Transnational dream,transnational practice: Tracking women students in Asia's knowledge diasporas

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a worldwide increase in women travelling on their own to seek educational and career-advancement opportunities, rather than as legal appendages of husbands. In northeast Asia this trend is particularly marked, and the increasing representation of women among the ranks of northeast Asian international students in Western nations can be seen as part of this trend. This essay engages with Youna Kim's book, Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters, and considers Kim's answers to the question: what are the subjective and material experiences of geo-cultural mobility for the current hyper-mobile generation of young northeast Asian women?     

British Satire in The Thick of It

This article intervenes in ongoing debates around the democratic potential of new television satire through an analysis of the content and reception of The Thick of It (TTOI). TTOI is popular not only with a notoriously cynical British public, but even more so with the politicians and journalists that are the target of its ridicule. TTOI’s politics are relatively radical, portraying the news media and politicians as forming a social apparatus which is rotten to the core, and thereby offering a challenge to liberal democracy itself. It is deeply ironic, then, that the show has been incorporated by this very apparatus. What does it mean for the show to be adopted so enthusiastically by the system it so aggressively derides, and what can it tell us about satire’s relationship to cynicism, politics, and democracy?     

Probing identity,integration and adaptation: Big questions,little answers

In 0035 and 0040 acculturation typology integration is defined by two core components – maintenance of traditional heritage culture and participation in the wider society. These components, underpinned by attitudes, behaviors and identities, are believed to contribute in an additive fashion to the psychological and sociocultural adaptation of immigrants and ethnic minorities, and international research has shown that integration generally leads to more positive outcomes than separation, assimilation or marginalization. This paper draws on an international program of research and describes four multi-method studies that raise and explore key questions about the process, assessment and context of integration and its relationship to adaptation. Three questions are posed for consideration: (1) How is the dynamic process of integration experienced and articulated by immigrants? (2) How do our conceptualization and measurement of identity as an aspect of heritage culture maintenance impact the additive model of integration and adaptation? and (3) Under what conditions does integration fail to be adaptive? Tentative answers are offered, and recommendations are made for future studies to guide the development of acculturation theory and research.     

Main Features of Mark of Toledo's Latin Qurʾān Translation

Abstract

This article sets out to be a concise account of Mark of Toledo's Qur?ān translation. It will be structured as follows: first, it will provide information about when and in what circumstances it was realised. Second, it will present some examples, which will show Mark's way of translating and transferring form and content of the Qur?ān for his Latin-speaking Christian audience. Mark mostly translates words consistently throughout the text, and also tries to translate words derived from the same Arabic root with root-related Latin words. Moreover, he does not usually try to convey the semantic nuances a word may have, seemingly not paying attention to the context, but translating with a standard, basic meaning of the word. (This observation should be taken as a tendency and not as a rule, as the excursus at the end will illustrate.) Nevertheless, Mark does not violate the grammar of the Latin language. Despite his fidelity to the text, Mark's Christian cultural background sometimes influences the translation. In the conclusion, the features of Mark's translation will be set out in relation to the cultural and political activity of its commissioner, the Archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.     

Catégories et fonctions dans l’appareil de l’état au temps des Barmécides: un sondage sur le glissement entre les rôles

This essay is part of a wider research project aiming to define the components of the élite in power during the first ?Abbāsid period. Our present purpose is to verify if, and to what extent, the sliding among different public roles must be related with the “arbitraire” of the caliph or rather if it would be reasonable to discern in it some automatisms, some unregulated, although already applied paths. For this purpose, we carried out a survey of the figures who had offices in the administration of the ?Abbāsid state during the second half of the 2nd/8th century, i.e. the Barmakids and those who evolved with them on the political scene. In the initial stage, we confined our survey to the figures appearing in the Kitāb al-wuzarā’ wa'l-kuttāb by al-Jahshiyārī (d. 331/942), that is, with al-?ūlī's one, the most ancient collection of akhbār devoted to the vizirs. We actually think that this work has a historical as well as a symbolic significance. In our opinion the fact of having been produced inside the official milieu of the 4th/10th century increases its value as a source for the social history of the first ?Abbāsid period. Facing the problem of the sliding among different public roles, we tried to fix some criteria for the statistical analysis of this phenomenon, as well as to deduce how this could be used for the study of the social components of the ?Abbāsid élite.     

Interracial Couples’ Conflict Styles on Educational Issues

This study reports results of a quantitative survey of interracial couples’ conflict styles on one specific issue—education. Interracial couples answered a slightly revised version of Putnam-Wilson's Organizational Communication Conflict Instrument to assess conflict styles in dealing with education. The paper has three research questions: Do men and women score differently on self-reported use of conflict styles when dealing with educational issues? Does age or race predict self-reported conflict style for husbands when they deal with educational issues? and Does age or race predict self-reported conflict style for wives dealing with educational issues? A difference on control emerged between husbands and wives, with the latter showing more control-oriented behavior compared to the former. Wives’ age and race were not related to control, non-confrontation, or solution. Husbands who are Asian or Latino were more likely to exercise control. Older husbands’ responses reflected that they were more likely to display solution-oriented behaviors over control-oriented ones.     

Cultural studies through education: moments of pedagogy and pragmatics

Abstract

Our main concern is to see if cultural studies can intervene more productively in the dominant educational processes, in ways that align with the sustainable interests of its critical project. As cynicism becomes the commonplace ‘distinction’ of our young graduates, we raise two questions: why should cultural studies be concerned with the spread of cynicism within our own institutional and pedagogic space? And what would be the implications of such critical reflection on our current practices, as scholar and teacher of this critical project? The paper draws on our continual engagement with the curriculum reform of secondary school subjects (Integrated Humanities and Liberal Studies) in Hong Kong, in an attempt to explore the limits and opportunities of education as social practice, as well as the effectivity of cultural studies within the contemporary contexts and crises of education. First we describe how taking part in the specific school reform projects has begun to change the critical and pedagogic orientation of cultural studies we do at the university. Then we discuss the implications of our recent experiments in doing cultural studies in and with the local schools. In all, we want to examine what brings us to our own search for a certain ‘politics of hope’, by re‐thinking and re‐mapping cultural studies as a collective, pragmatic programme in the local educational set‐up. For, without a constructive pragmatics, the students of cultural studies cannot be expected to work effectively across diverse institutional settings. Thus, criticism and the production of critical knowledge in the contemporary academy would go on to foster a state of cynicism among its graduates and the ‘stakeholders’ concerned. Cultural studies, we believe, can make itself more useful through concrete ways of mediating its expertise in the complex processes of education. As such, we emphasize the contemporary relevance and uses of cultural studies for educational transformation.     

The Heuristic for Thinking About Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT)

Michèle was hurrying to class. How, she thought, could she offer the students in her African American English in Society and Schools class a method of understanding, comparing, and abstracting the studies they had been reading in class? The heuristic described in this study evolved from a desire to capture aspects of several seminal studies that illustrated how African American English was deployed in classrooms for productive work with African American students. Michèle recalled that whenever she asked graduate students or practicing teachers what they, other teachers, and schools might do to improve the schooling of students of color, one of the most consistent responses was Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP). However, when pressed and asked what one would detect in classrooms where CRP is being put into practice, few were able to specify what an observer might see. Specifying the dimensions of CRP and its relationship to the heuristic had not been on Michèle’s mind. Even so, it was during the class discussion that the heuristic’s relevance to CRP became clearer. Jonathan, who had been tapped as a teaching assistant in an English language arts methods class, believed HiTCRiT could be modified to use with teacher education candidates, as a substitute for the standardized lesson planning tool used in the department. He piloted its use with the class the following semester. Utilizing HiTCRiT to explain research and existing practices as well as to assist teachers in creating culturally relevant instruction modified and shaped it, creating a more robust tool. Thus, the HiTCRiT came into being and came to inform our thinking and teaching practice.     

The Will to Be Unveiled: Sufi Autobiographies in Classical Sufism

While autobiography as a special genre increasingly occupies an important position in modern scholarship, independent Sufi autobiographies still require additional and detailed examination. The current paper seeks to examine two spiritual autobiographies known very well in the history of Sufism: Al-?akīm al-Tirmidhī's Bad? sha?n, and Rūzbihān al-Baqlī's Kashf al-asrār. References to these works in modern research do not go beyond the assumption that they may represent visionary autobiographies, dreams, and mystical, extraordinary experiences and states. In the framework of this paper, we consider it essential to regard both texts as serious indicators of different realities, contexts, and mystic discourses.     

Gender,affect, and landscape: wartime films from Northern and Southern Vietnam

Abstract

Examining two Vietnamese films, one made in the North in 1959, and another produced in the South during the American War in 1971, this article contends that Vietnam's landscape serves as an affective site for a gendered construction of nationalism within key moments in Vietnamese history. In analyzing the attachments that the Vietnamese and Vietnamese diaspora feel towards their country, I explore a topic rarely discussed in US film scholarship and historicize these filmmaking efforts to demarcate a different way of viewing Vietnam in film. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding how gender and affect are projected onto landscapes in a national cinema like Vietnam's. More exactingly, it emphasizes that affects underlying Vietnamese nationhood and war are undergirded by the political economy of film and filmmaking. My arguments point to the modes of production and circulation of film, which shape the making of affect in Vietnam War discourse. My analyses are framed by the questions: how is affect inscribed in Vietnamese film, and what are its effects on notions of belonging and nationhood? In what ways has affect traveled about Vietnam in the past and present moment? Who is able to access such representations, and why does this matter?     

Highbrow cultural participation of Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands: Testing an identification and social network explanation

Little is known about ethnic differences in highbrow cultural interests, because research on social differentiation in cultural participation has traditionally focused on educational or income inequalities. Employing data from the Netherlands’ Longitudinal Lifecourse Study 2010 we explored the extent to which educational attainment, national identification and social integration explain inequality in cultural participation among Turkish and Moroccan immigrants, and to what extent the effect of education was moderated by aspects of social identification and integration. Our results indicate that Turks and Moroccans, who identify more with the Netherlands and have a social network that includes larger numbers of Dutch and higher educated friends, are more active in the cultural realm. Most interestingly, we found that strong identification with Dutch society actually moderates the relationship between an immigrants’ educational attainment and their cultural participation: that is, highly educated people of Turkish and Moroccan descent, who strongly identify with the Netherlands, participated more in highbrow culture than their highly educated counterparts who identified less with the Netherlands.     

The cyberpolitics of the governed

How do governed postcolonial subjects perform resistance in the age of the internet? What are their oppositional practices, networks and creativity? This paper offers an empirical analysis of the emerging network politics in Macau, the former colony of Portugal whose sovereignty was returned to China in 1999, by focusing on netizens' engagement with the postcolonial governance. This research considers “government” as consisting of not only power but freedom. It starts with an interest in the “failure” of the government—that is, how the new regime, which attempts to insert the postcolonial subject into a new power structure, actually fails to produce a completely uniform and obedient subjectivity. Instead, its rule is saturated with a multiplicity of “netwars” which take advantage of the opportunities and resources offered by the new media environment. The network struggle, which is not unified under any single authority, enables a segment of the governed population to do politics and constitute subjectivity otherwise. In particular, I illustrate how egao, which opens official icons of the administration to negotiation and contestation, allows the governed to make their own political statements. The postcolonial cyberpolitics is simultaneously agonistic and playful, expressing what Foucault calls the refusal “to be ruled in such manners”, or the desire for alternative mode of governing.     

Scholar-Activism: A Twice Told Tale

What does it mean for individuals to intentionally see themselves as scholar-activists? Moreover, what does navigating a scholar-activist life mean for scholars in the early phases of their academic careers? As emerging scholar-activists the authors of this article are continuing to grapple with these questions, and in this article they present their distinct but overlapping stories of working through and overcoming the false separation of scholarship and activism. By sharing their stories the authors want to both provide readers an opportunity to find resonance in their experiences, and present some points to consider as we all define and live scholar-activism. Scholar-activism is historically situated with sights on the future. The authors have chosen to join the struggle of their predecessors in their scholar-activist work, exploring new possibilities sparked by the confluence of different generations.     

Social stratification of culture and leisure in Turkey

Using three sets of survey data, this article explores the variations and social bases of leisure and cultural consumption patterns during the last decade in Turkey. In particular, this article explores the social basis of reading habits of daily newspapers, magazines and journals, going out to movies and the theatre, as well as spending patterns on these and various other cultural activities. Questions addressed in this study are: how are culture and leisure consumptions stratified in contemporary Turkish society, and what types of changes can be detected between 1994 and 2004? In summary, the data indicate that leisure and cultural consumption tend to be stratified by educational and income level and, to some extent, white-collar occupations. Second, households with female heads tended to engage more in “highbrow” consumption, compared to households with male heads.     

Ethnic diversity and the nation state: from centralization in the age of nationalism to decentralization amidst globalization

The cause of conflict in multiethnic and multi-religious societies is not diversity in and of itself. Rather, it is one’s attitude towards diversity. Do we share political power and economic development with the regions and minority communities? Do we recognize the cultural identities of the minorities? This requires that the nation-state building process be imagined in more inclusive civic territorial lines rather than exclusive ethnic-genealogical lines. With the above as a backdrop, the article explores nation-state building and the related pursuit of economic growth in Malaysia and some parts of Southeast Asia. The article ends with a call for decentralizing power and resources, and for more research on local level governance and democracy.     

Analysing visits to English museums 1850–2015: a research note

ABSTRACT

Understanding why people visit museums is of interest to both cultural economics and museum studies. Most existing research relies on survey data concerned with visitors, their immediate background, and their experience of a particular museum. Very few studies have taken a more general perspective and analysed macro-level societal factors, such as inflation, educational attainment and unemployment, and their influence on the number of visits to museums. The conventional approach relies on visitor surveys to understand what drives visits and people’s general views on museums.

In a departure from these conventional approaches, this article presents a macro-level approach, using a unique dataset of visit counts for 40 English museums and visitor attractions spanning the period 1850–2015. It examines the effect of socio-economic factors on visits using panel data analysis and macro-level variables. The results suggest that inflation rates, average earnings, and educational level (using the indicator of secondary school attendance) all significantly influence the number of visits made. However, the most important variable is the number of visits recorded for the previous year. These findings are discussed in relation to existing studies, and some suggestions for future research are proposed.     

‘Of lost fathers and broken sons’: Farish Noor on the politics of love and the new thought in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper addresses the polemical and intimate writings of one of Malaysia’s leading public intellectuals, Farish Noor. Straddling secularism and Islamism, Noor’s ideas are informed by a compassion that seeks to bypass monotheism and an ethnically informed nationalism. An advocate of a multiethnic and plural society, Noor does not merely reject Islamism; rather, his thinking seeks to reconcile and transcend what he perceives as a false dichotomy between a system of reason and a system of belief. The achievement of this transcendence is a fraught one for it sometimes seems that Noor involuntarily contradicts himself. To resolve this contradiction I turn to Gille Deleuze’s work, Pure Immanence, which, I argue, provides a key in‐road into understanding the complexivity of Noor’s thought, in particular his valorization of love and his canny and novel attempts to interpret what he calls an ‘other Malaysia.’     

Not exotic,but too familiar…

ABSTRACT

Urbanization over in last three decades in China has produced and accumulated more and more complex problems and challenges in everyday life. People need different spaces and ways to learn about them, not only to understand what kind of problems they face, but also find a way to act together in order to change their passive situation and take part in the process which always seem to be dominated by government and technology. “Womende Chengshi” (Our Cities) citizen forum was built in 2012 and has lasted for almost 5 years in Shanghai. It aims to create a new educational space for citizens to discuss emerging city problems and to imagine alternative ways of urban life. After a concise introduction about this forum in Chinese social context, this paper will focus on three points. First, while the ideal setting suggests that citizens are everyone living in the city, “Our Cities” actually confronts the concrete ones shaped by various spaces and limited times in the whole city system. So how to struggle with different forces in limited time and space in everyday life is the main duty this forum needs to face. The third point follows: what kind of standard we could have to estimate such self-education process?     

The coming crisis of cultural engagement? Measurement,methods, and the nuances of niche activities

ABSTRACT

Do ticketing data and national survey data on attendance tell the same story? This question is particularly important in the context of debates over the power of new forms of data to supplant the “traditional” survey methods that have underpinned our understanding of the social stratification of culture. This paper compares three data sources on attendance: the Active Lives Survey, the Taking Part Survey, and Audience Finder. We first compare self-reported attendance at events in each English local authority from the Active Lives survey with ticket sales data, finding a close relationship. We follow up by comparing the distributions of ticket buyers across the Indices of Multiple Deprivation with those from Taking Part, finding that for widely-ticketed and widely-attended art forms they track closely together, providing support for existing trends. Ticketing data does not seem to offer more information on social stratification than traditional social science sources. However, we extend the comparison through more detailed analysis of subcategories within less well-researched forms – literature and dance events – where numbers of attendees are lower, with accompanying uncertainty in survey sources. We find that the audiences for dance vary widely, with ballet attendance being heavily socially stratified but attendance at contemporary dance much more similar to the general population. However, we find that audiences for literature events are more heavily socially stratified than almost any other art form, almost regardless of the subcategory. The power of new datasets is in offering specificity about artforms, rather than overturning what we know about culture and inequality.     

Between Asia and empire: infrastructures of encounter in the archive of war

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we stage a conversation about our experiences researching everyday histories of encounter between Asian and Asian diasporic subjects during the Pacific and Vietnam Wars. Through readings of materials from the archives of two empires, Britain and the United States, with bloody records of military intervention in east and south-east Asia, we show how wartime inter-Asian, Afro-Asian, and Asian diasporic geographies of relation overlapped with and animated one another, helping to (re)produce trans-local communities of affinity over space and time even as they also functioned as infrastructures for empire. Throughout, we reflect on the infrastructures – material, institutional, epistemological, affective – that make inter-referencing possible, both for our subjects and, importantly, for ourselves. If our archives resonate, what does this tell us about the trans-imperial durability of the intimate infrastructures we show taking shape in 1940s China and 1960s Vietnam respectively?