|
|
|
Sort Order |
|
|
|
Items / Page
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
178174
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The accelerating speed of economic, social, and cultural reforms in the past three decades in mainland China has created an atmosphere of moral uncertainty that encouraged many people to search for happiness by turning inwards. Shen xin ling (身心灵, translated as Body-Heart-Soul) fever refers to the growing interest among Chinese urbanites in various seminars that creatively transform the guiding principles of the Euro-American New Age movement, incorporating China into transnational networks of alternative spiritualities. This anthropological investigation into the shen xin ling milieu locates its genealogy in the progression of several post-Maoist self-cultivation fevers, most notably the recent ‘psycho-boom’. It focuses on Chinese New Agers’ practices of emotional release, conceptualizing them as ‘psy-venting’ spaces where the emotions that could result in resentment at those who perpetuate structural inequalities are released, dispersed, and channelled back to the individual. In so doing, these affective flows become carriers for Chinese state discourses related to therapeutic governing. This process is characterized by tensions as shen xin ling practitioners find themselves positioned at the intersections of state-endorsed discourses on consumerism, entrepreneurialism, the re-traditionalization of gender roles, and anxieties over multilevel marketing schemes and accusations of ‘evil cult’.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
147429
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The Chinese government has allowed collective village forest land to pass into individualized ownership. The purpose was to alleviate rural poverty and stimulate investment in forests. Using data collected from 288 villages, in eight provinces, over three years, this paper measures the effect of the individualization on one aspect of forest investment, forestation. Because villages voted on the reform, we identify the causal effect of the reform by an instrumental variable estimator based on the countywide decision to offer the reform package. We find an increase in forestation of 7.68% of forest land in the year of the reform.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
121209
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The article explores how people in Kunming have interpreted and acted upon food-related environmental health threats, particularly within the contexts of everyday food shopping. It is argued that an increasingly intensified, delocalized food supply system and a state-led emphasis on individual responsibility and choice have produced growing uncertainties about food. However, the article takes issue with the claim that new forms of risk and institutional changes have produced "individualized" responses, arguing that many of the practices Kunmingers have developed to handle food-related risks and their understandings of what constitutes "safe" food have been developed within the frameworks of family ties and regional cuisine. Further, shoppers and purveyors of food have forged new ties of trust and re-emphasized connections between people, food and place. Nevertheless, concerns about the food supply are a source of discontent which is feeding into wider ambivalences towards modernization. This is particularly acute among the economically disadvantaged.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
152475
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article offers an introduction to the special issue. It presents the arguments why a political anthropological perspective can be particularly helpful to understand the connected political and cultural challenges and opportunities posed by the situation of ethnic and religious minorities. The article concisely introduces the major anthropological concepts used, including liminality, trickster, imitation, and schismogenesis; concepts that are used together with approaches of historical sociology and genealogy, especially concerning the rise and fall of empires, and their lasting impact. The suggested conceptual framework is particularly helpful for understanding how marginal places can become liminal, appearing suddenly at the center of political attention. The article also shows the manner in which minority existence can problematize the depersonalizing tendencies of modern globalization.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
121204
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
After more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental public health crisis. In this article, I examine pollution in the rural industrial sector and its implications for community health. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in an industrial township in rural Sichuan, including interviews with government officials, environmental regulators, industrial workers and local residents, I explore how community members understand the linkages between air and water pollution from nearby factories and their health and well-being. The article has two main goals. The first is to examine the various ways in which uncertainty about pollution sources, about the severity of pollution levels and about the links between pollution and human health shapes villagers' experiences of pollution on a day-to-day basis. The second goal is to examine the rising trend of "individualization" taking place in China today and explore how this process is related to people's experiences of toxic exposure. I consider the implications of this trend for how social scientists should approach the study of environmental illness in contemporary China.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 6 |
ID:
119194
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
In Chinese public discourse, it has almost become a truism that the generation born after the mid-1980s is more selfish, individualistic, and materialistic than previous generations. Consequently, an important task for public moral education is to correct this behaviour and to generate compassion for others beyond the family, to strengthen nationalist sentiments and to imbue a sense of duty to the greater community. Schools provide the Chinese government with a key opportunity to achieve this. Based on fieldwork in a rural high school in China, this article demonstrates how the official visions of the learned individual portrayed in textbooks collide with a more powerful ideology of individualism that is implicitly promoted through activities within the school, and is reflective of an ongoing process of individualization, not only in Chinese society, but also within state institutions, such as the school.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 7 |
ID:
176481
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The emergence of the individual is one of the most profound and significant evolutions of Chinese society that has accompanied economic reforms since the late 1970s. Existing research frequently uses a dual concept of ‘individualist’ versus ‘collectivist’ societies to approach the lives of urban Chinese. In the case of same‐sex attracted persons, as they often hide their sexual orientation in most of their social life and must respect social norms of filial piety and marriage, it is easy to conclude that today's urban China continues to be primarily a ‘collectivist’ society where the individual remains fragile. Using a long‐term ethnography of same‐sex attracted migrant men who gather in a public park to create a community of friends and invent some shared cultural and social traits, this paper proposes to deepen the analysis by borrowing the distinction between three different attitudes towards individualism developed by Michel Foucault. It will argue that these men actively construct specific spaces where they can live a private life, as well as experiment and explore their self. Therefore, these men display a more complex articulation between some aspects of a ‘collectivist’ ethos and the strengthening of individual traits.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 8 |
ID:
107910
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2011.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Since the beginning of the 1980s Mizrachi theatre practitioners have confronted the problem of community segregation and the ways in which Mizrachi characters are represented. Gabriel Ben-Simchon and Sammy Michael represent two approaches chosen by playwrights and story-tellers of eastern origins (from Arab countries) in their confrontation with the changes that have taken place among their groups and with the stereotyping of these groups. These two approaches are: anti-stereotyping and specific individualization. Michael has chosen a detailed and intrusive characterization, and his characters feature elements of: beauty, ugliness and, mainly, humanity. In contrast, Ben-Simchon, in his plays and stories, has chosen the anti-stereotype as a paradigm that distances his Moroccan-Jewish characters from reality and sends them soaring into a legendary world. Both these playwrights are fully integrated into Israeli society and culture. They have separated from the past (willingly, or nostalgically), but have not shaken off their Arabic cultural links and preach for a shared future by Jews and Arabs in a modern state.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 9 |
ID:
124972
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Contemporary interpretations of youth transitions have been extensively influenced by sociological preoccupations with individualisation. Hence youth researchers have been inclined to present homogeneous and synchronised portraits of contemporary youth, skipping the crucial underlying structural features that still persist and sustain differential transitions into adulthood. Drawing on in-depth interviews with young people in Kashmir (North India), this article uses Bourdieu's conceptualisation of interdependent forms of capital to support the proposition that making rational choices and decisions, which does constitute individualisation, also still depends on one's class position.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|