The Byzantines and Saladin: Some Further Arguments

This is the second of two articles by the same author arguing against the thesis that there was a conspiracy between the Byzantine emperors and Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, against the crusader states and the Third Crusade in the 1180s. While the focus of the first article was primarily on the Latin sources, the present study shifts the focus to the Arabic primary material, hitherto largely neglected or inadequately treated by modern historians. Through a critical re-examination and re-interpretation of the Arabic sources, backed by the introduction and discussion of new Latin material when necessary, this article presents expanded arguments on the relations between the Byzantine Empire, the Sultanate of Konya and Saladin in the 1180s. The conclusions lend further support to the view that the Byzantine rulers and Saladin never concluded an alliance against the Latin settlers of Outremer and the Third Crusade.     

Empathy towards people of different race and ethnicity: Further empirical evidence for the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy

The present study examined the generalizability of the factor pattern, structural parameters, and latent structure of a multidimensional hierarchical model of ethnocultural empathy in males and females. The Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) (Wang et al., 2003) was administered to a sample of 610 Italian undergraduates to examine the generalizability and reliability of its factor structure across gender, the psychometric properties and the validity of the scale. Two models were tested through multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA): a confirmatory factor-analytic model that hypothesized a multidimensional model of ethnocultural empathy; and a structural equation model that proposed a multidimensional, hierarchical structure with global ethnocultural empathy as a superordinate construct that explained the covariances among the subdomains of the SEE. Both models satisfied multiple criteria for goodness-of-fit with the data. Full metric invariance of factor loadings and factor covariances, and partial invariance of error variances across gender for the four-factors model were supported. Scale reliability was also satisfactory, showing good internal consistency. As regard scale validity, evidence was found for a positive moderate association with a measure of general empathy and a negative high association with a measure of prejudice. Implications are discussed.     

The state question in Chinese popular cultural studies

Abstract

This note is an attempt to trace the change and continuity of leftist political policies, and to analyse why the Left generally, especially the Malay Left, has not been successful in Malaysian politics. It questions why the Malaysian Left was stafter the Second World War but slowly dissipated until it is almost crippled now. Other than examining the formation and the roles of the Malaysian Left and their struggles for independence, this note also sorts out the factors of the unsuccessful struggles to get wide Malay support for the Malay-dominated Malay Nationalist Party of Malaya (PKMM) and the Chinese-dominated Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).     

A true original

Abstract

This study analyzes Japanese and Korean ethno-national (minzoku-kokumin) education in postwar Japan. During a period of political unrest in Japan (1945–1955), some of the Korean residents and Japanese worked together to overcome the culture of Imperial Japan and its assimilative education. They also regarded themselves as people colonized by the United States, and pursued a political-cultural movement for their liberation and independence from American imperialism. The Koreans in Japan rejected compulsory education in the Japanese language. As a result, since 1956, Korean schools (Chōsengakkō), funded and supported by North Korea, were founded all across Japan. Their ethno-national education was in fact incorporated into North Korean politics, and has been considered in many studies as having overcome Japanese assimilation and ethnic inequalities. Such a view was a result of many academic Zainichi Korean studies that come from an “insider's perspective” to criticize Japanese colonialism and discrimination. In order to go beyond this insider's view, I focus on the political alliance between Zainichi Koreans and the Japanese people in their pursuit of ethno-national education. Since 2010, the Japanese state funding for Korean schools has become a major controversy in Japan. By tracing the historical background, this article intends to explain why this political issue has arisen. The ultimate purpose of this article is to suggest an ethical perspective to resolve the current political conflict regarding Korean schools in Japan.     

Seoul and the time in motion: urban form and political consciousness

Abstract

This paper explores the political effects of the cognitive change in the visual environment of colonial Seoul. It asks how the new urban imagery was perceived by the Korean population. It analyzes the ways in which they experienced urban forms, techniques of advertisement and urban infrastructure such as street‐cars and trains. It argues that the engagement of people with mobility, urban symbols and spectacles in the colonial city had stimulated different ways of seeing and thinking about who they were and what they had become, a new collective identity that is neither a subject of the Chos[obreve]n dynasty nor the Japanese colonial state. This paper demonstrates that colonial Seoul represented not only the technique of Japanese colonial subjugation but also generated a new grammar for imagining new identity and difference. The urban environment of the colonial city reflects not entirely a strategy of the colonizer but a tactic of the colonized in appropriating the different meanings of new social life, which was brought by, but not exclusively under, the control of colonial space and time.     

Rethinking the Rural Idyll

ABSTRACT

This article traces the profound social repercussions that resulted from the mass enlistment of British office workers into the armed forces during the First World War. Drawing heavily upon fictionalized autobiographies of the period, my study examines the various stages of the clerk's experience of the conflict and argues that the confidence gained during warfare by surviving office workers fundamentally shaped a more democratic postwar society. This change is evidenced, I argue, in the profile of the fictional clerk that emerges in British literature after 1918.     

Book Reviews

During the 40-odd years that the Alsatian-born, French-trained artist Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg lived in Britain, he became a triple celebrity. A decade after his migration to Britain in 1771 his achievements as a picturesque landscape artist were celebrated in election to the Royal Academy. During the same period he also worked for David Garrick at Drury Lane theatre as the highest-paid scenographer in Britain. Critics hailed him as a genius for revolutionizing Britain's dull staging traditions along the spectacular and naturalistic lines of France's Giovanni Servandoni. Finally, as the creator in 1781–82 of a pioneering commercial moving picture show, the Eidophusikon, he was acclaimed by leading arbiters of artistic taste such as Reynolds and Gainsborough. Well-heeled West End crowds flocked to performances, and the Eidophusikon was widely imitated in Europe, the United States, and the British colonies.

Yet de Loutherbourg's professional and social standing remained surprisingly fragile. At periodic intervals he was accused publicly of charlatanry, or its British equivalent, quackery. This damaging smear surfaced on each of the three occasions that de Loutherbourg shifted career direction. And though he managed to redeem himself on each occasion, it was only by making serious artistic and professional compromises. In this sense, the spectre of quackery haunted and shaped Philippe de Loutherbourg's British career, making him a fascinating test-case of quackery's shifting valencies at the dawn of the modern industrial age.     

The Cultural Attitudes Towards Cooperative Learning: What Proverbs Can Offer

ABSTRACT

Cooperative Learning (CL) is acclaimed for its effectiveness, but is not widely used, partly because the role of culture in its implementation is overlooked. To fill this gap and to introduce an alternative methodology for the study of culture, this interdisciplinary paper examines Iranian proverbs to see how Iranians' culture feels about group work and what psychosocial factors contribute to their attitudes. The findings suggest Iranians’ culture, notwithstanding its potentiality for cooperation, is relatively non-cooperative. This ambivalence was observed to originate culturally from distrust, egoism, antipathy towards reciprocal altruism, and diffusion of responsibility. These findings substantiate the functionality of this alternative methodology.     

Do EFL Teachers ‘Critically’ Engage in Cultural Awareness? A Mixed-Method Investigation

ABSTRACT

This study explored 150 EFL teachers’ perceptions of critical cultural awareness (CCA) considering their teaching context, academic degree, and professional development programs. The participants all completed the CCA questionnaire, fifteen of whom also sat a semi-structured qualitative interview. Our findings showed, a) EFL teachers’ perceptions of CCA located at a medium level, b) the PhD participants showed significantly higher engagement in CCA than their BA and MA counterparts, c) private language institute teachers reported higher levels of CCA than their state-run school counterparts and d) local professional development programs did not emphasize culture teaching in general and CCA in particular.