Search Results (157)

This article examines the relationship between the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI), a Muslim umbrella organisation, and the Indonesian state. It focuses on the dynamic role that MUI has played in public health issues and the national lottery. The two topics were chosen to focus on MUI’s partly contradictory role in its relationship with the state of Indonesia. While MUI has largely played along with the state on issues of public health and family planning, it has stood in opposition to and provided moral resistance to the state on issues of gambling and the national lottery. The analysis uses the theories of Bourdieu on symbolic capital and power, and the resource dependence theory as analytical tools. The article discusses how the state depends on the MUI’s religious legitimacy regarding policies like family planning and COVID vaccination. It has used its symbolic capital to mediate between divine revelation, public morality, and state authority. The MUI has played a paradoxical role through the dual processes of halalisation and haramisation. In contrast to halalisation in areas such as commerce, the MUI has stipulated the haramisation of gambling executed through a national lottery. Full article

This article examines memory and monuments in the science fiction Star Trek franchise as a lens for understanding commemoration technologies and how futuristic visions of memorials anticipated real ones, especially during times of conflict. To understand the cultural reciprocity of sci-fi television and contemporary commemoration of war and trauma, we investigate the interactive website produced by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Kan, titled Kan 7.10.360, which commemorates the victims of the 7 October 2023 Hamas massacre of civilians, soldiers, and policemen in Israel’s Gaza Envelope region. The 7.10.360 website employs advanced technologies to create what we identify as a digital “counter-monument.” By applying the concept of metamemorial science fiction relating to the Shoah, investigating its victims’ commemoration and examining the globital turn in memory work, we demonstrate that the Kan project realizes digital mnemonic practices engaged in Star Trek. We argue that the renowned series performs and anticipates three aspects of globital memory work and novel digital commemoration, also prevalent in the Kan 7.10.360 website: the personalization of memory using images; televisual testimony or documentation that mediates personal experience; and the display of objects that symbolize quotidian aspects of the victims’ lives. Full article

In the digital age, social media platforms homogenize beauty standards and intricately link clothing choices to social norms and class identities. Grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural and social capital, supplemented by Erving Goffman’s theory of stigma, this study examines how social media amplifies pre-existing socio-cultural pressures that influence Turkish women’s decisions to abandon the hijab. The research has practical implications for understanding and addressing hijab abandonment. It employs a qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews with 13 participants, analyzed through a phenomenological approach. The findings reveal that the pursuit of social acceptance and resistance to social exclusion are more decisive factors in hijab abandonment than direct social media influence. While social media serves as a crucial amplifier of aesthetic ideals and a gateway to digital legitimacy, the primary drivers are deeply rooted in the pursuit of social acceptance and resistance to long-standing mechanisms of socio-cultural exclusion, stigmatization, and symbolic violence—processes intensified and mediated through digital platforms. The analysis uncovers the operation of a dual-sided neighborhood pressure, whereby women face scrutiny from both religious communities enforcing idealized piety norms and secular circles perpetuating stigmatizing labels such as backwardness or ignorance. Crucially, participants reported that unveiling was strategically employed as a means of overcoming barriers to professional advancement, gaining access to elite social spheres, and escaping the constant burden of representation. The study concludes that hijab abandonment emerges as a complex strategy of social navigation, where digital platforms act as powerful accelerants of pre-existing class- and identity-based conflicts. Full article

As a museum constructed atop postwar ruins, Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum in Cologne exemplifies a reconciliatory approach to integrating new architecture with historical remains. The current Kolumba Museum embodies multiple historical layers—those of medieval Gothic, wartime destruction, and the modern present—coexisting within a single architectural continuum. This study analyzes how the symbolic terms “inclusivity” and “temporal reconciliation,” directly articulated by Zumthor himself, are embodied in the physical design and in the way it is experienced. More specifically, the study explores how Zumthor’s design incorporates past structures, spatial sequences, and sensory experience to create continuity between historical memory and contemporary use. By examining form, sensation, and movement, this study offers a comprehensive analysis of how architectural design mediates between preservation and transformation. That is, architectural heritage is not merely confined to a fixed structure from the past but is substantively transformed into a medium of contemporary experience, thereby reinforcing its value as a sustainable cultural narrative. Accordingly, this study highlights the broad potential embedded in contemporary urban regeneration efforts, emphasizing the value and role of proactive design methodologies that go beyond static, unaltered preservation to incorporate architectural reinterpretation. Full article

China’s fashion industry faces various sustainable challenges. Although the ecological and economic benefits of products are gradually increasing, a gap persists between consumers’ attitudes and behavior. In this study, traditional cultural symbols and craftsmanship are incorporated into the SOR model to explore Chinese consumers’ purchase intention. 358 valid samples were collected through a questionnaire survey. The results show that traditional cultural symbols have a significantly positive effect on perceived environmental benefits, emotional attitude, and purchase intention. Perceived environmental benefits and emotional attitude partially mediate the relationship between traditional cultural symbols and purchase intention. Traditional craftsmanship does not significantly influence emotional attitude and purchase intention. Perceived environmental benefits fully mediate the relationship between traditional craftsmanship and purchase intention. Chinese consumers tend to accept explicit traditional cultural symbols. This study extends the theoretical research on consumers’ behavior on sustainable fashion. Research on the traditional cultural elements enriches the theoretical basis for sustainable fashion development. The research findings also offered direct guidance for enterprises to improve marketing strategies and product design in the Chinese market. Full article

The article presents the results of a qualitative study aimed at uncovering the social imaginaries of virtual education among university faculty, with the purpose of understanding how symbolic representations shape the reality of educational phenomena surrounding this modality—its stances, evaluations, and pedagogical practices. In the context of increasing expansion of virtuality in higher education, it is recognized that beyond technological and regulatory developments, it is the teachers’ subjectivities that enable—or hinder—the appropriation of education within virtual environments. This study was conducted through a qualitative approach and a Participatory Action Research (PAR) design, involving 15 professors from Simón Bolívar University, Cúcuta campus (Colombia). Data collection was carried out through a focus group and a semi-structured interview guide, and information analysis was based on grounded theory. Triangulation made it possible to construct a cartography of subjectivities regarding virtual education, revealing tensions between institutional discourses, personal experiences, and transformations in practice. Complex symbolic configurations were identified, marked by imaginaries that articulate both innovative openness and pedagogical resistance, shaped by factors such as academic trajectory, technological proficiency, and perceptions of quality. The findings contribute to understanding the cultural dynamics mediating university training in virtual contexts and outline directions for consolidating relevant, situated, and diversity-sensitive faculty development models. In doing so, they promote critical reflection on virtual education as a territory under construction. Full article

This study examines how connectionist AI reshapes architectural rationality, focusing on the under-theorised epistemic implications of generative technologies. It positions latent space as the convergent medium of representation, cognition, and computation to investigate how learning-based models reorganise architectural reasoning. Employing a qualitative hermeneutic methodology suited to interpreting epistemic transformation, and analysing four emblematic cases, the study identified a tripartite shift: representation moves from symbolic abstraction to probabilistic, feature-based latent descriptions; cognition evolves from individual, rule-defined schemas to collective, data-inferred structures; and computation reorients from deterministic procedures to stochastic generative exploration. In this framework, type and style emerge not as fixed classifications but as continuous distributions of similarity, redefining the designer’s role from originator of form to curator of datasets, navigator of latent spaces, and interpreter of model outputs. Ultimately, the paper argues that connectionism introduces a distinct epistemic orientation grounded in correlation and probabilistic reasoning, thereby prompting critical reflection on the ethical, curatorial, and disciplinary responsibilities of AI-mediated design. Full article

Nighttime tourism has become a key driver of urban nighttime economic development. The nighttime tourism experiencescape (NTE)—comprising elements such as atmospheric lighting landscapes, culturally distinctive night markets, and diverse entertainment formats—creates an environment markedly distinct from daytime settings. This NTE significantly influences tourist experiences and contributes critically to the sustainable development of urban destinations. Grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework, this study investigates how the NTE shapes tourist loyalty. Empirical results indicate that the effect of the NTE on tourist loyalty is primarily mediated by place attachment, with place dependence demonstrating a stronger mediating effect than place identity. In the direct pathway, only the socio-symbolic dimension of the NTE exerts a significant positive impact on tourist loyalty. The study offers both theoretical and practical contributions: it reveals the mechanisms that influence tourist loyalty in nocturnal contexts and offers actionable insights into the sustainable management of nighttime tourism in urban destinations. Full article

This paper extends Rodney Brooks’ subsumption architecture into the era of Agentic AI by replacing its priority arbiter with a Generative Orchestrator that performs semantic mediation—interpreting heterogeneous agent outputs and integrating them into a coherent action rather than merely arbitrating among them. Brooks’ original model (1986) demonstrated that autonomous behavior can emerge from parallel reactive layers without symbolic representation, establishing principles later recognized as foundational to agentic systems: environmental responsiveness, autonomy, and goal-directed action. Contemporary Agentic AI, however, requires capabilities beyond mechanical response—decision-making, adaptive strategy, and goal pursuit. We therefore reinterpret subsumption layers as four interacting agent types: reflex, model-based, goal-based, and utility-based, coordinated through semantic mediation. The Generative Orchestrator employs large language models not for content generation but for decision synthesis, enabling integrative agentic behavior. This approach merges real-time responsiveness with interpretive capacity for learning, reasoning, and explanation. An autonomous driving case study demonstrates how the architecture sustains behavioral autonomy while generating human-interpretable rationales for its actions. Validation was conducted through a Python-based proof-of-concept on an NVIDIA platform, reproducing the scenario to evaluate and confirm the architecture. This framework delineates a practical pathway toward advancing autonomous agents from reactive control to fully Agentic AI systems capable of operating in open, uncertain environments. Full article

The Diamond Sutra and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, though grounded in distinct traditions, converge in their critique of the substantial “self,” revealing it as a fantasy produced by symbolic or conceptual structures. The Sutra dismantles attachment to “name-and-form,” asserting that realizing emptiness (śūnyatā) entails realizing non-self (anātman). Lacan, through the mirror stage, the Symbolic Order, and the Real, exposes the subject’s alienation within language, where desire continually circles around a constitutive lack. Both disclose that symbolic systems simultaneously generate and obscure reality. Practically, the Diamond Sutra prescribes the letting-go of all attachments—“letting the mind function without abiding anywhere”—while Lacan’s ethics of “traversing the fantasy” calls for confronting one’s fundamental lack and assuming responsibility for desire. By juxtaposing their approaches to the deconstruction of ego-fantasy, critique of symbolic mediation, and transcendence of illusion, this paper illuminates a shared insight into the interrelation of desire, language, and the real. Full article

This theoretical paper introduces the Verbal–Cognitive Scaffold (VCS) Model, a cognitively inclusive framework which proposes the cognitive architectures underlying computational thinking (CT). Moving beyond monolithic theories of cognition (e.g., executive-function and metacognitive control models), the VCS Model posits inner speech (InSp) as the predominant cognitive pathway supporting CT operations in neurotypical populations. Synthesizing interdisciplinary scholarship across cognitive science, computational theory, neurodiversity research, and others, this framework articulates distinct mechanisms through which InSp supports CT. The model specifies four primary pathways linking InSp to CT components: verbal working memory supporting decomposition, symbolic representation facilitating pattern recognition and abstraction, sequential processing enabling algorithmic thinking, and dialogic self-questioning enhancing debugging processes. Crucially, the model posits these verbally mediated pathways as modal rather than universal. Although non-verbal architectures are acknowledged as possible alternative routes, their precise mechanisms remain underspecified in the existing literature and, therefore, are not the focus of the current theoretical exploration. Given this context, this manuscript focuses on the well-documented verbal support provided by InSp. The VCS Model’s theoretical contributions include the following: (1) specification of nuanced cognitive support systems where distinct InSp functions selectively enable particular CT operations; (2) generation of empirically testable predictions regarding aptitude–pathway interactions in computational training and performance; and (3) compatibility with future empirical efforts to inquire into neurodivergent strategies that may diverge from verbal architectures, while acknowledging that these alternatives remain underexplored. Individual variations in InSp phenomenology are theorized to predict distinctive patterns of CT engagement. This comprehensive framework, thus, elaborates and extends existing verbal mediation theories by specifying how InSp supports and enables CT, while laying the groundwork for possible future inquiry into alternative, non-verbal cognitive pathways. Full article

This article examines the role of visual and plastic art as a key instrument for constructing and interpreting cultural space. The study synthesizes a corpus of diverse theoretical works on the interaction between art and landscape, systematizes the principal issues within the field, and proposes avenues for further discussion. It investigates how art not only reflects but also physically, visually, and semantically transforms the landscape. Functioning as a mediator between spiritual, material, and symbolic realities, art creates distinctive forms of spatial experience. Through artistic practices, the aesthetics of a landscape are formed, along with visual and semantic codes, and new centers and loci that alter the perception of the environment. On a theoretical level, the research draws upon the semiotics of space, the philosophy of art, and the concept of landscape as text. The mechanisms through which landscape is endowed with meaning—via architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature—are examined, with a focus on narrative and symbolic modes of artistic interpretation. Particular attention is paid to art as a tool for shaping cultural memory, from memorial complexes to heritage museums, which become spaces of a different temporality and “reservations” of meaning. The cultural landscape is a site of interaction between the sacred and the profane, tradition and innovation, and elite and mass art. Art forms the codes for reading the landscape, translating visual characteristics—color, form, the vertical, the horizontal—into the realm of cultural significance. Thus, art is presented as a form of world reconstruction: an instrument for the spiritual and semantic appropriation of space, one that transforms the landscape into a text perpetually rewritten by culture. Full article

This article explores how fashion, as a cultural system, constructs and circulates dominant imaginaries of the body, focusing on the visual narratives presented on the covers of Vogue Italia. Moving beyond a purely esthetic or biological notion of beauty, this study adopts an embodiment perspective to analyze how socio-cultural contexts shape representations of bodies, identities, and subjectivities within fashion media. Through a qualitative longitudinal analysis of Vogue Italia covers spanning over sixty years, this study explores how visible diversity is mediated through the visual and symbolic codes of fashion, revealing significant changes in esthetic sensibility and editorial strategies throughout the course of time. Rather than interpreting these representations as a straightforward response to growing demands for inclusion, we argue that fashion’s engagement with diversity operates through a mimetic logic that simultaneously displays alterity while reasserting existing hierarchies of power, desirability, and visibility. The results suggest that editorial choices have been decisive in determining the visual trajectory of the magazine, sometimes anticipating broader cultural debates on gender, race, and identity. We contend that Vogue Italia does not simply reflect social transformations, but actively contributes to shaping a cultural script in which inclusion becomes both commodified and contained. Ultimately, this study highlights the ambivalent role of fashion media in negotiating inclusion and exclusion through the visual construction of bodies emphasizing how the language of diversity can either challenge or reproduce hegemonic visual imaginaries. Full article

With the widespread use of sustainable building materials and the rise of emotional design, the use of wooden elements in public large-scale architecture has garnered significant attention. In public cultural spaces, especially music halls, although previous research has explored the aesthetic value and functional applications of wood in architecture, the micro-level exploration of how wooden design influences user perception and satisfaction has not been fully addressed. Therefore, this study uses a sample of 965 offline users of wooden music halls and applies Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) to investigate the pathways through which wooden design perception shapes user satisfaction. The results indicate: (1) Wooden design perception positively influences user satisfaction in wooden music halls; (2) Perceived restorativeness and musical resonance independently mediate the relationship between wooden design perception and satisfaction; (3) Wooden design perception positively influences user satisfaction through the chain mediation effect of perceived restorativeness and musical resonance. This study highlights how wooden design, through visual and tactile design, creates a profound immersive experience and emotional resonance, thereby optimizing the user experience and enhancing satisfaction in music halls. This research fills the gap in emotional and sensory experience studies in the design of wooden architecture in cultural venues, innovatively combining Emotional Design Theory and Immersion Theory, and proposes a new theoretical framework for how wooden design influences user satisfaction through perceived restorativeness and musical resonance, providing a fresh perspective for the field of architectural design. This study also provides theoretical support and actionable recommendations for the design practice of wooden music halls, helping designers better integrate cultural symbolism, perceived restorativeness, and multisensory experiences in space planning, material selection, and overall design. Full article

This article frames the virtual museum as a meaning-modeling system within digital heritage and proposes an operational semiotic method for analysis. Grounded in Modeling Systems Theory and informed by Adorno’s non-identity, we construct a twelve-category coding matrix that combines three modeling levels with four organizational forms. Applying this matrix to five heterogeneous cases (web, VR, and 3D environments), we derive three quantitative ratios that summarize each system’s profile: the Abstraction Ratio (degree of conceptual mediation), the Connectivity Ratio (degree of interlinking and systematic organization), and the Object Primacy Score (degree of object-centered representation). Exploratory clustering on these ratios reveals three recurrent patterns of virtual-heritage mediation: Network-Symbolic, Concept-Dominant, and Object-Preserving. The results articulate how different curatorial and technical choices redistribute attention between objects, contexts, and concepts, and how these redistributions affect the subject–object balance in digital settings. The contribution is twofold: a transparent, reproducible coding protocol that enables cross-case comparison, and an interpretive lens that relates quantitative patterns to critical concerns in heritage, including authenticity, legibility, and over-standardization. We conclude with implications for curators and designers seeking to align immersive interfaces with heritage values while preserving the irreducible remainder of the object. Full article