What the ‘housing problem’ shows about today’s China*

ABSTRACT

This paper presents, elaborates and contextualizes the results of a survey concerning the meaning of housing in Mainland China, mainly for young people, and the perception of the various dimensions of housing as a problem. It considers the material, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of this problem, and the contradictory expressions of the problem (e.g. housing as a measure of success and as an investment). It examines the relation of the housing problem to three sub-systems: state politics, market economy, and the ‘urbanized, at-home living style’. Finally, it considers the paradoxes of competing consumer rationalities and the consciousness of capital and markets in China.     

‘It’s not my problem’: exploring lecturers’ distancing behaviour towards students with disabilities

While conducting a qualitative study on the e-learning needs of students with disabilities at a South African university, the responses from some of the lecturers indicated that they distanced themselves from the responsibility of providing learner support to students with disabilities. These participants displayed a lack of involvement with the students and tended to transfer their responsibilities to support services on campus, such as the Unit for Students with Disabilities. In essence, this means that the creation of an inclusive learning environment at this campus remains elusive, thus frustrating the learning of students with disabilities in particular. Although the necessity of institutional policies is not refuted, we argue that personal responsibility is essential in bringing about inclusive campuses. Factors contributing to the shifting of responsibility will consequently be explored and ways in which lecturers can be supported to provide enriching learning experiences for all students will be suggested.     

Editor’s Notes

As we were editing this issue, wereceived the news that the renowned writerBing Xin had passed away. We were deeplygrieved over her death. Bing Xin, old as the century, had     

Editor’s Notes

CHINA has achieved great leaps in the 20 years since it launched itsreform. Economically it has reached a vital junction — the reform ofstate-owned enterprises. China is aiming to enable the majority of thelarge- or medium-sized state-owned enterprises to rid themselves of deficitand those serving as China's economic backbone to establish a modernenterprise system, all by the end of the century. This is the hard, urgent taskfacing the Chinese people. In this reform, women have given, and are stillgiving, an important contribution. Wang Hongming, General Manager of theShenyang Dawn Garments Group, provides a suitable focus for this issue.     

Europe’s Role in China’s Transition to Superpower Status

What can Western powers do today to ease an eventual global power shift resulting from the rise of superpowers such as China? This paper suggests that part of the answer lies in the same power-binding institutions that allowed the US to rise post WWII without threatening its allies. Continuity in the rules of the global system during a great power transition would promote stability by reducing uncertainty, as well as the extent to which material power can be used coercively. I argue that current superpowers, the EU among them, have an interest in ensuring an equitable distribution of the gains from cooperation. While distributional issues are usually treated in normative terms, they take on very real, material meaning in the context of a great power transition. With this in mind, I look at three aspects of the current global institutional framework that would benefit from reform: international trade and aid, institutional design, and institutional proliferation. In all three cases, a more equal distribution of the gains from institutions today increases the odds that those institutional arrangements will remain in the future.     

A children’s election—Dilemmas of children’s political participation

In this article, we explore how fifth graders (9–10-year-olds) and their teachers view children's participation in a parliamentary election for children arranged by Save the Children Norway in 2017. The participants draw on available discursive resources when making sense of children's political positions in society. In the discursive resources, longstanding tensions surrounding children, childhood and politics come to the surface. We conclude that although children's position in politics remains marginal, there are ways to move beyond the tensions to be able to imagine children as political actors.     

Nailing One’s Colours: Tate Britain’s Artist and Empire

Taking the view that national art museums should represent the multifarious populations they serve, this article explores racial material in Tate Britain’s high-profile exhibition Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (2015). The exhibition gave extensive coverage to two aspects of empire: hybrid fusions and the myth of white heroism, but gave limited attention to colonization as a maximally coercive system built on racist imaginings and abuse. Through cross-examination of the exhibition’s content and absences, I explore whether Tate Britain is setting out the ‘building blocks’ for more diverse practice.     

The Adoptee’s Journey

The subject of adoption has often been mired in wishful thinking and denial. Because of the secrecy in the system, adopted children have beenforced to repress their need to know about their origins; many feel invisible because an essential part of them is unacknowledged by their adoptive parents and society. The purpose of this article is to help mental health and legal professionals, as well as those in the extended community, to see what is specific about the formation of the adoptee’s inner world. It introduces the concept of cumulative adoption trauma and discusses the adoptee's need to dissociate feelings of loss, grief and anger. The struggle to form a coherent sense of selfmay eventually lead to the adoptee's need to search out the birth parents in order to integrate the past and the present and move on into the future.     

In Laura’s House

Eaton’s images offer us an eerie dream of blistering empathy using Donna and Laura, the iconic teenage friends of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, as identificatory paths into a sexualized female psyche divided against itself by the paternal violence at the heart of an “ordinary” family. This graphic vignette is one of simultaneously poignant, radical, and therapeutic solidarity and survival, the monstrously violating figures peopling Laura Palma’s world becoming recognizable, if only for a short, privileged time, to the hitherto unspoiled eyes of her best friend Donna.     

Vygotsky’s Anomalous Spinozism

Abstract

This article exposes sources and influences of Spinoza in some of Vygotsky’s works, keeping in mind its meaning for the creation of a “new man” in Soviet Socialism. We try to understand the features of Vygotsky´s reading of Spinoza in an active dialogue with contemporary studies of 17th-century philosophy and its consequences for a materialist psychology. In this direction, we discuss references to Spinoza done by Vygotsky in the context of the latter’s argumentative style as well as studies of Engels, Plekhanov and Deborin as possible sources in Vygotsky´s approach to Spinoza. Paraphrasing Negri´s take on Spinoza as the “wild anomaly” of the 17th-century, we argue that Vygotsky performed an anomalous reading of Spinoza. In spite of the similarities with Deborin´s view of the modern philosopher, Vygotsky had plans that were more ambitious for Spinozist materialism and determinism. We trace the anomalous way in that the latter´s materialism reveals itself as one of randomness and contingency, against a rigidly structured projection of state, society, or model of human beings. We cannot figure out exactly which “model of man“ Vygotsky had in mind in his take on Spinoza, but we are able to recognize some core aspects in his reasoning. Roughly, these include the unity between mind and body, which can take the most diverse forms in the common body of multitude; the bases of consciousness in the affection; the integration, in the psychological systems, of affect, will, and desire; and the Spinozan ethics as a reference to life.