It's More Than an M‐shape: The Political Economy of Female Non‐Standard Workers in the Republic of Korea

This study examines the re‐entrance of female workers into the Korean labor market. We highlight that women in their 40s have the highest rate of employment among all female workers and that a large proportion of these women are entering into non‐standard employment. In approaching this question, we examine the political economy of this phenomenon by first discussing the demand side of the Korean labor market using the gendering of the varieties of capitalism argument and then the supply side with the work–life balance argument. When examining re‐entrance into the labor market, women with general skills with lower education and higher education both found it more feasible to re‐enter the labor market as non‐standard workers. While work–life balance is a prominent reason for women's choice of opting out of the labor market, work–life balance choice mattered less for women re‐entering the labor market as non‐standard workers in their 40s and 50s but instead firmly based skill formation mattered more. In addition, the retail service industry is suggested to absorb a large number of female workers with lower skill levels who would have had difficulties in re‐entering other male‐oriented companies.     

语言实践基地建设的探索与实践——以北华大学韩国语实践基地建设为例

根据语言学家詹姆斯·卡明斯的＂弱语境＂和＂强语境＂的理论观点,强语境能使学习者获得的语言技巧更直接、更有效。为了更好地贯彻《国家中长期教育改革和发展规划纲要》中＂提高学生的实践能力、创新能力＂的要求,北华大学外语学院成立了＂韩国语实践基地＂,为提高学生学习韩国语提供了强语境的平台,对韩国语教学＂校地结合＂的新模式进行了有效探索和尝试。     

The turn to the self: From “Big Character Posters” to YouTube videos1

This paper explores the process by which user‐created content in contemporary China has evolved from being appropriated as a weapon of political mobilization and accusation to serving as a vehicle of independent self‐representation. The analysis is set in the context of the social, political and economic metamorphosis that China has undergone in the past five decades and foregrounds the dynamics of political, economic and technological forces transforming Chinese media. The metaphor of “the wall” is used to chart the contours of the struggle for self‐expression and representation. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the political and social implications of the Internet and networked user created media content for China.     

Wage Inequality and Performance in Nonprofit and For‐Profit Organizations

This article examines the effects of several forms of wage inequality on service quality and employee effort. We suggest that two popular theories, tournament and fair wage/equity, are not necessarily competing. Each theory accurately describes aspects of employee behavior, but because of sectoral differences in organizational objectives and employee attitudes, tournament theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the for‐profit sector, while fair wage/equity theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the nonprofit sector. Using an employer–employee matched data set of nursing homes linked to a federal regulatory database and a resident survey, we found that ownership moderates the relationship between wage inequality and service quality. Although wage inequality positively affects service quality in the for‐profit sector, the reverse is true among nonprofit organizations. We also found that overall wage inequality in the workplace has a more pronounced influence on employee discretionary effort than does the employee's place in the distribution of wages.     

Images of Jewish identities in Lithuanian literature of the twentieth century: Grigorii Kanovich and Markas Zingeris

This paper deals with the identity concept of two Lithuanian Jewish writers, Grigorii Kanovich and Markas Zingeris. Kanovich, as a member of the Holocaust generation, writing in Russian, depicts his protagonists as spiritual and hardworking people with strong self‐confidence, resting on religion and custom. By means of the narrative technique of memory, Kanovich creates a literary resurrection of the Lithuanian Jews as a people which was almost completely exterminated during the Holocaust. Omnipresent pictures of cemetery and grave transform the Lithuanian space into a metonymy of death and, grotesquely, to the only place of home, being the “shelter” for the killed bodies of the Lithuanian Jewry. Markas Zingeris, growing up in post‐war Soviet Lithuania, represents the concept of open identities, changeable in time and place. Calling himself a Lithuanian writer who has been raised within a Lithuanian, Jewish, and, not least, Soviet milieu, Zingeris depicts his protagonists in in‐between situations. Writing in Lithuanian, speaking several languages fluently and working as translator, Zingeris embodies the cosmopolite. At the same time, though, he is a writer of collective memory. He comments on the apparent loss of the great utopia of an autonomous identity with ironic melancholy, pointing instead to the rich variety of hybrid identities.     

It don't go both ways: Limited bidirectionality in sociolinguistic perception

This article explores the sociolinguistic perception of morphosyntactic variation, using sociolinguistic priming experiments. Two experiments tested participants' perception of the connection between social status and variation in two English subject‐verb agreement constructions: there's+NP and NP+don't. Experiment 1 tested sentence perception and found that exposure to non‐standard agreement boosted the perception of non‐standard agreement, but only for there's+NP. Social status cues had no effect on sentence perception. Experiment 2 tested speaker perception and found that participants were more likely to believe that non‐standard agreement was produced by low‐status than high‐status speakers. Results suggest that, especially for heavily stigmatized variables, non‐standard sentences strongly constrain the social judgments made by speakers, yet social cues do not necessarily constrain linguistic perception. The results suggest that the perceptual relationship between linguistic and social knowledge may be one of only limited bidirectionality. Implications for sociolinguistic perception and exemplar‐theoretic accounts of sociolinguistic competence are discussed.     

Using QSR‐NVivo to facilitate the development of a grounded theory project: an account of a worked example

This paper demonstrates how the software package QSR‐NVivo can be used to faciitate a grounded theory approach. Recent research evidence has questioned the methodological quality of many studies that claim to utilise grounded theory. This paper argues that qualitative data analysis software can be used to encourage good quality grounded theory research by facilitating many of the key processes and characteristics associated with this approach. To achieve this, the paper identifies a number of grounded theory characteristics, common to all revisions of the methodology. It then describes the development of a recent study, which examined how people successfully maintain long‐term physical activity behaviour change. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how different functions of QSR‐NVivo may be used in conjunction with the key grounded theory characteristics. In summary, QSR‐NVivo is a powerful tool that, if used appropriately, can facilitate many aspects of the grounded theory process from the design and early sampling procedures, through to the analysis of data, theoretical development and presentation of findings.     

Looking for a Grandview: introducing concepts of robust sampling to policymakers and practitioners engaged in measuring the well‐being of children at the local authority level

Local authorities are increasingly required to measure and monitor the well‐being of children. One key aspect of ensuring that these data on child well‐being are robust is that they form an accurate and representative picture of that child population. Rather than being only the purview of researchers, the act of gathering outcome data now falls within the remit of policymakers and practitioners. This article therefore describes the principles and importance of solid sampling methodologies to this audience and also considers the practical reasons as to why policymakers and practitioners may require larger samples than may be necessary for a representative picture of child well‐being. These ideas are illustrated by one local authority in the UK’s approach to measuring child well‐being, using representative sampling techniques and the subsequent expansion of this sample. The consequences of expanding the sample size are illustrated by examining the impact upon key findings related to child well‐being. The potential benefits and limitations of larger samples are discussed, as are some practical solutions to the apparent impasse.     

Developing people in a network of relational practices: reflections on the role of social work education

The mission of social work education in Flanders is threefold: to deliver education, to conduct research and to provide services to society. In our opinion social work education has a critical and liberating function towards society and it must stimulate and develop a critical attitude amongst students. In this article we first focus on the educational dimension of social work education as we practise this in one institute. Next we describe how we realise our objectives as a social work education institute in relation to the professional field. The central concept of our vision is social work as a relational practice.