scholarly journals “Translated” or “Transformed”: The Use of Western Hymns in the Evangelization of the Lisu of Southwest China

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 772
Author(s):  
Aminta Arrington
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Southwest China ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
A Cappella ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
China Inland Mission

Translated western hymns have a bad reputation in missiology. The term “translated” seems to convey a less than authentic expression of Christian faith. However, that was not how it happened when the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized by missionaries from the China Inland Mission in the 1920s and 1930s. The Lisu people exerted much more agency over their translated western hymns than the term “translated” implies. While the kernel of melody and message remained intact, four-part harmonies replaced unison singing. A cappella replaced piano or organ accompaniment. Phrases meaningful in a Victorian context were transformed into phrases meaningful in a Lisu mountain context. Abstract theological terms were replaced by concrete phrases. Western rhyming schemes were laid aside and Lisu poetic couplets were used instead. The end result is that in the everyday arena, in the practical living out of what it means to be a Christian for a communal and still largely oral-preference people such as the Lisu, the Lisu Christian hymns are the centerpiece of worship and devotion, of prayer and penitence. In other words, in the process of cross-cultural transmission, the Lisu hymns were not so much translated, as they were transformed.

scholarly journals Bringing the Arts to the Everyday Lived Experiences of Young Children

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-295
Author(s):  
Marni J. Binder
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Art Forms

The purpose of this arts-based education research was to explore the complex art forms in Bali, Indonesia, for a cross-cultural understanding of the everyday importance of the arts in the teaching and learning of young children. Five Balinese artists and one Javanese artist were interviewed to discuss their journeys as artists from a young age, their practicing art forms, and perceptions of the importance of the arts in their communities, cultural identity, and in the everyday lived experiences of children. While there is literature on the historical and complex art forms of Bali, giving context to the importance of time and place and hierarchies of the culture, little is documented on the interconnection between the arts as a paradigm that shapes culture and informs an understanding of the arts as important to teaching and learning. This research experience aimed to deepen the researcher’s understanding of how the arts are embodied and woven together in Balinese culture, and how this knowledge can be connected to the teaching and learning of children in the Canadian context.

Hybrid Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Banu Özkazanç-Pan
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Management ◽  
Business People ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Cross Cultural Management ◽  
The Moment

This chapter focuses on hybrid selves, a new kind of self that arises as a result of the distinct context, experiences and set of social and material practices that a person engages in to understand themselves and those around them. While there are many different ways to define hybrid, its use here examines those novel socio-cultural transformations, combinations and “mixings” that take shape at the moment of cultural encounter. Hybrid selves form differently even if facing the same set of circumstances and conditions such studying the everyday lives of business people can elucidate the repertoires of actions that they embody and eschew. By outlining the main tenets of hybrid selves, this chapter challenges conceptualizations of ‘self’ that are based on static notions of identity which limit how we can understand people. It provides examples and comparative illustrations of hybrid selves and contrasts them with research that aims to study similar people in diversity and cross-cultural management. The chapter points out main differences between hybrid selves and bi-cultural or multicultural notions of identity that generally offer hyphenation as a solution to the complex ways people may understand themselves.

Sartor Resartus and the Rhetoric of Translation

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Toremans
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Philosophical Argument

As the fictional account of a British Editor's attempt at translating a German philosophical manuscript, Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus has persistently frustrated critical analyses of its awkward combination of philosophical argument and rhetorical experimentation. This paper examines the highly paradoxical position that translation occupies in the work, arguing that Sartor Resartus is a self-subverting text that disarticulates its organicist aesthetic in the process of translation. Sartor Resartus emerges as a culminating critique of a key episode in the British Romantic attempt at cross-cultural transmission of German Idealism to Britain.

Culture Shock and Cross-Cultural Adaptation Or, I Was OK Until I Got Here

1990 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riall Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
Physical Illness ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Transition ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Cross Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Everyday

Cross-cultural interaction is occurring today on an unprecedented scale, as North meets South and West meets East. Many people believe that this will promote peace and understanding, and in the long run, they may well be right. But in the short term, such contact is more likely to produce "culture shock"—a stress-related syndrome whose symptoms can include. anxiety, confusion, depression, hostility, and even physical illness. This article discusses the phenomenon of culture shock and the role it plays in cultural transition—the process by which the exotic becomes the everyday.

On Memory, Transmission and the Practice of Building in the Crusader Mediterranean

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 481-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather E. Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Architectural Knowledge

Abstract Memory played a key role in the cross-cultural transmission of medieval architectural knowledge amongst patrons, designers, ateliers and audiences from different religious, cultural and architectural traditions. Two aspects of architectural memory are here posited as playing a role in the dissemination of architectural forms and styles: a “cultural memory” that evoked specific, earlier sites of ideological or other significance to patrons; and a “pragmatic memory” of learned, practical skills that was transmitted amongst masons themselves. These interlocking yet distinct aspects of memory in architecture are not unique to cross-cultural transmission, but they had particular impact when deployed by patrons and masons across physical or conceptual borders. Whether introduced by practical means or for associative reasons, new forms further moved across regions with artisans, who proffered (and learned) new modes of working while traveling. Examination of the Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka in Stymphalia, Greece and other churches of the thirteenth-century, post-Crusade Peloponnese and greater Eastern Mediterranean demonstrate how both aspects of architectural memory can be read in the physical architectural record. This methodology also re-inscribes masons into a history of the cross-cultural creative process, showing that builders were vital in the processes of transmitting and interpreting forms.

scholarly journals Understanding Jerusalem and its Cross-Cultural Dilemmas in Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Ana-Maria Gavrilă
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
National Stereotypes ◽  
Holy City

Abstract Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2011) is a nonfictional graphic novel which narrates the experiences during a year that the Canadian artist and his family spent living far from home, in the occasionally dangerous and perilous city of the ancient Middle East. Part humorous memoir filled with “the logistics of everyday life,” part an inquisitive and sharp-eyed travelogue, Jerusalem is interspersed with enthralling lessons on the history of the region, together with vignettes of brief strips of Delisle’s encounters with expatriates and locals, with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in and around the city, with Bedouins, Israeli and Palestinians. Since the comic strip is considered amongst the privileged genres able to disseminate stereotypes, Jerusalem tackles cultural as well as physical barriers, delimiting between domestic and foreign space, while revealing the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian present conflict. Using this idea as a point of departure, I employ an imagological method of interpretation to address cross-cultural confusions in analysing the cartoonist’s travelogue as discourse of representation and ways of understanding cultural transmission, paying attention to the genre’s convention, where Delisle’s drawing style fits nicely the narrative techniques employed. Through an imagological perspective, I will also pay attention to the interaction between cultures and the dynamics between the images which characterise the Other (the nationalities represented or the spected) and those which characterise - not without a sense of irony - his own identity (self-portraits or auto-images). I shall take into account throughout my analysis that the source of this graphic memoir is inevitably a subjective one: even though Delisle professes an unbiased mind-set from the very beginning, the comic is at times coloured by his secular views. Delisle’s book is a dark, yet gentle comedy, and his wife’s job at the Doctors Without Borders paired with his personal experiences are paradoxically a gentle reminder that “There’ll always be borders.” In sum, the comic medium brings a sense of novelty to the imagological and hermeneutic conception of the interpretation of cultural and national stereotypes and/or otherness in artistic and literary works.

scholarly journals Transcultural capital and emergent identities among migrant youth

2022 ◽  
pp. 144078332110669
Author(s):  
Magdalena Arias Cubas ◽  
Taghreed Jamal Al-deen ◽  
Fethi Mansouri
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Migrant Youth ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Diverse World ◽  
Cultural Connections

The everyday practices and socio-cultural identities of migrant youth have become a focal point of contemporary sociological research in Western countries of immigration. This article engages with the concept of transcultural capital to frame the possibilities and opportunities embodied in young migrants’ multi-layered identities and cross-cultural competencies in the context of an increasingly interconnected and diverse world. By re-conceptualising diversity and difference as agentic, transformational capitals to be valued, fostered and mobilised, this transcultural approach brings to the fore the multitude of skills, networks and knowledge that migrant youth access and develop through multiple cultural repertoires. Drawing on the narratives of migrant youth in Melbourne (Australia), this article argues that access to different – and not necessarily oppositional – cultural systems opens up a space for understanding the ability of migrant youth to instigate, negotiate and maintain valuable socio-cultural connections in ways that recognise, disrupt and transform social hierarchies.

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