Cultural Studies - Page 4

Culinary Transitions: Understanding the Kitchen Space through Advertisements

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Kashyapi Ghosh1 and V. Vamshi Krishna Reddy2

1Ph.D Scholar, IIT Tirupati. ORCID: 0000-0001-5394-6076. Email: hs18d504@iittp.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, University of Hyderabad. ORCID: 0000-0003-0383-6287

Email: vamshi.vemireddy@uohyd.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.13

Abstract

The kitchen is a ubiquitous space in the Indian domestic life. Yet there hasn’t been a lot of academic discourses around it possibly owing to its mundane nature. In this article, I aim to look into the gendered nature of the space through advertisements. Advertisements are digital documents of everyday life This article deliberates on the notion that the kitchen space in urban India is undergoing a change in representation and participation. This change is reflected in the advertisements, created keeping in mind the perception of its viewers. The gendered segregation of work done in the home space have been deliberated by a number of scholars. This article problematises those viewpoints and challenges DeVault’s notion of “womanly conduct” through the narrative of the advertisements.

Keywords: advertisements, gender, kitchen space.

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Traces of Scheherazade in Margaret Drabble’s The Red Queen: A Transcultural Intertextual Reading

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Dr Bushra Juhi Jani

Al-Nahrain University, Baghdad. Email: bushrajani@nahrainuniv.edu.iq. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8981-7003.

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.12

Abstract

This paper examines the transcultural intertextual influence of Scheherazade, the legendary queen and the storyteller of The Thousand and One Nights, on Drabble’s The Red Queen (2004), which has a subtitle, “A Transcultural Tragicomedy.” It discusses how an appropriation of Scheherazade was utilized by Margaret Drabble in writing, The Red Queen. “But appropriation is what novelists do,” Drabble writes in the “Prologue” of her novel, adding, “whatever we write is, knowingly or unknowingly, a borrowing. Nothing comes from nowhere.” This paper is a syncretic reading of The Red Queen to show the universality of womanhood and cross-cultural parallels. In this novel, which is based on the memoirs of an eighteenth-century Korean crown princess known as Lady Hong or Lady Hyegy?ng, the protagonist comes from the history of the East, just like Scheherazade, “to retell [her] story.” Also like Scheherazade who narrates stories in order to live, the Korean Princess uses storytelling as a strategy for survival. Moreover, the intentions of the novel can be seen in a feminist tradition of historiographic metafictional re-workings of the Orient and the Arabian Nights.

Keywords: Margaret Drabble, The Red Queen, The Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade, intertextuality, transculturality, historiographic metafiction

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Reading Tradition in Food: An Interdisciplinary Study of Bengali Food Writing

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Nilanjana Debnath

Assistant Professor of English, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation.

Email: njd.nilanjana1@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.11

Abstract

Food Studies has been a prominent part of Interdisciplinary Studies in the West from the 1980s and it is catching up in India as well. A close study of recipes and other forms of food writing can offer insights into the everyday culinary negotiations and the constitution of a cultural ‘tradition’ of taste. These insights of gastropolitics may help us better understand the functioning of subliminal hegemonic technologies and everyday resistance to the same. In our era of postcolonial globalization, where domination and subjugation happen through micro-politics of power, our readings of food writing may open new doors of reading and theorizing heritage and history.

Keywords: Food writing, recipes, cookbooks, Bengal, tradition, everyday, embodiment, taste.

History Contra Collective Memory: Collective Memory’s Finite Province

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Premjit Singh Laikhuram

Ph.D. candidate, Department of Cultural Studies, Tezpur University.

Email: premjit.laikh@gmail.com, ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9040-9288

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.10

Abstract

In the humanities and social sciences, with the rise of memory studies, there has been an important theoretical shift in how we engage the past. What used to be studied with the methodically elaborate field of history no longer seems adequate. With memory becoming an ever-present framework with which to look at culture, literature, social phenomena, politics, and the arts, a theoretical conviction has come to prevail that says collective memory is a larger framework within which history and other approaches to the past must be situated. This paper tries to address this theoretical conviction of conflating history with collective memory by arguing that collective memory cannot be a be-all umbrella term encapsulating historical representation or other approaches to the past such as tradition. It does so by uncovering the ground for such a conviction, during which a clearer view of the role of history and the limits of collective memory emerge. The investigation shows that indiscriminate application of the concept of collective memory in every approach dealing with the past makes the concept almost meaningless and betrays its two crucial characters, or limits: that of i) temporal finiteness and ii) fragmentariness. In so doing, it restores the vital role history plays in trying to get at the truth of the past. The article concludes by calling for deeper engagement with foundational conceptual and theoretical issues in collective memory research if it is to establish itself as a longstanding field of inquiry.

Keywords: Theory, cultural memory, interdisciplinarity, historical epistemology, cultural studies

Semiotic Analysis of Petroglyph «Ancient Turks and the Mother Goddess Umay/Umai»

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Tatiev E.E.1, Yesim G.2, Sarkulova M.S.3, Mukataeva A. A.4 & Tatieva M. E.5

1Doctoral student at the Eurasian National University named after L. N. Gumilyov, St. Satpayev 2, Nur-Sultan, 010008, Republic of Kazakhstan E-mail: ertisuly82@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6368-1251

2Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Eurasian National University named after L. N. Gumilyov, St. Satpayev 2, Nur-Sultan, 010008, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: garifollaesim@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4001-9235

3Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Eurasian National University. L. N. Gumilyov, St. Satpayev 2, Nur-Sultan, 010008, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: manifa.s@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5992-2814

4Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of the “Shakarim Semey University”, St. Glinka, 20 “a”, Semey, 071412, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: aizat720804@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9046-9256

5Master of the “ShakarimSemey University”, st. Glinka, 20 “a”, Semey, 071412, Republic of Kazakhstan Email: tatieva_me@mail.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2365-8123

Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.42

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Abstract

The study of historical artifacts from a scientific point of view is acknowledged in the literature. A clear understanding of our historical roots is connected with the study of cultural heritage from empirical and especially quantitative bases of research already done by scholars like Rudenko (1927) and Gavrilova (1965). Yet, another important method of studying historical material objects is semiotic analysis, which allow studying prehistorical visual culture artifacts as a system of signs, which may be deciphered, and related to deducible meaning and sense in the context of ethnographic, cultural and specifically semiotic references which bear on location, identification and understanding of such material. Our research in this article is dedicated to a study of certain visual material artifacts from the geographical region of the Eastern Altai. In particular, we study petroglyphs on a boulder that was discovered during the excavations of the Kudyrge burial ground near the Chulyshman River, which according to some sources belong to the Turkic culture of the early period, and have recently begun to arouse the interest of scientists. Various empirical methods have been used to explore the stone monument (statue) called “Kudyrginsky plot”. Some of the techniques as those of pioneering research scholars like Rudenko and Gavrilova, include archaeological, historical, historical-chronological, historical-comparativemethods, as well as approaches including analysis and synthesis of the obtained data. In turn we supplement the existing methodological approaches with a semiotic-ethnographic analysis of the information available on the “Kudyrginsky plot”. We argue that semiotic analysis of ancient artifacts, following methods established by Reday (2019) and Martel (2020), can offer adequate information for the understanding of a rich historical heritage sight like the Kudyrginskyplot.

Keywords: Altai, Central Asia, Petroglyph, Semiotics, Tengri, Visual Artifact Augmentation

Cosplay Phenomenon: Archaic Forms and Updated Meanings

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Tatiana V. Pushkareva1 & Darya V. Agaltsova2

1Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor of the Department of Design and Architecture Synergy University, Moscow, Russia. ORCID: 0000-0002-9139-6121. E-mail: ap-bib@yandex.ru

2Candidate of Pedagogy, Associate Professor of English Language Training and Professional Communication Department, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia. ORCID: 0000-0001-8892-2437. E-mail: darya_agaltsova@mail.ru

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.26

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Abstract

Cosplay is considered as a modern mass practice of copying and public demonstration of the costume, image and behavior of famous heroes in the mass culture: heroes of movies, cartoons, comics, video games within the framework of festivals, processions, activities of clubs of the corresponding subject. The empirical material for the study was observations, publications in specialized mass media, recordings of Russian and foreign electronic broadcasts of cosplay events, interviews with Russian cosplayers. The article provides a cultural and historical analysis of cosplay, on the basis of which it is concluded that the archaic cultural forms of totemic primitive holidays, medieval carnival, and the first forms of theater are reproduced in cosplay. Traditional cultural forms in cosplay are endowed with new cultural meanings, among which are the game principal development in culture, the implementation of special mechanisms of young people socialization through individual and collective forms of identification and imitation of famous characters, creative development of screen culture characters. In cosplay, there is a partial revitalization of archaic cultural forms, such as zoo-mystery, carnival, the first forms of theater. The conclusion is made about the role of cosplay in the development of the visual language of modernity, «de-virtualization» of the mass culture images and the development of the «instinct of theatricality» in a modern person. Cosplay in Russia demonstrates a wider thematic repertoire than cosplay in the USA and Japan: it includes not only images of American films, video games, comics, Japanese manga and anime, but also images of Soviet animation, which paradoxically are capable of direct competition with modern products of mass culture and art.

 Keywords: archaic, cultural forms, cultural meanings, theater, youth, game industry, subculture, mass culture, cosplay, middle culture.

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Inscribing the Migratory History of Tea Plantation Labours of Assam: A Journey from Ignorance to Experience

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Pradip Barman

PhD, Deptt. of History, Rangapara College, Rangapara, Sonitpur, Assam. ORCID Id: 0000-0002-5125-918. Email: adipta2013@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.23

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Abstract

The tea garden labours of Assam have an absorbing history of their own. They were imported to Assam from various parts of Bengal, United Province, Central Province, Madras, etc. At the time when they were facing economic hardships in their day-to-day life, the agents of the tea planters of Assam visited those areas and tempted them with plenty of facilities and economic incentives. Believing the false promises of these dishonest agents, these innocent people decided to follow them to get relief from economic deprivation and reached Assam. Thus, the process of importation of labour into Assam started and gradually their number was increasing year by year. But as soon as they left their native place, they met with adversity and it was increasing day by day. On their way to Assam also, many of them died of various diseases and eventually when they arrived in Assam, they were subjected to inhumane conditions. No one was known to them and unhealthy food and unhygienic habitation added further misery. On many occasions, they were even physically assaulted which increased their mental instability. Despite this, they gradually adopted themselves in Assam and started to treat Assam as their land. Now, the tea garden labour community of Assam is a part and parcel of Assamese society and in politics also they have been performing a major role.

 Keywords: Migration, Labour, Tea, Importation, Misery

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State Authority and Lynching in Latin America

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Giovanni B. Corvino
University of Turin. ORCID: 0000-0002-8191-3500. Email: giovanni.corvino@edu.unito.it

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.14

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Abstract

Social scientists observed a significant increase in the number of lynchings in contemporary Latin America. The reasons for the rise are wide-ranging and conflicting. However, there are commonalities with the well-known cases of the United States of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in which state legitimacy was the subject of intense debate. Therefore, this essay aims at observing why state intervention was deemed illegitimate in resolving local disputes that led to the vigilantes’ use of this form of extra-legal violence.

Keywords: lynching, summary justice, governance, vigilantes, extra-legal violence

Globalisation, the Forgotten Phase: Some Personal Reflections

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Thakur S Powdyel

Former Minister of Education, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Email: powdyel@gmail.com)

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.02

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Preamble

This paper is built on the premise that there have been at least two waves of globalisation – sublime globalisation of the earliest times that was truly an expression of global minds, and the modern material globalisation that represents a largely reductive, economic obsession that characterises today’s brand of globalisation. The paper begins by looking at the advent of globalisation in a little Bhutanese village, discusses globalisation as it is understood today and makes an attempt to distinguish the two waves of globalisation with the help of some examples. The paper concludes with a vision of a time when the world attains a sense of true globalisation.

Music as a Universal Bond and Bridge Between the Physical and the Divine: Transcultural and Medieval Perspectives

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Albrecht Classen

University Distinguished Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dept. of German Studies, University of Arizona. Email: aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.01

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 Abstract

This article accepts the challenge to reflect on the cultural history of music as a transcultural and universally human phenomenon, particularly in the medieval context. To what extent has music played the same or at least similar function in endless cultural contexts all over the world from the past to the present? We know for sure that music has always been present at all age groups, in all ethnic groups, among all genders, and throughout time. There have always been local, ethnic types of music (folklore), and universally accepted manifestations of music (esp. classical music). The emphasis here rests, after an extensive study of music in global cultural-historical terms, on comments about music in medieval philosophy, mysticism, and literature because here we discover fundamental notions about music being the medium to connect the individual with the cosmic harmony, hence with the divine. In literary texts, above all, music was identified as the critical expression of identity, love, and religion.

Keywords: Transcultural music; classic music; music in cultural-historical terms; The Beatles; Martianus Capella; Boethius; Gottfried von Strassburg; Jörg Wickram; Hermann Hesse

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