My intention is not to get into specific, detailed historical observation about the ways that led the term ‘democracy’ to take on its current meaning, in science as much as in politics, but rather to ...establish a comparison between the models that political science proposes and interprets as important for the existence of democracy and those that science illustrates as indicators of scientific knowledge constructed in a democratic form. The debate about the contemporary meaning of democracy has generated an extraordinary diversification of models of democracy: from technocratic conceptions of government to conceptions of social life that include widespread political participation. And it is exactly for this reason that the assumption of a specific point of view on the question we are dealing with inevitably brings with it the choice of a model suitable to describe democratic form as a form of politics without further explanation, that is, as a political system with which science measures itself as a cultural category. In this sense, we can consider the passage from the concept of democracy to that of politics and generally of science to be a peaceful one, since politics has been appointed with that set of behaviours and democratic practices (including science) that political culture demands for the social benefit. This demand can be met only on condition that structural obstacles are removed and new cultural and epistemological mediators are introduced.
The present study re-examines the underexplored region of the eighteenth-century Southern Netherlands as a multilingual contact zone, one that is open to and affected by numerous transfers from ...neighbouring, more established cultures through the mediation of various actors. Embedded in a larger project on (literary) journals and their role in the shaping of a proto-Belgian literature before 1830, this article presents the case study of a short-lived Brussels periodical, founded by the French émigré Jean-Baptiste Lesbroussart (1747–1818). With his Journal littéraire et politique des Pays-Bas autrichiens (1786), Lesbroussart created a literary journal that presented itself as fundamentally reader-oriented. By taking into consideration Lesbroussart’s agency as a cultural mediator, we lay bare three levels of mediation informing his Journal: (1) his institutional mediatorship, or the entanglement of the networks in which he was involved, his intended readership, and the didactic goals of his journal; (2) his aesthetic and ideological mediatorship, meaning the structure and composition of his journal as well as the editorial strategies revealing a reader-oriented strategy; and (3) his cultural mediatorship, or his self-defined role as translator and the emphasis he puts on transfer and translation as means of cultural identity construction. By doing so, our case-study provides a first stepping-stone towards a more encompassing study, and thus it enables new insights into the circulation, production, and networks of eighteenth-century literary culture in the Southern Netherlands.
This study aims to analyse the notion of politeness through the collocations of the adjective polite and its Polish equivalents, i.e. grzeczny and uprzejmy, chosen as cultural keywords in order to ...verify and expand the conclusions of my previous research on the noun politeness. The study has a double perspective. It is based on a linguistic corpus-based analysis of French politeness in a contrastive approach to French and Polish data. Also, the study considers ways of integrating such data into foreign language teaching. The research is carried out on three corpora: the French language corpus Frantext, the National Polish Language Corpus (NKJP) and the Leipzig Corpora Collection. The study includes the analysis of frequency classes of the three words and their most frequent collocations identified on the basis of different measures of association between co-occurring words. By integrating the results of this linguistic approach into language teaching, it is possible to clarify certain semantic subtleties of the words polite, grzeczny and uprzejmy and explain to the learners why these words are not perfect equivalents, or how linguistic analysis reveals cultural differences. Complex approach promoted in this paper may contribute to the development of the intercultural awareness in foreign language teaching and cultural mediation.
The paper deals with the reception by the Lorraine author Charles de Villers of the classical tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris (Goethe) in the monthly review intended for emigrants, Le Spectateur du Nord. ...De Villers, whose adopted country was Germany, was indeed a cultural mediator. The contribution seeks to establish whether the accusations of Germanophilia, which he was sometimes taxed with, were justified. Special attention is first given to the potential mentions of Germanophilia in Villers’s article. The second part is dedicated to Villers’s analysis of the defects of the tragedy and to a controversy with a German critic of the review Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste . The third part examines how far Villers turns out to be a perceptive mediator.
This introductory article presents the framework and contributions of the special issue Paratexts, Dissemination, and Book Market in Early Modern Venice (1500‐1650). This volume aims to shed a new ...light on the publishing activity of poligrafi and other figures operating in Venice and its area of cultural influence. In this context, the use of paratexts simultaneously serves to disseminate knowledge, portray self‐fashioning strategies, and respond attentively to the market's and readers' needs. This collection of essays highlights how paratexts can provide valuable insights for analyses grounded in different disciplines and methodologies. Indeed, the present issue brings together studies that examine paratexts from a literary, historical‐cultural, and linguistic perspective. The authors explore aspects of early modern culture that are relevant but still neglected in modern scholarship and thereby advance our understanding of writing and publishing as a complex modality of cultural exchange from the Cinquecento to the beginning of the Seicento.
Christina Stead was one of the great Australian writers of the twentieth century. After a revived interest in her work in the 70s and 80s, Hazel Rowley’s Biography (1993) and Chris William’s ...Christina Stead: A Life of Letters (1989), as well as an issue of Southerly in 2003, Stead is in danger of being once again forgotten. Many of her texts, however, are relevant today as they express attitudes dominant in social media. It is perhaps fitting now in the twenty-first century that we evaluate how relevant her work still is in an age of transculturalism and globalization. We see in some of her texts the same dissatisfaction with politicians, politics and social life expressed in current political events such as Brexit and the Trump phenomenon.
Abstract – This chapter starts from the premise that a Masters course dedicated to Mediation should be clear about what ‘cultural mediation’ means in theory and in practice. As regards the theory, ...the chapter begins with an exploration of the meaning of the terms ‘mediator’ and ‘mediation’ both in terms of language mediation and cultural mediation. The competences necessary for successful Intercultural Communication (ICC) are discussed and a hypothetical organisation of competences for Cultural Mediators working with refugees is proposed, taking ideas from current inventories focussing on ICC. Two main areas are proposed: competencies based on Knowledge, Skills and Attitude; and also competencies related to Cultural Adjustment curves, taking the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity as an example. The article then discusses the situation in practice, focussing in particular on Italy, concluding with other scholars that the habitus of the cultural mediator is still that of a professional and personal ‘zone of uncertainty’.
The overwhelming dominance of English as a lingua franca in the academic domain is having an insidious effect upon other languages, leading to the curtailment or erosion of their traditional ...scholarly discourses. Translators are often unwitting agents in this process, whether they are translating into or out of English. In the first case, market forces ensure that texts written by foreign academics need to be thoroughly domesticated to ensure acceptance by international journals, a process that sometimes involves the destruction of the entire epistemological infrastructure of the original. In the second, the prestige of the source language often means that English rhetorical patterns are calqued upon the target language. To date, little attention has been given to these matters in training translators. This paper suggests ways in which these issues may be confronted in translator training programmes. The aim is to alert trainees to the ideological issues involved in academic translation, and equip them with the linguistic, cultural and interpersonal skills to challenge dominant discourses, without losing sight of the real-world constraints under which they will be expected to operate.
Assisting asylum applicants through their procedure for international protection implies a commitment that most caseworkers accept with deep satisfaction. However, working with asylum applicants who ...disclose the claim for protection and stories of their journey can be challenging and distressing. The study aimed to understand the experience of caseworkers with the asylum applicants in Lesvos, specifically, the challenges they face and their perception of the qualities that facilitated or inhibited coping.
A grounded theory analysis within a constructivist framework involved interviews with thirteen caseworkers, cultural mediators, and operations officers in Levos and Malta.
A two-phase analysis was conducted due to unexpected findings. The first phase of the analysis uncovered the challenges posed by the work itself, and the caseworkers' personal characteristics which were either helping or hindering addressing these challenges. The second analysis revealed a four-step process as perceived by the asylum caseworkers: starting from the work
, facing
, finding ways to
to them, and finally, the
that this process had on the caseworkers' perspective about themselves and life.
For those who developed adaptative coping, interviews indicated a process of transformation in the caseworkers' perception, a new sense of self and world view, including the development of self-awareness, personal power, the relation to work and the refugees, and a deeper cultural understanding. Recommendations are provided for caseworkers' mental-health and operational support as well as for future research.
As global migration has been increasing rapidly, the Japan Association for International Health (JAIH) established the committee for migration and health in early 2021. This committee, which aims ...to challenge the health issues of migrants inside and outside Japan, held the first kick-off symposium in the 36th Congress of JAIH on 27 November 2021. Five symposiasts were invited and had presentations from the viewpoints of human rights and culture, which were recognized as the common keywords. This article was written by all symposiasts and chairpersons as the report of the kick-off symposium.
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