scholarly journals Telling the Stories of Left-behind Children in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-99
Author(s):  
Janice Hua Xu

The issue of “left-behind children” in China has been widely recognized as a significant social problem, as more than 61 million children are living in villages away from their parents, who have migrated to large cities to seek employment opportunities. There is a very limited number of media products depicting left-behind children in rural China as central characters with individual personalities. As Stuart Hall states, representation is the process or channel or medium through which meanings are both created and reified. This paper analyzes how stories and voices of this underprivileged group are presented in recent years to the public in different non-fictional media forms, particularly documentary films. Through content analysis of selected samples, the paper examines how narratives are weaved about the lives and emotions of these children, and how the stories make sense of their family experiences. The paper discusses the power of digital narratives and visual-based expressions. It also examines how the products of representation are mediated by different types of storytellers, who are often motivated by a sense of social engagement to raise awareness about the plight of these children to appeal for support but addresses the issue from their specific perspectives. Image Credit: Still of Children at a Village School by Nengjie Jiang

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Purcell ◽  
Kathryn Graham

The international trend for large, corporately owned nightclubs that are similar around the globe is changing and homogenizing the public drinking cultures in many large cities. To better understand this phenomenon, we examined the different types of clubs in Toronto, Canada. The typology is drawn from qualitative and quantitative data compiled by trained observers who conducted 1,056 nights of unobtrusive observations in 75 high-capacity nightclubs. Ten club “types” were constructed using the genre of music as the primary distinction: Dance, Superclub, Rave, Lounge, Upscale, Pop, Salsa, Reggae-Rap, Alternative, and Live Music. These types roughly approximate different subcultures, and provided a means to explore differences related to age, gender, ethnicity patterns, and alcohol and drug usage, as well as the apparent functions for which patrons frequented the different types of clubs. The predominant pattern of the current club scene in Toronto is one of large, corporately owned clubs frequented by a youthful multiethnic clientele, with most club environments characterized by slick décor and heightened sexuality.


Author(s):  
Aji Sulistyo

Television advertisement is an effective medium that aims to market a product or service, because it combines audio and visuals. therefore television advertisement can effectively influence the audience to buy the product or service. Advertisement nowadays does not only convey promotional messages, but can also be a medium for delivering social messages. That is one form of the function of the media, which is to educate the public. The research entitled Representation of Morality in the Teh Botol Sosro Advertisement "Semeja Bersaudara" version analyzed the morality value in a television advertisement from ready-to-drink tea producers, Teh Botol Sosro entitled "Semeja Bersaudara" which began airing in early 2019. In this study researchers used Charles Sanders Peirce's Semiotics theory with triangular meaning analysis tools in the form of Signs, Objects and Interpretations. In addition, researchers also use representation theory from Stuart Hall in interpreting messages in advertisements. The results of this study found that the "Semeja Bersaudara" version of Teh Botol Sosro advertisement represented a message in the form of morality. There are nine values of morality that can be taken in this advertisement including, friendly attitude, sharing, empathy, help, not prejudice, no discrimination, harmony, tolerance between religious communities and cross-cultural tolerance. The message conveyed in this advertisement is how the general public can understand how every human action in social life has moral values, so that the public can understand and apply moral values in order to live a better life.


Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Luiz F. P. Oliveira ◽  
António P. Moreira ◽  
Manuel F. Silva

The development of robotic systems to operate in forest environments is of great relevance for the public and private sectors. In this sense, this article reviews several scientific papers, research projects and commercial products related to robotic applications for environmental preservation, monitoring, wildfire firefighting, inventory operations, planting, pruning and harvesting. After conducting critical analysis, the main characteristics observed were: (a) the locomotion system is directly affected by the type of environmental monitoring to be performed; (b) different reasons for pruning result in different locomotion and cutting systems; (c) each type of forest, in each season and each type of soil can directly interfere with the navigation technique used; and (d) the integration of the concept of swarm of robots with robots of different types of locomotion systems (land, air or sea) can compensate for the time of executing tasks in unstructured environments. Two major areas are proposed for future research works: Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart forest and navigation systems. It is expected that, with the various characteristics exposed in this paper, the current robotic forest systems will be improved, so that forest exploitation becomes more efficient and sustainable.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Jue Wang

“Left-behind” children in rural China are those whose parents seek work in urban areas and leave them behind in their hometowns. In this article, I focus on the experiences of five young “left-behind” girls who were socially isolated because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the Chinese authorities’ instruction to schools to “Stop classes, but don’t stop learning,” I examine microlevel data on the tensions and challenges experienced by these girls during the COVID-19 lockdown. I look at how the pandemic has affected these girls in relation to school and family life and suggest that it has exposed and magnified gender inequalities, particularly those related to the maltreatment exerted by their guardians and/or brothers, that have left them even further behind.


1958 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 306-325

The Right Honourable Sir John Anderson, O.M., 1st Viscount Waverley of Westdean, died in St Thomas’s Hospital, London, on 4 January 1958 at the age of 75, after a lifetime of public service. Few men have filled so many public posts of the highest importance and of such bewildering variety. No one who has covered so wide a range has ever, surely, left behind a record of so many difficult tasks carried through to a successful conclusion. But when this record of a lifetime’s work is set out, it is not the variety of his achievement which leaves the deepest impression. John Anderson had certain outstanding qualities of intellect and character: and the development of these qualities and his determination to use them for the public service, give to his whole life a singular degree of unity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135910532110499
Author(s):  
Jingxin Zhao ◽  
Jing Ge ◽  
Qianyu Li

This study examined the roles of grandparent-child cohesion and friendship quality in left-behind children’s positive and negative affect compared with non-left-behind children. Data from 557 participants indicated that grandparent-child cohesion and friendship quality predicted children’s emotional adaptation. Friend trust and support and intimate exchange had a stronger predictive effect on positive affect among non-left-behind children. Moreover, the interaction effects between grandparent-child cohesion and friendship quality on children’s positive affect supported the reinforcement model, while the interaction effects on negative affect supported the reinforcement model among left-behind children but supported the compensation model among non-left-behind children.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S880-S880
Author(s):  
Zhiyong Lin

Abstract As the processes of urbanization and globalization have intensified across the world, a burgeoning literature has documented the impact of emigration on the health of family members left behind in emigrant communities. Although the association between children’s migration and parental well-being is well documented, few have examined the health implications of children’s migration in the milieu of multiple children and further differentiated between children’s short-term and long-term migration. Therefore, I argue that it is not the geographic locality of a single child but the composition of all children’s location that matters. I further suggest that the impact of children’s migration on parental wellbeing is conditioned on the duration of children’s migration. Using a six waves longitudinal data (2001-2015) collected in rural China, this paper compares mental health (measured as depressive symptoms) trajectories of old adults (aged 60 and older) across different compositions of local and migrant children over a 14-year span. Results from growth curve models show that parents having more migrant children relative to local children experience a more rapid increase in depressive symptoms. In addition, older adults who have their most children migrate away for three or more waves of data have experienced the steepest rate of increase in depressive symptoms. These findings provide new evidence to support the life course processes of mental health disparities among older adults from the perspective of intergenerational proximity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
MING WEN ◽  
KELIN LI

SummaryThis study examines the associations between parental and sibling rural-to-urban migration and blood pressure (BP) of rural left-behind children (LBC) in rural China. Analysis was based on the 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2009 waves of longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, which is an ongoing prospective survey covering nine provinces with an individual-level response rate of 88%. Blood pressure levels were measured by trained examiners at three consecutive times on the same visit and the means of three measurements were used as the final BP values. An ordinal BP measure was then created using a recently validated age–sex-specified distribution for Chinese children and adolescents, distinguishing normal BP, pre-hypertension and hypertension. Random effect modelling was performed. Different migration circumstances play different roles in LBC's BP with mother-only and both-parent migration being particularly detrimental and father-only and sibling-only migration either having no association or a negative association with LBC's BP levels or odds of high BP. In conclusion, the link between family migration and left-behind children's blood pressure is complex, and depends on who is the person out-migrating.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1037-1080 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Xuefei Wang

Abstract About 60 million children under the age of 18 are left behind by their parents in rural China. This paper studies the effect of migrant parents on the educational attainment of their left-behind children in rural China. A theoretical model of optimal schooling in the context of parental migration is proposed. Then, reduced-form equations are estimated using probit model, instrumental variables probit model, and linear instrumental variables model. Results show that parental migration has a negative effect on children’s school enrollment. This negative effect is significant and sizable on the school enrollment of boys, but insignificant on the school enrollment of girls. The most important source of this robust negative effect on boys is the absence of fathers. Results suggest that left-behind mothers or relatives cannot fulfill fathers’ role successfully in disciplining boys and help with their educational needs.


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