The power of names in a Chinese Indonesian family’s negotiations of politics,culture, and identities

Based on patterns of naming across four generations in first author Lie’s Chinese Indonesian family, we argue that naming practices are not just a function of personal taste or cultural habit but rather reflect negotiation of larger-scale political and historical conditions. We show that seeming contradictions and puzzles in the names and naming practices in Lie’s family can be explained by the specific social and political challenges faced by members of the family, particularly during the assimilation period of Suharto’s 1966–1998 reign. Both Lie’s family and the Indonesian state have treated names as having a high degree of constitutive power in these negotiations.     

Towards a typology of knowledge-intensive organizations: determinant factors

Phrases such as ‘knowledge-intensive organizations’ (KIOs) and ‘knowledge-intensive firms’ (KIFs), have recently found common usage, describing the distinct activities and attributes of some organizations. But a review of the literature reveals a lack of consensus among scholars and practitioners on the definition of KIOs. What is also absent from the discussion is an agreement on the factors that differentiate KIOs from non-KIOs, and how those factors affect knowledge management (KM) theory and practice. The objective of this paper is to extend a typology of KIOs as a preliminary step to conducting research on these types of organizations. With the typology of KIOs presented in this paper, we hope to provide a basis of distinguishing these organizations from other organizations, and also to allow one to perform comparative organizational analysis. The typology will also help researchers identify which of the organizations are knowledge-intense, and the nature of their knowledge-intensity, so that they help these organizations in designing appropriate KM tools.     

How best to evangelize to nonbelievers: Cultural persuasion in American and Chinese Indonesian evangelical Christian discourse on relational evangelism

In this analysis, I present a cross-cultural comparison of U.S. mainstream evangelical and Chinese Indonesian Evangelical Christian (CIEC) discourse on best ways to implement a popular evangelical Christian practice known as “relational evangelism.” My aim in conducting this comparison is two-fold: (a) to demonstrate how religion and ethnicity intersect in the communicative act of persuasion and (b) to unveil how these persuasive acts reflect differing cultural premises of personhood and relations. As each group attempts to persuade their members to share their faith with non-Christians in their lives, they reveal culture-specific limits of what counts as reasonable action.     

Contextual influences and athlete attitudes to drugs in sport

This article reports on 11 narrative-based case histories which sought to: (1) uncover the attitudes of players and athletes to drugs in sport, and (2) explore contextual factors influencing the formation of those attitudes as informed by social ecology theory. Overall, participants viewed the use of banned performance-enhancing substances as cheating, ‘hard’ non-performance-enhancing recreational or illicit substances as unwise, legal non-performance-enhancing substances as acceptable, and legal performance-enhancing substances as essential. In short, attitudes were sometimes quite libertarian, and contingent upon first, the legality of the substance, and second, its performance impact. Results also indicated that athletes’ attitudes about drugs were fundamentally shaped by sport's culture. Other significant factors included its commercial scale, closely identifiable others, early experiences and critical incidents of players and athletes, and their level of performance.     

Understanding cycle tourism experiences at the Tour Down Under

Sport tourism experiences are subjective and emotional, laden with symbolic meaning. This study explores the experiences of participants who adopted the multiple roles of both an active participant and event spectator, within the parameters of one chosen sporting event. A professional cycling race event, the Tour Down Under in South Australia was chosen for this investigation, and 20 face-to-face individual interviews were conducted with cycle tourists. The three main themes emerging from the data were the interaction of people and temporary spaces on a sport tourism ‘stage’; the co-creation of authentic personal experiences and meanings; and identity reinforcement and the development of a sense of belonging. Consequently, a model for understanding sport event tourism experiences is proposed. The findings suggest that providing tourists with authentic and memorable experiences lies at the heart of what constitutes sport tourism. Whilst the results demonstrate that cycling events provide the individual with a sense of belonging or membership to a wider social group, they also illustrate that there is a continued need for more focused and nuanced approaches towards understanding sport tourism experiences that reflect the ever-increasing diversity and complexity of the interaction between sport, events and tourism.     

Language,Identity, and Emotionality: Exploring the Potential of Language Portraits in Preparing Teachers for Diverse Learners

The present study, framed from a critical and transformative approach to teacher education, aims to investigate whether language portraits (Prasad, 2010)—the mapping of one’s language and cultural make-up on a body template—can help improve student teachers’ self-understanding about language and identities and can foster critical reflection regarding their attitudes towards linguistic diversity. This study looks particularly at how emotional engagement in autobiographical portraits and narratives of language experiences and practices could potentially facilitate personal interrogation of social assumptions and open up possibilities for greater intellectual examination of the sociopolitical dimensions of second-language teaching and learning.