Cultures in process

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Cultures in Process: Encounter and Experience is a diverse collection of essays spanning literary, cultural, and linguistic scholarship, as well as performance arts, ethnography, gender studies, musicology, sociology, and psychology. The first section addresses the concept of process, illustrating its evolution. The second section explores cultural encounters that shape social practices and expressions, featuring examples from expatriates in India and Spain, musical traditions in China, performance art in Brazil, and the interplay of tradition and modernity in sexual practices in the Arabian Gulf. The next segment examines linguistic perspectives on cultural encounters, including language and culture in intercultural interactions, code-switching among bilinguals, and the relationship between identity, language, and culture in translation. The fourth section focuses on literature, discussing themes of encounter and identity formation within the Indian diaspora, the tension between memories of home and new cultural narratives, and identity shaped by societal racial prejudices. The concluding papers present case studies of cultural processes at various levels, such as the redefinition of South African indigenous culture amid political change, the implications of illnesses like Alzheimer’s on personhood and identity, and contrasting concepts of dynamic cultural processes through the works of Carlyle and Warburg.