Connecting Cultures
6th February 2012
Introduction:
Professor Simon Swain
Chair:
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 GPP
Aims 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 School
Division 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 domain
History
Gender
Economics
Politics
Artistic domain
WELL-BEING (HEALTH)
Literature
Theatre
Painting
Music
ILL-HEALTH (DISEASE)
Cultural domain
Beliefs
Behaviour
Religion
High salt intake
and ill-health
$6-12 saved for
every dollar spent
Body size, weight, beauty,
[fertility] and health?
Venus of Urbino (Tiziano Vecellio c.1488-1576)
Venus (Fernando Botero 1932 - )
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 Authority
A. De Martino-Cappuccio (2010)
Lack of sleep and
ill-health
Thánatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep)
as twin brothers, the sons of Nyx (Night)
and Erebos (Darkness).
Hesiod, Theogony (c.800 BC)
Sleep duration and
self-rated health problems
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.
50
% poor health
Japan
Korea
40
30
Thailand
Three ways in which societies organise
sleep:
20
Taiwan
10
monophasic sleep culture (one period of 8h)
0
biphasic sleep (siesta cultures)
6
6.5
7
7.5
hours
8
8.5
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 community
Politics 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 ‘War of Monuments’ after socialism
‘The Bronze Soldier’ before its removal
in 2007, Tallinn, Estonia
Revivalist movements and identity claims
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, USA
The 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 Translation
Translation and the Mobility of People
Dr Loredana Polezzi
Department of Italian and Connecting Cultures GPP Lead
Professor Jackie Labbe
Department 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 Culture
Dr Anton Popov & Professor Hilary Pilkington
 Cultures of Translation
Dr Loredana Polezzi & Professor Jackie Labbe
 Health and Culture
Professor Franco Cappuccio & Professor Rebecca Earle
Next Ideas Cafe
Monday 12 March 5.30pm
Chancellor’s Suite, Rootes Social Building
Science and Technology for Health