Showing papers on "Westernization published in 2006"

Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity

Abstract: Until the mid-1970s, deaf people in Japan had few legal rights and little social recognition. Legally, they were classified as minors or mentally deficient, unable to obtain driver's licenses or sign contracts and wills. Many worked at menial tasks or were constantly unemployed, and schools for the deaf taught a difficult regimen of speechreading and oral speech methods rather than signing. After several decades of activism, deaf men and women are now largely accepted within mainstream Japanese society. Deaf in Japan, a groundbreaking study of deaf identity, minority politics, and sign language, traces the history of the deaf community in Japan, from the establishment of the first schools for the deaf in the 1870s to the birth of deaf activist movements in the postwar period and current "culture wars" over signing and assimilation. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with deaf men and women from three generations, Karen Nakamura examines shifting attitudes toward and within the deaf community. Nakamura suggests that the notion of "deaf identity" is intimately linked with the Japanese view of modernization and Westernization. The left-affiliated Japanese Federation of the Deaf embraces an assimilationist position, promoting lip-reading and other forms of accommodation with mainstream society. In recent years, however, young disability advocates, exponents of an American-style radical separatism, have promoted the use of Japanese Sign Language. Nakamura, who signs in both ASL and JSL, finds that deafness has social characteristics typical of both ethnic minority and disability status, comparing the changing deaf community with other Japanese minority groups such as the former Burakumin, the Okinawans, and zainichi Koreans. Her account of the language wars that have erupted around Japanese signing gives evidence of broader changes in attitudes regarding disability, identity, and culture in Japan.

Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty First Century

Abstract: Reviving the Invisible Hand is an uncompromising call for a global return to a classical liberal economic order, free of interference from governments and international organizations. Arguing for a revival of the invisible hand of free international trade and global capital, eminent economist Deepak Lal vigorously defends the view that statist attempts to ameliorate the impact of markets threaten global economic progress and stability. And in an unusual move, he not only defends globalization economically, but also answers the cultural and moral objections of antiglobalizers. Taking a broad cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach, Lal argues that there are two groups opposed to globalization: cultural nationalists who oppose not capitalism but Westernization, and "new dirigistes" who oppose not Westernization but capitalism. In response, Lal contends that capitalism doesn't have to lead to Westernization, as the examples of Japan, China, and India show, and that "new dirigiste" complaints have more to do with the demoralization of their societies than with the capitalist instruments of prosperity. Lal bases his case on a historical account of the rise of capitalism and globalization in the first two liberal international economic orders: the nineteenth-century British, and the post-World War II American. Arguing that the "new dirigisme" is the thin edge of a wedge that could return the world to excessive economic intervention by states and international organizations, Lal does not shrink from controversial stands such as advocating the abolishment of these organizations and defending the existence of child labor in the Third World.

The Rose Revolution: A Revolution without Revolutionaries?

Abstract: In this investigation of the sources of the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003 and presentation of the challenges the new leadership faces, the author argues that there are four contexts to the Georgian revolutionary events of 2003: first, a popular and romantic yearning among Georgians for union with Europe; second, the dismal failings of the Shevardnadze regime; third, the combined impact of global economic models and Westernisation in Georgia; and, fourth, the Soviet legacy. The role of civil society organisations, though important, was not vital to the success of the Rose Revolution. The manner in which the new leadership has tackled state-building challenges suggests the pro-Western revolution is still in a radical phase, with the imperative of state consolidation often overriding Western models of due process and democratic governance. The direction of the revolution – toward greater liberalism or radical populism – will have a major impact on regional politics and on the policies of both t...

"The West" in the Eyes of the Iranian Intellectuals of the Interwar Years (1919-1939)

Abstract: Persia has not been modernized and has not in reality been Westernized. Look at the map: there is Persia right up against Russia. For the past hundred years, living cheek by jowl with Russia, Persia has maintained her complete independence of Russian thought. Although sixty to seventy percent of her trade for the past hundred years has been with Russia, Persia remains aloof in spirit and in practice. For the past ten years, Persia has been living alongside the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, and has remained free from any impregnation by their basic ideas. Her freedom is due to her cultural independence. For the safety of Persia it is essential, if she is to continue to develop on her own lines, that she should not attempt modernization, and I do not think that the attempt is being made. It is true that the Persians have adopted motor-cars and in small way railways. But let us remember that the Persians have always been in the forefront in anything of that sort. The fi rst Eastern nation to enter the Postal Union and to adopt a system of telegraphs was Persia, which country was also among the fi rst of the Eastern nations to join the League of Nations and to become an active member. The Persians have always been ready to adapt to their own peculiar needs any Western invention that seemed to suit them. But that does not mean that they are being Westernized, with one exception. Westernization is taking place in the sphere of law.1

Restoring a Lost Identity: Models of Education in Modern Islamic Thought

Abstract: Education occupied a central position in modern Islamic thought. It aimed at purifying faith, but also at nurturing activism in the service of Islam and the community. Education was required to be holistic, strengthening both soul and body. It embraced all aspects of life and was conveyed by diverse means, ranging from communal involvement to political revolution. The broad scope of this education was impelled by the comprehensiveness of the Islamic religion, but also by the multifaceted nature of Westernization itself. The corrupting presence of hedonistic culture backed by indigenous regimes heightened the functional aspect of the pedagogic realm in Islamic discourse more than ever before. Re-education was perceived as the main lever for achieving cultural authenticity and as a core component of identity politics. The paper offers a contextualized reading of education in Islamic thought, an issue largely overlooked in the scholarly literature, which has focused more on socio-political aspects of the mod...

Colonial Legacies and Neo-Colonial Practices in Papua New Guinean Higher Education.

Abstract: This paper explores the Westernization of academic quality within the Papua New Guinea higher education system and the hybridity of the university sector where different actors force knowledge to be created for the needs of a small, formal economy, rather than for the development needs of the country. The country has yet to find a system that best responds to its educational needs; several models have been put into practice but without significant results. The approach that the PNG higher education institutes have taken, continuing the colonial tradition, builds on and is reinforced by the new international trends in higher education that follow the market needs, giving a false guarantee that HE is contributing to the economic growth of the country. Colonial legacies and neo‐colonial practices provide the conceptual framework.

The Tangled Ends of an Empire: Ottoman Encounters with the West and Problems of Westernization—an Overview

Abstract: ort cities were the main beneficiaries of the rapid growth of maritime trade between Ottoman lands and the industrializing countries of Europe during the nineteenth century. By the turn of the twentieth century, the principal ports of foreign trade had become bustling economic, cultural, and political centers with larger and more cosmopolitan populations than ever. Istanbul led the way, as it had done for so long in the past, as a city conveniently located at the juncture of major sea and land routes in the eastern Mediterranean region and as the seat of an imperial government that ruled over far-flung territories. Istanbul’s population increased from about 375,000 in the 1830s and 1840s to 1.125 million in 1912. Its composition, including a significant number of foreigners, reflected the rich ethnic and religious tapestry of the empire’s population. More monumental buildings were built in Istanbul for private, public, business, and religious uses in the nineteenth century than in any other comparable stretch of time in the city’s past. Its urban infrastructure saw significant improvements. New means of transportation and communications connected Istanbul to the provinces and also to other countries more effectively. These developments made Istanbul a better place to live as well as an economically and culturally livelier city. But the empire of which it was the capital disintegrated in the same period. At the end of World War I, in November 1918, the victorious European powers occupied Istanbul and contemplated transforming it into an international city. Instead, in October 1923, the Turkish nationalist forces liberated the city, if only to subordinate it to Ankara, the capital of a new state established in the heart of provincial Anatolia. Between the hammer of international designs and the anvil of a successful nationalist movement, Istanbul’s sixteen-hundred-yearold history as an imperial city came to an end.

East is east, except when it's west: the Easternisation thesis and the Western habitus.

Abstract: An exercise in hermeneutical suspicion, this article engages the extent to which the burgeoning appearance of ostensibly Eastern concepts and practices within everyday late-modern discourse and practice can actually be said to represent a thoroughgoing “Easternization” of Western culture. Using insights from Pierre Bourdieu, this article argues that Eastern themes have been appropriated by successive generations in the West relative to a range of hermeneutical dynamics, most relevant of which are technologized conceptualizations of the self, a depersonalized view of the cosmos, and the metaphorization of the modern cultural field. Holding that appropriated Eastern concepts and practices have been tailored to the contours of the Western habitus, the article concludes that what we have is more of a westernization of eastern themes than an Easternization of the western paradigm. The hermeneutics of suspicion detailed in the article thereby raises doubts concerning the extent to which purportedly eastern-looking “counter cultural” movements such as theosophy, the new age, and contemporary mysticisms/spiritualities actually run “counter” to the Western culture they purport to reject.

Foucault's Iran and Islamic Identity Politics Beyond Civilizational Clashes, External and Internal

Abstract: Foucault's writings on the Iranian revolution and the works of the revolutionary Islamist intelligentsia (not the clerics) are of tremendous relevance to social scientists today because they show us a way out of the internal clash of civilizations Islam suffers from. By extension this helps alleviate the confrontation between the civilizations of the West and Islam because culture clash—the fear of cultural imperialism and Westernization—is holding back the forces of modernization in the Muslim world. Iran's revolutionary thinkers, as Foucault demonstrates, were against this standoff. Afary and Anderson's review of the Foucault controversy inadvertently brings this out because the mistakes they make are paradigmatic errors made by the social sciences and many Western (and Eastern) decision-makers; assuming that modernization means secularization means Westernization.

Be European, Recycle Yourself!: The Changing Work Ethic in Romania

Abstract: "Westernization" and the prospect of European integration have been formidable catalysts for social and economic change in Eastern European countries since 1989. Full of promises and expectations but lacking economic means and adequate structures, Romanian enterprises have faced particularly difficult problems. Prompted by employees' self-criticism, this book explores the dynamics of work values in the service sector in Bucharest. Based on long term ethnographic fieldwork, the study analyzes the factors determining social and cultural change at the local level, from the impact of Western ideologies and symbolic measures to concrete organizational and economic constraints. Monica Heintz emphasizes the impact of the forced pace of change, which caused social disorder and disrupted individual values. She challenges the notion of a universal ethic of work and argues that what governs relationships between employers, employees and clients in the Romanian context is simply an ethic of human relations. "Monica Heintz" is a lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Paris 10- Nanterre (France).

Modernization and Gender: a history of girls' technical education in Turkey since 1927

Abstract: This article is a historical analysis of Girls’ Institutes in Turkey. These schools were established in the early Republican era in order to educate girl students to gender roles compatible with modernization and with the westernization project of the Turkish state. The analysis is based upon qualitative data (including interviews and focus groups). The findings point to four trends in the history of Girls’ Institutes and in the characteristics and lifechances of graduates in the period 1927‐70. These were (a) the shift from ‘good housewife and mother’ training schools to vocational schools; (b) the downgrading of the employment of graduates; (c) a shift from singleness to marriage; and (d) the redefinition of gender roles by women themselves.

Birth Attendants in Meiji Japan: The Rise of a Medical Birth Model and the New Division of Labour

Abstract: This article analyses two kinds of medical textbook for midwives published in Japan in the Meiji period (1868-1912), and compares them with the oldest extant guide published in the Edo period (1603-1867). Meiji textbooks, which became foundational to the rise of 'new-midwives', were written by a local hygiene officer in the 1880s, and later by obstetric-gynaecologists. Both these groups emerged as 'modern' professions in the late nineteenth century, when the government was trying to build a militarily strong, industrially competent state similar to western countries. The textbooks presented knowledge comparable to that in western counterparts. They revealed a clear departure from the Edo tradition, especially in relation to the role of midwives during the process of birth and the use of the hand. The article seeks to demonstrate that the epistemology of scientific midwifery reflected the political, social and professional position and aspirations of these two medical groups. It also argues that the emergence of 'new-midwifery' in Meiji Japan, which has usually been seen as part of the 'westernisation' of medicine, should not be interpreted in terms of a natural flow of knowledge from west to east.

Research Note: Cypriot Television, Dialect Productions and Demotic Culture: Urbanization, Westernization or New Resistance Identities?

Abstract: This article examines the television programme preferences in Cyprus over the last 10 years or so, from the English-language programmes popular during the public broadcasting monopoly period and up to the mid-1990s, to the imported Greek productions, in the Panhellenic demotic, after the pluralism of the 1990s and up to more recent times, when productions in the Cypriot dialect have become very popular on all Cypriot television channels. The significance of language in the expression of a people's culture is discussed, but at the same time, some of the content of the dialect programme offering is also described, to indicate the transition from rural to urban themes and modalities in dialect programmes. Today, Cypriots live in a changing, fragmented world. Could this phenomenal turn to dialect productions (with their satirical selfderision) be a voice of (modernized) demotic expression or is it a type of autochthonous cultural resistance to the embraces of Europeanization and globalization?

Ethnic identities and cultural capital: an ethnography of chinese opera in singapore

Abstract: This article weaves the trajectory of Chinese opera in Singapore with the country's political development. Starting in 1965, the year of Singapore's independence, it attempts to debunk the myth that national culture is resistant to global culture by describing the state's systematic erosion of local culture. From the late 1970s onward, with economic progress, state fears of “Westernisation” led to a centring of Chinese culture in national culture; this was followed by a mini-revival of Chinese opera that coincided with the emergence of Confucian ethics as national discourse and as a culturalist explanation for the “Asian miracle” of the 1980s. This article shows that globalisation's effect on local cultures is not a straightforward process. Instead, it is a complex relationship where the flourishing of a local culture depends on the changing recognition and valuation of cultural identities, ethnicity, and language as cultural capital. This in turn implicates the structural features of national policies an...

Economic Development versus Cultural Transformation: Projects of Modernity in Japan and Turkey

Abstract: In Turkey, Japan has often been perceived as an industrial country that developed economically while keeping to its traditions. This perception has been especially strong among Islamists and conservatives who have been critical of the process of Westernization since the nineteenth century. In their view, Turkey understood modernity as imitation of Western culture but failed to industrialize. Japan, on the other hand, proved that it was possible to modernize while preserving one's tradition, religion, and culture. Hence, according to this analysis, Japan's successful transition from agrarian to industrial society was in stark contrast to the Turkish course of modernization.

Transnational Orientals: Scholars of Art, Nationalist Discourses, and the Question of Intellectual Authority

Abstract: This article examines the ways in which two scholars of Japanese descent, Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) and Kojiro Tomita (1890-1976), defined the bourgeois fascination for East Asia in early twentieth-century United States. Fashioning multi-layered, transnational identities for themselves as authoritative cultural intermediaries, they occupied privileged positions within American social and intellectual circles and became active participants in debates regarding the impacts of modernization and Westernization on Asia and its aesthetics. In the process, Okakura and Tomita constructed and disseminated discourses of race, nationalism, and culture that served to decenter the nation-state and to underscore the complexities of the immigrant experience amidst socio-economic and political transformations taking place on both sides of the Pacific.

The history of nursing development in the Republic of China

Abstract: Modern nursing was introduced into China (and Taiwan) as part of the general Westernization of Chinese culture. It was accepted in its Western and modern form along with medicine as a part of China's modernization. Looking after the sick, one of the basic functions of any society, has traditionally been performed by women. Such basic social function cannot be ignored. Therefore, at the beginning of this paper, the traditional healing and caring systems in China prior to the influence of the West are examined. The second part of this paper shows that the strategy of nineteenth century reformers and later leaders from England and America was incorporated into modern Chinese nursing. Also, patriotic feelings opposed to imperialism and indignation over the Sino-Japanese War benefited the growth of domestic nursing. The last part of this paper examines recent developments and the current status of nursing in Taiwan. Overall, the more than a century of modern nursing history in the R.O.C. is infused with a complex mixture of cultural borrowing from the West, anti-imperialist experience, colonialist influences, and ethical and gender issues. The study methodology adopted for this essay follows that used by Robert Elias. Both the synchronic social context and diachronic historical processes are considered in order to illuminate and highlight the critical events that shaped the history of nursing in the ROC. Due to the researcher's personal academic background and interest, sociological and feminist perspectives were taken while investigating and analyzing materials.

Cultural hegemony in the museum world

Abstract: The museum is the cultural product of western history, and its concept was not domesticated by Asia until the twentieth century. This is not to say that Asia has no museum of its own; rather, the Asian museum world had not developed a westernized museum until the last century. Regarding the National Taiwan Museum founded in 1908 or the Nan-Tong Museum in China founded in 1905, these pioneer museums in Asia were established under the atmosphere of pursuing western civilization. To some extent, they were part of the heritage of cultural colonialism. Given the bourgeoning numbers of museums in both Taiwan and China nowadays, it seems that the concept of the museum has been successfully transplanted to Asia. However, it is also worth noting that even local museums are experienced un-locally. For instance, a cultural outsider may visit the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum and find him/herself located in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Can the Asian museum world really off-load the influence of westernization and globalization without losing its cultural identity? This paper would suggest alternatives for the museums of our own.

East is East, Except When It's West

Abstract: An exercise in hermeneutical suspicion, this article engages the extent to which the burgeoning appearance of ostensibly Eastern concepts and practices within everyday late-modern discourse and practice can actually be said to represent a thoroughgoing “Easternization” of Western culture. Using insights from Pierre Bourdieu, this article argues that Eastern themes have been appropriated by successive generations in the West relative to a range of hermeneutical dynamics, most relevant of which are technologized conceptualizations of the self, a depersonalized view of the cosmos, and the metaphorization of the modern cultural field. Holding that appropriated Eastern concepts and practices have been tailored to the contours of the Western habitus, the article concludes that what we have is more of a westernization of eastern themes than an Easternization of the western paradigm. The hermeneutics of suspicion detailed in the article thereby raises doubts concerning the extent to which purportedly eastern-looking “counter cultural” movements such as theosophy, the new age, and contemporary mysticisms/spiritualities actually run “counter” to the Western culture they purport to reject.

The Liberal Capitalist West as the New ‘Global State’*

Abstract: Over the last few decades, especially since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism, the world is transiting from ‘international’ politics to ‘global’ politics. The transformation comes in the wake of the very old inclusive and constitutive process of expansion of the West, westernization of the international society and that of the globe. This is a compelling phenomenon and has been mainly built on the political, legal and economic ideas (and also the culture) of the liberal capitalist West. The governing structures, organizational patterns and institutional practices of most countries in the world are also inspired by the West. This is the foundation of the nature, extent and form of power the liberal capitalist West led by the US exercises over the rest of the world. This kind of power is increasingly becoming similar in many respects to what the State exercises in the international system. Hence, the liberal capitalist West could be seen as the virtual Global State. Such a...

Introduction: Turkey at the Threshold of the European Union

Abstract: The history of contemporary Turkey is characterized by change, the main causes of which have been external stimuli and incentives, particularly the drive for transformation from an oriental Islamic empire to a secular national state. This transformation — known as Westernization — has been slow and occasionally painful. It has been aptly called ‘the Turkish revolution’ and, as Bernard Lewis pointed out, it could be defined not only ‘in terms of economy or society or government, but also of civilization’.1 It gained momentum with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the ascent of Kemalism, when ‘everything had to be rebuilt, above all a new identity’.2 Its main goal was to move Turkey from being a medieval Islamic theocracy to becoming a modern capitalist Western democracy. At the centre of the Kemalist ideology and its state-building and nation-building efforts was the consolidation of the Turkish Republic which was based on a political system the core principles of which were ‘heavily tainted by a historically developed authoritarian understanding of the unitary state and its functioning as well as an organic and homogenous understanding of the nation’.3 Eventually the scope of Westernization was broadened to include economic, social and cultural changes which were intensified by industrialization efforts and rapidly increasing urbanization.

Women, Westernization and the origins of modern Vietnamese theatre.

Abstract: Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, magazines, newspapers and novels burst off the presses in Vietnamese cities at extraordinary rates. (1) As cities expanded and a small but not insignificant urban Vietnamese middle class emerged, city dwellers had to cope with class distinctions and discrimination, new forms of knowledge and population increases. A new Vietnamese middle class rushed to consider, and sometimes embrace, a sea of new fashions, goods, tastes and ideologies that were being introduced. (2) At first, these developments seem to have offered Vietnamese urbanites an inchoate and disjointed series of choices. By looking at even one page from two newspapers, for example, one could find advertisements for sausages, trains and diamonds among announcements of ship timetables, essays on colonial life and commentaries on the role of women in the family. (3) Yet in the midst of all these new products and issues, three related themes emerged with greater frequency and greater consistency than the others: the changing status of Vietnamese women, Westernization and the meaning of being Vietnamese. Political debates over the status of women were important enough to become the focus of one significant and influential newspaper, Phu nu Tan van (Women's news), which ran continuously from 1929 to 1934. (4) In addition, debates on the changing role of women in newspapers dates as far back as commentator Pham Quynh's 1917 essay on the status of women, in which he warned of the moral degradation of women: 'when men lack virtue, it is harmful to society; but not so harmful as when women become unsound, because unsound women damage the very roots of society'. (5) Although Phu nu Tan van ran articles on any number of political and apolitical topics, they frequently debated and discussed the 'new girl', a Westernized elite Vietnamese woman who spent time playing tennis and ping-pong and shirking her Confucian responsibilities. The 'new girl' and the issues surrounding her were controversial enough in the pages of Phu nu Tan van that some editors and writers tempered the paper's progressive approach to the question of women by introducing exemplary characters from the Vietnamese past such as the Trung Sisters, who served as examples of assertive women that appeared to be consistent with a certain notion of the Vietnamese past. (6) This article will consider these changes in detail as they relate to the development of Vietnamese theatre in the 1920s and 1930s. First, it will examine the development of concerns about Westernization and the status of women in Vietnam during this period. Next, it will examine how these two developments in early twentieth-century Vietnamese social history affected the development in the same time period of a modern Vietnamese spoken theatre, and will demonstrate how these two themes influenced both the form and the content of the first spoken dramas. Finally, the study will examine in detail one particularly significant play that highlights the concerns about Westernization and the status of Vietnamese women: Nam Xuong's Ong Tay An-nam (The Frenchman from Annam) (1930). Women, the West and the nation: The concerns of the new Vietnamese literature The new concerns about the status of women given the chaotic world of the 1920s and 1930s in Vietnam also formed a central theme in the newly emerging genre of the Vietnamese novel. In Nguyen Ba Hoc's Co Chieu Nhi. (Miss Chieu Nhi), for example, a young girl from a rich family, tempted by Western goods, squanders her money and becomes a beggar. (7) Similar themes dominate perhaps the most popular novel of the 1920s, Hoang Ngoc Phach's To tam (Pure heart). In this tragic story, a young woman who has recently graduated from a French school is forced by her parents to marry a man she does not love instead of the love of her life. In To tam, the perceived modern individualism of the increasingly Francophile urban elite comes into conflict with the 'traditional' bonds of the family. …

Constructing transnational Islam: the East–West network of Shakib Arslan

Abstract: The interwar period saw the division of the greater part of the world into a colonized East and a colonizing West, and within the East into partly overlapping Arab and Islamic worlds. The East, the West, the Arab world, the Islamic world, each had its human networks. At the same time, the very concepts of an Arab world and of an Islamic world competed with local nationalisms, with Westernization, and with each other. As a literary figure belonging to the cultural milieus of Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus, and as the Arab amir al bayan, “the prince of eloquence,” Shakib Arslan was strongly connected to the Arab world. As a former student of Muhammad 2Abduh, a close friend of Rashid Rida, and an important contributor to the journal al-Manar, he was a spokesman for the Islamic revival. As a resident of Switzerland, the publisher of the journal La Nation Arabe, and a perpetual anticolonial activist, he was a regular figure at anticolonial congresses and in Paris, Berlin, and Rome.

Legitimacy Debates and Identity Crisis——In the Case of "Aphasia" in Chinese Modern Literary Theory and "Westernization" of Chinese Modern Poetry

Abstract: Legitimization is a key notion in the sociological theories of Max Weber, who initiated the concept in the discourses of cultural theories and the analyses of their debates, thus helpful in making clear the cultural significance of the discourses and the debates. Some recent discourses of Chinese modern literary theories and of Chinese modern poetry are worthy of our examination. Both "Aphasia" in Chinese modern literary theory and "Westernization" of Chinese modern poetry are virtually challenges to the legitimacy of Chinese modern culture and literature, for they seem to be greatly westernized and deviate from their tradition. These discourses are expressions of an anxiety in cultural identity, which is inevitable in a thorough transformation from traditional culture to modern one. By means of analyzing the relations between re-traditionalization and ontological security, the author tries to make clear a complicated relation between back-to-tradition and contemporary construction of Chinese cultural identity, critically reflects on the misunderstanding of cultural identity and claims that identity on the basis of multi-cultural values is always open to changes.

Living in two worlds. Challenges facing Pacific communities: The case of Fijians in New Zealand

Abstract: Living in two worlds is an insider perspective of how indigenous Pacific Immigrant communities, in this specific case Fijian's living in New Zealand face the challenges of living two cultures in a developed country like New Zealand. The quest to hold on to one's indigenous culture while adapting to another, in order to survive the realities of everyday circumstances can be a complicated struggle. The main objective of this research was to collate and analyze information from Fijian families who migrated to New Zealand from 1970's to the mid 1980's with reference to the challenges they faced. In order to understand such constant struggles there are underlying questions and factors that should be considered. For example - why do people continue to be conservative about their cultural identities or how do they react to unfamiliar challenges in a multicultural society. Another could be - what influences have been seen in order for their children to recognize their indigenous identity. Comparable factors that will bring to other aspects of living in two worlds which would be considered were socio-economic issues, higher education, technological advancement, immigration policies, development constraints and quality of living standards. Fijians and other indigenous Pacific people have through the years gained the ultimate will to defend their cultural and traditional identity whilst living in a world of western values and culture. Coupled with this have been the complexities of holding on to the values of both worlds. As this project probed into these newly rediscovered stories about journeys to their new homeland filled with opportunities, capitalism or westernization had never withered their passion and dreams as Pacific people to better themselves. They also enjoyed the luxury of both worlds as conservators of Pacific cultures and exploiters of technological advancement filled with huge dreams, opportunities and better standards of living. Fijians have the smallest population of Pacific people in New Zealand when compared to Samoa, Tonga, and Cook Islanders. There were relatively small number of Fijians who arrived after the end of World War 2 and they were basically employed in farms, forestry work stations and industrial areas. Others were in New Zealand on government scholarships, training or internship and work experience programs. Most of these people returned home while a very small proportion stayed behind. In the early 1970's and 1980's there was also an influx of seasonal workers in the Central North Island areas including Hawkes Bay, Tokoroa and the Waikato region. Most people were recruited from the Pacific Islands including Fiji because of their hard working attitude and cheap labour margins. When their term was completed some decided to stay and work, eventually residing legally and permanently with their families. Another group of men came via Wellington by boat, destined to become maintenance and repair workers. (bound for maintenance and repair work and ) but were left…

Anthropology and Japanese Modernity

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