Making American Friends: The Effects of Musical Tastes and English Proficiency on Chinese International Students’ Social Networks in the United States

This study investigated the relationship between Chinese international students’ social networks in the United States and their musical tastes. Based on concept of homophily, this study used a self-reported Social Network Analysis (SNA) survey to examine whether sharing similar musical tastes affected Chinese international students’ relationship, their musical tastes, and music consumption. The results showed that having high musical taste similarity predicted closer relationship between respondents and their alters, and higher likelihood of new music consumption. This study also found that frequent American English-language songs listeners were more likely to have Americans in their social network than less-frequent American English-language songs listeners.     

Exploring Media’s Impact on African American Women’s Healthy Food Habits in Kentucky

This qualitative study employs the uses and gratifications framework to explore the perspective of African American women in Kentucky, specifically urban Louisville and rural Hopkinsville, to understand their use of media as potential sources for gathering information about healthy food habits. Key findings include how the participants used media for instrumental purposes to educate themselves about healthy food habits, and that the specific media personalities were very important to the participants as they decided to make healthier food selections.     

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.     

Impact of Rohingya influx on host community’s relations to places in Bangladesh

This article assesses the ‘relations to place’ of the communities neighboring the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. In doing so, two qualitative data collection methods (FGD and in-depth interview) were applied in the neighboring communities that focused on their place relations (i.e., sense of place, place utility, place attachment, place dependence, place identity, and place obduracy). The results show how the unprecedented influx of Rohingyas negatively influences their relations with the places. Therefore, this paper proposes further studying the complexity of place relations in the host communities, which may contribute to future policy planning concerning Rohingyas in Bangladesh.     

The great upsurge of South Korea’s social movements in the 1960s

Abstract

I intend to show the characteristics and limitations of South Korea’s social movements in the 1960s and examine its formative potentialities in the growth of social movements thereafter. Whereas the 1960s in the Western world is characterized by the surge of ‘new social movements’ and waves of upheaval in the Third World, it would not be the case of South Korea. The ‘subject’ of the movements looks similar, but the context and raised issues proved markedly different. Some old‐school left‐wingers who conceived the strategy of socialistic national liberation survived the emergence of new ‘liberal’ generations in South Korea’s 1960s. The structural crisis of Korea’s anticommunist ruling class caused by the democratization movements and the growth of nationalism at the turn of the 1960s instigated the military coup of 1961, which finally brought Yushin dictatorship in 1972. Although South Korea’s social movements remained isolated from the world through the ‘long 60s’, it may be viewed as a significant part of the division of the ‘liberal consensus’ in the American‐led East‐Asian bloc.     

College Students’ Positive Strategic SNS Involvement and Stress Coping in the United States and China

Based on a self-administered online survey of undergraduate students, this study aimed to explore college students’ social media involvement in relation to their stress coping in the United States and China. A total of 262 survey responses were received from American participants and 265 survey responses were received from Chinese participants. Results indicated that American student users’ positive strategic social networking sites (SNS) involvement to a certain extent assisted in their adaptive coping with stress. However, the positive effect of positive strategic SNS involvement was not found as an adaptive coping strategy among Chinese student respondents. In addition, perceived support from friends on Facebook was the key mediator of positive strategic SNS involvement and adaptive coping for U.S. students.     

Okinawa's ‘postwar’: some observations on the formation of American military bases in the aftermath of terrestrial warfare1

Abstract

By looking at Muhammdiyah's educational programme and examining the discourse of its thinkers concerning modern conditions, this paper explores the ways in which this modernist Islamic movement deals with modernity. The different curricula that Muhammadiyah schools and colleges adopt reflect the tension of its efforts of reconciling religious requirements with those of modernity. The need to prepare students for life in modern times has led Muhammadiyah schools and universities to emphasize the teaching of modern general knowledge and skills, often at the expense of religious subjects. The difficulties of reconciling Islam and modern science, as well as making Islam remain a viable system of values in the midst of industrialization, however, has become a source of energy for Muhammadiyah thinkers to keep searching for new formulations. The fact that the public sphere seems to need an even greater dosage of infusion of Islamic values as Indonesia industrializes and modernizes itself does not discourage them. Their debate indicates a critical understanding of modernity and the challenges and opportunities it offers Muhammadiyah in 21st century Indonesia. Their disagreements show unresolved difficulties as to how modernism and Islam can be fused. They also show, however, a confidence that Islam can be a basis to think of ways of how to confront and shape modernity in Islamic terms.     

The history of the unspeakable: Shimokawa Masaharu’s The forgotten history of evacuation

ABSTRACT

Histories of wartime Japan often focus on the Japanese home islands after Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on 15 August 1945. Japanese citizens living in Korea, Manchuria, and elsewhere in the far-flung Japanese Empire are usually left out of the historiographical record. In a new book about the evacuees—hikiagesha—from the defunct Empire, Shimokawa Masaharu presents a vivid, harrowing portrait of the suffering of those who had to make their way back to Japan after the end of the Greater East Asia War. In particular, Shimokawa focuses on Izumi Sei’ichi, who established a sanatorium and abortuary in Fukuoka for women who had been raped by enemy soldiers.     

The Impact of an Erasmus Placement in Students’ Perception of their Intercultural Communicative Competence

Pre- and post-questionnaires answered by UK Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and Spain’s University of Salamanca (USAL) students on their placement abroad support a comparative analysis of its impact on their intercultural communicative competence, comprising the awareness, attitude, skills and knowledge dimensions. NTU students started their placements with better results in them all. Yet, while both groups completed their stay with a similarly increased awareness, the knowledge and skills of the USAL group matched the results of NTU students and, whereas the scores of the attitude dimension towards the host country of NTU students did not increase significantly, those of USAL students decreased.     

The Influence of Social Norms on Korean Wives’ Intention to Talk with Their Husbands about the Equal Division of Housework

Currently, Korean males see the equal division of housework more positively than in the past. However, a large gap still exists between the attitude and the actual behaviour of the equal amount of housework. Interpersonal communication can be used to reduce this gap. The theory of planned behaviour and social norms approach are the theoretical frameworks that guide the study. The purpose of the study is to examine how social norms are influencing Korean wives’ intention to talk to their husbands about the equal division of housework.     

Two Codes for Remedying Problematic Situations: Japanese and English Speakers’ Views of Explanations and Apologies in the United States

This study describes speech codes used by Japanese and English speakers in remedying problematic situations. By analyzing in-depth interviews, the study reveals the Japanese-speaking participants’ use of a code in which offering detailed explanations can be a way to deny having caused another person discomfort, thus being incompatible with their meaning of “apology.” The English-speaking participants used a code in which offering and listening to explanations is a way to show that they care about the relationship and to seek forgiveness. The analysis illustrates how the participants used these codes as a resource to draw a boundary between two speech communities.     

The influence of preschool rural migrant composition on rural migrant children’s early development in China

A multilevel modeling approach was employed to investigate the relationship between preschool rural migrant composition and the pre-academic and behavioral outcomes of young rural migrant children with different durations of residence in urban China. This study represents a unique contribution because (1) few studies have focused on young Chinese rural migrant children and examined the influence of preschool rural migrant composition on their academic skills and behaviors, (2) few researchers in China have used a continuous (i.e., percentage of rural migrants in school) as opposed to a binary (i.e., mixed school versus rural migrant school) indicator for school rural migrant composition, and (3) few investigations have distinguished groups of rural migrant children by the duration of urban residence (i.e., short-duration (SD) rural migrant children versus long-duration (LD) rural migrant children). Based on data of 1213 Chinese children (2.7–6.17 years of age) and their parents and teachers from 81 urban preschools in Beijing, we found that SD rural migrants (≦2.5 years) were rated significantly lower in oral language and numeracy skills and that LD rural migrants (>2.5 years) were rated as having significantly more behavioral problems than their urban counterparts after controlling for the children’s gender, age, family socioeconomic status (SES) and preschool SES. Cross-level interactions indicated that SD rural migrant children in preschools with proportionally more rural migrant peers fared better in terms of oral language skills, and LD rural migrant children had fewer behavioral problems when there were more rural migrant peers in their preschools, whereas urban children performed worse in terms of oral language skills and displayed more behavioral problems in preschools with a high rural migrant composition. These findings provide insights into improving the early development and adaptations of rural migrant children.     

“Oh,I’m Here!”: Social Media’s Impact on the Cross-cultural Adaptation of Students Studying Abroad

This study investigates the perceptions and interpretations of social media and online communication by students engaged in study abroad programs. In-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed with 23 American and international students who completed or were engaged in a study abroad program. Results suggest that online communication enhanced the students’ experience, providing help with sociocultural skills, informational needs, relational bonds, and psychological well-being. Different platforms were preferred when communicating with friends versus family and intimates. Online communication between co-nationals from the student’s home country buffered both the sojourning student’s acculturative stress, and the stress and concern of distant family members.     

The Left and Indonesia’s 1960s: the politics of remembering and forgetting

Abstract

This article examines a pivotal decade in the recent history of Indonesian society: the 1960s. It examines the context within which the Left came to be decisively, and violently, defeated as a social and political force. It then studies the consequences of this defeat for Indonesia’s subsequent historical trajectory. The article also suggests that history‐writing anywhere is nothing less than the politics of remembering (and forgetting). What is at stake in these exercises is ultimately tied up with the legitimacy of entire social orders and systems of power. Thus, in Indonesia, the trauma of 1965 and its aftermath banished, from the collective memory of Indonesians, the political role of the Left – except in the form that runs through New Order‐era discourse on Indonesian communism. For Indonesians born or raised after 1965, the ‘communist treason’ became, arguably, the most critical element of the grand narrative of post‐colonial Indonesian history, which was so important in legitimising New Order authoritarianism. The current inability of Indonesian society and its elites to acknowledge and confront the reality of the horrors of the 1960s might prove to be a major impediment to a more genuine and substantive democratisation process.     

What it means to be “one of us”: Discourses of national identity in the United States

In recent years, the transnational movement of people has resulted in increasing tension and debates about national identity. The present research utilized a discourse analytic approach to examine accounts of national identity in the U.S. among native-born U.S. residents, Mexicans living in Mexico, and Mexicans living in the U.S. Our analysis focused on two sets of diverging accounts of national identity. A first set involved participants' explanations of national identity as natural/essential, “felt”, or conditional, which served to either constrain how “American” immigrants could be or allowed for a more inclusive definition of national identity. A second set of accounts involved participants theorizing the national polity as a multicultural or monocultural space which functioned to construct national boundaries as permeable or reinforced (White) American dominance. These patterns of talk emerged across all interviews, although U.S. participants attended to more flexible and dilemmatic (e.g. inclusionary and exclusionary) accounts of national identity. We discuss the implications for the complexity of national identity.     

Does the term matter? The labeling effect on the perception of ethnic minorities: The case of The Romani in Serbia

Empirical research on the impact of linguistic labels on social perceptions is scarce, especially in the context of ethnic groups. Across three studies (N = 1185), we investigated the impact of labels on perceptions of the Romani ethnic group by non-Romani participants in Serbia. In Study 1 (N = 244), we found some evidence that the Romani elicit more positive perceptions (more sociable and competent) when labeled with the neutral (vs. derogatory) term. In two follow-up studies, we focused on investigating potential mechanisms. In Study 2, we tested whether positive perceptions emerged via perceived higher status, while in Study 3 we focused on the motivation to respond without prejudice and sensitivity to hate speech. Study 2 (N = 467) replicated the labeling effect showing that Romani were perceived more positively (more sociable and moral) when labeled with the neutral term. However, we found no support for perceived group status as a mechanism. Study 3 (N = 474) did not corroborate the labeling effect but found the higher external motivation to respond without prejudice (potential mechanism). Meta-analytic effects showed that Romani were perceived as more moral, sociable, and competent when the neutral term was used. These effects were to some extent moderated by ideology as they existed only for right-wing individuals. We conclude that the effect is much smaller than the effects in previous comparable studies.