Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Foner, N. (Ed.) New Immigrants in New York. Elschenbroich, D. (Ed.) Einwanderung, Integration, ethnische Bindung. Ben Jelloun, T. Die tiefste der Einsamkeiten. Morokvasic, M. Jugoslawische Frauen. Die Emigration und danach. Imperialismus und Ausländerfeindlichkeit. De Vries, M. Ogen in je rug. Turkse meisjes en jonge vrouwen in Nederland. Zucker, N. L. and N. F. Zucker The Guarded Gate. The Reality of American Refugee Policy. Chan, K. B. and D. M. Indra (Eds.) Uprooting, Loss and Adaptation. The Resettlement of Indochinese Refugees in Canada. Penninx, R. Minderheidsvorming en emancipatie. Balans van Kennisverwerving ten aanzien van immigranten en woonwagen-bewoners.     

Book Reviews

Changing Families, Changing Responsibilities: Family Obligations Following Divorce and Remarriage. Lawrence H. Ganong & Marilyn Coleman. Marriages in Russia: Couples During the Economic Transition. Dana Vannoy, Natalia Rimashevskaya, Lisa Cubbins, Marina Malysheva, Elena Meshterkina, & Marina Pisklakova. Parenting in Stepfamilies: Social Attitudes, Parental Perceptions and Parenting Behavior in Hong Kong. Gladys Lan Tak Lam‐Chan. Understanding Domestic Homicide. Neil Websdale. Handbook of Marriage and the Family (2nd ed.) Marvin B. Sussman, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, & Gary W. Peterson (Eds.). Violence in Homes and Communities: Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment. Thomas P. Gullotta & Sandra J. McElhaney (Eds.). Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture. Betty G. Farrell.     

Martial arts and the globalization of US and Asian film industries

Abstract

This article investigates how globalization is affecting film industries in the USA and Asia. It argues that these industries are becoming more closely integrated with one another both materially and aesthetically, and that this in turn is leading to the denationalization of individual films and film industries on both sides of the Pacific. The article explores how globalization is experienced differently by different film industries – and by different sectors within individual industries – and how it entails both losses and opportunities for Asian film makers. Taking the contemporary Hollywood and East Asian martial arts film as an exemplary cultural style of globalization, it also looks at how integration involves both cultural homogenization and the production of difference. Specific topics discussed include the growth of Hollywood's Asian markets, Jackie Chan and the flow of Hong Kong talent into Hollywood, Hollywood remakes of South Korean movies, the resurgence of Asian film industries, Hollywood's local-language film production and Zhang Yimou's Hero.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: ONG, Jin Hui, Chan Kwok BUN and Chew Soon BENG (Editors) Crossing Borders: Transmigration in Asia Pacific WICKRAMASEKARA, Piyasiri (Editor) The Gulf Crisis and South Asia: Studies on the Economic Impact BOTTOMLEY, Gillian From Another Place: Migration and the Politics of Culture EXTRA, Guus, and Ludo VERHOEVEN (Editors) Immigrant Languages in Europe ROGERS, Rosemarie, and Emily COPELAND Forced Migration: Policy Issues in the Post-Cold War World STARK, Oded The Migration of Labor Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Migration and Development: New Partnerships for Cooperation MENSKI, Werner (Editor) Coping with 1997: The Reaction of the Hong Kong People to the Transfer of Power HAMILTON, K.A. (Editor) Migration and the New Europe OGATA, Sadako, Daniel COHNBENDIT, Adrian FORTESCUE, Rafiq HADDAOUI, Igor V. KHALEVINSKI Towards a European Immigration Policy KEEN, David Refugees: Rationing the Right to Life – The Crisis in Emergency Relief ZED Books.     

Khmer Potent Places: Pāramī and the Localisation of Buddhism and Monarchy in Cambodia

Cambodia is strewn with places of national, local or, most frequently, village importance, considered as potent places, that is to say, places that are said to have agency and a positive or negative power of interaction with human beings. This paper emphasises the constituent principles of potency using case studies based on ethnographic research conducted between 2007 and 2015 in Pursat province, western Cambodia. Beginning with the analysis of the sanctuary of a powerful land guardian spirit called Khleang Muang, the author progressively guides the reader to all the potent places that form a network which spatially tells the legend of the sixteenth-century Khmer King Ang Chan who passed by Pursat, coming from Angkor and settled in Lovek (south of Tonle Sap Lake). Violent death and sacrifices, rituals, spiritual energy called paramī, old buildings, monasteries, precious tableware kept in the soil, trees, stones, termite mounds?…?all those constituents of the potency of the places are analysed. The author’s discussion of the core of potency (pāramī and paramī) enables her to show how Buddhism and land guardian spirit cults are entangled in a single still hierarchical religious system. Finally, the author analyses how potent places in Cambodia embody a process of localisation of the nation-level institution of monarchy.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Ethnic Groups in Motion: Economic Competition and Migration in Multiethnic States. By Milica Z. Bookman. Immigration the World Over: Statutes, Policies, and Practices. By James P. Lynch and Rita J. Simon. The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High‐Tech Global Economy. By David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun‐Hee Park. Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Jail Complex. By Michael Welch. Negotiating Europeapos;s Immigration Frontiers. By Barbara Melis. Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Control. By Teresa Hayter. Alien Policy in Belgium, 1840–1940. The Creation of Guest Workers, Refugees and Illegal Aliens. By Frank Caestecker. Military Migration and State Formation: The British Military Community in Seventeenth Century Sweden. By Mary Elizabeth Ailes. Becoming Asian American: Second‐Generation Chinese and Korean American Identities. By Nazli Kibria. Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro‐Asian Connections and the Myth of Racial Purity. By Vijay Prashad. West Indian in the West: Self‐Representations in an Immigrant Community. By Percy C. Hintzen. Of Orphans and Warriors: Inventing Chinese American Culture and identity. By Gloria Heyung Chun. Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand. Edited by long Chec Kiong and Chan Kwok Bun. Selling Diversity: Immigration, Multicultural‐ism, Employment Equity, and Globalization. By Yasemeen Abu‐Ladan and Christina Gabriel. Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. By Joshua Hotaka Roth.     

Donation to disaster relief campaigns: Underlying social cognitive factors exposed

A number of very serious natural disasters have put an enormous pressure on relief organizations in the last few years. The present study exposes underlying social cognitive factors for donation to relief campaigns. A causal model was constructed, based on social cognitive theory, research on attitudes, and the impact of media exposure. The aim was to expand and improve an already existing model by Cheung and Chan [Cheung, C. K., & Chan, C. M. (2000). Social-cognitive factors of donating money to charity, with special attention to an international relief organisation. Evaluation and Program Planning, 23, 241–253]. The expanded model showed a better fit. Furthermore, the expanded model explained two-thirds of the variance of the intention to donate to a disaster relief campaign. The greatest predictor of the intention to donate proved to be “Past donation to disaster relief campaigns.” The factor “News exposure” was indicated to be a valuable additional factor, as it had a significant direct effect on “Awareness of a disaster relief campaign” and was the only factor that had a total effect on all other factors, including “Intention to donate to a disaster relief campaign.”     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Megnad Desai, Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism Boel Berner and Per Trulsson (eds.), Manoeuvring in an Environment of Uncertainty: Structural Change and Social Action in Sub‐Saharan Africa Maria H. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State in Somalia: From Statelessness to Statelessness? Oliver Morrissey and Michael Tribe (eds.), Economic Policy and Manufacturing Performance in Developing Countries Naila Kabeer, The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka Michael Edwards and Alan Fowler (eds.), The Earthscan Reader on NGO Management Theodore H. Moran, Parental Supervision: The New Paradigm for Foreign Direct Investment and Development Michael T. Rock, Pollution Control in East Asia: Lessons from Newly Industrializing Economies Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (eds.), Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World Jeffrey James, Technology, Globalization and Poverty Derek Byerlee and Ruben G. Echeverria (eds.), Agricultural Policy in an Era of Privatization B. Mak Arvin (ed.), New Perspectives on Foreign Aid and Economic Development Stephen J.H. Dearden (ed.), The European Union and the Commonwealth Caribbean Samir Rihani, Complex System Theory and Development Practice: Understanding Non‐Linear Realities Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration Sylvia Chan, Liberalism, Democracy and Development Sherry Stephenson, Christopher Findlay and Soonhwa Yi (eds.), Services Trade Liberalisation and Facilitation Janelle Plummer, Focusing Partnerships: A Sourcebook for Municipal Capacity Building in Public‐Private Partnerships The Panos Institute, Reducing Poverty: Is the World Bank's Strategy Working?     

Un-imagining the local/future: cinematic engagement with the absence of hope

ABSTRACT

With reference to the 2014 Umbrella Movement and Hong Kong’s uncertain fate come 2047, I ask how one un-imagines the cultural future of inhabiting the locality. As people take prompts from the present predicament to cope with real possibilities about the future, they realize that a strong embodiment of local consciousness permeates the sociocultural space. I discuss how such engagement takes place through cinematic experience, and examine tactics of the spectator’s critique centring around the erosion of hope at the core of everyday, intellectual and affective imagination. I trace the ways in which postcolonial subjects engage with hope and with the shock of hopelessness in a lived social imaginary. Examining in detail three differently representative recent films, namely, The Midnight After (2014. Dir. Fruit Chan, The Midnight After Film and One Ninety Films), Overheard 3 (2014. Dir. Alex Mak and Felix Chong, Sil-Metropole, Bona Film and Pop Movies) and Ten Years (2015. Dir. K. L. Ng (‘Local Egg’, Boon-deh dan), J. Au (‘Dialect’, Fong-yin), K. Chow (‘Self-Immolator’, Jee-fun jeh), F. P. Wong (‘Season of the End’, Dong sim), and Z. Kwok (‘Extras’, Fau gua), Ten Years Studio), I depict the modes in popular imagination that invoke people’s engagement with the ‘local’, albeit in its affective state. Accordingly, in the context of ‘externalized’ social realities, I identify three interlocking modes of cultural engagement, which I characterize as figurative, performative and prefigurative, respectively. In their ‘future’ imaginary, I look for ordinary people’s ways to face the absurdity of the status quo and the performativity of local struggles with the self.     

‘Would you prefer not to?’ Resetting/resistance across literature,culture, and organizations

ABSTRACT

In this paper we put the concepts of reset, aprosdoketon and minor gesture to work in the context of organizational narratives. In particular we engage with two iconic characters of the genre of organizational fiction, Don Draper in the context of Mad Men TV series and the copyist, who is the main character of Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville. Through a series of textual and performative writings we explore the possibility of setting and resetting organizational narratives/genre. Moreover, we explore what happens when fictional characters from a TV series and a novel (Bartleby and Don Draper) meet us – three scholars working in an array of different fields (literary, methodology, education and organization studies) and how this meeting and interaction shapes our understandings of work, culture, and organizations.     

Nonverbal Emotion Priming: Evidence from the ‘Facial Affect Decision Task’

Affective associations between a speakers voice (emotional prosody) and a facial expression were investigated using a new on-line procedure, the Facial Affect Decision Task (FADT). Faces depicting one of four basic emotions were paired with utterances conveying an emotionally-related or unrelated prosody, followed by a yes/no judgement of the face as a true exemplar of emotion. Results established that prosodic characteristics facilitate the accuracy and speed of decisions about an emotionally congruent target face, supplying empirical support for the idea that information about discrete emotions is shared across major nonverbal channels. The FADT represents a promising tool for future on-line studies of nonverbal processing in both healthy and disordered individuals.The author gratefully acknowledges the service of Elmira Chan, Sarah Addleman, and Marta Fundamenski for running the experiment, and for helpful comments received from M. Harris, K. Scherer and anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft of the paper. This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.     

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article: The Origins of European Through about the Body, the Mind, and the Soul, the World, Time and Fate R. B. Onians The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity Jürgen Habermas An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism Madan Sarup On Social Fuels Margaret Gilbert. Social Anthropology: An Alternative Introduction Angela P Cheater Keynesianism. Monetarism and the Crisis of the State Simon Clarke The Capitalist Class T- Bottomore and R. J. Brym. (eds) Knowledgeable Women: Structuralism and the Reproduction of Elites Sara Delamont Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. A. Maclntyre Social Anthropology and Public Policy in Northern Ireland Hasting Donnan and Graham McFarlane. (eds). Whose Justice? Which Rationality? A. Maclntyre Against Criminology Stanley Cohen Regulating Fraud: White-Collar Crime and the Criminal Process M. Levi Negotiating Control: A Study of News Sources R. V Ericson, Patricia M. Baranek and Janet B. L. Chan Changing Patterns of European Eamily Eife: A. Comparative Analysis of Eourteen European Countries K. Boh, M. Bak, M. Pankratova, J. Ovortrup, G. B. Sgritta and K. Waerness, (eds) Family Planning and Population Control: The Challenges of a Successful Movement Kurt W Back Full Circle? Bringing up Children in the Post-Permissive Society Digby Anderson, (ed.). Raymond Williams: Writing, Culture, Politics Alan O'Connor Social Semiotics Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress Picturing Power: Visual Depictions and Social Relations Gordon Fyfe and John Law, (eds.) The Museum Time Machine: Puttmg Cultures on Display Robert Lumley, (ed) The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century Walter Benn Michaels Literary Methods and Sociological Theory: Case Studies of Simmel and Weber Bryan S. Green     

The number of weak orderings of a finite set

The number of Arrovian constitutions, when N agents are to rank n alternatives, is p(n) ^{p(n) N} , where p(n) is the number of weak orderings of n alternatives. For n≤15, p(n) is the nearest integer to n!/2(log2) ^{n +1}, the dominant term of a series derived by contour integration of the generating function. For large n, about n/17 additional terms in the series suffice to compute p(n) exactly. Received: 29 May 1995 / Accepted: 22 May 1997     

BBC Radio 4 and the experiential dimension of disability

In April 1998, BBC Radio 4’s programmes were rescheduled and a commitment was given that disability would become a mainstream issue for the network. Does He Take Sugar?, the network’s weekly programme which presented in‐depth treatment of disability issues was dropped. You and Yours, Radio 4’s weekday consumerist programme, was given the remit to include disability‐related coverage in its content. While mainstreaming yielded the possibility of increased coverage, the accompanying risk was that insightful treatment of disability would be lost. However, findings from an analysis of the series No Triumph, No Tragedy demonstrate that, post mainstreaming, meaningful exploration of disability continued on Radio 4. Crucial to this, it is argued, is the fact that the series was conducted by a disabled presenter.     

Studies in international social work

Studies in international social work is a joint report series between the Department of Social Work and INSWED (International Social Work Education and Development), both of which are at Stockholm University. The series was started in 2002 in order to reflect some of the international work relevant for social work that is being done by or in cooperation with these entities. It is open for ‘traditional’ academic work as well as international development cooperation projects. The research reports selected for publication in the series concern projects conducted in collaboration with Stockholm University and which can be expected to be of common interest to a wide range of readers. For this reason they are published in English. To date, the series has been devoted mostly to child welfare issues.     

THE IMMORTAL COSMOPOLITAN

The 1990s, internationally co-produced, television series Highlander was an early, successful example of everyday television produced under the pressures of negotiating the dictates of internationally conceived agreements concerning culture, representation, finance, and circulation. This essay parallels an institutional analysis of the series with a textual analysis of its fictive world and characters to examine the series’ attempts to elide the structural conditions and textual constraints underwriting its existence. To do so, the essay teases out the intricacies and implications of a new take on the colonial-era fantasy of cosmopolitan existence embraced by the series and embodied by the program's hero. It argues that this immortal cosmopolitanism offers a means for understanding the series as characteristic of transformations in the practice of transnational television production and circulation as a response to the globalization of neo-liberal economies. The machinations behind what gets displayed on screens around the world reveal a great deal about the substance of the global circulation of culture. At the same time, the text itself negotiated the pressures of attempting to appear constantly local and amenable as it traveled around the world. Highlander is significant for the specific ways in which it negotiated these pressures, revealing something of an allegorical take on its own existence as it imagined a hero that was relevant and interesting to globally-dispersed audiences in the 1990s: the immortal cosmopolitan.     

Alef and Shem: Original artwork

Abstract

Artist and scientist Sharon Gershoni presents here two works of her art in different mediums. Alef is a series of drawings made with Japanese sumi ink on washi paper and is a reflection on the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, alef. Shem (Name) is a photograph exposing the symbols and attributes of women in Western art and thought.     

Demotic or demonic? Race,class and gender in ‘Gypsy’ reality TV

An intriguing shift in the public interest of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller minorities has been the rise of the ‘Gypsy’ reality TV star in shows across Europe (‘Gypsy’ is the word most often used in popular media culture). The latest phenomenon to hit the UK has been the Channel 4 series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (Firecracker Films, Channel 4, 2010–2013), a flamboyant production that has garnered both huge audience shares and fierce criticism, with commentators berating its narrow, sensationalist focus. Drawing on both specialized literature on Roma minorities and current sociological debates on reality TV formats, this article raises questions about how the politics of the ‘demotic turn’ of such formats (as noted by Turner in 2004) can lean towards the demonic through emphasizing such groups as spectacular, extraordinary and above all, negatively different. Furthermore, this article shows how the series not only reproduces old stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as different, ethnicized others but is also heavily embroiled in UK gender and class discourses. Whilst the series claims to be a unique insight into a marginalized community, this close analysis discusses the wider politics within which it is embedded and how such representations can both popularize and undermine marginalized or minority groups.     

Actor and event orderings across time: Lattice representation and Boolean analysis of the political disputes in Chen Village,China

So far qualitative data on political disputes in a Chinese community, 1950–1980, have been presented in a narrative historical account (Chan, Madsen and Unger, 1984, Chen Village. The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao's China, University of California Press) and analyzed with statistical network tools (Schweizer, 1991, Journal of Quantitative Anthropology, 3, 19–44). In this paper, lattice and Boolean analyses are applied as new procedures. First, lattice analysis is used to explore the dual order structure among actors and events in different periods. This gives a systematic understanding of the power struggle across time. Second, Boolean algebra is applied to specify and test explanatory hypotheses trying to account for the success or failure of actors in the disputes. In this application Boolean analysis detects multivariate causal order patterns in a small and qualitative data set.     

From the Nelsons to the Huxtables: Genre and family imagery in American network television

Television genres must be understood within the sociohistorical context in which they are created and received. Television's classic genre, the episodic series, which is defined by the imagery of family, evolved out of the commercial imperative of the industry as well as earlier aesthetic forms. In the 1950s and 1960s, least objectionable programming strategies generated bland, consensual comedies such asFather Knows Best andMy Three Sons. With the social changes of the late 1960s and early 1970s and a shift to demographic programming, episodic series changed in form and content. Workplace and domestic family shows explored controversial issues and experimented with narrative form. In the 1980s, we see an opening out of the series both in form and content, generating a plurality of family forms. Yet this relativism is undercut by the rigidly fundamentalist nuclear families depicted in popular new comedies such asThe Cosby Show andGrowing Pains.This article is drawn from a larger project on television genres which will appear in a forthcoming collection of essays about television edited by Chad Gordon and Ken Tucker of Rice University.