scholarly journals Teaching Transnational Buddhist Meditation with Vipassanā (Neiguan 內觀) and Mindfulness (Zhengnian 正念) for Healing Depression in Contemporary China

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 212
Author(s):  
Ngar-sze Lau
Keyword(s):  
Mainland China ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Buddhist Meditation ◽  
Open Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meditation Retreat ◽  
Vipassana Meditation ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This paper examines how the teaching of embodied practices of transnational Buddhist meditation has been designated for healing depression explicitly in contemporary Chinese Buddhist communities with the influences of Buddhist modernism in Southeast Asia and globalization. Despite the revival of traditional Chan school meditation practices since the Open Policy, various transnational lay meditation practices, such as vipassanā and mindfulness, have been popularized in monastic and lay communities as a trendy way to heal physical and mental suffering in mainland China. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study of a meditation retreat held at a Chinese Buddhist monastery in South China, this paper examines how Buddhist monastics have promoted a hybrid mode of embodied Buddhist meditation practices, mindfulness and psychoanalytic exercises for healing depression in lay people. With analysis of the teaching and approach of the retreat guided by well-educated Chinese meditation monastics, I argue that some young generation Buddhist communities have contributed to giving active responses towards the recent yearning for individualized bodily practices and the social trend of the “subjective turn” and self-reflexivity in contemporary Chinese society. The hybrid inclusion of mindfulness exercises from secular programs and psychoanalytic exercises into a vipassanā meditation retreat may reflect an attempt to re-contextualize meditation in Chinese Buddhism.

The Politics of Hsia-hsiang Youth

1974 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 491-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Gordon White
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Ideological And Political Education ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Transitional Stage ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This paper sets out to examine various aspects of the contemporary Chinese social system and their political implications by studying the social and political attitudes of a subgroup of Chinese society. The general area of interest is social stratification in China: the bases of social differentiation in the new society and how these are perceived by its citizens; the extent to which changes in the structure of society have been accompanied by changes in social attitudes; the extent to which ideological campaigns to change attitudes have been successful; the limitations placed by the stratified nature of society in its transitional stage of socialism on the effectiveness of ideological and political education.

THE ROLE OF FACE GAINING ON MILLENNIALS’ OUTBOUND TRAVEL INTENTION IN MAINLAND CHINA

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behavior ◽  
Behavioral Control ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Perceived Behavioral Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
Tpb Model

As a typical cultural concept being deeply rooted in Chinese society, “face” regulates many social behaviors in China. However, research on the social aspect of “face” is limited in tourism studies. This study applies an extended TPB model incorporating face gaining for examining millennials’ outbound travel intention from mainland China. By analyzing data from 350 Chinese millennial tourists, we find that face gaining has an indirect impact on outbound travel intention through attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC). Based on the findings, the research provides some insights regarding “face gaining” in travel behavior, and destination marketing on Chinese millennials.

Villains, Victims and Morals in Contemporary Chinese Literature

1971 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe C. Huang
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revolutionary Romanticism ◽  
Social Conduct ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Source Materials

Novels reflect social realities at given times and under given conditions. When the direct survey method cannot be applied to the study of Chinese society, novels constitute one of the available sources from which useful information concerning the structure, order and conditions of society and interpersonal relations may be inferred. However, the difficulty of reconstructing the social conduct of Chinese people from such elusive source materials is enhanced since Communist novels reflect less the realities as they are than the realities as they should be. The theory of the combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism demands that the plots and characters must be “romanticized” to give a picture of the society corresponding to the needs of ideology. Even if this is so, the stories still have to be based on social realities for the readers to appreciate them. A somewhat modified interpretation holds that romanticization is based on the foundation of realism. It is from the discernment of this element of realism in Chinese Communist fiction that we may attempt to reconstruct the nature of Chinese society.

Humour and TikTok memes during the 2020 pandemic lockdown: Tensions of gender and care faced by Chinese mothers working from home

2021 ◽  
pp. 0920203X2110496
Author(s):  
Xiao Han ◽  
Giselinde Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Product Placement ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
Temporary Relief ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This article examines a humorous meme that emerged on Chinese TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Using #workfromhomewithchildcare, Chinese working mothers shared humorous clips of their experience of working from home with their children who were also at home during the pandemic lockdown. By analysing the themes, protagonists, and humour techniques of a sample of 85 videos, we ask why the mood of these clips is so strongly marked by humour, and what this tells us about contemporary Chinese society, particularly about the position of women and mothers. We show that these memetic clips consist of three distinct genres of mothers working from home: (1) ‘balancing mothers’ who balance between work and childcare, (2) ‘pedagogic mothers’ who give childcare tips, and (3) ‘commercially oriented’ mothers who offer tutorials by means of product placement and advertisement. While these memes express what Mary Douglas called ‘a joke in the social structure’ without offering either relief or critique, they do create an online joking culture that offers temporary relief as well as awareness that others are in the same position. Our analysis tempers enthusiastic claims about both the critical potential of humour and the new ‘liberating’ affordances offered by digital platforms to produce liberating female spaces.

scholarly journals A Behavioural Study on the Influences of Confucianism in Chinese Society

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-132
Author(s):  
Helal Uddin Ahmed ◽  
Zhang Jielin
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Population ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
World History ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Chinese Culture ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Confucius (551-479 BC) is considered to be a great philosopher and educator in Chinese society and one of the greatest scholars ever in world history. He was the founder of Confucianism, which constitutes a major part of traditional Chinese culture and made tremendous contribution to the unfolding of Chinese civilization over the centuries. In this study, the authors have presented a comprehensive outline of Confucianism and have attempted to gauge the attitude of contemporary Chinese people towards Confucian concepts, values and attributes as well as their influences on the social lives of present-day Chinese population. The Likert Scale was applied in the study to assess the attitude of the Chinese educated class belonging to the educational institutions like the universities in Beijing towards Confucianism. It was found from the survey that the Confucian concepts still wield substantial influence on the social outlook of the modern-day Chinese people and these attributes are still relevant in the day to day lives of the Chinese society. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#61-62; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2017 P 109-132

Lay Buddhists and Moral Activism in Contemporary China (当代中国的佛教居士与道德能动主义)

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Society ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
Grassroots Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economically Marginalized ◽  
Lay Buddhists ◽  
Organizational Cohesiveness ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

The last few decades have seen the rise of grassroots groups of lay Buddhists in post-Mao China who, through the composition, exchange, and discussion of Buddhist-themed media, foster moral discourses that critique what they perceive as the materialistic direction of contemporary Chinese society. Disseminated at legal but unregulated spaces within Buddhist temples, these discourses empower the economically marginalized lay practitioners who gather there and provide them with new purpose in life. Practitioners are also able to transmit these moral discourses through networks to other temple spaces. However, they do not yet possess the means to use them to influence the social direction of Chinese society at large. This is due to (1) political restrictions against the circulation of religious-themed materials outside of approved religious activity sites; (2) economic obstacles faced by the practitioners who seek to spread anti-materialistic messages; (3) a lack of organizational cohesiveness among the practitioners; and (4) the influence on practitioners of doctrines within Buddhism that caution against proselytizing to those who do not already possess a pre-fated bond with the Buddha and his teachings. As a result, lay Buddhists do not as yet constitute a social movement in the way the term is conventionally used by sociologists.佛教居士组成的草根社会团体在毛时代之后的几十年快速发展。通过书写、交流与讨论与佛教主题相关的文献，他们促进形成了一套批判当前中国社会拜金主义倾向的道德话语。这套话语在合法且相对自由的佛教寺院中传播，鼓励了经济窘迫的信徒，帮助他们获得新的生活目的。这一道德话语也借由信徒进一步传播给其他的寺院。但是因为以下原因，这些草根团体无力影响中国社会的整体方向：1)宗教政策限制了宗教思想在寺庙以外的传播；2)信徒的经济地位较低，难以宣传反对拜金主义的话语；3)信徒中间缺乏组织凝聚力；4)反对向那些与佛陀无缘的人宣传佛家思想的信条。因此到目前为止，佛教居士团体还没有形成社会学意义上的社会运动。

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

Embodied Spatial Practices and the Power to Care

2019 ◽  
pp. 360-377
Author(s):  
Elise Paradis ◽  
Warren Mark Liew ◽  
Myles Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Critical Care ◽  
Health Care Delivery ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Critical Care Units ◽  
Interprofessional Care ◽  
The Social

Drawing on an ethnographic study of teamwork in critical care units (CCUs), this chapter applies Henri Lefebvre’s ([1974] 1991) theoretical insights to an analysis of clinicians’ and patients’ embodied spatial practices. Lefebvre’s triadic framework of conceived, lived, and perceived spaces draws attention to the role of bodies in the production and negotiation of power relations among nurses, physicians, and patients within the CCU. Three ethnographic vignettes—“The Fight,” “The Parade,” and “The Plan”—explore how embodied spatial practices underlie the complexities of health care delivery, making visible the hidden narratives of conformity and resistance that characterize interprofessional care hierarchies. The social orderings of bodies in space are consequential: seeing them is the first step in redressing them.

scholarly journals Exploring Chinese people’s attitudes towards “going through the backdoor”

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 183449092199329
Author(s):  
Tulips Yiwen Wang ◽  
Allan B. I. Bernardo
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Total N ◽  
Perceptions Of Fairness ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
Back Door ◽  
People’S Attitudes

The present investigation explored Chinese people's attitudes toward the social practice of going “through the back door” or zouhoumen. Zouhoumen is an informal approach to achieve one’s goal through personal connections (called guanxi). We propose that Chinese people distinguish between different acts of zouhoumen and propose at least two types that differ in terms of social cognitive aspects, and that the two types evoke different perceptions of fairness that shape attitudes towards zouhoumen. Two experiments (total N = 414) provided evidence for the differentiation between facilitative zouhoumen and expropriative zouhoumen and also explore the role of type of guanxi in attitudes towards the two types of zouhoumen. Both experiments indicated that facilitative zouhoumen was less unacceptable than expropriative zouhoumen, but there were no marked differences in attitudes between zouhoumen involving expressive or instrumental guanxi. The results support a more nuanced theoretical account of a pervasive social phenomenon in Chinese society that we assume is adaptive responses to features of Chinese historical socioeconomic context.

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