The Literati-Official Victimization Narrative

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Burton-Rose ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Current Program ◽  
State Agents ◽  
Current Member ◽  
The Late Ming Dynasty

This article describes the Confucian cycle of apotheosis in which deceased sages and worthies served as a model for the living who in turn aspired to become paragons for future generations, thereby achieving a form of immortality. It explores the way in which victimhood was strategically employed to perpetuate power relations beneficial to local landowners through a case study of support over a hundred and fifty year period by a major familial lineage in the Yangzi delta region for one of the most prominent victims of factional violence in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644): Donglin current member Zhou Shunchang (1584–1626). Influential patriarchs in the Peng familial lineage of Suzhou cultivated indignation in local society about the injustices suffered by righteous literati-officials such as Zhou Shunchang. The driving motivation of the Pengs’ memorialization of Zhou was to decry physical harm of literati-officials by state agents and to perpetuate the Donglin current program of governance centered on the counsel of literati-officials. In continuing Zhou’s memory through textual and ritual interventions, the Pengs put forward a vision of local autonomy while simultaneously aligning their own interests with those of the Manchu Qing (1644-1911) rulers.

Homology, Hierarchy, and Space - A Case Study of Wu’s House

2011 ◽  
Vol 243-249 ◽  
pp. 1694-1700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Jia Li
Keyword(s):  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Interior Decoration ◽  
Imperial Palace ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Late Ming Dynasty ◽  
The City

This paper is a case study of Wu’s house, which is located at the Majiamiao hutong, only several blocks away from the imperial palace—the Forbidden City in Beijing. It is a typical quadrangle called Siheyuan, or "four-side enclosed courtyard". Historians declared that, judging by the architectural style and interior decoration, the house might have been constructed in the late Ming dynasty [1], which means the history of the house could go back for more than 400 years. The complete story of the house and its owners can be divided into three parts: first, a house for a large feudal family before 1949; secondly, a house for a famous dramatist until 1966; and finally, a house for the city poor from the Great Cultural Revolution on. During 400 years of social evolution and revolution, especially in the past 50 years, the house and the families who lived in it underwent great changes. The precise homology and strict hierarchy in Siheyuan, implied by the order of orientation and scale of the buildings within the house, was weakened gradually by the “revolutionists” who tried to establish an absolute equality among the people in every detail of their lives, including their house. However, never will a house like Siheyuan be equal to every member in it because it was born of politics.

Effective Altruism

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
The World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Effective Altruism

The effective altruism movement consists of a growing global community of people who organize significant parts of their lives around two key ideas, represented in its name. Altruism: If we use a significant portion of the resources in our possession—whether money, time, or talents—with a view to helping others, we can improve the world considerably. Effectiveness: When we do put such resources to altruistic use, it is crucial to focus on how much good this or that intervention is reasonably expected to do per unit of resource expended (for example, per dollar donated). While global poverty is a widely used case study in introducing and motivating effective altruism, if the ultimate aim is to do the most good one can with the resources expended, it is far from obvious that global poverty alleviation is highest priority cause area. In addition to ranking possible poverty-alleviation interventions against one another, we can also try to rank interventions aimed at very different types of outcome against one another. This includes, for example, interventions focusing on animal welfare or future generations. The scale and organization of the effective altruism movement encourage careful dialogue on questions that have perhaps long been there, throwing them into new and sharper relief, and giving rise to previously unnoticed questions. In the present volume, the first of its kind, a group of internationally recognized philosophers, economists, and political theorists contribute in-depth explorations of issues that arise once one takes seriously the twin ideas of altruistic commitment and effectiveness.

scholarly journals Distribution and Integration of Military Settlements’ Cultural Heritage in the Large Pass City of the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty: A Case Study of Juyong Pass Defense Area

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7166
Author(s):  
Yukun Zhang ◽  
Songyang Li ◽  
Lifeng Tan ◽  
Jiayin Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Conservation Strategy ◽  
Defense System ◽  
Current Conservation ◽  
North West ◽  
Cultural Routes ◽  
Great Wall ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

The Great Wall of China is more than a wall: it is an extensive cultural route. Pass cities, which are usually large defensive fortresses overseeing an entire fortified area, are an essential part of this heritage and are at the core of the Great Wall’s defense system. Juyong Pass was the closest Pass city to Beijing during the Ming Dynasty when the Great Wall reached its peak. It consisted of five regions—south, east, north, west, and central—that form three fortification levels: core castle, Bao city, and End facility. Based on the Juyong defense area military settlements database, this paper applied spatial analysis methods and found that more than half of the military’s resources for the whole defense area were focused on the western part of the wall, which formed another military core alongside Juyong Pass city. However, the current conservation strategy only focuses on Juyong Pass itself, neglecting the settlements in the western part, thereby destroying the integrity of the Great Wall’s heritage. By clarifying the distribution of cultural heritage in this area, we hope to encourage the preservation of many fortifications according to their authentic historical sphere of control and provide a reference for the sustainable integration of resources along the significant cultural routes of the Great Wall.

scholarly journals Gender Essentialism in Chinese Reality TV: A Case Study of You Are So Beautiful

2021 ◽  
pp. 152747642110272
Author(s):  
Altman Yuzhu Peng
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Feminist Analysis ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
Gender Essentialism ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
Tv Production

This article provides a feminist analysis of Chinese reality TV, using the recent makeover show— You Are So Beautiful (你怎么这么好看) as a case study. I argue that the notion of gender essentialism is highlighted in the production of You Are So Beautiful, which distances the Chinese show from its original American format— Queer Eye. This phenomenon is indicative of how existing gender power relations influence the production of popular cultural texts in post-reform China, where capitalism and authoritarianism weave a tangled web. The outcomes of the research articulate the interplay between post-socialist gender politics and reality TV production in the Chinese context.

scholarly journals Resituating the political in cultural intermediary work: Charity sector public relations and communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942199423
Author(s):  
Anne M Cronin ◽  
Lee Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Cultural Intermediary ◽  
Cultural Intermediaries ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Relationship

Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the expense of an in-depth analysis of the political. Using our case study as a prompt, we highlight the diversity of ways that the political impacts cultural intermediary work and that cultural intermediary work may impact the political. We reveal the tensions that underpin practice as a result of the interactions between culture, the economy and politics, and show that the tighter the engagement of cultural intermediation with the political sphere, the more tensions must be negotiated and the more compromised practitioners may feel.

Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Stell
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
African Country ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Phonetic Variation ◽  
Variation Patterns ◽  
Standard Models

AbstractThis study generally looks at indigenization in languages historically introduced and promoted by colonial regimes. The case study that it presents involves Namibia, a Subsaharan African country formerly administered by South Africa, where Afrikaans was the dominant official language before being replaced by English upon independence. Afrikaans in Namibia still functions as an informal urban lingua franca while being spoken as a native language by substantial White and Coloured minorities. To what extent does the downranking of Afrikaans in Namibia co-occur with divergence from standard models historically located in South Africa? To answer this question, the study identifies variation patterns in Namibian Afrikaans phonetic data elicited from ethnically diverse young urban informants and links these patterns with perceptions and language ideologies. The phonetic data reveal divergence between Whites and Non-Whites and some convergence among Black L2 Afrikaans-speakers with Coloured varieties, while suggesting that a distinctive Black variety is emerging. The observed trends generally reflect perceived ethnoracial distinctions and segregation. They must be read against the background of shifting inter-group power relations and sociolinguistic prestige norms in independent Namibia, as well as of emergent ethnically inclusive Black urban identities.

“Speaking truth to power”: analysing shadow reporting as a form of shadow accounting

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 510-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Tregidga
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Senior Management ◽  
Single Case Study ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Perceived Impacts

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the act of shadow reporting by a social movement organisation as a form of shadow accounting within a sustained campaign against a target corporation. Situated within a consideration of power relations, the rationales underlying the production of the shadow report, and the shadow reports perceived value and limits as a shadow accounting mechanism, are investigated. Design/methodology/approach A Foucauldian approach to power/knowledge and truth is drawn upon in the analysis of a single case study. Alongside a consideration of the shadow report itself, interviews with both the preparers of the report and senior management of the corporation targeted comprise the main data. Findings The paper provides an empirical investigation into shadow reporting as a form of shadow accounting. While a range of insights are garnered into the preparation, dissemination and impact of the shadow report, key findings relate to a consideration of power relations. The perceived “truth” status of corporate accounts compared to accounts prepared by shadow accountants is problematised through a consideration of technologies of power and power/knowledge formations. Power relations are subsequently recognised as fundamental to the emancipatory potential of shadow reporting. Research limitations/implications Results from a single case study are presented. Furthermore, given the production of the shadow report occurred several years prior to the collection of data, participants were asked to reflect on past events. Findings are therefore based on those reflections. Originality/value While previous studies have considered the preparation of shadow reports and their transformative potential, this study is, the author believes, the first to empirically analyse the preparation, dissemination and perceived impacts of shadow reporting from the perspectives of both the shadow report producers and the target corporation.

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