This thesis explores the cultural interactions between the Jesuit missionaries and the Guaraní indigenous peoples in the missions of Paraguay from 1609 to 1767. A particular attention is given to the missions’ formative years in which both groups refined their cultural strategies. Specifically, this thesis will explore the collaboration between the two groups and the cultural concessions made by both sides for the project to succeed. While missions are used as an area of evangelization by the Orders that operate them, involvement with the Jesuits allowed the Guaraní to avoid interactions with other settlers and colonial authorities. By agreeing to convert, they gained the protection of the Jesuits. However, they consistently threatened to leave or to refuse work if their protectors took away their most treasured cultural elements: their divine language and their use of sacred herbs like yerba mate. Furthermore, this thesis delves into power relations in the forgotten frontier. An inconsequential source of income for the Spanish Crown, the Province of Paraguay’s main importance was a presence in the buffer zone next to the Portuguese Empire in Brazil. Actors in this frontier─including the Guaraní and the Jesuits─were granted more autonomy and were able to interact with very little royal interference, resulting in an organic cultural exchange between the groups.

After the signing of the Cultural Exchange Agreement in 1958, exhibitions of culture and technology were exchanged between the Soviet Union and the United States. These exhibitions continued to be exchanged well into the 1980s. This paper focuses on comment books from seven of these cultural exchange exhibitions, five in the Soviet Union and two in Eastern Europe, in the years between 1961 and 1976. The public nature of the comment books and the way they were treated by visitors made them a space for expressions of popular opinions over the issues of public policy and ideology. As such, they provide contemporary historians with a unique glimpse into the mindset of ordinary Soviet and Eastern European citizens during the Cold War. Based on the evidence from the comment books, and using methods elaborated by cultural anthropologists, this study shows that challenged by the display of apparent American superiority, most Soviet visitors preferred to fall back on the official ideology which claimed the moral superiority of their system. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet citizens experienced an upswing in communist morale, expressed a desire to compete with America and a conviction that their system will ultimately prevail over capitalism. However, to what extent such declarations should be accepted at their face value as sincere expressions of Soviet citizens‟ deep-seated convictions and to what extent they should be seen as situational responses to the perceived humiliation at the hands of foreigners remains unclear. While most Soviet visitors were defensive, invested in their ideology, and competitive with America, their reactions were not monolithic. Some of them were clearly fascinated by American consumer products and expressed an envious yearning to get possession of them, iv others stressed their openness to cultural exchange. There were apparently sincere expressions of support to the policy of détente, and of outrage over the Vietnam War. The Soviet visitors were aware of the unrest in American society caused by the civil rights movement, but were uninformed of the profound changes effected by this movement. Members of non-Russian minorities were interested in American ethnic diversity and sometimes implied their dislike of Moscow treatment of non-Russian nationalities. Eastern Europeans were less defensive and more open to American society and culture than the Soviets. Still, some of them also expressed procommunist sentiments and national pride. There was one issue, however, on which the Soviets and Eastern were clearly more in tune with American popular culture than with their own governments: consumerism and the sentiment of entitlement to the high quality goods that Americans had access to while they did not. It was on this issue that the eastern bloc regimes were facing the greatest threat.

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This project is based on the realisation that there are gross misconceptions surrounding significant sites in Pretoria, stemming from the lack of cultural integration amongst differing communities. The proposed design of the Capital Exchange aims to initiate social redress amongst a divided people, through the design of an urban-friendly and contemporary Platform and Place for Cross-Cultural Exchange, developed along the idea of the recently inaugurated Reconciliation Road. The visualisation of the place as a Cross-Cultural Mediator draws on the day-to-day activities of the city dwellers, to generate an ensemble of actions that foster social cohesion. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

In response to the emerging Cold War conflict, American policymakers adopted cultural diplomacy as a permanent component of US foreign policy for the first time. In an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the worlds’ people, American leaders utilized international cultural outreach, through methods such as exchanges of students, teachers, and scientists, traveling exhibitions, radio and television broadcasts, publications, and tourism, among others. In recent decades, many historians have begun to explore the significance of these efforts. However, none of these works have examined the experience of those individuals who actually participated in the exchanges. This work begins to fill that void by focusing on American academics who travelled to the Soviet Union on educational exchange during the Cold War. By exploring their personal reports and recollections of their time behind the Iron Curtain, this study illuminates how they perceived their own nation, its values, and their own sense of national identity and purpose. Ultimately, I argue that these Americans used the image of the inferior Soviet “other” to cement a more unified national identity and affirm their feelings of American exceptionalism. Still, though their belief in American superiority remained constant throughout, their commitment to actively serve as America’s cultural representatives abroad waxed and waned at different points in the Cold War. Namely, although at the start of the program in 1958 exchangees enthusiastically assisted in spreading American values abroad, when American public opinion shifted against the Vietnam War their efforts immediately ceased. This shows specific examples of how conceptions of American ideology changed in this period. For a time, these Americans, and probably many others, abandoned a tenet that had long been central to American identity- the belief that the United States had the duty to assert its ideology globally. It was not until the last years of the Cold War, when American and Soviet leaders made significant improvements in superpower relations, that these individuals felt confident enough to serve again as cultural ambassadors. These fluctuations provide a case study of the direct and personal effects of major political and foreign policy shifts on ordinary Americans.

When tourism is growing fast it is important to develop it in a sustainable way which benefits the communities involved as much as possible. Homestay tourism can benefit local communities such as mass tourism has been widely criticized for failing to do. Homestay has shown to be successful as a tool for building sustainable tourism and contributing to locals involved in other countries. The concept has given hosts an opportunity to gain from their local resources. This gives the resources importance thereby locals preserve them. Although, there is a lack of studies on how the homestay concept can contribute to sustainable tourism development and how the concept is implemented in the Philippines. The aim with the research is to explore impacts of the homestay concept in sustainable tourism development through following perspectives: assess the social and economic impacts of having a homestay, identify motivational factors behind local peoples' decisions to put up a homestay, explore further ways of developing homestays in a developing country with focus on the central part of The Philippines. In the research, several challanges for implementing the homestay concept in a sustainable way have been identified and given suggestions on. The biggest challenge identified is that hosts do not have the skills and knowledge for the purpose of the homestay concept. The study argue that this challenge could be overcome by host-training to a large extent. This host-training should preferably be facilitated by the government, which in the Philippines has internal challenges such as reversed hierarchy and low commitment to overcome before being able to facilitate the homestays for a more sustainable tourism development.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar as peculiaridades da tradição oral africana e suas influências na criação do jazz. Os africanos, sendo um povo onde sua cultura tem como principal característica enfatizar o emprego da oralidade na transmissão do conhecimento, o faz de forma muito distinta aos padrões culturais europeus. Sob a ótica do povo africano, a palavra expressa de forma oral possui um grande valor, sendo atribuído à mesma, um nível de relevância tamanho que chega a ser vista como um elemento místico capaz de criar ou até mesmo destruir. Os africanos, presentes em solo americano, pela imposição da escravidão, fundiram seus elementos culturais à cultura européia, dando luz uma nova concepção musical, o jazz. O jazz desde sua criação até os dias atuais, passou e passa por diversas transformações. Estas transformações, mesmo que de forma implícita, contribuem para que o jazz esteja presente nas mais diversas manifestações culturais. O jazz não pode ser considerado apenas um gênero musical de origem americana. O jazz está presente em diversas partes do mundo, inclusive no Brasil, onde se torna renovado devido à riqueza e diversidade cultural deste país. / This work studies the peculiarities of the oral African tradition and his influences in the creation of the jazz. The Africans, being a people where his culture has like principal characteristic emphasizes the job of the orality in the transmission of the knowledge, it does it in the very different form to the cultural European standards. Under the optics of the African people, the definite word of oral form has a great value, when attributed to same, a so great level of relevance that comes being seen like a mystic element able to create or even to destroy. The Africans, presents in American ground, for the imposition of the slavery, fused his cultural elements to the European culture, giving there shines a new musical conception, the jazz. The jazz from his creation up to the current days, passed and it suffers several transformations. These transformations, even that in the implicit form, they contribute so that the jazz is present in more several cultural demonstrations. The jazz cannot be considered only a musical type of American origin. The jazz is present in several parts of the world, including in Brazil, where it becomes renewed due to the wealth and cultural diversity of this country.

<p>Brazilian telenovelas have always been very popular in Portugal but in the last years this popularity is decreasing. It seems Portuguese audiences prefer Portuguese telenovelas instead. Why is this so? Within the context of the relationship between Portugal and Brazil, Portuguese identity and theories of cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, this essay, through interviews to ten different subjects, tries to analyse why this is happening.</p>

Brazilian telenovelas have always been very popular in Portugal but in the last years this popularity is decreasing. It seems Portuguese audiences prefer Portuguese telenovelas instead. Why is this so? Within the context of the relationship between Portugal and Brazil, Portuguese identity and theories of cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, this essay, through interviews to ten different subjects, tries to analyse why this is happening.

As the world globalizes and people travel more, volunteering has never been more popular to combine with a cultural exchange. Many countries have volunteers and non-governmental organizations which try to help that country’s vulnerable. This study investigates the impact of non-governmental organizations through a case study done at one of ActionAid Denmark’s Global Platforms in Kenya. This Platform works as one of ActionAid’s training hubs where participants from mostly Denmark and Kenya take part in courses focusing on capacity building and global citizenship. Their aim is to provide knowledge to facilitate social change. By using qualitative data in the form of interviews and observation, this study makes an impact assessment and evaluates what impact the Mt. Kenya platform actually achieves and what challenges there might be. Questions about the impact and challenges are asked to a wide range of involved people at the Platform, namely participants, staff, locals and neighbors. This study’s theoretical concept employs the theories “4 Levels of Evaluation” developed by Donald Kirkpatrick and Robert Brinkerhoff’s “The Success Case Method” as well as Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning and Beck’s &amp; Purcell’s theory of social change. The analysis shows that the trainings themselves make a tremendous impact on the individuals participating in the Platform’s trainings. The courses are well structured and executed by the facilitators. The concept where different cultures meet and interact is a success in itself. To make even more impact in the community and for the people in the surrounding area, the Platform needs to be more visible to the locals and improve its marketing and communication activities so the locals want to participate more.