文化批评在当代还有用武之地吗?

论文简要分析了当前彻底商业化的社会里从事文化批评所面临的困境,商品拜物教、形象崇拜愈演愈烈,人文领域危机四伏;认为通过精神分析批评和马克思主义批评的结合,可以揭示资本主义社会中被压制和歪曲的文化因素;论文用“后意识形态共生”的理论对中国电影《英雄》作了解读;最后的结论是文化批评在当代仍有存在的价值。     

宗教旅游异化论析

我国宗教旅游发展极为迅速,但同时也存在较为严重的旅游异化问题。研究发现,我国宗教旅游异化现象突出表现在旅游开发行为异化、宗教文化商品化和庸俗化、封建迷信泛滥以及旅游者消费行为异化等方面,严重阻碍了我国宗教旅游的可持续发展。宗教旅游异化根源于旅游趋利性与宗教文化出世性的固有矛盾以及宗教文化世俗化、实用主义的宗教观与旅游发展观的推动,同时还受到旅游开发与管理模式、旅游者消费行为的影响。我国宗教旅游可持续发展必须坚持科学的旅游发展观,加强政府监管、游客教育和社区参与,并构建宗教旅游发展的利益相关者利益协调机制。     

Skills for sale: what is being commodified in higher education?

‘Commodification’ is a sociological term that has become widely adopted as part of the higher education lexicon. It has been argued that an increased emphasis on the commercial relevance of university courses is anathema to the values of the academy, resulting from the widespread adoption of neo‐liberal policies towards education. This article will discuss the use of the word commodification in this context, with particular emphasis on its economic roots. It will identify three models of commodification derived from the literature and use these to attempt an understanding of what it is that universities are selling. Finally, the article will examine the use of the term commodification within the broader debate about the purpose of higher education.     

Remaking Chinese identity: hegemonic struggles over national education in post‐colonial Hong Kong

Following the resumption of Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong Government has introduced a new national education project which aims at building nationalism and patriotism. With an active involvement of the state and civil society in promoting national education in recent years, there have been certain drastic changes in the school system—reforms in the curriculum with more weight to national identity and China’s topics, more nationalistic or patriotic extra‐curricular activities and rituals, and more training for teachers to conduct national education. Informed by a Gramscian notion of hegemony, this paper analyses the advent of and struggles over the national education policy and illustrates the collaboration and contests among various groups in the nation‐building project—with the controversies over display of the national flag and liberal studies curriculum as examples.     

The seduction of common sense: how the Right has framed the debate on America's schools

Abstract

Teachers in England have always been watched; only more recently have they been surveilled, with senior leaders, peers, students and stakeholders all collecting performance data. Yet surveillance in schools and colleges increasingly relies on watching the self, with teachers voluntarily participating in their own surveillance, making their practice visible for easy consumption by interested parties. This article builds on previous work on the surveillance of teachers to argue that this ‘conspicuous practice’ represents a convergence of surveillance and consumerism, with teachers being recreated as commodities and their own marketing agent, embodying the entrepreneurial self to maximise employability. Through social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn to exploiting open plan learning spaces, teachers engage in conspicuous practice for three main reasons: from fear, to avoid sanction; as a result of acculturation into commodified environments; as a means of routine resistance, employing the dramaturgical self for personal gain, to avoid work or re-appropriate professionalism.     

Confucian Ethics on the Commercial Use of Human Bodies and Body Parts: Yi (Righteousness) or/and Li (Profit)?

In China as elsewhere in the world, human bodies and body parts have long been used for a wide range of medical and non-medical purposes. In recent decades, China has played a considerable role in some of the public exhibitions of plastinated bodies and body parts, and the commercial trade in organ donations. These contemporary developments have raised numerous challenging ethical and governance questions. In spite of the growing role of China in these, there have been few studies devoted to Chinese ethical thinking that might govern its policies on the use of human bodies and body parts, and in particular on the issue of commercialization. The present study is an attempt to bridge this gap, and concludes that Confucian thinking stresses the primacy of righteousness over profits and utilities. This conclusion is reached directly by drawing on Confucian ethical responses to the peculiar practice of using human body parts, such as placenta and flesh, as drugs in traditional Chinese medicine in imperial China and what has been called “yili zhibian,” the major Confucian discourse on yi (righteousness or justice) and li (profit or interest) in its long history. The principle of prioritizing righteousness over profit leads to a general moral opposition to the commodification of human bodies and body parts. While Confucianism may not place an absolute prohibition on any such use, it does require that any commercial uses are made subject to the fundamental moral principles, such as righteousness, as well as adequate ethical governance procedures.     

Learning the `New, New Thing': On the role of path dependency in university structures

In current debates over thefuture of core institutions in a `knowledgesociety', universities figure most prominently. It seemsclear that they are crucial nodes in theoverall knowledge producing system, which, however,need to be repositioned and reformed.Therefore, the learning capacities ofuniversities are of central relevance. But howdo universities adapt to new challenges? Thecentral claim of the paper is that the rapidchange of pace at the level of higher educationdiscourse is hardly met at the level ofuniversities. Here, one has to take the path-dependentcharacter of their structures, practices andidentity concepts into account. Therefore, learning the`new, new thing' is a more cumbersomeprocess than might be expected at first sight.Empirical evidence for this claim is drawn fromthe institutionalization of technology transferoffices at German universities. Based on thesefindings, further general policy and researchperspectives on the role of path dependency inuniversity structures are discussed at the endof this paper.     

The Ignorance Economy 1

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the concept of ignorance. The article employs ignorance and related writings on the lack of knowledge and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), education, and on the state of being ignorant with the aim of expounding an ignorant approach to the critique of the knowledge economy. This perspective necessitates a discussion of those subjects and objects apparently lacking in knowledge in addition to deliberations on the nature of new ICTs. Various studies by educators, economists, and management theorists are introduced and examined as instances of an ignorant standpoint on the knowledge economy. The authors argue and find that whilst an ignorant viewpoint regarding the knowledge economy might initially appear as one that is itself founded on a state of ignorance, a deeper investigation reveals its usefulness when considering the knowledge economy. Thus, the value of the article is that it introduces the concept of the ignorance economy and considers it from an original standpoint in the light of ongoing debates over the knowledge economy.     

Access to Public-Sector Information in Europe: Policy,Rights, and Obligations

The article reviews the debates and policies on access to public-sector information (PSI) in Europe in relation to the contests between policies of open access, rights of access to PSI by citizens and business, and the assessment of the cost benefits of PSI to the economy and society. The political dimension of these debates within the European Union is highlighted to demonstrate the complexities of the governance of information within a pan-European regulatory framework.