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This book examines, in a culturally and contextually sensitive way, the particularity of what it means to be young in post-Mao China undergoing rapid and dramatic transformation by comparing childhood and youth experiences over three generations. The analysis draws on life-history interviews with Beijing young men and women in their last upper secondary year, their parents and their grandparents. The book offers a comprehensive coverage of the various aspects of life pertinent to youth experiences and compares each of these across three generations, treating them as interrelated and mutually affecting processes – childhood, intergenerational relationships, education and future plans, gende...
While previous research has explored the academic adaptation or acculturation processes of Chinese students studying abroad, limited attention has been paid to students’ own perspectives and narrations of their experience. To contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this highly mobile group, this study takes a closer look at the students’ self-identity narratives. How do they make sense of their foreign adventure? How do they position themselves among their peers and their family members, as well as within the greater transnational context? Based on 29 in-depth, biographical interviews with Chinese students in the United States, the findings show the participants’ continuously interpreting and revising their individual, academic, and cultural identities. In the familial context, a recurring narrative of the high-potential only-child could be observed. Many students (and their family members) felt that their unique talents and personalities were not appreciated within the Chinese educational system and thus sought more holistic environments abroad.
Trevor Kerry draws together contributions from leading academics in the field based in Europe, Canada and Australia to examine key themes in higher education, including: • academic freedom • leadership and management • the nature of learning and teaching • ethical behaviour • curriculum innovation • attitudes to globalization and internationalization The contributors explore what might constitute effective higher education provision, drawing on innovative practice from around the world and encouraging higher education practitioners to become more analytical and critical about their institutions, about their own roles, and about the ways in which they and their work serve their client-base. In so doing the book confronts the contextual conflicts that arise from political, social and fiscal agendas for higher education.
The collection brings together texts of Brazilian researchers who are dedicated to themes related to studies of youth cultures: social interactions, subcultures, identities and belonging, pop culture, social movements, migration, consumption and materialities, generational exchanges, media representations and digital media, among others. The objective is to promote a broad dialogue that includes fields of knowledge such as communication and social sciences, as well as local perspectives that represent the huge and rich diversity of the Brazilian regions. At the same time, the book proposes to discuss the reflexivity of such local youth cultures in the face of a global context that challenges, with ruptures and permanencies, the very idea of youth. The book seeks to fill the gap of a selection of scientific texts by Brazilian authors, about Brazilian youth cultures, aimed at foreign researchers.
This book discusses some of the newest developments of the internet, examining its impact on political, economic and psychological processes, the shaping of communication technology under social, cultural and organizational constraints, and the development of theories, methods and pedagogical tools to account for these transformations.
This book is the essential guide for understanding how state power and politics are contested and exercised on social media. It brings together contributions by social media scholars who explore the connection of social media with revolutions, uprising, protests, power and counter-power, hacktivism, the state, policing and surveillance. It shows how collective action and state power are related and conflict as two dialectical sides of social media power, and how power and counter-power are distributed in this dialectic. Theoretically focused and empirically rigorous research considers the two-sided contradictory nature of power in relation to social media and politics. Chapters cover social media in the context of phenomena such as contemporary revolutions in Egypt and other countries, populism 2.0, anti-austerity protests, the fascist movement in Greece's crisis, Anonymous and police surveillance.
This book is the first general social analysis that seriously considers the daily experience of information disruption and software failure within contemporary Western society. Through an investigation of informationalism, defined as a contemporary form of capitalism, it describes the social processes producing informational disorder. While most social theory sees disorder as secondary, pathological or uninteresting, this book takes disordering processes as central to social life. The book engages with theories of information society which privilege information order, offering a strong counterpoint centred on "disinformation." Disorder and the Disinformation Society offers a practical agenda...
The strict regulations on the Internet imposed by the Chinese government on its cyberspace are well known and the Chinese web experience is heavily spoiled day by day. Nevertheless, the typical Chinese Internet user is often not aware of what is going on in China and users’ perception of the Internet freedom issues is very low ( Global Internet User Survey 2012). This book focuses its exploration on the implications and repercussions of a typical Chinese user, accustomed to the pervasive Internet censorship in China, who starts benefiting from an open and democratic Internet environment as the Italian one. Will the Chinese user’s perception of the problems of freedom of speech and open a...
Italy is not a country for young people. Why? This book provides a unique and in-depth collection of empirical and theoretical material providing multiple answers to this question whilst investigating the living conditions of young people in Italy today. By bringing together a variety of approaches and methods, the authors of this collection analyze Italian youth through the lenses of three dimensions: ‘Activism, participation and citizenship’, ‘Work, Employment and Careers’ and ‘Moves, Transitions and Representations’. These dimensions are the analytical building blocks for challenging stereotypes and unveiling misinterpretations and taken-for-granted assumptions that portray yo...
How does the availability of the internet alter migrants' everyday lives and senses of belonging? Drawing on the empirical case study of Paraguayan migrants, this book explores the interrelation of media and migration practices and sheds light on cultural meanings of digital media, shifting senses of belonging and emerging global forms of living together.