world champion archer. Marsh shared the results of her survey and her belief that OS could be a genuine sexual orientation, reasoning that if childhood trauma were a factor in being OS, there would be more OS individuals. Eiffel, who had adopted her surname after a 2007 "marriage" to the Eiffel Tower, founded OS Internationale, an educational website and online community for those identifying or researching attraction to objects. Literature Marsh sees OS-like behavior in classic literature. In Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: Describing his passion for sculptures, Horace Walpole commented in 1791 that "Sir William Hamilton had actually married his Gallery of Statues". In popular culture Real life In 1979, a Swedish woman married the Berlin Wall. In 2007, Erika Eiffel married the Eiffel Tower. In 2010, Woman's Day magazine listed ten romances between people and things, including the Berlin Wall, a fairground ride, a dakimakura, a Volkswagen Beetle, the World Trade Center, a steam locomotive, an iBook, and a metal processing system. A March 2012 segment of TLC's My Strange Addiction featured Nathaniel, a man emotionally and sexually attracted to his car. Nathaniel told Anderson Cooper that he was also attracted to jet skis and airplanes. In 2013, an Australian woman, Jodi Rose, married the Le Pont du Diable Bridge in France. In 2016, an American man was refused permission to marry his computer. Music Keys N Krates's video for the song "Save Me," featuring Katy B, focuses on this particular sexuality. Cinema Christine (1983) tells the story of a young man and his obsession with his sentient car. Jumbo (2020) tells the story of a cleaner at an amusement park who falls in love with a fairground ride. Zoé Wittock, the director, took her inspiration from the experience of Erika Eiffel. Titane tells the story of a female serial killer who becomes pregnant after a sexual encounter with a car. Television Australian Netflix series Lunatics (2019) features a character named Keith Dick (played by Chris Lilley), a fashion designer who falls for "Karen", a Sharp XE-A203 cash register, as well as an old fashioned vacuum cleaner. See also Agalmatophilia, sexual attraction towards dolls, statues, mannequins or other objects which mimic the appearance of humans Animism, the belief that all things, both animate and inanimate, possess a spiritual essence Doll fetish Fictosexuality List of paraphilias Mechanophilia, a paraphilia involving sexual attraction towards machines, particularly vehicles Sexual fetishism Shoe fetishism References External links The OS Internationale website Interviews of Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer and Erika Eiffel Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauers website Paraphilias Sexual fetishism

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all socio-political power is held by a dictator, who also controls the national politics and the peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and by friendly private mass communications media. The totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as the political economy of the country, the system of education, the arts, the sciences, and the private-life morality of the citizens. In the exercise of socio-political power, the difference between a totalitarian régime of government and an authoritarian régime of government is one of degree; whereas totalitarianism features a charismatic dictator and a fixed worldview, authoritarianism only features a dictator who holds power for the sake of holding power, and is supported, either jointly or individually, by a military junta and by the socio-economic elites who are the ruling class of the country. Definitions Contemporary background Modern political science catalogues three régimes of government: (i) the democratic, (ii) the authoritarian, and (iii) the totalitarian. Varying by political culture, the functional characteristics of the totalitarian régime of government are: political repression of all opposition (individual and collective); a cult of personality about The Leader; official economic interventionism (controlled wages and prices); official censorship of all mass communication media (the press, textbooks, cinema, television, radio, internet); official mass surveillance-policing of public places; and state terrorism. In the essay "Democide in Totalitarian States: Mortacracies and Megamurderers" (1994) the American political scientist Rudolph Rummel said that: There is much confusion about what is meant by totalitarian in the literature, including the denial that such [political] systems even exist. I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that is unlimited, [either] constitutionally or by countervailing powers in society (such as by a Church, rural gentry, labor unions, or regional powers); is not held responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections; and employs its unlimited power to control all aspects of society, including the family, religion, education, business, private property, and social relationships. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. Totalitarianism is, then, a political ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), Marxism–Leninism as in former East Germany, and Nazism. Even revolutionary Muslim Iran, since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978–79 has been totalitarian—here totalitarianism was married to Muslim fundamentalism. In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power. State socialism, Communism, Nazism, fascism, and Muslim fundamentalism have been some of its recent raiments. Totalitarian governments have been its agency. The state, with its international legal sovereignty and independence, has been its base. As will be pointed out, mortacracy is the result. Degree of control In exercising the power of government upon a society, the application of an official dominant ideology differentiates the worldview of the totalitarian régime from the worldview of the authoritarian régime, which is "only concerned with political power, and, as long as [government power] is not contested, [the authoritarian government] gives society a certain degree of liberty." Having no ideology to propagate, the politically secular authoritarian government "does not attempt to change the world and human nature", whereas the "totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens", by way of an official "totalist ideology, a [political] party reinforced by a secret police, and monopolistic control of industrial mass society." Historical background From the right-wing perspective, the social phenomenon of political totalitarianism is a product of Modernism, which the philosopher Karl Popper said originated from humanist philosophy; from the Republic (res publica) proposed by Plato in Ancient Greece, from Hegel's conception of the State as a polity of peoples, and from the political economy of Karl Marx in the 19th century—yet historians and philosophers of those periods dispute the historiographic accuracy of Popper's 20th-century interpretation and delineation of the historical origins of totalitarianism, because the ancient Greek philosopher Plato did not invent the modern State. In the early 20th century, Giovanni Gentile proposed Italian Fascism as a political ideology with a philosophy that is "totalitarian, and [that] the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unity inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people". In 1920s Germany, during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt integrated Gentile's Fascist philosophy of united national purpose to the supreme-leader ideology of the Führerprinzip. In the mid 20th-century, the German academics Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer traced the origin of totalitarianism to the Age of Reason (17th–18th centuries), especially to the anthropocentrist proposition that: "Man has become the master of the world, a master unbound by any links to Nature, society, and history", which excludes the intervention of supernatural beings to earthly politics of government. American historian William Rubinstein wrote that:The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the Jewish Holocaust, but also comprising the mass murders and purges of the Communist world, other mass killings carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies, and also the Armenian genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of World War I, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots. In the essay "The 'Dark Forces', the Totalitarian Model, and Soviet History" (1987), by J.F. Hough, and in the book The Totalitarian Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution (2019), by Alexander Riley, the historians said that the Russian Marxist revolutionary Lenin was the first politician to establish a sovereign state of the totalitarian model. As the Duce leading the Italian people to the future, Benito Mussolini said that his dictatorial régime of government made Fascist Italy (1922–1943) the representative Totalitarian State: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Likewise, in The Concept of the Political (1927), the Nazi jurist Schmitt used the term der Totalstaat (the Total State) to identify, describe, and establish the legitimacy of a German totalitarian state led by a supreme leader. After the Second World War (1937–1945), U.S. political discourse (domestic and foreign) included the concepts (ideologic and political) and the terms totalitarian, totalitarianism, and totalitarian model. In the post-war U.S. of the 1950s, to politically discredit the anti-fascism of the Second World War as misguided foreign policy, McCarthyite politicians claimed that Left-wing totalitarianism was an existential threat to Western civilisation, and so facilitated the creation of the American national security state to execute the anti-communist Cold War (1945–1989) that was fought by client-state proxies of the US and the USSR. Historiography Kremlinology During the Russo–American Cold War (1945–1989), the academic field of Kremlinology (analysing politburo policy politics) produced historical and policy analyses dominated by the totalitarian model of the USSR as a police state controlled by the absolute power of the supreme leader Stalin, who heads a monolithic, centralised hierarchy of government. The study of the internal politics of the politburo crafting policy at the Kremlin produced two schools of historiographic interpretation of Cold War history: (i) traditionalist Kremlinology and (ii) revisionist Kremlinology. Traditionalist Kremlinologists worked with and for the totalitarian model and produced interpretations of Kremlin politics and policies that supported the police-state version of Communist Russia. The revisionist Kremlinologists presented alternative interpretations of Kremlin politics and reported the effects of politburo policies upon Soviet society, civil and military. Despite the limitations of police-state historiography, revisionist Kremlinologists said that the old image of the Stalinist USSR of the 1950s—a totalitarian state intent upon world domination—was oversimplified and inaccurate, because the death of Stalin changed Soviet society. After the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, most revisionist Kremlinologists worked the national archives of ex–Communist states, especially the State Archive of the Russian Federation about Soviet-period Russia. Totalitarian model for policy In the 1950s, the political scientist Carl Joachim Friedrich said that Communist states, such as Soviet Russia and Red China, were countries systematically controlled with the five features of the totalitarian model of government by a supreme leader: (i) an official dominant ideology that includes a cult of personality about the leader, (ii) control of all civil and military weapons, (iii) control of the public and the private mass communications media, (iv) the use of state terrorism to police the populace, and (v) a political party of mass membership who perpetually re-elect The Leader. In the 1960s, the revisionist Kremlinologists researched the organisations and studied the policies of the relatively autonomous bureaucracies that influenced the crafting of high-level policy for governing Soviet society in the USSR. Revisionist Kremlinologists, such as J. Arch Getty and Lynne Viola, transcended the interpretational limitations of the totalitarian model by recognising and reporting that the Soviet government, the communist party, and the civil society of the USSR had greatly changed upon the death of Stalin. The revisionist social history indicated that the social forces of Soviet society had compelled the Government of the USSR to adjust public policy to the actual political economy of a Soviet society composed of pre–War and post–War generations of people with different perceptions of the utility of Communist economics for all the Russias. Hence, Russian modern history had outdated the totalitarian model that was the post–Stalinist perception of the police-state USSR of the 1950s. Politics of historical interpretation The historiography of the USSR and of the Soviet period of Russian history is in two schools of research and interpretation: (i) the traditionalist school of historiography and (ii) the revisionist school of historiography. Traditionalist-school historians characterise themselves as objective reporters of the claimed totalitarianism inherent to Marxism, to Communism, and to the political nature of Communist states, such as the USSR. Moreover, traditionalist historians criticise the politically liberal bias they perceive in the predominance of revisionist historians in academic publishing, and claim that revisionist-school historians also over-populate the faculties of colleges, universities, and think tanks. Revisionist-school historians criticise the traditionalist school's concentration upon the police-state aspects of Cold War history, and so produce anti-communist history biased towards a right-wing interpretation of the documentary facts, thus, the revisionist school dismiss traditionalist historians as the being the politically reactionary faculty of the HUAC school of scholarship about the Communist Party USA. New semantics In 1980, in a book review of How the Soviet Union is Governed (1979), by J.F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, William Zimmerman said that "the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed, as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm [of the totalitarian model] no longer satisfies [our ignorance], despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without police terrorism, the system of conscription) to articulate an acceptable variant [of Communist totalitarianism]. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post–Stalinist reality [of the USSR]." In a book review of Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura (2019), by Ahmed Saladdin, Michael Scott Christofferson said that Hannah Arendt's interpretation of the USSR after Stalin was her attempt to intellectually distance her work from "the Cold War misuse of the concept [of the origins of totalitarianism]" as anti-Communist propaganda. In the essay, "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word" (2010), the historian John Connelly said that totalitarianism is a useful word, but that the old 1950s theory about totalitarianism is defunct among scholars, because “The word is as functional now as it was fifty years ago. It means the kind of régime that existed in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Soviet satellites, Communist China, and maybe Fascist Italy, where the word originated. . . . Who are we to tell Václav Havel or Adam Michnik that they were fooling themselves when they perceived their rulers as totalitarian? Or, for that matter, any of the millions of former subjects of Soviet-type rule who use the local equivalents of the Czech [word] totalita to describe the systems they lived under before 1989? [Totalitarianism] is a useful word, and everyone knows what it means as a general referent. Problems arise when people confuse the useful descriptive term with the old 'theory' from the 1950s." In Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (2022), the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way said that nascent revolutionary régimes usually became totalitarian régimes if not destroyed with a military invasion. Such a revolutionary régime begins as a social revolution independent of the existing social structures of the state (not political succession, election to office, or a military coup d'état) and produces a dictatorship with three functional characteristics: (i) a cohesive ruling class comprising the military and the political élites, (ii) a strong and loyal coercive apparatus of police and military forces to suppress dissent, and (iii) the destruction of rival political parties, organisations, and independent centres of socio-political power. Moreover, the unitary functioning of the characteristics of totalitarianism allow a totalitarian government to perdure against economic crises (internal and external), large-scale failures of policy, mass social-discontent, and political pressure from other countries. Some totalitarian one-party states were established through coups orchestrated by military officers loyal to a vanguard party that advanced socialist revolution, such as the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (1962), Syrian Arab Republic (1963), and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1978). Politics Early usages Italy In 1923, in the early reign of Mussolini's government (1922–1943), the anti-fascist academic Giovanni Amendola was the first Italian public intellectual to define and describe Totalitarianism as a régime of government wherein the supreme leader personally exercises total power (political, military, economic, social) as Il Duce of The State. That Italian fascism is a political system with an ideological, utopian worldview unlike the realistic politics of the personal dictatorship of a man who holds power for the sake of holding power. Later, the theoretician of Italian Fascism Giovanni Gentile ascribed politically positive meanings to the ideological terms totalitarianism and totalitarian in defence of Duce Mussolini's legal, illegal, and legalistic social engineering of Italy. As ideologues, the intellectual Gentile and the politician Mussolini used the term totalitario to identify and describe the ideological nature of the societal structures (government, social, economic, political) and the practical goals (economic, geopolitical, social) of the new Fascist Italy (1922–1943), which was the "total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals." In proposing the totalitarian society of Italian Fascism, Gentile defined and described a civil society wherein totalitarian ideology (subservience to the state) determined the public sphere and the private sphere of the lives of the Italian people. That to achieve the Fascist utopia in the imperial future, Italian totalitarianism must politicise human existence into subservience to the state, which Mussolini summarised with the epigram: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Hannah Arendt, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, contended that Mussolini's dictatorship was not a totalitarian regime until 1938. Arguing that one of the key characteristics of a totalitarian movement was its ability to garner mass mobilization, Arendt wrote: "While all political groups depend upon proportionate strength, totalitarian movements depend on the sheer force of numbers to such an extent that totalitarian regimes seem impossible, even under otherwise favorable circumstances, in countries with relatively small populations.... [E]ven Mussolini, who was so fond of the term "totalitarian state," did not attempt to establish a full-fledged totalitarian regime and contented himself with dictatorship and one-party rule." For example, Victor Emmanuel III still reigned as a figurehead and helped play a role in the dismissal of Mussolini in 1943. Also, the Catholic Church was allowed to independently exercise its religious authority in Vatican City per the 1929 Lateran Treaty, under the leadership of Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). Britain One of the first people to use the term totalitarianism in the English language was Austrian writer Franz Borkenau in his 1938 book The Communist International, in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them. The label totalitarian was twice affixed to Nazi Germany during Winston Churchill's speech of 5 October 1938 before the House of Commons, in opposition to the Munich Agreement, by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency. In a radio address two weeks later, Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny." Spain José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones, the leader of the historic Spanish reactionary party called the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA), declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity" and went on to say: "Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it." General Francisco Franco was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and CEDA was dissolved in April 1937. Later, Gil-Robles went into exile. Politically matured by having fought and been wounded and survived the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in the essay "Why I Write" (1946), the socialist George Orwell said, "the Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." That future totalitarian régimes would spy upon their societies and use the mass communications media to perpetuate their dictatorships, that "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." USSR In the aftermath of the Second World War (1937–1945), in the lecture series (1945) and book (1946) titled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, the British historian E. H. Carr said that "the trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable" in the decolonising countries of Eurasia. That revolutionary Marxism–Leninism was the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by the USSR's rapid industrialisation (1929–1941) and the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) that defeated Nazi Germany. That, despite those achievements in social engineering and warfare, in dealing with the countries of the Communist bloc only the "blind and incurable" ideologue could ignore the Communist régimes' trend towards police-state totalitarianism in their societies. Cold War In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the political scientist Hannah Arendt said that, in their times in the early 20th century, corporate Nazism and soviet Communism were new forms of totalitarian government, not updated versions of the old tyrannies of a military or a corporate dictatorship. That the human emotional comfort of political certainty is the source of the mass appeal of revolutionary totalitarian régimes, because the totalitarian worldview gives psychologically comforting and definitive answers about the complex socio-political mysteries of the past, of the present, and of the future; thus did Nazism propose that all history is the history of ethnic conflict, of the survival of the fittest race; and Marxism–Leninism proposes that all history is the history of class conflict, of the survival of the fittest social class. That upon the believers' acceptance of the universal applicability of totalitarian ideology, the Nazi revolutionary and the Communist revolutionary then possess the simplistic moral certainty with which to justify all other actions by the State, either by an appeal to historicism (Law of History) or by an appeal to nature, as expedient actions necessary to establishing an authoritarian state apparatus. True belief In The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), Eric Hoffer said that political mass movements, such as Italian Fascism (1922–1943), German Nazism (1933–1945), and Russian Stalinism (1929–1953), featured the common political praxis of negatively comparing their totalitarian society as culturally superior to the morally decadent societies of the democratic countries of Western Europe. That such mass psychology indicates that participating in and then joining a political mass movement offers people the prospect of a glorious future, that such membership in a community of political belief is an emotional refuge for people with few accomplishments in their real lives, in both the public sphere and in the private sphere. In the event, the true believer is assimilated into a collective body of true believers who are mentally protected with "fact-proof screens from reality" drawn from the official texts of the totalitarian ideology. Collaborationism In "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" (2018) the historian Paul Hanebrink said that Hitler's assumption of power in Germany in 1933 frightened Christians into anti-communism, because for European Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, the new postwar 'culture war' crystallized as a struggle against Communism. Throughout the European interwar period (1918–1939), right-wing totalitarian régimes indoctrinated Christians to demonize the Communist régime in Russia as the apotheosis of secular materialism and [as] a militarized threat to worldwide Christian social and moral order". That throughout Europe, the Christians who became anti-communist totalitarians perceived Communism and communist régimes of government as an existential threat to the moral order of their respective societies; and collaborated with Fascists and Nazis in the idealistic hope that anti-communism would restore the societies of Europe to their root Christian culture. Totalitarian model In the U.S. geopolitics of the late 1950s, the Cold War concepts and the terms totalitarianism, totalitarian, and totalitarian model, presented in Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956), by Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, became common usages in the foreign-policy discourse of the U.S. Subsequently established, the totalitarian model became the analytic and interpretational paradigm for Kremlinology, the academic study of the monolithic police-state USSR. The Kremlinologists analyses of the internal politics (policy and personality) of the politburo crafting policy (national and foreign) yielded strategic intelligence for dealing with the USSR. Moreover, the U.S. also used the totalitarian model when dealing with fascist totalitarian régimes, such as that of a banana republic country. As anti–Communist political scientists, Friedrich and Brzezinski described and defined totalitarianism with the monolithic totalitarian model of six interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics: Elaborate guiding ideology. One-party state State terrorism Monopoly control of weapons Monopoly control of the mass communications media Centrally directed and controlled planned economy Criticism of the totalitarian model As traditionalist historians, Friedrich and Brzezinski said that the totalitarian régimes of government in the USSR (1917), Fascist Italy (1922–1943), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945) originated from the political discontent caused by the socio-economic aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918), which rendered impotent the government of Weimar Germany (1918–1933) to resist, counter, and quell left-wing and right-wing revolutions of totalitarian temper. Revisionist historians noted the historiographic limitations of the totalitarian-model interpretation of Soviet and Russian history, because Friedrich and Brzezinski did not take account of the actual functioning of the Soviet social system, neither as a political entity (the USSR) nor as a social entity (Soviet civil society), which could be understood in terms of socialist class struggle among the professional élites (political, academic, artistic, scientific, military) seeking upward mobility into the nomenklatura, the ruling class of the USSR. That the political economics of the politburo allowed measured executive power to regional authorities for them to implement policy was interpreted by revisionist historians as evidence that a totalitarian régime adapts the political economy to include new economic demands from civil society; whereas traditionalist historians interpreted the politico-economic collapse of the USSR to prove that the totalitarian régime of economics failed because the politburo did not adapt the political economy to include actual popular participation in the Soviet economy. The historian of Nazi Germany, Karl Dietrich Bracher said that the totalitarian typology developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski was an inflexible model, for not including the revolutionary dynamics of bellicose people committed to realising the violent revolution required to establish totalitarianism in a sovereign state. That the essence of totalitarianism is total control to remake every aspect of civil society using a universal ideology—which is interpreted by an authoritarian leader—to create a collective national identity by merging civil society into the State. Given that the supreme leaders of the Communist, the Fascist, and the Nazi total states did possess government administrators, Bracher said that a totalitarian government did not necessarily require an actual supreme leader, and could function by way of collective leadership. The American historian Walter Laqueur agreed that Bracher's totalitarian typology more accurately described the functional reality of the politburo than did the totalitarian typology proposed by Friedrich and Brzezinski. In Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968) the political scientist Raymond Aron said that for a régime of government to be considered totalitarian it can be described and defined with the totalitarian model of five interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics: A one-party state where the ruling party has a monopoly on all political activity. A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given official status as the only authority. A state monopoly on information; control of the mass communications media to broadcast the official truth. A state-controlled economy featuring major economic entities under state control. An ideological police-state terror; criminalisation of political, economic, and professional activities. Post–Cold War Laure Neumayer posited that "despite the disputes over its heuristic value and its normative assumptions, the concept of totalitarianism made a vigorous return to the political and academic fields at the end of the Cold War". In the 1990s, François Furet made a comparative analysis and used the term totalitarian twins to link Nazism and Stalinism. Eric Hobsbawm criticised Furet for his temptation to stress the existence of a common ground between two systems with different ideological roots. In Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion, Žižek wrote that "[t]he liberating effect" of General Augusto Pinochet's arrest "was exceptional", as "the fear of Pinochet dissipated, the spell was broken, the taboo subjects of torture and disappearances became the daily grist of the news media; the people no longer just whispered, but openly spoke about prosecuting him in Chile itself". Saladdin Ahmed cited Hannah Arendt as stating that "the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term after Stalin's death", writing that "this was the case in General August Pinochet's Chile, yet it would be absurd to exempt it from the class of totalitarian regimes for that reason alone". Saladdin posited that while Chile under Pinochet had no "official ideology", there was one man who ruled Chile from "behind the scenes", "none other than Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism and the most influential teacher of the Chicago Boys, was Pinochet's adviser". In this sense, Saladdin criticised the totalitarian concept because it was only being applied to "opposing ideologies" and it was not being applied to liberalism. In the early 2010s, Richard Shorten, Vladimir Tismăneanu, and Aviezer Tucker posited that totalitarian ideologies can take different forms in different political systems but all of them focus on utopianism, scientism, or political violence. They posit that Nazism and Stalinism both emphasised the role of specialisation in modern societies and they also saw polymathy as a thing of the past, and they also stated that their claims were supported by statistics and science, which led them to impose strict ethical regulations on culture, use psychological violence, and persecute entire groups. Their arguments have been criticised by other scholars due to their partiality and anachronism. Juan Francisco Fuentes treats totalitarianism as an "invented tradition" and he believes that the notion of "modern despotism" is a "reverse anachronism"; for Fuentes, "the anachronistic use of totalitarian/totalitarianism involves the will to reshape the past in the image and likeness of the present". Other studies try to link modern technological changes to totalitarianism. According to Shoshana Zuboff, the economic pressures of modern surveillance capitalism are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action. Toby Ord believed that George Orwell's fears of totalitarianism constituted a notable early precursor to modern notions of anthropogenic existential risk, the concept that a future catastrophe could permanently destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life due in part to technological changes, creating a permanent technological dystopia. Ord said that Orwell's writings show that his concern was genuine rather than just a throwaway part of the fictional plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1949, Orwell wrote that "[a] ruling class which could guard against (four previously enumerated sources of risk) would remain in power permanently". That same year, Bertrand Russell wrote that "modern techniques have made possible a new intensity of governmental control, and this possibility has been exploited very fully in totalitarian states". In 2016, The Economist described China's developed Social Credit System under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration, to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, as totalitarian. Opponents of China's ranking system say that it is intrusive and it is just another tool which a one-party state can use to control the population. Supporters say that it will transform China into a more civilised and law-abiding society. Shoshana Zuboff considers it instrumentarian rather than totalitarian. North Korea is the only country in East Asia to survive totalitarianism after the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 and handed over to his son Kim Jong-il and grandson Kim Jong-un in 2011, as of today in the 21st century. Other emerging technologies that could empower future totalitarian regimes include brain-reading, contact tracing, and various applications of artificial intelligence. Philosopher Nick Bostrom said that there is a possible trade-off, namely that some existential risks might be mitigated by the establishment of a powerful and permanent world government, and in turn the establishment of such a government could enhance the existential risks which are associated with the rule of a permanent dictatorship. Religious totalitarianism Islamic The Taliban is a totalitarian Sunni Islamist militant group and political movement in Afghanistan that emerged in the aftermath of the Soviet–Afghan War and the end of the Cold War. It governed most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and returned to power in 2021, controlling the entirety of Afghanistan. Features of its totalitarian governance include the imposition of Pashtunwali culture of the majority Pashtun ethnic group as religious law, the exclusion of minorities and non-Taliban members from the government, and extensive violations of women's rights. The Islamic State is a Salafi-Jihadist militant group that was established in 2006 by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi during the Iraqi insurgency, under the name "Islamic State of Iraq". Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization later changed its name to the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" in 2013. The group espouses a totalitarian ideology that is a fundamentalist hybrid of Global Jihadism, Wahhabism, and Qutbism. Following its territorial expansion in 2014, the group renamed itself as the "Islamic State" and declared itself as a caliphate that sought domination over the Muslim world and established what has been described as a "political-religious totalitarian regime". The quasi-state held significant territory in Iraq and Syria during the course of the Third Iraq War and the Syrian civil war from 2013 to 2019 under the dictatorship of its first Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law. Christian Francoist Spain (1936–1975), under the dictator Francisco Franco, has been characterized as a totalitarian state until at least the 1950s by scholars. Franco was portrayed as a fervent Catholic and a staunch defender of Catholicism, the declared state religion. Civil marriages that had taken place in the Republic were declared null and void unless they had been validated by the Church, along with divorces. Divorce, contraception and abortions were forbidden. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, Franco had more day-to-day power than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin possessed at the respective heights of their power. Payne noted that Hitler and Stalin at least maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, while Franco dispensed with even that formality in the early years of his rule. According to Payne, the lack of even a rubber-stamp parliament made Franco's government "the most purely arbitrary in the world." However, from 1959 to 1974 the "Spanish Miracle" took place under the leadership of technocrats, many of whom were members of Opus Dei and a new generation of politicians that replaced the old Falangist guard. Reforms were implemented in the 1950s and Spain abandoned autarky, reassigning economic authority from the isolationist Falangist movement. This led to massive economic growth that lasted until the mid-1970s, known as the "Spanish miracle". This is comparable to De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, where Francoist Spain changed from being openly totalitarian to an authoritarian dictatorship with a certain degree of economic freedom. The city of Geneva under John Calvin's leadership has also been characterised as totalitarian by scholars. Revisionist school of Soviet-period history Soviet society after Stalin The death of Stalin in 1953 voided the simplistic totalitarian model of the police-state USSR as the epitome of the totalitarian state. A fact common to the revisionist-school interpretations of the reign of Stalin (1927–1953) was that the USSR was a country with weak social institutions, and that state terrorism against Soviet citizens indicated the political illegitimacy of Stalin's government. That the citizens of the USSR were not devoid of personal agency or of material resources for living, nor were Soviet citizens psychologically atomised by the totalist ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—because "the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin's leadership consisted, to a considerable extent, in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose." That the legitimacy of Stalin's régime of government relied upon the popular support of the Soviet citizenry as much as Stalin relied upon state terrorism for their support. That by politically purging Soviet society of anti–Soviet people Stalin created employment and upward social mobility for the post–War generation of working class citizens for whom such socio-economic progress was unavailable before the Russian Revolution (1917–1924). That the people who benefited from Stalin's social engineering became Stalinists loyal to the USSR; thus, the Revolution had fulfilled her promise to those Stalinist citizens and they supported Stalin because of the state terrorism. German Democratic Republic (GDR) In the case of East Germany, (0000) Eli Rubin posited that East Germany was not a totalitarian state but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens. Writing in 1987, Walter Laqueur posited that the revisionists in the field of Soviet history were guilty of confusing popularity with morality and of making highly embarrassing and not very convincing arguments against the concept of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state. Laqueur stated that the revisionists' arguments with regard to Soviet history were highly similar to the arguments made by Ernst Nolte regarding German history. For Laqueur, concepts such as modernisation were inadequate tools for explaining Soviet history while totalitarianism was not. Laqueur's argument has been criticised by modern "revisionist school" historians such as Paul Buhle, who said that Laqueur wrongly equates Cold War revisionism with the German revisionism; the latter reflected a "revanchist, military-minded conservative nationalism." Moreover, Michael Parenti and James Petras have suggested that the totalitarianism concept has been politically employed and used for anti-communist purposes. Parenti has also analysed how "left anti-communists" attacked the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For Petras, the CIA funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom to attack "Stalinist anti-totalitarianism." Into the 21st century, Enzo Traverso has attacked the creators of the concept of totalitarianism as having invented it to designate the enemies of the West. According to some scholars, calling Joseph Stalin totalitarian instead of authoritarian has been asserted to be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Western self-interest, just as surely as the counterclaim that allegedly debunking the totalitarian concept may be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Russian self-interest. For Domenico Losurdo, totalitarianism is a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology and applying it to the political sphere requires an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place fascist regimes and the Soviet Union in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research. See also List of totalitarian regimes Inverted totalitarianism Totalitarian democracy Guided democracy Illiberal democracy Defective democracy Herrenvolk democracy Ethnic democracy Racial segregation Apartheid Crime of apartheid Settler colonialism Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism Surveillance capitalism List of cults of personality Totalitarian architecture Nazism Fascism Stalinism References Notes Further reading Armstrong, John A. The Politics of Totalitarianism (New York: Random House, 1961). Bernholz, Peter. "Ideocracy and totalitarianism: A formal analysis incorporating ideology", Public Choice 108, 2001, pp. 33–75. Bernholz, Peter. "Ideology, sects, state and totalitarianism. A general theory". In: H. Maier and M. Schaefer (eds.): Totalitarianism and Political Religions, Vol. II (Routledge, 2007), pp. 246–270. Borkenau, Franz, The Totalitarian Enemy (London: Faber and Faber 1940). Bracher, Karl Dietrich, "The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism," pp. 11–33 from Totalitarianism Reconsidered edited by Ernest A. Menze (Kennikat Press, 1981) . Congleton, Roger D. "Governance by true believers: Supreme duties with and without totalitarianism." Constitutional Political Economy 31.1 (2020): 111–141. online Connelly, John. "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word" Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11#4 (2010) 819–835. online. Curtis, Michael. Totalitarianism (1979) online Devlin, Nicholas. "Hannah Arendt and Marxist Theories of Totalitarianism." Modern Intellectual History (2021): 1–23 online. Diamond, Larry. "The road to digital unfreedom: The threat of postmodern totalitarianism." Journal of Democracy 30.1 (2019): 20–24. excerpt Fitzpatrick, Sheila, and Michael Geyer, eds. Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Friedrich, Carl and Z. K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 1st ed. 1956, 2nd ed. 1965). Gach, Nataliia. "From totalitarianism to democracy: Building learner autonomy in Ukrainian higher education." Issues in Educational Research 30.2 (2020): 532–554. online Gleason, Abbott. Totalitarianism: The Inner History Of The Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), . Gray, Phillip W. Totalitarianism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2023), . Gregor, A. Totalitarianism and political religion (Stanford University Press, 2020). Hanebrink, Paul. "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" Journal of Contemporary History (July 2018) Vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 622–643 Hermet, Guy, with Pierre Hassner and Jacques Rupnik, Totalitarismes (Paris: Éditions Economica, 1984). Jainchill, Andrew, and Samuel Moyn. "French democracy between totalitarianism and solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and revisionist historiography." Journal of Modern History 76.1 (2004): 107–154. online Joscelyne, Sophie. "Norman Mailer and American Totalitarianism in the 1960s." Modern Intellectual History 19.1 (2022): 241–267 online. Keller, Marcello Sorce. "Why is Music so Ideological, Why Do Totalitarian States Take It So Seriously", Journal of Musicological Research, XXVI (2007), no. 2–3, pp. 91–122. Kirkpatrick, Jeane, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics (London: Simon & Schuster, 1982). Laqueur, Walter, The Fate of the Revolution Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917 to the Present (London: Collier Books, 1987) . Menze, Ernest, ed. Totalitarianism reconsidered (1981) online essays by experts Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (Yale University Press, 1944). Murray, Ewan. Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism (2005). Nicholls, A.J. "Historians and Totalitarianism: The Impact of German Unification." Journal of Contemporary History 36.4 (2001): 653–661. Patrikeeff, Felix. "Stalinism, Totalitarian Society and the Politics of 'Perfect Control, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, (Summer 2003), Vol. 4 Issue 1, pp. 23–46. Payne, Stanley G., A History of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1996). Rak, Joanna, and Roman Bäcker. "Theory behind Russian Quest for Totalitarianism. Analysis of Discursive Swing in Putin's Speeches." Communist and Post-Communist Studies 53.1 (2020): 13–26 online. Roberts, David D. Totalitarianism (John Wiley & Sons, 2020). Rocker, Rudolf, Nationalism and Culture (Covici-Friede, 1937). Sartori, Giovanni, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J: Chatham House, 1987). Sauer, Wolfgang. "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2 (December 1967): 404–424. online. Saxonberg, Steven. Pre-modernity, totalitarianism and the non-banality of evil: A comparison of Germany, Spain, Sweden and France (Springer Nature, 2019). Schapiro, Leonard. Totalitarianism (London: The Pall Mall Press, 1972). Selinger, William. "The politics of Arendtian historiography: European federation and the origins of totalitarianism." Modern Intellectual History 13.2 (2016): 417–446. Skotheim, Robert Allen. Totalitarianism and American social thought (1971) online Talmon, J. L., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1952). Traverso, Enzo, Le Totalitarisme : Le XXe siècle en débat (Paris: Poche, 2001). Tuori, Kaius. "Narratives and Normativity: Totalitarianism and Narrative Change in the European Legal Tradition after World War II." Law and History Review 37.2 (2019): 605–638 online. Žižek, Slavoj, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (London: Verso, 2001). online External links 20th century in politics 21st century in politics Authoritarianism Political philosophy Political science terminology Political theories Political extremism

Moe anthropomorphism

is a form of anthropomorphism in anime, manga, and games where moe qualities are given to non-human beings (such as animals, plants, supernatural entities and fantastical creatures), objects, concepts, or phenomena. In addition to moe features, moe anthropomorphs are also characterized by their accessories, which serve to emphasize their original forms before anthropomorphosis. The characters here, usually in a kind of cosplay, are drawn to represent an inanimate object or popular consumer product. Part of the humor of this personification comes from the personality ascribed to the character (often satirical) and the sheer arbitrariness of characterizing a variety of machines, objects, and even physical places as cute. This form of anthropomorphism is very common in otaku subcultures. With the exception of kemonomimi (which are human-like characters that have animal features), many moe anthropomorphizations started as dōjin efforts. An early form of moe anthropomorphism is the Gundam MS Girl created by Mika Akitaka in 1982. Many anthropomorphizations were the results of discussions on Japanese Internet forums such as 2channel or Futaba Channel. The trend spread out of dōjin circles as commercial anime and manga also prominently feature characters who are personifications of inanimate objects. Sociological aspects The media studies scholar Yuji Sone has argued that since moe anthropomorphism is usually personified by beautiful young girls, it is an example of the outgrowth of otaku subcultural habitus into sexual fantasies. The psychologist Tamaki Saitō regards moe anthropomorphism as an example of mitate-e art due to its simultaneous use of both high and low art to provide additional, sometimes humorous, meanings. Saitō also connects this anthropomorphism with a "desire for transformation" associated with the (girl) form. Types Animals , literally meaning "animal ears", is the concept of depicting human and human-like characters with animal ears, and by extension, other features such as tails. Kemonomimi is often used in moe anthropomorphism, to depict animal characters in human form. Catgirls and catboys are the most prolific and common in this category, although bunnygirls, foxgirls, doggirls, and wolfgirls are also common. Kemonomimi characters typically appear human except for added animal-like qualities. In Hiroki Azuma's theory of otaku database consumption, animal ears are one type of "moe element," which is combined with other elements in a character in order to create an affective response in fans. A notable franchise featuring moe anthropomorphism and kemonomimi is Kemono Friends, which is focused on a myriad of anthropomorphized animals in the form of girls and young women, ranging from real and extinct animals to cryptids and legendary creatures. Another notable series is Uma Musume Pretty Derby which focuses on girls as famous Japanese racehorses. Mimiketto is a doujinshi convention dedicated to kemonomimi works. Mythological and fantasy creatures When moe appearances are given to various creatures from folklore, mythology or fantasy, they are usually called monster girls (or sometimes boys). Their bestial traits may be fully retained, de-emphasized into mere personality tics or removed altogether. An early example of this is with the independent video game/doujin soft series Touhou Project beginning in 1997 which depicts yōkai and other mythical beings as young beautiful girls and women who summon spell cards to unleash a barrage of abstract projectile patterns called "danmaku". It was further popularized by such manga as Monster Musume and A Centaur's Life, and has grown into its own genre. Rarely, the monster girls are relatively unchanged from their original form and personality, such as mermaids and centaurides. The fan-created Bowsette, a gender-swapped and moe anthropomorphized version of the Mario antagonist Bowser that gives him the appearance of Princess Peach via the "Super Crown" powerup, became one of the most popular Internet memes of 2018. The popularity of the character later led to other Mario enemies being given moe interpretations, the most prominent of which was Boosette (based on the King Boo character). Computers Although Chobits (2001) and Toy's iMac Girl (1998) came first, the meme of turning computer-related phenomena into moe subjects did not start until , the anthropomorphization of Internet Explorer's Stop button. The idea of Shiitake-chan came in 2001 on 2channel, starting with a poster who claims he saw the Stop button as a shiitake. When Microsoft released Windows 7 in Japan, they included a theme pack centered around a personification of the OS named "Nanami Madobe" with voice samples from Nana Mizuki. Microsoft used another personification involving two girls named "Yū Madobe" and "Ai Madobe" to promote Windows 8 in Japan. As part of the market launch, a Facebook draw of 8 followers took place when follower count reaches 80001; and total Twitter follower count for Yū and Ai reach 8001, where winners receive Madobe Yū and Ai-themed prizes. Since the creation of the Microsoft-related OS-tans, other software and websites have been anthropomorphized as well. For example, Wikipedia has its own "Wikipe-tan", while Mozilla applications have their own set of "Moezilla". Chinese netizens have created a "Green Dam Girl" to parody China's content-control software Green Dam Youth Escort. In 2010, Taiwanese illustrator known as "shinia" on Pixiv created a personification of Microsoft Silverlight named Hikaru Aizawa, who is officially promoted by Microsoft Taiwan. In 2013, Microsoft Singapore introduced Inori Aizawa, a mascot for Internet Explorer. The manga and anime series World War Blue features characters who are personifications of computer games. Video games with characters based on them include Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario and Tetris. Sega Hard Girls features personifications of video game hardware by Sega. Law and politics Elements of the Japanese constitution have been anthropomorphized into moe girls, such as Article 9, which prevents Japan from waging war, being "portrayed as a peace-loving girl." In 2010, users from the Breaking News board on 2channel created Hinomoto Oniko as an anthropomorphism of the commonly used Chinese ethnic slur used against Japanese, Riben guizi (日本鬼子), literally meaning "Japanese devils". The character was made by the 2channel community in response to the growing anti-Japanese sentiment amongst Chinese netizens online, and has since become an Internet meme within Japanese imageboards and forums. In Japanese, the kun'yomi reading of the kanji which make up the racial slur can be interpreted as a female personal name, and so the character is depicted as a young female wearing a traditional Japanese kimono, along with devil horns and a katana. In 2015, Internet users created "ISIS-chan" (ISISちゃん), a moe anthropomorphized character of the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Images of her have been used by Anonymous to dilute the Islamic State's online propaganda. Others Other things have also been given moe characteristics: Cells The manga Cells at Work! depicts the cells of the human body as both male and female characters. Charcoal Based on binchōtan and other types of charcoal, the anime and manga Binchō-tan uses the dajare in the Japanese word for to create a series of cute girls. Chemical elements and compounds Many online artists have depicted chemical elements as human characters in their illustrations, webcomics and video games. Anthropomorphism of chemical elements is created more than that of chemical compounds. Notable examples are, a Japanese chemical company depicted their solvent products as moe in an online webcomic and another one is an ongoing English webcomic about personified chemical compounds by a Romanian illustrator who works as a drycleaner . Countries As with national personifications, moe versions of various countries are present. For example, Japan is Nihon-chan, Afghanistan is Afuganisu-tan—both have their own webcomics in Japan. Beyond these, however, are the countries of Hidekaz Himaruya's Hetalia: Axis Powers, a manga depicting the countries involved in World War I and World War II using mostly men with only a few women mixed in. Toshio Miyake argues that Hetalia's appeal lies in its combination of comedy and male personification of nations, with implicit homoerotic themes. Cultural Relics In a more unique take on moe anthropomorphizations of Chinese cultural artifacts and heritage sites like the Goujian Sword , "Ironed models" of the Yangshi Lei Archives and even the Great wall of China was the central theme in the 2021 Donghua The Country of Rare Treasure (Nation of Treasure) 秘宝之国 Diseases During the 2014 Western African Ebola virus epidemic, a user of the website 4chan created an image depicting a moe version of Ebola known as Ebola-chan. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a moe version of the Coronavirus disease 2019 named Corona-chan was created. Food and beverages Habanero-tan, the unofficial mascot of Bōkun Habanero; and Bisuke-tan for biscuits that KFC sells in Japan. The light novel series Akikan! has soda cans that magically turn into girls. Jelly flavors have also been anthropomorphized. Historic eras A series of Japanese history books features anthropomorphism of historic events. Home appliances Erotic computer games Like Life and Monogokoro, Monomusume both feature home appliances as girls. These appliances include washing machines, alarm clocks, blackboard erasers, pillows, first aid boxes, mobile phones, and even post boxes, among others. The very nature of such games, however, puts the main characters in unusual situations when the sex scene happens—such as essentially "having sex with the washing machine". Likewise, the manga 090 Eko to Issho features girls who are mobile phones. Military hardware Mecha musume are anthropomorphic personifications of military hardware, such as guns, tanks, ships, aircraft or even missiles. Popular subjects of this kind of anthropomorphism include World War II military vehicles, such as the Strike Witches franchise; collectible mecha musume figures of these vehicles have been released. Moe anthropomorphisms of historical military ships as girls and young women ("ship girls") are also notable, as popularized by Kantai Collection and Azur Lane. Vehicles Notable trains who were drawn as girls include the Fastech 360, often drawn with cat ears because of the train's emergency air braking plates. Called "Fastech-tan", this particular "train girl" has its own collectible figure, sold with permission from the East Japan Railway Company. The bishōjo game Maitetsu and its anime version Rail Romanesque feature Railords, anthropomorphized train characters paired up with the real trains. See also Anthropomorphism Moe References Further reading . Tokyo, Japan: Aspect, 2006. . (The -tan is a hypocoristic suffix.) Anime and manga terminology Science fiction themes Internet memes Kemonomimi