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Authors:Sin Sin Yeung Abstract: This study aims to reveal and compare the cultural logics of university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong in their mothering practices to improvise their femininities in constituting their work–family interactions. This qualitative research, with the ethnographic elements, has included 32 Chinese mothers to share about their mothering experiences through semi-structured interviews. This methodological design with feminist lens embraces women’s own narratives as sources of knowledge and learns their voices to reinvent their role and bodily engagement in shaping their family dynamics. This discussion basically reaffirms the argument where the mother’s involvement in their children’s schoolwork becomes one of the core elements in their actual everyday mothering practices. It has further reflected the dynamics of family quality time in the light of mothers’ cultural logics as much as their attentive agency capacity to present their respectable femininity in the form of mothering. This research process has revealed the actual experiences of the participants from their own narratives. For future research development, data collection can be extended to include the husbands’ profiles and their narratives in understanding their wives’ mothering experiences. This discussion enriches the work-family literature by extending it to the Asian Chinese context. While the concepts of cultural capital and habitus have been addressed in previous studies, this discussion highlights the agency capacity of the university-educated Chinese mothers in their cultural logics to deliver their respective mothering practices. This filtering process to transmit cultural capital to their children is as much as they involve in reproducing status boundaries for the family. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-09-28 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-07-2023-0002 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Zhenzhou Zhao, Canglong Wang Abstract: This special issue aims to address the complexities and dynamics in contemporary China’s citizen-making processes, with a focus on the educational dimension. The four articles in this special issue present citizen-making processes in both educational and cultural arenas. Based on the rich, first-hand data collected inside and outside China, the researchers revealed the dynamics of the educative processes, as the interplay of different mechanisms produces new understandings of citizenship practice. This special issue sheds light on the rise of new types of citizens, who are emerging at the grassroots level in China, beyond the state’s strict direct regulations, along with the rise of market forces and multicultural communities in Chinese society today. Contributors to this special issue have captured an ongoing change, in that the diversified citizen-making mechanisms are, to a certain extent, mitigating the party-state’s definitive monopoly on forging citizens and are creating new spaces for individuals to develop fresh forms of political subjectivity and citizenship practice. In this sense, we argue for the unpacking of the citizen-making processes in present-day China not only from the lens of state-dominated, top-down initiatives but also from that of participatory, bottom-up initiatives performed by grassroots groups with differentiated socio-economic statuses and cultural traditions. This special issue can be regarded as a contribution to the growing field of Chinese citizenship studies, which constitutes an integral part of the unfinished project of citizenship after orientalism. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-09-18 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-07-2022-0013 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:John Calabrese Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the trend of transatlantic strategic convergence and policy coordination in response to Chinese trade practices and technological competition, specifically in the critical minerals sector. The research draws on primary and secondary source material to identify evidence of and examine the drivers, manifestations and prospects for effective US-European efforts to advance the shared aim of reducing vulnerabilities in critical minerals supply chains. The interests of the USA and Europe would be best served by prioritizing their own security, diversification and resilience strategies while seeking areas of common ground and constructive engagement with China. The research offers a fresh perspective on the growing alignment and persistent gaps in US and European perspectives on China’s rising influence and assertive behavior. The research highlights the vital role of critical minerals in national security, economic competitiveness, technological advancement and sustainable resource management. It underscores the shared recognition on both sides of the Atlantic that securing a stable supply of critical minerals – essential for maintaining strategic capabilities, driving innovation and ensuring long-term economic prosperity – necessitates tighter transatlantic coordination as well as constructive engagement with China. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-09-07 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-06-2023-0001 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Siqi Zhang Abstract: This paper aims to explore Chinese female international students’ construction of global citizenship identity by examining their accumulation of cultural capital in different forms from transnational higher education in the UK. Participant observations and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese female international students at a British university to explore their experiences with transnational higher education, cultural identities, the construction of global citizenship and perceived future job opportunities. In this research, participants revealed that accessing a global elite university helps them accumulate institutionalised cultural capital. Embodied cultural cultivation acquired from transnational higher education is justified by students’ experiences in the context of transnational higher education. Rising confidence is shown by the participants’ narration and global-oriented awareness, which is their ability to understand and respect people from diverse cultural backgrounds, which was developed during their studies in the UK. However, they still realise the potentially difficult conversion of cultural capital to real job competitiveness. Recognition of global citizenship identity may be complicated if students plan to return home after studying. This study provides further insight into the single-child generation of globally mobile Chinese female international students. Participants were aware of the positive accumulation of cultural capital in its embodied and institutionalised forms obtained from the UK higher education system and its contribution to the construction of global citizenship identity. However, the newly constructed global citizenship identity remains complex. Participants question the extent to which the new identity fits into the Chinese social context if they decide to return home. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the originality of the paper lies in expanding the global citizenship framework with the specific application of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to show Chinese female international students’ study experiences in UK transnational higher education, rather than addressing the Chinese international student experience in general. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-05-19 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-08-2022-0015 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Chong Zhang Abstract: There is widespread debate about the nationalistic top-down approach of citizenship education. By using the notion of cultural citizenship as a useful theoretical lens, citizenship education research tends to focus on the process of subjectivity construction among students’ citizenship learning process. The Communist Party of China plays a dominant role in cultivating citizens in the form of ideological and political education (IaPE) in Chinese universities. The research problem thus focuses on the dynamics and complexity of how Chinese university students construct their subjectivities regarding citizenship learning through IaPE. The main purpose of the study is to provide some research directions for understanding students’ citizenship learning today. With the case study of one university in China and interview data from 25 students, this paper examines the ways in which students understand and respond to dominant discourses. The findings revealed there is a deficit of citizenship learning in IaPE, and students felt ideologically pressurized. This study suggests students’ complex subjectivities of active participants but confused minds as a phenomenon in Chinese higher education, in which they must involve in IaPE for personal academic and career development, while they adopted covert strategies for self-conscious citizenship learning expectations. These strategies took the form ranging from obediently completing basic curriculum requirements and distancing away by studying abroad, to actively searching for learning opportunities from other courses and media society. This paper contributes to citizenship education research by recognizing the complexities of how subjectivities are formed in formal university settings. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-03-14 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-06-2022-0011 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Siu Fung Cheung Abstract: This study aims to examine the symbolic meanings of the local shopping malls inscribed by the shoppers from the sociocultural lens other than merely departing from the economic dimensions. In this research, Kwai Chung Plaza was adopted as the case study. The author interviewed 12 local shoppers through an in-depth individual interview. All interviewees were selected through convenience and snowball sampling. All names of the participants in this paper are kept pseudonymous to protect their privacy. An integrated model, which consists of three major levels, namely, the spatial, individual and community levels, has been formed to show that the shopping mall was not merely a place for buy-and-sell transactions but rather a place that could be understood as an extension of the street, a body of collective memories and a place for Hongkongers. The most significant limitation of this study was the lack of a diversified demographic profile adding that the sample was restricted to the young generation. It is recommended that future research should consider including interviews with middle-aged and old-aged shoppers to ensure the generalizability of results. Future research may also consider examining other small/medium-sized shopping malls for comparison. The findings demonstrated the diversified social roles and functions of the local shopping malls in a community. In addition, the present study, to the author’s knowledge, is one of the few scholarly discussions on small/medium-sized shopping malls from a sociocultural perspective. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-02-28 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-09-2022-0016 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Bamidele Emmanuel Ola Abstract: Little is known about gender relations in young African migrant families residing in Hong Kong (HK). This study aims to present a first-hand account of daily lived experiences of African international doctoral student couples residing in HK, with special emphases on their Africa–HK migratory motivations, perceptions of female-breadwinning status, the effects of HK Immigration policy on marital power structures and the influence of spousal relative statuses (“breadwinner” versus “dependent”) on couples gender role performances and decision-making participations. This study used ethnographic method involving several indoor family visits, non-participant observations and 21 in-depth interviews in six African student families. Fieldnotes were taken and interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis. Couples, especially dependent men, had a hard time deciding to migrate to HK for family reunion, unlike dependent women who willingly resigned to join their husbands in HK. Among the male dependents, the main reasons for migrating included anticipated economic returns, while women migrated in response to neolocal cultural expectations. Overall, patriarchy persisted – while men had the final say over key household decision-making domains, women remained primary performers of household chores, but manifested little bargaining power, restraining husband’s ability to spend family income when they are the family’s sole-earners. Women’s relative breadwinning status had very minimal significant impact. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of HK’s immigration policy on married African students’ migration motivations and the effects of female-breadwinning status on spousal gender relations in HK’s African student migrant households. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-01-25 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-01-2022-0006 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Helen Yin-Kwan Lee, Lawrence Ka-ki Ho, Fredie Pak-Cheung Hung Abstract: This study aims to explore the community strengths/ weaknesses and the opportunities/ threats of the Nepalese communities in Hong Kong that have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The infection of COVID-19 among the ethnic minorities (EM) population in western democracies was reported higher, and it was wondered whether it was due to structural discrimination of the underprivileged. This study is situated in Hong Kong during the peak of pandemic in 2020–2021. The authors followed the work of an EM service agency and interacted with their Nepalese clients to explore their reactions in coping with the sudden physical and economic adversities and examined their capacity amid the pandemic. The authors noticed their effective self-mobilization that was strategically facilitated by veteran social workers and thus have strong resilience compared to other EM clusters in the territories. The ways of their interactions offer useful insights for the authors to examine the prevailing strategy for achieving the mission of social inclusion in Hong Kong with 8% of the EM population. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-01-17 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-08-2022-0014 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Liangliang Zhang Abstract: This paper aims to explore the relationship between ethical self-fashioning and citizenship practices in the ongoing revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture” pursued in tandem by the party-state and by private actors in present-day China. Adopting an anthropological approach, the author draws from three sets of resources: (1) research literature on China’s political history and key texts of early Chinese thought, (2) contemporary state discourses on citizen formation, and (3) participant observation notes and interviews with organizers and followers of the Wu-Wei School (a pseudonym). The author conducts a textual analysis of primary and secondary literature and a critical discourse analysis of the ethnographic data and examines emerging themes. Firstly, the author identifies a crucial dimension in the historical and cultural roots of Chinese citizenship practices: an enduring conception that binds individual ethical self-improvement with socio-political flourishing. Secondly, examining contemporary state discourses on “citizen quality” and “reviving China’s outstanding traditional culture”, the author showcases how party-state authorities call on individuals to self-reform for national rejuvenation. Thirdly, the author investigates how members of the Wu-Wei School construe their individual pursuits of ethical self-improvement as significant for societal progress. Based on these findings, the author demonstrates the ways in which autochthonous conceptions of Chinese citizenship give a central place to private acts of self-fashioning. The author argues that the entanglement between individual ethics and citizenship practices constitutes a crucial but largely understudied dimension of Chinese citizenship. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-12-20 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-06-2022-0012 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Ying Ma, Ewan Wright Abstract: This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures. The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development. This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China. The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-09-27 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-05-2022-0010 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Chi Kit Chan, Anna Wai Yee Yuen Abstract: This study scrutinizes the convergence between commercial advertising and the political vision of social movement in media advertisements. This study deliberates how commercial advertisement could be compatible with movement discourses and social resistance. Such hybridization between commercial narration and movement discourses is different from political advertising sponsored by political and civic organizations. This study uses an advertising campaign in Hong Kong which expressed outcry against police search on an outspoken media as a case study to conceptualize advertising activism with the thematic analysis of the movement discourses shown in printed advertisements. This study aims to engage with scholarly dialogue surrounding social movement studies and discuss how movement discourses could hybridize with commercial advertisement. This study examines the discourses and textual features of an advertising campaign initiated by the public instead of political elites and social movement organizations in Hong Kong, in which various individual citizens, anonymous participants, business enterprises and civic organizations expressed their anger over a police search against an outspoken media (Apple Daily) by Hong Kong police. This bottom-up advertising campaign shows how the narration of commercial advertising could be hybridized with the activism for social resistance, which is conceptualized as advertising activism in this paper. Based on the textual features and discourses embedded in the advertisements, this study investigates the printed advertisements mushroomed in Apple Daily since the police search in August 2020 by the thematic analysis under the concept of advertising activism: frame construction, identities mobilization and decentered solidarity. Advertising activism differs from commercial and political advertising from two ways. Firstly, its advertisements are cosponsored by numerous nonpolitically well-known individuals or organizations. Secondly, advertising activism feature with hybridization between commercial narration and political or movement discourses. Discourses of advertising activism aim to mobilize the commercial identity of consumers for noncommercial means by their consumption behaviors. The findings illustrate a hybridization of commercial narration and movement discourses stemming from social movement and identity politics, which is coined by our conceptualization of advertising activism. While commercial and political advertising focus on business promotion and political messages, respectively, advertising activism demonstrates multiple layers of cultural meanings on the consumption behaviors which hybridize with political and movement discourses. The authors hope this study could unleash further intellectual dialogue on the social role of advertising in social movement and how movement discourses “spillover” from social events to the commercial advertisement. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-09-08 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-04-2021-0006 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Alexander Fedorov Abstract: In the light of intensifying academic discourses on contemporary religious education in Hong Kong, this paper aims to examine how the interreligious model (i.e. that features teaching religious variety rather than a particular faith) is consistent with Hong Kong’s social context. It begins with a theoretical conceptualization that interreligious education originates from certain preconditions and is only understood contextually. Next, the analysis identifies the preconditions within Hong Kong milieus: sociodemographic, sociocultural and legal. Theoretically driven case study. The paper analyses Hong Kong's development toward interreligious education. Albeit most conceptualizing of interreligious education has been conducted in Europe, the study finds the model functional to Hong Kong. Moreover, these preconditions-religious heterogeneity, freedom of religion and secularity – are met, although with their specifics. These preconditions, however, do not imply imperativeness yet rather feasibility if the interreligious model adheres to Hong Kong’s educational aims. This study develops theoretical lenses for interreligious education in Hong Kong. First, it analyzes religious heterogeneity, freedom of religion and secularity within the Hong Kong milieus and reveals Hong Kong’s capacity to implement the interreligious model. It also advances scholarship on interreligious education in relatively underexplored settings (referring not simply to Hong Kong but to Chinese societies and contemporary Asia). Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-09-06 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-01-2022-0007 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:L. Nicole Vaughan Abstract: This paper aims to trace the development of Hong Kong's Happy Valley from a space associated with dangerous miasmas to the site of a racecourse, recreation ground and a series of cemeteries for the colony's foreign communities while examining the relationship between the exclusion of Chinese from Happy Valley and the notion of colonial order. This paper makes use of empirical evidence from historical documents, such as newspapers and government records, and applies Michel Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a theoretical model. This paper provides insights into the relationship between space and power in the colonial setting. It demonstrates that the imposition of colonial order in Happy Valley was a process that involved the exclusion of Chinese and that the various ways in which this order was reinforced, contested and negotiated revealed it to be shallow and incomplete. This paper sheds light on an underexamined but important colonial space in 19th and early 20th century Hong Kong and complicates the notion of colonial control. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-05-03 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-10-2021-0009 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Holy Hoi-ki Shum Abstract: The influx of mainland capital to different media sectors in Hong Kong has been commonly seen throughout the last decade (Leung, 2019). While the changes in ownership have been shaping the ecology of Hong Kong’s media industry, the rapid development of digital technology such as the internet and social media has also been important in the industry’s transformation. This study aims to investigate how and to what extent technology has shaped the Hong Kong media work culture. Alibaba, the powerful e-commerce conglomerate, has sought to advance its development in the media industry and leverage its technological expertise by acquiring the century-old Hong Kong English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in 2016. This essay, by using the SCMP as a case study, focuses on the workers and their use of technologies in their daily work practices, which offers an alternative lens to investigate the influence of a Chinese tech ownership in transforming a Hong Kong media outlet’s culture. This case study illustrates how the implementation of Alibaba work culture at the SCMP through technological application remained minimal over the four years following this Chinese tech giant’s acquisition, whereas a Silicon Valley-style start-up culture and techno-organisational gaze were profoundly found at this workplace and received both acceptance and resistance by the employees. This study results in a revealing unique type of techno-organisational culture change that deviates from the previous Chinese organisational studies within and outside the Chinese contexts. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-04-18 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-01-2021-0003 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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