Learning and Experiencing Chinese Qigong in Norway

This article discusses the reception of Chinese qigong in a Western context by focusing on the learning and experiencing of qigong in Norway. Drawing on ethnographic material from fieldwork among participants of a style of qigong referred to as Biyun medical qigong, I in particular explore the variety of body–mind states that Norwegian qigong students experience. I have differentiated five “stages” of Biyun practice. Using these stages as a framework, I demonstrate the gradual progression in the learning of qigong. “Body,” “concentration,” and qi (“life energy”) are all important constitutive dimensions in the practice, but as the learning progresses, qi becomes more and more prominent. Drawing on a definition of the body as “learning to be affected” and “learning to affect” (Despret, Body Soc 10:111–134, 2004; Latour, Body Soc 10:205–229, 2004), I suggest that qigong may be perceived as a practice that, at its core, involves learning to be affected by qi as well as to affect qi.

“I Can Provide for My Children”: Korean Immigrant Women’s Changing Perspectives on Work Outside the Home

Whether immigrant women’s introduction to paid labor empowers them with greater autonomy or exacerbates their oppression has been debated variously in the scholarship on gender and migration. In this paper, the author examines Korean immigrant women’s perspectives on work outside the home after migration. Based on in-depth interview data, the paper emphasizes Korean women’s own interpretations of work and motherhood, and highlights the ways in which they define and redefine work in relation to other aspects of their post-migration experiences. The analysis finds that income producing work is not empowering in and of itself, but contingent upon other post-migration challenges such as economic downward mobility and women’s changed roles as working mothers. Furthermore, women’s perception of work fluctuates over time. The findings suggest that paid work should not be simply interpreted as an empowering change, but the linkage between work and other aspects of immigrant women’s post-migration realities needs to be more closely examined.

Gendered Careers in Post-Soviet Society: Views on Professional Qualifications in Surgery and Pediatrics

This study examines the medical profession in post-Soviet society, where women have been in the majority of the physicians for almost seven decades. It examines pediatricians’ and surgeons’ definitions of the professional skills and qualities needed for “good” work. Lithuania is used as a case study. Thirty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2005 with male and female surgeons and pediatricians in Lithuania. The results show that the gender composition of the specialty—surgery being a male-dominated and pediatrics a female-dominated specialty—tended to influence the way that physicians perceived the qualities needed for good work. For surgeons, male-gendered qualities were prerequisites for being a good surgeon: physical strength and being in control. Female surgeons added a female-gendered quality—empathy and compassion—that made them good surgeons. A good pediatrician had a holistic and empathic approach and an ability to communicate, which were seen as female-gendered skills. Male pediatricians experienced otherness in this specialty but did not, as women surgeons did, offer a counter discourse in order to legitimate themselves as being as skilled as women.

The Voice on the Bridge: Taiwan’s Regulatory Engagement with Global Pharmaceuticals 橋上之聲: 全球醫藥法規中的臺灣處遇

This paper analyzes Taiwan’s engagement with the standardization of pharmaceutical clinical trials at the turn of this century. Unlike approaches that treat local encounters with globalization as either reluctant acceptance or lasting resistance, this study calls attention to a complicated process of negotiation, the conceptual gap between the illusion of a unified world and the reality of persistently divided nation-states. To address this gap, an ethnographic investigation is required. Two concepts, “bridging” and “voicing” (fasheng), are introduced in order to capture Taiwan’s unstable status, what I term “the voice on the bridge,” in this process. Bridging emerged as a technical concept for evaluating pharmaceutical drugs’ possible differential ethnic effects. But it also reflects the ambiguous reality of a world in which each state is an islet connected to others by imaginary bridges. Fasheng (“voicing”) has to do with Taiwan’s long-held desire for world recognition as a state. This paper is an ethnography of globalization and the state that traces how Taiwan created a regulatory resolution through the idea of bridging and how this “voice” was articulated through various social strategies. It explores not only the complexity of interactions in the technical field of regulatory science, but also argues that looking at such entanglements of science and society makes it possible to move beyond simple interpretations of globalization.

The State of American Boyhood

The existence of a “boy crisis” in the United States is a topic of public policy debate. This study examines the state of American boyhood, using not only the commonly reviewed indicators of school achievement but also mental health, premature death, injury, delinquency, and arrests. Boys are in trouble in many areas: low rates of literacy, low grades and engagement in school, high dropout from school, and dramatically higher rates of placement in special education, suicide, premature death, injuries, and arrests. Girls, however, suffer from other problems, especially depression, suicidal ideation and attempts, and eating disorders, and are less likely to achieve at the very highest levels in mathematics and science. This study argues that both boys and girls suffer from characteristic problems, but the issues affecting boys are serious and neglected.

“Grace Is Deceitful and Beauty Is Vain”: How Hassidic Women Cope with the Requirement of Shaving One’s Head and Wearing a Black Kerchief

Women’s modesty norms are often perceived as governing women’s bodies and as patriarchal oppression. This study challenges these perspectives, offering a deeper, multi-dimensional picture showing that the reality of the women’s life is much more complicated. The article chose to discuss aspects of modesty among women of one of the most extreme Jewish ultra-Orthodox groups, and in particular, to investigate how they experience an extremely demanding requirement—shaving off the hair on their head upon marriage and covering their head with a black kerchief. The findings show that there are a variety of voices among the women, ranging from the view that these practices are desirable, through the view that they empower the women, to the view that they damage one’s attractiveness and are quite painful.

Female Status and Infant and Child Homicide Victimization in Rural and Urban Counties in the U.S.

Studies consistently show that female labor force participation is a correlate of infant and child homicide victimization. Research and theory supports the notion that as women’s economic status improves, children are safer. Yet few existing studies make use of feminist perspectives to explain child homicide. Further, homicide studies have focused heavily on urban areas leaving a lacuna of understanding in the literature regarding rural areas. This study explores the connection between absolute and relative female economic status and infant and child homicide victimization in both rural and urban U.S. counties. Results show that absolute female economic status is positively associated with infant and child homicide in urban areas, but not in rural areas. I argue that in rural areas, stronger collective sentiment and less differentiation diminishes the effect of women’s status on child homicide. While rural areas are characterized by harsh economic realities, these realities are nevertheless shared among men and women, decentering the link between child victimization and women status.

The Conceptual Contours of Sex in the Chinese Life Sciences: Zhu Xi (1899–1962), Hermaphroditism, and the Biological Discourse of Ci and Xiong, 1920–1950

This paper “maps” a number of trajectories through which the conceptual contours of sex could be traced in the bioscientific discourse of Republican China. Focusing on the writings of the embryologist Zhu Xi (1899–1962), I analyze the epistemic functionality of such biological terms as ci (“biological femaleness”) and xiong (“biological maleness”) that acquired an unprecedented scope of cultural discursiveness in China only alongside the arrival of Western biology, which replaced classical learning and natural studies as the authoritative field of inquiry about life. I first show that when Chinese scientists used these terms to describe the sex of biological species, they relied on an epistemological framework of visual knowledge that granted some foundational operative power to a signifying order in which one could know by seeing the differences between ci and xiong (and, ultimately, sexual differences). These two terms’ lexicality and indexicality thus mutually reinforced one another in the production of their semiotic possibilities and epistemo-logicality. I then show that while they adopted ci and xiong as the bioscientific synonyms of the more culturally anthropocentric words such as nü (woman) and nan (man), Chinese biologists also incorporated sophisticated biological theories of sex from Europe and North America, including the theories of “gynandromorphism” and “intersexuality.” The implicit and explicit figurations of hermaphroditism reveal the ways in which at the heart of the entire bioscientific discourse of ci and xiong resides its key conceptual anchor: the human–non-human divide.

Children with Keitai: When Mobile Phones Change from “Unnecessary” to “Necessary”

This paper focuses on children in Japan who begin using mobile phones (keitai) while in elementary school and will discuss aspects of parental–child relationships that involve keitai use. Firstly, this paper presents an overview of a Japanese society presently immersed in mobile media, focusing particularly on the spread of mobile media use to younger Japanese children. Data are presented from two research projects and analyzed to examine the cause of, and circumstances that lead to, child keitai use. Increasing social anxieties about safety and parental concern have reportedly led to increasing perception that keitai use is valuable in times of emergency, or in order to prevent crime, leading to a shift in attitudes towards children’s keitai use: that which was formerly considered “unnecessary” has now become “necessary”. However, the anxiety about safety is shared by almost all people and is therefore not itself a deciding factor regarding children’s keitai ownership. Keitai usage is, instead, prompted by several factors, some of which are not shared by children and parents. From this rift in reasoning emerges a game of tug-of-war over ownership and use between children and parents.

Gender Pedagogy in Swedish Pre-Schools: An Overview

Sweden is often hailed as a pioneering country regarding gender equity, but it still has gender equity issues to deal with, and gender stereotyping is sometimes mentioned as one of them. Since the 1990s, Sweden has seen the emergence of many gender pedagogy projects, not least in pre-schools. With gender equity projects among adults yielding limited results, the focus has shifted to children to see if gender stereotypes can be countered in childhood. This article aims to provide an overview of the gender pedagogy projects that have been carried out in Swedish pre-schools. The article covers background, methods and insights gained.

Intersection of Ethnicity,Gender and Class: Oriental Faculty Women in Israel

Ethnicity, gender and class are the major factors of social inequality and have been studied extensively leading to a large literature pertaining to each one of them. The issue of the intersection of ethnicity, gender and class has been introduced into the social sciences by feminist critical theory. Intersection theory postulates that minority groups are discriminated against on the basis of more than one characteristic which are “inextricably tied” leading to complex forms of inequality in various social domains. This study examines the intertwined effects of these factors as they are experienced and narrated by Mizrachi women (19) who are employed in universities and colleges. Although the intersection approach is generally supported by the data it was found that under certain conditions ethnicity, gender and class may be separated. One type of decomposition is when one identity encroaches upon another or others; the second is the separation of diverse identities assigning them to different life areas. These change processes do not support stereotypical dichotomies between Ashkenazi and Mizrachi, women and men and so on, and enable the creation of new hybrid identities.

Understanding the Complexity of Attitudes of Low-Income Single Mothers Toward Work and Family in the Age of Welfare Reform

This article explores the ideas of low-income single mothers on certain aspects of welfare reform, namely the Marriage Promotion Act, which uses funds for the formation and maintenance of two parent families. Drawing on research with former and current welfare recipients, the author explores how the mothers felt about certain welfare reform policies while trying to understand their current work and family arrangements. Two main ideas behind welfare reform were to encourage paid work and two parent families. While the mothers acknowledged that having access to a second wage earner would help themselves and their children realize a life less complicated by monetary issues, they expressed anger and frustration at being encouraged to marry. Welfare reform dictates that families receiving assistance take personal responsibility for their low-income lives and that paid work is essential to moving a family out of poverty. The stories from the mothers interviewed for this study suggest that while they valued work and wanted to work, to combine work with being a “good mother” was difficult to accomplish. Ultimately, what these mothers suggest through their experiences is the contradiction of welfare reform—paid work does not necessarily provide independence and marriage to another wage earner also undermines independence.

Causes and Consequences of the Divergent Working-Time Patterns of Employed Mothers in the UK and the US: Developing a Comparative Analysis

The paper aims to develop a framework to understand the variant use of part-time work by employed mothers in the UK and US. In particular, this paper seeks to explore how diversity in the use of part-time work can be explained when both countries are associated with a neo-liberal form of capitalism (Hall and Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism: the institutional foundations of comparative advantage, 2001) and welfare regime (Esping-Andersen, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, 1990). It is argued here that by combining aspects of the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) and welfare regimes literatures with Gender Regime theory (Walby, Social Politics, 11(1):4–29, 2004), a gender centred analysis of both the causes and consequences of divergent working-time patterns can be more adequately achieved.

“알맞게 낳아서 훌륭하게 기르자!” (Let’s Have the Proper Number of Children and Raise Them Well!): Family Planning and Nation-Building in South Korea, 1961–1968

This paper looks at the formation of a South Korean national health network by focusing on the introduction of an ambitious National Family Planning (FP) Program under President Park Chung Hee (1961–1968). The program, influenced in part by the model of its neighbor, Taiwan (Taichung), saw two pilot studies carried out in Koyang (rural, beginning in 1963) and Sundong-gu (Seoul metropolitan area, 1964–1966), before being carried to rural areas nationwide. If the program began with numerous echoes of Japanese colonial practice, it was mobilized specifically in terms of the emerging “modern” South Korean story and the state’s relationship to the welfare of the individual family unit. Using a range of Korean and English-language sources, the paper illustrates how the FP effort took: (1) the Koyang study of the effects of mass communication in rural areas as a tentative blueprint for expanding its national agenda; (2) subsequently enlisted mobile transportation (1966) to expand the scope of its reach; and finally, mobilized “Mothers’ Clubs” (1968) to penetrate the very fabric of rural society, making women both the target as well as the primary means of distribution. Ultimately, this strategy of enlisting the active participation of South Korean women on behalf of the program asked rural women in particular to submit their bodies to the state’s scrutiny, even as they formed the core of the distribution network. In this respect, FP anticipated the mass mobilization of rural South Korea in the New Village movement of the 1970s and leaves behind an ambiguous legacy of state control that is only just beginning to be re-examined.

The History of Chinese Medicine in the People’s Republic of China and its Globalization

This introductory article provides an overview over the history of Chinese medicine, as it evolved in the People’s Republic of China over the last 60 years. In particular, it highlights how Traditional Chinese Medicine (zhongyi), as invented in the 1950s during a period of nationalism marked by idealism and pride in China’s ancient philosophy and cultural heritage, has evolved into a medicine that thrives on the contemporary global health market in a neoliberal climate. This latter form of Chinese medicine, which the author, in accordance with its Chinese promoters, calls zhongyiyao “Chinese medicine and pharmacotherapy,” has led to a further materialization of the once scholarly medical currents of Chinese medicine. However, as this volume will show, the globalization of Chinese medicine should not merely be considered in respect of those aspects that are being sold in those niches of society that offer a cure for bodily ailments but also in respect of those that—in accordance with the way Cartesian dualism has divided health care—are increasingly consumed as aspects of preventive medicine, namely taijiquan, and qigong.

Subjective Versus Objective Definitions of Homelessness: Are there Differences in Risk Factors among Heavy-Drinking Women?

Investigations with homeless populations have focused on those living on the streets or in shelters; few have examined phenomena based on respondents’ self-definitions as homeless or not. This investigation examined similarities and differences among risk factors (including mental health, substance abuse, religion/spirituality, social support, and risky sexual behaviors) using two definitions of homelessness: one where place of residence defined individuals as homeless (the ‘objective’ or traditional, definition) and another where respondents defined themselves as homeless (the ‘subjective’ definition). Data come from the baseline survey of the NIAAA-funded “Sister-to-Sister” study (n = 339) of heavy-drinking women. Subjectively defined homelessness was associated with higher rates of mental health and substance use disorders, lower rates of condom use, higher rates of trading sex for food, and less social support. Objectively defined homelessness was associated with higher rates of drinking in abandoned buildings, on the streets, and in public restrooms, more new sexual partners, and higher rates of trading sex for heroin and speedballs. Investigations failing to ask for subjective information may misattribute some factors to homelessness which may overestimate the effect of various factors on homelessness. Investigators should ask respondents to define their homelessness, or they lose an important dimension of the concept of homelessness.

Life After Experiences of Infertility Treatment: Akirameru—The First Step for Empowering

Although there is some awareness of how women in infertility treatment have suffered physically and psychologically, it is a little known fact that there is a limit to the “cures” that can be achieved even with assisted reproductive technologies. Here, I describe how the existence of ART affects women’s decision making about their lives. Through life histories of women who underwent infertility treatment, I explore the factors which cause their suffering and conflict—that they cannot give up on having children even though they want to give up—as follows: (1) The models of their ideal family which have been formed throughout their lives is ‘ordinary’ family; (2) they experienced the alienation from their own bodies in infertility treatment; (3) they are afraid that they deviate from the community norm because of infertility; (4) their narrative shows their suffering from infertility is caused by tense relationship in family and community. These factors make women in infertility belittle themselves. Through their life histories, I conclude that they need to be empowered if they want to akirameru (give up) having children after prolonged infertility treatment. To paraphrase, a woman who suffers from infertility and infertility treatment is empowered when she becomes unafraid to deviated from cultural norms.

The Window of Ritual: Seeing the Intentions and Emotions of ‘Doing’ Gender

My goal in this paper is to revisit interaction ritual theory as a theoretical underpinning of West and Zimmerman’s ‘doing’ gender paradigm in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of what is taking place inside the interactions of men and women as they ‘do’ gender. Recent work in ritual theory, specifically the work of Bell (Ritual theory, ritual practice, 1992) and Collins (Interaction ritual chains, 2004) expands the role of the individual in the ritual process by conceptualizing ritual as a form of ‘practice’ that can be mobilized in the pursuit of emotional energy. Through the narratives of 24 married couples, I explore how domestic labor functions as an interaction ritual that is driven by ‘emotional energy’. This emotional energy shapes the localized intentions of men and women as they ‘do’ gender thus transforming gender into something that we ‘use’ as well as ‘do’. These emotions and intentions can be seen most clearly through a new ‘window’ of ritual.

Gender and Mathematics Achievement in China and the United States

This study examines the relationship between gender and mathematics achievement among students in China and the United States, with an emphasis on the gender gap among mathematically talented students. The results show that in neither the US nor China are there gender differences in eighth grade math-achievement test scores. In China, there are no gender differences in mean college entrance examination math scores among high-school seniors, while in America, the mean SAT-Math score among male high-school seniors has been consistently higher than those of their female counterparts. In both the US and China, there are gender differences among the top math performers on college entrance examinations; boys are over-represented. The Chinese national mathematics curriculum, well-trained teachers, beliefs by students and their parents that academic achievement is more a product of effort than of natural ability, a gender-neutral parental expectation for children’s education, and generous family spending on the education of girls are suggested as possible factors underlying the comparable performance of the Chinese female and male students. The sorting system at Chinese secondary school level and a cultural stereotype favoring boys in mathematics are suggested as possible contributors to the math-achievement gender gap found among the top Chinese high school seniors.