• Title/Summary/Keyword: Cultural Identities

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Beyond Swahili Myths: Migration and the formation of modern Swahili identity (스와힐리 신화를 넘어서: 이주와 현대적 스와힐리 정체성의 형성)

  • Chang, YongKyu
    • Journal of International Area Studies (JIAS)
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.395-420
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    • 2009
  • Academic discourses on Swahili identity have been focused on either its Bantu or Arabic-originated theories. Both theories, nevertheless, have a common feature: a unilineal origin of Swahili identity. This paper questions on this Swahili identity and argues that Swahili identity has been developed through historical experience and discourses. For this, the paper utilizes Barth's theory of situationalism. Barth(1998(1969)) suggests that maintaining an ethnic identity is a personal or group choice out of multiple layers of social identities according to his or their social environments. Tanzanian Swahili identity is a good case for this analysis. Based on fieldwork conducted at Magomeni and Msasani in Dar es Salaam, a capital of Tanzania, the paper shows that residents in both areas hold strong Swahili identities although they have different social and historical experience. In case of Magomeni, most of the residents came from Zanzibar, a core Swahili cultural area. They trace their original genealogy from Arabia peninsular. Besides, they argue that they speak a proper kiSwahili(Swahili language) distinguishable from inland kiSwahili. On the contrary, residents of Msasani show variety of ethnic identities, far from a proper Swahili. They have adapted Swahili identities since the independence of Tanzania. With the help of strong socialist policies, including a language policy, most of Tanzanian ethnic groups have ignored their own identities and accommodated a national identity, Tanzanian(waTanzania) or Swahili people(waSwahili). Makonde immigrants from Mozambique who consists the majority of residents in Msasani also easily accommodate Swahili identity in the course. Therefore, Makonde have began to rebirth as waSwahili by claiming that they are living in Tanzania and speak kiSwahili as a mother tongue.

Rethinking Immigration, Remaking Identities: Exploration of Ethnic Identity among the Immigrant Adolescents and the Adolescents Born in Marital-Immigrant Families in Korea (결혼 이주 가정 및 중도 입국 청소년들의 민족 정체성 탐색과 형성)

  • Kim, Kihyun;Yi, Jaehee;Hong, Hyemi
    • Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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    • v.44 no.1
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    • pp.165-192
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    • 2013
  • Though identity formation is a major developmental task during adolescence and ethnic identity is an integral part of one's identity formation, little is known about ethnic identity exploration and formation among the immigrant adolescents as well as the adolescents born in marital-immigrant families living in Korea. Seventeen adolescents aged 13 to 17 having immigration experiences participated in the study and shared their experiences related to ethnic identity. Results of analyzing in-depth interview data indicated that the concept of ethnic identity was a multidimensional construct: self-identification, bases of identification, emotional reactions, and process of identity formation were important components consisting of the participants' ethnic identities. The youths also reported a variety of socio-cultural experiences related to one's ethnic identities. Based on the findings, the study discussed theoretical implications of the findings and suggestions for providing services for these youths.

Musical Identity Online: A "Netnographic" Perspective of Online Communities

  • Strubel, Jessica;Pookulangara, Sanjukta;Murray, Amber
    • International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.15-29
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    • 2013
  • Today's technology enables consumers to trade millions of dollars, conduct online banking, access entertainment, and do countless other activities at the click of a button. Online social networks (OSN) have become a cultural phenomenon that allows for individualistic consumerism. Consumers are increasingly utilizing OSN to share ideas, build communities, and contact fellow consumers who are similar to themselves. The relevance of online communities to the music is immense especially because musicians are now using social media to build global audiences. Not only is information about music and performance disseminated online, but musical commodities are sold and traded online. Online music communities allow consumers to elect and create new identities online through the purchase of subcultural commodities. Given the growing economic importance of online music communities it is important to get a holistic view of subcultural communities online. This study utilized content analysis of online music community websites using the Netnography methodology as developed by Kozinet for data collection to analyze consumers' purchasing and consumption behavior of subcultural commodities online as related to the formation of subcultural identities. Findings showed that subcultural items are predominantly purchased online, especially digital music, and there is a need for more custom craft items. The authors presented a new conceptual taxonomy of online subcultural consumer classifications based on online behavior patterns.

Comparative Analysis of the Roles and Identities of Artists and Fashion designers

  • Suh, Seunghee
    • Journal of Fashion Business
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    • v.25 no.6
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    • pp.70-80
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    • 2021
  • The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the identities and roles so that they can grasp their social roles and directions. Artists show a change in identity from the deification of modern artists with freedom and genius to artists who challenge the cognitive aspect of art and redefine the scope and concept of artists by expanding their social role. Artists dreaming of an ideal art utopia, in which art, society, politics, and daily life are coordinated, are constantly presenting the social role and direction of art through the combination and challenge of new ways of art and craft, beauty and function, creative imagination, and public service. Fashion designers act as contemporary genius artists, creators who express the appearance of the times, practitioners who advocate social values and changes, members of business in the fashion system, celebrities who are spotlighted by the public at the center of the fashion industry, or fashion influencers. Thus, fashion designers are complex or selective in their role depending on the fashion philosophy of individual designers or location given within the fashion system. They are becoming the subject of creating the culture of the times by expressing social ideology or playing a role in practicing art in life that leads social culture so as to raise the value of fashion in their development and satisfy cultural enjoyment of fashion consumers who consume art in everyday life.

Self-Control and Satisfaction with Gender and Sex-Role Identity in Korean and American College Students (한국과 미국 대학생의 성, 성역할정체감과 자기통제 및 자기통제 만족도와의 관계)

  • Lee, Kyung Hee
    • Korean Journal of Child Studies
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.91-112
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    • 1991
  • The impact of gender, sex-role identity and cultural background on self - control behaviors was studied with the use of reports from 410 college students(201 Koreans and 209 Americans), who were administered both the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Missouri Self Control Instrument. Gender, sex - role identity and cultural background significantly affected self - control and satisfaction. Regardless of cultural background, males showed a higher level of self - control and satisfaction than females. Androgenous students from both nations used a higher level of expressed/yielded self - control and more satisfied than the students with other sex - role identities. There were some differences in self - control between the Korean and American students. For the American students, the level of expressed self - control was the critical factor in explaining self - control behavior, whereas the level of yielded self - control was the critical factor for the Korean students. This was explained as a phenomenon of culture - bound relationships. Regardless of sex and sex - role identity, the level of satisfaction of Korean students was significantly lower than that of American students. The present results suggested that Korean students have some sort of conflict between self - control and satisfaction. The conflict can probably be attributed to the recent influx of western culture emphasizing goal - oriented control.

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A Study on the Indeterminancy Expressed in the Postmodernism Fashion (포스트모더니즘 패션에 나타난 불확정성(Indeterminancy))

  • 양숙희
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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    • v.45
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    • pp.179-199
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    • 1999
  • Indeterminancy is one of the thought systems which explains all things with not 'either-or' but 'both-and' the conditions and qualities of human identities and inner state. A view of the world of Dionisos of Nietzsche's and the character of Manneristic trend which has resolved the sense of alienation of men by paradoxic expression has succeeded to romanticism surrealism and postmodernism. 1. Cross-dressing has increased under contemporary conditions. There also have been various cross-dressing phenomena in the past but it appears strongly now that it would destroy the cultural stereotypes and give rise to the cultural insecurities in contemporary conditions. 2. The indeterminancy of status that is wealth versus poverty impacts on variations of contemporary dress. This has been represented by neglecting traditional code which is related to wealth in costume by conversion of the symbols of wealth and poverty as disguise with moderation simplicity and additionally poverty image instead of ostentation. 3. In the cultural aspect that is mother culture/ subculture the author has investigated black street fashion which has newly become visible. The black street fashion is wide spread in black popular music such as jazz Rhythm & Blues Reggae and Rap which is subculture against white. The external values of indeterminancy in fashion are n대-manneristic tendencies as deformation eclectic friction and irrational structure and graffiti method. The inner values by indeterminant expression in fashion are irony and paradox grotesque satire and amusement.

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A Study on Gender Identity Expressed in Fashion in Music Video

  • Jeong, Ha-Na;Choy, Hyon-Sook
    • International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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    • v.6 no.2
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    • pp.28-42
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    • 2006
  • In present modern society, media contributes more to the constructing of personal identities than any other medium. Music video, a postmodernism branch among a variety of media, offers a complex experience of sounds combined with visual images. In particular. fashion in music video helps conveying contexts effectively and functions as a medium of immediate communication by visual effect. Considering the socio-cultural effects of music video. gender identity represented in fashion in it can be of great importance. Therefore, this study is geared to the reconsidering of gender identity represented through costumes in music video by analyzing fashions in it. Gender identity in socio-cultural category is classified as masculinity, femininity, and the third sex. By examining fashions based on the classification. this study will help to create new design concepts and to understand gender identity in fashion. The results of this study are as follows: First. masculinity in music video fashion was categorized into stereotyped masculinity, sexual masculinity. and metro sexual masculinity. Second, femininity in music video fashion was categorized into stereotyped femininity. sexual femininity, and contra sexual femininity. Third, the third sex in music video fashion was categorized into transvestism, masculinization of female, and feminization of male. This phenomenon is presented into music videos through females in male attire and males in female attire. Through this research, gender identity represented in fashion of music video was demonstrated, and the importance of the relationship between representation of identity through fashion and socio-cultural environment was reconfirmed.

A Study on the Utilization of History Culture Resources of Cultural Historic Village Project - Targeting Deokbongmaeul, Hoechonmaeul, Hyodongmaeul and Ipsanmaeul - (문화역사마을가꾸기 사업의 역사문화자원 활용 방식 고찰 - 덕봉마을, 회촌마을, 효동마을, 입산마을을 대상으로 -)

  • Kim, Dul-Y;So, Hyun-Su
    • Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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    • v.24 no.1
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    • pp.33-44
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    • 2018
  • This study, targeting Deokbongmaeul, Choonchonmaeul, Hyodongmaeul and Kangsanmaeul, drew the characteristics of history culture resource utilization through the analysis of project plans and performance reports and field surveys. First, Deokbongmaeul is a rural village with scattered Confucian facilities. Ipsanmaeul conforms to Confucian order and has an attractive housing area landscape. Hoechonmaeul has forest landscape and distinguishing intangible recourses like Maeji farmer's music and traditional techniques and legends. Hyodongmaeul shows folk resources and folk behavior like traditional play and techniques. Second, the history culture resources chosen from the project plans focus on intangible history resources like individual historic buildings & structures and customs & traditional techniques. Third, cultural historic village projects are categorized by repair and restoration of historic buildings and structures, development of experience program and building facilities and maintenance and establishing the village landscape elements. From the research results, it is explained that history culture resource utilization methods of cultural historic village project are hard to be expected to have the project results based on the landscape identities of four villages.

Eating Ethnic: "Culinary Tourism" and "Food Pornography" in Kitchen Chinese

  • Chung, Hyeyurn
    • English & American cultural studies
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.65-92
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    • 2018
  • According to Wenying Xu, Asian American literature abounds in culinary metaphors and references (8); subsequently, a growing number of critics have begun to recognize that food "feeds into the literary rendering of Asian American subjectivity [and] provides a language through which to imagine Asian alterity in the American imagination" (Mannur 13). Ann Mah's Kitchen Chinese: A Novel about Food, Family, and Finding Yourself (2010) is yet another text within which to investigate how food "operates as one of the key cultural signs that structure people's identities" (Xu 2). Even as Kitchen Chinese insists on underscoring that Chinese food, as much as the voyage to her "motherland" China, is critical to protagonist Isabelle's quest to gain a better understanding of herself, we are able to observe how Isabelle exploits Chinese culture and its foodways as "food pornography" in order to align herself with mainstream America. Needless to say, the novels' relegation of Chinese food as "food porn" is problematic in that it encourages readers to participate in the exoticization of Asia and its culture, and the reduction of its people as the other. Ultimately, this essay aims to consider how the consumption and rejection of food becomes a critical means by which the Asian American subject fashions her identity.

The 40 Stairs Cultural-Street Design in Susan City (부산시 중구 40계단 문화의 거리 조성계획)

  • Choi Jung-Yoon;Kang Young-Jo;Kang Dong-Jin
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.33 no.1 s.108
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    • pp.81-92
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    • 2005
  • In study, various notions regarding historic landscapes and rehabilitation were first investigated, and efficient rehabilitation schemes on modem historic landscapes were analyzed. On the basis of these theological analyses, an underlying scheme on the rehabilitation of modern historic landscapes was drawn up for '40 Stair Cultural Street' in Jung-gu, Busan City. Rehabilitating historic landscapes not only expresses a positive method to preserving sites and relics of heritage, but also an idea of preservation and rehabilitation based on interpretations from a historical perspective of value in this present day. Its significance is, therefore, to construct an ideal urban landscape in which the past, present and future can coexist. The rehabilitation of historic landscapes will become a psychological pillar to the people living in cities and will be able to lead the various types of urban activities as effective landmarks creating accessibility and representing perpetuity, as rehabilitated landscapes last through the passage of time. In addition, since historic and cultural landscape resources significantly represent regional identities and cultural characteristics that are protected and maintained, they may result in the succession of time and space in regional and urban historical culture and contribute to improving local images and impressions, allowing citizens and tourists to experience many diverse historic and cultural environments. The underlying scheme on the development of '40 Stair Cultural Street' in the study has been drawn up with a focus on the rehabilitation of modern historic value drawn out of the 40 stairs. The area around the 40 stairs, which was shaped as a stronghold of refugees who fled for safety during the Korean War, has changed as dramatically as people can no longer get a feel of the circumstances of that period. Local historians and residents, however, still share the joys and sorrows of refugee life as sad memories. Based on the historical fact, landscape planting, street furniture, outdoor color schemes & signage, traffic systems, symbolic 3-D models and pavement designs are underway.