Category: Cultural Studies

As stated by Bennett and McDougall (2013), mythology also regarded as godlore describes a variety or a collection of several myths of a given group of people or primarily the study of such myths. On the other hand, myths are the stories that individuals explain in order to understand nature, customs, and history. Barthes wrote a range of typical mythologies within a monthly journal in the duration that lasted between in 1954 and 1556 (p. 13). Amongst the various contribution of Barthes mythologies were inclusive of the chapters regarding the professional wrestling, red wine, plastics, steak and chips, washing powder […]

Name: Course: Lecturer: Date: Two Famous Historical Figures Frank Lloyd and Le Corbusier are among the most influential historical architects in the early 20th century. The two architects were born in different countries, where Wright was born in America while Corbusier was born in Switzerland (Toby, 2008). However, both were born away from urban areas, which they both came to revolutionize in their works. They were both visionary architects as well as urban planners, where they sought to transform the current situation of the modern cities at the time. Despite having the same vision for transforming cities, they their ideas […]

In the last few decades, there has been increased interest in the examination of culturaldifferences in the self and other aspects of personality. It is difficult to conduct cross-culturalstudies for a variety of reasons, in part because of the various ways that culture can berepresented. Many cross-cultural researchers have operationalized culture by focusing on thecultural-level distinction between individualism and collectivism (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002; Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995). At theindividual level, the associated concepts of independent and interdependent self-construals havebeen emphasized. Individualism-collectivism constructs has been widely used as a theoreticalframework for understanding cultural differences […]

It is a well acceptedfact that the basic theme of all literature is human being, his or her actions,thoughts, feelings, beliefs and faiths. As human being is described as a socialanimal, it is quite obvious that sociological aspect of human being isreflected in literature. Literature deals with the number of sociologicalconcepts, movements aesthetically. ‘Diaspora’ is one of the sociologicalconcepts that find it’s reflection in today’s literature. Diaspora literaturedeals with expatriate sensibility. It focuses on the lives of immigrants andtheir inner and external conflicts in an alien land. By highlighting issueslike cultural dilemma, quest of identity, multiculturalism and universalaspects of human […]

In the 1980s, Soviet cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin(1984) fully explored the concept of carnival in his work Rabelais and His World.Bakhtin’s interpretation of carnival is mainly based on the study of ‘folkfestivities of the carnival type’, particularly those of the Renaissance andMiddle Ages (Bakhtin, 1984: 4). According to Bakhtin (1984), the celebration ofcarnival provides opportunities for individuals to get together in public areasand act without restriction by authorities and official conventions; ittherefore represents a way to weaken or even erase hierarchical distinctionsand to pursue freedom and democracy. Thus, Bakhtin claims that folk festivalculture evolved specifically to combat a reigning theocracy’s […]

IntroductionThe Birmingham school of thought came about in the 1960smajorly in response to the social movements that sprung up at the time. Theprimary focus of the school of thought was on the issues of gender, ethnicity,political ideology, race and how these were represented in the media and aswell in cultural texts (Juacalla, 2014). The school of thought is credited withpioneering in the study of the impact of radio, television, movies andnewspapers on the audience. The focus of the study was also on the diverse waysin which individuals interpreted the media messages and the different reactionsthat were aroused in the audience. […]

The 1980s saw a transformation happen within thesocial sciences and humanities with their disciples opening up to their ownreworkings and new perspectives owing to a greater attention to the workings ofpower and a more critical understanding of biological, cultural and socialmodes of differences. Projects that aimed to describe other cultures andpeople, primarily located in Anthropology, came to be rethought as far fromtransparent and straightforward, and instead caught within webs of imperialismand hierarchical renderings of the Self and the Other. Behind this criticalreworking of Anthropology was the questioning of knowledge, dealing with thenature, politics and problematics of representation and textuality and […]

As a symbolicreflxion of prevailing power structures, the innen spatial organization of thelibrary has always been shaped by two opposed forces, two purposes, thearchival purpose of preserving knowledge, and the public one of accessingknowledge, the coexistence between these two functions shaped the librarythroughout history. During the ecclesiastical world of the middle ages, thearchival function dominated, as the books were viewed as a source of sacredknowledge, to which access was limited to a limited number of priviledgedindivials, spatially this exculsivity was celebrated with reading clusters,ressembling in their form and order to temples and prayer rooms, Michelangelo’concept of ‚secret library illustrates this […]

Sugata Mitra, a TED prize winner and Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, England, once exposed a sad truth about our educational system: “We cannot continue teaching with the methods of the 19th century and hope to prepare our children for the 21st century.” Twenty-first century students, like myself, agree with Mitra as nineteenth-century teaching methods often feel suffocating. Most often, we have to sit impatiently in a confined traditional classroom and mindlessly stare at the board for hours. In addition to typical 7 hours spent in school, we have to laboriously endure through an average of 4 hours […]

Humans did not choose to be different from one another, they did not choose to have different cultures and they did not choose to speak different languages. Long ago, when first humans were evolved on this planet, forces of nature and desire for better food, forced humans to spread all over the planet Earth, losing touch with their previous roots. With time people formed groups that would help them survive and provide better conditions of living for themselves. Each group developed their own words, which later formed a language, to help them communicate with each other.Every group developed their own […]