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The cultural assimilation of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest is assessed by comparing their food consumption patterns with those of income-matched Anglos living in the same region and those of income-matched Mexicans living in Mexico City. Rather than relying on self-report data as indicators of consumption patterns, data concerning the contents of the garbage of these three types of households are used. The results suggest that, contrary to predictions based on the traditional model of assimilation. Mexican-American consumption patterns are not a simple blending of Mexican and Anglo patterns. Rather, Mexican-American consumption patterns suggest the emergence of a unique cultural style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined cultural reflections online of audience comments on social network sites regarding vocal talent shows in China and the United States. The study applied dimensions of cross culture to investigate audience comments on the official social networking sites of The Voice of China and The Voice. Findings reflect Hofstede’s dimensions as applied to social media and illustrate how individuals alter their “local” cultural norms in the new media environment. The study specifically enhances the exploration of cultural manifestations in cyberspace, which fewer cross-cultural studies have researched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social category of “teen” has become ubiquitous in Western English-speaking popular culture. Also, with the global success of cultural products from the United States of America, such as music, movies and television programs featuring teens, the word “teen” is being employed in other cultures and languages. However, a comparison of the girl teen—often portrayed as a vulnerable stage of human development—with other cultural representations of developing womanhood (the Japanese shoujo and the French jeune fille en fleur) shows the representation of the “teen” to be a construction of its cultural context and questions its universal applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to determine if cultural variables might explain differences in press freedom across nations. The results confirmed that two of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions – power distance and individualism – explained a significant amount of variance in press freedom rankings produced by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders. For example, the two factors combined to explain 48% of the variance in Reporters Without Borders rankings and accounted for 42% of the variance in Freedom House’s civil liberties scores. The results suggest that those who seek to promote freedom of the press around the world would be wise to pay more attention to cultural factors that may stand in the way of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversies surrounding ethnic dress such ashijabhave increased public awareness about cultural diversity. The number of comments posted on online media make it evident that many people are concerned about ethnic attire, cultural differences and social cohesion. Although researchers have examined the meanings of veiling, the relationships betweenhijaband public opinion have seldom been investigated. The overarching objective of this study was to understand the relationships between Islamic attire and online readers’ opinion. In light of the limitations in the previous studies on this topic, this study attempts to fill the gap by studying posters’ opinions towardhijabthrough publicly available online information in the form of posted comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the identities of Indian women engineers in the gendered organizational context of US engineering programmes. Participant narratives discuss the ways in which women are subjected to identity struggles in India due to gendered patrifocal norms that impose structural, societal, and familial pressures on women. Subsequently, when these women enter US engineering programmes, they encounter a highly masculine organizational and cultural space. Participants discuss identity dislocations, transformations, and assimilation as they seek to meld into the existing structures and find a career trajectory. I draw upon liminality theory to explore the cultural transitions, identity restructuring, and negotiations of Indian women engineers, navigating the intersections of competing and intersecting cultural norms of gender and engineering in India and the US, work, and family. The findings indicate the layers of gendered ideology that constitute engineering education in India and the US, the societal pressures of marriage and family rooted in patrifocal Indian norms, the barriers to finding an engineering job, the resources within the structures that support women, and the identification of patriarchy as the enactment of agency and as a site for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1980s the Orlando-Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area has experienced an influx of Puerto Rican migrants, which resulted in the Latinization of the region. But, how do non-Hispanic residents respond to demographic changes that impact their daily lives? I explore the "contact zones" where non-Hispanic whites encounter Hispanics, and confront the region's changing soundscape. I argue that Hispanic migration and the hyper-presence of the Spanish language leads to the articulation of language ideologies, the reaffirmation and strategic deployment of a white racial identity by non-Hispanic whites, and the racialization of Hispanics as non-white. Thus, theories and attitudes about difference are not only refined in these social spaces, but also provide an opportunity to understand the creation of white racial consciousness and the ways that language ideologies mediate racialization and Latinization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes how Emmanuel Carrère resurrects a painful period in Russian history through the life story of a politician and writer in his novel "Limonov". It is noted that the approach to a second degree national history achieved in the novel is doubled by the construction of a second degree narrative identity of the character. It concludes that the book as authentic testimony of the past contributes to the restoration of Russia's national selfness which is vital to the perception of its new national identity at the turn of the totalitarian past to the future democracy. This authenticity is realized by the reader because the central character and the author are both faithful to their individual selfness preserved throughout their narrative identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions people's bifurcation stories in life course. This research is based on a set of 55 life stories from people who had experienced professional voluntary conversion. First we investigate the effect of narrative and of storytelling on decision making process. In professional bifurcations, discourse seems to be a base for action. It works on two levels. On the one hand, when the person reveals their intention of professional conversion, the discourse engages action. « Telling opens the possibility of action ». On the other hand, discourse could have a performative effect: « telling is like acting ». Individuals use discourse as a tool for reconversion. We suggest that acting is already included in storytelling, the action is anticipated. The organisation of discourse prefigures action at the same time. R. Koselleck with his concept of "experience" highlight the fact that perception of past and future anticipation is in a perpetual movement, where fundamental events represent irreversibility. A second question will concern significant configurations in bifurcation telling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through two research works on very different topics - the formative years of an education specialist, Jacques Ardoino, on the one hand, and alternative education practices as told by parents on the other -, we examine the various processes of discourse production, their writing and the way they vary according to their target audience and the projects at their origin. In the first research, the narrative, or fiction (reconstructed long after the facts) of a forgotten childhood, will appear as an intelligibility resource like Ricoeur's "laboratory of forms": by combining an imaginary narrative and an examined reality, the narrative will allow J. Ardoino's family history to emerge in a "bio-fiction". In the second research, the approach is not retrospective but projective, for the parents' formative narrative constructs the child's. In this case, the analysis modes will look for other possible constructions of reality, both in the discourse's structure and in its social representations. For both, the role of reading and writing is essential. Writing becomes a fictional backing of one way of reading a reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article complacently falls into the trap of more or less bombastic show-offish quoting - in particular when it comes to the conceptualizing of narrative. The only noteworthy quote really is not one; with its open quotation marks, it is both faulty and open. That misquote forms the title of the conclusion: «Neither the sun, nor... , nor... The argument of the article might be of interest for three different reasons. «First, it draws attention to facile (neostructuroliberoneurobehaviorist) practices of «the therapeutic function of narrative» (Eco). Second, the article draws on two good examples. Thirdly, the article takes its cue from a (reliable) commentary on Guibert's Aids Trilogy, on the one hand, and a (more personal) commentary on Mars on the other. It proposes, possibly, that if mimesis III is to make its way toward the horizon of the humanities, one needs to be able to think death through. Such «thinking» is of the order of «impossible necessity» (Derrida). Anger (Zorn) and immediacy Guibert are approximations to such thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]