A Commentary on “Gender Perspectives in Cross-Cultural Couples”

This commentary expands on Kellner’s article by discussing clinical practice with Asian and Euro-American couples. Differences in Western and traditional Asian cultural expectations around intimacy and styles of emotional expression can often lead to misunderstanding among couples. Therapy can also be a challenge for couples when they do not share the same first language. A therapist who only speaks English can inadvertently create an alliance with the partner whose first language is English. On the other hand, bilingual therapists who use both English and an Asian language in the session can face challenges differentiating their roles as a therapist versus a translator. Case illustrations are presented to illustrate these challenges.

New cultural economies of marginality: revisiting the West Coast,South Island,New Zealand

Marginal regions have been the subject of political concern and remedial action in western states for several decades now. The West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand is an interesting case study in this regard, for recent economic growth has confounded earlier expectations of post-restructuring decline, while also contradicting several of the nostrums of new regionalism. In an effort to understand this trajectory, this paper draws on documents from public and private sector organisations, newspaper articles and field visits to examine developments in four key sectors of the West Coast's economy: mining, dairy farming, forestry and tourism. Economic growth is found to be closely linked to the cultivation of new markets for primary products, but efforts to rework the cultural dimensions of marginality have also been important. Value has been added to specific products through the insertion of references to the region's alpine and forested landscapes. Isolation and peripherality have been recast in more positive terms, echoing the broader reframing of New Zealand as a scenic, unspoiled destination. In adopting a cultural economic perspective on marginal regions, the paper illustrates the significance of symbolic forms of value, the potentially flexible nature of marginality as a discursive category, and the importance of the networks which connect regions to national and international flows of capital and tourists.     

中美中东石油关系解析

作为居世界前两位的石油进口和消费大国,中美都离不开中东石油。中美在中东必然因石油而发生关系,这种关系具有双重性——事实上的竞争与合作关系。在中东石油领域,如果两国展开过度竞争甚至恶性竞争,双方可能走向“零和”或两败俱伤的“负数”结局;如果两国开展对话、合作或实现竞争下的合作,则完全可以在中东石油甚至其他能源领域实现互利双赢。     

开展海外能源合作,确保中国石油供应

中国的石油需求增长迅速已成为世界性共识.在国内资源条件不理想的情况下,中国的最佳选择是,积极开展海外能源合作,以确保石油供应.各种因素表明,中东产油国应是中国的首选合作方.在开展海外能源合作,与一些主要的石油生产国或石油输出国互动时,既要重视提高海外能源运输的安全系数,也应以积极、友善的姿态,与周边邻国合作,构建亚洲石油供应保障体系.     

中国人口老龄化的地区差异分析

本文基于1990—2013年省际面板数据,以老年人口比重作为老龄化指标,采用基尼系数分解方法和Kernel密度估计方法,实证分析了中国人口老龄化的地区差异及其动态演进过程。研究结果表明：中国人口老龄化在地区分布上呈现出明显的非均衡特征;基尼系数测算及其分解结果表明,人口老龄化的地区差异总体上呈现波动缩小趋势;2004年以前,地区间差距和超变密度交替成为总体地区差异的主要来源,2004年以后,超变密度成为总体差异的主要来源。 Kernel密度估计显示,老龄化程度不断加深,地区差异呈波动趋势。     

China’s flexible overseas food strategy: food trade and agricultural investment between Southeast Asia and China in 1990–2015

Using the UN Comtrade database and multiple sources of agricultural investment data, this paper outlines the emerging patterns of food trade and agricultural investment between Southeast Asian countries and China. The paper shows that China has adopted a flexible overseas food strategy. First, China has increased food export and shifted its food trade with Southeast Asia from a dependent relationship towards a complementary relationship at the regional level in recent years. Second, China tends to adapt to the existing conditions of food production and trade in Southeast Asian countries instead of fundamentally altering them. Finally, Chinese overseas agricultural investment is less driven by domestic food demand but more oriented for profit making, and this gives it flexibility in diversifying investment. An adequate understanding of China’s flexible food strategy in bilateral and multilateral relationships holds implications for global food security.     

Reading Polanyi in Erbil: understanding socio-political factors in the development of Iraqi Kurdistan

ABSTRACT

The Kurdistan Regional Government emerges out of the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq as a rare positive, providing both political stability and economic growth. However, the outward display masks a more complex domestic settlement where the trappings of the free market coexist with political parties who are significant economic actors. How can this model of development in Iraqi Kurdistan be explained? Turning to the writings of political economist Karl Polanyi, does his thinking on relations between society and economy offer a way to unpack the development? And what does this analysis tell us of prospects for Iraqi Kurdistan?     

Wang Ming-hui and Blacklist Production: the Third World/Asia turn of Taiwan’s new music production

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the music group ‘Blacklist Production’ (also known as Blacklist Studio) that was established in the late 1980s when the Martial Law was lifted in Taiwan, and the group’s original works of music. It investigates the music composition and thinking process of Wang Ming-hui, the founder of Blacklist Production, and analyses two albums produced by the music studio, Songs of Madness (1989) and Lullaby (1996), as a way of reconsidering and reflecting the feeling process and limitations of the nativist ideology from 1989 to 1996 that took shape in Taiwan’s society. In addition, the paper also explores Wang’s musical practices through which he has tried to answer the question of ‘how to express thoughts with music’. Through the historical analysis of musical works and interviews with Wang Ming-hui, the paper suggests that ‘Taiwan’s New Music Production’ brought up and practiced by Wang and Blacklist Production is embedded with the possibility for Taiwan’s culture and imagination of modernity to ‘turn’ the referent point to the Third World/Asia.     

The politics of leisure and labor mobilities: discourses of tourism and transnational migration in Central Java,Indonesia

This article presents narratives and tropes of transnational tourism from a less considered perspective: rural migrant-origin villagers of Central Java. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cilacap and Yogyakarta, I analyze how and why some former temporary labor migrants depict their typically harsh experiences in terms of tourism and leisure. Addressing the tendency in current research to approach labor migration and tourism as mutually exclusive or unrelated class categories and experiences, I consider the ways in which former migrants and non-migrant villagers evaluate or identify labor migration in terms of gender, class, religious, and ethno-national subjectivities associated with ‘tourist’ and/or ‘migrant’ categories. Popular and commercial imaginations of leisure travel and tourism importantly shape the subjectivities and positionalities of precarious labor migrants. Foregrounding the relations between tourism and labor migration reveals the multi-scalar ways in which associated discourses and infrastructures of both mutually shape and constitute global socio-economic inequalities.