1,721,088 research outputs found
Becoming Chinese: Ethnic Chinese-Venezuelan Education Migrants and the Construction of Chineseness
No full textAs China transforms into a space of immigration rather than emigration, second-generation students from Venezuela return to the country in order to study. This student migration is primarily education-centered, as it involves not just formalized education, but additionally, informal education via socialization in the ancestral hometown of Enping with extended family members and the community at large. The core areas of education, language, fashion, and food are the forums through which identity is expressed, and by assessing these areas of life, an understanding of the multiple layers of Chineseness is developed. Return migration to China itself is multi-layered, and understanding the specificity of this type of migration projects a future in which the social fabric of Chineseness evolves. Second-generation and first-generation emigrants now live in a social system in which they are truly transnational, with the concurrent development of Chinese global education and trade allowing for such a migration to occur. The identity-development and connection with Chineseness occurs simultaneously within the larger schemes of mobility and transnationalism both globally and within the Chinese community. Thus the sense of the global is interlocked with the specificities of the students birth country culture, and one can see mobility and transnational practices in action embodied in the lives of Chinese-Venezuelan students.status: Publishe
Territorialization, scarcity, and value production : a transcultural study of China-Myanmar jadeite trade
No full textAbstract: Jadeite has evolved from a mysterious curio in far-flung frontier lands into an object of commodity fetishism in contemporary society. Not only do the Chinese regard it as the most expensive and rare jade species, it also has an important impact on Myanmar's political landscape. The question this dissertation wants to address is what kind of power relations and exchange actions are deployed to construct the scarcity of a cultural consumer product that spans history and cross-culture, such as jadeite, so that its price has reached unprecedented levels. I use the concept of "territorialization" as a theoretical paradigm to exam this issue which indicates the process of repeated de-territorialization and re-territorialization of multi-scale and multi-dimensional spaces by different cross-cultural power subjects. The research uses multi-sited linguistic ethnography as a methodology, focusing on translation and language use from a diachronic and social perspective when tracing the flow of jadeite and cross-cultural subjects' perceptions and evaluations. The study found that the scarcity of jadeite is constantly shaped and constructed, and its dramatic price changes are closely related to changes in national boundaries and the spatial production of power. This process can be divided into two stages. First, with the development of the southwest border area by the imperial court of China, the Han people brought jade culture to this area and discovered jadeite from it, thus forming the jadeite trade exchange among Han, Kachin and Shan in the area. Second, after the boundaries of modern countries, the origin and market of jadeite were cut off, and the two nation-states territorialized the jadeite trade within their respective territories to obtain more benefits. Multiple powers participate cross-culturally, continuously forming more complex and segmented labor aggregations, and becoming dis-embedded from the original order. Therefore, the value of jadeite has accumulated significantly in quantity and continues to expand in nature or content. In short, jadeite itself is just a kind of stone and has no use value, but Chinese culture endows it with special symbolic meaning, so it assumes value. However, the origin of its raw materials is an border area of "China". There, jadeite has no meaning and symbol, and the territorialization makes it valuable. In addition, due to the inter-ethnic conflict in the place of origin, the national and local competition further increases its scarcity and concurrently also its value
Shifting meaning potential in interpreter-mediated formal interaction : the case of the Chinese premier's press conference in China
No full textAbstract: China has made an amazing and spectacular advancement in its economy in the past four decades since its reform and opening up in 1978. The economic success helps bring China back into the international politics and promote its re-engagement with the rest of the world. Now \u2018to tell China's stories well, to make the voice of China heard, and present a true, multi-dimensional, and panoramic view of China to the world\u2019 (President Xi Jinping) is the overarching communicative goal of China\u2019s public political discourse. The Chinese Premier is the highest-level political leader who has an annual face-to-face meeting with the international press. His interpreted live-televised Chinese Premier\u2019s Press Conference (the CPPC) in the form of Q&A offers a channel to make the top policy maker\u2019s voice heard directly by the international audience. It is of great significance to have an in-depth investigation into how China\u2019s institutional voice represented by the premier is conveyed via the consecutive interpreter to the world. This data-driven empirical case study of the 2017 interpreted CPPC, based on the transcription of the video, takes a linguistic pragmatic perspective and conceives of it as an instance of language use in its formal political setting. The indeterminacy of meaning and interadaptability of meaning negotiation entails that meaning exists as meaning potential, viz. a range of possible meanings (Verschueren 2018). This brings thorny problems as well as room for manipulation to interpreters for whom the source and target languages provide different affordances (Verschueren 2018). As political discourse in the media, the data feature the combination of institutional discourse, media discourse and mediated political discourse. The interpreter, different from her counterparts in similar European contexts, is government-affiliated and a \u2018civil-servant interpreter-translator\u2019 (Setton 2001). In the face of a web of differentiated international audiences composed mainly of on-site journalists and an off-site general public, subject to institutional goals and procedures, deprived of the possibility of follow-up questions and feedback, the interpreter is greatly contextually constrained. My investigation finds ample linguistic traces at various levels that eventually point to strong tendencies that reveal the interpreter\u2019s intervention and agency: in terms of discourse coherence, image construction (both China\u2019s institutional image and the premier\u2019s personal image), information priority and cultural mediation
Home-sourcing: The making of the Indian highly skilled and diamond diaspora in Belgium
No full textThis research was conceived through the observation of the presence of Indian diasporic actors, who settle in particular occupational sectors within the Belgian national context. This research aims to remedy the gap in literature on Indias diasporascape in Belgium by contributing to the understanding of Indias postcolonial and occupational diasporas in the diamond and ICT sector. Therefore this work is based on fieldwork carried out in the economic sectors of both the diamond trade and the ICT industry which are embedded in the urban contexts of the Belgian cities of Antwerp and Brussels as these serve as exemplary urban economic sectors where the global and the local converge. These sectors constitute nodes in globalizing opportunity structures that interlink markets around the globe and which mold transnational spaces of exchange. In these transnational spaces, which traverse the First and Third world, developed and developing countries, a successful business model of outsourcing, which continuously reshapes transnational spaces of exchange, is unfolding. The Indian diasporic actors who partake in, and even actively shape these processes speak of home-sourcing because they rely upon the homeland in the making of their professional transnational careers. Hence, this work focuses on the dialectical process of outsourcing (otherwise known as home-sourcing) as a contemporary business model that is produced by globalization and which has diaspora-making as one of its outcomes. I demonstrate, using biographical narratives, how cross-border processes of relocation and their related educational and career choices are socially embedded and culturally informed for Indias highly skilled and diamond diaspora. In discussing the experiences of career migration and the construction of transnational livelihoods among Indias mobile (upper) middle classes, various routes of mobility, that go beyond geographic mobility, become apparent. Peoples upbringings and the manner in which they have been socialized clearly show distinct patterns of educational and career-oriented aspirations through which they perform their individual, familial and national identity. This research, by adopting a network perspective, makes use of the concept of diaspora as a heuristic device. Chapter I, therefore, presents a general overview of Indias diasporascape and contextualizes in particular Indias new, emerging diasporas. Chapter II offers a broad overview of migration theories and further elaborates upon the anthropological approach to transnational livelihoods. Additionally, it outlines new branches within Indias diasporascape, which are embedded and located in the European and Belgian economic and political opportunity structures, in detail. Chapters III and IV provide an anthropological reflection on the fieldwork experience, the multimodal interactions with the field as well as the methodologies and methods used in this study as well as the multi-sidedness of the research experience and the implications of conducting anthropology in a diasporic fieldwork setting. Indias postcolonial occupational diasporic actors, who tend to follow aspirational routes of becoming, tend not to follow linear routes of mobility. Distinct rhizome-like networks enfold along transnational home-sourcing practices which depend on the particularities of the distinct occupational fields of the diamond trade and the ICT sector. Hence, I have applied a rhizomatic methodology in following the rooted routes of Indias highly skilled and diamond diaspora in order to map out their biographic navigations in their respective socioeconomic fields. Chapters V and VI present narratives of exemplary life- and careerscapes of Indian diasporic agents who have become situated in various socioeconomic sites relating to their family background and occupational choices. These accounts bring out the close interrelatedness of geographic mobility and trade or business relationships that reinforce each other. Chapter V offers in-depth insights into the diasporascape of Indias diamond traders and adopts an intergenerational perspective while Chapter VI studies the biographical navigations of Indias highly skilled diaspora who are involved in white-collar professions in the ICT industry. The following chapters offer an analysis of the processes of capital formation among Indias occupational diasporas and focus on social networks, human capital and cultural resources that guide circuits of mobility. The strategies of cosmo-indigenous techniques of capital accumulation are described and are analyzed in the subsequent chapters. Familial investments are made to optimize their offsprings chances in economic environments, which are marked by uncertainty, transition and adjustment. Chapter VII investigates the role of social resources and their relation to destination decision-making processes and pays particular attention to the locational networks and social resources related to the diamond trade. The main argument developed here is that social resources are emplaced and, hence, serve to guide circuits of mobility. These resourceful networks benefit from being anchored at geographically diverse locations, as well as by capitalizing on specific locational resources. In this way, these resourceful networks induce what I describe as multilocational networked migration. This new pattern in migration pathways demonstrates how relationships across borders are constructive in the making of transnational livelihoods in a competitive capitalist landscape of the 21st century. Chapter VIII presents a detailed analysis of the importance of human capital formation and the construction of a meritocratic class related to the expansion of Indias highly skilled diaspora. This chapter indicates the urge for accruing transferable skills and capabilities in the desire to become less generic and replaceable workers. Whereas Indias diamond diaspora predominantly draws for knowledge accumulation on resources it has inherited, Indias highly skilled diaspora takes pride in its educational achievements which give access to transnational social networks.Chapter IX brings both occupational diasporas together in a discussion about the investments individuals and families make in cultural resources as a strategy to deal with processes of mobility and to take advantage of changing socioeconomic circumstances due to the intensification of processes of globalization and its technology-mediated characteristics. This work closes with the argument developed in Chapter X, namely that cosmo-indigenousness - a term that refers to cosmopolitan routes and indigenous roots - enables transnational economic activities of home-sourcing in which the local and the global converge and shape the direction of Indias occupational diasporas. The data show that the cosmo-indigenous techniques employed among Indias occupational diasporas are preparatory in nature and risk-averse while also being transnationally oriented. In this way they form a buffer to manage risks as they possess the capability to counteract the compulsions and pressures of mobility. Educational and career choices, based on inherited or newly acquired identities, indicate the central role that the capability for mobility plays in contemporary Indian middle class subjectivity. In this way, Indian career migrants, who tend to describe themselves as expatriates, invest in remaining economically integrated in contexts beyond the local level.status: Publishe
Cultuur, etniciteit en migratie = Culture, ethnicity and migration : liber amicorum Prof. Dr. E. Roosens
No full textBetrokkenheid bij de christelijke arbeidersbeweging en de houding tegenover migranten. Een onderzoek naar de verklaringskracht van de notie sociaal-culturele christenheid
No full textstatus: Publishe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Performing Italian-ness in school settings. Challenges and opportunities for Chinese and American students in a multicultural city in Italy: Prato
No full textAbstract: Prato, located in central Italy, is the most multiethnic city of the country: more than 20% of its population consists of foreign citizens, including a large proportion of Chinese people and a smaller, relatively new, American community of students. My research investigates to what extent the identities of the students from those two groups (American and Chinese) are affected by being immersed in an Italian context. Starting from the deconstruction of the concept of Italian-ness and based upon ethnographic engagement with the field, I give an overview of how Chinese and American students perform the Italian-ness that educational institutions enforce upon them
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