Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2021.1886422
Elżbieta Drążkiewicz Grodzicka
ABSTRACT This paper considers the dual approach to conspiracy theories in anthropological studies. While some anthropologists suggest treating them seriously because they might reveal some truths, others argue that conspiracy theories require serious attention, because they are alarming and present a threat to social cohesion and democracy. Analysing conflicts over HPV immunisation programmes in Ireland, this paper investigates if there is a way of bridging this divide. In contrast to most studies on vaccine hesitancy, this paper avoids reducing the issue to the problem of knowledge deficiency. Instead, it takes a holistic approach: rather than seeing medical conspiracy theorising as a problem of singular groups, it examines it as a relational issue that connects and disconnects different stakeholders, including medical professionals, families, and health administrators.
{"title":"Taking vaccine regret and hesitancy seriously. The role of truth, conspiracy theories, gender relations and trust in the HPV immunisation programmes in Ireland","authors":"Elżbieta Drążkiewicz Grodzicka","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2021.1886422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886422","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper considers the dual approach to conspiracy theories in anthropological studies. While some anthropologists suggest treating them seriously because they might reveal some truths, others argue that conspiracy theories require serious attention, because they are alarming and present a threat to social cohesion and democracy. Analysing conflicts over HPV immunisation programmes in Ireland, this paper investigates if there is a way of bridging this divide. In contrast to most studies on vaccine hesitancy, this paper avoids reducing the issue to the problem of knowledge deficiency. Instead, it takes a holistic approach: rather than seeing medical conspiracy theorising as a problem of singular groups, it examines it as a relational issue that connects and disconnects different stakeholders, including medical professionals, families, and health administrators.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"7 6","pages":"69 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886422","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41309788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2021.1886425
E. Sobo
ABSTRACT Profit-boosting manipulation and subterfuge is axiomatic to late-stage US capitalism, even in healthcare. I demonstrate how acknowledgements of this can overextend into ‘false beliefs’ using data from Southern Californian parents who vaccinate selectively and those treating intractable paediatric epilepsy with cannabis; and I explore appropriate responses. Both groups’ discourses referenced corporations’ self-interested duplicity, such as in sham invitations for patient engagement. Parents also pointed to contemporary measures of good health and citizenship moored to the US political economy’s expectation for independent, self-responsible, ‘productive’ adulthood (ableism). Rejecting normative and epistemological relativism yet attending in good faith to parents’ experiences and concerns, I recommend a Utilitarian approach to spurious claims – one that leverages culture’s potential fluidity while accounting for the ideological and material matrices of such claims’ emergence. Although unorthodox views with empirically verifiable underpinnings always deserve consideration, those unmoored to scientifically assessable reality can and should be challenged, with cultural sensitivity, in proportion to the degree to which their promulgation could underwrite harm. Moreover, interventions must bring the deep critiques that conspirational worries encapsulate to the attention of those with power to address them. If a community’s real concerns are taken seriously, discrete scientifically-untethered claims may be more easily relinquished.
{"title":"Conspiracy theories in political-economic context: lessons from parents with vaccine and other pharmaceutical concerns","authors":"E. Sobo","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2021.1886425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886425","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Profit-boosting manipulation and subterfuge is axiomatic to late-stage US capitalism, even in healthcare. I demonstrate how acknowledgements of this can overextend into ‘false beliefs’ using data from Southern Californian parents who vaccinate selectively and those treating intractable paediatric epilepsy with cannabis; and I explore appropriate responses. Both groups’ discourses referenced corporations’ self-interested duplicity, such as in sham invitations for patient engagement. Parents also pointed to contemporary measures of good health and citizenship moored to the US political economy’s expectation for independent, self-responsible, ‘productive’ adulthood (ableism). Rejecting normative and epistemological relativism yet attending in good faith to parents’ experiences and concerns, I recommend a Utilitarian approach to spurious claims – one that leverages culture’s potential fluidity while accounting for the ideological and material matrices of such claims’ emergence. Although unorthodox views with empirically verifiable underpinnings always deserve consideration, those unmoored to scientifically assessable reality can and should be challenged, with cultural sensitivity, in proportion to the degree to which their promulgation could underwrite harm. Moreover, interventions must bring the deep critiques that conspirational worries encapsulate to the attention of those with power to address them. If a community’s real concerns are taken seriously, discrete scientifically-untethered claims may be more easily relinquished.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"51 - 68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886425","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44762680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2021.1886426
Elvira Wepfer
ABSTRACT Whether scholars have the academic responsibility to debunk conspiracy theories depends on the social processes these theories set in motion. Based on ethnographic research with environmentalist activists in Greece, I argue that their engagement with conspiracy theories constitutes a kind of debunking that is both conceptual and relational. Specifically, the article traces four qualities of engagement with conspiracy theories in the Greek environmentalist scene: the conceptual opposition of structure with agency, the implementation of agency through personal development, the shift of significance from geopolitical power to environmental concerns, and finally the tackling of existing power structures through consequential ecological ethics. The core of this ethics is responsibility, and as such provides a valuable sign-post for the question this Special Issue poses. I argue that academic responsibility lies first and foremost in the pursuit of relationality. As science is increasingly used to serve political-economic knowledge authority and civil society truth trajectories, an ecological ethics based on relationality renews empiricist realism and thus debunks reifying power structures.
{"title":"Towards an ecological ethics of academic responsibility: debunking power structures through relationality in Greek environmentalism","authors":"Elvira Wepfer","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2021.1886426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886426","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Whether scholars have the academic responsibility to debunk conspiracy theories depends on the social processes these theories set in motion. Based on ethnographic research with environmentalist activists in Greece, I argue that their engagement with conspiracy theories constitutes a kind of debunking that is both conceptual and relational. Specifically, the article traces four qualities of engagement with conspiracy theories in the Greek environmentalist scene: the conceptual opposition of structure with agency, the implementation of agency through personal development, the shift of significance from geopolitical power to environmental concerns, and finally the tackling of existing power structures through consequential ecological ethics. The core of this ethics is responsibility, and as such provides a valuable sign-post for the question this Special Issue poses. I argue that academic responsibility lies first and foremost in the pursuit of relationality. As science is increasingly used to serve political-economic knowledge authority and civil society truth trajectories, an ecological ethics based on relationality renews empiricist realism and thus debunks reifying power structures.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"88 - 103"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886426","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45632557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2021.1886420
Elżbieta Drążkiewicz Grodzicka, Jaron Harambam
ABSTRACT Many people use conspiracy theories to make sense of a changing world and its ever more complexif social structures (e.g., international financial systems, global bodies of governance), tragic events (e.g., terrorist attacks, man-made catastrophes, or natural disasters), or socio-political and economic issues (e.g., security, migration, distribution of resources, health care). The widespread flourishing of conspiracy theories in this context has prompted much interest from the academic community. There is often an expectation that it is the responsibility of researchers to engage with conspiracy beliefs by debunking them. However, like everything that relates to conspiracy theories, even the subject of debunking is not straightforward. An answer to the question as to whether researchers should debunk conspiracy theories varies across disciplines and schools, and is closely related to specific ethical codes of conduct, research methodologies, and specific approaches to conspiracy theories. While scholars who study this cultural phenomenon from a non-normative and epistemologically neutral position might wish to refrain from debunking conspiracy theories, others who see conspiracy theories as the irrational, overly suspicious and even dangerous ideas of people who don’t quite understand what is ‘really’ going on, might lean towards the debunking stance. In this special issue, we explore different approaches that academics may take in relation to conspiracy theories.
{"title":"What should academics do about conspiracy theories? Moving beyond debunking to better deal with conspiratorial movements, misinformation and post-truth","authors":"Elżbieta Drążkiewicz Grodzicka, Jaron Harambam","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2021.1886420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886420","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Many people use conspiracy theories to make sense of a changing world and its ever more complexif social structures (e.g., international financial systems, global bodies of governance), tragic events (e.g., terrorist attacks, man-made catastrophes, or natural disasters), or socio-political and economic issues (e.g., security, migration, distribution of resources, health care). The widespread flourishing of conspiracy theories in this context has prompted much interest from the academic community. There is often an expectation that it is the responsibility of researchers to engage with conspiracy beliefs by debunking them. However, like everything that relates to conspiracy theories, even the subject of debunking is not straightforward. An answer to the question as to whether researchers should debunk conspiracy theories varies across disciplines and schools, and is closely related to specific ethical codes of conduct, research methodologies, and specific approaches to conspiracy theories. While scholars who study this cultural phenomenon from a non-normative and epistemologically neutral position might wish to refrain from debunking conspiracy theories, others who see conspiracy theories as the irrational, overly suspicious and even dangerous ideas of people who don’t quite understand what is ‘really’ going on, might lean towards the debunking stance. In this special issue, we explore different approaches that academics may take in relation to conspiracy theories.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"25 1","pages":"1 - 11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2021.1886420","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49077002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2020.1836979
Matteo Ciccognani
ABSTRACT This paper investigates a productionist metafilm that exposes a singular organisational method: Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. Productionist metafilms are reflexive works which display the processual dimension of filmmaking to the extent that the frontstage of production tends to coincide with the backstage. These films empower participants and exalt their incisive role, commonly subordinated to the decision-making power wielded by film directors. Their estranging character is mainly due to the presence of metacinematic gestures: film segments which exhibit cinema as a medium. This film analysis is approached through a dissection of the notion of gesture in productionist metafilms as imbued with impersonal markers of enunciation. The Act of Killing performs gestures which trigger forms of psychoanalytical self-examination in its participants while unpacking socio-cultural and organisational issues related to the Indonesian society and the nature of the filmmaking process. Through performances of role-playing and role-reversal, the film awakes the perpetrators’ suppressed sense of guilt and the consequences of impunity. Finally, it outstrips the narratives of denial and increases self-awareness of their complex psychological and socio-cultural condition.
{"title":"A critical glance into the metacinematic gestures of The Act of Killing","authors":"Matteo Ciccognani","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2020.1836979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2020.1836979","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper investigates a productionist metafilm that exposes a singular organisational method: Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. Productionist metafilms are reflexive works which display the processual dimension of filmmaking to the extent that the frontstage of production tends to coincide with the backstage. These films empower participants and exalt their incisive role, commonly subordinated to the decision-making power wielded by film directors. Their estranging character is mainly due to the presence of metacinematic gestures: film segments which exhibit cinema as a medium. This film analysis is approached through a dissection of the notion of gesture in productionist metafilms as imbued with impersonal markers of enunciation. The Act of Killing performs gestures which trigger forms of psychoanalytical self-examination in its participants while unpacking socio-cultural and organisational issues related to the Indonesian society and the nature of the filmmaking process. Through performances of role-playing and role-reversal, the film awakes the perpetrators’ suppressed sense of guilt and the consequences of impunity. Finally, it outstrips the narratives of denial and increases self-awareness of their complex psychological and socio-cultural condition.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"351 - 368"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2020.1836979","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47114529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2020.1861811
B. Nedoh
ABSTRACT This article offers a critical examination of the contemporary imperative to ‘trust science’ from the point of view of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It begins by putting contemporary scientific research in the twentieth-century historical context of the ‘military-industrial complex’ (D. Eisenhower) in which science and technology become symbiotically connected to the military. It then examines the psychic structure driving the military-industrial complex in which science (perversely) instrumentalises itself for military purposes. This structure is crystalized in two statements of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the principal investigator of the Manhattan Project. In these two statements, Oppenheimer describes this singular invention in terms of being ‘good’ and having ‘intrinsic value to humanity’, which is then bound to an identification with ‘death’ and total destruction in his famous citation of the Bhagavad-Gita. The article then proposes that the psychic structure underpinning this claim corresponds to the Kantian notion of diabolic evil, and then goes on to further conceptualise structure under the concept of ‘bureaucratic science’. The article concludes by showing how such a self-instrumentalization of science does not correspond to the psychoanalytic concept of the death drive, as is usually implied, but rather to the superego defined by Lacan as the ‘imperative to enjoy’.
{"title":"‘Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds’: science, perversion, psychoanalysis","authors":"B. Nedoh","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2020.1861811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2020.1861811","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article offers a critical examination of the contemporary imperative to ‘trust science’ from the point of view of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It begins by putting contemporary scientific research in the twentieth-century historical context of the ‘military-industrial complex’ (D. Eisenhower) in which science and technology become symbiotically connected to the military. It then examines the psychic structure driving the military-industrial complex in which science (perversely) instrumentalises itself for military purposes. This structure is crystalized in two statements of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the principal investigator of the Manhattan Project. In these two statements, Oppenheimer describes this singular invention in terms of being ‘good’ and having ‘intrinsic value to humanity’, which is then bound to an identification with ‘death’ and total destruction in his famous citation of the Bhagavad-Gita. The article then proposes that the psychic structure underpinning this claim corresponds to the Kantian notion of diabolic evil, and then goes on to further conceptualise structure under the concept of ‘bureaucratic science’. The article concludes by showing how such a self-instrumentalization of science does not correspond to the psychoanalytic concept of the death drive, as is usually implied, but rather to the superego defined by Lacan as the ‘imperative to enjoy’.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"315 - 333"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2020.1861811","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42936004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2020.1835443
J. Guy
ABSTRACT American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) is in vogue more than ever before. His creation – the Cthulhu mythos – is widely referenced across popular culture today. We can rightly speak of this as Lovecraft-mania, which is all the more unexpected considering Lovecraft’s personal details: he never achieved job stability in his life, let alone fame, while he was convinced that humanity had no value when seen in relation with the whole universe. This article examines what lies at the source of Lovecraft-mania as cultural phenomenon. By relying on Durkheim’s theory of religion, the article underlines the elements in Lovecraft’s writings marking a distinction between profane and sacred – not the pure sacred in this case, but the impure (transgressive) sacred. Through his stories, Lovecraft transports his readers from a profane time-space to a sacred time-space. It is this experience of transcendence that accounts for the pleasure (as effervescence) one finds in reading Lovecraft. Following this logic, we can add that the famous monsters imagined by Lovecraft – Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth and Nyarlathotep to name a few – do not stand as symbols of Lovecraft’s own racism, but as celebrated religious totems in a Durkheimian sense.
{"title":"Durkheim meets Cthulhu: the impure sacred in H. P. Lovecraft","authors":"J. Guy","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2020.1835443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2020.1835443","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) is in vogue more than ever before. His creation – the Cthulhu mythos – is widely referenced across popular culture today. We can rightly speak of this as Lovecraft-mania, which is all the more unexpected considering Lovecraft’s personal details: he never achieved job stability in his life, let alone fame, while he was convinced that humanity had no value when seen in relation with the whole universe. This article examines what lies at the source of Lovecraft-mania as cultural phenomenon. By relying on Durkheim’s theory of religion, the article underlines the elements in Lovecraft’s writings marking a distinction between profane and sacred – not the pure sacred in this case, but the impure (transgressive) sacred. Through his stories, Lovecraft transports his readers from a profane time-space to a sacred time-space. It is this experience of transcendence that accounts for the pleasure (as effervescence) one finds in reading Lovecraft. Following this logic, we can add that the famous monsters imagined by Lovecraft – Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth and Nyarlathotep to name a few – do not stand as symbols of Lovecraft’s own racism, but as celebrated religious totems in a Durkheimian sense.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"286 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2020.1835443","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49134498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2020.1861812
W. Kim, N. X. Trung, Le Van Hung, Nguyen Ngoc Trung
ABSTRACT This paper is an empirical analysis of how culture, specifically tradition, affects well-being, i.e., happiness, life satisfaction, and financial satisfaction, along with socioeconomic factors in East Asia. Ordered probit regression model results show that women have higher happiness and satisfaction levels than men even in Confucian cultures in which men generally receive more favourable conditions than women. Additionally, marital status or the impact of religion had strong and positive effects on happiness and sometimes on life satisfaction but not on financial satisfaction. Interestingly, tradition has a statistically significant and important effect on both life and financial satisfaction. Finally, the results show that individuals who value tradition greater also have higher levels of financial satisfaction.
{"title":"Relationship between cultural values and well-being: analysis from some East Asian countries","authors":"W. Kim, N. X. Trung, Le Van Hung, Nguyen Ngoc Trung","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2020.1861812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2020.1861812","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper is an empirical analysis of how culture, specifically tradition, affects well-being, i.e., happiness, life satisfaction, and financial satisfaction, along with socioeconomic factors in East Asia. Ordered probit regression model results show that women have higher happiness and satisfaction levels than men even in Confucian cultures in which men generally receive more favourable conditions than women. Additionally, marital status or the impact of religion had strong and positive effects on happiness and sometimes on life satisfaction but not on financial satisfaction. Interestingly, tradition has a statistically significant and important effect on both life and financial satisfaction. Finally, the results show that individuals who value tradition greater also have higher levels of financial satisfaction.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"334 - 350"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2020.1861812","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41760377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2020.1835444
Rosa M. Pacheco Baldó
ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to show that opposing cultural values can coexist in the same culture at a time. The United States is typically featured as a society representative of individualist and masculine cultural values. Nevertheless, the conditions given in some contexts collide head on with this view. The case that this article examines is one of these scenarios. The analysis of more than a hundred statements from fifteen nursing homes has shown that these centres try to convey messages compatible with tribal-group and feminine values. At a vulnerable time of life, as ageing is, owing to the need for assistance or to a desire to feel safe, what is attractive is knowing that one is going to be in a place of warmth. People seek for an environment of cooperation and care and not of competition and detachment. The discourse that these centres use to attract customers, opposes somehow the individualist and masculine values that are usually associated with the American culture. Therefore, this article discusses the importance of context and the communicative situation, which tilt the discourse used by the speakers even if it does not reflect the values traditionally assigned to their cultural group.
{"title":"American individualism and masculinity? The case of nursing homes","authors":"Rosa M. Pacheco Baldó","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2020.1835444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2020.1835444","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to show that opposing cultural values can coexist in the same culture at a time. The United States is typically featured as a society representative of individualist and masculine cultural values. Nevertheless, the conditions given in some contexts collide head on with this view. The case that this article examines is one of these scenarios. The analysis of more than a hundred statements from fifteen nursing homes has shown that these centres try to convey messages compatible with tribal-group and feminine values. At a vulnerable time of life, as ageing is, owing to the need for assistance or to a desire to feel safe, what is attractive is knowing that one is going to be in a place of warmth. People seek for an environment of cooperation and care and not of competition and detachment. The discourse that these centres use to attract customers, opposes somehow the individualist and masculine values that are usually associated with the American culture. Therefore, this article discusses the importance of context and the communicative situation, which tilt the discourse used by the speakers even if it does not reflect the values traditionally assigned to their cultural group.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"301 - 314"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2020.1835444","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41816005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-14DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2020.1820305
Tammy Amiel Houser
ABSTRACT This paper seeks to place the explosion of popular interest in empathy within a specific historic context: the financial crisis of 2008. The financial crisis, and the years of economic recession that followed, led to a general discontent with the neoliberal system. The paper argues that key texts of the post-crisis discourse of empathy tapped into this malaise by advancing a radical critique of the neoliberal worldview on the basis of care theory. However, the embrace of global empathy ironically became entangled with the ethos of neoliberal globalism that it sought to supersede. The post-crisis vision of an empathetic world thus ended up reinforcing the very paradigm it critiqued. The paper posits that the awkward alliance between the ethos of empathy and the neoliberal imaginary may explain the recent backlash of popular aversion to the discourse of empathy and its rejection in present-day politics.
{"title":"The rise and fall of empathy in an era of financial crisis: rethinking the neoliberal imaginary","authors":"Tammy Amiel Houser","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2020.1820305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2020.1820305","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper seeks to place the explosion of popular interest in empathy within a specific historic context: the financial crisis of 2008. The financial crisis, and the years of economic recession that followed, led to a general discontent with the neoliberal system. The paper argues that key texts of the post-crisis discourse of empathy tapped into this malaise by advancing a radical critique of the neoliberal worldview on the basis of care theory. However, the embrace of global empathy ironically became entangled with the ethos of neoliberal globalism that it sought to supersede. The post-crisis vision of an empathetic world thus ended up reinforcing the very paradigm it critiqued. The paper posits that the awkward alliance between the ethos of empathy and the neoliberal imaginary may explain the recent backlash of popular aversion to the discourse of empathy and its rejection in present-day politics.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"269 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2020-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14797585.2020.1820305","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47388947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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