Drawing on his diverse experiences in producing exhibitions and public programs, the Smithsonian's Richard Kurin challenges culture brokers--museum professionals, filmmakers, journalists, festival producers, scholars, etc.--to reveal more clearly the nature of their interpretations. Kurin discusses the ethical and technical problems faced by anyone charged with representing culture in a public forum. 33 photos.
There are three major healing traditions in the world: Western biomedicine, supernatural healing, and holistic healing. In a world of increasingly blended cultures, languages, and traditions, what happens when these contrasting healing practices clash? In A Case of Culture, author Snigdha Nandipati delves into the unspoken challenges that immigrant patients face when seeking healthcare in the West, exploring how we can bridge these cultural divides in our healthcare system. The solution? Cultural brokers. In this book, readers will learn how cultural brokers advocate for their patients, enhance the patient-doctor relationship, and build cultural humility in the healthcare setting through stories such as: the hospitalist who revived her unconscious elderly Indian patient by calling her "Aunty" the Latino Evangelical priest who used his sermon to encourage worshippers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 the psychiatrist who gained the trust of his Telugu patient with the skillful balance of spirituality and medicine Readers will better understand how culture plays a role in the medical care that is provided and how cultural brokers work to fill the growing culture gap in healthcare. This book will speak to healthcare providers and immigrant families alike - those who hope to look at culture and healthcare with fresh eyes.
Culture and Disabilty is a groundbreaking work on persons with disabilities from diverse immigrant backgrounds. It is a pioneering and practical volume dealing with topics that have been too long ignored. Using a ‘cultural broker’ model and written by individuals who have emigrated to the U.S. from countries such as China, Korea, Jamaica, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, Providing Cultural Competent Disability Services contains concrete examples, case studies, and recommendations that will help rehabilitation practitioners in their day-to-day activities. Providing Cultural Competent Disability Service also serves as an excellent supplemental text for undergraduate and graduate programs in rehabilitation and related disciplines. —Paul Leung, Ph.D., CRC, University of North Texas One in ten persons living in the United States was born in another country, and in many areas this percentage is much higher. Minority groups are currently underrepresented in the rehabilitation professions; consequently many persons with disabilities are served by professionals from a culture that may be very different than their own. Culture and Disabilty provides information about views of disability in other cultures and ways in which rehabilitation professionals may improve services for persons from other cultures, especially recent immigrants. Culture and Disabilty includes chapters with descriptions of the interaction of culture and disability. A model on "Culture Brokering" provides a framework for addressing conflicts that often arise between service providers and clients from differing cultures. Seven chapters discuss the cultural perspectives of China, Jamaica, Korea, Haiti, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam, focusing on how disability is understood in these cultures. Each of these chapters includes a discussion of the history of immigration to the United States, the role of the family and the community in rehabilitation, as well as recommendations for service providers on working with persons from each culture. Culture and Disabilty is a unique and timely text for students and instructors in disability-related programs. It is also a vital resource for service providers who work in cross-cultural environments.
Brokers of Culture analyzes how Italian Jesuit missionary émigrés attempted to integrate a heterogeneous western population (Native Americans, Hispanics, European immigrants, and native-born Americans) into a global religious community while simultaneously facilitating those groups’ entry into American society.
Cultural boundaries exist wherever cultures encounter one another. During centuries of contact between native peoples and others in America, countless intermediaries–artists, students, traders, interpreters, political figures, authors, even performers–have bridged the divide. Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker provides a new understanding of the role of these mediation in North America from 1690 to the present. Cultural brokers have shared certain qualities–in particular a thorough understanding of two of more cultures. Living on the edge of change and conflict, they have responded to evolving and unstable circumstances or alliances with a flexibility born of their determination to bring understanding to disparate peoples. No composite portrait can encompass the complexity of the brokerage experience. To convey the many roles of these intermediaries, editor Margaret Connell Szasz has brought together fourteen distinct portraits, crafted by prominent scholars of Indian-white relations, of brokers across the continent and throughout three centuries of American history–in the colonial world, during the expansion of the republic, in the Wild West, and in the twentieth century. This fascinating and inspiring collection speaks eloquently of life on the cultural frontier. Key figures in our pluralistic heritage, cultural brokers are no less important today, as society continues to struggle with diversity.
Staging Indigenous Heritage examines the cultural politics of four Indigenous cultural villages in Malaysia. Demonstrating that such villages are often beset with the politics of brokerage and representation, the book shows that this reinforces a culture of dependency on the brokers. By critically examining the relationship between Indigenous tourism and development through the establishment of Indigenous cultural villages, the book addresses the complexities of adopting the ‘culture for development’ paradigm as a developmental strategy. Demonstrating that the opportunities for self-representation and self-determination can become entwined with the politics of brokerage and the contradictory dualism of culture, it becomes clear that this can both facilitate and compromise their intended outcomes. Challenging the simplistic conceptualisation of Indigenous communities as harmonious and unified wholes, the book shows how Indigenous cultures are actively forged, struggled over, and negotiated in contemporary Malaysia. Confronting the largely positive rhetoric in current discourses on the benefits of community-based cultural projects, Staging Indigenous Heritage should be essential reading for academics and students in the fields of museum studies, cultural heritage studies, Indigenous studies, development studies, tourism, anthropology, and geography. The book should also be of interest to museum and heritage professionals around the world.
Taking various professional groups in the early modern period (diplomats, merchants, artists) as a starting point, this book offers exciting new perspectives on early modern brokerage as a widespread practice of transmission and dissemination of political, intellectual and cultural ideas.
Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews. This brief examines what causes people to reject or accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Synthesizing evidence from sociology, psychology, and political science, Andrew J. Hoffman lays bare the opposing cultural lenses through which science is interpreted. He then extracts lessons from major cultural shifts in the past to engender a better understanding of the problem and motivate the public to take action. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate makes a powerful case for a more scientifically literate public, a more socially engaged scientific community, and a more thoughtful mode of public discourse.
In American music, the notion of "roots" has been a powerful refrain, but just what constitutes our true musical traditions has often been a matter of debate. As Benjamin Filene reveals, a number of competing visions of America's musical past have vied fo
Some 16.6 million people nationwide live in mixed-status families, containing a combination of U.S. citizens, residents, and undocumented immigrants. U.S. immigration governance has become an almost daily news headline. Yet even in the absence of federal immigration reform over the last twenty years, existing policies and practices have already been profoundly impacting these family units. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Diego over more than a decade, Border Brokers documents the continuing deleterious effects of U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices on a group of now young adults and their families. In the first book-length longitudinal study of mixed-status families, Christina M. Getrich provides an on-the-ground portrayal of these young adults’ lives from their own perspectives and in their own words. More importantly, Getrich identifies how these individuals have developed resiliency and agency beginning in their teens to improve circumstances for immigrant communities. Despite the significant constraints their families face, these children have emerged into adulthood as grounded and skilled brokers who effectively use their local knowledge bases, life skills honed in their families, and transborder competencies. Refuting the notion of their failure to assimilate, she highlights the mature, engaged citizenship they model as they transition to adulthood to be perhaps their most enduring contribution to creating a better U.S. society. An accessible ethnography rooted in the everyday, this book portrays the complexity of life in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It offers important insights for anthropologists, educators, policy-makers, and activists working on immigration and social justice issues.
