3079 results in Jagiellonian University Press
Sada Yakko: Reconstruction in Action
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- By Hana Umeda
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 01 March 2024
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- 31 March 2023, pp 469-484
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Summary
Paris, 1900
The 1900 World Exhibition heralded the coming of a new century. Among the nearly fifty million visitors enraptured by the latest technological achievements, wonders of modern architecture, and colonial curiosities brought in to Paris from the furthermost corners of the globe, were three women that were due to leave their mark on the Western performing arts. Dubbed the mothers of modern dance, Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis were tied by the shared experience of the Parisian exhibition. One artist in particular made an indelible impression on the three: the Japanese dancer and actress Sada Yakko. Isadora Duncan would later refer to her dance as “[the] one great impression [that] remained with me of the Exhibition of 1900. […] Night after night [I was] thrilled by the wondrous art of this great tragedian.” Recalling the emotions stirred by Sada Yakko's performance, Ruth St. Denis confessed in her autobiography, “For the first time I beheld and understood the beautiful austerities of Japanese art.” And further on: “[It was the] antithesis of the flamboyant, overblown exuberance of American acrobatics.” According to Ruth St. Denis, it was Yakko who taught her to distinguish between the attributes: “astonishing” and “evoking.” Loie Fuller was so moved by Sada Yakko's dance that she resolved to host Yakko's Japanese performances at her theater and organize Sada Yakko's and Kawakami Otojiro's (Yakko's husband) European tour, to which she also invited the young Isadora Duncan.
What was so fascinating in this Japanese artist that so impressed the three great dance reformers? In her book Dancing Women. Female Bodies on Stage, Sally Banes suggests that towards the end of the 19th century “the Modern” was symbolized by the woman, and the revolution of modern dance was founded on the public gesture of the woman who took to the stage not only as a dancer but also as a choreographer. “The first generation of American modern dancers, including Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, and Ruth St. Denis, referred to their own type of dancing not as modern but as «aesthetic» or «interpretive.»” And yet they were laying foundations for dance modernism. Can the same be said of Sada Yakko? Would it be justified to refer to her as not only “Europe's first Japanese dancer” but also “Japan's first modern dancer?” Most of all, what may her dance have looked like?
Contents
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 31 March 2023, pp 5-8
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Historie elastyczne i nieelastyczne. Analiza wczesnodwudziestowiecznych kategorii niemieckiego tańca modern
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- By Marion Kant
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 01 March 2024
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- 31 March 2023, pp 61-84
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Summary
Przez ostatnie trzydzieści lat podejmowałam próby zrozumienia i przepisania historii niemieckiego tańca modern: zjawiska celowo nowoczesnego, przemyślanego pod względem filozoficznym i teoretycznym, promowanego równolegle z praktykami choreograficznymi i performatywnymi. Niemiecki taniec modern był utopijną wizją; jego twórcy zakładali i głosili rolę tańca jako rewolucyjnego narzędzia społecznej zmiany. Stworzyli teorię ruchu o wyrazistej estetyce oraz polityczną wizję, którą realizowali nie tylko implicite na poziomie poszczególnych spektakli. Wydarzenia historyczne i rozwój niemieckiego tańca modern były zespolone do tego stopnia, że trudno oddzielić je od siebie. Rodzi to pytania: jak spisywana (i prze-pisywana) jest historia tańca – czy istnieją tu jakieś ramy czasowe? Czy niezbędne jest powstanie pewnej masy krytycznej? Czy nowe historie muszą wejść do głównego nurtu? Czy rewidujemy go za pomocą redefinicji, rekontekstualizacji, czy też może rzutując nowe teorie na zjawiska historyczne lub tworząc nowe kategorie dla analizy niemieckiego tańca modern? Czy dzieje się tak samoistnie i na skutek zmian wrażliwości aktorów tego procesu – ówczesnych i obecnych?
W poniższych rozważaniach zastosuję koncepcję „sieci”, aby przyjrzeć się początkom oraz obecnym praktykom niemieckiego tańca modern: czy jego początki były konstytutywne dla całego ruchu? Czy zainicjowały pewną formację historyczną, czy też były jedynie jej rezultatem, narzędziem wspierającym globalny rozwój niemieckiego tańca?
„Sieci” rozumiem tu jako formacje organizacyjne, które prowokują działania, umożliwiają interakcję i wspomagają realizację konkretnych programów. Członkowie i członkinie sieci stają się jej przedstawicielami podejmującymi działania programowe, od ich artykulacji po realizację. Teoria aktora-sieci zakłada, że relacje istnieją wyłącznie w obrębie sieci. Jest to, być może, prawdziwe na najogólniejszym poziomie: ludzie są istotami społecznymi, które zawiązują relacje społeczne, aby przetrwać – sieci są jedną z dostępnych strategii. Teoria ta może być jednak myląca w przypadku złożonych wspólnot, w których interakcja prowadzona jest na poziomie kilku współistniejących ze sobą sieci. Niemiecka tancerka z początku XX wieku mogła należeć do kilku sieci tanecznych, jednocześnie działając w sieciach regionalnych czy lokalnych, strukturach rodzinnych, stowarzyszeniach religijnych, organizacjach zrzeszających artystów i artystki, związkach zawodowych czy partiach politycznych. Sieci stają się więc powiązane w stopniu uniemożliwiającym jednoznaczne oddzielenie ich od siebie. Niezależnie jednak od tego, jak ścisła byłaby zastosowana definicja sieci, ich struktury należy rozpatrywać zarówno od wewnątrz, jak i z zewnątrz.
Polish – Ours / Foreign – Alien – Stranger. The 1933 International Artistic Dance Competition in Warsaw’s Press
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- 31 March 2023, pp 557-578
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Introduction
“Words create the reality.” Attributed to Paul Ricoeur, this popular saying encapsulates the foundations of cognitivism, which was initiated as a trend in linguistics and gradually expanded its analytical reach over other fields of the humanities. How one designates phenomena, what words one uses to define other people, and how one describes events, are all indicative of one's worldview: a system of convictions organizing one's reality. The way in which one formulates one's utterances reveals a lot about one's reading preferences, one's key values, and one's perception of how a given topic is construed by those listening to or reading a certain opinion. The impact of one's language on other people's perceptions is particularly powerful in journalistic texts or commentaries. The press has a wide reach, and published commentators are often considered as pundits in their respective fields; hence, it is all the easier to unreflectively internalize the designations and convictions embedded in their texts.
This article aims to expound the ways in which Warsaw's press described the 1933 International Artistic Dance Competition, while also attempting to reconstruct the image of dance and dancers emerging from the journalists’ attitude towards the performers’ nationalities. How did they define the “Polishness” of a given dance or a person who performed it? What criteria determined if the performer's nationality was perceived as (non)Polish? Were the competition participants’ declarations taken into consideration? Did their birthplace, domicile, educational background and previous stage career matter? Was the same language used to review domestic and foreign artists? Did commentators write in their own, individual styles, or were their linguistic choices linked to the profiles of their respective newspapers? While the scope of editorial interventions in the published texts cannot be determined, one is nonetheless tempted to address the above questions by approaching the preserved materials as a testimony to the worldview (or rather: worldviews) prevailing in Poland at that time, not only with respect to dance. The 1930s in Europe were a period of a political calm before the storm whose social (and linguistic) heralds only seem obvious ex post.
Transmissions: Transnational Trajectories of Dance Modernism
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 01 March 2024
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- 31 March 2023, pp 405-406
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Jewish Tango and the Question of Identity
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 31 March 2023, pp 485-508
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Summary
The dynamic changes that occurred in dance aesthetics and kinaesthetic techniques in the first two decades of the twentieth century were most visible in Germany and France. These two countries were the first ones to witness the emergence of the choreographies that anticipated modernist dance styles and genres, which took place against the broad background of the avant-garde movement in various forms of art. Furthermore, Germany and France were the countries where the foundations of new movement theories were laid that not only concerned artistic dance but also popular body culture. Thus, it is no wonder that artists from these countries were most open to influences from North America and they knew how to use them to reform dance on the old continent. The increasingly numerous German and French dance companies and schools were very successful in attracting artists from other countries and especially from Central and Eastern Europe, where many nations, including Poland, did not have their own independent states, or even their own national cultural institutions. Therefore, one may argue that till the end of the Great War, the channels through which the ideas and techniques of modernist dance were spread were rather limited and unidirectional, as dance practitioners from Central and Eastern Europe educated themselves and developed their dance techniques in Western European centers, where they created their own concepts of stage movement and where they usually continued their dance careers. Rudolf Laban was born in Presburg (Bratislava) in what is now Slovakia; Rosalia Chladek came from Brünn (Brno) in the Czech Republic; Warsaw was Marie Rambert's city of birth; Vaslav Nijinsky, who had Polish parents, was born in Kiev in Ukraine, while his sister Bronislava – in Minsk in Belarus, to name but a few examples. Thus, due to the artists’ migration to German and French cultural centers, European modernist dance was from the very beginning a transnational and transcultural phenomenon.
The situation changed dramatically in 1918, when the war ended and the political map of Europe was radically redrawn. The regaining of independence by, for instance, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Czechoslovakia gave a strong impulse to the creation of new national artistic institutions and to the idea of expressing one's own national identity through art.
Selected Aspects of Czech Dance Modernism(s) in the Context of the Dance (R)evolution at the Beginning of the 20th Century
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 01 March 2024
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- 31 March 2023, pp 545-556
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Pondering the topic of “re-writing dance modernism” in the Czech context provokes one to contemplate if it is possible to review and redefine the modern and avant-garde dance era within the frame of Czech art studies, giving that the definition and the specification of these notions are nearly non-existent. However, this era can be considered without any doubt as one of the most dynamic in the development of artistic dance in the Czech milieu, which during this period progressed in parallel with the reforms and new art trends present on the European scale. The artistic legacy of the representatives of dance modernism has been mentioned by Czech theater scholars in a rather marginal way so far. It has been related especially to their intensive cooperation with particular avant-garde theater artists and ensembles. Besides, in the second half of the 20th century, several surveys and summarizing studies were written, mostly by female avant-garde and modern dance representatives themselves in an effort to recall and recapture the trace of the era between the two world wars.
Inquiring about the cause of the “oblivion” of Czech dance modernism legacy inspires a few reflections and a number of speculations. No doubt, the fundamental factor was post-war politics. After the February 1948 communist coup, the then Czechoslovakia became a part of the Soviet Union controlled bloc of countries. The liberal heritage of the interwar avant-garde art was considered as unsuitable by the communist regime. Even if the individual avant-garde representatives (mostly opposing the new regime) were not directly persecuted, they became marginalized and stripped of state support. Such was the fate of the representatives of dance modernism as well. The only accepted artistic dance style recognized nationally after the February coup was professional classical ballet, which was very Russian school oriented at the time. The modern dance legacy of the first half of the century, especially the Ausdruckstanz mostly developed between the two world wars, was banished from the professional stage in the beginning of the 1950s. In fact, this legacy survived only in the area of dance pedagogy and in the (often semi-legal) amateur dance domain during the entire duration of the communist era.
Wybrane aspekty czeskiego modernizmu tanecznego w kontekście tanecznej (r)ewolucji z początku XX wieku
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Book:
- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 31 March 2023, pp 265-276
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Rozważania na temat „prze-pisywania tanecznego modernizmu” w kontekście czeskim prowokują pytanie: czy w środowisku czeskich studiów nad sztuką możliwa jest rewizja i powtórne zdefiniowanie ery tańca modern oraz awangardy tanecznej, jeśli pierwotna definicja i opis tych pojęć praktycznie nie istnieją? Okres ten można bez wątpienia uznać w Czechach za jeden z najbardziej dynamicznych w ewolucji tańca artystycznego, który wówczas intensywnie się rozwijał, napędzany reformami i nowymi trendami artystycznymi obecnymi w Europie. W badaniach teatrologicznych dziedzictwo artystyczne przedstawicieli i przedstawicielek tanecznego modernizmu było dotychczas traktowane w dużej mierze marginalnie; zajmowano się głównie intensywną współpracą awangardy tanecznej z niektórymi artystami, artystkami i zespołami teatralnymi tamtej epoki. W drugiej połowie XX wieku powstało kilka opracowań i kompendiów, autorstwa przeważnie artystek awangardy i przedstawicieli tańca modern, przywołujących i odtwarzających ślady okresu międzywojennego.
Pytanie o przyczynę zapomnienia dziedzictwa tanecznego modernizmu skłania do refleksji i domysłów. Głównym czynnikiem była tu bez wątpienia powojenna polityka. Po komunistycznym zamachu stanu w lutym 1948 roku Czechosłowacja dołączyła do bloku państw kontrolowanych przez ZSRR. Liberalne dziedzictwo międzywojennej awangardy uznano za niezgodne z linią polityczną komunistycznego reżimu. Poszczególni przedstawiciele i przedstawicielki awangardy (w większości przeciwni nowej władzy) nie byli, co prawda, prześladowani, ale zostali odsunięci na margines i nie mogli liczyć na wsparcie ze strony państwa. Los artystów i artystek tanecznego modernizmu był podobny. Jedynym stylem tańca artystycznego dopuszczalnym po przewrocie lutowym był balet klasyczny, zorientowany przede wszystkim na rosyjską szkołę tańca. Dziedzictwo tańca modern pierwszej połowy XX wieku, w szczególności zaś spuścizna Ausdruckstanz, który najsilniej rozwijał się w okresie międzywojennym, zniknęło z profesjonalnej sceny tańca na początku lat 50. Do końca okresu komunistycznego taniec modern był praktykowany wyłącznie w obszarze pedagogiki tańca oraz na polu (często uprawianego na wpół legalnie) tańca amatorskiego.
Drugim czynnikiem jest szczególny stosunek czeskiej społeczności akademickiej do badań nad tańcem. Być może niski stopień rozwoju badań nad tańcem artystycznym na czeskich uniwersytetach wynika z braku zainteresowania, niewystarczającej erudycji bądź trudności metodologicznych związanych z tak niełatwą do uchwycenia dziedziną, jaką jest sztuka taneczna. Wspomnieć należy również o braku kompetentnych specjalistów i specjalistek, metodologii badawczych oraz o nieznajomości najnowszych trendów w teorii tańca.
Żydowskie tango i pytanie o tożsamość
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Book:
- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- Jagiellonian University Press
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- 01 March 2024
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- 31 March 2023, pp 203-226
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Prze-pisywać znaczy pisać od nowa. Z innego miejsca, uwzględniając wykluczone postaci, przewartościowując hierarchie. Rozsypując zastaną narrację. Szukając w niej szczelin i pustych miejsc. Jak jednak prze-pisać narrację jeszcze nienapisaną?
Pisząc o historii tanga argentyńskiego w Polsce, stajemy bowiem przed wyzwaniem opowiedzenia historii jeszcze nieopowiedzianej, istniejącej w ułamkach narracji, na zachowanych starych płytach, zdjęciach ze spektakli czy w scenach filmowych (ale już nie w ciałach tancerzy). Tym samym napisanie tekstu o polskim tangu do książki o prze-pisywaniu modernizmu w tańcu stawia przede mną zadanie cokolwiek paradoksalne i wewnętrznie sprzeczne: zaproponowanie narracji i zarazem przeciwnarracji, wskazującej na luki i puste miejsca w tej pierwszej. To trudne metodologicznie przedsięwzięcie. Wobec ogromu nieopracowanego materiału faktograficznego spróbuję zatem przedstawić stan badań, zarysować pole badawcze i omówić kilka kwestii teoretycznych.
Moim punktem wyjścia jest osobiste doświadczenie – tancerki tanga, a zarazem historyczki teatru i kulturoznawczyni. Chciałabym się przekonać, na ile pomoże mi ono w konstruowaniu owej nienapisanej narracji i w wypracowaniu narzędzi do odtworzenia mojego przedmiotu badań. Warto przypomnieć, że tak jak współczesna humanistyka odkrywa na nowo znaczenie doświadczenia1, tak w odniesieniu do refleksji o cielesności i technikach posługiwania się ciałem szczególne znaczenie doświadczeniu przypisuje somaestetyka. Jej twórca, Richard Shusterman, wielokrotnie podkreślał konieczność powiązania teoretycznej refleksji o ciele z praktyką – wszelkie techniki pracy z ciałem amerykański filozof uważa za równoprawną z teorią wiedzę o ciele. Sam praktykuje sztuki walki, jest nauczycielem i terapeutą metody Feldenkraisa. Pisze:
Podobnie jak wykwalifikowani robotnicy potrzebują konkretnej wiedzy na temat własnych narzędzi, tak i my potrzebujemy lepszej wiedzy somatycznej, aby poprawić nasze rozumienie i wykonywanie czynności w ramach różnych dyscyplin i praktyk. […] Bardziej rozwinięta świadomość naszego somatycznego medium może polepszyć jego wykorzystanie w zastosowaniu wszelkich innych narzędzi bądź innych mediów, ponieważ wszystkie one wymagają pewnej formy cielesnego działania, nawet jeśli chodzi tylko o zwykłe wciśnięcie guzika czy mrugnięcie okiem.
Korzenie
Wypada jednak zacząć od krótkiej historii gatunku. Tango wyewoluowało w drugiej połowie XIX wieku w delcie Rio de La Plata, w ubogich dzielnicach Buenos Aires i Montevideo, z rozmaitych tradycji muzycznych przywożonych do Argentyny i Urugwaju przez emigrantów z różnych zakątków świata: afrykańskiego candombe (rytm, który przetrwał przede wszystkim w milondze), afrokaraibskiej habanery (rytm), andaluzyjskiego flamenco (rytm, praca stóp, rola mężczyzny w tańcu), środkowoeuropejskiej polki (rytm, objęcie), a nawet włoskiej opery (technika wokalna, rola solisty w tango canción).
On the Way to ‘Asia’: Exoticism, Itinerancy and Self-Fashioning in the Making of Central European Modern Dance
- Edited by Julia Hoczyk, Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Warsaw, Wojciech Klimczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Re-writing Dance Modernism: Networks
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- 01 March 2024
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- 31 March 2023, pp 447-468
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Inter-war Europe, the time and place for the emergence and crystallization of modern dance, was also the penultimate phase of imperialism. This was a period when colonized people around the world were coming to Europe while imagining what would become of the “new states” established after World Word II, playing roles in anti-colonial movements even while pursuing education in a European mode and avidly consuming the products of European modernity – films, recorded music, fashion, food, and lifestyles. At the same time that Europeans began taking a serious interest in Asian traditions of dance – studying and filming them; writing about them; collecting artefacts and creating exhibitions; even undertaking practical studies and performing their interpretations publically – Asian practitioners were busy reformulating inherited dance traditions for the modern world and creating new dances that were aimed to appeal to cosmopolitans in Asia and internationally.
Dance in this time of exchange and flow was a privileged space for self-fashioning, playing with multiple identities, communicating about and through alterity and exploring novel modes of sociation and itinerancy. A new era in dance starts, I have argued, with Margaretha Zelle, who in 1906 drew on her experience of living in the Dutch East Indies as a housewife married to a Dutch army officer, connections to European artistic elites such as the museum owner and industrialist Émile Guimet, a knack for storytelling and theatricality and a willingness (indeed eagerness) to disrobe in public to transform herself into Mata Hari, the “Indian” temple dancer.1 For Zelle, Mata Hari was not just a stage persona, but a way of being in the world – or, better, a way of transversing multiple worlds. She performed as Mata Hari when interacting with the press and the general public; engaging in relations with men who were her patrons, artistic collaborators and sexual partners; communicating authoritatively about Asian art and religion; and negotiating professional relations with institutions and agents.
In the years to come, stages in Europe would see Uday Shankar, who trained as a painter in London at the Royal College of Art, becoming the foremost proponent of Indian dance through colorful and lively works created together with a series of European female partners – the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, the French pianist Simone Barbiere and Swiss sculptor Alice Boner.
References
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Dragons and Gazelles
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- 02 March 2023, pp 173-200
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Frontmatter
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Dragons and Gazelles
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- 01 March 2024
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- 02 March 2023, pp 1-4
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Social Perspectives of Business Internationalisation
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Dragons and Gazelles
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- 01 March 2024
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- 02 March 2023, pp 97-114
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All interactions, including those of an economic character, emerge in the social environment. From the perspective of organised social relations, this environment is subject to certain institutionalisation processes, which means that certain forms of behaviour become universal in a given community or society and reflect the commonly shared social norms. The plethora of institutionalised human interactions and relations between entities, communities and customers is the outcome of the diversity inherent in the roles individuals and organisations can have, among other things. The social environment is therefore created by the intermingling norms and subsequent behaviours shaped through family influences, belonging to a profession or to a particular business entity, or being an entrepreneur creating jobs. Such a situation implies a certain hierarchy, where social status can be the outcome of a natural authority, formal position, social capital, or ethnic background but can also be seen through the lens of economic position. Human existence, similarly to organisational activities, happens in the socio-economical fabric, where the social role played by businesses creates jobs and opportunities for development both at the individual level for employees and for shareholders and at the collective level for communities and economies.
A basic question pertaining to the social aspect of international business is therefore the question of whether international expansion and cross-border activities create growth, social, economic or even civilisational opportunities for development, and therefore whether they contribute to the well-being and common good of societies, communities and humans at large.
An attempt to answer this question calls for a two-fold perspective.
First, the net effects of international business should be considered, i.e. the effects related to the costs as well as the benefits for the host economy accepting FDI inflows and the effects related to advantages and disadvantages for the home economy—the source of FDI outflows.
Second, some areas of influence of transnational corporations are of highly strategic significance, not only social but also civilisational. Corporations largely control the pace of innovation, which is related to the dominant role of the private sector in financing R&D. Corporations can play a significant political role, seen through lobbying and different forms of influence on institutions and legislation, but also in political leadership, when corporations become powerful opinionmakers shaping state policies.
The International Business Environment
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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Summary
The story of a certain pencil
Milton Friedman, one of the key figures in neoliberalism, mentions a famous essay by L.E. Read called I, Pencil… in a series on economics entitled Free to Choose (1980). The author describes the story of how a seemingly trivial product such as a pencil is created. It is an exemplification of a complex production process which is dependent on international cooperation and sourcing of inputs, and is based on a free market pricing system which enables cooperation between independent entities reacting to the dynamics of demand and supply. This creates an environment for creativity to flourish. In a sense, it is a history of the global division of labour, but also an illustration of how the concept of the “invisible hand”, dispersed knowledge and the pricing system operate.
The mechanisms of international co-operation, which should ideally result in products of optimal quality and price, require the free flow of goods, services and production factors—both tangible and intangible. The more this freedom is granted, with the accompanying unrestricted international movement of capital, the more the market becomes global and borders blurred. Such is the process of globalisation, understood as the crafting of a global economy based on integration as well as investment, trade and information flows. A key tenet of a global market is thus an increasing interdependence of the international market actors.
The concept of the global economy can be best illustrated by key words such as proximity, location and a global mentality in both an organisational and an individual sense.
Proximity can be interpreted in the context of shrinking space for competition and a smaller distance to consumer markets.
It is a result of communication and technological advancement which makes geographical distance less of an issue and makes access to consumers much easier, but at the same time makes competition more intense.
The significance of location refers to the strategic ability to locate given elements of the value chain in such geographical locations which offer optimal conditions for a specific industry and business model in which a comparative advantage exists.
Appendix
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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- Dragons and Gazelles
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Methodology of the case studies
Case study research has been applied in the study (Yin, 2009). The selection of exemplary industries, economic clusters and enterprises for the case studies was based on a finding of convergence with the themes of the case studies. The criteria used to select case study subjects are presented in Table 16.
The aims of the studies are to describe the paradigms of globalisation and its impact in the micro and mesoeconomic areas on the basis of specific examples taken from economic business activities. Particular attention has been paid to industrial clusters as a form of organisation of an industry which is especially active in international business relationships.
The sources of the data and information used in the case studies are as follows:
• Eurostat—Regional structural business statistics,
• GUS—Statistics Poland,
• mostly peer-reviewed scientific articles,
• websites of companies and clusters.
Case studies no. 1, 2, 3 and 5 may be considered descriptive case studies (Baxter, Jack, 2008; Yin, 2009). Case study no. 4 has an explanatory nature (Baxter, Jack, 2008; Yin, 2009).
In case studies 1 and 2, both focused on a similar industry, the method included a literature review on clusters, using key words such as “Italian cluster”, “Marshallian cluster”, “cluster upgrading”, “cluster evolution”, and “clusters in global value chains”. Thanks to the application of the abovementioned selection criteria, it was possible to identify the clusters that best reflected the subject matter of the case study and the research questions posed.
Case 1 included also a qualitative method used for industry delimitation and mostly for industrial cluster identification. It was based on the measurement of the location quotient (LQ).
It is assumed that a location index of more than 1.25 indicates a potential cluster. A higher score on this indicator is accompanied by a higher probability of a cluster being present in the area. LQ shall be calculated as specified below.
LQ measures the relative concentration of a given type of activity (industry) in a research area in relation to the reference area, predominantly a region (Bohatkiewicz, Gancarczyk, 2018, pp. 490–491), usually a national economy (Górska, Łukasik, 2013).
The Mechanisms of Internationalisation
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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The mechanisms of internationalisation, that is, expansion onto international markets, can be classified according to two basic criteria: the scale of necessary integration and the scale of engaging one's own capital on foreign markets. The simplest strategies, where neither a high integration capacity nor a high capital investment abroad are required, are different forms of export. The most advanced strategies, which carry a risk related to making a capital investment in geographically dispersed and diverse markets, are foreign direct investments and organising one's own subsidiaries.
Additionally, market entry modes can be of equity or non-equity type. The former includes export and contract strategies—the latter relating to contractual agreements such as licensing, franchising or strategic alliances. The second type includes joint ventures and creating a network of subsidiaries, often based on the acquisitions of other entities or on foreign direct investments, e.g. greenfield or brownfield (Pan, Tse, 2000).
Extant literature also mentions different criteria for methods of expansion onto foreign markets, which, apart from engaging one's own resources in foreign markets, include a level of risk and a level of control exercised over the network of subsidiaries (Anderson, Gatignon, 1986; Hill et al., 1990; Erramilli, Rao, 1993). The level of control over subsidiaries can range from full control, as would be the case with foreign direct investments, to shared control in the case of contractual forms of expansion (Erramilli, Rao, 1993). The extent to which a given entity knows and understands the targeted host market belongs to the criteria for making a choice of the best method of expansion, with a larger probability of foreign direct investment in the case of firms which have already had previous experience with a given market (Gatignon, Anderson, 1988; Kim, Hwang, 1992; Sarkar, Cavusgil, 1996).
In summary, the choice of expansion method reflects organic development as well as growth based on mergers and acquisitions, where a parent company reduces the cost and risk it would have to bear when entering a new market “from scratch” and building a competitive position through having to compete with local entities which are strongly embedded in the local culture and environment.
International business expansion is largely led by transnational corporations with the specifics of the process illustrated through the dynamics and directions of FDIs.
Miscellaneous Endmatter
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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Global Marketing and Shaping Customers
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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Temptations of standardisation and communication visionaries
The differentiation of cross-border strategies, as well as the differing scale of internationalisation, can be determined through the criterion of perceiving a global market. Seeing the market as culturally diversified, composed of individual markets with their own specifics which call for adaptation, is characteristic of the multilocal approach. As a result, firms might decide to design a set of multiple strategies adjusted to local specifics. Seeing the market as homogenous is characteristic of a global, integrated strategy and global marketing.
The basis of such an approach, which aims at the realisation of a more or less utopian vision of the whole planet as a unified market with unlimited absorption capability for standardised products and demand created through global promotion constructed with culturally and socially unified narratives, seems to derive from the concept of the global market promoted by the Harvard Business Review and the notion of a “global village”.
In 1983 Theodore Levitt published The Globalization of Markets, which encouraged firms to create standardised products of high quality for global distribution (Keegan, Green, 2008).
The notion of a “global village”, popularised by McLuhan (Marshall McLuhan's theory…, 1960) with his vision of a development of easily accessible media, which can become a certain transmission belt of ideas on a global scale, in effect creating unprecedented opportunities for advertising and promotion, seems to justify a standardised global strategy as the basic way to operate internationally. From the perspective of more than half a century, McLuhan's vision can be seen as a prophetic and adequate description of changing consumer behaviour.
Additionally, the idea of global marketing developed under very favourable conditions, i.e. the 1960s saw a relatively high level of quality becoming standard and therefore ceasing to be the only condition sufficient for guaranteeing market share. As a result, companies began to seek alternative strategies. This is how a brand, seen as a factor of building competitiveness and an effective tool for operating under the conditions of easy, quick and mass communication, emerged, thus making it possible to convey standardised messages via different channels.
The question about the possibilities of making marketing truly global should be analysed through the concept of the marketing mix, which includes product, price, distribution and promotion (Naghi, Para, 2013).
Index
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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Cultural Aspects of a Global Market
- Barbara Fryzeł, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Bohatkiewicz-Czaicka, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
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Cross-cultural differences have always been one of the central themes in international management and good motivation for accumulating knowledge and competences such as sensitivity and cultural awareness on one hand, and flexibility on the other hand, to enable managers to function in the cross-cultural environment. Knowledge pertaining to the specifics of different cultures is necessary to avoid strategic mistakes when expanding internationally, and paramount for building stable relations with customers. It is also needed for building effective cooperation in increasingly diversified work groups as well as for managing inter-organisational processes such as negotiations or postmerger integration.
Traditionally, cultural diversification was seen as a challenge and a source of potential conflict (Hampden-Turner, Trompenaars, 1993). It can be interpreted through the lens of cultural ethnocentrism, be it in the workplace or on consumer markets, which requires managers to have cross-cultural skills allowing them to read signals from the environment and interpret them accordingly (Søderberg, Holden, 2002).
The contemporary view of cross-cultural differences sees them as a potential source of competitive advantage (Dupriez, Simons, 2000; Søderberg, Holden, 2002), assuming that a culturally diversified environment, be it a workplace or a consumer environment, can serve as a “living lab”, where different behaviours and traditions can be observed and strategies tested.
Both views as described above can be seen in the context of organisational culture, defined as the set of features describing the relations of the members of any given organisation with its partners and external environment, and which is sufficiently characteristic to differentiate them from other market players (Hofstede, McCrae, 2004)98. This definition assumes that culture has a function of differentiating one organisation from another; in this context, it overlaps with the definition of organisational identity, seen as a set of mutually shared beliefs which differentiates an organisation from the other market players (Albert, Whetten, 1985), which are central and enduring (Whetten, 2006)99.
Mutually shared beliefs are the necessary determinant for the culture to be an effective binder, something internally cohesive for an organisation which allows its members to build a sense of identification and belonging. Culture, therefore, plays both an internal and external role as the vehicle for identification for internal members of the organisation and a vehicle for differentiation for external actors.
The concept of culture serves as the interpretation lens for questions such as how we live, how we perceive the surrounding reality and how we communicate.