http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/3805 2013-05-31T06:11:54Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6503 Title: Revitalization of folk religion in contemporary China : a case study of Dragon Tablet Festival in central and southern Hebei Province Authors: Hua, Zhiya ( 華智亞) Abstract: This dissertation is an empirical study of the revival and development of folk religion in contemporary central and southern Hebei Province, North China. Community-based local cults prevail in the rural areas of central and southern Hebei Province, and xinghao de, namely, local folk religious believers, are enthusiastic in holding religious festivals to worship their deities. Those folk religious activities were prohibited in the Maoist era, but they have been revived and have thrived after the reform and opening up. After a general introduction to the folk religion and its revival in this region, this dissertation focuses on the story of the revitalization and development of Dragon Tablet Festival, a religious festival held annually dedicated to Dragon Tablet, a public deity in a village in Zhao County. Considered as "a typical example of feudal superstition," Dragon Tablet Festival was banned in the Maoist era. After it was revived in the reform era, Dragon Tablet Festival attracted lots of researchers after a local scholar accidently discovered it and in turn introduced it to academia. Subsequently, Dragon Tablet and Dragon Tablet Festival were reinterpreted as Dragon," the common ancestor and totem of the Chinese Nation, and "the living fossil of Dragon Culture," respectively. Accordingly, Dragon Tablet Festival acquired a great success: a temple to Dragon Tablet was officially permitted to build in the name of "Dragon Culture Museum," and Dragon Tablet Festival was listed as a provincial level "intangible cultural heritage" and hence protected by the local government. The revival process is generalized as "culturalization of a local cult, which may represent a developmental tendency of folk religion in contemporary China. The completion of this process depends on the cooperation among local people, outside researchers, local government officials, and journalists. Based on ethnographic research, this dissertation examines three intertwined themes and proposes some arguments. Firstly, the revitalization of folk religion is the outcome of various factors. Both internal factors, such as the pursuit of renao (heat-noise) by folk religious believers and the resilience of folk religion caused by the flexibility of religious festivals, and some external factors, such as the enthusiasm of outside researchers and local government officials' pursuit of local economic interests, contributed to the revival and prosperity of Dragon Tablet Festival. Secondly, legitimization is an important goal for these folk religious groups and believers in the gray religious market," a transitional area existing between the legal and illegal religious groups which is mainly caused by the current religious policy in China. To achieve this goal, folk religious groups utilize different strategies to legitimize their religious activities. Thirdly, the researchers who do field research on folk religion need to adopt some strategies to legitimize their research due to the religious policies and the related regulations of academic affairs in China, but meanwhile, their research on folk religion can be utilized by folk religious believers and local government officials to achieve their own interests. So eventually, the researchers and local government officials are also involved into the process of the revitalization of folk religion and to some extent promote this process. This research not only provides a vivid picture of the revival of a local cult, but also reveals some rules in the "gray religious market" in contemporary China. At the same time, it illustrates that the revival and development of folk religion is not a process of folk resistance" but involves and requires cooperation among various actors and stakeholders. The fundamental rule behind the cooperation is the rational choices of different actors in this complicated and important process. Notes: CityU Call Number: BL1945.H43 H83 2011; vii, 330 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-326) 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6130 Title: Corporate social responsibility, corruption and human rights : multinational corporations in China and Southeast Asia Authors: Hanlon, Robert James. (0) Abstract: This study examines how multinational corporations (MNC) are engaging the human rights and anti-corruption discourse in China and Southeast Asia. The purpose is to understand how industry perceives human rights and corruption within the corporate social responsibility (CSR) paradigm. This research presents a theoretical framework that argues elite business stakeholders are driving and engineering regional CSR practice. While this study largely focuses on foreign business in China and Southeast Asia, findings are derived from comparative analysis based on field work carried out in Cambodia, China and Thailand. Conclusions are drawn from 60 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders including business leaders, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations and government officials. Research is also founded on empirical data compiled and collated from six major industry conferences held in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Paris and Singapore. Results are also based on five years of observed behaviour working with several chambers of commerce, non-profit organizations and social enterprises in Hong Kong. Findings suggest that although social responsibility is an increasingly important corporate strategy, human rights and corruption remain marginalized CSR issues in China and Southeast Asia for three reasons. First, MNCs see the structural causes of human rights violations and corruption as outside their sphere of influence and responsibility. Second, divergent stakeholder interests are sidelining human rights and corruption as CSR issues. Finally, industry is constrained by structurally embedded business practice that is shaped by neoliberalism. This study concludes that human rights and corruption will remain a peripheral business issues until elite stakeholders agree on how the concepts should enter the social responsibility framework while being vigorously promoted as a global best practice. Notes: CityU Call Number: HD2891.85 .H37 2010; x, 313 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2010.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 285-313) 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5773 Title: The developmental impact of China's investment in South America's extractive industries Authors: Gonzalez Vicente, Ruben Abstract: This thesis examines the developmental impact of Chinese state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) increasing engagement in the South American extractive sector since the 1990s. To do so, it addresses two questions: i) how much room for independent developmental planning do China’s foreign policy aims and Chinese SOEs’ on-the-ground behaviors leave at the national levels? ii) how do Chinese mining and oil SOEs impact development at the places where resources are extracted? The thesis contains two case studies of Chinese extractive firms in South America based on fieldwork carried out in Peru and Ecuador at the end of 2008. At the national level, as China’s engagement in South America increases overtime, its foreign policy approach of non-intervention in sovereign affairs may bring about changes to a region whose fate has been traditionally determined by its dependent relations with North America and Europe. I argue that China’s approach is not positive or negative per se, rather it empowers states to create indigenously tailored policies whose outcome is largely dependent on national governments’ capacities, leadership, as well as their ability and willingness to draw up long term developmental plans. Therefore, in terms of its political influence, China acts as a accommodating force that reinforces positive and negative internal trends rather than as a transformative force. Furthermore, Chinese state-owned companies’ behaviors respond to national and corporate interests, as their operations are both part of Beijing-funded “Going Out” strategy and of each company’s individual search for global competitiveness. As a result, Chinese SOEs firmly controlled (and substantially financed) by Beijing will tend to be more cooperative with host governments. Where SOEs lack economic incentives to comply with China’s foreign policy, relations with host government may be strained. Consequently, as long as China’s policy for South America remains non-interventionist, and Beijing continues to fund SOEs, cooperative attitudes are expected to persist. At the local level, Chinese SOEs’ behaviors are essentially similar to any other transnational extractive company, showing no genuine concern for the socio-economic organization or the environmental reality of the places where their operations take place. Hence, the local level conflicts in which Chinese companies have sometimes been involved can be adequately studied with mainstream theoretical approaches that address the social dynamics of resource extraction in developing countries. Two case studies are elaborated to illustrate these theoretical findings. Andes Petroleum Company Limited (a consortium formed by Sinopec and China’s National Petroleum Corporation) is an example of collaborative attitude with central government, as well as of typical conflicts between companies and indigenous populations at local level in Ecuador. Shougang Hierro Peru S.A.A. is an example of how companies with a high degree of independence from Beijing may not cooperate with governments when their business interests are at stake. At the local level, Shougang has had a significantly negative impact on development. Nonetheless, as China’s regional policy has been progressively drawn, and as Peru has increasingly democratized, Shougang’s developmental impact has began to show signs of improvement. Notes: CityU Call Number: HD9506.A2 G66 2009; 228 leaves : col. ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (M.Phil.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-228) 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5532 Title: Gender, graduate education experience and career-related choices : the case of doctoral students in science and engineering in Hong Kong Authors: Luk, Christine Yi Lai (陸伊驪) Abstract: This research compares and contrasts the graduate educational experiences and the career aspirations of male and female doctoral students in Science and Engineering (S&E) disciplines in Hong Kong. The purpose is to get a better understanding of what contributes to the persistent under-representation of women in S&E, a research area of social, economic and epistemological importance, both locally and globally. Twenty doctoral students from Hong Kong and Mainland China were recruited for this study by snowball sampling. The primary data-collection method was by way of face-to-face, unstructured interviews. The bifurcated deficit/different framework devised by Sonnert is employed to conceptualize the research problem. The results indicate that doctoral education in S&E is a gendered process, where male and female doctoral students reported vastly different experiences in the relationships with academic supervisors and faculty. Essentially, women doctoral students are less likely to reap the benefits of developing close working relationships with their supervisors and faculty, who are predominantly male while male doctoral students are working shoulder to shoulder with their male teachers and junior fellows, weaving a fabric of “brotherly comradeship” in the practice of mentoring, role modeling and academic grooming exercises such as participation in study groups and conference meetings. Gender is also a mediating factor affecting the peer interaction process, by which male doctoral displayed biased attitudes to their female peers. The gender-differentiated graduate experience shapes the career aspiration of the graduating doctoral students in S&E as the majority of male respondents favor research-oriented career path over teaching-oriented path, while the reverse pattern holds true for women. The gender divergence in the aspired career path contributes to the gender disparity in career achievement in S&E as a premature specialization in teaching restricts the career possibilities of women in S&E, where much emphasis is put on research than teaching. By examining gender differences in doctoral educational experience and career preparation, the current study contributes to the literature of women in S&E by making explicit the mechanism through which gender disparity in S&E is perpetuated. A better understanding of the mechanisms of educational and occupational sex segregation in S&E is likely to shed light on the problem of under-representation of women in S&E, which in turn can also help us understand what stands in the way of achieving gender equity in high-status occupations. Notes: CityU Call Number: HD6278.C62 L85 2008; 216 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (M.Phil.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2008.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-209) 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z