Popular discontent,divided perceptions,and political polarization in Taiwan

Popular discontent with political performance has been a preeminent feature in Taiwanese politics since the first power alternation in 2000. Potential explanations include economic decline, deteriorating quality of democratic governance, and electoral over-competition. For an emerging democracy like Taiwan, the political experience under the Chen Shui-bian administration was a crucial test for the transition to a mature democracy. While popular discontent with various political agencies might convey different messages, the author argues that the synthetic outcome is a partisan-laden perception of political accountability, which led to serious political gridlock and ingrained partisan rivalry that could have jeopardized Taiwan's fledgling democracy. More importantly, polarized politics in Taiwan under the Chen administration can be seen as a lesson, one that illustrates how the process of democratic consolidation can be possibly reversed in an emerging democracy.     

由碰撞到融合——三种唱法的发展之路

民族唱法、美声唱法、通俗唱法在各自发展的历程中都形成了一种独特的体系,三种唱法在发展过程中伴随着不断的碰撞,并在碰撞中相互借鉴、融合,从而不断完善自我,扩大受众,三种唱法由碰撞到融合是时代发展的必然趋势,是当代人们不断提高的审美需求和欣赏习惯的必然选择,更是三种唱法自身发展进程中所形成的内驱力推动的结果。     

流行文艺与新生代农民工主流价值观的构建

新生代农民工的群体价值观存在缺乏吃苦耐劳精神、责任意识差且消费盲目、患有"城市冷漠症"等问题,结合流行文艺的特点及传播优势,在创作中融入主流价值观文化元素、构建主流价值观的接受途径、建立科学的评价方法和反馈手段等方法来构建新生代农民工的主流价值观,这对于和谐社会的构建具有现实意义。     

民心何足恃——中国传统“民本”思想中的一个解释困境

"得民心者得天下"是从属于儒家民本思想的一个通俗表述,得到了学界和民间的普遍认同。然而,这个理论在中国历史中却很难被证明。尽管官方和儒生极力鼓吹,但是"民心"与政权得失之间并不存在明确对应关系。在暴力和强权面前,"民心"往往呈现出扭曲的状态,很难考量。"得民心者得天下"可以被看作是儒家一种难以实现的美好理想,这也客观反映了儒家信条在中国古代的实际地位。     

马修·阿诺德与“文化与无政府状态”理论

马修·阿诺德是英国新左派和英国文化研究的＂先驱＂。＂传统文化＂是他思想中的核心内容。＂文化与无政府状态＂理论内核价值丰富。他认为严肃文化的守护只有＂文化与无政府状态＂中的＂剩余民＂或＂有机知识分子＂才能担当,这是＂文化霸权＂的时刻,这开启了他对＂大众文化＂正面的认知,对英国文化研究和英国文化马克思主义做出了杰出的贡献。     

评析大众文化批判理论下的流行音乐--基于唯物史观的视角*

音乐作为一种大众文化,它的传播无所不在,然而,法兰克福学派的大众文化批判为了强调这种“大众文化”并不是服务于大众的文化,提出了“文化工业”这一概念来取代“大众文化”。并指出,流行音乐像许多大众文化一样日趋标准化和商品化。这一批判是对当代社会中文化价值危机的深刻反思,但这种绝对的否定的态度,颇值得人们深思。     

Pregnancy,Then It's “Back To Business”

This essay theorizes the contours of a post-feminist gender regime that utilizes figures such as Beyoncé in order to hail women as self-governing subjects who make the right choices with respect to career, marriage, motherhood, and the disciplining of their bodies. As a black woman, the narrative about Beyoncé's life and choices has specific implications; it positions professional black women as ideal citizens and mothers and also seeks to reconfigure and normalize representations of the black family. The body, specifically the black female body, plays an important role in attempting to transform and normalize these representations. This essay offers one of the few examinations of black women's relationship to post-feminism. Although post-feminism has been conceptualized in ways that ignore black women, I aim to demonstrate why further consideration of black women's relationship to post-feminism is needed. It is my contention that with successful black women increasingly in the public eye, what they say about feminism and how they relate to feminist politics have important implications for how all women, but especially young black women, engage in types of activism that go beyond placing value on individualism at the expense of the collective.     

Urbanised soundtracks: youth popular culture in the African city

This article interrogates the participation of youth in constructing and defining the African urban landscape. It seeks to examine youth popular culture and performance practices that combine indigenous sound aesthetics with enactments of cultural memory to construct the urban landscape of Botswana. Particularly, the article examines youth cultural and expressive forms such as hip-hop and Kwaito musical genres, popularised traditional music, and the satirical dramatic impersonations of radio personality Dignash Morapedi. These performances elaborate African syncretic formations that underscore the power of African popular culture to integrate, reinvigorate, and transform various social spaces and identities. Urban youths use these performance forms to demonstrate how innovative practices could be used to interrogate social realities such as unemployment, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Using the notion of “urban noise,” the article teases out a strategy of critique that articulates the various ways that the youth acoustically construct, produce, and navigate the African city.     

Media advocates,Latino citizens and niche cable The limits of ‘no limits’ TV

In Shot in America, Chon Noriega calls for the study of media activism’s work ‘within the system’ of state institutions and for analysis of the relationships between media activism, the television industry and government policies. This article uses a cultural policy studies focus to answer this call and map the deregulated terrain upon which media advocacy groups must now operate. Liberal governance demands that media advocates find means other than state-directed appeals to advance their agendas. As such, this essay examines the efforts of several Latino advocacy groups to garner viewer support for a Latino-themed cable television show, Resurrection Boulevard, and to use the series as a vehicle for increased Latino participation in the television industry. This article focuses on the issue of access for Latinos to professional positions that affect television programming, and it presents tools for advocacy efforts within political spheres to achieve more socially equitable access to media technologies. First, the paper traces the regulatory history of the broadcasting and cable television industries to show how the federal government narrowly conceives of ‘the public interest’ as a specifically consumerist one. The article then analyses the structures that led to cable television’s ‘narrowcasting’ format, such as Showtime’s ‘No Limits’ programming, and argues that liberalism has created a context wherein several media advocates normalise the ‘citizen-consumer’ model. Having established this groundwork, the author then conducts a case study of the economic and social forces that shape Resurrection Boulevard, which is written, produced and acted by Latinos. Through this study, the author maintains that advocacy groups’ consumer-based appeals to Latinos as ‘citizen-consumers’ fail to serve as effective instruments for achieving increased minority representation in the television industry.     

Intellectual spaces of practice and hope: power and culture in Portugal from the 1940s to the present

This paper examines configurations of power, authority and culture in Portugal in the twentieth century, and intellectual practices and spaces related to those configurations and in opposition to them. Portuguese national history and essentialized versions of Portugueseness are analysed in the work of such distinguished and influential intellectuals as António Sérgio, António José Saraiva and Eduardo Lourenço, in articulation with the role of high culture in the process of nation building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One particular structure of attitude and reference, constructed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is foregrounded with reference to the History of Portugal by Oliveira Martins, in the context of the persistent contradictions and conflicts between progressive and conservative, modernizing and traditional, ‘historical’, formations and projects. In such a context, moments of oppositional, alternative and independent projects are worth looking into. Two decisive moments of social change in the second half of the twentieth century were the 1940s, and the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper pays attention to the politics of culture of Neo-Realismo in the 1940s and its consequences for high and popular culture over the following decades, especially in the years leading to the democratic revolution of 25 April 1974. A brief analysis of the 1990s is articulated to the study of the change-producing projects in the 1940s and 1960s as part of the cultural studies practice the paper argues for.