scholarly journals The Missionary as Cultural Mediator: Alexander Don and the Chinese and European Communities in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Luke Stephen Tysoe

<p>Missionaries to China, by virtue of their positions and knowledge, frequently became important channels of information between cultures. They transmitted Christianity and Western learning to Chinese people while simultaneously describing China to home audiences through their writings and public speaking. This thesis examines how Alexander Don, Presbyterian missionary to the New Zealand Chinese in Otago from 1879 to 1913, performed similar functions as a "cultural mediator". For most of his career, Don was one of the most significant links between Chinese and European people in New Zealand. He developed a relationship with the Chinese community while simultaneously describing Chinese culture to Europeans in his published reports. While Don's missionary career has been extensively documented, there have been no studies of his significance from the perspective of cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. In this thesis I will discuss the ways that Don acted as a cultural mediator, as well as the factors that impelled him to do so. I will make an in-depth investigation of Don's presentation of Chinese culture to European readers through his mission reports, and how this image changed over the course of his career. The picture Don painted was both motivated and influenced by his mission aims, his growing understanding of Chinese culture, and his developing rapport with Chinese people. In order to demonstrate that Don was unique as a cultural mediator in New Zealand, I will compare him to other sources of information on Chinese culture. It will be shown that he provided very different data and opinions from those conveyed by secular writers and authors, and that his descriptions were generally more detailed than those of other missionaries to the New Zealand Chinese and New Zealand missionaries in China. Don will also be compared to more well-known China missionaries, in order to show that he was similar to them in terms of educating Westerners about the East. Finally, I will weigh the impact of Don's cultural mediation activities. Although he gained few converts, he played a crucial role in improving Sino-European understanding and relations. In the final analysis, Don had a greater impact in these areas than he did in the field of evangelism.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Luke Stephen Tysoe

<p>Missionaries to China, by virtue of their positions and knowledge, frequently became important channels of information between cultures. They transmitted Christianity and Western learning to Chinese people while simultaneously describing China to home audiences through their writings and public speaking. This thesis examines how Alexander Don, Presbyterian missionary to the New Zealand Chinese in Otago from 1879 to 1913, performed similar functions as a "cultural mediator". For most of his career, Don was one of the most significant links between Chinese and European people in New Zealand. He developed a relationship with the Chinese community while simultaneously describing Chinese culture to Europeans in his published reports. While Don's missionary career has been extensively documented, there have been no studies of his significance from the perspective of cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. In this thesis I will discuss the ways that Don acted as a cultural mediator, as well as the factors that impelled him to do so. I will make an in-depth investigation of Don's presentation of Chinese culture to European readers through his mission reports, and how this image changed over the course of his career. The picture Don painted was both motivated and influenced by his mission aims, his growing understanding of Chinese culture, and his developing rapport with Chinese people. In order to demonstrate that Don was unique as a cultural mediator in New Zealand, I will compare him to other sources of information on Chinese culture. It will be shown that he provided very different data and opinions from those conveyed by secular writers and authors, and that his descriptions were generally more detailed than those of other missionaries to the New Zealand Chinese and New Zealand missionaries in China. Don will also be compared to more well-known China missionaries, in order to show that he was similar to them in terms of educating Westerners about the East. Finally, I will weigh the impact of Don's cultural mediation activities. Although he gained few converts, he played a crucial role in improving Sino-European understanding and relations. In the final analysis, Don had a greater impact in these areas than he did in the field of evangelism.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Binyao Ning ◽  
◽  
Rosmini Omar ◽  
Ye Ye ◽  
◽  
...  

As the essence of traditional Chinese culture, Zhong-Yong is closely related to the psychology, behaviour, and life of Chinese people. Due to the advent of indigenous psychological research, several studies have explored Zhong-Yong thinking (ZYT) in recent decades, but such research is still in its infancy. Although some scholars have affirmed that the influence of ZYT on the Chinese people, the systematic synthesis of the impact of Zhong-Yong thinking on employee’s behaviour at the workplace is limited. Based on the established literature, this study offers a systematic review of 22 selected articles in the field by conducting a bibliometric analysis to categorise the three main clusters of innovative behaviour, voice behaviour, and employee performance. The findings of this study enable future researchers to gain a deeper understanding and enrich the field by offering a wide range of perspectives on the direction of research. Theoretical and practical implications for Asian business context are provided.


2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 117 ◽  
Author(s):  
JK Ling

Details of southern elephant seal oil and fur seal and sea lion skin cargoes have been extracted from a large number of secondary sources dealing with Australian and New Zealand maritime history, which in turn referred to numerous primary sources of information. The data were collated and analysed for ten areas in the south-west Pacific region and published recently in two separate larger works. This review is a synthesis and analysis of the impact of the colonial sealing industry on seal stocks in the region, based on those papers, with some minor revisions and reference to works by other authors. Colonial sealing lasted from the late 18th to the mid- 19th century and was followed by sporadic hunting until the late 1940s. Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) were hunted for their oil; and Australian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus), New Zealand fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri), Australian sea lions (Neophoca cinerea) and New Zealand sea lions (Phocarctos hookeri) were targeted for their skins and some oil. At least 1,081 tons of elephant seal oil were shipped from King Is. between 1802 and 1819, while 8,380 tons were shipped from Macquarie Is. between 1810 and 1919. More than 1.4 million skins of both species of fur seals were harvested between 1792 and 1949, but only 4,000 Neophoca and 5,700 Phocarctos pelts are recorded as having been shipped by 1840. The Antipodes Islands yielded more than a quarter of the total fur seal skin harvest, and New Zealand and southern Australia each delivered a quarter of the total. Current numbers of the two species of fur seals combined are about a tenth of the crudely estimated size (1.5 million) of the original population. The exploited fur seals and sea lions were probably the same species as occur today at the original sealing localities, apart from Macquarie Is. where the identity of the exploited fur seals remains in doubt. There is some evidence that Maoris and Australian Aborigines hunted seals in pre-European times, resulting in reduced ranges and depleted stocks that were exploited later by colonial sealers.


Romanticism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-166
Author(s):  
Nikki Hessell

John Keats's medical studies at Guy's Hospital coincided with a boom in interest in both the traditional medicines of the sub-continent and the experiences of British doctors and patients in India. Despite extensive scholarship on the impact of Keats's medical knowledge on his poetry, little consideration has been given to Keats's exposure to Indian medicine. The poetry that followed his time at Guy's contains numerous references to the contemporary state of knowledge about India and its medical practices, both past and present. This essay focuses on Isabella and considers the major sources of information about Indian medicine in the Regency. It proposes that some of Keats's medical imagery might be read as a specific response to the debates about medicine in the sub-continent.


2000 ◽  
Vol 1719 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter R. Stopher ◽  
David A. Hensher

Transportation planners increasingly include a stated choice (SC) experiment as part of the armory of empirical sources of information on how individuals respond to current and potential travel contexts. The accumulated experience with SC data has been heavily conditioned on analyst prejudices about the acceptable complexity of the data collection instrument, especially the number of profiles (or treatments) given to each sampled individual (and the number of attributes and alternatives to be processed). It is not uncommon for transport demand modelers to impose stringent limitations on the complexity of an SC experiment. A review of the marketing and transport literature suggests that little is known about the basis for rejecting complex designs or accepting simple designs. Although more complex designs provide the analyst with increasing degrees of freedom in the estimation of models, facilitating nonlinearity in main effects and independent two-way interactions, it is not clear what the overall behavioral gains are in increasing the number of treatments. A complex design is developed as the basis for a stated choice study, producing a fractional factorial of 32 rows. The fraction is then truncated by administering 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32 profiles to a sample of 166 individuals (producing 1, 016 treatments) in Australia and New Zealand faced with the decision to fly (or not to fly) between Australia and New Zealand by either Qantas or Ansett under alternative fare regimes. Statistical comparisons of elasticities (an appropriate behavioral basis for comparisons) suggest that the empirical gains within the context of a linear specification of the utility expression associated with each alternative in a discrete choice model may be quite marginal.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Rotimi Williams Omotoye

Pentecostalism as a new wave of Christianity became more pronounced in 1970's and beyond in Nigeria. Since then scholars of Religion, History, Sociology and Political Science have shown keen interest in the study of the Churches known as Pentecostals because of the impact they have made on the society. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) was established by Pastor Josiah Akindayomi in Lagos,Nigeria in 1952. After his demise, he was succeeded by Pastor Adeboye Adejare Enock. The problem of study of this research was an examination of the expansion of the Redeemed Christian Church of God to North America, Caribbean and Canada. The missionary activities of the church could be regarded as a reversed mission in the propagation of Christianity by Africans in the Diaspora. The methodology adopted was historical. The primary and secondary sources of information were also germane in the research. The findings of the research indicated that the Redeemed Christian Church of God was founded in North America by Immigrants from Nigeria. Pastor Adeboye Enock Adejare had much influence on the Church within and outside the country because of his charisma. The Church has become a place of refuge for many immigrants. They are also contributing to the economy of the United States of America. However, the members of the Church were faced with some challenges, such as security scrutiny by the security agencies. In conclusion, the RCCGNA was a denomination that had been accepted and embraced by Nigerians and African immigrants in the United States of America.


Author(s):  
Tair Akimov

Everyone knows that phraseological units are the most popular genre of oral folk art, which was formed as a result of life observations of the ancestors. Learning and analyzing Chinese phraseology allow us to better understand the inner world of the Chinese nation. This article reveals and semantically analyzes aspects of the word “head” that are closely related to Chinese culture. The worldview, deep logical thoughts, feelings, superstitions, lifestyle and environment of the Chinese people are described in phraseological expressions in a concise and clear form. This article discusses the semantics and features of Chinese-language phraseological phrases associated with the word “head”. Chinese-language phrases associated with “head” express meanings such as wisdom and ignorance, process of thinking, cunning,sagacity, and planning. Phraseological units in Chinese linguistics are closely related to practical life and determine such features as philosophical and ideological thinking, logical observation. Taking into account the above, the article provides a comparative analysis of phraseological units related to “head” in Chinese and Uzbek languages. The figurative meanings of the word “head” are being revealed, semantic connections and semantic structure of phrases in the sentence are in the process of learning. Chinese phraseological expressions are poorly studied in Uzbek-Chinese studies. We hope that this work will provide practical assistance to our young people who are learning Chinese.


Author(s):  
Talbot C. Imlay

This chapter examines the post-war efforts of European socialists to reconstitute the Socialist International. Initial efforts to cooperate culminated in an international socialist conference in Berne in February 1919 at which socialists from the two wartime camps met for the first time. In the end, however, it would take four years to reconstitute the International with the creation of the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in 1923. That it took so long to do so is a testimony to the impact of the Great War and to the Bolshevik revolution. Together, these two seismic events compelled socialists to reconsider the meaning and purpose of socialism. The search for answers sparked prolonged debates between and within the major parties, profoundly reconfiguring the pre-war world of European socialism. One prominent stake in this lengthy process, moreover, was the nature of socialist internationalism—both its content and its functioning.


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