Superior–Subordinate Communication Dimensions and Working Relationship: Gender Preferences in a Malaysian Organization

This paper attempts to investigate the Western proposition on the communication preferences of male and female employees in a Malaysian organization. Based on the literature, Western scholars suggest that male employees prefer working communication with their superior that will allow them to accomplish their jobs. On the other hand, female employees prefer relationship communication with their superior in order to maintain and develop their relationship with their superior. Our findings show the combinations of working and relationship communication emerging from Malaysian male and female respondents. The consequences of these findings are discussed and elaborated.     

Religion and politics in Malaysian nation-building: a “double-movement” of hegemonic and plural Islam

This article looks at links and fractures in the development of Political Islam in Malaysia. It looks at the various bases of divides in Malay political mobilization. In the early colonial period, Malay–Islamic political elites were divided along the lines of language and schooling, while the postcolonial era saw the divisions taking on a more ideological basis, marking the deepening of intra-Islamic contestation. The double-movement in Political Islam’s expansion can be seen as moving in two opposite directions. While, on the one hand, the incorporation of Islamic governance in the state had taken on a centralized and hegemonic character, the splintering and pluralization of Political Islam had also occurred in an equally extensive manner.     

The development of cultural indicators for Australia – policy-making in a federal system of government

The publication in 2010 of Vital signs: Cultural indicators for Australia was the culmination of a complex national policy development process, which exemplifies some of the challenges of making cultural policy in a federal system of government. This paper examines the policy imperatives which gave rise to the original proposal to develop a set of national indicators, the context which led to support for the proposal, the process of policy development which ensued, and some of the key issues which emerged, and which are relevant for future work. The paper was written from the perspective of a bureaucrat closely involved in the project: the author was, between 2006 and 2011, head of the Queensland state government arts agency, and chair of the Statistics Working Group, the multi-agency body which managed the cultural indicators project on behalf of the participating governments.     

Munna Guru – portrait of a eunuch

Abstract

In this essay, Ho Tzu Nyen attempts to unearth a subterranean narrative that threads through three films produced by three male Singaporean directors – namely Mee Pok Man (1995) by Eric Khoo, 15 (2003) by Royston Tan, and Zombie Dogs (2004) by Toh Hai Leong. This narrative of unconsciously repeated motifs that migrate from film to film is in turn analyzed as a recurrent symptom that haunts a number of Singaporean cinematic productions from the 1990s onwards. This symptom, which can be summarily described as a paranoid relationship to ‘otherness’, makes manifest a variety of psychic tendencies such as morbid fear of impotence, misogyny, and fetishization of the social other. For Ho, such impulses are in turn intricately linked to what he, following the literary critic Harold Bloom, calls ‘The Anxiety of Influence’. For Bloom, every poet embarks upon his career after a prior encounter with another poet, or poem. As a result, the ‘late‐coming’ poet inevitably suffers from a sense of threatened autonomy, because his profoundest insights and deepest desires are always already elucidated by another. For the Singaporean filmmaker, Ho argues that this ‘anxiety’ in relation to the cinematic tradition takes on a peculiar nature and a doubled pressure, for the canon that inspires them is perceived as being something essentially foreign. Hence the Singaporean filmmaker makes cinema as though he is stuttering in a foreign tongue. Therefore, the concept of ‘the anxiety of influence’ is modulated and compounded with a ‘postcolonial anxiety’. In addition, Ho also draws upon the concepts of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze in an attempt to sketch out an ontology of cinema that at once functions in a deconstructive relationship to ‘auteur‐driven’ modes of analyses, while avoiding what he perceives as the overly ‘sociological’ bent that characterizes much of the existing corpus of writings on Singaporean cinema.     

Amalfitans in the Caliphate of Cordoba – Or Not?

This article concerns itself with the references in Ibn ?ayyān's Muqtabis, Book V, to an Amalfitan presence at the court of Cordoba in the middle of the fourth/tenth century. It will be argued that these isolated references to a precociously early, Italian, mercantile presence in Spain, taken largely at face value by the text's editor and all but neglected in Amalfitan historiography, need to be interrogated to determine whether they fit the fourth/tenth-century context of Amalfitan–Muslim relations, or should be read against their fifth/eleventh-century context as evidence for a golden age of the Caliphate which, by Ibn ?ayyān's day, was already passing into memory and myth. Using contemporary, comparative evidence from Barcelona, the article examines the possibility of communications between Italy and Spain in the earlier period, and concludes that the conditions were probably right for an Amalfitan arrival, but rapidly changed by Ibn ?ayyān's day to exclude them from further contacts.     

The Impact of Receivers’ Nationality and Cultural Orientation on the Effects of Fear Appeals in Health Communication

Participants from the Netherlands (n = 52), China (n = 50), and South Africa (n = 166) either read a self-targeted or a family-targeted fear appeal message about chlamydia. Seven aspects of individual cultural orientation were measured, and six effects of the different messages. Interactions between nationality and target of threat were found on perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, and danger control. Only for perceived susceptibility, a difference in cultural orientation partly explained this interaction. The outcomes add to the doubts about claims in earlier literature about the relevance of receivers’ nationality and cultural orientation for developing a fear appeal message.     

Developing intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms – A study of EFL learners in Taiwan

Internationalisation has accentuated the importance of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) among language learners in higher education in the 21st century. As in the case of Taiwan, universities worldwide have begun to emphasise intercultural ‘literacy’ in language classrooms. Following Byram’ (1997) ICC model, this study adopts an intercultural approach to language classroom in order to investigate the effectiveness of explicit instruction in developing ICC among EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in Taiwan, and to discover how this development is related to the background factors of overseas experience and English proficiency. The accompanying research therefore has two purposes: (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of explicit instruction on EFL learners’ development of ICC by employing both self-assessment and other assessment tools and (2) to investigate the relationship between the development of ICC and two background factors. The results show that (1) explicit instruction is effective in raising students’ development of ICC, especially the knowledge and skills dimensions, and (2) English proficiency and overseas experience are significantly related to better acquisition of ICC.     

Social adjustment and dynamics of segregation in higher education – Scrutinising the role of open-mindedness and empathy

Earlier research has suggested that ethnic minority students have a significantly lower chance of attaining academic success compared to their peers without an ethnic minority background. Numerous research has also illustrated the importance of social capital for being academically successful. In two studies we examine the particular role of interethnic interactions in the social and academic adjustment of students in higher education. We use a Flemish university as a case study. Study 1 (N = 1549) uses mediation analysis, and Study 2 (N = 2479) replicates the first study using SEM (structural equation modelling). We first found that social adjustment is necessary for adjusting academically, and that it has a small, but positive effect on study success. While adjusting socially by interacting with students from other ethnic groups is of little benefit to native Flemish students, the opposite is true for students with a migration background. Furthermore, the more open-minded native students are, the less socially adjusted they tend to be, and they seem to benefit from a more close-minded stance than from open-mindedness in terms of adjusting to the social (and academic) context of a university.     

Five-Avenue Area：a Glimpse of Colonial Architecture in Tianjin（Ⅱ）

<正>The Five Avenues area sees the concentration of old colonial buildings in Tianjin. It is a rectangular historic quarter encompassed by five avenues, includin...     

When is a discovery? The affective dimensions of discovery in music consumption

ABSTRACT

This article explores the concept of music discovery and seeks to provide a definition of the act of discovering music content. Research on music consumption has weakly theorized what the moment of “discovery” consists of, since it has been more preoccupied with debates about the conditions of discoveries, which either highlight the importance of individuals’ social milieus or the enhanced technological agency that they enjoy in the digital age. Drawing on qualitative data about musical experiences, this article frames discoveries as affective responses to music content that occur within individuals’ life narratives and mediate their interpretation and definition of music.     

Is cultural group representation a fair option? Adolescents’ evaluations of forms of decision-making in multicultural Mauritius

Social psychological research on multiculturalism has mostly looked at recognition of differences and much less at equitable participation. The present study investigated adolescents’ fairness judgements of three democratic decision-making procedures (representative democracy, equal group representation, and proportional group representation) and one nondemocratic procedure (cultural group oligarchy) among Hindu (N = 844), Muslim (N = 630) and Creole (N = 310) adolescents in Mauritius. We examined these judgements in two different contexts (i.e. school and national), and in relation to ethnic group identification, age and gender. Results show that representative democracy was viewed as the fairest decision-making procedure and cultural group oligarchy as the most unfair one. The group representation procedures were judged as relatively unfair although there were significant differences by ethnic group, age and gender. Strength of ethnic identification was linked to higher fairness ratings of democratic group representation procedures. The results are discussed in terms of morality, group positions and ideological representations of the Mauritian nation.     

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa on Shedding of Blood in the Delhi Sultanate

Ibn Ba??ū?a's longest sojourn (734–748/1333-ca. 1347) in his famous world travels was in the domains of the Delhi sultanate ruled by Mu?ammad b. Tughluq. He presents a vivid picture of court life in Delhi and a portrait of the sultan, whom Ibn Ba??ū?a describes in contrasting terms of generosity and violence. This essay examines the latter phenomenon, first by briefly noting the contribution of two contrasting studies on the complex nature of violence itself (Part One), followed by Ibn Ba??ū?a's depiction of Ibn Tughluq's accession to power (Part Two), and then his perception of the sultan's use of capital punishment during his reign (Part Three). The last section (Part Four) adds further detail on the sultan's policy and then briefly compares Ibn Ba??ū?a's perception of the sultan's violence with that of another contemporary witness, the historian ?iyā? al-Dīn Baranī. The result suggests that Ibn Ba??ū?a's representation of violence is as nuanced as the phenomenon of violence itself.     

‘Engineering for Boys’: Meccano and the Shaping of a Technical Vision of Boyhood in Twentieth-Century Britain

The construction toy Meccano was created in 1901 by Liverpudlian clerk Frank Hornby and reached its height of popularity during inter-war Britain. By focusing on the development of Meccano throughout the company’s publicity and within oral history testimony, this paper considers how the toy promoted engineering to shape a technical vision of boyhood. Hornby shaped this vision by building upon masculine ideals of self-improvement that were central to Samuel Smiles’ book Self-Help and Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts movement. This vision built upon a past of achievements in engineering, and with it Victorian values such as clean-mindedness and independence, to enable boys to prepare for a technological modern world. Hornby’s own career and influences also provided the model for boys to make a success of their lives through the later establishment of the Meccano Magazine (1916) and guilds (1919) to accompany the toy. Secondly, it shows how this vision has continued to endure through the use of Meccano as a scientific device and in memories of the toy.     

Protective or harmful? Exploring the ambivalent role of social identification as a moderator of intergroup stress in sojourners

Living outside one’s home country may be stressful, and having strong social ties should help deal with this stress. However, social ties may be protective or harmful depending on whether the social group they evoke belongs to the host- or the home country context. The current study examines how social identification with different groups may either buffer or aggravate the negative effects of two stressors (perceived discrimination and symbolic threat) on sojourner adaptation. Two hundred and twenty international students sojourning in nine different countries responded to an online questionnaire. As expected, adaptation was negatively predicted by both stressors. Moreover, high identification with the group of international students attenuated the negative effects of perceived discrimination on psychological adaptation, while home country identification aggravated the negative effects of symbolic threat on sociocultural adaptation.