Unequally Adrift: How Social Class and College Context Shape Students’ Mentorship Experiences

Faculty mentorship is a highly advantageous yet under-explored form of social capital which can grant access to co-curriculars (e.g., research assistantships), ensure strong letters of recommendation, and more. It is also typically informal and dependent on student initiative, requiring that students be skilled at engaging educational authority figures. Privileged students are most likely to have such skills as part of their dominant cultural capital, making faculty mentorship a site of social reproduction. To explore variations in this process, I compare two institution types: a small, teaching/undergraduate-focused regional university and a large, research-intensive flagship. In interviews with 68 working- and upper-middle-class students, I find that college context mediates the relationship of class background and faculty mentorship. Upper-middle-class students fostered advantageous faculty relationships at both universities, but working-class students diverged: at the flagship, they rarely approached professors in search of mentorship, while those at the regional university described close, beneficial connections with professors. I discuss working-class students’ dissimilar experiences in terms of each university’s structural and cultural characteristics (organizational habitus), particularly their institutional focus and size. I argue that through their particular organizational features, colleges can both reproduce and reduce inequalities, challenging the determinacy of precollege socialization in education.     

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.     

政府引导社会资本赋能全域土地综合整治的影响与路径

基于共建共治共享视角分析政府引导社会资本赋能全域土地综合整治的影响,构建政府和社会资本的演化博弈模型,采用湖北省全域土地综合整治的调研数据,对政府和社会资本的演化趋势和行为策略进行动态仿真。研究发现：共建共治共享从主体、工具和价值维度指明了政府引导社会资本赋能全域土地综合整治的影响因素和行为逻辑;共建共治共享有助于促成政府和社会资本的正向合作博弈,初始意愿、政府补贴、政府监管、企业成本是影响双方行为策略的关键因素;关键因素的变化能对社会资本的行为策略产生不同性质和程度的影响。对此提出：政府通过出台激励政策,整合部门资源,落实奖罚措施等手段,有助于科学引导社会资本赋能全域土地综合整治,促进整治模式从政府强势主导向多元主体共建共治共享转型。     

‘There’s a lot of places I’d like to go and things I’d like to do’: the daily living experiences of adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities during a time of personalised social care reform in the United Kingdom

Adult social care services in the United Kingdom have undergone a period of transformation over recent years, characterised by a drive towards personalised care. Concurrently, social care budgets have been significantly reduced. This study aimed to explore the daily living experiences of adults with mild/moderate intellectual disabilities, who are at risk of no longer meeting eligibility criteria for statutory support. Focus group discussions, which included both people with intellectual disabilities and support workers, were analysed thematically. Two broad themes are presented: independence and agency; and social capital and well-being. While some participants echoed ideas central to the personalisation narrative, a number of contextual barriers to achieving greater independence and agency were discussed. Moreover, greater independence was not a desired goal for all participants. The findings highlight the potential mismatch between personalised social care, as delivered within significant budget constraints, and the needs of adults with intellectual disabilities.