WHAT MAKES THE LOCAL? A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF THE REJUVENATION OF HONG KONG IDENTITY

This paper ascertains what makes the local and why the local is important, in the context of change in Hong Kong due to the political transition to PRC sovereignty.In doing so, I hope to pose a modest polemical challenge to cultural studies' tendency to overlook seemingly simplistic empirical information. The return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 has led to a contraction of the political sphere, as the convergence of political structures curbed the development of local identities. The label or category ‘Hong Kong people’ was then appropriated with a specific meaning for the local to resist encroachment of the national. It was true that the high intensity of dominant national discourses during the political transition created a favourable atmosphere for re-nationalization. However, as soon as the political transition was over, Hong Kongers re-adhered to their own label in their struggle for cultural autonomy.Their strong cultural affect toward various national icons during the transition quickly diminished. This multiyear discourse study (1996–1998), which utilizes social scientific methods in conjunction with cultural theories, illustrates important political and methodological impulses necessary for the formulation of a socio-political approach to cultural studies within the Hong Kong context.     

Pluralistic ignorance in Sino–Hong Kong conflicts: the perception of mainland Chinese people living in Hong Kong

This study examined pluralistic ignorance in the context of conflicts between Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese in Hong Kong. This focus differs from past studies, which have mainly explored in-group pluralistic ignorance regarding whether people could correctly perceive the opinions of others who belonged to the same social group as they did. The present study investigated whether people could correctly perceive the public opinion of a collective to which they did not belong. Using two representative samples of mainland Chinese students and local students from three universities in Hong Kong, this study found that mainland students overestimated the local public’s unfavorability regarding Chinese mainlanders and the Chinese government. This overestimation was found to be positively associated with their attention to media content about the Sino–Hong Kong relationship and the extent to which they perceived the pertinent media content to be biased toward Hong Kong but negatively associated with their interpersonal communications with Hong Kongers about issues regarding the Sino–Hong Kong relationship. The overestimation of the local public’s unfavorability of Chinese mainlanders and the Chinese government reduced the willingness of mainland students to stay in Hong Kong for further study, work, or domicile. Based on the findings of this study, further research on pluralistic ignorance is recommended in order to determine how migrants perceive the mainstream opinion in the society to which they migrate.     

The Willingness to State an Opinion: Inequality,Don't Know Responses,and Political Participation

Most explanations of inequality in political participation focus on costs or other barriers for those with fewer economic, educational, and “cognitive” resources. I argue, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's work on “political competence,” that social position in the form of income also structures political participation through differences in the sense that one is a legitimate producer of political opinions. I test whether income differences in participation persist net of costs by examining nonparticipation in a setting in which barriers to participation are low: answering political survey questions. Lower‐income people are more likely than others to withhold political opinions by saying “don't know” net of differences in education, “cognitive ability,” or engagement with the survey exercise. Further, political “don't know” rates predict voting rates, net of other predictors. Efforts to democratize participation in American politics must attend not only to the costs of involvement but also to class‐based differences in individuals' relationship to political expression itself.     

Political scandals, “black materials,” and changing backstage imaginary in the Hong Kong press, 2001–2015

This article examines changes in political communication in Hong Kong in the past 15 years by analyzing the portrayals in mainstream newspapers of the political “backstage,” that is, the part of the political process that is kept from public view. Specifically, the empirical analysis focuses on how the media have utilized the phrase “black materials” in association with political scandals. Based on the qualitative textual analysis of news and commentary articles published in six local newspapers, the findings showed that a significant change occurred in media portrayals of “black material collection” during the study period. Before 2012, the practice was largely ad hoc or tied to elections, and the collection of black materials followed largely legal means. After 2012, the practice was portrayed as routinized, pervasive, and illegal. The changes in the media portrayals both reflected and constructed China as a powerful state with increasing levels of intrusion on Hong Kong affairs.     

Akteure der Gentrification und ihre Ortsbindung:

Relations between residential quality and place attachment of people involved in the gentrification process of an old inner city housing area in East Germany were asked by a questionnaire. As part of a neighbourhood monitoring process, a total of N = 295 subjects of the urban revitalization area of Magdeburg-Buckau participated in the study. Perceived residential quality was measured with an adapted German version of the “Residential Satisfaction Scale” (Bonaiuto et al. 1999), place attachment with a German version of Bonaiuto et al. (1999) “Neighbourhood Attachment Scale”. The empirical findings revealed that those residential preferences which are relevant for gentrification, such as buildings’ aesthetic pleasantness and presence of green areas, are significant predictors of both pioneers’ and gentrifiers’ place attachment. For all residential groups social cohesion was a significant predictor of place attachment, whereas the length of residence was a significant predictor of place attachment only for those who had lived in the area for a long time (i.e., lower class people and high-class people of high education).     

Towards a “New” outrageous public choice

Public choice theory has identified and emphasised “failings” in political processes. However, an assessment of “failure” is sensitive to the framework used for evaluation. Recent developments in cognitive psychology and in experimental economics suggest that “deficiencies” in the political process (ie. “defects” that weaken the link between self interest and policy outcome) are, instead, attractive attributes (which safeguard individuals from the costs of “anomalous behavior”). A “new” public choice perspective (outrageously!) identifies “strengths” (as well as “failings”) in democratic political processes when what has been regarded as “anomalous” behavior is deemed relevant.     

Proceed with Caution: On Teaching and Therapy*

The importance of awareness as to the motivation of the leader or teacher who is involved in affective group process is elaborated in this article. Differentiations are made between manipulation and teaching and therapy and education. The importance of “allowing” as a ground rule for groups is described along with a rationale for this which includes factors such as readiness and motivation. The integration of the affective and cognitive domains in the curriculum (confluent education) is touched on in relationship to the conscious use of affective process in the classroom. Finally, the existential condition of the “Now” is described as a significant factor for guiding the behavior of the leader or teacher.     

Education,Civic Patriotism,and Democratic Citizenship: Unpacking the Education Effect on Political Involvement1

Previous research argues that political involvement not only reflects instrumental concern with political outcomes, but also involves normative motivations such as commitment to collective ideals. Consistent with this view, Americans with a strong sense of “patriotism” have been found to exhibit higher rates of participation than those with weaker attachment to their country ( Huddy and Khatib, 2007 ). However, citizens with high levels of formal education seem to be an exception. Despite scoring lower on conventional measures of “patriotism,” well‐educated Americans are among the most politically active segments of the population. In this article, it is hypothesized that formal education fosters an alternative, civic form of patriotism that conventional measures are unlikely to capture. Rather than reflecting attachment to a particular nation, civic patriotism is rooted in values and beliefs associated with democratic citizenship. Using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, it is found that civic patriotism helps mediate the education effect on two types of political engagement: grass‐roots activism and voting in elections.     

Media populism in post-handover Hong Kong: an investigation of media framing of public finance

Given that the political institution of Hong Kong is not fully democratic and is incompetent in channeling public opinion to the executive branch, the Hong Kong media perform the “surrogate democracy function,” wherein they act as the representative of the Hong Kong people in monitoring the government. This simultaneously provides a breeding ground for media populism. Focusing on newspaper editorials and reports on issues of public finance in Hong Kong, this paper analyzes the rhetoric of media populism, which has become part of the journalism culture of the city since the transfer of sovereignty. The paper reveals that media populism is formed by the construction of a populist diagnostic frame, which implies antagonism between the rich government and the deprived people. The populist diagnostic frame is exercised by (1) lexical creations that imply the government–people relation in public finance, (2) omitting inter-class redistribution by in-grouping both the middle class and the lower class as “the people,” and (3) validating the people’s will by interpreting poll results.     

Trust,scepticism, and social order: A contribution from the sociology of scientific knowledge

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), which studies the organisation and content of science, has made two original contributions to the understanding of social order at large. First, SSK scholars regard social order as a problem of establishing “cognitive order” and knowledge. A wealth of case studies has demonstrated that interpersonal trust is necessary to achieve agreement and shared perception among particular collectives of specialists. Second, SSK scholars insist that all types of cognitive order and knowledge, whether “scientific” or “lay,” are the result of socially organised scepticism being parasitic upon existing trust and background expectations (an argument that I call “the Parasitic View of Scepticism”). Sociologists with an interest in today's so‐called “knowledge” and “information” societies, and more specifically, in the social distribution and political uses of doubt and unknowns (including “post‐truth”), would benefit from adopting the Parasitic View of Scepticism and investigating the corrosive and generative consequences of scepticism on the trust relations and the cognitive/social order upon which it is based, in line with insights from the emerging fields of agnotology and the sociology of ignorance.     

Who's the fairest of them all? Television ads for skin-whitening cosmetics in Hong Kong

This paper explores the notion of fair skin and its relationship to the construction of a Hong Kong ‘racial’ identity by Hong Kongers. It examines a local television advertisement for a cosmetic product named ‘UVWhite whitening softener’. Based on the interpretations of focus-group participants in Hong Kong and the UK, and his own in the role of analyst, the author explores three different perspectives on the advertisement. A triangulation of these three perspectives reveals a number of possible meanings and symbolic functions of fair skin in forming identities of ‘self’ and ‘other’, and their relationships with class, gender and, above all, race in various sociocultural contexts. These perspectives, and the differences between them, also closely reflect the sociocultural backgrounds of the participants and provide clues to an understanding of the ways in which skin colour operates as a visual agent in defining the boundaries of cultural identity, and in identifying a person's place in a local social hierarchy, if not an increasingly global one.     

Where are you from? A case of rural residential identification

This study analyzes the way people identify where they live in a rural midwestern area. This geographic area was chosen because it lacks a single name and includes sections of two states. One year of participant observation and intensive interviews with 45 prominent residents provided the data. Respondents gave a variety of answers to the question, “Where are you from?” These answers utilized (1) governmental district; (2) proximity to a place of concentration; (3) proximity to a famous place or person; (4) mailing address; (5) political location; (6) location of telephone exchange. Different residential identifications are evoked by different activities: negotiating with bureaucracies, traveling, financial transacting, giving directions for residence location, and joining local organizations. This study was conducted in the frameworks of “locating activities” (Psathas and Henslin, 1967) and “cognitive perspectives on community” (Moore and Golledge, 1976). The data suggest that residential identification can be problematic, rather than simple, as has been assumed in previous community research. By examining how people identify their residences, we gain insight into the microdynamics of communities.     

Motherhood Motivations: African Refugee Women Resettled in Australia and Return Visits to a Country of First Asylum

This article expands on conceptualizations of refugee “return” by examining why African women resettled as refugees in Australia return to visit the country of first asylum from which they were previously resettled. I show that their return visits do not relate to attachment to place, but are motivated by social obligations to practise “motherhood” to family members who, due to conflict‐induced displacement, remain in a country of first asylum. I argue that the phenomenon of refugee “return” cannot be conflated exclusively with return to country of origin but is, for African women in particular, centred on the reinvigoration of care relationships across diasporic settings of asylum in which family remain. Building on an emergent focus on feminization in migration studies, I show how these gendered dynamics of refugee “return” are an entry point from which to re‐consider how scholarship and policy take into account “family” in contexts of forced migration.     

THE AMBIGUITIES OF EXTERNAL MINORITY PROTECTION

This article focuses on the special and prominent place that the “Jewish question” occupied in the general discussion about Russian modernisation in the pre‐1914 period, both in American society and in the arena of US–Russian relations. It analyses the role that anti‐Jewish violence in Russia had in effecting a dramatic shift in the way Americans viewed the Russian Empire, which was being depicted by the American Jews and the leaders of the crusade for a “Free Russia” as a barbarous oppressor of political dissent and a savage persecutor of religious, national, and ethnic minorities. American society’s reaction to anti‐Jewish violence in the Russian Empire at the turn of the twentieth century helped, on the one hand, to shape the idea of the American belief that the United States bore special responsibility for carrying out reforms in Russia, and, on the other hand, to place relations between the two countries within such binary oppositions as “light and darkness,” “civilization and barbarity,” “modernity and medievalism,” “democracy and authoritarianism,” “freedom and slavery,” “the West and the Orient.” The article uses a broad range of verbal and graphic sources from the American press and new sources from archival collections. These sources help to illustrate one of the author’s principal tenets which holds that the United States’ view of the foreign policy of the Russian Empire was a result of the Americans’ projection of their own vision of the nature of the US foreign policy. In their official and public discourses, Americans considered Russia’s foreign policy an extension of Russia’s political regime. This study examines US foreign policy as a vital sphere in which national identity is redefined and reaffirmed and gives an opportunity to draw attention to the cultural and ideological dimensions of Russian–American relations, to understand the origins of dualistic American myths about Russia that have proven so enduring, and to demonstrate how a demonised Russia serves to revitalise American nationalism and how the Russian “Other” was used, in part, to construct the American “Self.”     

Fight Club and the World Trade Center: On Metaphor,Scale, and the Spatio-temporal (Dis)location of Violence

In this essay we examine the metaphorical rendition of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, which took place on 11 September 2001, as attacks on “civilization.” Our principal aim is to understand how it has proven to be as affective as it seems to have been thus far. We do so by turning to film, a medium that is quintessentially metaphorical and whose own affective power rests on the reconfiguration of time and space. More specifically, we do so by turning to David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). In contrast to the textual approach offered by Slavoj [Zbreve]i[zbreve]ek (2002), we explore how the formal play of different temporal and spatial scales, which would articulate a trenchant critique of alienation, in fact reproduces an understanding of the subject that is deeply complicit with capital. The play of time and space, on which the affective power of the film rests, articulates a rejection of the fundamentally schizophrenic nature of the subject of capital. Our claim is that this exploration of time, space, and political critique illuminates how the elisions of the historical and geo-political that characterize the metaphorical rendition of the attacks on New York and Washington might easily be overlooked. This essay also advances our more general understanding of both the articulation of time and space within the dominant form of metaphorical representation and how this enacts and consolidates a particular politics.     

Fathering Involvement to Engagement: A Phenomenological Qualitative Roadmap

This phenomenological research examines the narratives of fathers and mothers about the lived experience of “fathering” to find themes to form dimensions of measuring father engagement. Qualitative responses from a mixed method cross-sectional sample of 191 father and mother participants were analyzed for phenomenological themes related to the lived experience of the fathering experience. Mothers (n?=?24) and fathers (n?=?34) provided narratives related to fathering roles and expectations, including enjoyment, fulfillment and gratitude, a relational and environmental context, the value of fathering, fathering involvement and activities, and emotional bonds and attachment. Themes from these narratives included both cognitive and affective dimensions of father involvement experience. The essence of this experience presents the intersection between the value of involvement within a contextual environment, attachment and the fulfillment and joy of the experience of parenting. Measures of attachment as well as fulfillment in parenting are necessary for future direction of research evaluation.     

The “what” and “who” of co-optation: gendered racialized migrations,settler nation-states and postcolonial difference

In this article, I focus on the management of postcolonial difference and the production of belonging in a white settler nation-state in order to rethink the notion of co-optation. I first develop a theoretical framework for understanding co-optation by separating the “who” and the “what” of co-optation: actors who embody diversity in public, political debate become the “who” of co-optation, as their agency is shaped by gendered and racialized processes of subject making. The “what” of co-optation revolves around particular conceptualizations of practices, rights and freedoms, associated in this case with “gender equality,” which is rendered an empty signifier in the process. I then illustrate this framework by drawing from research on the Sharia-based arbitration debate that took place in Ontario, Canada, between late 2003 and early 2006. I focus on the claims of two Canadian Muslim women activists to show that co-optation occurs as attempts to further liberation instead advance illiberal practices.     

The elephant in the room: media ownership and political participation in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong’s open and law-abiding society, applying the political principle of “one country, two systems” presents a challenge to the Chinese government, particularly regarding its efforts to control media ownership. Focusing on the structure of media ownership in Hong Kong, this paper describes the ways in which the Internet – especially social media – has empowered activists and alternative media by providing a means of avoiding censorship and social control. This paper also describes the Chinese government’s use of political power and capital to censor and shape the media landscape in Hong Kong in order to dampen public interest in politics and influence public opinion. Finally, this paper attempts to identify potential solutions to this problem.     

Explaining Urban Migration from Mexico City to the USA: Social Networks and Territorial Attachments

Using a representative survey on a municipality in Mexico City, the article explores the relevance of both social networks and place attachments for US migration. By comparing households with and without migrants, the logistic regression models show that social networks make emigration more selective with respect “education”, but less selective regarding “sex” and “marital status”. These results shed new light on the mechanism through which social networks operate in urban settings. Even if a municipality that is very homogeneous in terms of poverty and employment opportunities, variations on the socio‐demographic profile of the would‐be emigrants to the USA are found depending on the household′s social networks. As for territorial variables, the general impression is one of placelessness, apart from attachment to the municipality, but here again social networks act as an intervening variable.