科技、商业、政治的博弈

科技、商业和政治是社会的三种强大驱动力。三者的博奔影响了人类社会的发展进程。历史地考察三者的关系将会发现它们的作用是不同的。政治力量一直主导着社会的发展;商业在不同时期、不同国家和地区扮演不同的角色,是政治力量的有益补充;科技只是到了近代才逐渐崭露头角,并成长为一支不容忽视的力量。科技、商业和政治的博弈决定着未来社会的领导权。未来社会中,纯粹的政治家将不复存在;科学家群体将成为社会的领导者;科学家将与商业领袖结为联盟共同引导社会发展;社会的转变将主要取决于科技文明的发展高度。     

Xu Beihong and the New China: thoughts centered on the painting At the World Peace Congress

This essay analyses a politically tinged painting by Xu Beihong (1895–1953), a representative modern Chinese painter. He composed the work in 1949, just before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, or the New China. In this article’s discussion of the perplexing work, the author attempts to unveil Xu’s understanding of revolution and of the relationship between art and politics, in relation to his difficulties in exploring and practicing art in the early Republic period (1912–1949). Based on this, the author discusses the painter’s mindset in the social and political context of the New China. She also tries to reveal that Xu’s art practices were restrained by the realities he was in – a crucial point to understanding his achievements and predicaments. As an artist who resisted the western modernism in the course of modernization, and who idealistically pursued the highest good and beauty through “realist” approaches and historical expressions, Xu’s predicaments interestingly reflect the complicated relationship between art and revolution in China’s road to modernization, and provide a foundation for further explorations into the core issues and the particularity of modern Chinese paintings.     

新时期高校思想政治工作的定位与思考

新时期高校思想政治工作在认识、内容、形式与方法等方面存在着问题。加强和改进思想政治工作,是贯彻党的教育方针、实践“三个代表”重要思想、落实科学发展观、促进学生全面成长的根本要求,重在推进工作观念、工作内容、工作方法、工作载体和工作氛围创新。     

Subjective well-being in cultural advocacy: a politics of research between the market and the academy

This paper responds to a trend of contracting out subjective well-being econometrics to demonstrate social return on investment (SROI) for evidence-based policy-making. We discuss an evolving ecology of ‘external’ research taking place ‘between’ the academy and commercial consultancy. We then contextualise this as waves of research methodologies and consultancy for the cultural sector. The new model of ‘external between’ consultancy research for policy is not only placed between the University and the market, but also facilitates discourse between policy sectors, government, the media and the academy. Specifically, it enables seductive but selective arguments for advocacy that claim authority through academic affiliation, yet are not evaluated for robustness. To critically engage with an emergent form of what Stone calls ‘causal stories’, we replicate a publicly funded externally commissioned SROI model that argues for the value of cultural activities to well-being. We find that the author’s operationalisation of participation and well-being are crucial, yet their representation of the relationship problematic, and their estimates questionable. This case study ‘re-performs’ econometric modelling national-level survey data for the cultural sector to reveal practices that create norms of expertise for policy-making that are not rigorous. We conclude that fluid claims to authority allow experimental econometric models and measures to perform across the cultural economy as if ratified. This new model of advocacy research requires closer academic consideration given the changing research funding structures and recent attention to expertise and the contracting out of public services.     

Gender equality in the Olympic Movement: not a simple question,not a simple answer

This article explores the strategies followed by the International Olympic Committee for the achievement of gender equality. It is argued that this international body can go beyond simply adopting an equality of opportunities approach to gender equality. It suggests which other strategies can be incorporated for which it draws on the different ways of understanding gender equality in gender political theory.     

The Evolution and Cultural Characteristics of Korean Professional Soccer

Abstract

Since it was introduced in the late nineteenth century, soccer has been one of the cultural driving forces for Koreans in overcoming national hardships during the dark ages marked by imperial occupations, war, and division during the modern era. This study was carried out to investigate the cultural backgrounds and characteristics due to which soccer has entered an era of professionalization under the name of the Super League. Korean professional soccer started in 1983 under the name of the Super League, not by popular demand but by from political backgrounds. The sport was off to a bad start, and this became an inherent limitation and the reason Korean professional soccer did not flourish. In addition, although Korean professional soccer had grown rapidly in terms of quantity based on a consistent increase in professional teams and the introduction of advanced systems, the cultural limitations of an incomplete local franchise system and a lack of public attention were revealed. Korean professional soccer has shown a variety of sociocultural limits while rapidly developing in its short history. Nevertheless, having a short history indicates the system is young, which means it has the opportunity to mature. Korean professional soccer has sufficient potential and it can be directed toward a brighter future.     

The Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm and the Turkmen of the Byzantine frontier, 1206–1279*

This article examines the frontier between the Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm and its Byzantine neighbours in the thirteenth century, concentrating on the place of these frontier districts within the Seljuk state. Scholarship on the frontier, influenced by the ideas of Paul Wittek, has seen it as something of a “no man's land”, politically, economically, culturally and religiously distinct from the urban heartland of the Seljuk sultanate in central Anatolia, dominated by the nomadic Turks, the Turkmen, who operated largely beyond sultanic control. It is often thought that the Seljuk and Greek sides of the border shared more in common with each other than they did with the states of which they formed a part. In contrast, this article argues that in fact the western frontier regions were closely integrated into the Seljuk sultanate. Furthermore, with the Mongol domination of the Seljuk sultanate in the second half of the thirteenth century, the Seljuk and Mongol elites became increasingly involved in this frontier region, where some of the leading figures of the sultanate had estates and endowments.     

The political skill and will of expatriates in acculturating to the politics of an organization in a new culture

This paper explores and conceptualizes the process through which expatriates acculturate to the politics of an organization in a new and dominant culture that differs from their origin culture. In addition to an overview of acculturation, we review research on the emergence and perception of political context in organizations, and on political skill and political will. We posit that politically-relevant situational characteristics in organizations and work interact with national culture to affect the intensity with which expatriates perceive politics in their organization. Based on their political skill (operationalized as high versus low) and their political will (operationalized in terms of concern for self versus concern for others), we describe the different political behavior expatriates will use as a means of acculturating to their political context and the effects those strategies have on their acculturative stress and individual effectiveness in the organization.     

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.     

Young precariat at the forefront: anti-nuclear rallies in post-Fukushima Japan

Japan suffered a catastrophic disaster on March 11, 2011. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear radiation leakage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant devastated the northeastern part of the country and threatened the entire country and beyond with the risk of radiation. Nowadays, movements against nuclear power plants are emerging across the country. The crisis indeed provides a chance for Japan to forge a new energy policy. However, the activists' claims are not narrowly limited to such energy issues. They call for a fundamentally fairer society and propose alternative ways of life, regarding nuclear power plants as symbols supporting the economic development that Japan enjoyed over the post-Second World War period. As an ethnography, this paper documents the 60,000-citizen Goodbye Nuclear Power Plants (Sayonara Genpatsu) rally that mobilized in central Tokyo on September 19, 2011, as well as the Occupy Tokyo action on October 15, 2011 Occupy Tokyo オキュパイ東京. 2011. “Occupy Tokyo, the Rally and Demonstration in Shinjuku” “オキュパイ東京新宿の集会とデモ.” YouTube video, 9:19, from a demonstration recorded on October 15 and posted on October 17, done by Shinya Adachi. http://youtube/FoKkhRAkwJU  [Google Scholar], presenting the real voices of the rally participants against nuclear power. In particular, I will focus on the voices of young precariat participants, the major actors in the anti-nuclear rally who were generated from and revealed as the negative result of Japan's neoliberal economic policy, held since the 2000s. Further, I argue that their mounting anger might be a trigger for new post-neoliberal politics in post-Fukushima Japan.