Search results for " cultural studies"

Civil Society in Making: <i>Challenges of the Somali Diaspora Organizations</i>

2013

This article contributes to the discussion on migrants and civil society by directing attention towards the importance of transnational processes. Somali organizations in Finland will be addressed against the state-failure and conflict in Somalia. Among the Somalis, an NGO largely remains an alien and donor-driven concept, whereas clan, religious affiliations and associational structures may be blurred in complex ways. There is a need to rethink the concept of ‘civil society’ and how it could be analytically used in understanding transnational civic participation. The data comprises interviews with INGOs as well as observations and discussions with Somali associations.

Conversion as Negotiation. Converts as Actors of Civil Society

2020

This article focuses on the religious movement of the Ahmadiyya and its civil society organization, Humanity First, in West-Africa and in Europe. Particular attention is paid to the place of converts within these two institutions. Conversions to an Islamic minority and the actions of this minority are studied through the prism of social commitment. I examine the intersections between religious values, the ideas of solidarity in the societies under scrutiny and, the kaleidoscopic range of Muslim charities. The paper investigates conversion as negotiation in regard to gender, social mobility, and power. Conversion is approached here as a matter of social relations and not personal belief. I a…

Studi culturali

2010

Questo libro introduce il lettore all’esercizio di una mentalità, di un habitus critico, di un’attitudine alla ricerca, di una “pratica” che consideriamo essenziale per lo studio della cultura. Si tratta di pensare le figure della critica e della crisi come una risorsa della ricerca culturale. Si tratta cioè di comprendere che la “cultura” è la figura di pensiero che si costruisce attraverso una riflessione su se stessa (critica) e attraverso la continua messa in discussione di se stessa (crisi). Il fatto che esistano negli odierni “studi culturali” numerosi e fecondi “cultural turn” è la prova più evidente che la Modernità si è immaginata a partire dal concetto di cultura e la cultura si è…

Comparing colonial differences: Baltic literary cultures as agencies of Europe’s internal others

2016

ABSTRACTThe article discusses the Baltic colonial experience in historical and comparative perspective. It sketches the ways in which Baltic societies are best linked to theoretical discussions on postcolonial issues, and whether they might be looked upon in a more global context. The main question posed by the article is in what ways Baltic identity has been determined by processes of foreign settlement, occupation and colonization of the territory of each respective country and whether we can see Baltic societies as potential agencies of Europe’s internal others.

Latvian CDI: Methodology, developmental trends and cross-linguistic comparison

2019

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Baltci Studies on 21 March 2019, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01629778.2019.1590433. In this article, we report the results of a large-scale population study based on the Latvian adaptation of Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) – a parental report tool aimed at mapping the lexical and grammatical development of children under the age of three. Two CDI forms are discussed: CDI I: ‘Words and Gestures’ (8–16 months), and CDI II: ‘Words and Sentences’ (17–36 months). This article discusses the Internet-based methodology used for the data collection, reports the…

Policy vs. reality: intimate contact in Nazi-occupied Latvia

2021

To better understand the contradictions between regulations and reality on consensual relations between German soldiers and Latvian women, this article investigates the development of Nazi sexual p...

Crisis and credit: social and political challenges of the Malian tea market

2020

This article examines the manifold facets of crisis situations in Mali since the 1990s. Most prominent was la crise, the political crisis of 2012 that resulted from the rise of armed separatist gro...

National culture in post-apartheid Namibia: state-sponsored cultural festivals and their histories

2016

Muslim Intimacies : Challenges for Individuals and Families in Global Contexts

2016

Between Time and Culture: Anthropology and Historicity in the Study of Ancient Literature

2015

ENGLISH Since several decades the use of an ethno-anthropological approach has met with considerable success among classical scholars. The comparative analysis of ancient and ‘primitive’ cultures and the application of anthropological models to the interpretation of classical texts have stood out as a powerful alternative to traditional philology. This paper reassesses the complex relationship between cultural anthropology and classical studies, highlighting the relevance of historicity and diachronic factors as basic dimensions of both fields. Indeed, classicists referring to ethno-anthropology and its methods have sometimes inclined to see Graeco-Roman antiquity as a stereotypically homog…