| Room 705 Saturday Onsite Presentation Session 2

Cultural Studies

Session Chair: Brian Haas

11:25-11:50

70565

| Navigating the Complexity of Multicultural Societies: A Pilot Workshop

Jesvin Puay-Hwa Yeo, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Hedren Wai Yuan Sum, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

When we examine “complexity” in multicultural societies, we can relate to the intricacies and convolutions represented by the intersections of identity, privilege and marginalization that define the cultural, social, historical and political dimensions of different populations and communities. This complexity increases in the face of immigration and economic globalization. Complexity in societies today can be seen in the way people interact and the number of variables that need to be considered when trying to understand social systems. This complexity manifests itself in economic, political and social interactions. These interactivity and interconnectivity make it difficult to isolate any one factor to understand how or why a system works the way it does. Making changes to complex systems can be difficult and even challenging to predict the impact of those changes. Today, in addition to the complexities of society, the scale of wicked problems is also expanding, linking with global supply chains and having global social, economic and environmental impacts on larger timescales. Addressing these complexities places increasing demands on academia across fields. A single discipline cannot resolve conversations around current economic models to address more critical systemic problems alone. The proposed paper will discuss in detail the process and initial findings of a brainstorming workshop aimed at uncovering rich and diverse perspectives on current topics. The workshop brought together an interdisciplinary group of 11 scholars to discuss the challenges and opportunities in understanding and responding to the complexities of a multicultural society.

11:50-12:15

70555 | Game, Interactivity, and Narrative of Love: A Case Study of It Takes Two, 2021

Xin Yao, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China

This presentation approaches the ideas of interactivity and game narrative through the lens of a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). It focuses on how players engage with the narrative of love, by using It Takes Two, a popular creative co-op game, as a case study. In 2021, arriving one year after social distancing protocols were introduced, a creative co-op video game, It Takes Two, created by Swedish developer Hazelight Studios and published by American gaming giant Electronic Arts, gained huge popularity on a global scale, including unexpected success in the Chinese market. The game is based on a divorce-themed story but by integrating cooperative gameplay mechanism, it enabled players to engage in constructing a narrative of “love”. Although game narratives are argued to impose restraints on how the player can interact with the virtual world, as they are not given the agency to change the game’s structure and design. Still for this game, it attempts to establish a narrative of how couples drift apart and the powers that can hold people together, and arriving after a year of pandemic social distancing, at this challenging time, It Takes Two raises awareness and questions on how games can connect us emotionally in real life rather than how we fall apart in a relationship.

12:15-12:40

70296 | Women and Ethnicity in the Tea Production Processes of Thailand Siya Uthai, Chiang Mai University, Thailand

In northern Thailand, tea is in the food culture for a long time, commonly known as ‘Miang’. This means fermented tea leaves by bringing the local tea found in many highland-forest of northern Thailand as a part of local food. However, fermented tea leave-making as local food is not as popular as in the past. In Chiang Rai Province, local communities transformed their tea gardens to produce tea as a beverage. Many large tea gardens gained incentive incomes from the trend of tea drinking in Thailand. Nowadays, Chiang Rai has the largest tea plantation area in Thailand, covering approximately 13,600 hectares, becoming a large-scale tea industry cultivation. Therefore, Chiang Rai Province has been selected as the case study to examine the relations of gender roles and ethnic identities in the tea production of both small-scale and large-scale industries in Thailand. The study aims at exploring worker management and working models of tea enterprises in reducing conflict issues by gender and different ethnic groups. Qualitative research methods by observation technique and key informant interview were applied in data collection. Twelve female workers from four tea enterprises are selected for in-depth interviews, The study found that women become the main workforce in the tea garden and many ethnic groups in Chiang Rai play significant roles in tea production processes.

12:40-13:05

69514 | Understanding Personality and Dynamic Life Stories Through a Cultural Lens

Brian Haas, University of Georgia, United States

Kazufumi Omura, Yamagata University, Japan

The way people think about themselves as individuals and their lives in general seems to have a lot to with several contextual factors. Personality and culture have been shown to be linked to one another in several important ways. However, personality and identity are factors that change throughout one’s life. In this research we sought to better understand how culture is linked to the way people perceive changes to their identity throughout their lives. Do people who live in different cultures tend think differently about how they have changed? We investigated this question in two different cultural contexts, Japan and the United States. We asked 794 Japanese and 815 Americans about their personality and life satisfaction now, 10 years in the past, and to predict their personality and life satisfaction 10 years in the future. We found that Japanese looked back at their lives (10 years in the past) in a more positive light than those from the United States. We also found that the tendency for Americans to derogate their past selves was linked to greater self-reported self-esteem. These finding support the idea culture plays an important role in painting people’s life story. While Japanese may espouse nostalgia and harmony when thinking about their life story, Americans espouse life stories depicting growth from a previously negative place.