The Gender of Communication: Changing Expectations of Mothers and Daughters in Urban China

2010 ◽  
Vol 204 ◽  
pp. 980-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Evans

AbstractIn the flow of the material, cultural and moral influences shaping contemporary Chinese society, individual desires for emotional communication are reconstituting the meaning of the subject, self and responsibility. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Beijing between 2000 and 2004 to discuss the gendered dimensions of this process through an analysis of the implications of the “communicative intimacy” sought by mothers and daughters in their mutual relationship. What could be termed a “feminization of intimacy” is the effect of two distinct but linked processes: on the one hand, a market-supported naturalization of women's roles, and on the other, the changing subjective articulation of women's needs, desires and expectations of family and personal relationships. I argue that across these two processes, the celebration of a communicative intimacy does not signify the emergence of more equal family or gender relationships, as recent theories about the individualization and cultural democratization of daily life in Western societies have argued. As families and kin groups, communities and neighbourhoods are physically, spatially and socially broken up, and as gender differences in employment and income increase, media and “expert” encouragement to mothers to become the all-round confidantes, educators and moral guides of their children affirms women's responsibilities in the domestic sphere. Expectations of mother–daughter communication reshape the meaning – and experience – of the individual subject in the changing character of the urban family at the same time as they reinforce ideas about women's gendered attributes and the responsibilities associated with them.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.

Today, worldview, spiritual and moral problems that have always been reflected in education and upbringing come to the fore in society. In this situation, there is a demand for philosophical categories. One of the priority goals of education in modern conditions is the formation of a reasonable, reflexive person who is able to analyze their actions and the actions of other people. Modern science is characterized by an understanding of the absolute value and significance of childhood in the development of the individual, which implies the need for its multilateral study. In the conditions of democratization of all spheres of life, the child ceases to be a passive object of education and training, and becomes an active carrier of their own meanings of being and the subject of world creation. One of the realities of childhood is philosophizing, so it is extremely timely to address the identification of its place and role in the world of childhood. Children's philosophizing is extremely poorly studied, although the need for its analysis is becoming more obvious. Children's philosophizing is one of the forms of philosophical reflection, which has its own qualitative specificity, on the one hand, and commonality with all other forms of philosophizing, on the other. The social relevance of the proposed research lies in the fact that children's philosophizing can be considered as an intellectual indicator of a child's socialization, since the process of reflection involves the adoption and development of culture. Modern society, in contrast to the traditional one, is ready to "accept" a philosophizing child, which means that it is necessary to determine the main characteristics and conditions of children's philosophizing.


1929 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Toynbee

The paintings in the triclinium of the Villa Item, a dwelling-house excavated in 1909 outside the Porta Ercolanese at Pompeii, have not only often been published and discussed by foreign scholars, but they have also formed the subject of an important paper in this Journal. The artistic qualities of the paintings have been ably set forth: it has been established beyond all doubt that the subject they depict is some form of Dionysiac initiation: and, of the detailed interpretations of the first seven of the individual scenes, those originally put forward by de Petra and accepted, modified or developed by Mrs. Tillyard appear, so far as they go, to be unquestionably on the right lines. A fresh study of the Villa Item frescoes would seem, however, to be justified by the fact that the majority of previous writers have confined their attention almost entirely to the first seven scenes—the three to the east of the entrance on the north wall (fig. 3), the three on the east wall and the one to the east of the window on the south wall, to which the last figure on the east wall, the winged figure with the whip, undoubtedly belongs.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-257
Author(s):  
Robert Iljic

The sentences of the type above mentioned are characterized, on the one hand, by the cooccurrence of bă with an intransitive verb, on the other hand, by the classifier ge following bă and introducing a noun relative to a unique referent. This type of sentence, quoted by most major contemporary Chinese grammars, and to be traced in baihuà texts, doesn't seem, nowadays, to pertain any longer to a universally accepted standard. This paper demonstrates that in these sentences, as in all bă constructions, bă actually marks a patient (even if the latter may be the subject-of an intransitive verb); besides, given its position before bă, a certain agentivity is always conferred to a noun in topic position, even if this agentivity, taken to its far end, boils down to the only desire of having been able to do something to prevent a given event (a point in case: the death of a father); finally, the function of ge before a proper noun or a noun semantically determined as unique, which can be found in some other sentences, isn't to count, that is, to indicate a quantity. but to emphasize the qualitative value of the noun (the father insofar as he is a father), the effect being to underline the value (price) that the speaker attaches to a given person or thing, hence the modal connotation ascribed to such sentences.


1863 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Scoresby-Jackson

The subject to which I have to invite the attention of the Society this evening is one of no modern origin, the name of Hippocrates, amongst others of the fathers of medicine, being commonly associated with it. There is, indeed, perhaps no branch of medical inquiry whose history dips more deeply into the obscure pages of antiquity. The influence of weather upon disease and mortality has been acknowledged as a potent external force in every age, from that eminently speculative and credulous period when physicians professed to receive their diagnostic as well as their therapeutic inspirations from the stars, down to our own day. And yet there is perhaps no question in the whole cycle of medical sciences which has made slower progress than the one we have now to consider. People believe that the weather affects them. They speak of its influence, sometimes commendingly, more frequently with censure, on the most trivial occasions; but beyond a few commonplace ideas, the result of careless observation, or perhaps acquired only traditionally, they seldom seek a closer acquaintance with the subject. Our language teems with medico-meteorological apophthegms, but they are notoriously vague. The words which are most commonly employed to signify the state of the weather at any given time, possess a value relative only to the sensations of the individual uttering them. The general and convertible terms—bitter, raw, cold, severe, bleak, inclement, or fine and bracing, convey no definite idea of the condition of the weather; nay, it is quite possible that we may hear these several expressions used by different persons with reference to the weather of one and the same place and point of time. In order, then, to render medico-meteorological researches more trustworthy, we must be careful to employ, in the expression of facts, such symbols only as have a corresponding value in every nation.


Author(s):  
Ann Pellegrini

This essay asks what psychoanalysis and religion might have to say to each other in view of Freud’s secular aspirations and queer theory’s temporal turn. Both queer temporality and psychoanalysis offer resources for understanding the multiple ways time coats, codes, and disciplines the body in secular modernity. This is so even though psychoanalysis is one of these disciplines. Nevertheless, the times of psychoanalysis are multiple. On the one hand, psychoanalysis quite frequently lays down a teleology in which the individual subject matures along a set pathway. On the other hand, this developmental imperative is at profound odds with psychoanalysis’s capacity to make room for the co-existence of past and present in ways that confound secular time’s forward march. This latter recognition—co-temporality—may even lay down routes for the cultivation of “counter-codes” (Foucault’s term), ways of living and experiencing and telling time out of sync with the linear logics of what José Muñoz has called “straight time.”


Author(s):  
E. B. Muradyan ◽  

The article has a theoretical approach in research. Relations between the terms «hardiness»; and «psychological safety», «subject of activity» and «professional’s personality» will be considered. The components of hardiness are analyzed. The issues that contradict the basic theoretical position on hardiness as the underlying psychological safety of the individual are analyzed. At a theoretical level, a connection between the hardiness and psychological safety of a professional’s personality is revealed. In theoretical terms the conceptions of a person as a personality (professional) and as a subject of professional activity are considered. The attitude of professional’s personality towards activities in the «new» conditions is revealed. Based on results of experts’ survey, a preliminary conclusion is made that a person involved in professional activity, is passionate about his/her work, professionally ready for it, quickly overcomes negative emotions connected with an emergency, the person is reorganized to work in the «new» mode, providing high performance (if the specificity of the work allows it). The issues arising in a stressful, emergency situation are being considered for the subject of professional activity. An attempt is made to describe the emergency, as well as the necessity to introduce conceptual «slogan»: «the situation of global emergency uncertainty». This situation is considered as the environment that the one created «for his/her self-preservation», to ensure the safety of mankind.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1240-1266
Author(s):  
Andrew Manley ◽  
Michael Silk

Adopting complimentary integrative research methodologies, this article examines changing conceptions of community among urban residents within the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China. Through local residents’ past memories, “everyday” experiences of (former) urban communities, and reflections on a particular way of life, we focus upon the subjective/affective meanings and memories attached to processes of urban change. We place emphasis on the manner in which residents make sense of sociospatial transformations in relation to the (re)making of community, local social interaction, and a sense of belonging. Discussion centers on the affective and embodied notions of a particular way of life in (older) communities; sensory performances that were deemed difficult to replicate within modern development zones and the broader field of contemporary Chinese society.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja M. Yang

This book provides detailed insight into the psychology of modern Chinese society and its implications for social actors’ socio-political agency and efficacy. Perceptions of social mobility and cohesion are at the heart of a sociological typology that is a direct reflection of China’s unique path towards modernisation. The book makes a contribution to the debate about convergence versus divergence of cultures and, ultimately, political systems. Using the example of China, it supports the argument of cultural divergence as proposed by Shmuel Eisenstadt’s notion of ‘multiple modernities’. It mainly builds on a qualitative interview study conducted in Peking, Xi’an and Wenzhou, whose key findings are discussed in the light of findings from national surveys. The book is aimed at political and social scientists who are interested in modernisation theory and at sinologists who are interested in contemporary Chinese society.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Dawid Szpak ◽  
Barbara Tchórzewska-Cieślak

Abstract The subject of the publication is the analysis and assessment of the reliability of the surface water treatment plant (WTP). In the study the one parameter method of reliability assessment was used. Based on the flow sheet derived from the water company the reliability scheme of the analysed WTP was prepared. On the basis of the daily WTP work report the availability index Kg for the individual elements included in the WTP, was determined. Then, based on the developed reliability scheme showing the interrelationships between elements, the availability index Kg for the whole WTP was determined. The obtained value of the availability index Kg was compared with the criteria values.


Author(s):  
Marian Bedrii

The article researches the functions and tasks of legal custom based on historical experience and the current state of legal life.The view represents that law and culture functions are realized through legal custom, as it is an important element of these phenomena.At the same time, it is noted that legal custom is characterized by a separate catalog of functions and tasks that need to be studied. Theregulatory, explanatory, protective, defensive, inflectional, reconstitutive, ideological-educative, identification-communicative, antimonopoly,and legal-resource functions of legal custom are analyzed. The administrative and organizational components of the regulatoryfunction of legal custom are highlighted. The preventive and restrictive components of the protective function of legal custom are cha -racterized. It is substantiated that these functions are inextricably linked with the tasks of legal custom.Based on the analyzed functions, the following tasks of a legal custom are allocated: the legal regulation of social relations; cla -rification of provisions of the legislation, acts of law enforcement, texts of agreements, terms and symbolic actions; legal protection ofpublic goods and values; providing opportunities to protect rights and freedoms; stabilization of the legal system, its protection fromill-considered and risky transformations; reproduction of the acquired legal experience in new conditions; ensuring the flexibility of thelegal system; influence on the worldview of the individual and society in general; determining the affiliation of the subject to a parti -cular community and maintaining communication between its members; prevention of monopoly in the legal system of a normativelegal act or other sources of law; formation of material for the systematization of law.It is argued that legal custom, as a social phenomenon, evolving in the process of history, performed a wide range of functionsthat correlated with its tasks. Not every period, people, or locality is characterized by a full set of analyzed functions and tasks, but itis worth noting the possibility of their implementation by the legal custom in general, as evidenced by past experience and the currentstate of legal relations. The results of the research, on the one hand, complement the understanding of the nature of legal custom, andon the other – prove the feasibility of further use of this source of law in modern legal systems.


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