Connecting Cultures6th February 2012

Introduction: Professor Simon SwainChair: Dr Loredana Polezzi (Italian)Panel: Professor Jacqueline Labbe (English)Professor Francesco Cappuccio (WMS)Dr Anton Popov (Sociology)

Global Priorities Programme - Overview

Showcasing research excellence in key areas

Demonstrating the impacts of research and engaging with key stakeholders

Supporting and enhancing multidisciplinary and cross-departmental research

Generating research income through interdisciplinary research that addresses major global issues

Connecting Cultures GPPAims to:

Contribute at both a theoretical and an applied level to debates around what connects and what divides cultures

Identified 3 strands:•Health & Culture•Memory & Culture•Culture of Translation

Health & Culture

Professor Francesco Cappuccio

Warwick Medical SchoolDivision of Metabolic & Vascular Health

Health & Culture

Innovation (Forward looking – but valuing the past)

Generalizability (Should apply to all – but how about differences?)

Individual vs Collectivity(behaviour, beliefs) v (social, economic, political)

Efficacy vs Effectiveness(it works) vs (it works in my setting)

Social domainHistoryGender

EconomicsPolitics

Artistic domainLiteratureTheatrePainting

Music

Cultural domainBeliefs

BehaviourReligion

ILL-HEALTH (DISEASE)

WELL-BEING (HEALTH)

High salt intake and ill-health

$6-12 saved for every dollar spent$6-12 saved for every dollar spent

Body size, weight, beauty, [fertility] and health?

Venus of Willendorf

Paleolithic (ca. 20,000 BC) AustriaVenus of Willendorf

Paleolithic (ca. 20,000 BC) AustriaVenus of Urbino (Tiziano Vecellio c.1488-1576)Venus of Urbino (Tiziano Vecellio c.1488-1576)

Venus (Fernando Botero 1932 - )Venus (Fernando Botero 1932 - )Catwalk model (2011)Catwalk model (2011)

The perceptions of the benefits of a Mediterranean diet

Food denotes social status !Gennarino and Geraldina: Due uova sbattute and ‘caffè e latte’Catiello: ‘nu piattiello di pasta e fagioli di ieri’Antonio Barracano: ‘pane e latte è la più migliore colazione’

From Eduardo De Filippo. The Local AuthorityA. De Martino-Cappuccio (2010)

Sleep that knits up the ravel’s sleeve of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

W Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2

Sleep that knits up the ravel’s sleeve of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

W Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2

Thánatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep) as twin brothers, the sons of Nyx (Night)and Erebos (Darkness). Hesiod, Theogony (c.800 BC)

Thánatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep) as twin brothers, the sons of Nyx (Night)and Erebos (Darkness). Hesiod, Theogony (c.800 BC)

Sleep represents the idea of death, making

the struggle to remain conscious and the

struggle to remain alive the same.

Homer, Odyssey (c.700BC)

Sleep represents the idea of death, making

the struggle to remain conscious and the

struggle to remain alive the same.

Homer, Odyssey (c.700BC)

Sleep (Somnus) as a kinsman to death Aeneid, Virgil (70-19BC)

Sleep (Somnus) as a kinsman to death Aeneid, Virgil (70-19BC)

Lack of sleep and ill-health

Sleep duration and self-rated health problems

0

10

20

30

40

50

6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5

hours

% p

oor h

ealth

Japan

Taiwan

Korea

Thailand

Explore differences and similarities between cultures and historical periods, including those with strict attitudes towards the regulation of night-time and sleep and those that reveal a higher degree of tolerance.

Three ways in which societies organise sleep:

monophasic sleep culture (one period of 8h)

biphasic sleep (siesta cultures)

polyphasic sleep pattern (napping cultures)

Reflections

• Cultural dimensions of health and health policies

• To create a bridge between science and cultures

• Reciprocal enrichment• Opportunity for cross-disciplinary research

– How does cultural diversity influence health and well-being?– Are there historical and cultural domains that impact on human health

and medicine?

Memory and Culture

Dr Anton Popov

Department of Sociology

Memory and Culture

‘Social memory’: the process of socialisation into mnemonic communityPolitics of memory: social construction of the past‘Memory boom’ in society and popular culture: the voice of ‘ordinary people’Modernist frame vs. memory frame

‘Memory boom’? In popular culture, media and art

Politics of memory: Alternative memories and revision of history

‘The Bronze Soldier’ before its removal in 2007, Tallinn, Estonia

Revivalist movements and identity claimsThe ‘War of Monuments’ after socialism

Neo-Cossacks marching in the city centre, 2007, Krasnodar, Russia

Political legacy and memory: Russian ‘Winter Revolution’, 2011-12

History and Memory: Remembering Holocaust in the West and Eastern Europe

The Holocaust Museum, Washington DC, USAThe Monument to victims of the Nazi terror,

Krasnodar, Russia

Remembering and Forgetting Silence vs. amnesia Forgetting as part of remembering Embodied and emplaced memories

‘Memories do not have to be consciously held in order for them to be socially alive. Rather, they can furnish a structure of feelings, while remaining elusive, even to those who inhabit them’ (Beck 2007)

Memory as sensorial experience… It is like a key, certain keys are needed, the same is with physical training, [you need it] to feel your internal self, to reach a certain state. In other words, if you give a sword to someone who has Cossack roots, not everyone could even hold it in his hands. Well, I don’t know this opens up in the course of your life activities, genetic memory resurfaces. There is such concept ‘genetic memory’… (Daniil, born 1984)

Questions to consider:

In what ways our collective memory of the past is culturally and historically conditioned?

What implication this has for our understanding the present social and political processes and our expectations of the future? How does what society remembers depend on what it forgets?

What are relationships between history and social memory?

Do the past need to be narrated in order to be remembered?

Cultures of TranslationTranslation and the Mobility of People

Dr Loredana PolezziDepartment of Italian and Connecting Cultures GPP Lead

Professor Jackie LabbeDepartment of English and Comparative Literary Studies

How Europe changed

Changing borders: do they equate to changing national identities?

Movement of peoples and movement of ideas

What, instead of who, carries ideas?

Literary Migrations: the effect of translation and adaptation

Charlotte Smith, The Banished Man (1796) becomes Le Proscrit

Rome, Via dei Fori Imperiali, Maps tracing the expansion of the Roman Empire

Portolano: Map of the Mediterranean (XVII century)Venice, Museo storico navale

Vauro, April 2009

Travel, Mobility, Migration & Translation

Translation in a Monolingual/Polylingual World

Translating, Self-translating, Silencing

Where does translation take place?

Who requires it, authorizes it, sanctions it, controls it?

Who translates and for whom?

Who can self-translate and who cannot?

How do individuals and communities use translation?

How can we conceptualize translation needs and rights?

Breakout Sessions Memory and CultureDr Anton Popov & Professor Hilary Pilkington

Cultures of TranslationDr Loredana Polezzi & Professor Jackie Labbe

Health and CultureProfessor Franco Cappuccio & Professor Rebecca Earle

Next Ideas Cafe

Monday 12 March 5.30pm

Chancellor’s Suite, Rootes Social Building

Science and Technology for Health