Afinando as Emoções no Centro Cultural Cartola: intervenção clínica no social

A presente tese aborda e discute a experiência sobre uma prática clínica desenvolvida a partir de demandas que se originaram no próprio campo da pesquisa, o Centro Cultural Cartola, território sociocultural, que agregou, com a instauração da clínica Afinando as Emoções, o radical psi às atividades oferecidas, passando a denominar-se psicossociocultural. Com a inserção dessa nova prática, foi possível dizer que o Centro Cultural Cartola se confirma como Território da Esperança, lugar com possibilidades de oferecer uma rede de atividades capaz de auxiliar os sujeitos no processo de ressignificação, já que promove maior consciência de si, instrumentalizando-os a romperem com a discriminação e o estigma que a pobreza lhes reserva como destino. A Afinando as Emoções configurou-se como clínica que atua no social, seja sob o ponto de vista teórico, seja por confirmar a possibilidade do exercício clínico dentro do espaço habitado pelo sujeito da demanda, no qual o desejo e as singularidades são o destaque. Também faculta aos sujeitos que lá se integram/entregam uma oportunidade de conhecerem e de experienciarem novas perspectivas de estar no mundo

Território de gente e de música: Jovens no Centro cultural Cartola e o cotidiano de uma experiência

Este trabalho busca compor um quadro das práticas cotidianas de jovens frequentadores das oficinas de jazz oferecidas pelo Centro Cultural Cartola (CCC). Contextualizado dentro de um universo tradicionalmente conhecido por sua origem no samba, esse território de arte e de expressão através do corpo e da música contempla outros movimentos musicais, principalmente o jazz e o moderno, possibilitando um conjunto de múltiplos sentidos e ressignificações na vida destes participantes. Como fundamentação epistemológica, foi utilizada a Teoria Ator-Rede (TAR), concebida como forma de abordar a fabricação dos fatos, ao abranger, simetricamente, natureza e sociedade, humano e não humano. Foram igualmente consideradas as possíveis configurações de interação e sociabilidade que envolvem território, sujeito e demais atores da rede, os quais conseguem reconhecer-se diante do outro, do diferente, e construírem um projeto individual e coletivo frente à sociedade multicultural em que estão inseridos. Para isso, foram realizadas entrevistas que, por sua vez, são complementos à descrição interpretativa registrada no diário de campo, permitindo a dimensão de improviso, de manejo das situações e de envolvimento nas incessantes redefinições processuais. O campo explorado foi, estritamente, o de jovens adolescentes, num recorte etário de 14 a 21 anos. Todos deveriam estar matriculados na escola ensino fundamental e médio e residir em comunidade, não sendo necessariamente a Mangueira. As abordagens contemplaram também as incontáveis participações do professor da oficina de jazz. Durante o processo, emanou-se a existência de um apaixonamento e de uma apropriação por parte de todos os envolvidos com a oficina: parte administrativa, pedagógica e docente, garantindo autonomia e diferencial no universo social do grupo, cujas escolhas legitimam o quanto o investimento na cultura produz artistas conscientes da beleza inerente à própria arte e aos afetamentos daí advindos. Interessante ressaltar que o samba funciona como marca histórica e temporal do CCC, mas a principal motivação ali percebida estava no encontro mediado pela dança, junção corpo/música, presente na vida dos participantes desde a infância, além do prazer de pertencerem a um grupo afim, movido por histórias semelhantes. Junto a isso, o professor exercia o papel de liderança velada, a mediar as relações e a produzir efeitos de coesão grupal, com suas ideias e incentivo à expressão pela dança, de modo a dar lugar a novas descobertas e ressignificação

Experiências subjetivas e perspectivas de futuro: a juventude do Centro Cultural Cartola - RJ

Esta pesquisa se construiu a partir do encontro com a ONG Centro Cultural Cartola da comunidade da Mangueira, no Rio de Janeiro. Nós refletimos sobre algumas questões relativas aos processos subjetivos com os quais se relacionam as crianças e jovens que participam de atividades culturais do centro, a partir justamente das experiências vividas neste espaço. Nosso foco se concentra nas crianças e jovens que integram a orquestra de violinos, grupo que denominamos grupo orquestra. Concretizamos nosso intento através de pesquisa participativa, focalizando, sobretudo, as perspectivas de futuro desses sujeitos em relação à inserção na sociedade e no mundo do trabalho. Nós buscamos nos aproximar da realidade do campo para conhecer como se dava a participação desses jovens nas atividades culturais e artísticas, e entender como elas contribuíam para o processo de produção de subjetividade e formação de uma concepção sobre a vida profissional deles. Realizamos encontros de grupos operativos que procuraram investigar como cada jovem enxerga sua situação atual e seu projeto de futuro. Nesta dissertação, fruto de tal intervenção, tecemos uma discussão sobre os aspectos das experiências subjetivas emergentes no centro cultural, bem como sobre os processos de produção de subjetividade e a temática da identidade cultural. Abordamos também o conceito de grupo e sua relação com a formação e transformação do sujeito. Além disso, refletimos sobre a função do trabalho para a configuração e reconfiguração do mundo social

Psychosocial well-being of African migrant children in Ireland: a cultural orientation

This thesis explores the psychosocial wellbeing of sub-Saharan African migrant children in Ireland. A sociocultural ecological (Psychosocial Working Group, 2003) and resilience lens (Masten & Obradovic, 2008; Ungar, 2011) is used to analyse the experiences of African migrant children in Ireland. The research strategy employs a mixed-methods design, combining both an etic and emic perspective. Grounded theory inquiry (Strauss and Corbin, 1994) explores the experiences of African migrant children in Ireland by drawing on multi-sited observations over a period of six months in 2009, and on interviews and focus group discussions conducted with African children (aged 13-18), mothers and fathers. An emically derived ‘African Migrant Child Psychosocial Well-being’ scale was developed by drawing on data gathered through rapid ethnographic (RAE) free listing exercises carried out in Cork, Dublin and Dundalk with sixty-one participants (N=21 adults, N=28 15-18-year-olds, N=12 12-14-year-olds) and three African community key informants to elicit local understandings of psychosocial well-being. This newly developed scale was used alongside standardised measures of well-being to quantitatively measure the psychosocial adjustment of 233 African migrant children in Cork, Dublin and Dundalk aged 11-18. Findings indicate that the psychosocial wellbeing of the study population is satisfactory when benchmarked against the psychosocial health profile of Irish youth (Dooley & Fitzgerald, 2012). These findings are similar to trends reported in international literature in this field (Georgiades et al., 2006; Gonneke, Stevens, Vollebergh, 2008; Sampson et al., 2005). Study findings have implications for advancing psychosocial research methods with non-Western populations and on informing the practice of Irish professionals, mainly in the areas of teaching, psychology and community work.

Contemporary pilgrimage in Ireland: a cultural geographic perspective

Using the lenses of contemporary cultural geography, this research develops an understanding of pilgrimage as a relational and reciprocal process that co-produces self and world. Drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, I argue that through the performances and experiences of contemporary pilgrimage in Ireland, participants and locations emerge as pilgrims and pilgrimage places. This approach unites different strands of cultural geography, including the mobilities field, more-than representational concerns, discussions of embodiment and practice, emotional and affective geographies, and religious and spiritual geographies. I explore how pilgrimage is an active process in which self and world, belief and practice, and the numinous and material entwine and merge. An autoethnographic methodology is enacted as an embodied, intersubjective, and reflexive research approach that incorporates the motivations, experiences, and beliefs of research participants, alongside my own descriptions and reflections. The methodology is focused on encountering and documenting pilgrimage practices as they occur in place and relating these embodied spatial practices to the accounts of pilgrims. The insights generated by engagements with research participants and through my own pilgrimages, offer new appreciations of the enduring appeal of pilgrimage in Ireland as a religious-spiritual and cultural activity that allows people to express personal intentions, to develop their faith, and to seek numinous encounters. Through the pilgrimages at Lough Derg, Croagh Patrick, and three holy wells, I produce a layered account of the empirical circumstances of the practices. The presentation of these places and events is enhanced by the use of evocative images and audiovisual recordings. By centring my study on the practices and experiences of different pilgrimages in present-day Ireland, and critically deploying strands of cultural geography and pilgrimage studies, this research produces new qualitative understandings of pilgrimage and contributes to discussions concerned with the relationships between self and world.

Ritualizing Barong and Rangda: Repercussions of a Collaborative Field Experience in Kerambitan, Bali.

The dance-drama called Barong and Rangda a ritual, is one of the vital events that breathes life in the small village, Banjar Tista, and extends beyond the boundaries of its "performance" area. In this thesis, I depend on Ronald Grimes' concept of "ritualizing" as a continuum in the context of my fieldwork in Bali, Indonesia. The ritual cycle and the collaborative fieldwork process are analyzed through the impressions of each fieldworker. Barong and Rangda is a well-documented dance-drama and part of the longer Calonarang story. This dance-drama is a mythological battle between the lion, Barong, and the witch, Rangda, and is performed authentically to create spiritual balance and cleanse its community members of evil. This ritual performance reaches beyond the time and place in which the performance originates and creates a ripple affect on the village members, those in trance, musicians and cultural outsiders alike.

Has cultural studies sounded the death-knell of classical sociology prematurely?: the view from Romani studies

The paper will argue that although Bryan S.Turner's recent defence of classical sociology was seen as apostacy by some, it points to real problems in the idealism and a-historicism of contemporary cultural studies. The paper will examine the importance of the classical sociological problematic in getting the field of Romani Studies started, and the continuing relevance of a sociological approach rooted in history and political economy. [From the Author]

Reflecting on Habitus, Field and Capital: Towards a Culturally Sensitive Social Work

Summary: This article argues that the notion of the knowledge base as a central aspect of professional activity is flawed, and that it is more useful to see social work as in a continuous process of constructing and reconstructing professional knowledge. Findings: Culture is an area that has attracted widespread attention in academia and the social professions. However, there has been little examination of culturally sensitive social work practice from a realist perspective, or one that starts from the view that oppressive structures, as encoded within social class, are essential determinants of cultural experience. Following a critique of postmodern perspectives on culture, the work of Pierre Bourdieu on culture and power is explored. Applications: Three of Bourdieu's key constructs - habitus, field and capital - are utilized to develop a model for culturally sensitive social work practice that attends to the interplay of agency and structure in reproducing inequalities within the social world.

Civil society as a contested field of meanings

Purpose – During recent years, the concept of civil society, particularly global civil society, has come to the fore in both academia and policy circles. A key component of recent theoretical and policy research is the attempt to do international comparative research on the meaning of civil society. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the language and the terminology used to describe the agents of civil society are reflective of cultural and historical contexts of societies, have distinct meanings and cannot be used interchangeably.

Design/methodology/approach – In different national contexts, the key agents of civil society are referred to differently; nonprofit sector, voluntary and community sector, third sector and social economy. In comparative studies, scholars often list these concepts to indicate that they recognise that the agents of civil society are referred to differently in different societies. The article offers a socio-historical analysis of each concept. It is concluded that teasing out the differences, as well as the similarities, between the nonprofit sector, voluntary and community sector, third sector and social economy, is crucial to robust comparative research on civil society.

Findings – This paper exposes a number of limitations of each of the terminologies used to describe civil society. They all present a much more limiting notion of civil society than that proposed by the founding fathers. None seem to capture the range of civil associations in any society. Yet, assumptions are made that the terminologies used have similar meanings rather than attempting to clarify and define exactly what is being written or described. This is exacerbated by the interchangeable usage of nonprofit/third sector/community and voluntary sector/social economy. In order to progress beyond culturally specific understandings of civil society, it is necessary to examine the terminology used and how it emanates from a specific cultural and political context. Having a clear understanding of the language used and what it signifies is crucial to robust cross-national comparative research.

Originality/value – This paper examines context specific understandings of civil society and the terminology used to define it; a question not previously addressed. It is hoped that this article will generate much needed further debate on cross-national meanings of civil society.

Museums and youth: between misunderstanding and disappointment. Youth perceptions and arguments about the cultural consumption of museums in Chile

Young people are less explored in museum audience research; this is a paradoxical situation when considering its strategic location in the cultural reproduction and if considering the high performing cultural consumption compared with other sectors. The phenomenon of museums consumption by young Chileans who are self recognized as public and non-public museums is explored from a qualitative approach. It was conducted with focus groups in the three largest cities in Chile (Santiago, Valparaíso and Concepción). They identify the museum as a cultural institution in full force. However, in questioning museums activity youth reveal the specificity of their cultural matrix. This is referred to a social temporality based on the fragment, the discourse of familiarity, proximity and instead of breaking and critical. They claim a museum aesthetic / historical experience based on pleasure and enjoyment. An overview is proposed to further clarify the youth cultural consumption to characterize more precisely the place of the museum in the set, to design more effective policies museums.

The conflict between realism and abstraction in the field of spanish art as an iteration of la "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes"

Based on the analysis model favored by the study of the conditions in which the seventeenth century Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes took place, we examine the case of confrontation between realism and abstraction, which occurred in the context of Spanish art in the nineties of the twentieth century. Connections are established with other aesthetic conflicts which are considered part of a genealogy whose most explicit antecedent could be placed in the before mentioned complaint, such as the confrontation between realism and abstraction in the American art scene, which occurred in the fifties of the last century, and the more recent controversy on pluralism and the end of art.

Charabanc, cultural capital and the men of recognised credit

This paper compares the cultural legacy of the all-female Charabanc with that of Field Day, its fellow counterpart in the Irish Theatre touring movement in the 1980s. It suggests that a conscious awareness amongst the all-male Field Day board of successful writers and directors of what Bourdieu has called 'cultural capital' is implicated in the enduring authority of the work of that company within the history of Irish theatre. Conversely the paper considers if the populist Charabanc, in its steadfast refusal to engage with the hierarchies of academia and publishing, was too neglectful of the cultural capital which it accrued in its heyday and has thus been party to its own occlusion from that same history.

A new landscape of arts-based buildings and comparative cultural policies on the island of Ireland: the curse of Jocasta's necklace

Much current cultural policy research focuses on activity traditionally viewed as arts practice: visual arts, music, literature and dance. Architecture’s role in the discussion of cultural policy is, however, less certain and thus less frequently interrogated. The study presented here both addresses this dearth of in-depth research while also contributing to the interdisciplinary discussion of cultural policy in wider terms. In seeking to better understand how architectural culture is regulated and administered in a specific case study, it unpacks how the complicated relationships of nominal and explicit policies on both sides of the Irish/Northern Irish border contributed to the significant expansion of arts-based buildings 1995-2008. It contrasts political and cultural motivations behind these projects during a period of significant economic growth, investment and inward immigration. Data has been gathered from both official published policies as well as interviews with elite actors in the decision-making field and architects who produced the buildings of interest in both countries. With the sizeable number of arts-based buildings now completed in both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, one must wonder if this necklace of buildings is, like Jocasta’s, a thing of both beauty and redolent with a potential future curse. It is the goal of this project to contribute to the larger applied and critical discussion of these issues and to engage with future policy design, administration and, certainly, evaluation.

A new landscape of arts-based buildings and comparative cultural policies on the island of Ireland: the curse of Jocasta's necklace

Much current cultural policy research focuses on activity traditionally viewed as arts practice: visual arts, music, literature and dance. Architecture’s role in the discussion of cultural policy is, however, less certain and thus less frequently interrogated. The study presented here both addresses this dearth of in-depth research while also contributing to the interdisciplinary discussion of cultural policy in wider terms. In seeking to better understand how architectural culture is regulated and administered in a specific case study, it unpacks how the complicated relationships of nominal and explicit policies on both sides of the Irish/Northern Irish border contributed to the significant expansion of arts-based buildings 1995-2008. It contrasts political and cultural motivations behind these projects during a period of significant economic growth, investment and inward immigration. Data has been gathered from both official published policies as well as interviews with elite actors in the decision-making field and architects who produced the buildings of interest in both countries. With the sizeable number of arts-based buildings now completed in both Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, one must wonder if this necklace of buildings is, like Jocasta’s, a thing of both beauty and redolent with a potential future curse. It is the goal of this project to contribute to the larger applied and critical discussion of these issues and to engage with future policy design, administration and, certainly, evaluation.

The Nature of Religious Diversity: A Cultural Ecosystem Approach

Studies of religious and other cultural groups tend to be particularistic or focus on one or more axes of variation. In this article we develop a more comprehensive approach to studying cultural diversity that emulates the study of biological diversity. We compare our cultural ecosystem approach with the axis approach, using the distinction between “tight” and “loose” cultures as an example. We show that while the axis approach is useful, the cultural ecosystem approach adds considerable value to the axis approach. We end by advocating the establishment of field sites for the study of religious and cultural diversity, comparable to biological field sites.